Music: Tragedies

¶ With his $25,000 Guarnerius violin tucked cosily beneath his arm, Violinist Harry Braun, 22, walked down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue one night last week. Protege of Banker Otto Hermann Kahn and of Lieut. Governor Herbert H. Lehman of New York, pupil of the late great Leopold Auer, he was given his violin by Philanthropist August Heckscher. He was to play on it at his Carnegie Hall debut in January. As Violinist Braun crossed Fifth Avenue a truck came lumbering along. He dodged. The violin case slithered from under his arm, landed squarely in the truck’s path. He waved wildly but there was a crackling and splintering and off went the truck, leaving $25,000 worth of uselessness on the asphalt.

¶ From the automobile of Composer Roy Harris, 31, were stolen last week in Manhattan a new symphony and a toccata. Police bumbled sympathetically, asked him to describe the music. Said he: “I just put it down as 160 pages of music. What I really tried to do … was express the meaning of America.”

Part of “the meaning of America” was found in a subway telephone booth.