1000 Composers Under His Wing

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 763, 5 March 1954, Page 7

1000 Composers Under His Wing

are considerably indebted to an organisation known as | APRA-the Australasian Performing Rights Association — which 'makes sure that ‘they receive royalties for performances of their _ works throughout the world. But APRA has also done much to stimulate the composition of good music in the last few years by means of a scheme for the publication and recording of outstanding local compositions, and for the sending of such scores abroad, where they will come to the notice of European and American musical organisations and orchestral conductors. Jack Woodbridge, general manager of APRA, explained details of this scheme in an interview with The Listener last week, when he was in Wellington to meet New Zealand composers and music publishers. "We are locking after the interests of over 1000 composers in Australia and New Zealand," he said. "In addition to collecting their royalties we set out some time ago to help the cultural development of our composer members by making awards for merit. The first went to Alfred Hil] for his Quartet in D Minor, and Dr. Edgar Bainton and Douglas Lilburn also benefited under special awards. At first we just made cash awards, but as I saw this thing develop I saw the need for publishing and recording, too. I saw it was necessary to get together a committee to select works by local composers which were ,of world class and to put them On record, since today is the day of the record. "The first work we recorded was John Antill’s Corroboree. It was highly recommended by ugene Goossens and Sir Malcolm Sargent, so I approached the ABC and the E.M.I: recording company in Sydney, with the result that we made a recording of excerpts from the work with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eugene GoosOMPOSERS in New Zealand

sens. It turned out to be a first-class recording, and has had the largest sale of any local work of its kind, with over 5000 sets sold’ so far. Since then we have made a dozen further recordings ofa lighter kind. "Now we have perfected a special process for printing the scores of works of outstanding merit composed locally, and these scores and parts are to be lodged in Australia House in London, and with the Australian Department of Information in Washington, where they are available for perusa] by local musical bodies. Ten works have been dealt with in this way, and the most successful of them has been Alfred Hill’s Welcome Overture, which has _ been taken up by a number of orchestras in the United States, and was recently performed in Dallas, Texas. We are a‘so sending these scores to various wellknown conductors in Europe and England. "So you might say that we are the first of the younger countries to be doing

something practical to help the serious composer, who is faced out here with the difficulty of cost in getting his work published or recorded, and. with : performance difficulties since overseas conductors just don’t hear of the existence of worth-while works produced by our composers. To give one example of the results of our help we have had half a dozen requests from the United. States for the score and parts of Alfred Hil!’s Quartet in D Minor, which has also now become a standard work for performance in Australia and New Zealand." "Who are the members of your award committee?" "The committee consists at present of Eugene Goossens, Professor Frank Hutchens, Professor Linley ; Evans, Dr. Perry Jones, Hal Saunders" vand "Dr. Ernest Lashmar.. The chairman is George Cooper." "And does your ‘association get Back its origina] outlay?" "APRA pays 50 per cent of the publication cost and arranges for copies of scores to be sent to other countries. We pay the composer 50 per cent of the royalties on the work until we have covered our costs, and then pay the composer his full royalties after that." Mr. Woodbridge mentioned. some _ Zealand composers who have henefited from the scheme. These included

Leslie Jordan, whose song "Tis Lonely on Earth" was published in 1952, and Doris Sheppard, whose piano work, "Romanza," will shortly be published. In Australia, composers were assisted by a clause in the Broadcasting Act which made it compulsory for radio stations to play at least two and a half per cent of Australian and New Zealand ruusic, he said. The royalties collected by the Association were based on copyright of the melody of a work, and were divided : into three kinds-sheet music royalties, | mechanical fees (or the right to record), -and performing fees. Any public performance of the melody of a work, even if it was only on a mouth organ, was covered by the Copyright Act, He added that the recording of Antill’s » Corroboyee was a special venture which had ‘cost £1500, and that at present the Association was concentrating on premot‘ing the publication and. recording» of /art songs and high-class ballads.