Ghosts Listen Too as Band Plays on

By CHRISTOPHER PFROMMER

Young couples lolled on the lawn and elderly ladies leaned out of windows to hear the No. 1 Park Concert Band play at Mount Vernon place last night.

Like a ghost suspended above the square, a stony-faced George Washington raised an arm in benediction.

Like a shadow at the base of the monument, band conductor Gerald Eyth raised his baton and began a martial air. His shoulders lifted and fell with each oom-pah, oom-pah – that happy marriage of tuba and drum

Sprawled at Taney’s Feet

On the north end of the square a bronze Roger B. Taney listened moodily, his head tilted to one side. About 300 citizens sprawled at his feet or sat in folding chairs set up on the square.

“You see that guy?” a teen-ager asked his companions as he pointed to the Taney statue. “On a bet one time I sat in his lap.” They chuckled. “That’s okay, boy, I won a dollar.”

Three shopgirls kicked their pumps off and lay wearily on the grass. Two dirty-faced urchins played tag on the mall.

At the march’s close the band struck up Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” In the fading light General Washington still hovered above like a ghost descended.

Group Singing

The lamps above the bandstand went on and Carroll Warrington stepped up to the microphone to lead group singing.

“Let’s sing, let’s sing…,” he crooned. There was a patter of polite applause when he finished. “Thank you everybody,  now let’s all sing ‘In the Good Old Summertime.'”

He led the song in a sweet tenor and gently badgered the audience to sing louder. A little girl in a blue jersey and dungarees clapped the beat with her doll-like hands too fast.

Puccini Aria Sung

Before intermission, Mrs. Doris Asbell sang the solo number, Musetta’s Waltz from “La Boheme.”

“Quando dome’n vo soletta per la via,” the dark-haired soprano began. She clasped her hands before her in tight embrace as she sang.

The last notes of the Puccini aria died away and the band members set their instruments aside. “It’s a very hot job,” Mr. Eyth said as he stepped from his podium. “Those lights, you know.”

Syllogism In Sculpture

A mother walked her bored son around the square and showed him the four statues which border the place. “Force” and “War,” “Order” and “Peace”: A syllogism in sculpture.

The program resumed with “West Side Story” and a polka. Mr. Warrington led the group through “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

“In the lilt of Irish laughter you can hear the angels sing,” he boomed into the microphone.

Later, the band and audience rose for the National Anthem. They stood a few yards away from the Peabody concert hall where poet Sidney Lanier once played his flute.

On an opposite corner was the site where Francis Scott Key died in 1843.

They were playing his song.