WORLD OF MUSIC

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 15 January 1927, Page 18

WORLD OF MUSIC

local societies Work and practise will be resumed shortly in the various local musical societies of the district. Hawera has had a great revival in musical affairs during the past year or two and this has been also the experience over the whole of the province. If is actually a rare position to find four . strong amateur operatic, soceties within a radius of less than fifty miles. At Eltham the Musical Society, or as it is to be known in the future, as the Amateur Operatic Society, have held a meeting at which the change of name was decided and at which also the name of the new opera was discussed. No definite choice has been made, but it is understood that a considerable body of opinion favours “Mcrrie England. The final decision will shortly be made. PERSONAL Friends in Hawera will be interested to learn that Miss Amy Partridge, who went for a trip Home some months since, has left on her return to the nonunion and will reach Hawera in a few weeks. DEVOTION TO MU SI C The letter from Mr. Major in Thursday’s Star serves to recall the many and great services rendered to music, in this town by Mr. Josepji TTigham. a man with a very sincere devotion to the art. For many years in the early days, he was one of the leaders in musical circles, and he continued to be one until comparatively recent years. He was always to the fore with his musical ablity and enthusiasm whenever a good cause needed assistance. He was a player as well as a composer and conductor. Few of those who can recall the great work done by lus Havdn Choir, a small but very competent band of musicians, will never forget their performances. Music owes much to Joseph TTigham. ALFRED HILL’S SONGS

A specialist in his study of Maori music, Alfred Hill has adapted a number of the Maori songs for the use of European singers and specially of children. They are all full of melody and rhythm and should be the very thing for introduction as proposed into the schools of New Zealand. MUSICIANS ’ STUDIES SUMMER SCHOOL TO BE HELD The music teachers’ summer school is to be held in Wellington during January this year, and more than half of the seventy who are going to attend will be from the country districts, and some from Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay, says an exchange. The scheme is something quite new in New Zealand, though an annual fixture in England, and it is capable of considerable development on lines that should be of interest to Wellington as a whole as well as to teachers of music. In Dunedin and Christchurch the classes were held in December, a more suitable date for many, and ovei eighty attended at each centre. There was a great display of enthusiasm throughout the course, and the principal lecturer, Mr. Frederick Moore (of London), has expressed great satisfaction at the evident keenness of those attending. It is hoped that this scheme may be the means of bringing other teachers of European reputation to the Dominion for future classes. A POPULAR COMPOSER The famous composer. Sir Arthui Sullivan, died on November 22, 1900, and recently in London, members of the Gilbert and Sullivan Societyplaced a wreath on his monument on the Thames embrankment on the twenty-sixth anniversary of his death. PASSING NOTES. (Otago Daily Times.) Dunedin scored up to its credit last week ia Handel concert. It was time. Jazz we have every week , and there are people who if given the choice would prefer jazz to a Beethoven symphony—as there are people who would rather go to si. bridge party than to a Knox ('Lurch prayer meeting. Fh©re is no accounting for taste. If you argue on a question of taste you never get anywhere—d© gustibu.s non est ctisputan duin. At the Exhibition we delighted ourselves in an imported military band .-if the highest merit, but wind and percussion only, no strings; hence not an orchestra. Since the Exhibition we have listened to a Cossack choir, singing in Russian and incapable of English, whose conductor might have been Prince Agib of Tartary: Strike the concertina’s melancholy string! Blow the spirit-stirring harp like ar.yrhing ! Le.l the piano’# martial blast Rouse the echoes of the past. For of Agid, Prince of Tartary, I sing i Of Agib, who could readily at .sight. Strum a match upon the loud Theodolite, He would diligently play On the Zoetrope all tlay. And blow the gav P'antechnif-jn all night. But apparently Prince Abig wa.s not a’ vocalist. Once in the year we honour the Christm-as. season by Handel "Messiah.” a righteous deed iund greatly to our credit. Last week, thanks to the Dunedin Choral Society (to whom my respectful compliments!) we have produced “Judas Maccabaeus. and. yay the critics. “ ‘.Tilda*! Maccabaeus has always been a favourite.

Speaking: at the annual dinner of^ the London Philharmonic Choir. T>r. Vaughan Williams, who in matters musical is a big-wig. said “he had come to the conclusion that he did not like modern music. Most modern music was either much too difficult or written for a public that did not exist.’’ There was a tremendous movemen in choral music in England. All the little towns were crying out for music which they could -sing and understand, and they had to fall back upon Handel and Mendelssohn because their was music they could understand and grasp. Sims Reeves, Santlev, Melba—-each of them began in ia> church choir and doubtless &ang Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn in the nearest choral society. Singing Handel, they would be learning music under one of tbe greatest of masters. For Handel, be it remembered', wrote forty operas, no less! —of which the critics say that “every shade of human pa-ssion, from the ten-

deiest pathos, through the varying phases of sorrow, anxiety, fear, terror, scorn, anger, infuriated madness, oi' curdling horror, may he found depicted in them.” .And after his fort l ' operas he wrote twenty oratorios, nr which ‘‘Judas Maccahaeus” is one. Always music that you can “understand and grasp. ’ 1 suggest to the Dunedin Oh oral Society (to whom again my compliments!) that they should put. no their own members' for the solos. I Vive seen it done, and' in this same “Judas Maccahaeus.’ ’ Yes —and Try-'’ waited in tense expectancy for the voW of our amateur tenor to crack on th® high A of “Sound an alarm.’ ’