Published by

Edwin Teale, Sigmund Spaeth, and Agnes De Mille

Iritia Van Doren is the host of this Books and Authors Luncheon, which features a speech by naturalist Edwin Teale, author of "North with the Spring;" and a performance/talk by Sigmund Spaeth, author of "Opportunities in Music, from behind a piano".

(The second disc is unfortunately missing, and Spaeth's portion is cut off mid-performance. Agnes De Mille, author of "Dance to the Piper," also spoke at the event, but her speech is not captured here.)

Iritia Van Doren tells the audience they will receive their books at the end of the luncheon.
She introduces Raymond Bond, whose company Dodd-Mead published Teale's book; Mr. Morris of Grasset and Dunlap, who distributed Spaeth's book; Mr. Weeks of the Atlantic Monthly, who published many of DeMille's chapters, prior to their being published as a book; Mr. Dodd of Dodd-Mead; Sales director of Little-Brown, Allan Anderson; Maurice Shelby of Vocational Guidance Manuals; George Hecht of the Doubleday Book Shops.

Van Doren introduces Edwin Teale through his friendship through Rachel Carson. She discusses his work as a naturalist including his best-known books, including "Grassroot Jungles," about the life in his own backyard, "the Golden Throng" and the life of bee-hive, "Near Horizons" about an insect garden near his home on Long island, "Dune Boy" about his youth on an Indiana farm. She talks about some of the oddities of insect world, leading into the publication of "North with the Spring," his latest book, written with his wife.
Van Doren describes "North with the Spring," a book about his travels with his wife headed north with the spring, starting in February, 15 miles a day from Lake Okeechobee in Florida, through Georgia, Virginia, through Cape Cod, up to Canada. He describes the travels north throughout his book.

Teale jokes about delusional feelings of fame after publishing his book. He also jokes about the unremunerativeness of natural history careers. He talks about wanting to be a writing naturalist.
He talks about putting off his writing in preference to doing research. He talks about Thoreau's ability to write freely being less of an option today.
He recalls a magazine feature he did on John Lee Baldwin from Babylon Long Island, 15 years ago. Baldwin whittled ducks, and had a slogan "never work, and never will." He considered his work to be fun, and thus not work.
Teale recalls watching a bird migration on the top of the Empire State Building. The only unexpected thing was a night watchman. unaware of his presence.
Teale talks briefly about his insect garden.

He begins his discussion of his book following spring for 130 days in the Everglades. Violets are the footsteps of spring. He talks about Dogwood specifically. He recalls a day ion the Blue Ridge Mountains going in and out of the spring. They joined an herb woman, Toy Miller, near Blowing Rock, NC. He talks about Trillium Glen in Tryon in the Appalachian Mountains. He talks about the variety of life on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. He talks about making up famous last words, and how they could not have made up their last day in Franconia Notch in New Hampshire.

Van Doren talks about how much more Teale could have spoken about from his book. She begins to introduce Sigmund Spaeth and his career in music. He has been literary editor at McCall's, Esquire, and Literary Digest. He was radio's "Tune Detective." He has also been a musicologist at copyright trials.
He has written 26 books on music, many of them reprinted by Modern Library. His most important work is his "History of Popular Music in America." The book of the day is a "Vocational Guidance Manual" about careers in music. She discusses work for those who love music but do not have the skill to perform it professionally.

Spaeth asks if he may give his speech from behind the piano. He quotes Richard Connell in saying he is "practically naked without a piano." He will talk about opportunities in music before showing some of the fun of music.
He talks about the Vocational Guidance Manual series and being asked to write the music volume. His "job" initially was as "tune detective."
The book as aimed at those who want to make a career with their music talent of enthusiasm. Given the competition, you must have a businessman's attitude. He tries to remove the glamour and be honest about music careers.

He returns to the "fun" of music. Music should not be limited to those with talent he insists. He talks about the need for more "bad" musicians. Music wouldn't exist without bad musicians.
He will teach the crowd to play piano in 5 minutes. (It's sort of a joke he stresses.) He introduces the 5 note scale of 5 notes (the pentatonic scale) made by playing only the black keys. He notes that given this people can immediately play a song. He teaches the crowd to start to play the "Blue Danube Waltz" by Strauss and then "Little Liza Jane" using just a "C" chord.

(The program ends abruptly)

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 150145
Municipal archives id: LT2316

This is a machine-generated transcript. Text is unformatted and may contain errors.

All of you may claim your books that the end of the luncheon. Captain will happen here for you. I think because table today let me introduce to you first Mr Raymond bond the advertising in publicity man or a manager of dogmeat and company dogmeat publish Mr Geo Mr Bond. And then comes the general editor granted Dunlap who distribute Mr Space new book Mr Maurice. And you have met Mr weeks and I think I don't need to tell you that he is the editor of The Atlantic Monthly in which several sections of Mr Mills books were first book was first published mostly the same. On my left is the vice president an editor of God lead in company Mr Edwin that. The first and then becomes a director of Little Brown in charge of sales from ahead of the New York office of little brown with Allen and that's. The best and on his left is the president of the vocational guidance manuals in which the little musical vocational guidance book is published Maurice filming the show and at the extreme left our old friend George Hecht of the manager of the double their lookouts and from a president of the A.D.L. the. You. We have in the phone we had for the first time as a speaker a scientist who specialty as you remember was the seed Rachel Carson. Today we have our first naturalist also a scientist and a good friend of Rachael Kohn Edwin wait. Now he quite properly belong to the Explorers Club you've done most of his exploring with binoculars and a microscope and a camera in the world of grass trees and swamps wherever insects birds and other small creatures live in grass roots jungle and he wrote about the life of the grass under the grass in his own backyard in the golden throng he gave an account of his observations of a beehive which he set up in and attended for a year. Is the story of an insect garden which he has cultivated on a couple of Long Island acres this is his home children with an eye to a naturalist. It has three important features. From his point of view an old bong. And that kind you may not think this is an asset but it is. An apple orchard for the influx of wood and a marsh for a lot of dwelling in. Dubai his next book is a literal. Account of his boyhood on an Indiana mom where he knew from the time. That he wanted to be a naturalist and where he picked the estimated twenty thousand strawberries to add in the money for his first camel. Mystically mule has found a venture in a world of the robbers. He has watched Monaco butterflies sail out to sea in an apparent suicide light years better night on the world's tallest building observing the autumn migrations of thousands of. Years bound in sex that let the water and breathe through extensible and hoses. Is happy with adventure however one long cherished as an idea and only recently carried out has resulted in his latest and most fascinating book. With the spring. Toward the end of February. And his wife a pretty good naturalist data started from the Everglades in Florida to follow the spring. Spring advances up the United States fifteen miles a day and ascending the mountain about a hundred feet a day Mr Pollard from Lake Okeechobee through Georgia's fabulous Okefenokee swamp with a swing to the Gulf mudflats and Louisiana marshes back through the Great Smoky the Dismal Swamp in Virginia and New Jersey penguins to the tip of Cape Cod to the Canadian border and finally up Mount Washington through seventeen thousand miles in twenty three states one hundred and thirty days they followed the spring they saw it come to lakes and streams the high mountains and lonely beaches and they recorded its excitement and photographed its beauty. With the spring mist appeal has given us the spring shelf with information that is scientifically accurate with interesting often eloquent pearls and with pictures startlingly clear sometimes exquisitely beautiful he has let us share the adventure that he knows how to find in the natural world around us and happy to introduce to you Edwin wait until. After an author has a pair of the two or three luncheons and has given two or three speeches and have been introduced by kind people like I read of and during and after if you have a naturalist you have seen two or three favorable reviews comparing him to those around you Audubon and well you begin to suffer from delusions of grandeur and he walked down the street with a feeling of people must certainly be turning to look at him as he goes by. But there is in nature what is known to naturalists as the balance of nature and that's against to assert itself very shortly not a few weeks ago the Saturday Review of litter tour. Used morph with the spring as a cover subject and the cover contained a picture showing me working at my desk with my pet tabby cat silver curled up behind me some friends of ours on Long Island had moved away two or three years before and on the day that they are better during a litter to arrive the small boy went out to get the mail he knew me he knew silver he knew all of us and he came rushing into the house calling guess who's on the cover of the Saturday Review of litter to our silver. A friend of mine is the head of a large department in a natural history museum and one time he told me that his father took him aside when he was a young man and said Now you're interested in natural history and there isn't right much money in natural history what are you going to do about it so there are two things you can do first you can begin working and spend twenty five or thirty years of your life working hard in the business make enough money to retire and then you can devote yourself to natural history or you can start right out now and not make very much money but begin doing the thing you want to do and he said I advise you to do the second thing because a knowing you I don't think you'd make very much money anyhow. So that's what he was he did he began immediately doing the thing that he wanted to do or one of the great problems all of this of do the thing that you want to do and to make a living doing it we spent so much of our time just keeping machinery of life going I know. For years I wanted to be a writing naturalist and I feel I've all. Ah but I can imagine it's do just what you want to do and get paid for doing it for a number of years as a writing actually I've come had the great good fortune to come to that goal not like the late will copy of course I tend to continue the research just as long as I can to keep from having to do a writing. And a writing naturalist in doing what he wants to do had better want to do a little writing because. In the boom country of northern Indiana where my grandfather was a pioneer and where he used the farm out of the forests in the early days and had hard times for many years he used to say there is no crime in being poor but it is mighty intervene. Was days when Henry thorough could spend his time and I thought the sidewall been for twenty seven cents a week or unhappily a thing of the past so my writing actually had better want to write as well as observe the things out of doors. Ten or fifteen years ago for a magazine feature I interviewed a man named John Lee Malvo and who lived at Babylon Long Island and the one thing he wanted to do was sit down and when he went about little ducks mallards and pen tales involved taking off and landing and ducks flying and he'd sit there all day waiting out the little ducks so fortunately for him they were good enough to sell all over the United States they sold as far away as Sweden and the Philippine Islands and he used to have a little ticket he'd put on the back of these docks and that was his slogan I was never work and never will and he described work doing something they didn't want to do and he said he never did but he didn't want to do and he told me you know people think that I'm crazy but they don't know how much fun I'm having. And I often remember John Lee Baldwin and I come to the conclusion that probably people think I'm crazy but I just don't know how much fun I'm having for example the night that I spent at the top of the Empire State Building that I read of and born has mentioned I thought it would be an awfully interesting thing to be in the midst of a bird migration and the Empire State Building being the highest thing being on earth a fifty mile about the Earth would put me up in the midst of these flocks of birds that were streaming over the city in the long flight south in the fall so one October night I spent the whole night at the top of the Empire State Building and the birds were coming down the Hudson River flyway they were coming down the coast of New England and they were all converging over the city I could hear the sheep and the cries of these birds being passed in the in the box over this vast lake of illumination by the infinite number of pinpoints of light of New York City and the only unexpected thing that happened that night occurred about three o'clock in the morning one of the night watchman had not been. Told I was going to be at the top of this tower and he came on the Suddenly as I was leaning over the parapet with the wind. Blowing my hair on end and I know exactly how it feels to be human like a lunatic. He just sized me up and kept his distance and apparently came to the conclusion that I was mental nitroglycerine because he said hello but what are you doing playing nightwatchman. I told him No I was looking at the bird that didn't help a bit. What some of the other things that I've done in this. Most enjoyable process of doing what I want to do and getting paid for it is to have this in effect Gardenhire for fifteen years I planted things that will attract insects where so I can study them and I can watch them and photograph them also won the summer I spent considerable time in a lonely little crappers cabin way back in the Maine woods on the Canadian line and. These things were always very interesting and I They went into the various books but I have effort to spot the most fascinating of all the things that I've done with this long trip with a spring that has been going on has told you about we get kept pace with the spring as it came north and what a wonderful day today would be in the gloomy day like this to start out with out of the Everglades where spring begins and then just drift north with it all during the spring season the Everglades are the place where for the North American continent spring begins the thought of a no man's land down there there's an intermingling of fall plants and spring plants they the fall plants bloom in the spring the spring plants bloom in the fall and then when you get above Lake Okeechobee in the Kissimmee prairie where we saw the first violent then you begin to have a definite changed when spring comes violets where the flowers that we saw all the way from Florida to the Canadian border they're almost like the footsteps of spring going ahead of a dog what we first saw Margery can and Rawlings took us out to the little sink hole in the Big Scrub that she had used as the silver gland where Jodie built his ladder mill in the urine and all over that the sides of the steep descent of that grand with a solid mass of white dog like and all the way through the mountains and along the sea coast into New England we had dogwood before and one. Day in the Blue Ridge Mountains we went in and out of spring all day long we would go up on the ridge an altitude would carry us back into winter and we go down into the valley it would be almost like diving down into a wave with foam on it because the fruit trees would be in bloom and the whole air would be perfumed with the spring flowers and we go up on the ridge again and we received in the season we go down the side of that ridge on the other side and we'd come back in the spring again it was like a giant roller coaster a hundred miles long going in and out of spring and all the way. During that hundred miles we had wall around us the most colorful little bird we have are they warblers and they had poured over the mountains during the night and spilled all down those ridges and there were warblers everywhere and we saw one third of all the waters east of the Rocky Mountains on that one day and if the blogger way we went out with a herb woman in the Blue Ridge Mountains we stop of the vast modern like loft where earth had been collected an herb company had people local people out looking for a ball over the mountains and we walked down the floor of this loft where there were mounds of marks on the roofs and by them and we asked who would be a good person to blot with to see how the earth gathered in the mountains gathered the earth and they gave me a graph I said after Mrs towing Miller and quite hot all off Happy Valley on the road to Blowing Rock. We found her there and we spent the day with her most of the time gathering balsam by Balm of Gilead buds and various types of things that the herb Gather gather to use terms that we've never heard which he referred to plants as bad man's oatmeal and Adams flannel and things like that with were local names for the various plants. Near crying on one of the most memorable sights we had was I Trillium glance I little mountain land with the side covered from top to bottom with a man red and white filling in the gloom there were a paddock and Bloodroot and spring beauty and other flowers but the Trillium predominated and in this glance I think that a. One of the most curious things that we encountered in the region of the southern Appalachians was a vertical migration of birds normally we think of birds starting in the north and flying south on the map and then they fly back up again but these birds in that region make a vertical migration they go to the top of the mountain in the summer and nest in the top of the mountains and they go down into the valleys in winter and going up and going down is the equivalent of going north and going South Carolina juncos and some other birds made this vertical migration. A trip like ours made us realize the variety and the beauty of the North American natural history it made us understand what the American naturalist beyond world meant when he said I'm in love with the world no place else. In the on the globe that I know of has the rioting and the interest in the beauty of the natural history of our eastern seaboard here in the United States the very last hour of spring off brought the most memorable bike I think of the whole trip we wondered all during the journey of a hundred thirty days just what the last they would be a light breeze wondered what it would be rainy weather would be an anti-climax or not and you remember that Mark Twain bad. Famous Men should make up their last words ahead of time because if they left on the spur of the moment they didn't say anything or not or they would otherwise. And if we had made up the last day ourselves to come to conceive anything it would be more striking than what actually happened during Franconia not working on a bounce on the back mom and the last evening looking out over the gale river dreams that ran down the mountainside to this river after sunset the cooling of the atmosphere produce milk which rose from the spring so that there were rumors of mist above rivers of water whining above the trees down into the valley and the sun that one of the most brilliant flaming sunsets of all the trips into this net father looked like the waving slowly moving tongues of flame about between. When we got back to. The. Bridge. Hundred miles. And I remember we slapped. The turn of. The on. With all kinds of experience. Under the ground and the back. Light study. Writing about it. And collecting it's more. Of. A one time. Educational motion picture and. Knowledge. In court. With. Copyright of plagiarism. On. Many of them and. Among them. The. Barbershop ballads and the Guide to Great. The man title. And several of them have been reprinted in the modern library and increment. With the most important work I think. Popular in America this book is just what the pride of. It covers a great deal of ground and is done with genuine scholarship. Interesting and useful. All of. The background. Of the professional uses of music radio television concert and opera. But out of his wide experience and practical judgment should run. On opportunity. You know that all those people who would like to make a living by the. Way are not necessarily great musicians but they. Can find a prostitute muse and with pleasure at the same time the plain profit of stimulus topping that. Little endeavor dissident such places will. Develop the press. Vocation. He asked. Perience some observations in conclusion that should be extreme to young people after and I'm glad to introduce you to a man with much to increase our knowledge of music and our plans. For. The US. Madam Chairman Ladies and gentlemen I ask your indulgences. If I talk from the piano because when you talk about music sooner or later you have to let music itself to some of the talking and I think it was my friend Richard Connell like Richard Connelly was that at one time that I was practically naked without a piano. Using the piano as a garment and as a an assistant I would try and tell you very quickly one or two of the more serious things about opportunities in music and then finish up as I usually do by showing you the funding that people can have with music because that has been my belief all through that music called the great majority of people must be a recreation again so that you can actually pursue music performance versus the listener and then eventually perhaps even as a participant now to take the serious part first of this book opportunities in music is as it has been done had a handbook and it was published as one of a series by the publishing firm of hateful guidance manuals they have books on all sorts of vocational professions jobs which are distributed by them to the colleges in the schools and it was some years before they came around to tackling music and when it was suggested to me that I might like that but I was glad to try it although frankly it was not an easy job I'm glad that Mr teal spoke of turning a hobby into a profession because that frankly is what I've done with music I found out very soon in my life. That I would be foolish to try to be a professional performer sometimes I play the piano a little bit you'll realise why I asked if I had the Left my voice in song you'll realize it's still law but luckily I found that since music was the thing that interests me most the thing that gave me the most fun I could turn it into a job into a profession partly through this rather unique idea of being a two detective which was meant cheaply to persuade people to listen to music and then also to these other outlets ending finally actually in the law courts where I have to tell it to the judge now and then not just in a nutshell the idea of this book opportunities in music which is now being distributed also biographic been done live in the bookstores is aimed at the people who even vaguely think that they might like to do something with their musical talents or their musical enthusiasm and I make the point very strongly that if you're going to make a career of of music as a profession you first of all have to have something to sell you must have not only an extraordinary talent you must have practically genius today because the competition is terrific but granted the two have that extraordinary gift something that people really want to listen to you're only at the start because then you must treat that talent exactly as a man would create his private business you are setting up your own business in effect what you have to sell is the same as a patent that a man might have the exclusive control of you have your own talent that is you that is the thing you have to sell if you can establish a reputation that your name which is very important in music today becomes as it were a trademark. Now having the patent and the trademark you still have to find capital and ways of bricks and dyes and that material and that is a great problem and I try to be thoroughly honest in this little book I don't try to discourage them at the same time I try to remove the glamour which has been such a menace to musical careers and finally after showing them the difficulties and the problems of the professional career in music I optimistically point out a lot of other jobs that there are in music not only the people who can do as the average businessman will do who has not the capital to start his own business but who gets a salaried job and works up gradually from a shipping clerk to a vice president say it may be he doesn't have to invest his money he is working at the thing he does best and he gets there in another way that it's possible in music working in orchestras working on radio doing all sorts of jobs which are not in a sense careers of a spectacular type and finally getting down I'm not even speaking out of teaching which obviously is an enormous field for the people who are adequate performers and who are excellent teachers but finally getting down to such jobs as selling security over the counter doing publisher day in a manager Ariel plant whatever it may be there are ways of using your enthusiasm for music and so the whole problem which I've tried to answer in this book is to find the right opportunity to face it honestly not to try to do something you are not equipped for but to do the thing that you are equipped part of the best of your ability and I think with that much we can dismiss for the moment the serious side of opportunities in in music. Eventually I always come back as I've already said to fun with music that happens to be the title of another little book of mine and I have been absolutely sold on the idea that music should not be limited to the few people of talent that music is not a special privilege that music is something that in which everyone can take some part in some way first of all as a listener and then perhaps singing in a group most of us have done that some time or other eventually getting actually around to playing a little bit on some musical instrument I use the piano today because it happens to be the handy instrument there are plenty of other possibilities however there are piano accordions are harmonicas article Ailey's guitars saxophones and so on and I believe that we need today more bad musicians that I would apply to music the same principles that are applied to golf if it weren't for the dubs golfers golf would have died long ago it couldn't subsist on the experts if we didn't have a lot of horrible bridge players all over the country and I know because I've played with em. There would be no bridge we couldn't depend on a few experts so I'm for the musical dub but I want people to have a little fun I want them to pick out a few chords at the piano and I say So long as you like it that's all that matters don't ask anybody else to listen to you they might not like it but do it for your own pleasure so I'm going to take the remainder of the time a lot of to me and show you very quickly here at the piano how anybody can talk and play the piano in five minutes without a lesson. It sounds like a big order but actually if you think of it as music for fun if you think of it as recreation then forget all about the art especially with a capital A you'll find that this actually can be done now of course it's primarily a joke but I've done this sort of a stunt for Road Runner in quantised clubs for high school kids and all kinds of audiences and they actually go home and do it they print it isn't hard so you don't have to take it entirely as a joke and here's the way we start. Well I persuade them to sit down at the piano back to find someplace I have to get them to open the piano first and a lot of our pianos are closed up. They have nice Paisley shawls on top some books and flowers and a lamp people have forgotten that a piano is a musical instrument and not just a piece of furniture So first of all I say let's open the piano and I say sit down relax look at this very nice lot of black and white keys in front of you eighty eight of them altogether if it's a full size keyboard you don't need that many you can get along with a couple of dozen of the outside immediately you notice that these keys run in a definite pattern and you'll find all music runs in patterns same as carpets curtains wallpaper whatever it might be. Pattern the Jew immediately see in the keyboard is the pattern of The Black Keys which run in threes and in pairs if I'm talking to masculine audiences I remind them that that's a very good hand three of a kind of pair a full house but. We'll skip that today now or if you play those five black keys in a row from the bottom up anywhere in the keyboard. You're getting one of the oldest patterns in or music the old five tone scale. Goes way back to the old days if it turns up in the folk music of practically every country in the world and that may be one reason why so many people think it's easier to play on the Black Keys than on the white there's no real reason for it but they start in like this. Quite a familiar sound I think in some of our home that is not what I mean by playing the piano but if you want to start that way it's all right with me so long as your start that's the important thing my reason for pointing out the Black Keys the pattern the old five tone scale is because with the help of that pattern anybody at all and immediately find one chord having found that one chord you can immediately play an entire piece that's what everybody wants to do play a piece right away no practice no scales no exercises to write down to play. It's not as foolish as it sounds I think the scales of the exercises have not only been a complete waste of time and a great majority of cases. And I say this deliberately I think they've been worse than a waste I think they have an axe or menace to music I think they have made enemies to music instead of friends and in fact by turning music into a drudgery which it is for the big artist but should be only for one out of ten thousand for the rest it should be fun and our old fashioned piano teachers have actually killed that natural instinct for music that all people have so let's forget about all that let's see how you can actually sit down and play a piece immediately Now here's how you find that first court that's the important things start you look at the pair of black keys right in the middle of the keyboard there they are you put your right thumb on the white key just to the left of that pair of black keys you're on middle C. that's is going to place to start as any middle say. Just like the Everglades in Florida start on middle C. this time. Now when your right thumb is on middle C. your other four fingers are lying right over the next four white keys all you have to do is drop your middle finger your on your drop your little finger you're on G.. You have three very nice tones harmonizing with each other. Some of your points recognize the start of a of a fairly familiar piece of music. Other words when Mr Johann Strauss wrote his beautiful Blue Danube Waltz he started with those three notes. Which we're now going to use as the basis for this one important core Now anybody can tell that is not a complete chord it's a harmony but you need a bass you need a foundation so we look down the keyboard we see another pair of black keys down below then we put the left thumb on the white key just to the left of that pair of black keys and that's another C. That's an octave below middle C. same note. An octave lower if you're very ambitious you stick out the little finger of the left hand way down there and that's another See now you have. A great big beautiful core. With that one chord doing the play and entire piece of music. Course you have to sing or hum or whistle the melody. But the chord is you're the accompaniment and that's important because that's what makes it sound like a piece and the first piece that I usually try on people with this one chord is our old friend a little wise A J You can accompany the entire tune a little lies again with just that one fork and I don't care how often you played a chord I know you'll keep time people do that by instinct choice if they say play the chord as often as you feel like it that certainly makes it as easy as possible all right your first stanza would sound something like this has got to go out and you. Got to go out and use. The old days out of the you know the. Guys at the well there you are You say you've started and that is the important thing and of course having started you want to go right on so I say for the second stanza play the chord twice as often as you did before.

Post a Comment