Every Folk-Song Tells a Story

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 727, 19 June 1953, Page 24

Every Folk-Song Tells a Story

|.XCURSIONS are being made in New Zealand into the preserving and arranging of Maori folk-music, notably by Ashley Heenan of the NZBS (mentioned on this page last week). Antony Hopkins (pictured below), who wrote the background music for the BBC feature The Face of Violence, broadcast by the NZBS last year, and other radio features and films, has some interesting things to say in the English magazine Music about the art of arranging folk-music. Here is

his comment, in part: "I recommend any young composer tostry his hand at: this sort of work if he has not already done so, even at the risk of doing myself out of the business! It is a little like the job of a make-up expert to whose skilful hands is entrusted the care of a beautiful but quite unkempt country girl. If he knows his job, he will not end up by making her look like a city tart, but will seek out her best qualities and subtly underline them. She will at the end of

his ministrations still look the same girl, but infinitely more _ beautiful, so that her friends who knew her before will gasp and say, ‘I never knew she was so lovely.’ To ‘hear this said of a song I have arranged is one of the nicest compliments' I know." Antony Hopkins was born in London in 1921, His father, Hugh Reynolds, died a few years later and Antony was adopted by a= schoolmaster. He changed his name by Deed Poll in 1934. Later he won various music exhibitions and prizes, and on joining the staff of Morley College, London, he worked with Michael Tippett. His works in- ~ clude three Pianoforte Sonatas, a Violin Partita, and Scena for soprano and String Orchestra.