Facing the Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1049, 2 October 1959, Page 9

Facing the Music

ISTENERS who pride themselves on their musical knowledge will have an opportunity to put it to the test when they listen to Facing the Music, an NZBS musical quiz, which begins from YAs, 3YZ and 4YZ, next Sunday, October 11, and later from 1YZ and 2Y¥Z. In this series, which consists of six programmes each a half nour in duration, a chairman-quizmaster, Peter Zwartz, puts all manner of musical questions to a permanent panel of four"writer and critic Bruce Mason, amateur _ musician Margaret Campbell, lecturer Pat Macaskill, and D. W. McKenzie of the Monday night YA programme Talking About Records. In addition to this panel, a guest musician will be invited for each session; in the first of the series it is the violinist and conductor Alex Lindsay. With the exception of a round dealing with popular songs filched from the classics, all the questions were devised by Peter Zwartz and deal exclusively with serious music. The panel must recognise compositions, and also com-posers-both the well-known and cbscure. They have to identify instruments; and animals and literary characters, cities and countries, by suitably associative music, Though there is no precise format to the programmes, each will contain six or seven rounds devoted to separate subjects. The panel is divided into two

teams to make for competition, Margaret Campbell and Bruce Mason opposing Pat Macaskill and Don McKenzie, and marks are awarded to each team by the Chairman, according to the way the questions are answered. "We have borne in mind the fact that listeners themselves may like to join in, so the difficult excerpts are given a longer playing time than might otherwise be necessary," says Peter Downes, producer of Facing the Music. "The programme is not meant to be a serious investigation of the panel’s musical knowledge, it is devised primarily to entertain. rather than to edify."