Ashley Sterne Music of the Weak

Here are four light-weight burlesques by Ashley Sterne, republished in the Sarawak Gazette (Malaysia) on November 2, 1931.


                                                                    Music of the Weak

The following burlesques of highbrow musical criticism, written by Ashley Sterne, originally appeared in the Radio Times. — [Ed.]
 


Prelude to Act XIX of ‘The Twilight of the Dogs,’ by Schnarl Bluthund.

Born at Pudel, Pomerania, in 1886, Schnarl Bluthund received his elementary musical training at the offices of the Bach Gesellschaft, where, at the early age of fourteen, he won a scholarship entitling him to a week at Lovely Lucerne, six pairs of ladder-proof silk stockings, and a pint of winkles every Saturday night for three months.  He was subsequently sent to Paris, where he studied composition at the Pasteur Institute and decomposition at the Morgue.

His opera, in twenty-five acts, ‘The Twilight of the Dogs,’ the libretto of which is based on the stud-book of the Kennel Club, is the only work he has yet had time to perpetrate.  The entire score was written backwards, in red ink, and occupied him exclusively from half-past-three, 1904, till a quarter-to-eleven, 1925.  The work was produced on the Easy Instalment System, in 1927, at the Opera House, Dachshund, with Fraulein Peke in the role of Dalmatia and Herr Lohschen in that of Schipperke.  The Prelude to Act XIX is a vivid tone-picture of the various phases gone through by a King Charles’ spaniel suffering from an acute attack of Hall’s distemper.

The work (numbered K.9 in Dr. Kochel’s catalogue) is dedicated to Rin-Tin-Tin.


Double-Concerto for Hypodermic Syringe and Nasal Guitar, by Glaubersaltz

Although his productions are not to everybody’s taste, the name of Glaubersaltz needs no introduction to the English public, his famous ‘morceaux de salon,’ Poudre de Matin and Poudre de Soir, having been familiar to most of us from childhood.  He was originally designed for the medical profession, but the medical profession did not think much of the design, and hence he took up music instead.

His early compositions, notably the first Fantasia on the Tonic, his second Fantasia on the same theme, entitled The Mixture as Before, and his Symptomic Poem in the Gregorian Modes, all show distinct evidence of his early medical training, the scores being almost entirely illegible.

The Double-Concerto is unique among concertos in that the solo performers have nothing whatever to do during the whole course of the work.  The suggestion (thoughtfully added by the composter in a footnote to the full score) that they might occupy the time playing halma is usually adopted, though when the work is performed in America euchre is generally substituted.

Glaubersaltz received the honorary Doctorate in Music from the Billericay Bicycling Club in 1906, upon which occasion he selected for performance as his doctorial ‘exercise’ his well-known Song-Cycle (with bawl-bearings) entitled Wheel or Whoa, which is written throughout upon a dominant pedal, without a break of any sort.


Pavane for a Sturgeon deprived of its Caviare, by Nokisblokoff

Nokisblokoff, a pupil of the famous Pushiskonkin, is a native of Splvnsk, in the province of Skjnsk, where for the years immediately following the Revolution he was organist of the Trotsky Free Prison.  Here he first gained musical notoriety by his Concertstuck of fourteen cathedral organs and the Big Bell of Moscow.  After the first (and only) performance, Trotsky rewarded the young genius by presenting him with a sentence of five years in the vodka mines at Skmtchsk, but the composer managed to escape across the frontier disguised in the uniform of a Russian butter-agent for Great Britain.


 Folderolero, by Gravel

This is a little musical jeu d’esprit written entirely on one note — a new departure for M. Gravel, whole melodies are usually constructed in intervals of semitones.  The interest and humour of the piece are derived the the gradual diminuendo from the ffff with which the work starts to the pppp with which it concludes.  Commencing with every resource of a colossal orchestra, which includes a pair of silk soxophones, M. Gravel drops out his instruments one by one until there is only a single muted hartshorn engaged and even that finishes its part with a ‘rest’ of 254 bars’ duration.

M. Gravel is, of course, the composer of the well-known Suite of Indian Love-Lyrics, entitled Ghusi-Ghusi Gandni.