Humoresque

Arturo Toscanini had broken into his vacation to conduct the premiere himself. At rehearsal with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, he seemed to be having the time of his life. Don Gillis' new Symphony for Fun was the kind of thing the maestro could let himself go on. On the podium, he swayed, sang, all but strutted a cakewalk. Once the Toscanini temper flared up--when the xylophonist floundered over a particularly tricky passage. In the studio control room, Composer Gillis watched the struggling xylophonist, whispered to a companion: "Poor guy. Doesn't he realize that no one could possibly play that passage? Even I know that."

The music of whimsical, young (35) Don Gillis was getting a hearing partly because of a whim of Toscanini's. For three years, Gillis had been NBC's Producer of Symphony Programs. On the side he has written 42 compositions, most of them earnest but light things. Some, out & out musical gags, bore such titles as Thoughts Provoked on Becoming a Prospective Papa. Toscanini, who sometimes likes to indulge his ability to make a 24-hour sensation out of a young musician, announced that he would play a piece by "Jee-lee."

The symphony he picked is really Gillis' sixth, but because it is so short (14 minutes) Gillis decided to call it Symphony 5 1/2. Its four movements--Perpetual Emotion, Spiritual?, Scherzofrenia, Conclusion!--jump from low-down to hoedown, owe more to Gershwin than to Bach. Gillis gave the third movement its punning title "because it can't quite make up its mind whether to go the Haydn-Mozart route or get hep."

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