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5XX Daventry
on 5XX Daventry

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ALICE VAUGHAN (Contralto) SYDNEY NORTHCOTE (Tenor)
THE VICTOR OLOF SEXTET
MACDOWELL, the first of the American national composers to claim the world's interest in his music, had a very happy gift of infusing pictur. esqueness into even such short pieces as these. The listener feels that each of them illustrates its own idea with real vividness. The series consists of eight in all, and MacDowell has prefaced each of them with a little quotation which makes its purport clear. In front of No. I, a short piece which is to awaken the picture of a wide expanse of open sea, stands a phrase from Weber's opera Oberon—' Ocean, thou mighty monster.'
No. 2 is founded on this verse :—
' An errant princess of the North,
A virgin snowy white,
Sails adown the summer seas
To realms of burning light '— and No. 3 is inspired by a thought of the Pilgrim Fathers as they made their voyage to the New World.
No. 4, ' Starlight,' is prefaced thus:
' The stars are but the cherubs
That sing about the throne
Of grey old Ocean's spouse, Fair Moon's pale majesty '— and the fifth piece, called simply ' Song,' has its meaning amplified :—
A merry song, a chorus bravo, And yet a sigh, regret '
For roses sweet, in woodland lanes-Ah, love can ne'er forget ! '
No. 7, ' Nautilus' is described as ' A fairy sai. and a fairy boat,' and listeners will surely feel that the music does indeed present just such a picture.
ALMOST every country in the world which has a real history and tradition of its own, has a treasured heritage of its own tunes. These are, for the most part, either songs, of which the melodies are nearly always far older than the words, or dance tunes. Sometimes the two overlap, words having been written to tunes which came into being for national dances, but whichever they be, they arc usually strongly character. istic of the races to which they belong, as are the dances themselves. Many of these, of course, have long ago lost their merely local or patriotic meaning, and have become part of the whole world's music, and some have made their way into classical music, as part of its formal design.
Except for the Minuet, however, all the dances in this programme have preserved their own racial features; and each is a good example of the way in which composers have seized on their characteristics.

Source: Radio Times

5XX Daventry

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This data is drawn from the Radio Times magazine between 1923 and 2009. It shows what was scheduled to be broadcast, meaning it was subject to change and may not be accurate. More