WHISTLING AS A FINE ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9154, 8 September 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHISTLING AS A FINE ART.

MRS. ALICE SHAW MAKES A SENSATION IN LONDON. London, July 22.—The Saturday Review says Mrs. Alice Shaw, who brings with her a new art from that land of novelties, the United States, has the merit of great courage in facing a world by no means favourable to whistling of any kind. It is true that the tendencies of the time are allies of most innovations, especially when the innovators are undowered daughters who display a true dash of independence. If some should say that whistling for a livelihood is what a large section of the community does already, and that to whistle for want of thought is what the listless majority has always indulged in, it is no less a fine art, though it has never obtained the enviable popularity even of the banjo, triangle, or big drum. Indeed, this ideal whistler combines the strength of an opera singer with the sweetness of a nightingale, and achieves a success such as was displayed by the Spanish students at a famous garden party last year. Many people in London have been asked here to hear Mrs. Shaw, regarding the whole thing as a joke, and have come away in simple wonder at the unlookad for display of her powers. They have found her a sound musician, and mistress of the subtle mysteries of her particular art. They have found that through her special medium she could fill Covent Garden .with ecstatic trills, shading into the soitest whispered notes, the execution of which only years of rehearsal could achieve. It may difficult to conceive a whistling ■prima donna, but the fact is that the whistling art is worthy of attentive study. The vocal chords which act as vibrating reeds, form, in conjunction with the mouth, a resonator, or hollow reverberating sphere, the only musical apparatus that can boast perfection, and it is certain that this instrument, so sweet and effective in expressing emotion through the voice in speech and singing, can be made equally so when its sounds .are made to issue at the self-adjusting lips. Those who have once heard Mrs. Alice Shaw cannot fail to realise that if whistling were cultivated as a fine art by those who, in addition to a musical endowment, have strength of the vocal chords, a high-roofed palate, and a flexible labial aperture, they might be trained to take part in a concert, as of many clarionets, with an effect mora thrilling than the most exquisite instrumental music has ever conjured up, and which from its novelty alone would be more surprising than any concert hitherto heard, whether instrumental or vocal.