MUSIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 664, 16 May 1929, Page 14

MUSIC

<By F.1.R.)

Darius Milhaud’s new opera, based on Werfel’s “Juarez et Maximilien,” is among the works to be produced in Budapest, Moscow and Berlin during tho coming season. Tho Creation is to be given by the New Plymouth Choral Society at its first concert this season. The second concert will be a miscoilneous one, and the third will be Sir Edward German’s • Merrie England.” * * * Mr. Dance Craig, late of Timaru, has been appointed conductor of the X.)pier Choral Society. Before going to Timaru Mr. Craig was conductor of the Wanganui Male Choir. “Sir John in Love” A new opera bj' Ralph Vaughan Williams was announced l’or production receutly at the Royal College of Music in London under the auspices of the Ernest Palmer Opera Fund. The work deals with the story of Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor, and is called “Sir John in Love”; the text, arranged by the composer, is entirely Shakespearian, with the addition of several Elizabethan lyrics. A number of folktunes are introduced, both as dances and as part of the vocal texture. The composer has laid out his work in four acts (seven scenes), and has

employed an unusually large cast, for he introduces all the characters of the original comedy. The opera was to be produced by Cairns Tames, the conductor to be Dr. Malcolm Sargent and the part of Sir John Falstaff played by Leyland White and Richard Watson at alternate performances. SONG OF THE SEAL HOW A FOLK TUNE WAS FOUND HEBRIDEAN SONGS Generations ago Mendelssohn composed a Hebridean overture, a celebrated and charming piece ot music—but more Mendelssohnian than Hebridean. In his day it was hardly suspected that the Hebrides had a music of their own. To-day the wild islands have been most thoroughly charted, and the gramophone and the printing press have recorded the least shreds of the untutored song of fisher-folk and crofters. The collecting of this folkmusic has been one woman's work — the indefatigable and enthusiastic Mrs. Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser. Rather more than a quarter of a century ago this Edinburgh singing teacher and musical critic first went to the Outer Hebrides and became fired with the idea of collecting the hitherto unrecorded folk-songs. She returned year after year; she roughed it: she learnt Gaelic; she found numbers of really beautiful songs, and these she has tirelessly propagated up and down the world, at numberless concerts, so that Hebridean folkmusic has become a commodity almost as well known as Harris tweed. In ihe evening of her days Mrs. KennedyFraser has written an account of her Hebridean and other adventures. Not only the islanders, but even the local zoological life has musical propensities. and we read of this remarkable origin of one of Mrs. KennedyFraser's folk-songs. She was sitting by the sea shore at Barra, with two musical friends, and on some rocks lay basking some grey seals. It occurred to her to test the creatures’ powers of musical appreciation and she begun singing to them. The seals replied In chorus — "Then, from out a few seconds’ intense silence, came a beautiful solo voice. . . . The voice of the seal was so beautiful (of a rich mezzo-soprano quality) and the cantabile so perfect that I should almost have believed I had been dreaming but for the corroboration of my two musician fellowhearers.” Mrs. Kennedy-Fraser had her notebook with her and on the spot she ] wrote down the seal's song which is now perpetuated in her collection.