MUSIC

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23220, 18 June 1937, Page 3

MUSIC

NOTES AND RECORDS

By Allegro

In Mr Alfred Hill, says a writer to an Australian paper, there is the music of New Zealand and Australia; New Zealand is placed first because there he began music, but Australia last, because there is his climax. He did not begin his study in Australia, the land of his birth, seeing that he left Melbourne for New Zealand at the age of 18 months, and he was not music-conscious until he was three years old. Try to guess the first musical instrument of young Alfred Hill, aged three (the Australian writer says) You have guessed wrong; it was a tambourine. Not a toy, but a real tambourine, yielding its rhythms and harmonies. Next, as soon as he could blow bard enough, he played a cornet; was given desultory lessons whenever a musical company visited New Zealand (the Simonsen Opera was about the first), and fitted himself to tootle in an orchestra. He evolved a gift of composition, and his father sent him, at the age of 16, to study in Leipzig for five years. Wonderful quinquennium! Great musicians came to Leipzig, to conduct or to listen, and Alfred Hill played before Brahms. At one time Brahms, Tschaikowsky and Grieg v/ere in Leipzig together. With such inspiration the boy in his teens had a frenzy of music-writing; his Scotch Sonata and other compositions were published in Germany. He has lived in a world of music for more than 40 years since then. AH his life Alfred Hill has not only been composing for his own self-expression, but has wanted to build music for the nation. He was not much more than a boy when he came back from Leipzig, on fire to organise and conduct orchestras in New Zealand. He set out to write music with a Maori idiom, and composed his cantata of Hinemoa—the Aphrodite or Helen of Maori legend The cantata crossed the Tasman Sea to Sydney; Alfred Hill came with it, and so remained in Sydney, which picked him to be conductor of Sydney Leidertafel. A varied life followed as a J. C. Williamson conductor, a composer of operetta and symphony and sonata, a writer on music, a traveller in England and America conducting his own works, and years of zeal in the State Conservatorium xn Sydney, where he successfully created the students' orchestra. Mr Hill now resides in a Musician's Retreat, a house and studio, built almost in a cutting from a rocky' cliff-face overlooking Sirius Bay.'His studio itself makes a miniature concert hall. Besides its cabinets cf printed and written music, it contains many mementoes beautiful and quaint; a Tibetan praying-wheel. Boxer drums from China, old fiddles, and old books, for Mr Hill is a zealous collector. Sitting between table and organ, Mr Hill writes his music beside a wide window, looking out oyer the low tops of thick green boskage upon the glittering blues and emeralds of the bay. Bronislaw Huberman, in his article on the role of Jewry in Music, says that art is not merely the creative act of the individual, but also expresses the active contact of the individual with some community of minds, synthesising and symbolising the emotions that are latent in any given society, their ideals, their longings, their hopes and their despairs. Hence art is only possible in an appropriate atmosphere arising out of communal life. This is especially true of music which does not materialise until it is both performed and heard. How much the truth of this is ignored by criticism and history writing, treating music as though it were a selfcontained science or game! Sir Percy Buck, at the commencement of his present examination tour of Australia on behalf of the Royal School of Music, London, said that because Australia was a dominion, he did not propose to make allowances to candidates. It was no use having diplomas if an examiner shut one eye. However, he did not wish to create the impression that he was a severe critic. The Ernest Drake Student Choir will present a recital in the Concert Chamber on Monday, June 21. An evenly-balanced programme has been arranged, featuring practically every type of vocal entertainment in addition to the presentations of the choir itself, and Miss Ethel Wallace will provide the instrumental jtems. Two popular vocal recordings appear on the one disc. They are " Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life " (from " Naughty Marietta ") and " Indian Love Call" (from "Rose Marie"), with orchestral accompaniment, and both sung by Nelson Eddy and' Jeannette MacDonald. Peter Dawson records two Kioling songs—" Mother o» Mine" (Tours) and "Danny Deever" (Damrosch)—with orchestral accompaniment. Two Coronation marches, clayed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Sir Landon Ronald), are "Coronation March " (Elgar) and " Coronation March and Hymn" (German). Each takes two sides of a record.