Memorial to movie magic
QUESTION In the film Brief Encounter, Celia Johnson is shown sitting alone smoking a cigarette in a park near a war memorial with a Vickers machine-gun. Where is this location? Does it still exist? While footage of Carnforth station in lancashire were genuine location shots, much of the 1945 film, including the famous refreshment room scenes, were filmed on a set at Denham Studios, Buckinghamshire.
Within the grounds was a back-lot area where external scenes were filmed. After completion earlier the same year of a film called Perfect Strangers, a town set was left standing and David lean re-used it for some of Brief encounter’s street and park scenes.
The war memorial was a studio mock-up. The figure of the soldier crouched over the machine-gun was actually only two or three feet tall, but made to look larger by clever use of camera angle.
A recent book — Noel Coward Screenplays — confirms the location (the film was based on Coward’s one-act play Still life): ‘Scene 261 external war memorial night (studio) long shot. The foreground of the picture is composed of the war memorial statue: a soldier’s hand gripping a bayoneted service rifle. Beyond it laura is seen as a tiny figure walking toward a seat at the base of the memorial.’
it is a key scene in which laura, lost in thought, is approached by a policeman, the implication being that she is a streetwalker. The humiliation leads her to break off her relationship with Alec (Trevor howard).
Karen Mogg, Luton, Beds. QUESTION What is the origin of the ‘piggy bank’? iT’S often claimed the name is derived from the Old english pygg, a type of dense orange clay used in the creation of a wide variety of containers, jars and cups, and that in the days before banking, money would be stored in pygg jars, leading to the term ‘piggy bank’.
Unfortunately there is no evidence of pygg clay, the term ‘pig bank’ is not recorded in the literature and the term dates only from the early 20th century: ‘The latest novelty — The Pig Bank. You have to kill the pig to get the money — 25c each.’ The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), November 10, 1900.
Devices similar in function to modern piggy banks have ancient origins. A money box dating from the 2nd century BC was found in the Greek colony of Priene in Asia Minor and features the shape of a little Greek temple with a slit in the pediment. Money boxes of various forms were also excavated in Pompeii and herculaneum.
A biblical reference to a money box can be found in the second book of Kings in the Bible: ‘Jehoiada the priest took a chest and bored a hole in its lid. he placed it beside the altar, on the right side as one enters the temple of the lord. The priests who guarded the entrance put into the chest all the money that was brought to the temple of the lord.’
One theory is that piggy banks originated in China during the Qing dynasty. Pigs symbolised wealth and abundance in Chinese culture, and people crafted pigshaped vessels to store their coins.
Others suggest that piggy banks originated in indonesia for similar reasons: vessels dating to the 14th century have been found there. Through trade routes between China, indonesia, and europe, it is possible that the concept of piggy banks travelled from across Asia into europe.
early piggy banks are hardly ever found — they were shattered in order to retrieve the saved coins. But the Victoria & Albert museum does hold some early examples, plain pots from the 17th century and more ornate 18th-century versions decorated with flowers and birds. Pigs, though, are conspicuously absent. Diane Cartwright, Appleby-in-westmorland, Cumbria. QUESTION Why is a musical note set at a frequency of 432Hz deemed to be therapeutic? CONCerT pitch is the universal pitch to which all instruments in an ensemble are tuned, so that they all produce the same frequency when middle C is played (though technically the A above middle C is used as the compass). Today, standard pitch is recognised as having a frequency of A440 hz. historically there was much variation in pitch, but this didn’t matter as long as all instruments in the group were in tune with each other.
in 1711, British trumpeter John Shore invented the tuning fork which allowed accurate tuning to a reference pitch, and this had a pitch of A423.5.
An english pitchpipe from 1720 plays the A380 hz, while the organs played by Johann Sebastian Bach in hamburg, leipzig and Weimar were pitched at A=480 hz, a difference of around four semitones.
in 1834, Johann heinrich Scheibler, a silk manufacturer and acoustics researcher, invented a ‘tonometer’ for accurately measuring pitch, based on an array of 52 tuning forks, spanning a range of pitches from A3 to A4. he was the first to recommend the use of 440hz standard at the Stuttgart Conference in 1836.
in 1859, the French government, acting with the advice of composer Gioachino rossini among others, established by law the Diapason Normal and deposited at the Paris Conservatory of Music a standard tuning fork ‘which was to be the standard pitch or “diapason”’. The frequencies generated by vibrations of this fork were 435hz for A above middle C.
it is often claimed that italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi advocated 432hz as standard, and this is sometimes called ‘Verdi Pitch’. This is clearly untrue. in a letter dated 1884, Verdi made clear his preference for Diapason Normal and formally requested that italian orchestras adopt this standard.
in 1917, the American Federation of Musicians formally adopted A=440 as American Standard Pitch. Following World War i, a little known provision of the Treaty of Versailles (June 28, 1919) adopted A=440 as the standard pitch for all signatory nations.
This 440 hz standard was taken up by the international Organisation for Standardisation in 1955 (reaffirmed by them in 1975) as iSO 16.
The idea that A432 is therapeutic is New Age claptrap. There have been claims that A432 resonates with the ‘heart chakra’, repairs DNA and restores both spiritual and mental health. it is also claimed that A432 tuned music stimulates the right brain, responsible for our most desirable human traits and that the number A432 was integral in calculating the size of the egyptian pyramids.
There are plausible claims that A440 is too lively for early classical pieces; some baroque orchestras are now tuning A415 as a more suitable pitch for their music.
Simon Mellings, Bournemouth.