MUSIC AND RECORDS.

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 181, 26 April 1924, Page 16

MUSIC AND RECORDS.

By

C.J.M.

Muslo as a Social ForceIt is doubtful whether miisio has over taken itself so seriously as it does to-day (writes Mr. H. E. Mortham in tho London ‘ ‘Morning Post ). Thanks to Plato and Aristotle, we have come to realise that music is not only good for the individual soul, but a social force of enormous potentiality. That it should be looked upon as merely one of the adornments ot a life of cultured ease appears to us • down right immoral. We realise today that music in that period—which happened to coincide with Mozart and Haydn—was decadent because it was purely aristocratic. Nowadays we are aware, almost self-consciously aware, that music has a bigger function, a definite importance, in the training of the soul, that it is, in short, a social force. . , Some recent books . about- music help to remind one of this. There ls > ™ r instance, Dr. T. H. York Trotter’s “Music and Mind,” which in the first chapter quotes the phalanx of Philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Schopenhauer and Herbert Spencer on the art to emphasise how anomalous and. unsatisfactory is the position occupied by music in our educational system. Dr. Yorke Trotters’ book, by the wav, covers a deal of ground, and is well worth reading. So. of course, is Mr. Percy Scholes 3 Crotchets.’ Where the other is speculative or philosophical, Mr. Scholes is practical. He, too, holds that music is, above everything else. a B ° c . l . al force. Tho education of the public, he says, is tho problem of the coming ten years. If that be so his own writings should help to solve it, tor Mr. Scholes takes care to write not only for the initiated. And, again, in some remarks on the purpose of music, he asserts that “work for ‘the good of music’ is a form of social propaganda and should be encouraged and * supported, financially and otherwise, by the same earnest people who encourage and support the efforts of the Scout movement or St. Dunstan’s. Huge Exhibition Choir. The largest choir and orchestra in history—lo,ooo voices and .500 instrumentalists —will be heard in the Stadium during the British Empire Exhibition. Six concerts will be the first on May 31—under Dr. Charles Harris, who conducted the massed choirs and bands at the Empire Day celebration in Hyde Park in 1910- . The leading musical festival organisations in the Old Country are sending contingents to take part in the M emblev concerts, tho first of which will have an “Empire Day” programme. On Buying Records. The haphazard method of buying gramophone reqards most generally adopted of walking into a shop, hearing half dozen or so played, and buying one that ticklee your ear most is the grave of more budding gramophone enthusiasm than survives the shock (says a bright writer m the "Dundee Courier.”) “But how can I select recoros except by buying what takes my fancy when I hear it?” I hear the beginner querulously asking . By removing in the first instance a deeply-ingrained but unfounded, prejudice that because certain music has been labelled classical or romantic it is 1 deadly dull stuff. Tlrnt shibboleth has been fostered by a clique who in themselves have confounded musical culture with pose; they have tried to scare the ordinary man off the grass with their “superior’ airs and their “Of course, you couldn’t understand it,” and so on. Don’t believe

them; you are more likely to understand it than they are, because you are sincere in your quest for the beautiful and the uplifting. They are not. They are only asking flattery and adulation. . In any case, it was not. written to be understood; it was written to be enjoyed. The message was spiritual and to mankind, not intellectual and to a clique. If it brings brightness and freshness into your life what does it matter whether you see the “bag of tricks” behind the composer s inspiration or not Below the label I have already suggested I would have another on every gramophone sold—“ Don’t be scared at names.” Don’t fight shy of records on which you see such names as those of Bach, Beethoven, Schumann or Schubert, Chopin, Wagner, or even Brahms. Twenty years ago Bach was considered deadly dull, but we had not reallv discovered Sebastian then. Today he is recognised as one of. the jolliest fellows you could meet m a musio folio, and there are few who have cultivated his acquaintance who would not vote for a collection of Bach to that of any other composer, even including the mighty Beethoven himself, if, like Napoleon, they were destined to spend the rest of their lives on a lonely island. . Beethoven is another name that is unacceptable to the man in tho street but who amongst all the music-hall celebrities has ever written. such haunting melodies as heard m the slow movements of . Beethoven s Sonatas and Symphonies? Who is as roguish and devilishly humorous as the master of Bonn in these wonderful scherzi he composed and developed? Is there . anything so refreshing and melodious in . all the realms of songs and syncopations that have boon written for and forgotten by music-hall audiences as Mozart provides in his operas, Schubert in his sonigs, or Chopin, ip. his small©r pieces? Haf the music-hall composer produced anything so naively charming as old Henry Purcell, whom we have only found again after being lost for over a century, or the Elizabethan Madrigalists, whom, we have only lately been rediscovering? Have they produced anything so beautifully touching as some of the Hebridean folk-songs that Mrs. Kennedy Fraser has rescued for us? These are tho kind of titles I refer to as friends for keeps,, because they are always fresh and interesting, no matter how often we turn them on. Therefore don’t be afraid of names. Look at them. Coming shortly are a double-sided disc of tliz London String Quartet in Beethoven’s Quartet in B flat. Op. 18, No. 6. Tho playing is said to be charminc in its light and shade: the band of °tho Life Guards in Vaughan Williams’s Folk-song Suite; Lionel Tertis in arrangements for viola; Evelyn Scotney’s singing, and Sasha Culbertson’s olexterous violin-playing. A capital fox-trot called “Dreams of India” should be here soon, if it is not already. The composer has ingeniously solved the problem of giving variety to music which of necessity must bo obvious in melodv and straightforward in rhythm. This he achieves by clever instrumental figuration, which nt one point contrives neatly to borrow from Rimsky-Korsakov t Other records in the way are ‘The Dove” (Yradier), sung by Rosa Raisa; Humoresque Op. 10, No. 2 (Tschaikovsky), played by Sapollnikov; the Liszt Piano Concerto, played by Anderson Tyrer, and the British Symphony Orchestra, under Adrian Boult, and several violin pieces played by Zacharowitsch.

Schumann's Praise of Chopin. Though Chopin apparently thought little of Schumann, the generous com-poser-critic was more appreciative of Chopin. Of Chopin’s playing, Schumann wrote in the “Neue Zeitschntt a tetter after their, meeting in 1836: “Imagine an aeolian harp possessed of all the scales and these made to vibrate altogether by an artist’s hand, with every kind of fantastic embellishment, but in such a manner that a fundamental bass note and a softly singing upper part were always audible, and one has a fairly good idea of his (Chopin’s) playing. No wonder that one prefers those of his pieces heard from hintsdlf, aiixl therefore let us mention in the first place the A flat Etude —more a poem than a study. It would be a mistake to imagine that ho allows all the small notes to be distinctly heard; one was aware, rather, of the undulation of the A flat major chord, strengthened afresh here and there by the use of the pedal; but one was always sensible through, tho har--1 monies of the wonderful melody of the big notes, and, about the middle of the piece, a tenor part was heard distinctly from tho chords. When the piece terminated, one felt as though, but half awake, one would like to seize a beauti--1 ful picture seen in a dream. It was impossible to say much, and praise was unutterable. He. went on to the second in the book, in F minor, another which leaves an unforgettable impression of his originality~so seductive, so dreamy, so soft —something ' like the singing of a child to sleep.” Sparks from the Musical Anvil. “There is a great fountain of new life in a singing people. Song in mass is a regenerative force of incalculable power in tho social body.”—Harry Barnhart. “Of. all the intellectual processes none is more helpful to the student than concentration." —Olga Samaroff. ’ “I find English a very grateful language to sing in, and not at all difficult or unpleasant, as some would have us believe.”—Elena Gerhardt. ' “Aside from the aesthetic quality of music it is wonderfully satisfying and restful. It smooths out wrinkles and puts a man at rest with the world and with the universe,” —Thomas A. Edison. “We should give all our foreign 1 operas in English. If they are given in English they will become more popular with our people.”—Mrs. Edgar Stillman Kelly. “National art has always been the > expression of an ardent national spirit and can only be premised upon a na- • tion of which that art is a direct and immediate aesthetic expression.”— I John Powell. i Unaccompanied Song. > In an essay on “Modem Unnccom- - panied Song,” published by the Oxi ford University Press, Mr.. Herbert ■ Bedford breaks old ground with a new 5 spade. It is a subject ho has recent--1 ly made very much his own. With - all the enthusiasm of a crusader he refers to is as a movement; he sharpf Iv divides modern unaccompanied song t from ancient unaccompanied song; he i’ repudiates any intimate relationship f with the folk-song, old or new; he dis- ’ cusses what ho would like us to beI lieve is a new medium; and ho pror vides graphs of certain i ecent specii mens of vocal line to illustrate his es--1 say. “The success of tho art of modern unaccompanied song,” he » writes, “must largely depend upon ; everything that tho words are capable - of conveying remaining manifest in tho » musio. The verbal musio of .tho poet - is a thing so subtle, so elusive, that ’ only tho most supple musical medium I is capable of retaining it. only the - most transparent capable of revealing it. The human voice carrying tho poet’s words in single thread of sound seems to offer us an ideal medium, at once supple and transparent.’.’ . To show what can be done with this single thread of sound is Mr. Bedford’s selfappointed task. RECORDED MUSIC Considered by many to be unrivalled amongst living operatic baritones, Titta Ruffo invariably appeals to grantophone listeners by the excellence of his recording and his volume, purity and richness of tone. Amongst the new records which will be available at the end of this month is a very beautiful record by him of the aria from “Patrie,” “Pauvre Martyr Obscur.” This record is well worth while. Though dead the late —the great— Caruso still lives, and wo continue to receive newly published recording of his singing, made before his death. The latest posthumous contribution to the Caruso collection is a very fine mass number from Rossini’s “Messe Solenelle.” “Domine Deus.” Caruso’s

singing of devotional music is markedly free from the symptoms of phyical exertion which ’ - n certain ol his oiieratio efforts tend to mar the effect In “Domine Deus,’’ as in Handel’s “Ombra Mai Fu,” his singing is wonderful, white the recording is exlittle songs by Stella Power, who created a favourable impression on her recent visit to New Zealand, ought to appeal, quite apart from the personal factor. They are from the album of that popular song-writer, Montague Phillips, “Butterfly Wings full of daintiness and charm, and “Little Bunch of Snowdrops, in which the composer has captured a very pretty sentiment, this, needless to say, being artistically expressed by the singer. It is quite a little while since we had a record from Emilio de Gorgoza, a cultured baritone who is highly popular all over America. Here we have him in a fine little lyric, sung in English, with orchestral accompaniment. “Waiting For Your Return.” De Gorgoza is not only making fine records but he is doing sterling spjvice for the better class of popular songs—those which would most deserve to 11V Qne of the best of the new records is Maria Jeritza’s singing of the “Vissi d’arte” aria from “Tosca.” The story of this aria is interesting. Scarpia, Chief of Police, offers it to Tosca, the singer, and when she demurs he threatens the life of her lover, Mario Cavaradossi, whose groans she has just heard in an adjoining torture chamber. Before her consent is given, she thinks hard; her emotions are summed up in this beautifu Isoprano aria, perhaps the most famous of the work. Introductory phrases lead to a wonderful cantabile theme, against the harp chiefly, with strings and wood-winds making subtle counter-melody. Sophie Braslau’s appealing contralto is very much in its element in the old southern plantation song, “Croon, Croon, underneath the Moon,” an enchanting lullaby with a soothing rhythm. In a previous reference I mentioned two of Schumann’s pianoforte pieces which were well worth while. I notice that supplies of these—the “Traumeswirren, and the “Fruhlingsnacht’ have arrived, and should be available shortly. It is always a special pleasure (writes a London critic) to hear M. Moiseivitch in Schumann s music the poetry and beauty of which the famous pianist realises to a wonderful degree m his interpretations. How perfectly delightful, for instance, is his recording of “Traumeswirren’ (“Dream Visions”). Those delicate arabesques of dream-like beauty which we hear the outset are given with an exquisite touch, and the lovely melody that appears a. little later is expressed with beautiful tone by the player. It is a most charming record, indeed, and equally attractive is the Schumann-Liszt “Fr.ulingsnacht” (“Spring Night”). In this piece the genius of Liszt has clothed m a new and rich beauty the fine melody of Schumann’s song, creating from it a brilliant little fantasia of wonderful effectiveness under tho fingers of such a virtuoso as H. Moiseivitch. A record of topical interest is the Mayfair Orchestra’s selections from “Little Nelly Kelly,” which has been all the rage in Sydney lately, and will shortly, it is expected, be seen over here. Lovers of the old-fashioned duets, “Larboard Watch” and “All’s Well,” will like the recording of these by Mr. Peter Dawson and Mr. Sydney Coltham, two popular favourites with the gramophone public. Amongst the now records is one by theHorwich R.M.J. Band: “Prelude in C Sharp Minor” (Op. 3, No. 2), (Rachmaninoff), and “Rhopsody No. 2’ (Liszt). The Horwich R.M.I. Band has won its spurs in the contest field, the main success 'oeing the winning of the 1000 guinea trophy at the National Band Festival at the Crystal Palace, 1922. Every member of the band is an employee of tho Horwich Works of the London. Midland, and Scottish Railway Company. The above two numbers are the first of a brilliant series recorded exclusively for zonophones. Both pieces demonstrate what wonderful progress has been made during recent rears by brass combinations. Frank Webster, with orchestra, presents two good numbers, “Onaway, \wako Beloved.” (Cowen) and “Love Went a-Riding” (F. Bridge). Mr. Frank Webster, a newcomer, is well known as an oratorio singer. Besides singing for nearly every principal choral society, ho has had experience in grand <yp©ra c.nd has also appeared with the D’Oyly Carte Opera