Honegger, Bodanzky, David

The shepherd David, a pale boy staring at a man in armor; David the warrior, huge-thewed and falcon-hearted, marching before the armies of Israel into battle; King David sitting in judgment over his people, stroking the black wires of his beard with fingers that have forgotten the harp; David, old and a prophet, remembering past enchantments and past ills--this cycle in the sounds of a limited wind-choir, a piano, harmonium, celesta, double-bass and percussion, was heard last week in Manhattan --Arthur Honegger's "Symphonic Psalm," performed by the Society of the Friends of Music.

Artur Bodanzky, conducting, called into service the windswept vigor which he acquired last summer at the Lido, Venice, where his lean torso was seen on the beach, wrapped in a gaudy bathrobe. His wife was with him there. Also his son Karl. Also his daughter Elizabeth. He had friends to soothe him, drinks to amuse him. "I ate, drank, smoked and talked too much," said he. Yet spiritual hunger rather than oafish gluttony spoke in the fierceness with which he whipped up the clever and sometimes moving music which Mr. Honegger has written about King David.

David plays for Saul in his tent; the music runs in a march in three-four time, soars to the song of the shepherd--the Twenty-Third Psalm. In the fight with Goliath, trumpets blare in two keys at once.

For the sad war between Saul and David, horns complain in the night; discords rise, resolve; figures whisper and stir in a camp of many tents. Saul goes to consult the Witch of Endor and a whirling wind of ghostly voices imparts to him foreknowledge of doom. Saul and his three sons die in the battle of Gilboa while the Israelites march ("The Lament of Gilboa"). A women's chorus of solo voices proclaims David King of Israel. David's humility has gone flying away with the pebble that burrowed in Goliath's brain; he swaggers and struts before the Lord; calamities confront his house. The music, from a gloating minor, rises steadily with blood-burning cymbals and a strump of drums; David dances, David prances, licks his red-hot lips and glances at Bathsheba. Absalom revolts, is killed. David rides in triumph through Jerusalem to Honegger's march for wind instruments.