"IT'S PROVINCIAL"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 741, 25 September 1953, Page 9

"IT'S PROVINCIAL"

This is the first of five weekly articles written about his stay in New Zealand by the visiting English music critic ' ARTHUR JACOBS

ce HY are you going to New Zealand?" they said in Sydney. "You'll find it’s provincial." Of course it is!) "Any ass can see that" (as Bralms said when someone: remarked on the similarity of a theme in his first symphony to the main choral theme of Beethoven’s Ninth). Indeed. you would hardly find better evidence of provinciality than a sign which New’ Zealand puts on her front doorstep-that is, at the flying-boat base where one arrives in Wellington from Sydney. It has been decided there to translate into several languages the inscriptions "Ladies" and "Gentlemen" on the appropriate doors. Someone has evidently found the words donna and uomo in an Italian dictionary, and has assumed that the Italians, like any. right-minded Englishman, make their purals by adding s. Hence the stupendous words, for al] to see: ? . DONNAS UOMOS Is the explanation of why they still remain that no Italian has ever passed this way? More likely each Italian traveller passes the joke on secretly to the oext, , In music, too, I have come across an example of such pure provinciality that I hardly expect friends at home to believe it. Resignations are threatened from one of New Zealand’s best-known choirs because certain members, staunch Methodists, refuse to sing Bach’s Magnificat in Latin. But the problem of provinciality is a serious one. I am not referring to mere small-mindédness, like this, but to the problem of appropriate musical organisation in a country which has no cities the size of Sydney-never mind of London. Obviously. Australian example cannot be copied here. And, as @ critic I ar

keen to see what distinctive forms of musical organisation have been evolved instead, So far, I-have heard the National Orchestra only performing in a small broadcasting studio in Wellington. where the ecousti¢és no doubt flattered it. But despite this I was agreeably surprised and considerably impressed. I liked the liveliness and unanimity, as well as the quality of tone, which War. wick Braithwaite evoked from his players. I was ‘pleased at the apparent absence of mere "passengers" in the strine

section ‘such as some orchestras are forced to carry to make up numbers. In two other fields of .musical] activ. ity. choral work and chamber music New Zealand has achievements whi-h would seem to make Australia backward by comnarison. s Indeed, a recent number of the Sydney musical journal, The Canon, held up New Zealand’s chamber music organ isation as a example to Australia In Perth a senior radio official said sedlv to me that in his city (povulation more than 250.000), "we can" do Messiah, but it seems we’ve not a hove of putting on The Dream of Gerontius or@he Ninth Symphony." Does he know IT wonder. that Christchurch. with a considerably smaller population. has in recent vears heard both these verv works? I came to sunny, friendly beautiful Christchurch after a few days in du!! sullen, cheerless Wellington. If you -jetect a personal bias here you are quite right. Even music critics are mortal and therefore susceptible of flattery. and the welcome.I have had in musical circles in Christchurch would have won ove1 the stoniest heart to that city. Thanks principally to Dr. Vernon Griffiths. professor of music at Canterbury Uriversity Collese and to Mr. C. Foster Browne. organist of Christchurch Cathedral. I have been kept busv. I have heard some notable singing in the Cathedral (to congregations sometimes of half a dozen). I have heard some New Zealand music. All of it. to anyone coming from Britain. ‘has an oddly old-fashioned ring abcut it. Vernon Griffiths’s cantata Peace and War occasionally advances bevond the idiom of. Stanford and, Parry to, that of Elgar. Some songs by a’ younger composer, John Ritchie venture more boldly -stiJl into the pleasant melting chromaticism which E, J. Moeran offered twenty years ago. I longed, I confess. for something to break through the musical conventialities. But I admit that this music is solid. Not merelv is it practical-Peace

and War is for choir and brass band, an admirable idea-but it is also thoughtful. honestly-wrought handiwork. How fortunate for me that I heard these works and did* not first encounter New Zealand music in the form of Eric Curtis’s oratorio The Christ, which I heard rehearsed by the~ Christchurch Harmonic Society. How choralists who have recently given Bach’s Mass in 8B Minor can devote time to this unspeakable drivel is beyond me. 4 The presence of the Biblical text mnst have numbed their critical faculty Remove the words. play this’ music in a restaurant. and it would be recnenised as an inadequate accompaniment for drinkine what in New Zealand passes for coffee : : I really feel that if I can persuades this society to drop this oratorio before it is too late I shall not have come to New Zealand in vein The thought of healthv men and women spending time on this type of combination of bad Mendelssohn, bad Gounod, bad SaintSaens. and bad Stainer. when they could be engaged in some relatively uplifting occunation like dominoes. stirs me to a Quite personal indignation. What a relief it was to pass to a rehearsal of the Royal Christchurch Mnsical Society. corducted by E. R. Field-Dodeton. which was _ tackling Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem with sensitivitv end intelligence. But T note from the paner that Christchurch has another vocal attraction. JT Trovatore is being given. announced as ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST BEAUTIFUL OPERAS BEAUTIFUL OPERAS ENTRANCING MELODIES ENTRANCING MELODIES DRAMATIC CLIMAXES DRAMATIC CLIMAXES I can only say, I can only say, that [ hone to be writing. that I hone to be writing. about this. about this, next week = +