Curtain Up
AS anyone ever noticed the intensely theatrical quality of Bax’s "Overture to a Picaresque Comedy"? As a rule, the overtures heard in recorded programmes were written for operas and the like, works of music where the music was taken to be the aspect possessing all the importance; and were therefore overtures designed to introduce the evening’s music and little more, But here?in Bax’s work, we have an overture written (I think) with .
no specific drama in mind, yet expressing in musical terms and with overpowering vividness the atmosphere of the theatre. In ome passage I have particularly in mind the music seems to reproduce the chattering buzz of an audience watching lights and curtains, and like it conveys to the listener a sensation, physical and muscular (diaphragmatic, dare I say?) of mervous expectation. Bax’s music is not "From the Theatre"-to use a phrase of special significance to the New Zealand radio pub-lice-but for the theatre; it renders into music the unique experience, the interest, intimacy, and suspense, which the theatre offers to its audience. In this work, more than in any other I can at the moment call to mind, one art salutes another.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19461206.2.30.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 389, 6 December 1946, Page 14
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196Curtain Up New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 389, 6 December 1946, Page 14
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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