David Sell

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 797, 29 October 1954, Page 29

David Sell

\JOT every clever young composer is as gifted in writing about the music of others as he is in writing his own compositions, but this could well be said of David Sell, who acted as music critic on one of the Christchurch daily papers while he was still a student at Canterbury University College. David Sell was born 24 years ago at Oxford, North Canterbury, and educated at the Cathedral Grammar School and Christchurch Boys’ High. He subsequently gained his Mus. Bach., L.R.S.M. and L.Mus. T.C.L. at Canterbury College, where he was also conductor of the Choral Society. In 1952 he held the position of assistant music master at Wanganui College, and in 1953 he was appointed director of music at the Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College. He has won several prizes for composition, notably the Philip Neill Prize from Otago University (1952) for his Fantasie Sonata for "Cello and Piano. This year his Sonatina for Violin and Piano won the prize offered by the Christchurch Civic Music Council for an instrumental work by a New Zealand composer. In 1951, in connection with the Philip Neill Prize, he received a

special award for a song cycle for voice and piano quintet. In the eleventh -programme in the series Music by New Zealand Composers listeners are able to hear his song cycle, Five Songs on an Aspect of Nature, a setting of poems by Thomas Hardy. The song titles are "Weathers," "Summer Schemes," "Going and. Staying," "If It’s Ever Spring Again," and "Afterthought." The artists are Pauline Price (soprano), Loretta Cunningham (piano) and the Alex Lindsay Quartet.