THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 440, 28 November 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Talks on Peru ‘THE Republic of Peru came into the news in the middle of this year when six men-five Norwegians and a Swede | -drifted on a raft from the Peruvian. | coast to Polynesia to try to prove that the South Pacific Islands could have been visited, and perhaps partly peopled, from South America. They made their landfall and claimed that the theory of the leader of the expedition was correct. Now Peru is to be in the news again, this time by radio, for, from 2YA on Monday, December 15, at 7.15 p.m., the first of a series of five weekly talks on Peru (which possesses the oldest university in the New World) will be given by Dr. Herbert Money. Dr. Money was the first New Zealand Master of Arts in Education, graduating with honours at Canterbury University College. He went to Peru some years ago as an educational missionary and is now on furlough. He enrolled as a student at the University of Lima where he got his doctorate in Philosophy. Old Wine, Old Bottles HAT right modern popular songwriters have to take melodies and themes from the old masters and sell them as their own, dressed up'in jazz and boogie-woogie settings, is a question that all lovers of classical music must often ask themselves. Perhaps the most notorious example of such a "steal’’ was the very popular song (by the American Harry Fisher) that came out in the 1920’s, "I’m Always Chasing Rainbows," which uses part of the theme of Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu. To-day, Tchaikovski seems particularly to have suffered at the hands of the swing .experts. Some people think that the classics lose nothing by being popularised, others regard it as a desecration. But whatever your views on this matter, you should be interested to hear the 3YA programme Hands Off the Masters which will be broadcast at 8.25 p.m. on Saturday, December 6. It demonstrates, with recordings and commentary, the origins of some popular tunes of the day, and contrasts the new arrangements with the original settings. Westland By-Election T was an old Spartan custom, when people wanted to record their opinion on some political matter, to do it by a shout, or by clashing spears on shields. To-day pencil and paper serve the purpose, for democracy has brought us more tranquil ways. But some of the older of the rugged inhabitants of New Zealand’s wild west will remember when an election campaign was a robust affair, featuring the senile egg, the mature tomato and the flour-bomb, Elections may have lost much of their entertainment value, but perhaps its absence makes for more reasoned decisions. On Wednesday, December 3, the electorate "of Westland will have a by-election, .and for the benefit of radio listeners Stations 2YA, 3YA, and 3ZR will broadcast the returns as they come to hand, after Consumer Time at 7.0 p.m., and Stations 1YA, 2YH, 4YA (4YO after 8.0 pm.) and 4YZ will give progress results from time to time. As the

electorate is extensive it may be late in the evening before the final result is known. Scott and Romanticism BEHIND Sir Walter Scott’s early fame as a romantic poet lies an interesting story which is a tribute both to his tenacious memory and his sense of opportunism. Scott was present at a party held in Edinburgh in honour of Coleridge, who read to the guests his unpublished Christabel, a poem whith made use of elements of the new German romanticism in an original metre-the four-beat couplet. Scott went home with this poem echoing in his mind, and shortly afterwards (in 1805) appeared

his great "success The Lay of the Last Minstrel, writtén in the same metre and echoing many of the phrases of Christabel. Although Coleridge remarked to a friend many years later that all the glory which Scott received as the first great exponent of romantic-

ism belonged by rights to him, Scott cannot be accused of plagiarism, for Coleridge could have published Christabel long before the Last Minstrel appeared. Later, when Scott’s fame as a poet was eclipsed by Byron’s Childe Harold, he turned to the romantic novel, and it is as the author of the Waverley series and- historical romances like Ivanhoe that he is best known to-day. Hawke’s Bay listeners will be able to hear the BBC programme Sir Walter Scott,from 2YH at 9.50 p.m. on Wednesday, December 3. Juvenile Taste ‘, HE problem of developing good taste among children has been receiving increasing attention in New Zealand in recent months. There have been two publications by the Council for Educational Research embodying work in this particular field--Dorothy Neal White’s About Books for Children, and The Reading, Film, and Radio Tastes of High School Boys and Girls, by W. J. Scott -and there have been articles on children’s comics in National Education and elsewhere. The campaign for a more intelligent understanding of the problem is being carried into the home by the latest A.C.E. talk for housewives, entitled "Children’s Tastes in Books, Radio and Films," which will be heard from 1YA at 10.45 a.m. on Thursday, December 4; from 3YA at 2.30 p.m. and 4YZ at 9.31 a.m. the same day; and from 2YH at 10.0 am. on Wednesday, December 3. Force of Destiny HEN mothers and maternal aunts start making prophecies about the future of some new-born infant, the consequences (for the child) may sometimes be rather unexpected. This is the case with the hero of the NZBS play, The Man Who Feared the Gallows, by Victor Andrews, which will be heard from 3YA at 8.0 p.m. on Thursday, December 4. He happened to be born with a caul on his head, which, apart

from being a good omen for a child’s future, is supposed to be a charm against drowning. But the play opens at a point in his later life when he is accused of a murder that he did not commit. We discover in a series of flash-backs that he is afraid that because of this childhood prophecy he is bound to end up on the gallows. In fact, every incident of his past life appears to him to have been leading up to this moment, so that like Shakespeare’s bo’sun in The Tempest, if he can’t drown he must hang. However, things don’t turn out quite as he (or we) anticipated, and the irony of fate is revealed in the dramatic climax with which the play ends. The Christmas Oratorio OW that December is here again, and the children are busily anticipating what they will get for Christmas, and some of us are gathering stamina for the frantic business of arranging holiday travel, the musical world is agog,. too. For hundreds of faithful choir members up and down the country, December means looking out copies of Handel’s Messiah, rehearsing and dog-earing vocal scores where there are difficult passages. Soloists, too, are getting ready. Messiah is a famous and to many a much-loved work, without which December would not be the Christmas month. And though it was written more than 200 years ago, it has never lost its musical savour. Station 1YA will lead off with this year’s radio presentations of the oratorio, on Saturday, December 6, at 7.45 p.m. The choma, will be the Auckland Choral Society with the 1YA Studio Orchestra (aug mented) in a public performance. The soloists will be Peggy Knibb, the Australian soprano who was in New Zealand some months ago and who is being brought by the society from Australia to take part;~Dorothy Stentiford (contralto), Leslie Russell (tenor), and Bryan Drake, of Dunedin (baritone). The conductor will be Georg Tintner, and the performance- will be relayed from the Auckland Town Hall.