MUSIC FOR BANDS
Sir-My- fellow townsman "J,M." protests against brass bands playing transcriptions of string orchestral music. But why? As an organist of sorts I am perhaps open to the charge of being prejudiced in favour of orchestral transcriptions, but even so, how much of the untranscribed brass repertoire can stand firmly on the legs of its intrinsic musical merits? I would be hard put to it to mention even one such piece, Most of the brass tone-poems I hear in broadcast band programmes are mere pretentious trash. Most brass marches (apart from Sousa’s) are just bad hymn tunes, especially in their trio sections. Miss Winifred Styles told us in Music Magazine that the: viola has a regrettably small repertoire, which the violist has to fill out with vocal and instrui i i . = — ie
mental transcriptions. So it is, surely, with the brass band repertoire, But must it always be so? Can’t our rising New Zealand composers be induced to write serious music for brass combinations-if possible, uncacophoni-
cally?
F. K.
TUCKER
(Gisborne).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 771, 30 April 1954, Page 5
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173MUSIC FOR BANDS New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 771, 30 April 1954, Page 5
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