Ernest Jenner

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 794, 8 October 1954, Page 29

Ernest Jenner

[F Ernest Jenner’s work as a teacher of music is better known than his work as a composer, it may be because he was a teacher before he was a musician. As a youngster he couldn’t overcome his parents’ objection to a musical career, and they sent him to a teachers’ college from which he went into the schools for seven years. Then he threw | teaching overboard for his musicstudying by day at the Matthay School and earning his living by -playing in theatre orchestras at night. His career | as a New Zealand musician was the re- | sult of a bicycle ride. One’ day in the 1920s he was on holiday in the country when-one of his students (he had taken | to giving piano lessons then to eke out his income) bicycled out to see him, | carrying an advertisement from the Lon- | don. Times for the position of lecturer in music at Wellington Training Col- | lege. From there he went to Christchurch Training College, where he continued to lecture uate his recent retirement. ; | In the current series of Music by New Zealand Composers, listeners are able to hear the composer at the piano playing his "Jubilate Deo," which was specially written to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and the suite "Three Old Dance Forms." His song cycle for baritone and piano, "Three Songs of Thomas Campion," is also included, with Winston Sharp as the singer. This programme will be broad-

cast from 2YZ at 2.15 p.m. on Sunday, October 17. Ernest Jenner’s text books on Musical Training in Schools have been widely accepted, and it isn’t surprising that several of his compositions ‘have been choral works, His cantatas La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Garden of Hesperides have both been publicly performed. Recently he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, an honour which had only three times before been bestowed on a New Zealander.