Britain Goes Symphonic

Britons are listening to more German music in the third year of World War II than ever before in their history. This curious state of affairs reflects a surprising wartime swing in British popular taste from dance music to concert music of which Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner are still the main staples.

Vaguely people feel that this sudden shift is somehow due to the war, to a longing to escape through music from realities that have become so harsh and drab, to a revived sense of the nearness of death which lies at the root of the appreciation as well as the creation of great music. But whatever the reasons for the change, the facts were startling enough.

Last week London publishers' sales of printed music had risen 40 to 60% above the pre-war normal. A sentimental, serious ballad, I'll Walk Beside You, has sold 750,000 copies--more than twice the biggest popular-song sale. The only slump has been in the songs and dance tunes peddled by Charing Cross Road (London's Tin Pan Alley). Phonograph companies, doing a 60% above normal business, cannot cope with the increased demand for classical disks. Most spectacular rise of all--400%--has been in the sales of miniature scores (pocket-size reductions of symphonic scores, usually bought only by musicians, music students and zealous amateurs).

The London Philharmonic, now touring the provinces on a cooperative basis, gives many of its concerts in music halls (for years the British home of vaudeville), playing popular programs nightly to jam-packed audiences. Response is greatest in the most heavily blitzed towns.

New this year, and playing to capacity crowds, are daily lunchtime concerts at the Royal Exchange in the heart of London's Wall Street, and Sunday afternoon Celebrity Concerts (orchestra plus noted soloists) at the Cambridge Theater. The Londoners' summer standby, the orchestral Promenade Concerts, have drawn 200,000 admissions, double the "Proms' " pre-war normal.

This big Prom season is also a testimony to the labors of grey-bearded Conductor Sir Henry Wood, 73. Sir Henry, a born Londoner who drops his haitches, is a British Walter Damrosch. He started the Proms as glorified ballad concerts, raised them gradually during 48 years to a symphonic level, is credited with doing as much as any man could to make Britons music-minded. Said the London Times last fortnight by way of tribute: "He met wars with dogged persistence, changes of taste with a willing compliance. . . . We set our watches by his arrival on the rostrum."

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