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Ever since the story ending "Who called that son-of-a-gun a piccolo-player?" won its wide circulation, piccoloists have had considerable difficulty in getting themselves taken seriously. Last week Maurice Van Praag, personnel manager of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony, told another piccolo story:
A Philharmonic piccoloist wandered recently into the wareroom of a phonograph company where a salesman bent all efforts to sell him a machine. Bravely the piccoloist withstood his attack but yielded finally when it was suggested that he go into the laboratory and make some records himself. A fortnight later he went back and the disks were played for him.
"Now!" said the salesman rubbing his hands, "NOW! don't you want to buy a phonograph?"
"No!" said the artist. "I want to throw away my piccolo."
*Other Judiths have been written by Karl Gotze (first performance in Magdeburg, 1887), George Whitefield Chadwick (Worcester, Mass., 1901), Max Ettinger (Nuremberg, 1922), Arthur Honegger (Mezieres, Switzerland, 1925). Honegger's Judith is in the repertoire of the Chicago Civic Opera Company, Mary Garden the Judith. The same legend supplied Emil Nikolaus Reznicek with his Holofernes, first given in Berlin in 1923.
*But not in Russia where his return is forbidden by the Soviet Government.