THE HARMONIC SOCIETY

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22081, 1 May 1937, Page 8

THE HARMONIC SOCIETY

ATTRACTIVE CONCERT PROGRAMME

"THE HIGHWAYMAN"

The programme of the Christchurch Harmonic Society's concert next Wednesday and Thursday, when "The Highwayman" will be featured, will be specially attractive. Armstrong Gibbs has earned his place in the forefront of contemporary British composers, though concertgoers in New Zealand know him chiefly as a writer of art songs such as "Five Eyes" and "Silver." He is a professor of composition at the Koyal College of Music, and is therefore in constant touch with a band of stalwarts, including VaughanWilliams, Dyson, Bliss, Constant Lambert, and other composers of the staff who have done much to raise British music to the high position it enjoys to-day. In "The Highwayman," which he dedicated to George Dyson, the composer has skilfully caught the atmosphere of Alfred Noyes's dramatic poem. It is a compact work full of intensity and lasts only 20 minutes. In this respect it is a typical example of the works of the moderns, who, realising that audiences will not concentrate on a work lasting two or more hours, avoid monotonous repetition and wearisome padding. In its directness and virility it is typical of the healthy and robust idiom employed by the present-day school of British composers.

Interesting Harmonics

The opening phrases, "The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, the moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas," at once grip the listener. Clear diction, word stress, and colouring are essential to paint the scene, strong melodic time and unusually interesting harmonies are used to portray the entry, "the highwayman came riding up to the old inn door," and sparkling accentuation and moving rhythm are employed in "over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn yard." The music rises to a climax at the words, "her musket shattered the moonlight, shattered her breast in the moonlight," where Bess, the landlord's daughter, warns her approaching lover, for whom the soldiers are waiting. With a masterly touch the work ends with the following instructions from the composer: "Very little lone and the words almost whispered to get and keep the ghostly effect.**

At the Christchurch Harmonic Society's concert next Wednesday this work will be performed. Other outstanding items will be the massive Sanctus from the Mass in B Minor by Bach and Hoist 8 part 148 th Psalm and Wagner's "Hail, Bright Abode," with organ accompaniment by Mr George Martin.