JOHN ALDEN
CARPENTER
(Born at Park Ridge, Ill., February 28, 1876)
SUITE. “ADVENTURES IN A PERAMBULATOR”
I. En Voiture II. The Policeman III. The Hurdy-gurdy IV. The Lake V. Dogs VI. Dreams
Mr. Carpenter has told us in music the outing of a child. One of his first compositions was a collection of humorous Improving Songs for Children. This fondness for children as subjects for art he shares with Victor Hugo; with Swinburne, who abandoned the shrine of Venus to sing of children’s beauty and innocence—after Watts-Dunton had docked him of his rum. In the Perambulator there is no sentimentalism, no Sunday-school address to “you, little girl with the blue sash”; but his music is as his child saw and thought, when wheeled about.
This suite is not only an ingenious work: it has true fancy, true humor, pages of truly poetic feeling. Mr. Carpenter displays imagination; witness his glorification of the lake that supplies Chicago with water. But even his imagination was dormant at the thought of the Chicago River. An unflinching realist would have introduced the child’s visit to the stockyards and slaughter houses.
The composition of this suite was begun in July, 1914, and completed in December of that year. The suite was performed for the first time at the concerts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock conductor, March 19-20, 1915.
The suite is scored for these instruments: three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, xylophone, glockenspiel, bells, harp, celesta, pianoforte, and the usual strings.
This programme is printed as preface to the score: