CLASSICAL REQUEST SESSION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 457, 25 March 1948, Page 17

CLASSICAL REQUEST SESSION

Sir.-Your correspondent "J.B.W." (Lower Hutt) has made an excellent suggestion in asking for a "Classical Request Session" for the Wellington district; but, if it ever should be.inaugurated let us call it a "Musical Request Session" or something of the sort, since it is fairly safe to assume that such a session would embrace compositions ranging from pre-Bach to Schoenberg and Shostakovich, works well outside the sphere of classical music. The extremely loose use,of the term "classical," by the NZBS has often catised confusion in my own home, and doubtless in many ‘others. How is one expected to assist a child with musical studies, explaining the different periods of composition, "classical," "romantic," etc., when the strongest cultural influence in New Zealand includes Ravel and Debussy in "Classical" Hours? Let us call things by their proper names if only for the guidance of the growing generation.

VEE

(Lower Hutt).

(The trouble is that ‘"‘classical" is used in more than one sense, not only in music, but in other arts. "It is ftequently used,’’ says Percy Sholes in the Oxford Companion to Music, "‘as a label to distinguish what is obviously of more or less established and permanent value from what is ephemeral. This is the sense in which it is perhaps most often used in connection with literature and the other arts, and from that point of view the most desirable sense." The Oxford Dictiorary quotes a writer as saying that ‘‘classic’’ is, used in two senses: ‘In the one it means having permanent interest and value, In the second, good music written in a particular style, aiming at the embodi"ment "of a certain ideal, the chief element of which is plenty of form.’’-Ed.)