As they Stepped it in the GOOD OLD DAYS

Radio Record, Volume VI, Issue 10, 16 September 1932, Page 1

As they Stepped it in the

GOOD OLD DAYS

Dance Melodies of far-gone days from 2YA Saturday, 24

Those who look back enviously to "the good old days" — consider modern dances "immodest," and jazz music as so much more cacophony-will find their tastes specially catered for by 2YA on Saturday evening next, September 24, when the 2YA Concert Orchestra, under Mr. Leon de Mauny, will present an evening of old-time dance music, interspersed with selected dance recordings, from 8 p.m. till 11.30 p.m.

N such an occasion it would be interesting to make a flying visit to the homes of some of the listeners where the presentation of old-time dance music is almost certain to bring up the hardy perennial question as to whether modern times will bear

favourable comparison with "the good old days." ; Grandad, or grandma, will no doubt recall the days when dancing was dancing, when the melodies of Strauss, Waldteufel, Translateur and other pure melody-makers drifted dreamily through ballrooms where "__brighy the lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell." And back on the farm Dad and Mum

will tap their feet as the strains of the Barn Dance, Polka or Schottische come from their radio, recalling the times when they danced the night away in a woolshed or schoolroom to the strain of an accordion or violin. "No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet." The younger generation, on the other hand, will raw attention -to the fact that when Grafi¥ad went to one of the balls he is so fond of talking about, he found it essential to take a supply of collars, as the terrific energy exerted in a set of Lancers, ‘d’Alberts or Quadrilles reduced starched linen to a pulp. In these enlightened days, the young folks will point out, one can dance all evening without any physical strain whatever. And in the homes of music-lovers the argument will probably turn on the merits of old-time dance music as compared with modern jazz tunes. It is not the purpose of this article to start a controversy among readers on the merits or demerits of old-time dances as contrasted with modern ones, nor as to the’

merits of modern dance tunes a8 compared with the melodies of the classical composers. Nor does space permit of reference to the various types of dances which were featured on the ballroom programmes of the Victorian era-those dainty programmes with

-_ pencit attached, which were treasured for years Dy tle Mlewe™ of those days. . Of all the dances of the past and present, however, it probably be agreed by both young and old that the waltz stands pre-eminent in popular favour. Well over a century ago, Lord Byron said in a poem: "4 NDEARING Waltz !-to thy more melting tune, Bow Irish Jig and ancient rigadoon." Later in the same poem he went even so far as to describe the danee as "seductive" and "voluptuous" as, indeed, it must have seemed to Enelish dancers, when at the very end of

the eighteenth century it was introduced into an English ballroom for the first time. How it conquered all Europe, Great Britain, and America is now a matter of history, and its victorious march from its first home, Vienna, to the modern dance publishing centre of Tin Pan Alley, New York, is one of those fascinating romances which will not be found in the standard musical dictionaries, but depends for its elaboration upon students of the human interest side of music rather than the technical and theoretical experts. ; Byron’s poem invites us to picture country gentleman of his day who is supposed to come to town with his wife and daughter, and in the fashionable assemblies of the time saw the waltz as a new dance of which he could not at first wholly approve. "Judge of my surprise," he says, "to see poor dear Mrs. Hornem with her arms halfround the loins of a huge hussar-looking gentleman I never set eyes on before; and his, to say truth, rather more than halfround her waist, and turning round and round to a see-saw, up-and-down sort of tune till it made me giddy wondering if they were not so." Like (Continued on page

wo cock-chdfers spitted on the same bodkin" the dancers looked, and in the closing words of the preface to the poem, Mr. Hornem admits: "Now that I know what it is, I like ‘it of all things, " and so, I think, say_all of usWhy is this? More than any other dance the waltz stands for pure melody, whose. traditions it enshrines and keeps: inviolate, It'ls therefore not difficult to rhapsodisé. about it. The’ waltz .also represents more than in any other dance the veal poetry of motion. All the grace, dignity, and animation of the old min-

— a uet, gavotte, and saraband have, in a measure, been passed on to us in the musi¢ of the waltz, if not in its movements. Added to which it possesses, its own romantic charm, and its inher: ent capacity for an infinite variety of moods and styles. But the waltz is not only a dance with a most engrossing musical history; it may even be said’ to embody in itself one of the fundamental elements of musical expression. Of Bohemian origin, and populurised by the Germans, it gains its name from the German word "walzen’-to revolve, spin, or roll, Its first mention.

8 in England was at the commencement of last. century, when what ultimately became the-German Empire comprised more than 80 sovereign states, to whicli an Hnglishman went to reside for five years. Appropriately enough his name was Robinson, and in his letters home to his brother Thomas he describes "waltzing as.a form of dancing unlike ‘anything you ever saw,’ My. Robinson’s : impressions in. 1805 "are worthy of quotation-he goes on to say: "A fair lady may repose her head on the bosom of her partner, par.ticularly when they embrace so closely

as to revive the {dea of Plato's primitive man. Dancing makes them giddy, and a couple sometimes fall; in that case the: gallant male gets undermost and receives his partner." A century ago, Chopin, who wanted to playin Vienna, mourned the fact that "the. Viennese have finished with the serious; everything is pushed into the background by Lanner and Strauss (the elder) and their waltzes." The eroticism that was the basis of. the recent jazz and dancing craze was the céntral force of the old waltz, as many a moralist testified, and as many a ‘self-appointed ‘censor maintained. The waltz-writers of those days, like their jazz descendants, had to be perpetually preducing something new; a dance band tvould have had short shrift from its followers unless its conductorcomposer gave them a fresh repertory every week. The waltz attracted some of the world’s gré4test composers and what Weber and Chopin did for it ‘in transferring it from the ballroom to ‘the concert. platform was little short of marvellous. From the Teytons we have had much music of varied and beautiful charactey, But the €anals of music know no more alluring tiling than & good waltz well played by a good orchestra. They are a source of gaiety and cheerfulness for the old as well as for the young, for do not our grandparents even now love what they call "a: dreamy waltz’? On. Saturday evening, from 2YA, listeners. will hear some of the most popular dance melodies of bygone years, including some evergreen waltzes from the pens of the waltz kings, It will be a programme for young and old, and no doubt many hundreds of listeners will thank. those responsible for the programme for drawing back the curtain: of: memory on scenes long forgotten; or only dimly remembereddays of delight, and nights of endur‘ing happiness.