To Soothe the Savage Beast

Jacqueline Kennedy has painted the White House state dining room a gleaming white and gold (it had been what decorators politely call an "Eisenhower pink"), the University has set little colored tiles into the gray walls of the new Health Center, and even Life magazine looks different, but the Brattle Theatre, whatever its program, still plays its one mournful record of brass canzone, of all things, by Gabrielli, of all people.

In olden times, the Brattle had a recording of the 1812 Overture, which was at least close to the proper emotions for a Bogey festival, but this fall, the horns will sound the spaces between the theatre's showings of Hiroshima Mon Amour, Black Orpheus, and even Can-Can. Variety is required: for the first of these three, Norman Dello Joio's Air Power Suite would no doubt suffice; a few bar's of Gluck might enliven the second; and Offenbach is the only answer for the third. Certainly other suggestions are possible, but continuing the present entr' acte offerings is worse than playing Frescobaldi at a Yovicsin press conference.