Cantata for Christmas

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 650, 14 December 1951, Page 25

Cantata for Christmas

HE LISTENER caught up with Dr. Eric H. Thiman at the tag-end of his examining tour through New Zealand; caught up with him, in fact, when he stopped at Wellington on his last week-end here to record a programme for the NZBS. Dr. Thiman is an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, and he bas spent the past two months examiningprincipally in pianoforte-throughout both Islands. The Listener, however, was interested mainly in Dr. Thiman’s connection with Church music, in which he is one of the most important contemporary English figures. There was development in Church musie today, Dr. Thiman said, but it was slow, and it was taking place without making any breaks with tradition. In fact, it might more precisely be said that the tradition itself was developing slowly. Composers of Church music had to restrain themselves if they wanted to do anything new and _ startling-dis-sonance and the generally more dynamic structure of modern music had very little place. On the other hand, he went on, there wasn’t any reason why Church music shouldn’t appeal to the imagination of the man in the pew, and modern compositions sometimes did. But, he was asked, if there was too much appeal in- the imagination, wasn’t there a danger of people going to church. just to listen to the music? Dr. Thiman agreed. "That is why the music has to have a purpose in the service," he said. "It’s not there only to edd beauty; it has to prepare the people : who hear it for the message from the preacher." He would not be drawn, however, into a discussion on hymn tunes. It was too wide a question to be dealt with briefly. Some hymn tunes were good, some bad, and some indifferent. As far as the bad ones were concerned, it was possible to educate a congregation’s taste. A good congregation needed only keeping on the right lines. He

would not be drawn, either, by a variant of the standard type question-to-be-put-to-visitors-who-are-nere-for-the-first-time: What do you think of the music you’ve heard in New Zealand churches? Dr. Thiman smiled at that one. "I can’t say," he said. "You see, I haven’t been to church very often since I’ve been here." But he attended church during his. last week-end in New Zealand, and part of the service was recorded by the NZBS for broadcast later in the year. Dr. Thimen is an eminent composer of religious and secular choral music, and his Church compositions-most of them cantatas and other choral works written for choirs of average size-are used extensively in Free and Nonconformist churches in Britain, throughout the Commonwealth, and in the United States. Dr. Thiman is also a fine organist and on the last Sunday in November, at Hataitai Methodist Church, Wellington, he conducted (from the organ) the singing of his cantata The Nativity. The choir, a selected one, had been trained by Stanley Oliver, and the soloists were Merle Gamble and Owen Bonifant, The recording made then by the NZBS will be broadcast on Christmas Day from 1YZ at 8.20 p.m., 2YC (8.45 p.m.), 3YC (9.32 p.m.), and 4YZ (9.30 p.m.).