Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 894, 21 September 1956, Page 20

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS ON AND OFF THE RECORD

MUSIC TUTOR

Re USIC when you leave school" is the broad title Nancy Martin applies to a sphere of activity she has given much attention in her! work as music tutor for the Council of Adult Education in the Victoria University College district. Miss Martin has held this position for several years

now, and has _ been connected with adult

education since sie came back from England in 1950, There she had studied, on a British Council scholarship, at the London University Institute of Education. Miss Martin believes that much could be done in New Zealand towards extending opportunities for musical education for adults. This subject and some of its possibilities and difficulties were discussed in a group. at the Unesco music seminar she attended in Melbourne in May. Miss Martin will discuss the work of the seminar in a talk to be heard from YA and YZ stations on September 27. A conservatorium would probably iimprove the general preliminary training of serious music students, Miss Martin considers, While this would. not stop musicians from going overseas, it would greatly assist the better students, who would gain from working together. Re-cord-lending libraries and the extension of library services to sheet music for perusal and borrowing would also help. The recorder is another of Miss Martin’s interests-her book Learning the Recorder was published in April this year-and she feels that small group music-making gains much from the use of this instrument, particularly as there seems to be a movement today away from mass music-making and back to these smaller, more informal groups. There music is more often used as a means of expression and for fun rather than aiming at perfection. Miss Martin points out that there is quite a repertoire of recorder music suitable for group activity of this kind, and as music tutor she is available to suggest new

music, arrange courses of instruction and music discussions-and, in fact, as a source of musical information generally. =

FOR SPACE CADETS

\V HEN the first journey into space of Jet Morgan and his crew came to an end a year or two ago, a schoolboy and a 74-year-old farm labourer, ex-R.A.F. pilots with a lingering interest in the skies and youngsters who rated

Jet the Hopalong Cassidy of the space world were

among many hundreds of listeners who pleaded with the BBC to continue the adventures. The comparison with Hopalong was in a way well chosen, for Charles Chilton, the writer-producer of the programme, first made his name in radio with a Western serial, Riders of the Range. Mr. Chilton is an enthusiastic amateur astronomer-a member of the British Astronomical Society-who has built a small observatory in the back garden of his home. To make sure that his scripts are technically accurate he has them checked by a rocket expert. "So far I’ve had no complaints about the technical data," he told a Radio Times. reporter, "although one schoolboy did remind me that in quoting the distance to the moon at 240,000 miles I was 51 out." In another story which illustrates Chilton’s thoroughness, Andrew Foulds, who plays Jet Morgan in the serial, says that one day he happened to say that he’d like to get the feel of the part by actually looking at the moon. "Charles promptly took me to his observatory," he said, "and we sat up half the night staring at the Heavens through his telescope." Charles Chilton thinks that on the whole, Journey Into Space is more en(continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) joyed by adults. "It’s a novelty to them, whereas most youngsters nowadays are ‘brought up on space fiction," he says. Adults enjoy the serial because it gives a glimpse of a not-too-far-distant future, while youngsters, apart from‘ idolising Jet, appear to be mainly intrigued by life on the planets. As evidence of this, Chilton has a file full of their personal impressions of Moon People-gruesome-looking figures with lizard-like bodies and monkey faces. hp

HISTORIAN

bla N historian who had spent all his time in the Middle Ages, Dr. Francis West took something of a plunge into the present four years ago when he was offered a Fellowship of the Australian National University in Pacific

history and began to carry out research into colonial administration in

New Guinea. Dr. West, who talks about New Guinea in The Second Kenya, a talk going the rounds of YC stations (2YC, September 30), tells us there. were two parts to his work in New Guinea. The first Was a survey of the extension of Government control over the newlydiscovered central highland valleysalmost the last colonial area left where there are still natives who have not yet seen a white man. The larger aim was to write the administrative biography of Sir Hubert Murray, LieutenantGovernor of Papua from 1908 to 1940. "In carrying out this research I spent from September, 1954, to January, 1955, in Papua-New Guinea," said Dr, West. "T collected material and looked at, the areas concerned, and also tried to evolve

techniques for incorporating anthropological methods and information in historical research, without which the writing of colonial history is defective." Dr. West hopes that the outcome will be a pioneer study of colonial administration | at district level, rather than the traditional accounts of colonial policy. Born in East Yorkshire in 1927, Dr. West was educated at the Universities | of Leeds and Cambridge-where he was at Trinity College-and he holds the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of both untversities. He did his research into 12th century administrative history and taught mediaeval history for three Cambridge colleges. When his work in New Guinea was done in 1955 he came on to New Zealand as Senior Lecturer in History at Victoria University College.