Oldal 137 [137]
MÁRTON MESTERHÁZI
experiments meant more than the sound stage between two (or four) speakers.
They required discipline in the studio, and carefulness in the technical room:
no chance of unwelcome sputters, no chance of slovenly “holes.”
And “noises” became sound effects. A “noise” is a nearly superfluous must:
it slowly fades in, is modestly present, then slowly fades out. A sound effect
has meaning: with a sudden, steep fade-in, an intense presence, and a quick
fade-out, for example: “Mrs Rooney: Heavens, here comes Connolly’s van!
(She halts. Sound of motor-van. It approaches, passes with thunderous rattles,
recedes.) Are you all right, Mr Tyler? (Pause.) Where is he?”!° Beckett evidently
encourages us to use sound effects, not “noises”; I could just as well quote the
scene of the “up mail” and the “down train.”
In the early seventies (when Jifi Horci¢ka held a modest job in the tape
library of Prague Radio), Gabor was removed, to be promoted to a higher
executive position. The new Head of Drama, Otté Lékay, was one of us:”°
he gave permission, even encouragement, for us to get rid of the “noises” in
All That Fall, and use our own sound effects. Which we did.
And that is the — happy — end of the story.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BECKETT, Samuel: Collected Shorter Plays, London, Faber and Faber, 1984.
MESTERHAZI, Marton: Introduction to All That Fall on Hungarian Radio
News, 11 January 1968.
Beckett: Collected Shorter Plays, 15.
20 Ottö Lekay: The Head of Drama 1971-1985, who was, like us, a script editor, not a party
functionary.
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