Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-12-22

NV ~ , Ho" m say i have sat tom on
the gas mans stool, and you may have
swung your feet from the stars trunk but
| unless you have scraped acquaintance with
| the man in the right-hand corner of the
| orchestra you have missed one of the good
things of life.
Every night fifteen minutes before the
| play begins the call boy cries out, over
ture!' at every actors door. Then people
| in front see a little door under the stage
| open and the musicians crawl out one by
| one The bass viol goes to his stand at
| the extreme left-the prompt side" stage
| people call 1.-THE viola and the Violins
| seat themselves. The piccolo and from
| bone go to the right, and all the other
| players hit into their inches. The con-
| ductor looks around to see if Fritz and
I-mil ard Karl are all ready, and his glance
tails last the way over to the
riSht-the 20. p side-in the tin-shop
corner. He raps for attention, lifts his
baton, then down come the violin bows
the trombone blares out, the bass viol
rumbles. and the little man in the tin shop
bangs away at the drum.
The orchestra might limp along without
the second violin. 1t would not he utterly
wrecked by the loss Of the trombone. but
without the little man in the tin shop it
would not be an orchestra at all.
He does not look so important he sits
there surrounded by his bells and tam
BOURNE, and drums and tlLlngles, and all
the other Instruments he plays. Only the
men in the front row notice him. and to
them he is sometimes u greater attraction
than the leading iady's diamonds or the
soubrettes ankles, as his eyebrows frown
with the snare drums fortissmo his
| mouth witches as he plays the xylophone.
Master of Many Instrumrnts.
The little man in the tin shop" as is
his title in the vocabulary of the theater,
plays more Instruments than any other
two men in the orchestra. He plays the
bass drum, the cymbals the tambourine,
the snare drum, the xylophone, the tri-
angle, the bells, the castanets. the sand
blocks, the clog mallets, fIfteen or twenty
different whistles and if he happens to
have a leader who is fond of descriptive
pieces he must give limitations of nearly
everything on earth.
OF course. he does not play all these
every night, but he knC - them all. At his
right, with string to 1t, hangs the large
metal disk that sounds like Chinese war
gong, and is Ised in Wagnerian selections
The drum is before him. ami with
his foot he works d pedal which plays the
bass drum and the cyTbals. The triaage
hangs beside him. and in box at has feet
is the bewildering array of minor instru-
mentS he manipulateS.
The right-haEd corner OF the orchestra is
always crowded with musical and uIImusi-
cal instruments, but most of these puZZling
arrangements are kept in the music room,
that mysterious apartment beneath the
stage to which the musicians retire when
they crawl through the little door under
the stage and down the stairs that lead
| from it. 1t is not the easiest thing in the
world to get behind the scenes in the Wasp
| iEgton theaters, and if any young sprig
| boasts to you of his familiarity with that
| mysterious and entcing place you may lie
more than half sure that he is drawing on
| his Imagination. The initiated slip in easily
! enough, but if you have no business that
/ carries you to the stage, you are aot like
| ly to go farther than the stagc-doOr. TO
| pass that requires the especial permission
| Of the powers that be, and sometimes the
! powers that be are none other than the
| manager himself. However. if YOU are
| fortunate enough 20 win your way into the
good graces of the conductor of the or
| chestra, you can go into the music room,
| and have all the paraphernalia eAolained
| to you.
If you had been there one afternoon last
week you would have heard the conductor
| explaining the tin shop end.
| THE public said he, likes descriptive
| pieces. 1t prefers the counterfeit sound of
| clog-dance to a List rhapsodie or a
| Gounod mass. The clog. by the way. is
| initiated by the little man in the tin shop
| with two wooden mallets, TO each of which
| is loosely screwed bit of brass, such as
real clog dancers wear on the inner side of
| their heels which jiDgles as the dance is
raped out.
In Descriptive Music.
THE grating of the sand under the feet
of a wing dancer is initiated by rubbing
| together two blocks of wood fitted with
handles and covered with sand paper. The
bells so frequently heard in orchestral Sc
| lections are not bells at all, but bars of
| bell metal The xyophone is a reproduc-
| ton in wood of the same instrument, and
| its hard rosewood bars are laid on ropes Of
straw.
Does it ever get out of tone? Why, yes
certainly, it does as the wood shrinks or
| warps a trihe. When a xylophone note
| drops and needs to be sharpened half
| tone or SO, piece is carefully cut off the
| end of the wooden bar If the note needs
| to be fatted bit the tuner saws into the
| bar cuts piece out of the under side
| 1t needs to be carefully done, and just why
| it is so l have never taken time to think
The bells have a range of two octayes of
| notes in chromatic succession, and are very
| hard to play. The castanets, you see, are
| fastened to handles.
Washington people are very fond of the
| jolly little bits OF description an orchestra
can give. There is, for example, Life on
| the Levee," patrol introducing the whistle
! of a steamboat and the sound of dancers.
| The whistle is simply a great organ pipe,
| and the exhaust of steam as the boat pulls
out (the same thing is used as an imita-
| ton of a railway train) is initiated by
| striking bundle of coarse steel wires
| against sheet IRON
| Then, last summer, the Gable Car" galop
| was played several times. The cornet play
| er struck the gripman's gong with his foot,
| and the rumble of the wheels was simu-
| lated by a heavy wooden wheel with eight
| large iron casters beneath. This was pin
| ned to the floor, and as it was rolled round
| and round on its heavy castors, the imita-
| ton of the noise of the cars was perfect
One of the castors tipped into the air and
| turned rapidly supplied the noise of the
cable while the car is stopped, and the lit
! tie man in the tin shop, industriously rasp-
| ing a row of nails in the orchestra floor
with a broken corset steel, gave a marvel
| ously lifelike representation of the noise
| the grip makes as it closes on the cable.
Another popular piece that the tin shop
| played a prominent part in was "A Nights
Frolic." There was a fire engine in that
and the gallop of the horses was supplied
| by the halves of a cocoanut shell. With
| one of these in each hand the tin shop man
galloped a slab Of marble The same
| thing, by the way, was used in the Cocoa