FOLK MUSIC AND SONG

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12455, 25 May 1926, Page 4

FOLK MUSIC AND SONG

SOME NOVEL VIEWS OPINIONS OF MR GRAINGER FAMOUS COMPOSER AT AUCKLAND (By Telegraph.-—Special to “Times.”) AUCKLAND, May 24. Some novel views regarding music were advanced this morning by Mr Percy A. Grainger, the famous pianist, composer and preserver of folk music, who arrived by the Aorangi en route to Australia. Mr Grainger, in the flesh, is very like the photographic version of him 60 often seen in newspapers and musical publications. In any case his long hair singled him out from the throng of passengers. Mr Grainger is now on liis way to fulfil engagements in Australia-, and will play in New Zealand at the conclusion of the tour. He recently completed over 100 concerts in America, finishing in Los Angeles on April 13tli. During his present trip the composer has been at work on tho manuscript of liis famous, “Marching Song of Democracy/’ tlio vooal score of which was published in 1017. He will post a completed orchestral score from Australia to Vienna, where it will bo published. Mr Grainger stated that if there was time and the willingness in Australia he would arrange to co-operate with the choral societies in concerts. The name of Mr Percy Grainger will ever be associated with folk music. He has done more for its preservation than any other man, and the roinuto manner in which he has gone about his work is a lasting testimony i.o the love that he has |or songs and tunes of old, many of which were in danger of being lost for ever. ENGLISH FOLK SONG Mr Grainger said that within tho next two or three years he hoped to publish a collection of 500 English folk songs which he had collected with the aid of the phonograph, an instrument which he used in order to record, exactly, the slightly different manner in which different verses of the songs are sung. He said that ho was very interested in the development of the percussion section of orchestra. “I believe,” he said, “that we should have a percussion group. 1 mean by percussion instruments with a definite pitch and strong enough to hold their own with the other three groups of strings. The wood> wind and brass instruments I have in mind are the piano, glockenspiel chimes, steel marimba, wood marimba, xylophone and staff bells. In the Orient they have gone very far in the making of gong orchestras, for instance, and in America they have for many years been experimenting with the idea of adapting orchestral instruments to European music. In- many parts of the Orient instruments are now available for European music with an exact pitch and increased volume. I have been making the percussion group co-equal to the other three groups, and the great advantage to my mind is its clarity; metallic and wooden sounds do not* mix with other sounds of the orchestra as most instruments do. They do not, as it were, get mopped up. There is something spongy, for instance, about the strings and the other instruments which are mopped up by them. But with the percussion group although it has very clear and ringing tones, it does not soak up nor does it become soaked up. It keeps its independence like oil on water.” MODERN MUSIC PROBLEMS That was very valuable, continued the composer ? in dealing with some of the polyphonic (many voiced) problems of modern music. As our day music had gone back to many voicedness comparable to the style of Handel and Bach. There was an intervening period when voices did not enjoy so much independence or freedom. He traced the recent development of polyphonic choralism, and said that the whole of our harmony could he traced back to the middle ages. Coming forward to modern times Grieg, he mentioned, and then said that DeliUß had carried the wave further by combining the polyphonic technic ot" AVngner with polyphonic choral technic of Bach and Grieg. Mr Grainger’s own contribution lay in the creation (around 1899-1900) of wordless vocalism as applied to the chorus on a large scale. This may take the form of singing only open vowels as in “the Irish tune from County Derry,” or in the use of “nonsense syllables,” as in the “Marching Song of Democracy.” BEATLESS MUSIC “I am also very interested in beatless music, which was started about 1900,” said Mr Grainger. “It has no standard duration of beats so that one voice is entirely free of the other voices as regards its rhythmical impulses. In the present day music voices may syncopate or have different lengths of notes, but all are bound by the same rhythmical impulse and beats. Beatless music allows a greater freedom, and after all the progress of art or of anything in any direction depends on greater freedom. I feel very strongly that the two sides of music are highly developed and primitive or folk music should bo equally studied or practised in the language. For example, we have slang and old words such as ‘quoff’; both are necessary to tho poet. The language would probably die if it had no fresh arrivals, from say slang, but it would also be poorer if the brown words were forgotten.”