WAR MUSIC

Evening Star, Issue 22913, 22 March 1938, Page 9

WAR MUSIC

FOR JAPANESE COMPOSER’S “ INSPIRATION.” Modern war, says Composer Keizo Horiuchi, makes good music. “ But there’s the problem of finding instruments, or perhaps combination of instruments, to portray the new sounds that have come from new types of weapons,” he adds. Mr Horiuchi, one of the best-known Japanese composers, is back from the Shanghai front, where he went to gather phonetic data for a symphony. He said ho hoped to create a piece of music comparable with Beethoven |s musical description of the Napoleonic w^irs. ” However, I am afraid even that great master would have trouble approximating, with an orchestra, the tremendous sounds of war to-day,” Mr Horiuchi said. “In his day one could beat the kettledrums to emulate the roar of canon. But what kettledrum even fairly suggests the modern siege gun? And how would you describe tho peculiar scream of a heavy shell? ” Still; tho composer believes the potentialities offered by what he heard at Shanghai make the attempt worth while. “ The soprano of rifles and machine guns, contralto of trench-mortars, the baritone of anti-aircraft rifles and the bass of heavy cannon, intermingled with ‘ shouas ’ of bayonet charges—all these must be splendid natural symphony, in themselves,” he commented. By comparison, the wars of the last century were fairly quiet affairs, the composer observed. Since cannon and rifle were the principal weapons, no great descriptive problem faced tho musician, seeking to reduce a battle to a series of flats and sharps. He concluded that the inventors of musical instilments might have to match, to some extent, the strides of those who devise new martial implements. “ They haven’t kept pace,” lie smiled.