SUPER-MEMORY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 14 August 1924, Page 6

SUPER-MEMORY.

CONDUCTOR OF WEMBLEY MASSED BANDS. Ihousand of people who have listened to the massed military bands of 1000 performers in the Stadium at the British Empire Exhibition have been amazed to discover that no music score is ever used by the conductor. Lieutenant H E. Adkins, director of the Royal Military School of Music. The explanation (says the Daily Mail) is that Lieutenant Adkins possesses an ab_ normally developed “musical memory.” After once reading a score he “knows the music by heart.” He said to a reporter recently: “I began menioyisnig when I started mv career as a bandmaster in 1913. It has now become natural to me, and it does notcost me the least effort. Recently 1 memorised Air. Gustav Holst’s very difficult work, ‘The Planets,’ after hearing it performed once at the Queen’s Hall, and then reading it over in the military band score. When 1 am standing in the midst of the massed bands I am able to visualise pages of the music being played. I memorise the whole of each day’s programme. My usual practice is to prop up the score's before me on a table at home and concentrate on them. In a short time the pages are, as it were, printed on my memory.”

Lieutenant Adkins himself conceived the idea of placing the bands in circular formation for ease of control “It is the first time,” he said, “that massed bands have been placed in this way the ordinary- method being to arrano-e the performers in the pattern of a horse shoe or in a semi-circle.” The 600 performers who from the rings are provid ed with, numbers and all are able to take their places in the great “Catherine Wheel” within five minutes. In addition to the 600 instrumentalists there are 100 drums and pipes and a corns of 300 drums and fifes. Lieutenant Adkins is himself able’to play every instrument used by a military baud' At the end of each performance at W'emblev he is very fatigued physically, and on reaching his dressing room he jumps into a hot bath, arid afterwards into a cold one.