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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 8 (November 1939)

Lost in the Jingle

Lost in the Jingle.

One of the greatest difficulties of those who have been dragged up on five-finger exercises is to get at what the composer is getting at. Take descriptive music! With the exception of Wagner, who is always so emphatic that you sometimes wish that he had taken aspirin with his aspirations, you are liable to get lost in the Jingle. With Wagner you are always safe if you guess that he is doing something with lightning and wild horses and tanks rolling down iron staircases; and, even with other composers, it is not so hard if a clue is given away with the title. A piece called “Moonlight
“Hunched up into your collar so that nobody could see what a gross, ignorant, common face you had.”

“Hunched up into your collar so that nobody could see what a gross, ignorant, common face you had.”

on the Gasworks” is quite easy to visualise. But, in the absence of a merciful title, it is fatal, after listening to a piece, to murmur: “Ah, yes. How lovely! You can positively see the waves dancing on the coral strand whilst the palms sway and bow to the tropic breeze.” As sure as you unleash such a blatant segment of boloney you find that the piece you have just heard is “Stampede of the Reindeer,” or “Ratcatcher Overture.”

It makes it difficult for a plain, ordinary citizen, whose music is almost entirely confined to the bath, and who has never actually been locked up in an insane asylum, to retain any confidence in his sanity.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem to help much even when the piece is described to you in advance. There is something wrong either with your ear or your brain—or both.

Some merciful person, noting that you have a very low brow and pickled-onion eyes, essays to give you the low-down on the composer's uplift. He describes the whole works in that goo-goo kind of voice which you expect, at any moment, to say: “… and so the king said to the beggar, ‘slay the dragon and you may wed my lovely daughter.’” He is patient with you and is probably a lover of dogs and other dumb animals, too. With the help of hip and thigh, Adam's apple, all his hands and the best part of his spine he gives you a hundred-per-cent. action story of what you are about to hear. But you don't. What he has described as the tragic love story of Aspedestra and Neurasthenia will persist in projecting itself on your dome as a picture of bulls at play in a bottle yard or stormy weather off Flushing.

You can't blame the music or the players. You may have an ear for music but what you need is a head to wear it on.

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