Chopsticks

Press, Volume C, Issue 29620, 16 September 1961, Page 3

Chopsticks

(A fourth Leader in “The Times! Was it composed or has it been handed on since time out of mind by generations of elder brothers and sisters on wet afternoons? It is hard to believe that it first saw the light of day in a collection of pianoforte pieces for beginners, sandwiched between. "Abendsonnenschein”" and “The Jolly Woodpecker.” If it did, the composer managed to keep his name quiet, and perhaps this was just as well, for the piece must have raised irritation and doubts in the minds of countless parents. That is not to say that the argument is all against it. Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Liszt —one does not trifle with such names, and yet each one of them, and others besides, have composed variations on the theme of "Chopsticks.” The Oxford Companion to Music, while admitting it to be no more than “a quick waltz tune... performed by schoolgirls, as an amusement ...the notes struck with the side of the little finger,” adds the sobering detail that it is played “with a touch of glissando intercalated and a dominant tonic vamping bass part." Here is a basis for respect, and yet parents have, generally speaking, no such feelings about it. For one thing “Chopsticks” has come to include that sickening fragment, performed entirely on black notes, some times with the knuckles or the point of the chin, and which bears a faint ghoulish resemblance to the opening bars of the infinitely mOre lovely Moonlight Sonata. That fragment, too, has its variations but they do not bring release from monotony. They merely give their executant an opportunity to show a little expertise in crossing one hand over the other, although he may not yet have properly mastered the minim "Chopsticks,” in whatever form, shouts defiance at the curriculum. It sticks its tongue out at the gentle "Berceuse.” through mastery of which the teacher seeks to lead the reluctant pupil forward. A scale, a dozen times repeated, falls more sweetly on the adult’s ear, but to children newly returned from school the scale is the musical symbol of the classroom and implies a voluntary surrender to discipline. This is contrary to the whole spirit of “Chopsticks,” which was bom free and offers a shortcut to achievement Fortunately the fever does not last long in the individual but so long as it does it carries a warning. The parent who hears the strains cd it at a maddeningly early hour in the morning or breaking into the stillness of a summer afternoon, is left with the uncomfortable feeling that the child's future as a musician is in the melting pot. Will "Chopsticks” or the scales prevail?