The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 31

Music mm Rosemary Joshua and Sally Bugged by something fungi about the little rotters some socialists in exile until late in 1914. It saw itself as the only free, independent German-language newspaper in Europe and perceived Britain, in the light of Germany's invasion of its neighbouring territories, as the last free haven in Europe. The newspaper had the approval of the British government. In what it published in its political, economic and cultural sections. Die Zeitung opposed Hitler in everyway it deemed possible.

The editors were soon encouraged to distribute the newspaper abroad. The success of the subsequent "overseas edition" is reflected in its own transformation from an eight-page fortnightly newspaper into a 12-page weekly. In June 1945, with Hitler's Germany defeated. Die Zeitung declared that it had reached its goal and ceased publication. The editors felt that the tasks facing journalists in post-war Germany should be tackled by a different newspaper.

Die Zeitung had always been regarded as a war-time initiative. A full set of the British Zeitung is available for consultation in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. Despite the paper shortages facing the country, the government of the day permitted several foreign-language newspapers to be printed in London a situation eventually challenged in Parliament in June 1943. Dr Donal McLaughlin. Department of Languages.

Heriot-Watt University. Edinburgh. QUESTION: Printed on the labels of many compact discs are initials such as BIEMSTEMRA or BIEMMCPS. To what do they refer? THESE initials can be found on all formats of recorded music, such as records, cassettes, compact discs and other derivatives. They refer to the collection societies who license the mechanical reproduction of copyright music on behalf of composers and publishers.

For example. MCPS (The Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society Limited) is a British society. When the initials are printed on labels of recordscassettescompact discs, it implies that the manufacturer has been granted a license to reproduce recordings of specific compositions and has paid or has agreed to pay the appropriate royalty to the society for subsequent distribution to the individual publishers and composers. Paul Mooney. Ardent Music.

Co Durham QUESTION: I sometimes find myself humming a song from a 1950s children's TV programme: "Billy Bean built a machine to see what it would do, He built it out of sticks and stones and nuts and bolts and glue." Who was Billy Bean and did the director, producer or Billy himself go on to achieve greater things? YOO HOO the cuckoo on "Billy Bean and his Funny Machine" was the protege of a Mr Ivan Ow en, who later went on to have a hand in the booming success of Basil Brush. He discovered Basil in 1964 in an act called "The Three and the two have been hand in glove since. Posterity does not record the fates of either Yoo Hoo or Basil's other two scampy co-stars no one else has lifted a finger for them in years. Ian Potter. National Museum of Photography.

Film Television, Bradford. QUESTION: Why can't someone design a urinal that docs not splash back? NATURE has provided the ultimate in non-splash urinals, in the form of privet and other small leafed hedges. Tim Hogan. Welwyn Garden City. Herts.

i IS THE questioner bragging or complaining? Alan Thornton, notion. Lancashire Compiled by Joseph Harker BUrgeSS HENRIETTA BUTLER gerous predator whose sexual advances carry the threat of violence. And there's genuine contempt in the way the Italians switch allegiance to Octavian so that the third-act trickery carries a sense of genuine humiliation. Otherwise the ferment of society in 1912 is hardly suggested, and despite Miller's parades of busy-extras nothing disturbs the mechanics of a well-oiled rococo machine which once in each lorn; act Gener ates a moment of transcendent musi cal beauty. It was Hans Keller who once observed that where other com posers have a heart Strauss has a pool of sentimentality, and for the sake of that Act 1 duet, the Presenta tion ot the Kose and the Trio, the audience is asked to forgive a lot, and tney get little trom Miller production to hold attention from one gilded moment to the next.

The golden moments here come from Sally Burgess's Octavian, Rosemary Joshua's Sophie and Anne Evans's Marschallin. Burgess looks fine and acts wonderfully, but her singing on Wednesday was not as assured as usual and lacked convincing penetration at the top. The Evans Marschallin is a beautifully rendered, slightly reclusive figure; there's always the feeling that this princess is keeping something back, though it was the conductor's fault not hers that the Trio ran out of steam. Joshua's performance is the real highlight, wide-eyed with innocence and silvery-toned and precise in every phrase. There is a finely drawn collection of supporting parts (especially Maria Moll's Marianne and Christopher Booth-Jones's Faninal); Ochs's retinue is a real rogues' gallery.

John Tomlinson's Baron does have more dark depth than usual, even though sometimes his swagger becomes caricature, and his forthright delivery certainly ensures that most of the text gets across. Words, though, are a problem throughout the evening. Yakov Kreizberg from the Berlin Komische Opcr makes his Coliseum debut in the pit and veers between the lugubriously slow and the stridently frenetic; little of the first act text could be heard until the Marschallin's final aria. There's nothing in the show though, which could not be sharpened up in future. In rep al the Coliseum.

London. porary Europeans like Debussy but with a rhythmic energy that is very-much Griffes's own. Sessions's Second Sonata is tough and uncompromising but one of his finest pieces. Certainly Sessions's note-heavy dialectic is a long way from Morton Feldman's gently lapping harmonies and spare, laconic gestures. The disc of his 80-minute Piano and String Quartet seems to me one of the most valuable things the Kronos Quartet has done in its high-profile career for some time.

Feldman's late music demands a light touch and serene concentration: the basic material of the work is just a simple scale pattern in the piano and a held chord for the strings, but the ways in which this material returns with its contexts varied are haunting and compelling. Feldman emerges as one of the most significant composers in post-war music. The tribute to John Cage, assembled in aid of the New York-based Gay Men's Health Crisis, is predictably and appropriately uneven. It mixes performances of Cage's own works the late Frank Zappa makes a verison of the most notorious of all Cage pieces. 4' 33" while others offer their own specially composed tributes.

It is a thoughtful and loving memorial to the most provocative and influential American experimentalist of them all. QUESTION: Are bacteria animals or plants? How do we know? BY ANCIENT reckoning, bacteria are plants. By modern criteria, they are neither animals nor plants, but moncra. Until the 1960s, organisms were placed in the animal kingdom if they were irritable, mobile and heterotrophic, and in the plant kingdom if they did not have the characteristics of animals. With the advent of electron microscopes and molecular biology, the ancient categories have been revised.

All recent taxonomies recognise at least four kingdoms: monera (which are organisms without cell nuclei), animals, plants, and. of course, fungi. Monera have cell walls of muco-protein, plants have cell walls of cellulose, fungi have cell walls of chi-tin, and animals have no cell walls. Donald Rooum, London SW2. QUESTION: Who changed the name of Richard to Dick? Why? 11 THIS came about, first, through the very common shortening of names for example.

Will for William, Sim for Simon, Gib for Gilbert, and Wat for Walter. These short forms were then subjected to rhyming process. Some examples are: William Bill; Robert Hob. Bob; Roger Hodge; Molly Polly. Dick is one of the earliest to be mentioned in records, in 1220.

During the 13th to 15th centuries, it is probable that the majority of peasants were called these short and rhyming forms. Such names resembled the Old English names which had been generally used before the Norman Conquest. Because these forms were usually for the peasants, they gave rise to use as common nouns, such as: JackDick manfellow; hodge country labourer. Ann Addison. Nuneaton.

QUESTION: During the second world war, a German-language newspaper. Die Zeitung, was on sale in the Welsh village where I was evacuated. Why, and what happened to it? DIE ZEITUNG was conceived in the summer of 1940, at the time of the Battle of Britain, and first published on March 12, 1941. From January 2. 1942, a 12-page weekly replaced the original four-page daily newspaper.

The last edition appeared on June 1, 1945. Die Zeitung was created by and for German-speaking refugees, but boycotted by yj.ui.i.uuuiAj IN THE late 1960s, some aggrieved citizens on the Isle of Dogs tried to declare indepen dence from the rest of Britain. Can anyone remember what this was about? Could such an attcmnl ever be a feasible revolutionary act, I wonder? Helen Pearce, London. IN Trafalgar Square in London is an empty plinth sited at the top left hand corner. Was there ever an intended statue for that place li so, wny is it still unoccupied? If not, any suggestions as to which person, living or dead, would be suitable to place on it now? Mrs Trixie Latter, 7.ec, London.

was still intact but only just, and was about to be blown away for ever. Peter Davidson has provided fine-looking, spacious sets. There is a slightly foxed grandeur about the old aristocracy (there's nothing very sumptuous about the Marschallin's bedroom in the first act), while the nouvcau riche Faninals open up their glass and gilt palace for the presentation of the rose. Sue Blanc's costumes are smart and finely detailed. But though the frocks may be different the frippery of the piece remains the same; this is Miller's first new opera production in London for more than six years and his first ever Rosenkavalier, but the approach is a familiar one; the relocation of the opera turns out to be a purely cosmetic exercise, just as superficial and unrevcaling as a fascist Tosca or a prohibition Rigoletto.

There may be a sharper edge than usual to some of the comedy: this tweedy Baron Ochs is more than an absurd rogue with a fondness for a quick grope, he just could be a dan- COW ELL: Persian Set, Hymn and Fuguing Tunc, American Melting Pot, Ofd American Country Set Manhattan COClark (Koch 3-72320-2H1) A Henry Cowed Concert Chris Burn (Acta 7) The American Innovator; piano works by Adams, Ives, CowrcJL Nancarrow A Cage Alan Feinberg (Argo 436 925-2) Piano sonata; SESSIONS: Piano sonata no IVES: Piano sonata no 1 Peter Lawson (Virgin 769316 2) FELOMAN: Piano and String Quartet Yukio TakahashiKronos Quartet (Eleklra Nonesuch 7559-79320-2) A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute ZappaTudorOnoAndersonCaleMonk SakamotoAshley (Koch 3-723B-2. two CDs) Babbitt is represented by two of his least didactic, most unbuttoned pieces. But for the sake of miniatures like Ruth Crawford Seeger's Study and Ives's Study No 20 the disc is well worth investigation. Peter Lawson's recital packs far more weight; all three of the American sonatas he includes are impressive pieces, and are delivered with due seriousness. Only Ives's First could be thought remotely well known, but Charles Griffes's Sonata is a fine, highly wrought work with a harmonic feel that's close to contem Best omitted from an omelette a salmonella bug science photo library WHEN classical music is presented on radio, we are usually-told what key it is played in.

Why? Who cares? Roy Twitchin. Soutigaie, London X-J. 1992 lp and 2p coins are strongly attracted by a magnet. Coins minted in previous years are not. Why? Alun Jones.

Monmouth. Cwent. AN ELECTRICIAN once told me that fluorescent tubes should be arranged at angles to each other, because the polarisation of the light causes some sort of problem if they are mounted along parallel lines. What sort of problem, and why do I see them lined up on the ceiling of my local superstore? Will Milm: London. WHY did human beings lose their fur during evolution? It is surely still necessary, and has only resulted in us having to manufacture the replacement or to kill animals? Per Bogstad.

Ham. Surrey. Answers should be faxed to 071-239 9935 or posted to: Notes Queries, The Guardian. 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. Please include a telephone number if possible.

A book. Notes Queries Volume 4, is now available from all good bookshops. It is published by Fourth Estate, price C5.99..