ALICE IN ORCHESTRA LAND, by Ernest La Prade

Page 117

THE walk back to Fiddladelphia, where the concert was to take place, seemed to Alice to take almost no time at all. The Trumpet knew a short cut across the fields, and as they proceeded he entertained Alice with anecdotes of his career so amusing that she was sorry when they arrived at the Conservatory and the stories came to an end. As they entered the great marble hall crowds of instruments of all kinds - string, wood-wind, brass, and percussion were arriving and flocking into the auditorium ; but standing aside from the throng, alone and ...

Pages 126-132.

... As the orchestra began to play again, Alice gave a little start of surprise. What was that gentle, flowing, rippling melody that the strings were singing, and- why did it seem so familiar to her? All at once she remembered: it was the song of the brook which she had heard and learned by heart on her way from Panopolis to Brassydale. But now it was fuller and richer, as if the brook had joined other brooks and become almost a river. On and on it flowed, calmly and smoothly, never hurrying, constantly changing and yet always the same, while the sound of the breeze among the rushes and the songs of birds in the trees added richness and variety to the ever-changing harmonies. Just before the end a nightingale began to sing - it was really the flute, of course - and the brook seemed to stop flowing, as if to listen. A quail and a cuckoo really the oboe and clarinet-answered the nightingale, and then gradually darkness fell and all was silent.

The next number on the programme proved to be of quite a different kind - gay and jolly and full of excellent musical jokes. It was called "The Carnival of the Animals," and the Harp told Alice that, though it had been written by Saint-Saens, the famous French composer, many years ago, he had permitted it to be played only two or three times during his life, so that very few people had ever heard it. It was really a suite, or series, of fourteen short pieces, each one representing some member of the animal kingdom. The first was called the " Royal March of the Lion," and Alice was astonished to find how well pianos - there were two of them in the orchestra for this number - could imitate the roaring of the King of Beasts.

The next movement was called " Hens and Roosters," and from the way the pianos and the violins and violas and the clarinet cackled and crowed one would have thought that they had all grown feathers and turned into barnyard fowls. In the third movement the two pianos alone gave a wonderful imitation of the fleet-footed wild asses running at furious speed over the plains, Then came " Turtles," represented by the strings playing a very fast tune very-slowly, which suggested most amusingly the motions of those clumsy creatures.

The title of the next movement was " Elephants," and Alice remembered that the First Violin had told her that in this piece the basses gave an imitation of elephants dancing a minuet. Sure enough, they did,' and so well that although Alice had never seen elephants dance a minuet she could quite well imagine them doing it, with their ears and trunks waving solemnly, and trying very hard to be graceful. The effect was so funny that all the audience laughed aloud.

The next piece was a realistic imitation by the pianos of two kangaroos hopping about on their enormous hind legs ; and then came one called " The Aquarium," in which the flute, the celeste, and the muted strings represented the cool, transparent water, through which, like lazy, many-hued fish, swam - graceful piano arpeggios.

" People with Long Ears," was the title of the next movement, and Alice wondered whether they were rabbits or donkeys. She soon found out, for the violins began to bray so plaintively that she was sorry she hadn't any carrots to offer them. They very soon ceased complaining, however, and the pianos began to play beautiful soft chords which made one think of a forest at twilight ; and presently, from very far away-it was the Clarinet, the Harp explained, playing behind the scenes-came the notes of a cuckoo. Alice knew it was a cuckoo because it sounded like the one in the tall clock at home, except that it was much softer and more musical.

In the movement which followed, called " The Bird House," all the little twittering, chirping birds in the world seemed to be gathered together. It was difficult to believe that they were really only the flute, pianos, and stringed instruments of the orchestra. The next piece puzzled Alice a little, for it was called "Pianists," and she didn't quite see why they should be included among the birds and beasts ; but she couldn't help laughing at the imitation of a young pianist practising scales and exercises, for it sounded so much like her own early attempts to master the difficulties of Czerny. The next movement was called " Fossils," and the Harp had to explain that fossils were the remains of prehistoric animals that had been dead thousands of years-one saw them in natural history museums, you know. They were represented by some very old tunes which the composer apparently thought had been heard often enough and ought to be kept in museums too. After that came a lovely serene movement called " The Swan," in which the pianos played a soft, rippling accompaniment while a beautiful melody in the 'cello glided about with all the stately grace of that most graceful water-fowl. The final movement, which came next, brought all the animals together in a sort of general jollification, and the suite ended with the merry braying of the " people with long ears."

Only one more number remained to be played, and that, the programme stated, was the "Waltz of the Flowers," by Tschaikowsky. Alice didn't dare try to pronounce the composer's name-it seemed to be full of letters that didn't match-and the Harp wasn't there to help her, for he had a part to play in this piece and had gone to take his .place on the stage. But she felt sure that the music would be less forbidding than the strange collection of consonants in the composer's name-and it was. It began with an introduction in which the swaying waltz theme was announced by the woodwind and horns, while the Harp played great sweeping arpeggios. Then the sound of the wind instruments died away, leaving the Harp to execute a brilliant cadenza, or solo passage, that surged upward, higher and higher, like waves on a beach, and then subsided gradually, to end in a series of rippling chords. The waltz rhythm then began again with plucked chords in the lower stringed instruments, and presently the horns again took up the lilting, swinging theme, which the Clarinet embroidered now and then with a delicate tracery of notes. It seemed to Alice as if she were in an enchanted garden, surrounded by vast numbers of flowers of every kind and colour, all swaying and nodding and bowing in time with the music. More and more exciting grew the dance; new themes appeared, more enchanting than the first; new instruments added their voices to the chorus; more and more dizzying became the motions of the swaying blossoms. Then, suddenly, with a deafening crash, the music ceased.

Alice felt quite bewildered. She rubbed her eyes and stared at the stage. Something appeared to be wrong with the orchestra, though she was not sure what it was. Then she noticed that Mr Baton was not bowing his acknowledgment of the applause as usual. Instead, he was lying on the music desk, and the dummy conductor was bowing for him. But was it a dummy conductor? It certainly looked amazingly like a real live human being. Had it suddenly come to life? Why, all the dummies had come to life - they were all getting up and leaving the stage, and they were carrying their instruments, which no longer showed any signs of life. What on earth could have happened?

Just then a voice behind her said, "Come along, Alice. The concert's over and we mustn't miss our train."

Alice turned and, to her astonishment, saw her mother beckoning to her. Without realizing where she was going she followed her mother out of the hall and into a taxi. As they drove through the busy streets to the station she tried to untangle the confused thoughts that filled her mind. Was she still in Orchestra Land-had she ever been there ? Had she really talked with fiddles and walked with trumpets and had tea with oboes? Well, at any rate, she had had a wonderful time, and had learned a tremendous lot about the orchestra.

"The only thing I'm quite sure of," she said to herself, " is that it was not a dream."

THE END

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