Voices of the Dead Speak Again...

Radio Record, 22 April 1938, Page 10

Voices of the Dead

Speak Again...

By

EMILE

WE HEN the words and the songs of the famous dead can be recaptured, Time Marches Back with all the fascination with which Time Marches On. In the "museum" of the NBS at their Wellington. headquarters are stored these voices of the past. They will be heard in special performances from the Netionel stations in the near, future. by ae |

Radio Captures The Fascinating Past For Its Listenets —

HERE is a voice speaking, harsh and deep and strong. It speaks about a great tidal wave in Mexico. As it goes on, the voice surges and sways, as if it, too, would move men and women with its flow... as indeed it did. The voice is that of General Booth. Now I hear a voice that speaks in French anc assuredly this must be one of the most wonderful vorces in the world. The voice is speaking some lines from "Phedre," the play of the French dramatist Racine, and though not one word ix intelligible to me-for Frenelh iu real life, like money, always seems to go too fust-I could sit and listen to this voice for half an hour. It is crystal clear and yet flexible: it swings along, now trembling, now rising high, now shaken with tragedy. IT have never heard a voice like thix one. It belongs to Sarah Bernhardt, "Wait And See’ " HIN will Asquith speak?" I ask. "Wait and see," says the man in the small room in the headquarters of the NBS. I can remember how that phrase ran round the world in the early days of the War, when Asquith, the scholar and the man ot thought ratber than action. found himself cast suddenly into a world where the sxcholar'’s delay and careful hesitation was a serious weakness and statesmen had to dive straight into action. Then Asquith’s voice came clearly, making his Budget speech, of 1909. His voice is musical, calm, fluent. It is not unduly perturbed. The year 1916, when that voice was to break under the tragedy of a man cast for a role for which he was unfitted, was still seven years away then. HE voice of the late Rt. Hlon. Herbert Asquith is silent gnd a new yoice takes its place. "Phere are {wo questions," it says. "that my friends ask me. How F came to write ‘Sherlock Holmes’ end how I came to be a Spiritualist."

The voice is deep and has almost a guttural note. I do not know whether that voice is still heard’ from the spirit world, but though its owner has been dead fur many years it is still heard from this world. THE small room is filled suddenly with the sounds of two voices singing the * ‘Miserere’ > from "Il Trovatore." One of them is a man's, magnificent in the Italian manner. The other voice in the duet is that of a woman. It, too, carries clearly and well after all these years. | "Caruso and Frances Alda," says the man in. the small room. "She was a Dunedin girl. She became — a famous prima donna and married the manager of the New York Metropolitan Opera House." These voices came from the treasury of the NBS in Wellington. They are the gold that has beén carefully hoarded out of all the currency on the air in this century. back memories to others when they are heard on /the air. They are to be presented by the New Zealand National stations in a series of special programines that will’ begin in several weeks’ time. The owners of the voicex are long since dead, but the yuoices themselves are still clear and fresh and living. TI Was astonished that the old records should in so many instances come through so clearly and well. HERE were some in which the sense of the words was lost, but very few. Foreigners speaking in English were not distinct, but I doubt if Tolstoi would have been understood much better on an electrical recording. . Tolstoi! Heaven knows that when I read. the Russian classics of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" I never dreamt there was any chance of ever hearing his voice. Yet the man in the room had a recording of a talk that Tolstoi gave early in this century, called ‘Thoughts From His Book Every Day.’ The title even belongs to the forgotten age. Only the first sentence of his talk in English was intelligible, and it was typically Tolstoi: "One of the HEY brought back bistory to me and they will

bP] objects of life is. first; perfection. . . , AND after Tolstoi came a voice that | had heard as a child and since then had forgotten. But it brought hack a picture to my mind of a stuffy theatre ina small town and a stout man of fair complexion who spoke from the stage to a worshipping New Zealand audience. _ "Fellow. citizens," said the voice, "the British .fmpire holds 460 million people of all races, creeds and colours. These people, like ourselves. glory in the British Empire and its fundamental principles of justice and jndependence," That voice belonged to William Massey, STRAIGHT after the talk on the fundamental principles of justice in the Empire came, ironically enough, the voice of a woman which said Clearly, firmly and with 2 sort of quiet aggression. that the reasons Why women should have the vote were obvious to every fair-minded person. It was a voice speaking just a few hours after if had been released from being shut up in jail in 1909, It stirred up memories of tales of policemen assaulted With hatpins, of women haranguing men in the streets, of the not so funny jokes in "Punch" and of the tragedy of a woman who threw herself to death under the feet of the King’s racehorse as the horses thundered down the Straight. This was the voice of Miss Christabel Pankhurst ""Museum Pieces "’ T the NBS they call these recordings "museum" pieces. To me it seemed more like a biological collection. There Was too much life still imprisoned in these wax discs for them to belong to a museum, IT found that the curator of this museum at the NBS ix constantly collecting. He even collects the yoices of living people who talk to-day, and carefully tickets them and stows them away. Your own Children in 40 years’ time will be listening to one recording of a voice that I heard last week. and wondering. They will hear this voice say i-

"My father has for the last few years spoken to his people at Christmas time, Only two montbs ago he broadcast his last Christmas message. . . . I know how in the Dominions and in India and in the colonies the bond of loyalty to the Crown has been strengthened by the tie of passionate deyotion to my father. .. The example wet hy King George Jays on me, his Successor, a solemn trust to remember those

associations. ... It now falls on me to succeed him and to carry on his work."

That voice was te make another speech before many months had passed, taking farewell of its subjects, ‘THE curator told me how he had built up his museum. every now and then, the gramophone companies would send round word that certain numbers on their catalogues would no Jonger be republished. They were, taking no more pressures from their original matrices, of the recordings. When the companies notified the NBS some four years ago of this, the service realised the value of the records in the future. They got as many as they could. "The actual value of some of those records to-day is hard to estimate in cash. That one you are holding," said the curator, "would probably fetch £20 in cash." I put it down again. Its Collection OW that it has its own recording plant, the NBS is able to add to its collection whenever noted men. visit New Zealand. The service missed getting the voice of Bernard Shaw when he was in the Dominion because the recording plant was not then set up. But it has the voice of Ivan Menzies singing the Oxford Group rally song in Wellington, not otherwise heard on recordings. And it has a collection of the voices of famous All Blacks and Springboks. It is building up its museun: for the future. T is 50 years since the phonograph wus invented, and some of these museum pieces vividly revall the "Edison record!" announcement of- those old days and the jolly, though not particularly musical, sounds that came out of the large cardboard horn. Even so, it is something very wonderful to be able to hear the peerless voice of Tetrazzini still singing "Cara Nome" from "Rigoletto"; the voice of Lilian Nordica, who toured New Zealand just before 1914, singing the "Omaha Indian Tribe Song" and "Mighty Like a Rose," and the voice of Klauser singing the "Laughing Song." FILA-GOERS will remember a recent film, "Here’s to Romance" in which an old lady, Madame Schumann Heink, "stole the picture" from the new tenor, Nino Martini, singing and playing in the film when she was 85 years old. In the NBS museum there is a record of her voice in its prime, singing a magnificent duet with Caruso. The voice of Sir Ernest Shackleton, wags silenced in his throat when he died on board his ship, the Quest, in 1922, while nearing the Antarctic. (Cont. on page £1.)

Voices Of The Dead

RECORD MORGUE (Continued from page 11), Ocean, but it spoke again in the small room, recorded in 1909, telling of how his party left New Zealand in 1908, landed near the Antarctic volcano, Mount Erebus, and climbed its 13,350 feet for the first time in human his- ( tory. ‘ Theodore Roosevelt speaks again and the late President Harding. One can hear the voice of the present King George VI speaking at one of his open-air camps for English boys when he was Duke of York. The voice of President Wilson survives the death of himself and of many of his ideals. Fittingly, there is a recording of the voice of Marconi, broadcasting to Australia from his yacht in 1933. In the museum of living voices I heard the voice of Lord Galway, Governor-General, in a recording of "Hunting Cries," and the voice of Frank Buchanan, leader of the Oxford Group. THERE is stuff for a philosophising Hamlet in this museum. Even more important, there are yolees and songs that will wake the memories of many listeners and stir

old scenes and recollections into life, enriching their present days with these reminders of the pust.