TABLET'S BUTTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 869, 29 March 1956, Page 20

TABLET'S BUTTER

MILY BUTTER, the satire on modern opera and Third Programme avant gardism, contrived by Henry Reed and Donald Swann, was pretty good fun of a rather highbrow kind. Hilda Tablet, the twelve-toned comPposeress, with a nice line in profanity,

who swam into our plan like a kennet, was a maliciously entertaining portrait. Her comment occasioned by an orchestral strike, "My music can stand on its own feet without help from any ruddy orchestra," was a typical gem. Likewise the satire on Third Programme talks, with their mixture of sentimentality and critical gobbledygook, on Menotti-ish libretti and unmusical music, with harpsichords imitating lift-doors, and on stupid prima donnas was distinctly healthy. But for all the ingenuity and the parody, I felt it went on a little too long, at least for an audience unused to the kind of thing satirised. Much of the joking was of the family kind, aimed at listeners familiar with BBC Third Pro-

grammes rather than with our more tentative YC sessions. But at least it did indicate the nature of the more pretentious and ingrown highbrowism from which English art and letters suffer, and at the same time, the willingness of the BBC and the brighter British writers to satirise themselves.