THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 436, 31 October 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

: . Mendelssohn HE centenary of Mendelssohn’s death, which falls on Tuesday, November 4, will be commemorated from 2YA at 7.46 p.m. with a programme of his works, including vocal, instrumental, choral and _ orchestral items." Station 1YX will feature at 8.32 p.m. on the same day his Symphony No. 4 in A Major ("Italian"), and at 8.30 p.m. on Sunday, November 9, Elijah, as recorded by the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra. From 4YO there will be two half-hour programmes, beginning at 10.0 p.m., on Wednesday, November 5,and on Friday, November 7. Mendelssohn was_ only 38 when he died, and his death is said to have been hastened by overwork, and the death of his sister. Incidentally, apart from his fame as a composer he was recognised during his lifetime as one of the finest of contemporary pianists and an organist of exceptional ability, while he often conducted or played the viola in performances of his own works. First Performances HE first of several first performances, to be broadcast by Station 3YA in the near future will be heard at 8.16 p.m. this Friday (October 31). when the soprano Anita Ritchie will be heard in a group of five songs by Dr. T. Vernon Griffiths, Professor of Music at Canterbury University College. Dr. Griffiths has given new settings to some old English verses, among them "And Shall Trelawney Die?" and Shakespeare’s "Tell Me Where is Fancy Bred." The following Friday, November 7, 3YA_ will broadcast at 8.27 p.m. four songs composed by David Farquhar, sung by Marijean Edmonds with the composer at the piano (see page 21). David Farquhar, who comes from Cambridge in the Waikato, is studying for a Mus. Bac. degree at Canterbury University College, and has already composed several instrumental works, among them a sonata for piano and ‘cello. Another forthcoming first performance will be the presentation of Bernard Stevens’s "Theme and Variations" by Ernest Jenner on Monday, November 17, at 9.30 p.m. Music and Mysticism N the course of his long and rather unpredictable musical development Vaughan Williams has followed many trends of thought and explored many philosophies in his search for inspiration. One of his most frequent sources has been the literature of 17th» Century England, particularly the poems of George Herbert (set to music in the Mystical Songs), and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (on which the short opera The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains was based). The mystical quality already apparent in these works was again strongly emphasised in his Third Symphony, but it reaches its highest point in the Fifth, which was written during the war and had its first performance in 1943. The third movement of this symphony embodies material from an unfinished Pilgrim’s Progress opera, while the whole work is a mass of cross-refer-ences, incorporating many of the ideas

and methods used in previous works. "Diatonic and luminous," Scott Goddard says of it, "the music in motion and texture has clarity more concentrated than any of the great number of works which have come before it, works of whjch it seems the crowning achievement in its complex discipline of expression." Symphony No. 5 in D Major will be heard from 2YA in that station’s classical hour beginning at 2.0 p.m. on Monday, November 3, Another Faustus ITH the BBC’s World Theatre presentation of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus fresh in the memory, Wellington listeners are to have an opportunity to hear another variation on the theme on Sunday, November 9, when The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz will be heard from

2YA. Marlowe’s tragical history was popular in Germany up to the end of the 19th Century, but it is on the first part of Goethe’s Faust, a work on which the author spent almost .a lifetime of meditation, that the various operas are based. The first of these, by Spohr, appeared in 1818, followed in 1859 by Gounod’s familiar work. The Damnation of Faust, first presented in 1846, is dramatic music- for soloists, chorus, and orchestra-written to be performed in the concert hall rather than on the stage. Nearly 50 years later, howeVer, it was given a full operatic production at Monte Carlo, and has since become one of the best-known of the six operas built around the Faust legend. It’ will be heard from 2YA at 8.5 p.m. Back to Chaucer | LISTENERS to 3YA on Thursday, November 6, may (if they wish) take a long jump into the "dark, backward and abysm of time"’-560 years long to be precise-to hear of Chaucer’s medieval pardoner whose stock-in-trade was discoursing on the evils of gluttony and drunkenness, swearing and gambling (he sold indulgences). This will be a radio adaptation of The Pardoner’s Tale, the story of the three revellers who in time of plague set out on a search for Death, who had killed one of their comtrades. An old man told them they would find him under a certain tree. There they discovered a heap of gold. Each designed to get sole possession of the treasure, but they succeeded only in killing one another. Douglase Wight, who made the adaptation, let himself go to some extent by putting Chaucer

into prose and giving names to the characters, and the NZBS has produced the result in radio play form, The Pardoner’s Tale will be broadcast at 8.0 p.m. Law and Life in Samoa HEN the United Nations Trusteeship Council’s mission to Western Samoa was investigating the natives’ petition for independence last August, members of the NZBS who accompanied them to record the proceedings made some additional records of various aspects of Samoan life for broadcast to New Zealand listeners. Three of these talks will be broadcast from 2YA at 7.15 p.m. on_ succeeding Fridays, beginning on November 7 with "Justice in Western Samoa," by Chief Judge J. R. Herd, of the High Court of Western Samoa. Originally, Judge Herd recalls, justice was administered by the tribal chiefs, who were apt to impose on anyone they did not like such punishments as killing and cooking, or tying a man up like an animal and carrying him around on a pole, while they themselves and their families were able to get away with what they liked. With the civilising influence of Christianity, however, fines (payable in produce) and banishment from the village were substituted for these more barbarous customs; then, when the area became a New Zealand mandate in 1921, the Samoa Act was passed, ensuring a judicial system based on the European belief in the equality of rights. Discussing his experiences in Samoa, Judge Herd describes a typical day at the Native Land and Titles Court (where the natives in attendance punctuate proceedings with kava-drinking spells), and recalls some of the more unusual cases he has had to deal with in the High Court. The succeeding talks in the | series deal with "Education," and "Your Own Tropical Farms"-the latter a discussion of the New Zealand Reparation Farms by D. R. A. Eden, .