Music: Ring Dem Bells

One way to study American regional history is to listen to the music of Ferde Grofé. Among his nine schmalzy suites are musical chronicles of the Hudson River, the Mississippi, Death Valley and, most famed of all, the Grand Canyon. Last fortnight Memorialist Grofé. a vigorous 68, got around to San Francisco. Before an audience of proud local citizens, he conducted the première of his golden-gaited San Francisco Suite, tracing the fortunes of the city from gold-rush days to the present.

As always, Grofé's musical method was simple: if you want to evoke the idea of a gun fight in a saloon, fire a gun; if it is fire engines you are after, ring a fire bell. Ferde's 1933 Tabloid Suite, inspired by the New York Daily Mirror, was even scored for typewriters. The San Francisco Suite consisted of four descriptive movements—"Gold Rush," "Bohemian Nights," "Mauve Decade" and "1906-1960"—all of them as cliché-ridden as any Mirror Sunday feature. But the composition was stuffed with enough acoustical effects to keep any Grofé fan awake and happy: a clanging cable-car bell, a foghorn, Chinese gongs and temple blocks, the clippity-clop rhythms of a hansom cab. The most rousing movement was the last, which was chiefly devoted to the great earthquake (Grofé's simulated explosions had several musicians leaping in terror from their seats). The piece ended with a fanfare based on Hail to California!, an old University of California song.

Manhattan-born Composer Grofé, who lives in Santa Monica but has not yet written any music about it, laments that he is "running out of suites" and talks wistfully of doing "one big symphony" based on either War and Peace or the life of Abraham Lincoln. Much modern music, says Grofé, leaves him cold, including the later works of Igor Stravinsky. "Sometimes," he says, "I feel I must take a course in music appreciation. If I understood modern music I might write that way myself."