Unorthodox music for youth concert

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32639, 22 June 1971, Page 20

Unorthodox music for youth concert

Percy Grainger and Charles Ives, two composers whose names are perhaps more familiar to Christchurch concertgoers than their music is, are to be featured in the annual youth concert this week by the Christchurch Harmonic Choir and the Civic Orchestra. The concert, under the choir’s musical director, William Hawkey, will be held in the Civic Theatre on Thursday, beginning at 7 p.m.; and the programme will be repeated on Saturday, beginning at 8 p.m. Percy Grainger, who died in 1961, was one of the most single - minded and independent composers. He was bom in Brighton, Victoria, in 1882. His mother, a, cultured woman and a skilled musician, gave him both his early training as a pianist and his rather scanty formal education. At the age of 10, after two years studying the piano under Louis Pabst, a celebrated teacher of the day, he gave his first solo recital and was hailed a genius. With the money he made from his first recitals his mother took him to Germany, where he established a reputation as a concert performer of exceptional merit. His debut in London caused a minor sensation, but his success discomfited him. He shied clear of the concert platform as much as the state of his purse would allow, and immersed himself in what was to him the fascinating task of collecting, editing and publishing British and Northern European folk music. His approach to music was fearlessly un-academic. For example, in one of the works from the youth concert programme, the “Marching Song of Democracy”

members of the chorus are left in no doubt how they are to sing. “Easygoirigly, but richly; nasal; not nasal; hammeringly; heroicly; don’t tire yourselves over this: keep fresh for what’s to come! Now’s your time to sing up! All should sing the higher octave that possibly can.” His effects are unfettered—such as the bang of a fist on the piano lid. All his music was designed to be adapted for almost any imaginable set of players and singers. This celebrated concert pianist often hiked to his engagements, wearing tattered khaki. Occasionally, on his way to some famous concert hall, he was arrested for vagrancy and frequently he was bitten by dogs. Among his other idiosyncrasies he had a superstition about its being lucky and good for his health to hop upstairs.

He became an American citizen in 1915, but retained an affection for the city of his birth. In 1937 he built the Grainger Museum in the grounds of Melbourne University, and later he collected material for it from all parts of the world. Most of the last years of his life were spent in New York, where he continually revised his manuscripts and experimented with new musical instruments. He was a "committed” composer in the fullest sense, committed to skills and feeling based on human associations, shared enthusiasms and experiences, and simple joys and sorrows. Three pianists will combine in a work by Grainger for two pianos and six hands, “Green Bushes.” The first piano part will be played by Michael Houstoun, the second by Nan Anderson and the third by Rouie Swan. Different combinations of orchestra and choir will be found in the programme. Charles Ives was bom in Danbury, Connecticut on October 10, 1874. He was the son of a bandmaster and

music teacher, and therefore it was not unnatural that he began to compose music at an early age. What was unnatural was that his experiments with polytonality in 1894 predated by many years those of even the most advanced European composers. In its unorthodox use of tonal, harmonic and rhythmic material, Iveses music is individual and often startling. All sound was grist to Ives T s creative mill, and he unabashedly amalgamated folk, ragtime, popular, hymnody and patriotic song elements with his own highly original material. If dissonance was the result, so much the better; Ives was always eager to "stretch our ears" with chords that used

all 12 tones of the octave and fractional pitches in between. Grant Dickson, the Wellington bass, will be the soloist in two items, one of which is Ives’s "General William Booth Enters into Heaven.” This is for solo voice, chorus and orchestra, and like many of his compositions a comment not only on the founder of the Salvation Army, but also on some of the social evils of the time. Today Ives has almost achieved the status of popular composer, but during his lifetime he received little recognition, a neglect that bothered him not at all. He was 71 before he heard any of his own compositions performed by a full orchestra. He died in 1954.