THE MUSICAL WORLD

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 287, 31 August 1935, Page 23

THE MUSICAL WORLD

(By

C.J.M.)

Stray Notes. Dorothy Clark, noted English dramatic contralto is making a tour of Australia for the A.B.C. A musical event of unusual interest will be the visit to Australia and New Zealand of the famous Viennese Boys’ Choir, who will make their first appearance at the Melbourne Town Hall on Saturday, August 31. The tour will be under the management of J. and N. Tait. This boys’ choir has giorlous traditions, dating back to its inception In 1498, which are heightened bj the fact that it trained the musical childhood of such great masters as Mozart, Haydn, Frajiz Schubert, and other great names in the world of music. Thousands of boys apply for admission to the choir every year, and from these some hundreds are chosen for training. The curriculum Includes general educational subjects and musical studies, both theoretical and practical. After two or three years the boys pass through a process of elimination until only a few remain, and these are admitted to the Imperial Choir as vacancies occur.

Mr. Stanley Oliver, conductor of the Royal Choral Union, who has been adjudicating at Hawera, returns to Wellington to-day, and will resume his routine next week.

Elgar’s Rise to Fame. In Mr. Plunket Greene’s recently published biography, “Charles Villiers Stanford,” it is related Elgar was deeply hurt by the remark made by Stanford, who was an Irish Protestant with a hot temper and a caustic tongue, that Elgar’s oratorios “stank of incense.” In this interesting book Mr. Greene completely disproves the accusation of Mr. Bernard Shaw and others that Stanford and Parry tried to keep Elgar down. It was Stanford who recommended Elgar for his Cambridge degree in 1900, seconded him for membership of the Athenaeum in 1903, and fought for his inclusion in the Leeds Festival programme in 1904. The biographer considers Stanford “the greatest innovator in English music since Purcell." Some Recital. Tulsa University, in Oklahoma, U.S.A., recently gave a large audience the unique experience of hearing 10Q pianos played together by 200 players. The students were rehearsed for seven months for the performance of Tschaikowsky’s popular “1812 Overture” and “Slav March” and Strauss’s “Blue Danube,” played by 2000 fingers in unison. To be precise, two mammoth pianos led, and the others were brought in like the parts of an orchestra by the conductor. An American commentator remarks that the big show demonstrates a new idea. “Piano practice isn’t really a lonesome job, Johnnie, Go to your practice now, and some day mother will get 199 other bright pupils to come over and play with you.” A British Musician Passes. With the death of Sir Alexander Mackenzie in the fullness of years, says the “Monthly Musical Record.” England has lost the last of that trio of composers to whose gal'ant efforts at the end of last century the renaissance of British music was largely due. Fashions in music change rapidly, and Mackenzie's music is rarely performed at the present day—much more rarely than Parry’s or Stanford’s. To a natural change in the taste of audiences we may attribute the oblivion

into which Mackenzie’s cantatas have now fallen, and to a less excusable indifference the neglect of bis orchestral works. Yet even though his music is now little known, his name is still held in honour as one of those whose faith and artistic integrity encouraged others to scorn the second-rate and strive after what is best. If it is true that the labours of administration at the Royal Academy of Music hampered his creative work, the value of his service to that institution was such that even regrets at his enforced activity as a composer in later years were tempered by admiration for the splendid way in which he gave a lead to the young men and, women who were to carry on the heritage of English music. Though he was old in years he was young in spirit, with a geniality of temperament and lively wit which did not prevent him from discharging the duties of his office with dignity or from maintaining a strict discipline. Of him we may say, as Mr. Plunker Green has said of Stanford, “Si Monumentum requiris, circttmspice.”

Percy Grainger. A London critic wrote in the “Dally Telegraph”: Reports of a series of lectures recently delivered to radio listeners in Australia by Percy Grainger were a reminder of a name long unheard of in England. It is 20 years <_. so since Percy Grainger settled in America, and one needs to be middleaged or elderly to remember the time wien be was a well-known figure on the London sepne.

It was a time when pianists still wore their hair long, a la Paderewski. Mr. Grainger was one of these. His hair was a bright yellow, and he used to play Grieg’s ifausic in a spirited fashion. Folk-song was very much in the air, and Mr. Grainger took to it enthusiastically. As a composes, he struck a happy vein, exemplified by such popular pieces as “Molly on the Shore” and “Mock Morris.” He began an agitation for the purging of the musical vocabulary; we were to say “foursome” for “quartet.” Then soon after the outbreak of war, Mr. Grainger departed, never to be seen and hardly to be heard again.

His Australian lectures come as an assurance that the lively boyishness remembered as his characteristic has withstood the passage of the years. Amusing and irresponsible, here is the same Percy Grainger now broadcasting to the length and breadth of Australia the news that the D major melody in the Choral Symphony is a kind of “Yankee Doodle” and that Havdn, Mozart and Beethoven were “jazz classics.” The following are some of his thoughts, by the way: “I do not know a single distinguished modern composer who places Beethoven high among the great composergeniuses,” “Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were seldom able to write a typical slow' movement, judged by the standards of earlier and later geniuses."

“The shortcomings of Beethoven's late works are too often laid at lhe door of bis growing deafness. Surely it would be more sensible to attribute them to his latjk of musical culture, to his Ignorance of the great musical resources.of the past.” “Nordic art-music composers, from the 13th century to the present day, out-soar all others.” “Note the almost invariable blueeyedness of the greatest British, American, German and Russian composers.” “Non-Nordic musicians have been In the saddle as executants, conductors, etc., for the last 200 years, and they are unable to understand the depth and complexity of our Nordic music.” “Javanese music is probably the most spiritually lovely music of the Orient, It not of the whole world.”