The enthusiastic people who have for five years supported the Arts Year Book will be glad it has achieved substantial recognition as a national institution which is likely to remain with us. It will be clear, as it proceeds, that this review is quite narrowly concerned with a deficiency in this year's volume which should not be perpetuated.

It is a thick book. The title lettering on the cover is thick, the type lies thick on the glossy paper, the ‘exhibits’ are thickly crammed between its solid covers, and the written comment and criticism are, with two exceptions, pretty thick too. It has no edge.

What purpose engendered it? and who is it for? The book itself is evidence of some deliberation. In the preface ‘they’ (unspecified) write that ‘… a periodic stocktaking of a country's assets in the various fields of the arts is a desirable thing…. With the all-over view supplied by an annual survey of developments in all branches of the arts the individual worker has a clearer picture of where he stands. The artist individually and collectively, is assisted to plot his course with intelligence, and so everyone is able to proceed with increased confidence. Co-ordination in the progress of all the arts is encouraged. Form and direction are given to widely differing yet essentially related creative activity, making for a higher degree of aesthetic order.’ That is what the editors set out to do. It is clear that they are to do it for the benefit of practising artists. The actual problem of editing, they say, may be comparatively simple.

And what happens? A sample will show: beneath this crudely optimistic preface is jammed as a tailpiece Mr Russell's sensitive picture, Melancholie. The essential disrespect which this incongruity suggests, arising from a desire to show regard for the painting and to use it for the advantage of the book, sounds the confusion of purpose which weakens the book in almost every part. It has its expressed object of being an ‘all-embracing’ review for the benefit of working artists and at the same time it is acutely concerned with itself as an Arts Year Book —‘A-Y-B’. It is muzzy with self-consciousness. Look at the self-advertising title on the dust-jacket, at the inside flap, where are offered the Arts in a self-conscious convulsion (mystery, suspense, thrills galore). Read the preface and the comments introducing the pictorial art and poetry sections, sodden with self-justification.

Asking myself if I make too much of these weaknesses — not allowing for New Zealand conditions, giving credit for the effort made, and so on — I am reminded of the need, mentioned more than once in the book, for adhering to single standards of judgement. Then little about the book seems really satisfactory. Like a woman seeking assurance in a mirror — without either simplicity or profound self-knowledge — it mars its virtues.

Inhibiting self-consciousness is a chronic New Zealand complaint, and in the arts we are constantly getting in the way of our work. When I have seen the splendid complete absorption of human energy and skill in a task, it was generally sheep-shearing or car-doctoring, building a henhouse or preparing a meal. And it was a delight to watch the union of the doer with the object. We are at home in these activities and feel reasonably sure about them, a shorn sheep is something on which we are able to pass a confident judgement. But our artists look abroad. They feel their isolation, the lack of a local tradition, and of a disciplinary, informed, critical opinion. Because they are unsure, their concern with themselves as artists obtrudes in their work. We see the picture and the painter being a painter, the poem and the poet being a painter, the individual quality of the object, which is for the artist's special sensibility to perceive, which he must lose himself in representing, which gives to a work of art its own fire of life, its reason for being — is lost.

This may be amply illustrated from the work shown in the Year Book. (My remarks about the work of individuals are intended to criticise it only in so far as it is related to my contention here, and because it seems to illustrate characteristics significantly common in the sections where it appears.) An artist who does not heed Matthew Arnold's advice to ‘keep his eye on the object’ will hardly avoid the cliche. It may be a community cliche, or one which he creates for himself. Not being freshly united with each new object he can but repeat a worn generalization. In J. Edward Murphy's drawings the uninteresting repitition of what was not, I think, in any case a very original conception is an example of how this may occur in an effort to escape the ‘conventional’; conversely, T. A. McCormack's Still Life shows how absorption in the object produces a completely individual result, which also tells something about the quality of flowers generally — and tells it in paint. This picture with Bessie Christie's Tobacco Queue, M. T. Wollaston's Landscape, and a few others, is an exception to what seems to me a stiff literalness in the pictorial section — for example, the Parents, by Gordon McAusland, appears to be the laborious translation of a verbal idea into pigment. Contrast this with New Year's Day, by Evelyn Page, a picture which directly apprehends its object.

Again, in the poetry — Denis Glover shows his ability as a parodist, Basil Dowling is refreshingly content with his modest accomplishment, and there is genuine and sometimes moving particularity in James Baxter's Rocket Show and in Ruth Dallas's poems — but there is not a rhythmically individual and exciting poem in the collection. The piece which leads off portentously — Sonnet For Our Time — shows the characteristic interference of the poet's self-consciousness in the poem he is writing. Why use the sonnet form, which demands progression, when there is so little movement? The simple theme, the clinging in a doomed world to the satisfaction of personal relations, remains undeveloped (scarcely justified, I should say, but the poem may be intended ironically). It is extended into a sonnet through a series of heterogeneous images (tidal wave' which is the ‘shattering curtain of a pantomine’, ‘soggy structure’—pantomime or tidal wave—which ‘reels and sways like a dying dinosaur through worlds’ … etc.), which confuse and hold up the sense. The first line sags with the affected ‘my darling’, where an effective caesura (or a shorter line) is needed. The alliteration is over-worked and enfeebling (‘caught in the pause that presages a bomb’). It appears that the potentialities of an idea have been aborted by poetic exercise.

Now it is true that it must be left to the artist to grapple with his situation, to get and digest his experience as best he can — chiefly, in many cases, to escape the overwhelmingly verbal nature of his education. But he can be helped by criticism which will enable him to find himself, and to forget himself. The Arts Year Book, which sets out with unquestioned sincerity but with confusion of interest to help artists, gives little room to criticism in its ‘all-embracing’ review, and the space that is allowed is generally not well used.

One exception, which should be mentioned first because it is the kind of criticism which ought to inform the whole book, is E. H. McCormick's contribution, in which he traces the pattern of New Zealand's culture over the—last hundred years through an examination of title pages. The writing is closely packed with sense, exact and incisive. Mr. McCormick moves surely through documentation and detailed observation to his general conclusions. Apart from Roger Duff's note on Maori cave drawings and, in part, H. V. Baigent's on the amateur theatre, this article is the only instance where the writer really faces his material squarely and ventures his judgement on particular points.

Patrick Macaskill's article on the year's fiction is comparable in its attempt, but is nullified by loose writing, by its lack of specific reference (‘later, however, the novel seems to lack the central thread or emotional theme necessary to integrate it and indicate some sort of structural plan …’, etc.), and-its liking for vague, superficial generalities (‘the cultural scene’, ‘New Zealand atmosphere’, ‘… particularly Sargenson, whose style and technique are especially suitable.’). The jargon of criticism keeps the reader once removed from the writer's material.

In the section on architecture — but why go wearily on? Generalities, generalities, generalities. Fat ones, thin, ones, fuzzy ones, dizzy ones, grave old plodders and fresh young friskers — who will lead them to the river and drown them all…. Except one. The one which arrives without being asked.

The idea of a periodic review of the country's art is not questioned, and one must acknowledge the energy and concern for art in New Zealand which produced this one. But a review which is not critical misses its opportunity and is likely to make unsure artists more self-conscious than they already are. If the review is for artists it should be workmanlike and particular in its approach to the material it is treating. The lay public will not lose by that either.

The desire to be ‘all-embracing’ is preposterous. Surely it is enough to include as much of significance as can be handled conveniently. Nor does there seem to be any reason why all sections should be included in one volume. Separate publications might lessen problems of editing — it may be seen in this book how unsuitable the type is to the paper and to the double column — and some might be more cheaply produced. Best of all, that insidious spirit, ‘A-Y-B’, might be laid at last.

Long-playing records have been an established fact for three years, and first supplies for New Zealand are officially on order. The time has come for a definite assessment of this biggest advance in the gramophone world since the advent of electrical recording a quarter of a century ago.

First, as to practical details. The records are made in the ‘normal’ sizes of 10-inch and 12-inch, and play on a turntable revolving at 33 1–3 revolutions a minute instead of the standard 78. (It is convenient to ignore the 45 r.p.m. disc introduced by one or two companies in America — this disc is not so much long playing as quick changing, and its reproduction requires a radically different set.) The standard 33 1–3 10-inch disc will play for 12 or 13 minutes on each side. The standard 12-inch will play for an average of 25 minutes each side. (I have encountered some which play nearly all of 30 minutes.) This length of playing time is achieved by the slow speed in conjunction with the extreme fineness of the grooves. These factors demand the use of an extra light weight pickup fitted with an appropriately small needle.

It is obvious that all this is of great benefit to the serious music lover. A work such as Scheherazade, previously obtainable on six or at least five cumbersome shellac discs. can now be obtained complete on one thin, plastic, and virtually unbreakable 12-inch record. Two movements go comfortably on to each side of the disc and the only ‘break’ is a perfectly natural one. Shorter works can be heard with no interruption whatever. One side of a 12-inch LP record will hold Strauss's Don Juan, Liszt's E flat piano concerto or the Brahms Variations on a theme by Haydn (even, in one case I could mention, the whole of the Grieg Concerto). One side of a 10-inch disc will suffice for the Academic Festival overture or Smetanas' Moldau. And, to make life complete, a New Zealand firm has already imported a playing desk with a two-speed motor and interchangeable pickup heads, so that it requires a moment's work and the flick of a lever to change from 78 to 33 1–3 or vice versa, and thus one can play either kind of record with equal ease.

So far so good. Now for a few less pleasant but equally definite facts. The first is that the discs themselves, though nominally unbreakable, are far more susceptible to surface damage than the shellac discs which most of us treat very carefully. They attract dust as a flame does a moth and they just cannot be roughly handled in any way. If they are in the slightest degree warped or buckled the result will play havoc with the pitch, and a small scratch on the surface which would go unnoticed on a standard disc may give cause to an annoying ‘tick’ of a minute's duration. Then the musical side is apt to be unsatisfactory — some works suit LP better than others. The companies have set their hearts on 10-inch and 12-inch sizes, which works out well in most cases but not all. In more than one case they have put a Haydn Symphony on to a 10-inch record, with the result that the turnover in the middle comes halfway through the slow movement! No one in his senses will welcome LP if it brings with it the worst features of the present recording system. Then, in order to obtain a short work on one side of a disc, you may be compelled to buy, on the other side, a work that you don't particularly want. Worst of all, their enthusiasm for LP has lead the companies into issuing ‘recital’ records, on which a singer or pianist ploughs through anything up to a dozen (generally ill-assorted) numbers. One assumes these discs would be given a wide berth by the more serious collectors, but as they are appearing in increasing numbers it must be presumed there is a demand for them.

Another factor is that of reproduction. You just can't hitch up an LP turntable to your ordinary radio and expect to get all there is to get out of the new records — these discs, especially English Decca, are of a greatly extended range and nothing will do except a properly constructed amplifier and speaker. I am no technician and cannot elaborate this side of the matter, though it is obviously one to consider carefully. It is for every collector to decide whether he is getting enough of the music reproduced to satisfy his own taste.

The most amazing and heartening aspect of the whole LP revolution has been the increased repertoire which has appeared on records. That most of these records are released only in America (though largely recorded in Europe) and would be most difficult to obtain here cannot lessen our wonder and admiration. Who would have thought five years ago that by today there would be no fewer than 50 of Haydn's 104 symphonies obtainable on records? That almost half a dozen of this composer's Masses would be recorded? That the repertoire of complete or substantially complete operas would by now include Idomeneo, Il Seraglio, Fidelio, The Flying Dutchman, Ernani, L'amore di tre re, Fledermaus, Puccini's three one-act operas and his Girl of the Golden West? That recorded choral works would include Bach's St John Passion, Mozart's Coronation Mass, an early Beethoven mass and Haydn's Creation? Other achievements of LP include recordings of practically the whole of the Bach Festival given under the direction of Casals in the town of Prades last year, Strauss's Electra recorded complete at the Florence Festival, and a complete Die Meistersinger done in Vienna.

In this article it has not been possible to do more than touch the surface of a fascinating subject. LP is here to stay and the newest records are markedly better than the earlier ones, but the serious record collector will welcome it as an additional feature rather than a replacement of the old system. Those of us who have been collecting for some years are not going to discard our pre-war Busch and Budapest quartet recordings, our Glynde-bourne Mozart operas or our Mozart symphonies conducted by Beecham. If we wish to march with the times we must have apparatus that can give us the best of both worlds, and even here there may be some loss, for I am afraid that these new playing desks make us rather painfully aware of the technical limitations of some of the older records. But I cannot see that the enormous amount of music now being recorded would ever have been possible without the advent of LP, and for that reason at least we should treat the newcomer with respect.