HAL COLLINS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 501, 28 January 1949, Page 5

HAL COLLINS

Sir,-In your issue dated December 24 appears an extraordinary story about a half-caste Maori named Collins, or Te Auke, who, though he knew nothing at all of the theory of music, composed a song which a highly gifted composer, Peter Warlock, wrote down as Collins played it on a piano. Warlock recognised the composition as one having real merit, and brought it to the notice of the Oxford University Press, who published it. I have said the story is an extraordinary one, and it is-extraordinary indeed. A man who knows nothing at all of the theory of music is a man with no musical knowledge whatever. A man with no musical knowledge is a man who knows nothing at all about music; and to say that Collins was such a man is plainly to talk nonsense. Collins knew that the quality of the sound of a piano differs from that of a voice: he knew of time and of rhythm, of melody and accompaniment: he knew there is ‘such a thing as a song, and that song has a definite form. He must have had this knowledge, or, how on earth could he have composed a song at all, far less composed one sufficiently well to have it published? Collins, we are told, died in 1929, and I believe Warlock died some years ago, so it is unlikely that your contributor got his information from either. Who, then, is his authority? Can he give us any conclusive evidence that the melody and the accompaniment as published are the entirely unaided work of Collins? I have written "melody and accompaniment" because "song" often means nothing more than the tune and words. I do not think your contributor is using "song" in this sense. Let me repeat my last question, altering its

wording. Is your contributor certain that neither the melody nor the accompaniment was arranged or altered in any way whatsover by anyone, other than Collins working unaided, before the song was published? The answers to these questions, and the following, are important. If a man who knows nothing at all of the theory of music, can, working only by inspiration, compdse a song of sufficient merit to be published by the Oxford University Press, what need is there for textbooks and teachers of the theory of music? What need is there for textbooks and teachers of anything? If inspiration alone can achieve such a result in the art of music, why should it not achieve a like result in any other field of human endeavour?

JOSEPH C.

McEVOY

(Tomahawk).

(We are informed by a relative of Collins (a) that he spent much of his youth with musicians, (b) that attempts were made, but always without success, to get him to study theory. The following reference to him appears in the book on Peter Warlock by Cecil Gray: "Ee was one of those people who, without ever having learnt a note of music or received a lesson in piano playing, have an inborn technical dexterity and a quite remarkable gift for improvisation. He used to compose systematically also but without being able to write it down.’’-Ed.)