BYZANTINE
FREDERICK PAGE’S introductory talk in honour of Stravinsky’s 75th birthday was a model of what such things should be, the personal statement of one deeply involved in the work of this most elusive and enigmatic of modern composers..Mr Page does not find Stravinsky’s celebrated and notorious dryness intimidating though, as he points out, Stravinsky has not always acted up to his declared principles of classical coldness, and in works like Symphony of _Psalms and Apollon Musagétes, a vein of deep feeling is uncovered, There is a majesty about the man, in his absolute refusal to compromise, in his scorn of dim-witted critics ‘ (which recalls the celebrated saw of Sibelius: "Look hard; where will you find a statue of a critic?"), and his resolute pursuit of the musical images to which he has been drawn. To those nurtured in the lush German and Italian idioms, Stravinsky’s Byzantine austerity is at first chilling, but his dry gaiety and sardonic humour and the strange piety of which one gets from time to time a glimpse, make him, if not lovable, then at least seizable and human, Mr Page’s talk was~ followed by the opera The Nightingale, the Octet, and part of the Histoire du Soldat. Chosen from different periods, these works were fitting testimony to an enormous, manysided talent.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570705.2.12.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 934, 5 July 1957, Page 8
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217BYZANTINE New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 934, 5 July 1957, Page 8
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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