THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 557, 24 February 1950, Page 26

THINGS TO COME

TATION 4YA will have an hour of Gabriel Fauré, starting at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, February 27, when the University of Otago Trio with the violist Patricia. Naismith will play his first piano quartet. Fauré’s music does not knock you over. He obviously had himself well under control, and where | Liszt or: Wagner would rush in like a surfer on a breaker of noise and emotion, Fauré prefers to swim quietly in a deep pool. This does not mean that he let his "intellect overcome his feeling, but rather that his intellect, restrained his emotidns from spending themselves in one rush. The fresult is that at each hearing fs music brings fresh and hitherto unsuspected pleasures. Oscar Thompson use§ three words about him, each with an appropriate adjec-tive-‘"inspiration," "taste," and "sensibility." These are shown in the remaining, recorded portion of 4YA’s hour, in songs and his Ballade for piano and orchestra. More Tudor Music NEW series of recitals of Tudor music by the Wellington, Madrigal Group, under the direction of W. Roy Hill, starts from 2YA at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, Febru&ry 28. Most musicians know, if only by name, The Triumphs of Oriana, a collection of madrigals pub-

lished by Thomas Morley in 1603 in honour of Queen Elizabeth. Nearly all the leading composers of the period contributed to the collection, but Elizabeth herself died before it appeared. Some of the 24

songs in it are of course better known ‘than others. Thomas Weelkes’s "As Vesta was from Latmos hill descending," for instance, is still decidedly popular, but others, such as "All creatures now are merry-minded," by John Bennet, and "Fair Nymph, I heard one telling," by John Farmer, have seldom been heard in New Zealand. One of these madrigals will be heard at the end of each broadcast in the new series by the Wellington Madrigal Group. Three for the Flute _]AMES HOPKINSON, the flautist who | left the BBC Symphony Orchestra to join the National Orchestra of the -NZBS, will play three pieces for flute from 2YA on Tuesday, February 28, at 8 p.m. One of these, Danse de. la hévre (a nanny-goat, if you haven't a French dictionary handy) was written for unaccompanied flute by Arthur Honegger, a composer who ought to be popular in New Zealand and South Africa for the good reason that in 1928 he wrote an. orchestral piece called Rugby. Writing for unaccompanied flute is not common, but Bach, Debussy and Ibert have also tried it. The other two solos James Hopkinson has chosen were written for flautist friends of the composers. Albert Roussell, a footloose. Parisian who did most of his | composing in cafés, wrote Pan for Mar-

cel Moyse a generation after Georges Hiie wrote Fantasie for his friend Fleury, Bierce the Mysterious LL that is known’ of the end of Am‘brose Bierce, the American teller of mystery tales, is just as mysterious as any of ‘the stories he has set down, for his death is unrecorded. He just disappeared round about 1916, leaving no trace, and nothing has been heard of him since. At the end of the Civil War he tossed a coin, it is said, to decide his vocation, and entered journalism. He went to London in 1872 where, because of his caustic humour ‘he became famous as "Bitter, Bierce," and was engaged by friends of theexiled Empress Eugénie to edit The Lantern, a publication intended to defend her against rumoured newspaper attacks .on a visit to England. But her enemies were prematurely frustrated by, the arrangement, and Bierce went back to America, After turning out numerous stories of the queer and the supernatural, he left in 1913 for Mexico. He never went back to the U.S., and theugh persistent rumours appeared in the Press about his death at the hands of Mexican revolutionists, none of them has been substantiated. Station 1YA listeners who are following the BBC series The Man in: Black will hear another classic tale of mystery and fear when Valentine Dyall introduces Ambrose Bierce’s story "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot" at 9.59 p.m. on’ Wednesday, March 1. ~ Fervent Twilight ~T. DAVID is wrapped about in one of the denser portions of Celtic Twilight. There is reason to-suppose that he was born about 590 A.D., the son of Sandde, a prince, of the line of Cunedda, and Non, a Cymric saint. He founded numerous churches throughout Wales, and is said to have taken a leading part in the celebrated synod of LlanddewiBrefi, a village in Cardiganshire where he had his headquarters for a_ period. When he became pen-escoli, or primate of South Wales, he moved the seat of ecclesiastical government to a remote headland called Mynyw. He was canonised by Calixtus II. about 1120, and is regarded by Welshmen in much the same way that Scots look~at St. Rabbie Burns. On Wednesday, March 1, the Cambrian Society of Canterbury is presenting a St. David’s Day Commemoration Programme, and its President, J. G. Parry, will send greetings to Welsh listeners.. Station 3YA will broadcast this programme at 9.30 p.m. Homage. to Chopin ‘THE specially composed Unesco programme Homage to Chopin, which

was. described in The Listener of January 27, will be broadcast from the YA and YZ\ stations at the following dates: Friday, March 3 (at 8 p.m.) from 1YA; March 8, from 3YA; March 14/7 from 2YA; March 27, from 4YA,. During

April’ and May it will be broadcast from 2YZ (on April 5), from IYZ (on April 17) and from 4YZ (on May 10). The recordings were made in Paris for the Radio Division of Unesco last October, and the special compositions were composed -by representatives of nine countries. Among the more noteworthy items in the programme are Hommage a Chopin, by Heitor Villa-Lobos, EtudeCaprice, by Jacques Ibert, Three Mazurkas, by Lennox Berkeley, and Etude, by Carlos Chavez. The Search for Security [HE only safe and satisfying kinship for community building is that which is founded on faith in God and the acceptance of the moral order, says the Rev. Principal J. D. Northey, president of the Congregational Union of Australia and New Zealand, in a recorded talk to be broadcast from 2YA at 7.15 p.m. on Friday, March 3. The title of his talk’ is The Complete Cemmunity, and

in it he tries to evolve a’ philosophy of living which will satisfy the concern for real peace and orderly progress which is exercising many people’s

minds these days. Reciprocal service, mutual love, a consciousness of kinship, in short the will to share what we are and, what we have with others for our, mutual benefit, is the basis of his ideal community. But since "morality has its source and sanction in religion," unless the. complete community is founded also on our basic kinship of faith in God, he says it will fail. Malice Towards Some PRECOCIOUS, petulant, unscrupulous and vain, the poet who said ‘The proper study of mankind is man" himself offered a rewarding study. Son of a linen-draper, Alexander Pope was mostly self-educated — his health was g@uined and his figure distorted by an illness brought on at the age of twelve by "perpetual application"-but before he was even seventeen Pope was admitted to the society of "wits" and men of fashion, , London was fairly dazzled by the prodigy’s learning, judgment and felicity of expression, and his wit won him as many friends among the distinguished men of the day as his vitriolic pen made enemies. Although a full appreciation of Pope’s genius requires an intimate knowledge of the gossip of the period, his satires are still some of the most‘ brilliant pieces of irony and invective in the English language. They have a permanent value as literature and present, etched in acid, a picture of the early 18th Century that is unsurpassed. A talk on Alexander Pope in ‘the BBC series Chapter and Verse, will be broadcast from 4YZ at 2.45 p.m. on Sunday, March 5.