Clickety-Click update : Plagiarism in the Music-Hall

H.F. Juleene (aka John Parsons)

Of late I've been delving deeper into the overseas exploits of H. F. Juleene and Dot D'Alcorn with their Mephisto electro-musical entertainment.  As stated previously, their Mephisto act was stolen from that of J. B. Schalkenbach, but they toured overseas in places Schalkenbach hadn't set foot.  To its credit, Mephisto attained some originality from Dot D'Alcorn's role as Mephisto's operator; she was described (by Juleene himself) as "the only lady electrician in terrestrial orbit".

Earlier this month The Wire's website hosted a rendition of Juleene's Clickety-Click, performed by Fari Bradley, featuring an electrical clicker built by myself.  The song was published in score form around 1887, and is highly likely to be scored for Mephisto, with the clicks played on an electrical adjunct.

I've made a recent discovery that adds a new dimension to Clickety-Click and demolishes its claims to (musical) originality...

In 1887, Mephisto was touring around the US, playing in Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York.  Incidentally, some curious things happened on this tour - at the Lyceum Theatre in Chicago, June 10th 1887, Mephisto's bare wires were rigged onto chairs to electrically shock the audience at key points during the act.  An old man suffered an injury and sued both Juleene and the management.  Juleene and D'Alcorn saw the potential for publicity in this, and sought to contrive another incident of this sort, which they did later that year at the Brooklyn Theatre by consorting with the management to publicise another - fake - lawsuit.

Compared to other acts of the time Mephisto was a novelty, but it remained a rip-off to a gobsmacking extent: Juleene piled audacity upon audacity.  The new discovery concerning Clickety-Click reveals yet more audaciousness.  Whilst in Philadelphia, Juleene was evidently exposed to a very similar song called Clickety-Click March (c.1881) by Fred T. Baker.  Baker's version also featured the "clickety-clicks" written beneath the score, but the piece did not emerge from any electro-musical context.  Juleene appears to have retranscribed it, slightly altered some parts, and stamped his name onto it when it was published as Clickety-Click in The Musical Million (a weekly periodical published by Dot D'Alcorn's father, Henri D'Alcorn), presumably safe in the knowledge that no UK readers would recognise the melody.  Evidence still suggests that the so-called "electrofanatic" Juleene intended the clicks to be played electrically, but this episode highlights the smoke-and-mirrors nature of the music hall - where all is not what it seems, and everything is touched by piracy.

Plagiarism and priority disputes are still a concern today.  This is especially so in electroacoustic music where compositions are characterised less by 'songcraft' and more by basic 'active principles': harnessing natural phenomena where compositions are goaded to emerge almost automatically with minimal composerly intervention.  Such 'active principles' are so elemental that today's electroacoustic composers often clash over things as simple as amplified beetles on tin foil.  Recently, Prof. Nic Collins visited London from Chicago, and as we conversed on this topic in the King's Arms pub, he gave his own perspective.  Many of his students, he said, often proffer ideas that appear to hold new promise, only be told that "Alvin Lucier did that thirty years ago".  Lucier was Collins' former teacher and was composing experimental music throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s that rigorously employed natural acoustic principles.  Indeed, Lucier has perhaps explored all the most elemental 'active principles' for principle-driven electroacoustic musical compositions.  But anyways... More on this anon.... There's no need to be defeatist about the paucity of unexplored 'active principles', as the principles are incredibly variable depending on circumstances and environmental factors, and there is much variety still to be had from things as elemental as, say, feedback... and clicking...

Clickety-Click - The earliest surviving electrical musical score?

The Wire's website now hosts a short recreation of what is believed to be one of the earliest surviving scores for an electrical instrument.  It is called Clickety-Click and is written by H. F. Juleene (aka John Parsons) - one half of the Victorian electro-musical act Mephisto, starring Dot D'Alcorn: "The Only Lady Electrician in the World".  The piece was published circa 1887.

For the recreation, I built a basic electrical-tapper and foot-switch combo, and Fari Bradley played the piece on Resonance FM's upright piano.  But it should be said that there's no explicit indication that the scored 'click-e-ty-clicks' were specifically intended for an electric adjunct.  However, the evidence strongly suggests it was intended for Mephisto.  (The publication in which it appears - The Musical Million - also published Juleene's The Mephisto Gavotte [referred to in a previous post]).

Clickety-Click isn't entirely representative of the electro-musical style.  One imagines that the scoring of its 'electrical' parts suffers from the constraints of traditional notation, and even the melody itself is wrung through the wringer of The Musical Million's popular stylings.  If we examine the score carefully, the actual sound 'click-e-ty-click' savours of an electric button - connected to an electromagnetic percussor - being pushed twice.  The two 'click-...-ty-...' sounds, synchronised with the first and last beats of the beamed three-quaver chords represent the 'on' state: the leading edge of the trigger, whilst the '...-e-...-click' sounds represent the automatic recoil in the 'off' state.

An actual description of the Mephisto entertainment illuminates the extent to which electricity was employed.  (The thematic and technical aspects of Mephisto were based heavily on J.B. Schalkenbach's electro-musical act):

"Bounding about amid flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, she [Dot D'Alcorn] explains how she means to electrify mankind by her magic powers, and how by the mere touch of her fingers on the keys of the organ storms shall rage, cannons roar, birds warble, churches come into view, ships sail, and railway engines their 'daily course of duty' run.  Presently, sitting down at the instrument, the young lady commences a series of operatic airs, sometimes 'pianisimo' and at other times 'organic'.  But the wonder is that as the music proceeds strange effects are produced.  A canary trills forth its accompaniment, a cuckoo calls, drums hidden away somewhere take up the oracle, and dazzling light flashes out for a moment among the audience and is gone before the people can turn round to see 'what's up'.  Castanets suspended in the air keep time to the melody, and an arrangement of cups and saucers half-way down the hall respond to the musical strains.  A cannon suddenly goes off in the gallery, and before the surprise it has evoked disappears the audience notice a miniature church in one corner suddenly lighted up.  Then, with a whistle and a snort, the circular railway sets in motion; a ship above the stage is seen buffeting with the waves, and a lighthouse throws its lurid rays around.  Vivid lights appear in various places, and as suddenly vanish; flashes of lightning cross the hall, a salvo of artillery is given, the rushing sound of a pelting storm can be heard, and, amid a crash, and peal, and flash of fire, 'Mephisto' disappears."

Dot D'Alcorn aka Susette D'Alcorn in pre-Mephisto days (circa 1883) dressed as 'Gentleman John' - a song that cocks a snook at young men-about-town of wealthy parentage.

More on this can be found in the current issue of The Wire #364...  Click to Clickety-Click to hear the recreation.

LMJ #23 - "Electric Music" on the Victorian Stage

There are many obscure, under-explored sonic marvels to be found in the old music hall annals - I'm rustling to publish a detailed survey soon.  In the meantime, the latest Leonardo Music Journal (#23) features my paper on 'electrical music' in Victorian music halls, focussing specifically on the work of the eccentric Johann Baptist Schalkenbach and his imitators.  In the 1860s Schalkenbach developed an act in which he played on an amalgamation of instruments he called the Piano-Orchestre Électro-Moteur (built around a reed harmonium).  Whilst playing, he would simultaneously trigger musical, noise and optical effects via the electromagnetic triggering of circuits connected to objects placed around the hall.  It's a delicate precursor to the noise machines of the Italian Futurists.  Over the decades, the apparatus gradually became more spectacular as new features were added.

For some years now I've been hunting down ephemera relating to Schalkenbach and his copycats in the hope of shedding some light on the electrical music contraptions.  Precious little information exists, despite Schalkenbach performing for almost 40 years.   LMJ 23's "'Electric Music' on the Victorian Stage: The Forgotten Work of J.B. Schalkenbach" forms the most complete account so far of Schalkenbach's work.  My research also suggests that in the 1870s Schalkenbach assisted in the construction of acoustic magic tricks for celebrated magicians Maskelyne and Cooke.  Schalkenbach's conspicuous absence from the "standard" prehistory of electronic music can perhaps be accounted for by the lack of credible information about the electrical aspects of his Piano-Orchestre Électro-Moteur.  Minor gripes rooted in nationalism possibly also contributed to his present obscurity - one early review states that Schalkenbach's act met with great applause, but: "we fancy it would have gained still greater favour but for [his] singular resemblance to the great German Chancellor Prince Bismarck, which did not quite please some of the audience."

Maskelyne & Cooke's Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. (Demolished in 1905)

Schalkenbach played upon the mysteriousness surrounding "electrical music".  One newspaper reporter presumed that the rain sounds were electrically produced: "in a moment even electricity travels to the roof of the building and also to the apparatus around the hall, and causes vibrations as if a thunderstorm were heard approaching from the distance; you hear the howling of the wind and the downfall of a torrent of rain."   Investigations reveal that, in reality, the electric action was only employed to control a door, releasing buckshot that rattled down concealed descending shafts (later to become a popular off-stage acoustic rain effect).  But Schalkenbach's instrument was nevertheless very sophisticated.   In the 1890s, an electrical journal asked, "was it telephonically or phonographically that Herr J. B. Schalkenbach transmitted sounds to a distance?"  It is unlikely that either of these techniques were employed.  It appears to have been primarily electromagnetic triggering (including percussive sounds, motors, release mechanisms, explosives, detonations and light effects), the possibility of trembling-bell style feedback, and the basic wind bellows with their artful acoustic couplings through pipes and funnels.  Although, there are still many mysteries.

The descriptive, noisy, electrically actuated music pioneered by Schalkenbach was subsequently copied by many music hall acts, including Professor Beaumont (aka John Walmsley Beaumont) "Necromancer and Electric Musician", Herr Renier, and most interestingly, H. F. Juleene (aka John Parsons) and Dot D'Alcorn (aka Susette D'Alcorn), a double act who titled their demonic centrepiece Mephisto.   Dot D'Alcorn is possibly the first professional female performer of an electrical musical instrument.  Juleene and Schalkenbach had an interesting run-in played out in the The Era stage newspaper involving aggressive placement of adverts.

In performance, Schalkenbach played his own music (which does not seem to have survived), and also included selections from operas, such as Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici‬ and The Storm from Rossini's William Tell.   Mephisto on the other hand, was more grounded in music hall styles, and some original Juleene compositions do exist.  Dot D'Alcorn would play the electric instrument dressed as Mephistopheles.  I have transcribed the surprisingly twee Mephisto Gavotte (the electrical parts are not scored) - it gives a flavour of the Mephisto repertoire.  It is a MIDI arrangement:


Schalkenbach and his ilk are particularly interesting in relation to the post-electronic music techniques outlined on this blog and elsewhere.  In 'post-electronics', acoustic sounds are wrought with close adherence to classical electronic music techniques.  Essentially: acoustics aspiring to electronic sound.  In Schalkenbach's art, acoustics likewise aspire (or are styled) to 'electric' sound despite the utter non-existence of any "electric music" listening paradigms at that time(!).  Schalkenbach produces acoustic sounds - musical and non-musical - distant from the console, and presents them enigmatically as electrically produced sounds - sounds of mysterious provenance: the beginnings of sound art.

More coming soon...

Leonardo Music Journal #23 is out now.