Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 777, 11 June 1954, Page 28

Open Microphone

_ so NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

ST back after about 15 months’ roaming about the United Kingdom and Europe, Lawrence Constable, programme officer at 2YA, tells me that one thing which amazed him was the number of New Zealanders he saw touring the Continent. "They were getting

round in old cars, on bicycles and hitchhiking. Almost every: one of them sported a New Zealand flag, on the handlebars, the bonnet of the car, or decorating the shoulder-pack," he said. "When I sat down ata table in a Heidelberg youth hostel the chap opposite turned out to be from New Zealand; that sort of thing was happening all the time. I found that most of the tourists were working in England’ and taking their holidays in Europe." Constable found that many of the castles along the Rhine had been turned into youth hostels. Each one was packed with young people, and to hear 600 at a time singing German folk songs was "really something," he said. "I would have given anything for a tape recorder." In most European countries there was only one national radio programme, and the broadcasting people were amazed that the New Zealand Broadcasting Service had 26 stations. In Norway there was a magnificent Broadcasting House, with 18 studios working 12 hours a day, and Denmark also had a fine building. Broadcasting was going ahead rapidly

all over Europe, and it seemed that the first thing that occurred to the rebuilders of bombed cities was to start a radio station. From the technical point of view New Zealand was just as up-to-date as any radio organisation overseas. It was an adventurous trip in many ways, particularly when Constable and others with him were searched and interrogated for two hours high up in the mountains of Yugoslavia by Customs officers who didn’t know a word of English. Then,.when he was studying radio in Vienna, the station authorities took him for a distinguished visitor, and interviewed him-in a sort of radio newsreel-on the differences between the New Zealand and European systems. He visited the Salzburg Festival and gathered much information about other important European musical occasions; the result is the present weekly Calendar of European Festivals of 1954 which listeners are hearing from Station 2YC. Mr. Constable confessed that his trip was the outcome of a feeling that he was very much out of touch with overseas affairs. He decided that the time to take a look at the world was while he was still young. "And I hope it’s not the last time," he said. In between taking an observer course at the BBC, studying the Outside Broadcasts Department, Features Department and studio management, he secured a seat in the New Zealand section at Hyde Park and a good view of the Coronation procession. His journey included England, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Yugoslavia, Italy, France, Spain and Morocco. : He has been with broadcasting continually since 1940, but five years before that he was with Victor Lloyd in one of the first big-scale radio serials produced in New Zealand by the Commercial stations-One Man’s Family. He was one of the family. His first book, Home Territory, which included articles he had contributed to The Listener, was published at the end of last year.

CELEBRATED BEA

BEATRICE LILLIE, the famous revue and cabaret artist, was born in Canada. Her mother was a concert

singer of Spanish-Eng-lish extraction, and her father was Irish. Even

when she was a child people found her funny, chiefly when

she was trying to be serious. At the a ign of ten she became stage struck and decided to emulate mamma. She took singing lessons and soon her mother,

sister Muriel and Beatrice toured the small halls as "The Lillie Trio"’mother as soprano, sister as pianist and Bea as character costume vocalist. Later on she went to college near Toronto and her mother took sister Muriel to Europe to study. Soon Beatrice persuaded her father to pay her passage to London, where she intended to try the stage. All the managers laughed at her. But when. she had almost decided to catch the next boat home, she had an audition with the French producer André Charlot, who was casting a new revue. She began few impersonations, and after half an hour Charlot, weak with laughter, gave her a three-year contract. The famous Bea’s style is distinctive. For other people the stressed statement, broad wink, obvious joke; but for Miss Lillie the lift of an eyebrow-possibly only half of it-a slight, very slight gesture, a raised finger and the shadow of a wink are enough to reduce her audience to tears of mirth. She is a mistress of the understatement, the throw-away line and the sly innuendo.

To her admirers she is the incomparable and inimitable Beatrice Lillie who is also one of the favourite entertainers of the British Royal Family. *

"MUSIC IS DYING"

RTHUR HONEGGER, Swiss born composer who became a member of the temporary Paris group known as "Les Six," seems at the age of 62 more than a bit fed up with-music. According to Time he told the Paris newspaper Franc-Tireur the other day that there

were works he used to like and couldn’t hear any more-the Beethoven symphonies, for

example. "After having heard them a few hundred times it’s as if I hear

nothing but noise. . . Music is dying. The radio, that infernal machine, is helping to kill it. Always, always the same things. . . A composer needs contact with his listeners. Does he ever obtain it? No. They play Tchaikovski . and still I’m one of the few composers who like music. It’s all becoming more and more like a circus. They’re giving to the public . . . four-year-old conductors in diapers, brought on to the stage with their little chamber pots. . . Our civilisation is going, to end soon, and music even sooner. All ‘this will be replaced by something else — perhaps concrete music, when it’s made by composers, not engineers." Honegger has writen chamber music, orchestral music and a sort of oratorio with spoken connective tissue called King David. The last was composed for the folk-theatre. of Méziéres, Switzerland, where it was performed in 1921 as a play with music. The author is Rene Morax. Among other works that have attracted attention by their novelty of conception have been a "mimed symphony," a locomotive tone-poem, and a football tone-poem. Honegger has also written opera and ballet, and dozens of film sound tracks.

NO ECHO CHAMBERS FOR HIM

* "N H.P." (Awakeri, Bay of Plenty): * Mantovani (that’s his real name) started his musical career as a_ hotel violinist. His Tipica Orchestra which he started in the ‘thirties earned him wide popularity when he began a series of broadcasts from a London restaurant.

Later he played in other restaurants and clubs, formed a

stage band, and conducted a pit orchestra in a number of successful musical

shows. Mantovani told the Radio Times recently: "There were times when I was forced to play music that I detested. Now I am happy." Scoring his "new music" and conducting the orchestra is a job that gives him a chance to be creative. It’s also a job which, with recording, television, and radio sessions keeps him extremely busy. Since Mantovani and his Orchestra introduced the "new music" in a recording of the tune "Charmaine" they have been accused of using trick effects-echo chambers. and so on--to produce what are really new musical interpretations of familiar tunes. "The ‘trick’-if you like to call it, that -is purely in the orchestration, and especially in the scoring for strings," said Mantovani, who has been described as the Kostelanetz of England. His orchestra consists of’ about 40 players. +>

BROTHER JAMES’S AIR

5 [-ELIX" (Papanui, Christchurch) writes: "I have followed with interest your series of short articles giving the origins of various songs. I wonder if you could tell me something about ‘Brother James’s Air,’ which I heard sung recently bv a small church choir." The story goes that the air was composed by James Leith Macbeth Bain,

who deciared that it simply entered his head and refused to leave

until he had it down on paper. He made it fit his favourite psalm, the 23rd — "The Lord is My Shepherd.’ Bain was described as a likeable and warmhearted man and, because he reminded them of St. Francis he was known to his friends as "Brother James," The air was published by the Oxford University Press as a solo, a duet, a chorus for women’s voices, and in other versions.