In London Town.
[SOME HOLIDAY MUSIC.]
Fine fun can be had out of two action songs by William Younge and Lionel Elliott (J. Williams). They just suit the merry season for youngsters of the family who must have amusing and interesting ideas to keep themselves and others happy. One is called “Home for the Holidays,” and the other, “Making the Pudding.”
For our tiny nursery people there is a really capital shilling book by Florence Wickins, consisting of “Merry little tunes, including all the original melodies to the nursery rhymes and a complete set of dance music for little folk” (Wickins & Co.). It is in clear, big print, with a gay cover, and there are some dear old favourites therein, such as the undying Miss Muffet, Tom Tucker, Lucy Locket, Baby Bunting, and other heroes and heroines of nursery lore in days of yore.
Schoolboys and schoolgirls too will join with fervour in Scott-Gatty’s new “Country House Songs” on “Golf” and “Cricket” (Boosey), and these will not fail to attract boys and girls of an older growth, so admirable are they.
Some stirring ditties suitable for musical entertainments after schoolroom teas are two rousing naval and military lays with telling refrains, namely, “Beresford’s Boys,” by Lionel Hume (Weekes), and “The Life of a Soldier,” by Gerald Lane (Enoch); “Two Gay Owls,” by M. Van Lennep (Doremi), with characteristic “tu-whit to-whoos” capable of expressive rendering, and “De Blue-Tailed Fly,” a plantation song by G. H. Clutsam (Stanley Lucas), the buzzing chorus of which can be given with much dramatic feeling!
Pretty little light pieces, all suitable for bright occasions, interludes for tableaux, charades, &c., are the following: “Danse Chic,” by Arnold Olding (Cramer); “Mountain Gnomes,” by Wilhelm Popp (Ashdown); “La Lucette,” by Gladys Hope (Weekes); “Vous Dansez Marquise,” by Augusta de Kabath (J. Williams); “Chanson de Louis Seize,” by G. Bachmann (Ashdown); and a small book of “Three Dances” by Corelli Windeatt (J. Williams).
These popular marches are desirable for the same purposes, namely, “Santiago,” by Walter von Joel (Ashdown); “The Charge at Dargai” (Cramer); and the “British Outpost,” by Lionel Hume (Weekes); while the quicker polka marches of “Gringalet” and “Automobiles,” both by Ad. Gauwin (Chappell), are spirited in music and in dashing frontispieces. Two nice little operettas for children are “Cock Robin and Jenny Wren,” by Florian Pascal, and “The Maid and the Blackbird,” by Ed. Solomon (J. Williams).