Music: Melody for Morale

The London Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the best ten in the world, has lived from hand to mouth for a year. When it needed money at the beginning of the war, its conductor and occasional angel, Sir Thomas Beecham (pills), said bitterly that all he could think of was to appeal to the Germans. But Sir Thomas succeeded during the winter in raising £2,000. By midsummer that was nearly gone, and Philharmonic men began pooling their resources. Then appeared a new angel: Jack Hylton, popular dance-band leader. He guaranteed salaries and overhead—assumed a total contingent liability of £10,000—for a ten-week tour of provincial music halls. After packing in 25,000 in twelve concerts in Glasgow, and about the same number in Manchester, the Philharmonic looked last week as if it would not need a farthing from Jack Hylton. There might even be profits for the orchestra’s future use.

Band Leader Hylton made a speech in each town the Philharmonic visited. Although his £10,000 might have said, with authority, that he could conduct, he did not do so. Dr. Malcolm Sargent, who did, put a symphony on each program, played also light classics but “no rubbish.” Up to last week only one air raid disturbed a concert. The Philharmonic played right through it. The orchestra’s nucleus of 65 oldish players was periodically eked out by men on leave from air-raid and home-defense forces, as well as nine enlisted members. But the Philharmonic was worried because English Horn Peter Newbury, London’s best, was harming his sensitive hands digging trenches on the coast.

With prices from a shilling (20¢) to three-and-six (70¢), the Philharmonic tour brought out working folk in swarms. In Manchester, the inevitable man-in-the-pub exclaimed: “It’s made me find out I’m a bloody high-brow.”

Meanwhile music had been mobilized as a national morale builder. In London, shilling concerts organized by Pianist Myra Hess in the National Gallery (de nuded of its pictures) still attracted 500 to 1,500 people every noonday. Plodding old Sir Henry Wood began his 46th-and-farewell year as conductor of the Promenade Concerts of the London Symphony.

Sir Henry, who in the war’s first week made a lugubrious speech regretting that concerts must end and hoping “that we shall soon meet again,” last week extended a Promenade Concert (no seats) into an all-night show while German bombers ranged overhead. After the regular program (which, significantly, was devoted entirely to the works of that most Ger man of the Germans, Richard Wagner), Sir Henry led the audience in community singing; then members of the orchestra did solos until they ran out of numbers; finally musicians from the audience took over the stage. Among those who stayed on was that inveterate concertgoer Ambassador Joe Kennedy. The 3,000 who straggled home just before dawn were satisfied that two bob had never bought so much good music.