7.5.7 Analysis of 'The Seven Ages of Mechanical Music'
7.5.1
Thursday 13 January 1927 London 10-10.30
'The Seven Ages of Mechanical Music' (L. de G. Sieveking)
A Quaint Fantasy
Written by L. de G. SievekingMusic reproduced mechanically, without needing the intervention of a skilled musician, is far older than most of us probably think. It is mentioned in Greek literature as early as the third century B.C., and the pianola and gramophone of to-day are really only the culmination of a long series of experiments. Some of these old forms of reproduction have a considerable charm – the tinkling clarity of last century's musical box has a definite, even if a somewhat meretricious appeal to ears accustomed to Caruso records and Paderewski rolls. In this programme will be heard the Musical Snuff-Box, the Polyphon, the Hurdy-Gurdy, and the earliest Phonograph, and a Calliope (the music-maker of the roundabout) will be relayed from Olympia. The whole will be given unity by a dialogue in the form of a little play.
[no cast]
Siveking's full name is referred to here and it is Lancelot de Giberne Sieveking (1896-1972). He has been previously introduced in 6.1.5 and a summary of his work is below at 7.5.10.
7.5.2
Fortunately the script of this play survives in Sieveking's book, The Stuff of Radio (Sieveking, 1934, 221-233). The date for the original production is given as 'Sometime in 1926' and the revival was 16 April 1930 National 10-10.31. I have not found 'The Seven Ages of Mechanical Music' in the listings for 1926. As it makes demanding use of echo, I argue that the 13 January 1927 listing could be the premiere. The new, replacement 'Echo Room' was introduced subsequent to this, in June 1927, but 'Seven Ages' could have been part of the experimentation with the first 'echo' room attached to Studio No. 2 and Effects Studio No. 2 (B), built in early 1926.
Sieveking notes:
For this production on the first occasion [1926? 1927?], one studio [the original Studio No. 3?] and one microphone were used. On the second occasion [16 April 1930 National] there were five studios used: one medium-sized studio for cast [Studio No. 2 probably]; one echo room [Echo Room attached, No. 2 (B)]; one small studio for different instruments [possibly No. 5], the effects [Studio No. 2 (B)] and the gramophone studios. There were three rehearsals.
And:
It was only on the second occasion [16 April 1930 National] that I used the Dramatic Control-Panel. I am not sure that it was available for the first performance. At any rate I "conducted" the show personally in the studio as I did the Wheel of Time [3 September 1926 London 11.15-12], with the most terrific silent gestures and grimaces. Christopher Wood took a prominent part, playing musical-boxes from his famous collection.
7.5.3
Sieveking's summary of the piece is:
The Seven Ages of Mechanical Music demonstrated what, I think, is a quite legitimate radio form. I wanted to play a number of music-machines in a suitable and, if possible, amusing context, but not to do an illustrated talk, of the kind to which the public were already accustomed in 1926. The method of presentation, i.e. a framework of dialogue faintly apropos, for the exhibition of something, seems to me to have brought to light a form that might be extended usefully and entertainingly. Christopher Stone, Sir Walford Davies and several other people do something similar. The Seven Ages of Mechanical Music is a sort of surprising blossom from one of their bulbs. . .
It is also described by him as:
Genre: Word framework for external purpose.
7.5.4
I will first describe 'The Seven Ages of Mechanical Music' and then analyse it. The main technical issues are the echo acoustic and the Spot effects of the musical boxes, etc.
Characters:
Papa
Little Matilda
Little Arthur
Junior Assistant to Father Time
Sieveking adopts a descriptive style in his printed scripts, to enliven and fill out the voice qualities and aural aspects of the pieces. Here are his three characters:
PAPA'S voice has that queer flat quality that somehow, I don't know how, suggests daguerreotypes, and drooping moustaches, and the rather flamboyant kind of hat that the mildest men wore when our grandfathers were young.
LITTLE MATILDA has what is sometimes called an "old-fashioned manner", which is not to be confused with: "he gave me such an old fashioned look", which means something quite different. MATILDA obviously wears delicious square-toed little button-boots, and has a tartan dress.
While as for LITTLE ARTHUR, he is quite unlike either of the miserable little Princes in the Tower. He is more like Tom Brown, or Tom Brown's friend - what was his name ?- the bright, good-looking one. His voice suggests that he would sing "Hear my Prayer" divinely and yet probably can't sing a note.
There is no note on the Junior Assistant.
7.5.5
The opening:
ANNOUNCER: The Seven Ages of Mechanical Music. An Early Victorian Absurdity, by LANCE SIEVEKING. With Apologies to the memory of Maria Edgeworth, who in the middle of the nineteenth century wrote a number of excellent stories which she called Moral Tales for Young Persons, somewhat in the style of what now follows.
FX (And then, to mark the beginning of the play, you hear the sound of a recordovox. Small plunketty-plonketty silvery-tinny music. It ceases. The ANNOUNCER continues):
ANNOUNCER: Out on a walk of instruction combined with amusement, LITTLE MATILDA holds fast to PAPA'S hand, while her brother LITTLE ARTHUR, a pompous and unbearable child, runs hither and thither finding problems in Nature to confuse PAPA, who, after all, is doing his best, poor man. At last PAPA gets annoyed and will not reply at all. THEY walk on in silence through the lanes and fields. All at once PAPA sees, among the bracken, the opening to a cave. It is overhung with gorse and bracken. In there, he thinks, the intolerable child ARTHUR will not be able to discover any posers, and THEY will be able to sit comfortably on the ground and rest. THEY enter the cave.
In the cave acoustic, and the chilly darkness, Matilda plays her musical top, which causes an extraordinary echo:
FX (It is a sort of flash of rich blurry mechanical turn-handle tune. A flash that strikes off into an echo and is gone.)
Arthur, who they thought lost, reappears:
LITTLE ARTHUR: I have been walking beside you all the while. But, having nothing to say, I have not opened my mouth.
PAPA (holding up one finger): Even when I called you! That was wrong, Arthur!
LITTLE ARTHUR (pompously): I regret it then, Papa. But surely you will admit that the acoustic properties of this cavern are remarkable?
Matilda explains her interest in sound and music:
LITTLE MATILDA: Oh, pray Papa, take me with you. I too, with my little brother Arthur, am passionately interested in the wonders of natural phenomena, of which the acoustic or sound qualities are the strangest.
Little Arthur thinks he has discovered a long-forgotten haunt of prehistoric man and they meet the Junior Assistant:
FX (The hurdy-gurdy bursts out. You are startled by its loudness apparently at your elbow.)
PAPA: That is no echo!
FATHER TIME'S ASSISTANT: No! It is not an echo, nor a dream! It is the reality which exists in all time.
LITTLE ARTHUR: Papa! What is that?
PAPA: Who are you?
FATHER TIME'S ASSISTANT: I am the Junior Assistant to Father Time.
LITTLE ARTHUR: But the conception of Father Time is merely the survival of a literary myth. How then ...
LITTLE MATILDA: Arthur! How can you be so unmannerly? If the gentleman says so, we must accept his word.
FATHER TIME'S ASSISTANT: My dear, you are right. Father Time himself is not here, because this is too small a part of his work to warrant his spending attention on it. Here is the slice of time which contains everything that has ever been or ever will be in the shape of music produced by automatic appliances.
LITTLE MATILDA: Oh, sir, do you mean like this?
FX (Plays her top.)
7.5.6
The Assistant explains that along the cave passage, the Passage of Time, are mechanical music-makers and the first is heard:
FX (The tiny, sharp, melodious tinkle of a musical-box begins. It sounds like a clear, frosty morning.)
Which leads to a discussion about terms:
LITTLE MATILDA: Oh, Arthur, surely you are confusing two things . . . two meanings? And is this not called Synecdoche? I am sure Papa will correct me if I am wrong.
PAPA: Probably you mean Zeugma, Matilda; but my Greek is rusty, as they say
LITTLE ARTHUR (with a winning smile): Permit me to correct both of you.
And an explanation of the music box mechanism:
FATHER TIME'S ASSISTANT: The notes are produced by the vibration of steel teeth on springs cut in a plate of steel reinforced by the harmonics generated in the solid steel back of the comb. The teeth are graded in length, the longer ones giving a deeper note. The teeth, acted upon by the revolution of the brass cylinder, produce musical vibrations. The headquarters of the manufacture of these musical-boxes has always been Switzerland, though examples have been found of the Zange, a popular instrument among African natives. In the case of wind instruments-pins raise valves to admit air compressed by bellows to various kinds of flue-pipes. Let me show you this beautiful book of drawings which was published in Frankfort in 1615, making clear the actual relation of the pins to the piece of music. In the Netherlands in the fifteenth century, the Dukes of Burgundy encouraged the invention of ingenious mechanical musical curiosities-snuff-boxes, birds, curious clocks-all of which you will see about you here. In 1830 a favourite musical composition was the "Snuff-Box Waltz".
FX (Up comes, as though from a well, a bright, stiff, liquid little metallic tune by Verdi. It has a sound as of going round and round.)
The lecture continues with the earliest citings of mechanical instruments and then:
FATHER TIME'S ASSISTANT: So vast are these original combinations that if each was played for five minutes it would take 138 trillion years to exhaust them. I am going to play you now, however, the old hurdy-gurdy. Listen.
FX (Sweet, soft and with an appealing gaiety the old music is drawn out and poured into your room.)
FATHER TIME'S ASSISTANT: This is the vielle a manivelle, or, as the Italians call it, Lira Rustica. "Hurdy-gurdy" has been loosely regarded as synonymous for "barrel-organ." Strictly, it is the medieval drone instrument. The strings are set in vibration by the friction of a steel wheel, which is rosined. It followed the earlier organistra, which had three strings only, which was often used in churches. It originated in France when the Paris School (or Old French School) was laying the foundations of counterpoise and polyphony.
The hurdy-gurdy is traced in French history. Then the next instrument is heard, an old Flaute barrel-organ:
FX (And then, before he has stopped speaking, behind his words comes floating up a sound of music familiar, yet unfamiliar. It makes you think of an organ in a church. But this is the sound, surely, in miniature. An organ, perhaps, in a doll's house. Reedy and slightly burred at the edges. A note is missing? The melody goes on. And so, and so, flute, flute, flute, la di-di-oo-la-es, a note is missing. . . But LITTLE MATILDA has begun to speak again -in her prim but attractive little voice. It is the voice of a little girl who has pretty legs inside her lace trousers.)
It is repeated:
FX (The oo-ey note-missing miniature organ reedy burry blurry music FADES UP, and after sustaining itself on the air for a moment, FADES RIGHT AWAY.)
And followed by a reed-organ:
FX (The reed-organ, which now suddenly strikes on your ear, has a smaller, thinner, yet more insistent feeling than the one which has just stopped Its tune is more undecided still. . .)
This is followed by the Italian street piano, heard in London, and then a mechanical organ at a circus:
FX (The acoustic changes completely as the microphones in the middle of Olympia become alive. If you have ever been in that huge exhibition hall, you instantly recognise the actuality of what you are hearing. The place is packed with sightseers. There is a circus in the middle and side-shows all round. Here, near our microphones, is one of those whizzi-go-rounds from whose giddy heights you may stare out over the heads (of the crowd, seeing the same faces again and again as you come round, lit by the glaring gas or electric bulbs. . . . What a beautiful twopennyworth! Oh, yes! I'm stopping on: here's my twopence. (That's a fine girl astride the pink giraffe with the green eyes! How she grips his wooden sides with her legs!) Round we go. The music blares and blares! It puts life into you! Whenever it gets to the chord of G major a huge puff of hot steam belches into the air! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!)
And then the pianola:
FX (Per-inkely-ump! Per-inkely-ump! The wooden fingers of the invisible pianist tap the ivory keys without touching them, and out comes the tune as clear and accurate as a music-master's dream of a show pupil winning a prize for playing a simple piece of Weber with rulers across both hands. . . . On, on, it goes: per-inkely-ump, behind the dialogue, slowly fading.)
Followed by the 1885 Eddison wax cylinder:
FX (Long, long ago, and far away; the tiny scraping sound comes to your ear like a tune stored in a granite thimble. "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly? K-E-Double-L-r? Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly? Kelly from the Isle of Man! Tinkleyscrape-scrape-scrape very faint and varying slightly in speed as the faded black-brown cylinder turns on its drum.)
They ask for and hear the snuff box again:
FX (Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle goes the little snuff-box. It stops, and the sound of rushing waters mounts and mounts till the cave and its occupants are swept away . . . swept away and out . . back on to the green, sunny slopes where their walk had started.)
(Silence.)
PAPA (rubbing his eyes and yawning): As I was saying
They hear the polyphon and then, as Papa continues lecturing on their way home:
PAPA (rambling on vaguely): Pray don't mention it, Mattie. Consider those bells, those pretty trilling bells.
FX (From over the valley come floating . . . floating incredibly sweet cadences; bell after bell. . .)
PAPA: That is called a carillon. It was a set of bells so hung and arranged as to be played mechanically, giving out regularly a composed melody.
LITTLE ARTHUR: Yes, Papa!
LITTLE MATILDA (tearfully): Yes, dear Papa, ve-ry in-ter-esting.
PAPA (still rambling): Holland, Belgium, North Germany and the Low Countries resounded all through the fifteenth century to the sound of carillons of bells. . . . To be heard at great distance . . . Amsterdam, Bruges, Munich.
FX (FADE UP bells over PAPA, and after a few moments gradually FADE OUT.)
7.5.7
'The Seven Ages of Mechanical Music' is the first and point of origin for the Sieveking 'oeuvre'. The place for an overall view of Sieveking will be in later parts of this History and Taylor has given a crisp and, to my view, suitably measured judgement (Taylor, 1972, 35-8). See also Briggs, 1965, 58-62, 164-70. Taylor's terms range from imaginatively inspiring to grandiose and trite.
'Seven Ages' suffers from his main faults: content and concept are sacrificed to formalist experiment, the dialogue fails to sustain interest nor is it given the underlying architecture of plot. Also, lines become repetitious, serving mainly to link Effect with Effect. The piece fails somewhat to come up with an overall concept to back up its fussy production.
There are some thirty FX cues in this half-hour play, nearly all of them musical instruments. On the other hand, against this negative view, there must have been an antiquarian pleasure, if not the delight of discovery, in bringing together these museum treasures.
7.5.8
Sieveking also explores adventurous changes in acoustic:
4 FX (All at once the acoustic changes. Now it is all boomy and echoey, and when the sedate little girl's voice comes, it is as though she were talking in the rope-walk at the entrance to Poole's Cavern at Buxton.)
101 FX (The acoustic changes completely as the microphones in the middle of Olympia become alive. If you have ever been in that huge exhibition hall, you instantly recognise the actuality of what you are hearing. The place is packed with sightseers. There is a circus in the middle and side-shows all round. Here, near our microphones, is one of those whizzi-go-rounds from whose giddy heights you may stare out over the heads of the crowd, seeing the same faces again and again ....)
The source of information for this first Echo Room is A.G.D. West's article in early 1926, describing the three-studio suite (Studio No. 2, Studio No. 2 (B) and Studio No. 2 Echo:
… a combination studio for dramatic purposes, consisting of three parts, which allow of effects and echo to be superimposed on the transmission of a play just as it is desired in any particular production.
A.G.D. West, 'Programmes from Five Studios. Behind the scenes at London Station' 'The Radio Times' 5 February 1926 p 292
In the first 'echo room', the output was fed into an empty studio and transmitted via microphones from there.
7.5.9
The humour in 'Seven Ages' is patchy. There are self-referential jokes:
LITTLE ARTHUR: I have been walking beside you all the while. But, having nothing to say, I have not opened my mouth.
PAPA (holding up one finger): Even when I called you! That was wrong, Arthur!
Sieveking plays with one of the main problems of radio drama dialogue - that once a character is silent, he or she fails to signify. Hence the need for the playwright to write their presence into the dialogue by constant reminders. But the biggest problem is that Sieveking's dialogue is stilted and what is more, acknowledges itself to be so. This is either jestingly or tiresomely, depending on the individual listener's response:
LITTLE MATILDA: Oh, pray Papa, take me with you. I too, with my little brother Arthur, am passionately interested in the wonders of natural phenomena, of which the acoustic or sound qualities are the strangest.
And also:
LITTLE ARTHUR: I was informed by my tutor that pure mechanism could be divided into the following categories:
I. The motion of a point.
2. The motion of a surface or fluid.
3. The motion of a rigid solid.
4. The motion of a pair of connected pieces on an elementary combination.
LITTLE MATILDA (putting her little head quaintly on one side): But is this what may be called pure mechanism?
PAPA: My children, you are speaking forwardly and with an unbecoming boldness.
7.5.10
This, and other passages, come over perhaps as precious and self-regarding, but the performance style is crucial. It certainly throws a burden on the actors.
In summary, the technology of the time in Savoy Hill enabled Sieveking to push forward with two innovations: the use of an extraordinary number of effects for that time (mostly the display of mechanical musical instruments) and the first 'echo room'. Noticeably, he did not attempt montage as technique and this was left to later, to the thirteen montages of his 'Intimate Snapshots' (22 November 1929 5GB and 12 May 1930 National).
Sieveking was able to centre his experiments on the autonomy of the microphone and the 'combination studio', the Studio No. 2 suite built in early 1926. He was no H.G. Welles of wireless drama and I consider the real alchemist of wireless drama to be Cecil Lewis, allowing for the loss of most of his scripts. In searching for, and listing the few originations of these years, Sieveking emerges in a much more favourable light. The only other originations surviving and to match now with Sieveking's 'Seven Ages' are Reginald Berkeley, 'The White Chateau' (Wednesday 11 November 1925 2LO London 8.30-9.30), Richard Hughes's 'The War in Spain' (7 December 1925 Cardiff 8.45-9.5) and Captain Frank Shaw's 'By Virtue of a Broadcast' (9 February 1927 Manchester 7.45-8.10). Sieveking may have been the first wireless mannerist, but he had the power to astonish and to entertain by his virtuosity.
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