relayed from St. Lawrence Jewry

'The Eel and the Pike'

from the Royal Automobile Club

Bismarck, the Prussian statesman, is as truly one of the makers of modern Europe as any of those great figures with whom Mr. Gayford is dealing in this series of Talks. The man who directed the Prussian policy that led to the defeat of Austria in 1866, and the reconciliation that followed it, the defeat of France in 1871, and the establishment of the German Empire, was certainly foremost among those who arranged the pieces on the board in the positions in which they found themselves in the ill-fated summer of 1914.

from the Royal Automobile Club.

'Swopp' (Mabel Marlowe)

'Stories of King Arthur: (14) How Sir Tristram Became a Knight of the Round Table' (C. E. Hodges).

Songs and Piano Solos.

from the Rialto Theatre

Mr. DESMOND MAcCARTHY : Literary Criticism

conducted by JOHN ANSELL
Selection, ' Rose Marie '......... Friml and Stoihart

by Dorothea Johnston (Mezzo-Soprano)

Repeat Performance of the Lyric Drama in One Act, suggested by and founded upon Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' by Herbert Ferrers.
The Wireless Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Herbert Ferrers.
Scene: The Market Place of Hamelin; in the centre, the East end of the Great Church; on the right, the Town Hall.
The action passes from the evening of one day to the next morning, the curtain dropping for a minute during the intermezzo to indicate the lapse of time
Period-XV. Century: the Piper's Costume one hundred years earlier.
Mr Herbert Ferrers's opera The Piper, which was broadcast so very successfully from London in October, is, of course, founded on Browning's famous poem. The story is the old German legend of the town overrun with rats, which are causing the people to rebel against the Mayor and Corporation, who cannot rid them of this plague. This riot of the crowd forms the first scene of the opera. It is followed by the entry of the Piper and his conversation with the little lame boy. After this, the Mayor and Corporation make a bargain with the Piper that if he rids the town of rats they will give him a thousand guilders. The Piper plays and the rats in thousands follow him to the river where they are drowned.
The curtain rises again to the peal of bells upon the scene of rejoicing next morning when the townsfolk are celebrating their relief from the plague of rats, and the Mayor is taking all the credit. The Piper appears and demands his price, but having got all they wanted, the authorities refuse it, and the Piper plays again. This time, the people are struck dumb and motionless, all but the children, who follow the Piper and disappear. The' only survivor is the lame boy, who cannot walk fast enough to keep up with the crowd, and comes back to tell the people of the beautiful land to which the rest have gone.
After the repentance of the people, the opera ends with a vision of this beautiful land, a meadow starred with flowers where the children lie listening to the Piper, who sits amongst them for ever playing his faery tunes.
(The words of this lyric drama will be found on pages 570 and 571.)

by Mr. Alfred Cox, Secretary of the British Medical Association, 'The General Practitioner'

Interpreted by Mrs. Norman O'Neill
Scarlatti (1685-1757)
Presto in E Major, No. 20
Presto in G Major, No. 14 Fuga in G Minor, No. 30
Allegressimo in A Major, No. 31
Andante in E Minor, No. 58
Allegro in C Major, No. 32

We in this country are proud to remember that the foundations of keyboard music were laid by sixteenth-century British musicians - Byrd, Farnaby, and the other Tudor and Elizabethan composers. Then this supremacy passed to the Continent. Scarlatti the elder (there are two of that name, father and son) was a great pioneer in writing for the keyboard. He brought a new technique to harpsichord music, doing away with the exaggerated ornamentation then in vogue, and making the hands move about the keys with greater freedom. He often made the hands cross, so that the arm, and particularly the forearm, had to be used freely; thus he may be said to have laid the foundation of modern Piano technique. In his later years, it is said, some of his own pieces were beyond his own playing, for he had grown so stout that his hands would not cross!

In his young days he once competed with Handel, at a test held by a Cardinal in Rome, to see who was the finer executant. The two were equally matched in skill at the harpsichord, but when it came to Organ playing, Handel, they say, was an easy winner.

The Fugue in G Minor has received its nickname of the 'Cat' because Scarlatti's cat is supposed to have walked on the keyboard striking certain notes which the composer playfully adopted as the 'subject' of his fugue.
Music has often inspired verse, but seldom can it have moved a music critic to ' drop into poetry!' Whilst Mr. Edwin Evans, the well-known critic, was listening, in a London concert hall, to a Scarlatti recital recently, he made up, on the spur of the moment, a happy Triolet which he passed round amongst the fellow critics and which, by his permission, we quote:-
The Muse of Scarlatti
Was blithesome and gay.
In style ever natty,
The Muse of Scarlatti.
Only once was she catty;
A fugue marks the day.
The Muse of Scarlatti
Was blithesome and gay.

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