The World of Music

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20261, 9 November 1935, Page 14

The World of Music

(By "Semitone”).

The Permanent Council for the International Co-operation of Composers will meet next year at Stockholm in February, An outstanding performance at the Vichy meeting recently was Eugene Goossens’s Sinfonietta, conducted by Emil Cooper.

Referring to the film ‘Mississippi,” an Australian paper says: “The only thing wrong is Bing Crosby's crooning. His rendering of “Swanee River” is positively the most painful episode of the week. The noise is such as a cow might emit if suffering from acute appendicitis. It is more a moan of hopeless woe than a bellow’.”

“Within a few years classical music will draw more people to the stadia of America than American football does,” Was a prophecy made by Jascha Heifetz, the famous violinist, during an appearance at the Lewisohn Stadium. During the winter, football games are played in the stadium, and the stands are sparsely filled. Yet when the violinist was due to give a recital 3000 extra chairs had to be brought to accommodate the vast crowds. Mr Heifetz said that he felt that "the amount of good music being played over the wireless to-day had precipitated a musical renaissance.”

Boys desiring to be admitted to the Viennese Boys’ Choir, the brilliant combination now touring New Zealand, have to apply at the early age of seven years. So eagerly are these appointments sought after

that thousands of boys every year apply for admission. All the usual school subjects are, of course, included in the curriculum in addition to music, both theoretical and practical, but in this first year their musical studies are mostly confined to singing and voice production. At the end of the first year, the second stage of selection begins and for two years the process continues until finally only 15 or 20 boys might remain out of the hundreds first chosen and the thousands who applied. These 15 or 20 boys are then finally admitted to the choir. To mention only a few, Hans Richter, Felix Mottl, and Clement Krauss received their first musical education in the choir. Mozart, Haydn and Franz Schubert were in their boyhood also members, and a tablet in the National Library of Vienna records the date on which Schubert sang for the last time among the Wiener Sangerknaben.

Notes and Comments of General Interest

News from the other side of the world tells that the American jazz composer George Gershwin says: "It Is an opera of set numbers like, let us say, ‘Carmen,’ with solos, duets and choruses, but It is a symphonic opera as well as a singing opera. I believe I have achieved an American flavour in the melodies and I have tried to preserve the inflections of negro speech in the sections corresponding to recitative. There is no borrowed negro folk material, but I have composed a number of original ‘Spirituals.’ ”

Richard Strauss's latest work, “Die Schweigsame Frau,” which was produced at Dresden In June, has been banned In Germany on the ground that the librettist, Stefan Zweig, is a Jew. Shortly after the Dresden production Dr Strauss was relieved of his office on the German Government Music Committee (Reichsmuslkkammer). It was noticed after the first performance of "Die Schweigsame Frau" that the German Press refrained from discussing the libretto, and in most cases did not mention the author's name; but the work was announced a few weeks ago as down for production at the Berlin State Opera in the autumn. Some organs of the German Press lay great stress on the fact that Dr Strauss’s daughter-in-law in Jewish, and also his publisher.

Mr Percy Grainger is at present in the South Island, broadcasting in turn from the Broadcasting Board’s main stations. The Wellington Harmonic Society and the Wellington Apollo Singers have combined for the third subscription concert of the 1935 season, to be given in the large Town Hall on Saturday, November 23, at which Mr Grainger will be the assisting artist, playing piano solos, as well as conducting some of the numbers and taking part in the orchestra and as accompanist in others. Mrs Grainger, too, will be associated in the programme. Mr Grainger will be appearing in conjunction with an orchestra (under the auspices of the Broadcasting Board), as solo pianist, but it is expected that this concert will be his only public appearance as an individual soloist.

Sir Thomas Beecham, the famous conductor and most outspoken critic of "canned music,” explained to the “Sunday Chronicle,” In a recent interview why he is going to conduct for the films. Confirming the statement that he had signed a contract to assist in making a film, “Whom the Gods Love,” based on the life of Mozart, Sir Thomas made it clear that he would not appear on the screen himself. “1 have signed because we have at last found a means of co-operating with one another,” he said. “ I have been trying to do something about music with the film companies for the past 14 years. At last we have got something done. It has been impossible before because I have hitherto found the mentality of the film people to be as singularly and exotically aloof from that of the rest of humanity as some fabulous legend of antiquity." Sir Thomas's eyes twinkled as he quoted an example of his case against certain film companies. “I once saw a 15-minute melodrama in which I watched a battle at sea, a train wreck, a fire on the 130th story of a San Francisco skyscraper, the abduction of 25 young women, and a number of other minor thrills. The whole accompaniment from beginning to end was the Good Friday music from ‘Parsifal’.” Sir Thomas added that he felt that the emotion created in him by this effort should be communicated to the world, and he did so in a letter to the newspapers. A week or two later he received a visit from three strangers who were “something in the film world.” They said that they had read his letter and wished to know if he would consent to choose a subject for a picture, to approve in every detail the scenario of it, and to select, arrange or compose the music for it. "I thought for a few minutes,” said Sir Thomas, “and my mind naturally gravitated toward what is after all the most magnificent and unequalled story for any film. “I said ‘What about the “Odyssey” of Homer?

“One of the three picturesque looking visitors said "oo’s ‘Omer-’ “I replied ‘Homer is probably the most distinguished man of letters the world has yet known,’ whereupon the second of my visitors commented in pensive and somewhat melancholy accents, ‘Oh, my! Won't the fees be ‘eavy?’

“I think this is enough to show why I have not found it easy hitherto to deal with most of the paladins of the film world, but I have now found in Basil Dean someone with whom I can work. I have also the co-operation of an old friend of mine in Ernest Irving, the musical director of the studios. I am looking forward to the experience.” Sir Thomas will be concerned solely with the recording. The result should be, as the film producers are constantly telling the world when launching their latest, “something different.” Sir Thomas Beecham is a master of the art of conducting, and his command over an orchestra is almost magical. He has no more enthusiastic admirer than Madame Muriel Brunskill, the famous English contralto, at present in Wellington, who has starred in grand opera under his direction. “His power over the orchestra is simply wonderful,” she said, in the course of a conversation with “C.J.M ‘‘ “He gives everyone a feeling of confidence, and makes them, through the power of his personality, do their very best. i have enjoyed every moment of. my mualral association with him"