DOGS AND MUSIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 33

DOGS AND MUSIC

CLARA BUTT’S PEKE SINGS SCALES IN PERFECT TUNE Dame Clara Butt, who has announced her intention of visiting South Africa on a concert tour at the beginning of next year, has complete in. the ability of some of her ’dogs to appreciate the music of the human voice, says the “Cape Times.” One of them, a favourite Pekinese, sang scales with her and reproduced the notes not only in perfect tune, but with evident delight. The great singer has placed this fact on record. There are other people firmly convinced that dogs do have a musical sense, even though not as vivid as that described by Dame Clara. One dog lover avows that his dog is entirely unmoved by music until a certain piece of Beethoven is played; another tells of a bulldog who almost sobs when the soft notes of the piano sound “Auld Robin Gray,” but who is unaffected by anything else. There are not many dogs who show themselves sensitive to music at all. Some set up a howl of sympathetic or outraged nerves when music begins, particularly if it emanates from a stringed instrument, but now that they are so used to more or less perpetual music from gramophones it takes a good deal to stir them from their normal placid attitudes. One dog has been known to show extraordinary restlessness whenever a certain Spanish ballet played by a Spanish orchestra was given on the gramophone, but when the same music was played by an English orchestra he “never turned a hair.” Probably there was some especially robust tone produced by the Spaniards that stimulated his senses. This habit of his was tested often, always producing the same result. It is a common thing to see a dog sitting on its haunches, not far from a street musician, singing, with uplifted head, a mournful accompaniment.. This cannot, however, really be attributed to its being moved by the music, but to that certain sense of sympathy with humans that all dogs possess.