How many "Rataplan"s can you count in these 33 seconds?
rataplan n. A tattoo, as of a drum, the hoofs of a galloping horse, or machine-gun fire. [French, of imitative origin.]
-- The American Heritage Dictionary
by Ken
So this is what I suddenly found going through my head this week. And once it was lodged in there, it was mighty hard to get out. Then it occurred to me that we've never listened to this wonderfully goofy moment from the little one-act farce
Cox and Box, with a libretto by F. C. Burnand, here in Sunday Classics. (Regular readers will know that my admiration for Sullivan as musical dramatist in his partnership with W. S. Gilbert is something like reverence. However,
Cox and Box is the only music he wrote without Gilbert which I return to with real pleasure.) I figured that while the lights are still on here at Sunday Classics, however dimly, we ought to rectify this omission.
In a moment we'll hear a little more music to place the above in context. Then I thought, since the delicious Bouncer of these excerpts is the beloved (by me, anyway)
Donald Adams, we should do some sort of Donald Adams retrospective, but that project quickly got out of hand, so maybe we'll do it some other time. For the record, though, as I recall we've already heard him
in his most famous role, the Mikado (and he's still the best I've ever heard, without even a close second), and also
as Colonel Calverley in
Patience,
as Sir Marmaduke Pointdextre in
The Sorcerer, and even in a snippet from a role that as far as I know he never sang, the Sergeant of Police in
The Pirates of Penzance. (The Pirate King was another of his most famous roles, and we
have heard him in a snippet from that, the incandescent
Paradox Trio.)
I love the idea of a Donald Adams retrospective, but for now, in order to make this a proper post, even a proper "ghost" post, after we've dealt with the rataplanning Sergeant Bouncer, we'll hear quite a different "Rataplan."
OF COURSE WE WANT TO START FROM THE BEGINNING
This is an old Sunday Classics habit, and in this case it's pays quick dividends, as I think you'll hear pretty quickly. You'll also note
very different approaches to our material from our first two conductors, our old G-and-S friends Isidore Godfrey and Sir Malcolm Sargent. For the heck of it, I've thrown in the perfectly solid Overture from the generally lackluster later D'Oyly Carte recording of
Cox and Box, also of basically the "Savoy edition," which chops the show down to a half-hour -- a loss that's almost pure gain.
F. C. BURNAND and ARTHUR SULLIVAN:
Cox and Box: Overture
New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded 1961
Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded 1961
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royston Nash, cond. Decca, recorded February 1978
NOW LET'S MEET SERGEANT BOUNCER
