Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 735, 14 August 1953, Page 24

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

is that he recently presented the "records in the BBC's Housewives’ Choice. Bathurst made his name as an actor and broadcaster in New Zealand and ATEST news of Peter Bathurst

Australia. His family left Southern England for New Zealand when he was still a child, and he did a variety of jobs before he took up acting. His first broadcast was in 1931, and six years later he joined the staff of the NZBS as an announcer. Then he went to Australia, where he became a radio player of some note, and a regular film commentator. He returned to England in 1950. He has been heard from the BBC in a number of dramas and features, including the popular serial Under the Red Robe. ke

STRANGE AND WONDERFUL GAME

AYMOND CHANDLER, born in Chicago, and one of the best current exponents of tough crime fiction,

is the answer to the many people who

think that thriller writers are elderly women who wear

tweeds by day, old lace in the evenings, and dream about arsenic at night. ‘Listeners to .the four ZB stations are now hearing a serial called Philip Marlowe Investigates, adapted from two of Chandler’s novels, The Lady in the Lake and The High Window (Tuesdays, at 9.0 p.m. and Thursdays at 7.30 p.m.). Raymond Chandler says: "Work like mine needs gusto and there are long periods of aridity. . . If I haven’t got a scene right I have to scrap it all and start afresh. . . It’s a strange and wonderful game. Your first book gets a sixline notice in o of the big newspapers. Years afterwards you achieve some sort of fame and the same paper devotes a whole page to saying how much your: work has fallen off since your first book." Chandler is an: IrishAmerican by blood, but he was educated at Dulwich and later in France rand Germany. Somerset Maugham has described him as the "most brilliant author now writing this kind of story."

TUNES ON THE TIBIA

F the neat turn of alliteration which captions this paragraph (it came to ‘me in a flash while playing bridge) suggests the popular song "Dry Bones,"

the idea should be put aside, for this is about something serious -bag-

pipes. Nero, we know, was partial to a tootle on the tibia utricularis, the ancestor of the modern instrument which the Romans introduced to Britain-an escapade which some . testy Sassenachs still find it hard to forgive. But whatever the severest critics says about the melodic qualities of the pipes, no one’ can deny their excellence when heard over the water or the hills, or heading a column of marching men. Whangarei, in the Far North, has just acquired a new exponent of pipe music in the person of Pipe Major Angus MacAulay, who has settled in the town and become Pipe Major of. the Whangarei and County Pipe Band. Angus MacAulay was born in Benbecula, South Uist, and started to pipe up when he was only 10 years old. His father showed him the rudiments

and then the boy had tuition from the late Pipe Major William Lawrie and Pipe Major William Ross, of the Lovat Scouts. At his first competition in 1923 — -at the South Uist and Barra Games-_ Angus was placed second in the march. In 1925 he won the medal for highest points in all the competitions and for the following nine years won the championship for most points, His first ¢ompetition on the mainland was at Inverness in 1930, when he was placed third in the medal. Eight years later he was second in the medal and first in jigs. At Oban he has been second and third | ‘in the medal and he has won the | march, strathspey and reel. But that’s

not all. In 1947 Angus carried off the Dunvegan Medal for Piobaireachd and the Kemble Star for marches, and went on to win the Bratach Gorm for Pio-. baireachd at the London Piping Competitions in 1948 and 1949. His best performance is considered to have taken place at South Uist in 1947 when he pipe-bagged four firsts. Readers are assured that the ensemble he’s wearing is correct in every detail, because before coming to New Zealand last year the Pipe Major had a business in London as.a Highland costume outfitter, and he also sold bagpipes and accessories, Angus MacAulay, who has broadcast as a soloist for the BBC, will present pipe solos from Station 1XN Whangarei on Wednesday, August 19, at 9.4 p.m. With him will be his 11-years-old daughter Margaret, who will sing in Gaelic two traditional Hebridean songs. a

MAKE ‘EM WAIT

\ ILKIE COLLINS, who wrote the novel No Name (a radio adaptation of it is the current Saturday evening serial at the four YA stations) was born in London in 1824, son of a wellknown landscape painter. Collins tried

his hand at commerce, was called to the Bar in

1851, but finally chose writing as a profession. He was in poor health at the time he was writing No Name. The ‘

agonising form of rheumatic complaint which was soon to undermine his health and drive him to opium addiction had begun seriously to trouble him, He fought it off until the book was almost finished and then collapsed. He died in 1889. Not many listeners will have read No Name, as the book has been out of print for a long time. Collins’s formula as a writer was a simple one, "Make — ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait." No Name shows to what good purpose he employed it. --_

TASTY CORN

Led t \V HEN 3ZB presented a series of recordings under the title Dudley Cantrell and his Orchestra the other evening, the station staff had no. idea that Mr. Cantrell was in New Zealand. A couple of days later they were pleasantly surprised to have a letter from him saying: "I would like to thank you for presenting a session of my record-

ings. Although they , are old and corny; having been made

over 10 years. ago, you had at least one listener who got quite a kick out of hearing them again. I came over with the "Tommy ‘Trinder Show,’ having previously been round with ‘Tourist Trade,’ but this time I did not go the full distance. I was unfortunate enough to contract pneumonia in your fair city (no reflection) . . . and was found to be infected with T.B, However, I was pleased to receive the news that I would be able to play the trombone again." Station 3ZB’s reply wished Mr. Cantre!l a quick recovery and return to the trombone. Commenting on his description of his own records as "corny," the programme organiser said, "We still have a very large audience who like "corn, We’ find it quite tasty, too." The letter gave a list of at least 10 Cantréll re- ° _ cordings in the station library and suggested that Mr. Chntrell might like to hear some of them broadcast during his stay at Pleasant Valley Sanatorium, Palmerston South. =a

OLDER THAN YOU THINK

")\| OUTHPIECE" writes: "A friend *" of mine maintains that the’ saxdphone was unheard of before the invention of jazz. I say, it’s a good deal older than that. Who is right?" You are, "Mouthpiece." The inventor of the instrument was, as is fairly generally __ known, Adolphe Sax, but it is perhaps

not so generally known that his real name was Joseph Antoine Sax. Why he

changed his name nobody seems_ to know. Sax was born at Dinant, Belgium, on November 6, 1814, the son of a famous pare" ma maker. Adolphe acquired some of Mis father’s skill, and also became a fine clarinet player, But he was fonder of the workshop, and when he was 28 (in 1842) he went to Paris and opened a business of his own in the Rue St. Georges. He had been working on a saxophone before he went there,.and the instrument seems to have made its first public appearance in » 1844, Berlioz having: written a Chant

‘Sacré for six saxophones, which was performed on February 3 of that year. The instrument was "patented. in 1846. Sax died in 1894 almost in poverty at the age of 80. There is now a fairly extensive library for the saxophone, including compositions by Jacques’ Ibert, Glazounov, Henri Thomasi, Debussy, Milhaud, and Britain’s Eric Coates.

SORT OF SHORTHAND

MANY people imagine that Braille consists simply of raised letters similar to the printed letter. That is not so. It is bdsed on a group of six dots arranged as on a six of dominoes. Now, by using various combinations of these letters, 63 different characters of symbols can be made. So, besides the alphabet, mumerals and _ punctuation

marks, there are, in Braille, many contractions for frequently used letter combina-

tions, such as st, ing, tion, ment, and so on. In addition, many words are merely outlines in Braille; abv stands for "above"; tgr for "together"; imm for "immediate." And there are many more. Indeed, Braille is very similar to a modified shorthand system. , . The blind people of New Zealand are fortunate enough to have access to one of the best stocked libraries for the blind in the Southern Hemisphere, This is at the New Zealand Institute for ~he Blind in Auckland. There are oveg 3000 volumes in the library, and every type of literature is well represented.-From a NZBS Book Shop talk by T. Small.

CHINESE BASSO

\/HEN Yi-Kwei Sze, the Chinese basso, comes to New Zealand on tour for the NZBS this concert season

there will no doubt be speculation about

the correct pronunciation of his name. Here it is, as given by him to an Australian interviewer-E-Kway Zee.