Ma.y 1936

The GRAMOPHO,YF.

498

people pass through the garden in the Bay of Naples singing the chorus Bella vita militar / (The soldier's life is a jolly one f), which is curiously reminiscent of the Marseillaise. Rouget de Lisle was a captain of engineers quartered at Strasburg when the volunteers of the Bas Rhin received marching orders to join Luckner's Army of the Rhine, and hearing Dietrich, the Mayor of Strasburg, lament that the young patriots lacked a marching song to inspire them, Rouget de Lisle went back to his lodgings and on the night of April 24th, 1792, composed the words and music of what was first called a chant de guerre, picking out the melody on his violin. I t was sung in Dietrich's house next day, arranged for a military band the day after, and first played by the band of the Garde Nationale at a review on April 29th. A month later i t was sung at a civic banquet in Marseilles and had such a success that i t was at once printed and given to the volunteers of a Marseilles battalion on the point of marching on Paris, which they reached a month later, singing i t as they eame in. They were singing i t when they marched to attack the Tuileries on August 10th, 1792, and hence the popular association of the song with Marseilles. Later when the tune was world-famous all sorts of origins were discovered for it, including a folk-song of Upper Bavaria; but there is no reason to doubt the inspiration of Rouget de Lisle. Perhaps the Bavarian folk-song may have borne as much resemblance to the Marseillaise as this chorus of Mozart's in Cosi fan Tutte bears to it, or perhaps Mozart got his melody from a Bavarian folk-song. At any rate i t is a coincidence that Bella vita militar shoulcll have been composed only just over two years before the Marseillaise. Early in the second act of Cost fan Tntte there is a delicious serenade Secondate, anrette amiche (Aid me, sweet zephyrs), the melody of which is extremely familiar. I think i t must come from some piece of Mozart's chamber music; but which one I cannot discover. There is a story told of Leoncavallo scandalising one of his feminine admirers, who was gushing to him over Pagliacci without realising that she was gushing to the composer himself, by telling her where Leoncavallo got all his best tunes for that opera. I had always supposed the story to be mythical, but the other day I was playing over Schumann's Trio in D minor, performed by Cortot, Thibaud and Casals in an H.M.V. album, and in the first movement I was startled to recognise the very phrase of Un tal gioco credetemi and began to wonder if there were anything in the story. I wonder if readers can fix the origin of other melodies in Pagliacci? While they are making these researches I will set another little problem: What popular song of the war period begins almost exactly like a melody in Cavalleria Rusticana? To the first five readers who solve this on a postcard sent to the London office before May 23rd we will give any record from Cavalleria Rusticana they choose.

Probably Brahms is the composer who took more suggestions for tunes from other people than any other major composer, and never without improving them. I fancy he drew as freely on Schumann as anybody, which is rather humorous considering that he was in love \'"ith Schumann's wife. I t is much more difficult to detect deliberate plagiarism in music than in litel'ature and I should hazard that ninety per cent. of the resemblances were accidental. No musical composer of the first rank, except possibly Brahms, has stolen from his predecessors in the way that Milton stole from the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, or as Tennyson stole fr'om the 'whole corpus of poetry. Of Milton i t may be added that in every case he improved upon the original, and in many cases so did Tennyson. Nevertheless Tennyson did not like to be told that he had borrowed even if i t was to improve and even if his admirers could quote Virgil's treatment of Greek l i terature as a justification. I f readers are interested in this question of musical resemblances I will have a competition later in the year for the best collection of twelve. A fragment of melody in some composition will often remind us that we have heard something like i t before, but the difficulty is to discover what that other melody is! When I first played the Schumann Trio I knew that the phrase in i t reminded me of something, but i t was not until the other day, five years later, that I discovered what i t was.

Various Records

I wish we could have a Gluck festival like the Glyndebourne Mozart Opera Festival so that we could have a Gluck Opera Society. I had a good deal to say about Gluck in the March Editorial; but I have been playing through those eight records of Orpheus and Eurydice published by Columbia so often since, and always with such increasing pleasure in the ravishing music, that I long more than ever for I phigenia in Tauris, lphigenia in Aulis, Alcestis, and the complete Orpheus and Eurydice. Madame Alice Raveau's contralto sounds more and more beautiful the more often I listen to it, and I do beg readers to secur'e at least one if they cannot afTord to buy all these eight lovely discs. "J'ai perdu mon Eurydice" is matchless. At the same t ime I urge upon g.ramophone societies a communal subscription. I may be wriLing now without the latest advices, but I used to find that the gramophone societies relied on the records belonging to individual members for their communal enjoyment, and I do not recall many societies that were building up libraries of their own. This, if I may say so, would be the surest way of establishing the gramophone societies' permanency. It has occurred to me that at one t ime the motor-car seemE!d likely to drive the bicycle ofT the road, and that the revival of the bicycle has been one of the features of the last decade. There is a lesson here for the gramophone. The gramophone has been through a difficult period owing chiefly to the financial muddle which has caused the "depression" and