THOUGHTS ABOUT MUSIC

Evening Star, Issue 20364, 21 December 1929, Page 27

THOUGHTS ABOUT MUSIC

[Written by “ L.D.A.,”'for the ‘ Evening Star.’] Music gives tone .to the universe, wings to the wind, flight to tho imagination, a charm : to sadness, gaiety and life to everything.—Plato. In this part of the world the custom of singing Christmas carols has not survived—if it ever obtained a footing. The only reminder of this ancient usage is the occasional more or, less discordant braying of topical hymn tunes by itinerant brass bands at some unearthly hour of the morning. I remember once, when living at Sumner, being disturbed somewhere about 3 a.m. by an excruciating exhortation to hear the herald angels sing, to a smart side-drum accompaniment on my front door knocker. The ordinary man’s temper is apt to get out of hand if subjected to this kind, of ' treatment, and I make no claims of exemption from the common frailties of the proletaire. The consequence was that the nocturnal intruder •received a broadside of invective totally at variance with tho pence and goodwill precepts of the Yule tide hymnarv; whilst he, after his initial surprise at the onslaught, returned my abuse with a considered objurgatory rhetoric that soon put my lesser powers to tho rout. The verbal clash ended, I recollect, in the adoption by the band of my suggestion to make a move in the direction of a large building about a quarter of a mile distant, where—so I told them—their attempts at concerted harmony ■would undoubtedly bo passively received.

This prognostication certainly proved correct, for it was not until the members of the band had blown themselves black in the face by countless repetitions of their entire repertory, and had tired themselves out in vain hammerings at front and back doors, that a passing milkman enlightened them on the nature of the building they were thus fruitlessly serenading. It was the Sumner Deaf and Dumb Institute.

In direct contrast to tlio foregoing experience I can distinctly remember enjoying the singing of carols by earlymorning vocalists when I was a young lad in England. Perhaps the consciousness of lying in a warm bed, contrasted with the unpleasant wintry conditions obtaining without, had something to do with the enjoyment of the vocalists’ efforts; but in those days the singing was unquestionably often very excel lent, and seemingly quite unaffected fog and frost. I do not know whether this old English custom still persists; it may bo that, like the tradition of Guy frawkes. modern conditions have forced it into desuetude, and have thus broken one more link in the chain which connects us to the England that once was and is no longer.

In early times the waits were the night guards stationed at city gates. They were provided with a reed instrument of the hautboy family for the purpose of signalling to each other - oi for sounding at intervals the “ All’s well.” By the sixteenth century the waits had developed into paid bands of musicians, supported by the towns and cities in order to play at civic func tions; they were used to welcome distinguished visitors, and the welcome frequently took _ the form of earlymorning serenading. Whether the victims appreciated this delicate attention history deponeth not. Readers of ‘ Humphrey Clinker ’ may remember that in this ancient novel Mathew Bramble is welcomed to Bath by the town waits calling at his lodgings and playing. At. Christmas it was the prac tice for the waits to visit the residences of the ..nobility and gentry; it is from this custom that the term “ Christmas waits ” is derived.

Several distinguished musicians have arisen from the ranks of the waits. The father oh Orlando Gibbons was one of the waits of Cambridge, whilst John Banisterls father was also a wait at St. Giles in the Fields, London. _ John Ravenscroft, a noted composer in the eighteenth century, was a wait of the Tower Hamlets. The word wait itself was originally spelt wayto or waight. I used to imagine that the carol singer's were. called waits because of the long period which usually ensued between the knock at the door or pull at the bell and the answer—if any—to the. summons. More often than not the demand for gratuity was met with gratuitous insult, particularly in later years; in all probability the lack of sympathy* in the listeners has contri-

buted chiefly to the discontinuance of the custom of carol singing.

Tho Christmas carol, or nowell, is primarily a traditional song in honour of the birth of Christ. It came prominently into being when Latin was ceasing to be a language universally understood, and was a perfectly natural development from the hymns and sequences of the church services. Tradition has it that wq owe to St Francis of Assisi the beginnings of the popular tunes,and carols, apart from church music, designed to appeal to the masses. English carols can be classified into several distinct groups, according to their subject matter. The early ones are those of tho nativity and the incarnation, together with a considerable group dealing with the annunciation. Later we get the shepherd carols and those concerning the epiphany. Parallel with these, are tho Christmastido festivity carols—the wassail and the boar’s head group.

It must bo admitted that some of the music of these carols is, in modern parlance, not much to write home about. One of the most popular, ‘ The First Nowell,,’ is really only a portion of a carol, the other part being lost, and the consequent reiteration of one phrase gets very monotonous. In England, carols have suffered much vicissitude. They began as popular songs of considerable merit, usually with a strong devotional flavour The Reformation diverted tho interest of the carol-loving public from the Virgin and Child motive; and thus the carol became a formal and sometimes rather dull hymn. Tho present-day so-called carols are mostly only uninspired hymns or second-rate part songs, in many of which sense is sacrificed for the sake of the rhyme. It is of interest to note that the tune of tho earliest carol of which there is any record is preserved to-day in ‘Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. . 447, although, of course, the original rhythm has been lost.

One of the most haunting tunes among early carols is that of ‘ Good King Woncelas.’ This was originally a spring carol, with the Latin title ‘ Tempos Adest Floridan; ’; but was adapted to tho words now associated with it by a certain Rev. J. M. Neale, who ought to have known better. Continental countries are fortunate in possessing a much finer and more varied array of carols than England can boast of. "This is very evident at the annual festival of carol singing at Hereford Cathedral, where it is the custom for the programme to bo compiled from tbe best compositions extant in this genre, both English and foreign. However, every year it becomes more apparent that the influence of the oratorio has gradually displaced the vogue of the carol at Christmas time; and, after all, what is oratorio but glorified carol?

The .mention of oratorio evokes five reflection that the repertory of nearly all choral societies, at any rate, in New Zealand, is restricted to ‘Elijah’ and ‘ The Messiah.’ One would imagine that no others worth performing were in existence, whereas there are at least a dozen other works of equal merit. Spohr, for instance, wrote three—‘The Last Judgment,’ ‘Calvary,’ and ‘The Fall of Babylon.’ Each of these is a masterpiece in its way, and all of them have had considerable success in England at different periods. A less well known German composer named Neukomm wrote two oratorios that have been performed at tlio Birmingham Festivals—viz., ‘Mount Sinai’ and ‘David.’ The.latter, especially, is considered by competent judges to rank with Mendelssohn’s ‘ Elijah ’; but nowadays nobody seems to be courageous enough to produce it. Even Mendelssohn’s other works in this line, ‘ St. Paul ’ and the ‘ Hymn of Praise,’ are seldom put on by choral conductors—goodness knows why, unless it is because of the absurd doctrine held by many that the public only likes what it knows. If new works are never performed, how on earth can the public e\ - er learn anything fresh ?

Before leaving the subject of oratorio by foreign composers, it may be of interest to mention—what is not generally known, even by musicians—that Wagner once wrote a work of this type entitled ‘The Last Supper.’ It is his only contribution to music of a sacred character, and is, for him, of a particularly wild kind; in fact, few listeners would ascribe the work to this great composer, so lacking is it in his salient characteristics. Then wo have Brahms’ ‘ German Requiemr.,’ a great composition, eminently worthy of its author; Bruch’s ‘ Moses ’; Rubinstein’s ‘ Tower of Babel ’; Liszt’s ‘ St. Elizabeth ’; Dvorak’s ‘ Stabat Mater ’;

Mehul’s ‘ Joseph ’ —a truly remarkable work; Bleriot’s ‘lnfancy of Christ’; Cesar Franck’s ‘ Les Beatitudes ’; to say nothing of Gounod’s ‘The Redemption ’ and Saint Saons’a ‘ The Deluge ’ • —two that have profoundly influenced British composers in that line. , ■ * ■ * '* * The foregoing comprises a formidable array of neglected nlasterworks; but in addition to these there are available some magnificent oratorios by English musicians, notably those of Parry, Stanford, and Elgar, the last-named having given us ‘ the Dream of Gerontius,’ ‘ The Apostles,’ ‘The Kingdom,’ and other works that will stand comparison with any product of a foreign brain. Having regard to the immense amount of material available, of which I have given an outline, as it were, it becomes all the more inexplicable why the musical societies of New'Zealand and Australia confine their activities to the production, year after year, of the same old stuff which surely has done all and more than was expected of it by its composers. (To be continued.)