Astley and his Musicians.

Otago Witness, Issue 1752, 20 June 1885, Page 28

Astley and his Musicians.

Astley, when he first started his ridiugschool, had no other music than a common drum, wbioh was beaten by bis wife. To this ha subsequently added a fife, the players standing on a kind of small platform, placed in the centre of the ring ; and it was not till he opened the Royal Grove that he employed a regular orchestra. Although an excallent rider and a great favourite of Gaorge 111, old Astley was an excessively ignorant man. One day during a rehearsal a performer suddenly ceased playing, "Hallo!" cried As,tley, addressing the de linquent; " what's the matter now ?" ''There's a rest," answered the other. "A rest?" Astley repeated, angrily; "I don't pay you to rest, but to play !" Astley always kept a sharp eye on his instrumental performers. One evening he entered the orchestra in a ragn, and asked of the leader why the trumpets did not play. "This is a pizzicato passage, sir," was the reply. "A pizzy—what? 1' said Astley. " A.pizzicato, sir." / " Well, I can't afford to let them be idle : so let the trumpets pizzicato too 1" Indeed, as an accompaniment to equestrian exercises ABtley always considered that loudnesa was the most desirable quality in music. *' Any fool," he used invariably to say, " can handle a fiddle, but it takes a man to manage a horse; and yet I have to pay a fellow that plays upon one fiddle as much salary as a man that rides upon three horses." On one occasion Astley requested his leader to arrange a fow bars of muaic for a broadsword cdmbat—"a rang, tang, bang; one, two, three, and a cut sort of thing, you koow !" for thu« he ■ urfcly expressed his ideas of what he required. At the subsequent rehearsal Astley shouted out to his stage manager, '■ Stop ! stop! This will never do. It's not half noisy enough ; we must get shields!" simply meaning that the mimic combatants shou d be supplied with shields to clash against the broadswords, causing the noise so excitingly provocativs of ap plause from the audience. But the too sensitive leader, thinking that it was his music that was " not half noisy enough," and it was Shields, the composer, to whom Astley alluded, jumped out of the orchestra, and, tearing the score to pieces, indignantly exclaimed, " Gat Shields, then, as soon as you please, for I am heartily sick and tired of you!" —Cas3ell's "Old and New London."