January IP, 1922 MUSICAL COURIER 22 SAINT-SAËNS AND FRENCH ORGANS A FRENCH ORGAN OF 1450 Photographic copy of an old drawing made for the Musical Courier 6y Clarence Lucas. deur and majesty of Bach. Saint-Saëns was a profound admirer of Bach’s organ works. The fact remains nevertheless that French composers have not been able to write organ music which is epic in style and devoid of the sensuous charm of orchestral effects. Clarence Lucas. is a constant interchange of operas, the operas of each country being sung, translated, of course, in all the other countries. They argue that English cannot be sung, which, in view of the successful songs, oratorios and light operas, is the veriest nonsense. And they argue that there are no American singers; that the singers being Italian the opera must be Italian. But if you read the Musical Courier and note the number of Americans who are actually starring in our opera houses you will know that that argument is also utterly absurd. No! Those arguments are meaningless nothings, excuses, prejudices, traditions fostered by people who would rather drift along than exercise their prerogative of change. What is lacking is the will —nothing else—and that will is being built up by the efforts of the Opera in Our Language Foundation. But it must also be aided by American composers. Their care, their first care, must be to write to good English librettos (whether on American subjects or not is a matter of no consequence) and they must write with due regard to the English inflection. Let the composers all get together and back up Mrs. Freer and the Foundation with sincere and genuine effort to make an American school of opera, and the last excuse for opera in foreign languages will disappear. ------- BRAVO PITTSBURGH! “Ask for good music every day wherever you happen to be” is the slogan of what has proved to be a practical movement for the betterment of public taste in Pittsburgh. The movement was started by the Musicians’ Club and consists of furnishing a list of fifty-two works of unquestioned musical excellence, one for each week in the year, and persuading orchestras to play these pieces. If the orchestras do not play them, people are urged to ask for them. Among American composers represented on this list are Edgar Stillman Kelly (“The Lady Picking Mulberries,” week of April 10), Charles Skilton (“Indian Cradle Song,” week of August 21), Ethelbert Nevin (“Love Song and Country Dance,” week of November 27), Cadman (intermezzo from “Shane-wis,” week of December 11), and MacDowell (“To a Wild Rose,” week of December 18). Here is an excellent idea and one that can not fail to produce valuable results both in the way of advancing public taste and in increasing interest in music. It would be still more valuable if the entire list of fifty-two compositions were made up of works by American born composers. If the movement could then be made nation-wide, it would soon become a greatly sought-after honor to be “on the list of fifty-two.” ----<•־--- PAGE MR. GLUCK Dr. Erich H. Müller, of Dresden, has been commissioned by the Gluck Society of Leipsic to make a collection of Gluck’s letters for publication. Dr. Müller therefore appeals to all Gluck lovers for assistance and especially requests those who have in their possession Gluck autographs to call his attention to these, or, if possible, to place at his disposal for a short time the originals or photos thereof. All such communications are to be addressed as follows : Geschäftstelle der Gluckgesellschaft, Nürnberger Strasse 36 II, Leipsic, Germany. who has heard a fine example of a French Vox Humana will doubt the ability of French workman to produce exquisite reed tones. But the Vox Humana can never be mistaken for epic grandeur. In the Harleian MMS. of the British Museum library is a copy of Froissart’s Chronicles dating from the middle of the fifteenth century and containing the drawing of a French organ Froissart says he heard played at a festival of St. Nicholas held by the Count de Foix at Orthes. The longest pipe on the organ shown in the illustration could not give a note as low as a bass singer can easily reach. It is evident therefore that at least one early French organ was lacking in those ponderous low notes which Herbert Spencer so much admired. As the tendency of the organ has always been to increase in size, it is reasonable to suppose that the organ given by the emperor Constantine to Pepin, King of the Franks, in the year 757, was an insignificant collection of small pipes blown by a hand bellows. France waited more than a thousand years for a Cavaille-Col to build the magnificent organ in La Madeleine church, on which the young Camille Saint-Saëns was to play from 1858 to 1877. It must not for a moment be though that great French organists, like Alexandre Guilmant and Charles Widor, were unable to understand the gran- ELEANOR EVEREST FREER Eleanor Everest Freer has been working for years to advance the cause of opera in our language, and at last it seems that her unselfish effort has been crowned with success. It is announced that a new opera company is being organized by Mrs. Freer and her associates in Chicago, and that this company will give opera in English. Charles Henry Meltzer has been engaged to make suitable translations of operas of the standard repertory, and two works by two American composers are to be given next season as a starter, with more to follow. Meantime an examining board has been selected and is recommending other works by American composers so that other opera companies can have no excuse for not including these works in their repertory. They can no longer say, “there are no American operas.” The Foundation is hunting them out and giving the names of them. The names so far announced are: “Castle Agrazant,” by Ralph A. Ly-ford, of Cincinnati; “The Echo,” by Frank Patterson, of New York—these two to be given next season; “The Spanish Student,” by G. D. Sapir; “Alglala,” by Francesco De Leone; “The Legend of the Piper,” by E. E. Freer; “Shanewis,” by Cadman, and “The Daughter of the Forest,” by Arthur Nevin. That is good, but there is more of it. The Foundation recognizes the difficulty American composers find to complete their big opera scores, and proposes to send three of them to Peterboro for the summer so that they may devote their entire time to compositions free from material care. The Foundation also hopes to be able to aid in printing the piano scores of works accepted for performance. And who is doing all this ? Eleanor Everest Freer. She is being assisted by Edith Rockefeller McCormick and others constituting various committees whose names have already been listed in this place, but the initiative is her own and most of the work has been done by herself. Everyone will wish her the best of success and will hope, with us, that the undertaking will become permanent, or will be able to continue until the effect of its propaganda has rendered its existence no longer necessary. This propaganda is already having a widespread influence. It is getting people interested—that is the great thing—and is convincing them of the necessity of English as the language of opera if opera is ever to mean anything beyond the singing of famous stars to the people of America. In Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia—everywhere all over Europe—opera is a very real thing to everybody from prince to pauper because it is sung in a language they can understand. The “standing-room” and the “gallery” in all European countries is made up of everybody who cannot afford the price of a seat —in America, especially in New York and Chicago, it is Italian when an Italian opera is sung, French when a French opera is sung, German when a German opera is sung. The poor, uncultured American, to whom the study of a libretto would be a difficult thing, simply will not go “to be sung at (not to) in some foreign tongue.” People argue three things—three utterly silly, foolish things. They argue that the European countries have opera in their own tongues because they produce the opera themselves. That is only very partially true. For in all European countries there Camille Saint-Saëns was an organist, not a violinist. For nineteen long years, from 1858 to 1877, he earned the greater part of his income by playing the great organ of La Madeleine Church in Paris. He consequently had every opportunity and inducement to compose organ music. But the qualities required for the composition of great organ music were precisely the qualities this extraordinarily versatile composer lacked. The nature of his genius was essentially lyrical. The heroic, the grand, the epic, are invariably the weakest parts in all his works. His perfect mastery of counterpoint, fugue and form could not make up the lack of that robust breadth of manner of which Handel could never divest himself. Saint-Saëns, the masterly organist, became a highly successful composer of violin concertos, and picturesque symphonic poems. The lyrical beauty of his famous opera, “Samson et Dalila,” has carried it around the world. But the choral works and the symphonies of Saint-Saëns have been weighed in the balance and found wanting in grandeur and strength. And Saint-Saëns hardly attempted any organ music of the least importance. It seems almost incredible that so versatile and prolific a composer as Saint-Saëns should have written so little for the grand organ he played so well. He turned more naturally to the orchestra which yielded him readily those delicate shades of tone color which distinguish all his orchestral pages. Saint-Saëns probably could not have heard music with the temperament of a Herbert Spencer. This English philosopher is not quoted here as a musical authority of anything like the same rank as Saint-Saëns. Spencer was a layman, not a musician at all. But he was a highly cultured lover of music with an English temperament and mind. His opinion of the organ may be fairly set against the average Frenchman’s opinion of the orchestra. We are all of us, composers and musicians included, brought up in passive acceptance of ideas, sentiments, and usages, political, religious, and social, and I may here add artistic. We accept the qualities of orchestral music as in a sense necessary; never asking whether they are or are not all that can be desired. But if we succeed in escaping from these influences of custom, ■we may perceive that orchestras are very defective. Beauty they can render ; grace they can render ; delicacy they can render ; but where is the dignity, where is the grandeur ? There is a lack of adequate impressiveness. Think of the volume and quality of the tones coming from an organ, and then think of those coming from an orchestra. There is a massive emotion produced by the one which the other n'ever produces; you cannot get dignity from a number of violins . . . . Further contemplation of the contrast between the emotion produced by an organ and that produced by an orchestra shows that a large part of this contrast is due to the far greater predominance which bass has in the organ than in the orchestra. It is from the volume of an organ’s deep tones that there comes that profound impressiveness which an orchestra lacks. As a masculine trait, deep tones are associated with power, and their effect is therefore relatively imposing. Spencer meant the sound itself and not the idea the composer expressed by means of the sound of an organ or the sound of an orchestra. He well knew that a great organist, Lefébure-Wély, wrote a number of light and frivolous pieces for the organ, and that a very poor organist, Beethoven, composed many grand and magnificent works for the orchestra. Saint-Saëns, a skillful organist, was too fine an artist to write trivial works for the organ, and was also deficient in musical ideas which were grand and dignified, either on the organ or the orchestra. He had the beauty, grace and delicacy which Spencer says an orchestra can render and the world has paid homage to the charm of his works for many years. French genius in music has always expressed itself in dramatic, rather than in epic forms. Nor is there a great epic poem in the French language. The vivacity and wit of the incomparable Molière are as far from dignity and grandeur as a brilliant genius could make them. French organs likewise always seem deficient in body and solidity to German and English ears. The reason is not because French organ builders lack the necessary skill but because they strive more for variety of orchestral color and brilliancy than for the weight and dignity the organ builders of England and German)׳ seek. An English critic has asserted that the French seem to be lacking in the ability to understand the nature of the organ at all. French organists certainly do not manifest a keen interest in English organ compositions. It can hardly be doubted, however, that Bach himself would prefer a good English organ to an equally good French organ for the interpretation of his works. Delicacy and variety of orchestral color and brilliancy of reedy power are not as necessary for Bach and Handel as epic grandeur is. Organ builders throughout the world look to France for their most beautiful reed stops. No one