THROUGH THE LOOKING GLAS

 HIGH FIDELITY RECORDING  

40008  


PRINTED IN U:S.A  

- Deems Taylor |  
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS  


MORTON GREEN >  
MEMORIAL  
RECORD LIBRARY  

five Pictures from Lewis Carroll, Op. 12  


HOWARD HANSON conducting the  
EASTMAN-ROCHESTER SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA  


pe TayLor (b. December 22, 1885, New York  
City) has since the 1920’s been known throughout  


the country as one of our most gifted and urbane  


commentators on the musical scene. Mr. Taylor’s  
activities as author and radio commentator on mat-  
ters musical have tended to make many of us forget  
his very considerable creative contributions to Ameri-  
can music, such as the two Metropolitan-produced  
operas, [he King’s Henchman and Peter Ibbetson and  
the colorful symphonic pieces, Circus Day and  
Through the Looking Glass. Unquestionably, it is  
Through the Looking Glass which seems destined to  
become a classic of the American concert repertoire;  
for in terms of the goals this piece sets for itself, it  
is a flawlessly accomplished work of art.  


To evoke properly the delicate Victorian fantasy of  
Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass — that  
delectable continuation of Alice’s Adventures in Won-  
derland — requires precisely that knowledge which  
Deems Taylor has of all musical styles and of just  
how to blend sentiment and humor in exactly the  
right proportion at the right time. To his musical  
setting of Through the Looking Glass, Deems Taylor  
brings still another element which is present through-  
out Carroll’s tale — that of scholarly wit. Carroll was,  
under his real name of Charles Dodson, one of the  
most distinguished logicians and mathematicians of  
his day; and a good deal of academic humor is smug-  
gled into certain episodes of both Alice’s Adventures  
in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. So  
it is that Taylor gives us its musical counterpart with  
the delicious parody of Wagner’s Parsifal and Die  
Meistersinger that comprises part of the Jabberwocky  
episode. He also has his fling at the more mannered  
imitators of Debussy by using a whole-tone fugato to  
depict the battle with the Jabberwock.  


Through the Looking Glass began life as a work  
for chamber orchestra and without the section we now  
know as The Garden of Live Flowers. In this first  
form it was played by the New York Chamber Music  
Society on February 18, 1921. The full orchestral  
version was ready two years later and premiered by  
the New York Symphony Orchestra under Walter  
Damrosch. Its four movements bear the titles — Ia.  
Dedication; Ib. The Garden of Live Flowers; Il. Jab-  
berwocky; III. Looking Glass Insects; 1V. The White  
Knight. The best description of the music is to be  
found in the Lewis Carroll quotations which the com-  
poser has included as a preface to each movement .. .  
Ila. DEDICATION  


Child of the pure unclouded brow —  
And dreaming eyes of wonder! ©  
Though time be fleet, and I and thou  

Are half a life asunder,  
_ Thy loving smile will surely hail  
The love gift of a fairy-tale.  


And though the shadow of a sigh  
May tremble through the story,  

For happy summer days gone by,  
And vanished summer glory—  

It shall not touch with breath of bale  
The pleasance of our fairy-tale.  


Ib. THE GARDEN OF LIVE FLOWERS  


“O tiger-lily,” said Alice, addressing herself to one that was  
waving gracefully about in the wind, “I wish you could talk.”  

“We can talk,” said the tiger-lily, “when there’s anybody  
worth talking to.”  

“And can all the flowers talk?”  

“As well as you can,” said the tiger-lily, “and a great deal  
louder.”  


II. JABBERWOCKY  


“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves  
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;  
All mimsy were the borogoves,  
And the mome raths outgrabe.  


“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!  

The jaws that. bite, the claws that catch!  
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun  

The frumious Bandersnatch!”  


He took his vorpal sword in hand:  

Long time the manxome foe he sought —  
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,  

And stood awhile in thought.  


And as in uffish thought he stood,  
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,  
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,  
And burbled as it came!  


One, two! One, two! And through and through  
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!  

He left it dead, and with its head  
He went galumphing back.  


“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock!  
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!  

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”  
He chortled in his joy.  


‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves  
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,  
All mimsy were the borogoves,  
And the mome raths outgrabe.  


III. LOOKING-GLASS INSECTS  


— This was anything but a regular bee: in fact, it was an  
elephant —as Alice soon found out, though the idea quite  
took her breath away at first.  

— The gnat (for that was the insect she had been talking to)  
was balancing itself on a twig just over her head, and fanning  
her with its wings. It certainly was a very large gnat: “about  
the size of a chicken,” Alice thought.  

“then you don’t like all insects?” the gnat went on, as  
quietly as if nothing had happened.  

“TI like them when they can talk,” Alice said. “None of them  
ever talk, where I come from.”  


“Half way up that bush, you'll see a rocking-horse-fly, if.  


you look . . . Look-on the branch above your head, . . . and  
there you'll find a snap-dragon-fly . . . Crawling at your feet  
. .. you may observe a bread-and-butter-fly.”  





“And what does it live on?”  

““‘Weak tea with cream in it.”  

“Supposing it couldn’t find any?”  

“Then it would die, of course.”  

“But that must happen very often,” Alice remarked thought-  
fully.  

“It always happens”, said the gnat.  


IV. THE WHITE KNIGHT  

This time it was a white knight. He drew up at Alice’s side,  
and tumbled off his horse just as the red knight had done.  

“Thank you very much,” said Alice. “May I help you off  
with your helmet?”  

“Now one can breathe more easily,” said the knight, putting  
back his shaggy hair with both hands, and turning his gentle  
face and large mild eyes to Alice. She thought she had never  
seen such a strange looking soldier in all her life .. .  

Whenever the horse stopped (which it did very often), he  
fell off in front; and whenever it went on again (which it gen-  
erally did rather suddenly), he fell off behind.  

“The great art of riding,” said the knight suddenly in a  
loud voice, waving his right arm as he spoke, “is to keep —”  
here the sentence ended as suddenly as it had begun, as the  
knight fell heavily on the top of his head exactly in the path  
where Alice was walking.  

Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey  
through the looking-glass, this was the one that she always  
remembered most clearly. Years afterwards she could bring  
the whole scene back again, as if it had been only yesterday —  
the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the knight, the setting  
sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a  
blaze of light that quite dazzled her, the horse quietly moving  
about, . .. and the black shadows of the forest behind...  

— He gathered up the reins, and turned his horse’s head  
along the road by which they had come.  

“You'll stay and see me off first? .. I shan’t be long. You'll  
wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the  
road? I think it'll encourage me, you see.”  


HI-FI FACTS  





This recording was made November 21, 1953 at the Eastman -  


Theatre, Rochester, N. Y. with a single Telefunken micro-  
phone hung approximately 20 feet above the conductor’s  
podium. The orchestra was in normal concert performing  
position on the stage. Fairchild tape machines were used for  
the recording sessions; and the processing from tape to disc  
was done through Fairchild tape machines, McIntosh 50-watt  
amplifiers and the Miller cutting head, employing the Fine-  
Fairchild margin control system of variable pitch and variable  
depth of cut — thus assuring a 100-percent reproduction in disc  
form of the recording captured originally on magnetic tape.  

Listen especially on this disc to the string bass sonority at  
the solo ensemble entrance on Band 2, Side A. Later in this  
same movement, note the faithfulness of reproduction of the  
entire bassoon register from highest to lowest of the contra-  
bassoon range throughout the famous cadenza. Most striking  
part of this movement is the subsiding of the last full orches-  
tral climax amid blended sonority of strings, horns, glocken-  
spiel and piano. On Band 1, Side B, note the complete clarity  
of orchestral texture despite the busy agitation of strings and  
middle-register winds. Band 2 is notable for the striking clean-  


ness with which the complete gamut of the orchestral dyna-  
_mic range has been captured on disc — from the barely audible  


whisper of the opening rhythmic figure to the huge climax near  


the end.  
Printed in U.S.A.  


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THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS © MG40008