THE AMERICAN WHISTLING LADY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2513, 18 August 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE AMERICAN WHISTLING LADY.

• » Entkktaixments by the American 8 whistling lady, Mrs Shaw, are now being ° given in London drawing rooms. The musical executant has at commnnd a S repertoire of forty compositions, much of ™ it good music, and some of it specially V written for her. She has already, it is '} said, whistled before the Prince of Wales, and with concert engagements constantly R booked, and seeing maDy grand people, H she " thinks London too delightful for anything." Her range of whistle is over f; two octaves and a half. This is how the correspondent of the Paris edition of the rt New York THerald describes a whistling 01 interlude, where he seems to have been a P highly gratified listener Now the . notes burst forth gaily like tho laugh of I 1 a bobolink, and again they siuk away soft as the evening's breeze. She pro- V duces a tone which would rise clear and steady above an orchestra, and with equal ac ease sustains her upper B flat so gently J ll that one almost loses the sound. Trills, ' high notes and low, every trick that is „ known to the throat of a bird or the voice of a prima donna, this wonderful P ! whistler can imitate on her lips." To a y Pall Mall Gazette interviewer, she said ln that she was a Detroiter, and had lived 01 among musicians all her life. When she ® c was ten months old she whistled instead , of crying, and when she had children of tt] her own she whistled them to sleep with n< sweet lullabys. About a year ago Mrs m Shaw determined to put her gift to some r ® useful purpose, and went into training ? with a musical professor. Whistling by ear was all very well for domestic music, I 1 but for the concert-hall and the evening ' r party every note had to be rendered to Jv be effective. One of the great difficul- . ties which Mrs Shaw had to contend with at first was the tendency of her audience to laugh at such an odd entertainment, but any tendency of that sort vanished after a few bars from that wonderful labial orchestra. He asked j n Mrs Shaw if ladies could learn to whistle, and understood her to say that the art w would be difficult of acquirement without .>q some natural gift. The advice she gives Jq to aspirants is " never prepare to g (.. pucker," by which she means that the lips must fall into their note-producing 0 ■ position quite easily and naturally. Mrs t jj Shaw never whistled on an empty „ 0 stomach, and never takes stimulants £u Her lips seldom get out of order, but a | ni little wind or even draught dries them 0 j ( and makes her music difficult. g j c or On the 31st day of December the popu- shi lation of Sweden was reported at fiv 4,717,189, an increase during the year of Mi 1it,420. The assisted poor numbered pic 221,911, or 6, 73 per eenf, of the popula- the tion. Lu