"There were two main delights for me in
that final year of College: the discovery of art in the inspiring lectures given
by Gordon Tovey, and the performance of the college choir, where all sang, even
those without musical voices. We sang ‘The Lady of Shalott’, ‘At Flores in the
Azores (the Ballad of Richard Grenville)’ and the ‘Hymn to Joy’ from Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony, under the tuition of George Wilkinson, known as Wilkie. I
remember rehearsing and rehearsing, and finally singing, full of tears at the
momentous occasion, surrounded by singing voices, all in a sensation of being in
an upper storey of the mind and heart, knowing a joy that I never wanted to end,
and even now when I remember that evening in the Dunedin Town Hall, the massed
choir and the massed audience, and people who one never dreamed would be
singing, and I too, singing ‘soft and sweet through ether ringing sounds and
harmonies of joy’, I remember the happiness and recognise it as one of the
rewards of alliance with any great work of art, as if ordinary people were
suddenly called upon to see the point of view of angels."
~ Janet Frame (from An Angel at My Table)
Image: Dunedin Town Hall
Photograph: Graham Warman
Layout: Rua Haszard Morris
('Literature & Light')
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