COMPETITIONS SOCIETY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3823, 21 June 1927, Page 32

COMPETITIONS SOCIETY.

PREPARATIONS FOR FESTIVAL. A meeting of the committee of the Dunedin Competitions Society was held on Thursday nighh, Mr W. H. M'Kenzie (president) occupying the chair. The syllabus fc the forthcoming festival was approved. It was decided that in sections in which selections from Gilbert and Sullivan operas were previously necessary competitors should be permitted at the next festival to choose selections from any light opera or musical comedy, and that in other operatic sections selections should be made from grand opera. It was also decided to prevent the repetition at this year’s festival of certain selections in the humorous recitation, monologue, and action song sections. The following judges were appointed for this year’s festival: —Vocal music, Mr Jas. Brash (Sydney); instrumental music, Mr Ernest Empson (Christchurch); elocution, Mr Culford Bell (Auckland); national dancing, Mr D. M’Kechnie. The judg of fancy dancing has yet to be appointed. Mr J. Brash’s method of marking is as follows: —Choral work: Balance and blemj I 20, attack and release 10, tone and intonation 20, tempo and rhythm 20, enunciation 10, interpretation, expression, and general effect 20: —total, 100. VocAl: Tone and intonation 20, tempo and rhyt-hm 20, diction and munciation 20, phrasing (breathing) 20, interpretation and expression 20; —total, 100. ADVICE TO COMPETITORS.

Mr Brash giv, - the following advice to intending competitors:— To ’ e con incing as a singer one must have a message, and to deliver that message properly is the sum total of the art of song. In order to give out his (or her) message and create the receptive atmosphe-e the true artiste “lives” the song for the time being. How often has one heard a finely-trained voice sing, let us say, a love ballad, with all the notes perfectly produced and the phrasing correct, but there is something wanting. It is the soul of the song —the inspiration of the interpretation—without which the perfect notes and phrasing go for next to nought, resulting in a complete failure to carry away the listener. If he lyric inrano chants of the blackbird she must be able to transport one’s mind to the leafy dell, where dwells the feathered songster. Should the contralto choose a sacred number her one aim must surely be to create the atmosphere of the holy places; and, as the silvery-voiced tenor sings his love song to the lady of . his dreams, how unconvincing he must be I if he lacks the passion and fire of the lover, and thereby fails to mate each one of his audience the object of his outpouring heart. The baritone may depict the sea in his song, “I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky.” These .ne lines of Masefield’s must have the “soul” of the sea when

declaimed by the singer, otherwise they lose their message, and the great seas might as well be but a duck-pond. It has often' been remarked that we, as a nation, lack the fire and passion of the Italian or the Spaniard in our song, but I do not think that this is the ease. What we lack, to my mind, is the “spirit” of the song. We are altogether too phlegmatic aqd oyster-lite, and afraid to let our feelings carry us away. If we “live” the song, then, -urely, we cannot but create the necessary atmosphere. This “living,” then, must be the goal of every singer. One remembers that delightful artiste, D’Alvarez. She lives each song she sings, whether it be a sacred or a secular song. Can one ever forget her impassioned appeal to her lover in Hagemann’s beautiful tone poem, “Do not go. my love, without asking my leave.” or, again, in Delilah’s seductively imploring air to Samson in “Softly awakes my heart”? •- ■ n I have tried to outline as briefly as possible what I consider to be the most apparent defects amongst our many fine young singers. The art of song does not consist merely of singing the notes properly and phrasing. correctly. . That is only the beginning of the singer’s task.