Music of the Night
TO me, Manuel de Falla’s well-known "Ritual Fire Dance" is an interesting but unsuccessful attempt to gatecrash into the strange exciting world of primitive ritual. I approve of the attempt to use new material but do not feel that the end justified the means. With the Concerto for Harpsichord in B Minor, which I heard from 3YC, I had reason to take a new interest in Falla’s work. The harpsichord was accompanied by violin, oboe, clarinet and *cello, and the piece began with a slow sequence of strange and arresting chords unlike anything I had heard before. I no longer stood aside puzzled but seemed to hear in the heavy driven columns of sound a record of the inevitable passage of time, the slow marches of the night; a joy disturbed, made piquant, by the thought of its perishable nature. The sound died away into each interval with a heaviness and a savour that made it last in the inner ear. If one might tune into the night then this, surely, would be heard in the slow heavy pulse of the earth swingin beneath the stars with its great burden of souls.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540319.2.22.5
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 765, 19 March 1954, Page 11
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196Music of the Night New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 765, 19 March 1954, Page 11
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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