Air Force Wonder

Composers are seldom ordinary citizens, but Serge de Gastyne, 25, is extraordinary even among composers. He is 1) a count, 2) an Airman First Class,* assigned to write music for the Air Force, and 3) the composer of three symphonies.

Count de Gastyne, Marquis de St. Maur and Viscount de Montauriant, fought with the French underground in his teens, and in 1947 came to the U.S., where his dazzling piano-playing soon won him scholarship grants at the University of Portland and the Eastman School of Music. Between studies he took a flyer at salesmanship (encyclopedias), earned enough to finance a cross-country trip by bus. In 1952 he enlisted in the Air Force, which decided that it wanted him at the keyboard of a piano, not at the controls of a plane. At Sampson Air Force Base near Rochester, N.Y. (Major General Richard Lindsay commanding), he set out to compose a huge musical "panorama" celebrating the 50th anniversary of powered flight. Composer de Gastyne's librettist: General Lindsay's daughter Raylyn, to whom he is now married.

Early this month the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Conductor Thor Johnson played De Gastyne's third symphony. Critics found it to be a highly promising work, but with far too many ideas--a potpourri of styles recalling Stravinsky, Ravel, Gershwin. Best feature: confident orchestration that sounds as if Composer de Gastyne enjoyed playing around with masses of pleasant sounds.

Last week, at Washington's Boiling Air Force Base, De Gastyne was at work on his latest assignment: converting songs by ex-King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia into a symphonic rhapsody.

* Air Force equivalent of an Army corporal.

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