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Oyez
June 1970
by Brown1

SCUNA history » Oyez » June 1970

Reconstructed image - Transcription follows


Image of newsletter. Transcription follows.

Transcription

Oyez
Incorporating the IV Burbler
Volume 4, June 1970.

IV BURBLE 1970: 20 odd brave souls made their ways, respectively, to Queenscliff, VIC, many averaging 14.2 mph with the Victorian Railways, who staged an absorbing struggle for line honours with Hingerty,2 who managed a rather better cruising speed, but who tended to be lured into passing pubs.3 Also garages.4 During the week, the number of known drunkards in the SCUNA ranks increased severalfold, David D____ had his drawers rifled, 100 choristers failed by the barest of margins to sink the Queenscliff-Portsea ferry by dint of filling the bilges with alcohol, Hartley and your correspondent scored n points in the Rugby,5 SCUNA (men and women) won the boat races hands down and bottoms up, at considerable personal cost, (the Revue item following was an undistinguished performance), and SCUNA's effort in the Individual Items Concert was well-received.

Thence to Melbourne at 14.2 mph with 54 people to the compartment,6 and more serious rehearsal for the Brahms Concert, with numerous naughty parties. On the amorous side, those who don't want their escapades exposed in the next edition could perhaps arrive at some agreement with the editor.7 A consideration should, of course, be forwarded.....

COMING EVENTS: (1) ABC Broadcast July 15. This is SOON, so please come to practices.
(2.) Musicale (postponed last term) and Dinner - probably about July 8. More about this when arrangements are finalized.
(3.) Verdi.8 Next rehearsal for SCUNA people is this Thursday night. There is also a Chris Nicholls practice on Friday night. Please don't go to the Sunday Verdi practices. We have gone to considerable trouble to arrange the Thursday night as an alternative. It is very hard to sing well for four hours on end; if you go to Sunday Verdi practices, SCUNA rehearsals suffer.
(4) Concert. Probably about third week third term. More about this in later editions.

IV BURBLE '71: We are hosts for next year's nameless orgy, a job which has reduced strong men to tears. A committee of three has been set up (Ayis,9 Ken10 and me) to look after the planning at this stage. To operate effectively we are going to need to delegate furiously, so be ready. Some time in third term I expect that various people will be given specific jobs to do, and that next year the IV Committee proper will be arranged.

Things that have been done: The main concert with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra has been arranged to all intents and purposes, thanks largely to tireless diplomacy by Ken. We have made an investigation of Goulburn as a site for the camp in the first week, and are in the process of writing to various organizations asking about accommodation. We have approached George Dreyfus11 to write an IV overture. (Other works are likely to be the Poulenc "Gloria" and Mozart's Mass in C Minor.) We have negotiated at length with people running Arts Festival12 in the May vac in Canberra next year.

Your job at this stage is to make up your mind whether you want to be in on planning IV, and what specifically you would like to do.

GILBERTIANA: "Ora pro me; nunc, et in hora dysinteryae meae."
Gilbert is in Iran, after a hair-raising trip across Asia. Various people have letters from him, notably Val, Sue and Brian, which you can read if you're interested.13

SMALL GROUP: Interested people are invited to audition for Ayis's Small Group (possibly to be called "The Renaissance Singers").14 Please give your name to Val.

FREE PLUG: There will be no SCUNA rehearsal on Wednesday, July 1, when we will all be flocking along to the Playhouse at 12.40 pm to see Our Ken and Our Janet in an opera, "The Wandering Scholar".15

Meanwhile, I remain your humble etc etc etc etc etc

Etc

Notes

1J M Brown (hereinafter JMB), President of SCUNA 1969-1970, Billeting Officer CIV 1971.

2Brian Hingerty, that is, who conducted SCUNA in the Individual Items concerts at Adelaide IV (1969) and Melbourne (1970), was Convenor of the 1971 CIV, conductor of the 1977 CIV, and conducted SCUNA from 1971-1976 and again in the late 80s.

3Highly unlikely. Brian was often seen at parties with a drink raised to his lips, but the level of liquid in the glass never went down. This is perhaps why he remembers so many things his fellow-members wish no one had noticed in the first place.

4I couldn't believe Brian had ridden his motorbike to the Melbourne IV in 1970, but he tells me he did. The bike was a Lambretta (I'd always thought it was a Vespa; I have scanned one of my wedding photos, from December 1970, in which it appears in the background) and he rode all the way from Sydney. He stopped several times on the way down, but rode straight back - and could barely stand when he got home. (The conversation then segued into tales of other extraordinarily uncomfortable IV trips - I'll save them for other notes.)

Photo with Brian's lambretta in the background

Mum and Dad outside St Paul's with Brian's Lambretta in the background

5Information I had ruthlessly excised from my memory.

6I blame the Kays.

7Perhaps this idea occurred to JMB because Ken H_____ hadn't given him the option to avoid being exposed in the Oyez following the Hobart IV in 1968. The words "Lothario" and "the green hills of Tasmania" strike a vague chord.

8A televised performance of Verdi's Requiem with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra under Ernest Llewellyn and a combined group called the Singers of Canberra. According to Peter Campbell (Canberra Choral Society: A capital choir for a capital city, PC Publishing, Canberra, 2002) other major choirs in the Singers of Canberra were the Canberra Choral Society, the Canberra Society of Singers, and the Canberra Philharmonic Society. Chris Nicholls, then a lecturer at the Canberra School of Music, was the chorusmaster.

9Ayis Ioannides, who took over from Chris Burrell as conductor of SCUNA in 3rd (final) term 1970, and who was chorus master for the 1971 CIV, conducting Jean Berger's Brazilian Psalm in the final concert.

10Ken H______, at that stage Convenor of the prospective IV.

11SCUNA had some memorable encounters with George Dreyfus when he was Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University in 1969 (1968-9?), but I don't remember this commission happening.

I do however have vivid memories of Dreyfus' Homage to Igor Stravinsky, which SCUNA performed on Capital Television and in a farewell concert for George Dreyfus. The Australian Music Centre describes it as a work for ten-part SATB choir - music: George Dreyfus; text: Mark Dreyfus, Stephen Wurm; 1968.

I believe the words were "Hats on, gentlemen. For all we know, he may be a charlatan". This is a rewriting of Schumann's famous remark about Chopin: "Hats off, gentlemen, a genius". "Gentlemen" was translated into numerous languages. I believe hats were thrown. Janet Allan sang the soprano solo, a very high melismatic improvisation on the word "charlatan", over a whispered chorus of "Charlie!".

It was a difficult work, if brief, and it was reproduced on very long pieces of paper "to symbolise Man's reach exceeding his grasp" or words to that effect.

There was also a school opera by George Dreyfus in which volunteers from the SCUNA tenor- and bass-line participated. I think it had something to do with Mittagong - perhaps they toured it there. It featured a lugubrious ostinato containing the words "Bong, bong" - at least, Gilbert sang it lugubriously (and often) around the place.

CORRECTION:

"The ostinato in the Dreyfus opera was 'grong grong', not 'bong bong'. There is a town called 'Grong Grong', and people were always threatening to visit it in loving memory of the opera."

- Mark Hyman, email of Mon, 2 Feb 2009 13:55:50 +0900

FURTHER INFORMATION:

"...it was not strictly speaking an Opera. It was a 'thing' for school children about early settlers in Australia. The Aboriginals were to be sung by boys with broken voices. Not enough could be roped in so some of us 'boys' from SCUNA...the ones with broken voices...were also roped in."

- Brian Hingerty, email of Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:26:31 +1100.

  After some online research, I asked Brian whether he thought the work might have been The takeover - composed in 1969 in Canberra, school musical/opera in one act, text by Frank Kellaway, choirs of boy and girl sopranos, and boys with broken voices (based mostly on information from the Australian Music Centre website) and he agreed that it might.

12The attractively-named CAC (Cultural Affairs Committee), which may or may not have contributed financially to the 1971 Canberra IV(?). I was at most of these planning meetings, too, as SCUNA secretary and prospective IV secretary, among other things.

13They were excellent letters, and I wish I still had them - and all the other mementos I was talked into throwing out because of living overseas. Brian has passed on a sole surviving Gilbert letter which I'll put online when I can.

14Initially it was called the Madrigal Group. At the end of 1971, it took over the name "University Consort" (and a couple of the members) but was nothing like the original University Consort.

15Presumably this was The Wandering Scholar by Gustav Holst? Part of a lunchtime series of short operas which marked the birth of Ken's baby, Canberra Opera? And Ken's involvement with Canberra Opera was the reason he didn't go on to convene the 1971 Canberra IV?