Hold the elephants

In EM Forster’s Howards End is a celebrated description of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony at the Queen’s Hall, which the author called the “dreariest music-room in London”, though its acoustic was sadly missed after its destruction in a German bombing raid. Helen Schlegel the heroine whispers: “Now comes the wonderful movement: first of all the goblins, and then a trio of elephants dancing.” Forster does not mean to suggest that she is a musical half-wit, merely that she responds in rather concrete terms. Viewers of the BBC version of the novel this week have found that goblins are the least of it and that the elephant dance troupe has been augmented to ensure the dialogue is drowned out. Unlike the piano that follows the cast around, inaudible dialogue is perhaps like real life. For drama, it is, though, disadvantageous.