People, Nov. 3, 1975

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"I think people were a little confused. They don't think symphonies should be funny," said Painter, Composer and Author (Clockwork Orange) Anthony Burgess after hearing his Symphony C performed for a bewildered but appreciative audience at the University of Iowa. The avant-garde composition began "as an English dance rhapsody and developed into a symphony more or less against my will," explained Burgess. Its finale is "corny, full of schmalz, with a mandolin tinkling away in the background," and at the end "the orchestra plays a single fortissimo chord of C major and everybody goes off for a drink." The music's mystery may be rooted in its unusual creation. Burgess, 58, wrote at least half of his symphony while on a lecture tour of the U.S. earlier this year. "The score was sent to [Conductor] James Dixon from Oshkosh, Wis., without my having checked a note of it aurally," he confessed. "Holiday Inns have Muzak but no pianos."

She became one of the highest-paid models of the 1960s with an 84-lb. body and measurements of 32-22-32. Now weightier by a scant 7 Ibs. Twiggy, 26, arrived at London's Ritz Hotel last week to plug her new autobiography and announce that she is branching out into matrimony. Her intended: American Actor Michael Whitney, 42. "She isn't much of a cook, but she makes a fabulous egg-and-chips and spaghetti sauce," says Whitney of his fiancée, whom he met more than two years ago. Though her modeling and acting careers have faded, the future bride still plans to make an album of love songs before easing into the role of housewife. "I believe that a girl has to be the homey sort to keep her man," says Twigs, who intends to dish up the eggs-and-chips in Rome, where Whitney will soon be making a movie. "He is a bit of a gypsy," she allows. "I would never let him be there by himself with all those fabulous Italian birds."

He is still No. 1 with the jeté set, but at 37, Ballet Star Rudolf Nureyev may be feeling a bit creaky of knee. Friends report that he has considered an acting career, and the aging dancer has been showing up at a London studio to cut his first record. Nureyev, who defected from the Soviet Union in 1961, read the title role of Stravinsky's L 'Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier's Tale) in lightly accented English. He then described his trepidation at leaving his silent art even temporarily. "I usually don't have the courage," confessed Nureyev, "but I arrange things so that I can't escape." Nervous or not, he apparently intends to keep at it. Next spring he will team up with French Mime Marcel Marceau, who will play the devil, and make a film of L 'Histoire.