Modern American Music
"STATION 1YC’s new Tuesday even- | ing series, Contemporary American Composers, recorded by the NZBS, fills, if I may coin a phrase, a long-felt want. We are nowadays hearing more modern American music (of the serious kind) than ever before, but the works usually appear as part of miscellaneous programmes. When they are brought together, as in this series, we have a chance not only to get to recognise the idiom of different composers, but also to see that modern American music has a distinctive personality of its own, and that Copland, Piston, Barber and Ives
ere as different from Britten, Berkeley and Rawsthorne as Bourbon is from Scotch. On the evidence of scattered pieces, I hadn’t formed a very high opinion of Samuel Barber, but now, having heard two 1YC sessions of his works, I find his adaptations of localisms attractive and his range of moods beguiling. He appears at his best when sombre, as in his piano Excursions, where. blues rhythms are effectively used, and in the impressive setting of Arnold’s Dover Beach, well enough rendered in a recent programme by Stewart Harvey and the Ina Bosworth Quartet to overcome the initial handicap of John Gordon’s remarkably uninspired reading of the poem itself,
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540409.2.21.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 768, 9 April 1954, Page 10
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207Modern American Music New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 768, 9 April 1954, Page 10
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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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