21
MUSICAL COURIER
February 2, 19 2 2
No one can be a true music critic who fails to refer to the “archness” of any singer who does the role of Rosina in “The Barber of Seville.”
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Those enthusiasts who delight in declaring that America is “opera mad,” might ponder over what W. J. Henderson wrote in the Herald last Sunday: “Some people believe that there ought to be opera in every city in the United States. Others wonder why there is not, if there is a definite public demand for it. Does any one believe that if St. Louis was hungry for opera it would not have it ? Or Cincinnati ? Or Boston ? The last named city had its own opera and refused to retain it.”
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Henry T. Finck cries in the Evening Post: “Oh, for a Nikisch to play the Schumann symphonies for us again and show how much more inspired they are than those of Brahms, which are inflicted on us ad nauseam from October to April.”
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In “Bulldog Drummond,” that highly thrilling melodrama done with a sense of humor, when the “bad man” is brought to bay, his captor asks him: “What made you take up this crooked life?” The culprit answers: “I guess it was singing in the village choir when I was young.”
Willy (at Sousa concert) : “I thought you said that Sousa is the March King?”
Nilly: “And so he is.”
Willy: “Well, I don’t see him do any marching.”
Leonard Liebling.
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NIKISCH
In the death of Arthur Nikisch the musical world of today loses one of its most prominent figures. Nikisch has long been recognized as the greatest conductor of his time and America always felt particularly kind toward the young man who was at the head of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for five years—from 1889, when he was only thirty-four years old, to 1893. In those days he was indeed a picturesque figure with his great shock of black hair, beard and mustache. Since then he has been called upon to conduct practically every great orchestra in the world. Some ten or twelve years ago there was a strong effort to get him to Vienna, as regular conductor of the famous Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra, and an idea of how he was valued in the city where he made his reputation, Leipsic, may be had from the fact that a syndicate of friends and admirers there, in order to retain him in Leipsic, agreed to meet without question any sum which the Viennese might offer him. So at Leipsic he remained and there he died.
America at this moment feels its loss with particular keenness, for he was already contracted to come here for a farewell tour next season, when he became suddenly and unexpectedly—as so many have been in the last few years, especially in Germany—a victim of influenza.
His power over orchestra players was magnetic, almost hypnotic. His gestures in conducting were few but he conveyed his wishes by glances and slight but meaningful movements that were unmistakable. His was a forceful personality—one that will be missed fot many a day.
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MORE ABOUT NILSSON
The house in which Christine Nilsson died, a country home in the Swedish town of Vaxio, Province of Smaland (the cable erroneously reported that she died in Copenhagen), is to become a home for aged vocalists, according to a promise given during her life time. Although the Countess de Casa Miranda (as she was known in private life) possessed a magnificent residence in Paris, filled with art treasures, as well as a villa on the Riviera, it was her lifelong wish to die in her native country. Feeling that the end was approaching, she left Spain, where she was visiting her married step-daughter late in summer, and so passed her last months in the immediate neighborhood of the town in which, as a peasant girl, she played the violin in the market place and the village inns until her wonderful voice was discovered. Already, a few weeks after her death, her memoirs have been published in Swedish. They were not written down by herself, but by an authorized spokesman, and they give a very detailed picture of her concert tours, especially the American one. There are some very humorous accounts of incidents, such as at Nashville, Tenn., where the soldiers stationed in the town were mobilized to defile before the prima donna.
VARIATIONS
By the Editor-in-Chief
A.	—I guess he must be John B., ’cause someone told me H. G. wrote for the papers or wrote a book or something.
B.	—Guess he must be, yeah.
A.	—Yeah, guess he must be. But say, this man Werren-rath is good, isn’t he?
B.	—Yeah, great; yeah.
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Joseph Weber is the famous funmaker of Weber and Fields, and another Joseph Weber is president of the American Federation of Music. The first named Weber was spending his vacation at the Thousand Islands last summer when he received a telegram reading: “Shall we strike?” and signed by the New York Musical Protective Union. The comedian, realizing the mistake in identity, wired: “Do not strike until you hear from me.” The result was that the New York musicians stayed at their jobs and to. this day no one has discovered the perpetrator of the “treachery” which President Weber ascribes to an enemy of his association.
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Somehow, thinking Americans do not feel tragic about the absence of our national great composer when they fall to remembering Franklin, Emerson, Morse, Longfellow, Edison, Poe, Whistler, West-inghouse, Whitman, Fulton, and the Wright brothers.
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Pierre Lasserre’s book, “The Spirit of French Music,” finds it necessary to ridicule and defame Wagner, Mozart and Beethoven, in order to exalt the tonalists of France, for he holds that Rameau occupies a higher place in music drama than Wagner, and in symphony than Mozart and Beethoven. But why stop short? The judicious Lasserre should have added that Lully is greater than Bach, Auber far surpasses Schumann and Schubert, and Lecoq towers head and shoulders above Haydn and Brahms.
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In the New York World, Percy Shostac is out with a defi against those persons who consider jazz a low form of musical creation. Mr. Shostac considers it the typical Americal folk music and says that through it our people have become expressive in art at last. Fie continues, jazzily, but convincingly so far as we are concerned:
First came the sentimental songs, true rhyming with blue, “Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven.” Then the “rags” —“The Barbershop Chord.” Next the old style jazz; rhythm and noise; cowbells and bass drums; no saxophone to speak of, nothing from the heart except rhythm. Then from New Orleans came the blues, those sung in public and the genuine Frankie and Johnny variety heard in the army and in chorus dressing rooms. And from these came the national anthem. Now we have it! They—that is, Paul Whitman, Irving Berlin, Ted Lewis, A1 Jolson and a dozen others, the musicians of America—have gone and done it—written down our folk music. They’ve taken the rhythm of the old jazz band, cut out the noise and substituted the haunting undertones of the blues. They’ve taken a pinch of the sentimental ballad and a pinch of the pseudomystery of the rag. .	.	.
And by the gods it’s real stuff. Music—an appeal to the_ senses, to the emotions. Like all folk music, haunting, insidious, clinging and winding itself into our blood.
In Europe they know this. A concert of American jazz in Paris sees the elite of the musical world in the boxes. When are we going to see it? When is the Philharmonic going to play Irving Berlin’s “Everybody Step”?
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We hope we have not started anything with our occasional references in this column to the sport of horse racing. Here is the Herald informing its readers (under date of a January 28 cable from Paris) that Fanny Heldy, a noted operatic contralto in the French capital, has applied to the Paris Jockey Club for a license as a jockey. The despatch adds that the application was refused, but not without that graceful courtesy .and flourishing gallantry so typical of both banks of the Seine. The Jockey Club considers Mile. Heldy as possessing a talent likely to effect a lasting imprint on operatic art, “therefore why leave before the public,” states the committee, “only the impression of a bright eyed blonde with her limbs attired in bright silks, fitting as tightly as possible, when what the world should remember is a voice of interpretative ability.” Mile. Heldy, not content with the flattering decision, intends to appeal to the Paris courts for a reversal of the Jockey Club verdict. Hitherto the best known lady jockey in grand opera has been Briinnhilde.
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The Herald tells also that piano lessons now cost three cents in Berlin. We took some lessons there years ago from Professor Barth, which we considered worth even less than that, especially the one at which he told us that Liszt composed nothing but “Dreck” (dirt).
Governor Miller,.of our proud State, understands what is wrong with' all of us at the present time. In a recent public utterance he scored his fellow citizens for their extravagance and pretentiousness and declared that no one is content any longer with anything but an orchestra seat in life. The Governor occupies a pretty good chair himself at Albany, and, like most other critics, gets paid for occupying it.
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One of the last of the old fashioned brigade was John Towers, whom we first met twenty years ago in Utica, N. Y., where he, already an old man of sixty-six, was teaching singing, and we, a callow and sallow youth addressed by the town as “professor,” were instructing even younger pianists than ourself in the art of passing the thumb under the hand without jerking that member. Towers told us that he was spending his leisure hours compiling a catalogue of all the operas ever written and looked forward to earning a fortune through the volume. He finally Unshed and published it, but did not make the money he expected, and having become too old to teach, he wound up as an inmate of the Presser Home for Old Musicians (in Germantown, Pa.), whence he used to address humorous communications to this column from time to time. The last of them came Thursday on a post card which good old Towers caused to be printed a while ago, leaving the date to be filled in by some one else. It read as follows:
JOHN TOWERS
B. Feb. '18, 1836, Salford (Manchester) England
D. (and cremated).....Jan. 18, 1922....
Germantotyn, Pa., U. S. A.
He tried his best to do his DUTY and he, very nearly, succeeded.
VALE!
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Lord Redesdale writes his “Memoirs” and “the facts that shine out,” says a review, “are that he sat at Mario’s table and he played for Grisi.” Queer matters to write memoirs about, some might think. »? *e *s
“An optimist,” said Charles M. Schwab, speaking at the Ohio Society dinner, “is a man who expects to sell at a profit to a Scotchman something he bought from a Jew.”
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Or some one who expects to engage a prima donna for less than her regular concert fee and resell her at a tremendous profit to a local manager.
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Germany is tottering indeed and about to crash, when a Teuton finds it in his heart to steal the sword from the Siegfried statue in Berlin, as the cables report. The equivalent—so the world should be told —would be for an American to steal the clapper from the Liberty Bell at Philadelphia.
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Someone overheard the following at a Werren-rath concert in Maplewood, N. J., on January 11, and most happily sends it to this column:
(Before concert.)
A.	—Do you know Werrenrath?
B.	—Yes, quite well—well, rather well. I heard him sing once in New York about fifteen years ago.
A.	—Was he any good?
B.	—Yeah. Guess he’s much better now. You know, they get better.
A.	—Yeah.
(After first group.)
B.	—I knew another singer I heard once.
A.	—Who was that?
B.	■—A sort of a tenor. His name was Wells.
A.	—Which Wells?
B.	—H. G. Wells, I think.
A.	—Oh, I thought he wrote for the newspapers.
B.	—No, I don’t think so. This tenor was H. G. or maybe it was John B. I can’t remember. But he came from Syracuse—or near there.