Music: Massed Strings

Out of the foggy moors and smoky cities of England it came, music that sang of Technicolor landscapes and of love that was tender, contented, and safely married. Every song was almost without flaw, as in a languorous dream, rich and edgeless as whipped cream, and always giving a hint of something a little more respectable than a mere pop tune, as the massed strings soared to the discrete pulsation of a harp or a guitar. And sometimes the music actually was more respectable, as when it was an orchestral arrangement of an operatic aria. This was the music of Annunzio Paolo Mantovani, a swarthy Italian-turned-Briton who five years ago zoomed to the top of the “mood music” heap and has stayed at or near it ever since.

In Boston last week, Mantovani and a 45-piece orchestra (mostly of U.S. musicians) jampacked staid old Symphony Hall on the first leg of a 60-city tour. The crowd, a cross section of the musical public from teen-agers to grandparents, was there to listen rather than to participate. When slight, unassuming Bandleader Mantovani walked solemnly on stage, the crowd seemed to squirm with delight. When he played such favorites as Always, Green Sleeves, Moulin Rouge and Schubert’s Ave Maria, the communal catch in the throat was almost audible. Afterwards, autograph hunters queued up quietly outside his dressing room. They received his dignified thanks and left, pleased and satisfied.

Mantovani was born in Venice in 1905. He inherited his taste for the lyrical side of music from his father, who was once concertmaster for Toscanini, Saint-Saens and Mascagni. When Paolo was four, the family went to England on an opera tour and decided to stay. Paolo showed talent on the piano, then the violin, and gave solo recitals before settling into the salon-music business. Over the years he gained the respect of London’s music world, began broadcasting, and became Composer-Playwright Noel Coward’s musical director.

Nobody can explain Mantovani’s sudden ascent from a better-than-average bandleader of average popularity, except that in 1951 he added a couple of dozen strings to sweeten up his orchestra, and recorded a schmalzy old waltz called Charmaine. It was a period when makers of LP records were discovering the possibilities of mood music. Mantovani’s “new music” was apparently just what thousands of people wanted to hear when they were not really listening. It still is. Today, London Records claims, sales have topped 2,000,000 on his 16 LPs.