Popular Drudge

Form: To put it bluntly . . . form is one of the composer's chief means of averting the boredom of his audience.

Organ: The widespread impression amongst a section of the musical public that a unit organ consists of about a dozen vox humanas and a powerful tremulant is based upon observation of the performances of the injudicious.

Virtuoso: The reward of the instrumental virtuoso in glory and cash is beyond that of any other honest profession (except that of the prima donna, q.v.).

Prima Donna: The word has, in the mouths of the more thinking members of the musical public, taken on a half-humorous, half-caustic meaning . . . (The child who in an examination paper misspelt the term Prim Madonna was very young).

So goes one of the most popular one-volume musical reference books ever written: The Oxford Companion to Music. On most of its 1,195 pages may be found other samples of wry humor, homely philosophy and unabashed propaganda as well as a welter of personalized information on the facts of musical life. Every word is the penchild of a sprightly 78-year-old scholar and popular educator named Percy A. Scholes (pronounced skoles).

Born in Leeds of middle-class parents with no interest in music, Scholar Scholes only waited to finish prep school before dedicating himself to life as a musical missionary. In the next years, he taught, lectured with the assistance of a cranky phonograph, compiled the first history of music on records (the Columbia History of Music), then got a job writing running program notes for the margins of player piano rolls so pedal pumpers could read about the music they were hearing as they heard it.

With a contract for two piano rolls a week, Scholes and his wife moved to Switzerland, which was kinder to his bronchitis, and settled down to write a compendium for the common, or musically uneducated music lover. The famed Dr. Johnson waggishly defined a lexicographer as "a harmless drudge." Scholes makes no attempt to refute the gibe, in fact rather proudly points to some of his own drudgery; e.g., he meticulously checked numberless musical scores rather than reprint other men's findings, with the "minor" result that he explains and translates "probably a greater number of musical directions than that in any previous publication."

Seven years and 1,000,000 words later, the Companion was done, was published in 1938. Last week the ninth edition went to press for the second printing -an all-time world record for musical reference works. As for Author Scholes, he sat happily in his house in Oxford, wheezing a bit but looking almost spry enough to take a fling at the Can-Can: "A boisterous and latterly indecorous dance . . . Its exact nature is unknown to anyone connected with this Companion."

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