MUSIC.

OCCASIONAL MUSIC.

IT would be hard to find a drawing-room that did not contain at least one of those tables known as occasional tables. Of

all the objects that we use in one way and another to express our moods, these tables come the most readily to hand—

indeed, they are always at our elbow, offering themselves to be leant upon with the whole weight of a body dejected by disappointment. If we are suddenly annoyed, nothing else makes such a satisfactory noise when banged upon with the flat of the hand.. If we are distrait the objects they uphold seem placed there for us to move about and straighten at our pleasure, making patterns with a cigarette box, an eighteenth-century vinaigrette, and a magnifying-glass If we desire to impress a companion with our need of sym- pathy, they give an appropriate emphasis to " the fainting hand that falls."

To such (if you will) low uses is music often put. The first example, of course, that leaps to the mind is the restaurant orchestra. When this is not used to dance to its function is purely utilitarian. It is supposed to aid conversation ; it gives graceful emphasis to the gestures of the diners ; it helps slow wits to shine ; it slurs over uncomfortable moments with a well-timed fortissimo. Such have always been its functions. No royal festivity in the great days of Versailles was complete without it ; as Mr. Walkley quoted the other

day in criticizing some play or other : " . . . cent musiciens faisant rage sur l' eau " were an integral part of the evening's entertainment. Later on came Handel's famous Water Music, composed at the request of Baron Kielmannsegg for an aquatic fête given by George I. What a falling-off there has been since those days ! Are our modern fetes ornamented and set off by such great composers as we can boast ? The most we ever get, in the intervals of ragtime, is a selection from Bohime.

But though we have ceased to expect beauty from the band at a flower-show, we get something that has value of a different kind. This something is the successful march.

There are very few of these, but those there are must be quite as useful as the divertissements of Luili and Rameau.

Who, for instance, is able to resist the joyful and delightfully humorous strains of Colonel Bogey ? The first bars are enough to make one burst out laughing ! I remember once being present at some function with a friend of mine ; we were talking nervously to the exalted personage who had " opened "

the show, when, with a sudden blare the band struck up this tune. Ta-turn . . . ta-ta-ta turn turn ! turn ! It is terrible

to be seized with fou rire at moments like these, but I shall

always be grateful to this march for bringing to me with its first two notes—emphatic as a legal statement—a sen-

sation of almost foolish happiness. Then there is the March of the 95th, high-kicking and chirpy, and Pomp and Circum- stance, and (best of all) La Trompette Militaire, from that old-fashioned and entertaining operetta, Les Saltinthanques.

This last is not often enough heard. Nothing suggests so well the facile, platitudinous frame of mind one must assume

in order to enjoy, let us say, the amusements park at Wembley. Some tunes, and those I have mentioned in particular, have the power of changing one's feeling about a face one is regarding while the tune is being played. What has seemed beautiful, or austere, or merely charming, becomes, under the influence of Colonel Bogey or the War March of the Priests, fatuous and inane—as though the owner was in process of making the most foolish grimaces at nothing at all. To experience this phenomenon at its best, the March of the 95th is thoroughly to be recommended. If you feel your friend to be superior to you in any way, watch his face while this tune is being played and you will be fully satisfied that he looks and is almost idiotic.

A lesser function of " occasional " music is to produce long-drawn chords, played square and loud, to give accent to the beginning of a performance. Go to a Rodeo and you will hear every rider ushered into the fray by one of these tearing chords. They seem to rise spontaneously out of your own excitement and suspense, as if the marvellous feat that is about to take place were but the objective expre:sion

of your inward, romantic gesture at such a tightening-up of life. I have never witnessed a bull-fight, but I suppose that the fanfares that usher in the bull perform much the same office for the spectators ; just as the strange, gawky music of the Tibetans used to play in this way (so I have read) during a ceremony at which the white intruders were tortured. It must have been a new and terrible sensation to hear one's own agony announced by such a method. Would it have sharpened or softened the crisis I wonder ? In either -case one shudders to think of the effect upon the tortured if the Tibetan players had taken it into their heads to learn