Note 48 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
As a specimen of Grattan Cooke's humour, the following incident was related to me by a veteran musician who was a fellow-student of the witty oboeist at the Royal Academy of Music. At one of the early rehearsals of Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" Overture, Cooke was missed from his place in the orchestra, and was soon afterwards seen walking up the room carrying a ladder. "What on earth have you got that for?" he was asked. Cooke replied: "He's written the notes so tremendously high, that I've brought a ladder to get up to them!"