Beamish

Lewis Carroll, who was, in real life, Professor Dodgson, an English don who taught mathematics, one day amused some children by tossing off Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass--thereby becoming immortal. And now Mr. Deems Taylor, who is in real life the redoubtable music critic of The New York World, has amused himself by translating "Lewis Carroll" into an orchestral suite. It contains the following numbers: The Garden of Live Flowers, Jabberwocky, Looking Glass Insects, The White Knight.

Last year it was performed by the New York Symphony Orchestra. Since then it has been heard in Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia. Only last week the Philadelphia Orchestra again brought it to New York, and it is to be a feature of the next appearance of the new American-National organization. Then it is going to London.

The marvelous humor, wistful whimsicality and delicious irony of the text have been masterfully transferred into the music. Children enjoy most the passages which eloquently describe the "beamish boy's" conquest of the Jabberwock:

And as in uffish thought he stood.

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgy wood,

And burbled as he came! One, two! One, two! And through and through,

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! The beast was dead, and with his head,

He came galumphing back!

But adults appreciate most keenly the penetrating delineation of the White Knight, 'mild, chivalrous, ridiculous, and rather touching."

Mr. Taylor is not the first critic who was also a musician. Robert Schumann, it will be remembered, was also such a combination. And, strangely enough, Schumann is best beloved by many for his charming Scenes from Childhood. Whether Mr. Taylor is really a musician who writes criticism, or a critic who writes music, will perhaps be decided only 50 years from now. What is important at the present moment is that he has produced a score that may be fittingly placed on the same shelf with MacDowell's lovely little Marionettes and John Alden Carpenter's Adventures in a Perambulator. These masterpieces of children's music are perhaps America's most substantial achievements in tonal art so far.