MUSICAL COURIER
20
February 16, 19 2 2
weeks ago, a benefit at raised prices, brought about $22,000 into the Manhattan, it is said; but the second performance, last week, at regular prices, did not sell out. As a matter of fact, currents of thought have changed so since “Salome” was new that the sensation is largely gone out of the work. To us, seeing it for the first time after ten years or so, it was rather dull. The final scene, with the gruesome head of John the Baptist so crassly exhibited, will always remain repulsive, the acme of bad taste in play, making, just as Mme. Butterfly’s suicide scene is repulsive and in bad taste; but that New York will get righteously indignant over a “Salome” production today is not to be expected. A certain number of professional busybodies, if it is revived, will doubtless use it to advertise themselves, and after abiding a season in the Metropolitan repertory—possibly two—it will give way to something less tawdry and more vital.
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A NEW GUILD
The latest of the “modern” organizations is the International Composers’ Guild, the aim of which is “to centralize the works of the day, to group them in programs intelligently and organically constructed, and, with the disinterested help of singers and instrumentalists, to present these works in such a way as to reveal their fundamental spirit.”
Further, the guild “refuses to admit any limitation, either of volition or of action” (principles that a good many of us have, perhaps, tried in vain to introduce into our every day life) ; and the Guild also “disapproves of all ‘ism’s,’ denies the existence of schools, recognizes only the individual.” The society in its manifesto gives the following list of composers who will contribute to Guild programs: Bela Bartók, Arnold Bax, Alban Berg, Alfredo Casella, Acario Cotapos, Carl Engel, Louis Gruen-berg, Eugene Goossens, Arthur Honegger, D. E. Ingelbrecht, Zoltán Kolady, Walter Kramer, Ethel Leginska, G. Francesco Malipiero, Roland Manuel, Darius Milhaud, Vitezlav Novak, Francois Poulenc, Serge Prokofieff, D. Rudhyar, Carlos Salzedo, La-zare Saminsky, Erik Satie, Florent Schmitt, Arnold Schoenberg, Albert Stoessel, Igor Stravinsky, Karol Szymanowsky, Edgar Varese, Anton Von Webern, Emerson Whithorne. This includes, as will be seen, practically all of the well known modernists and a good many who are less known. The artists who volunteered to present these programs are of good standing. One would have, however, more faith in • the Guild if its director were not the man who had the two most conspicuous chances and made the two most prominent failures to be remembered in New York music for a good many years past.
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THE GOLDMAN BAND
The announcement which has just been made of a transcontinental tour of the Goldman Concert Band will be welcomed with joy. The tour will begin in October, after the termination of the New York summer season, which will be the fifth season for the band in New York.
The concerts were inaugurated on June 10, 1918, when a season of ten weeks was given. During 1919 the second season of ten weeks was given. During 1920 a third season of twelve weeks followed, and then, during 1921, a season of twelve weeks was successfully presented. The season of 1922 will be for twelve weeks, commencing June 12 and ending September 8.
During last season it is estimated that the Goldman Band played to about a million or more people. The average attendance per night was from ten to fifteen thousand, and very frequently double that number. Besides the concerts at Columbia it has been the custom for the band to give additional concerts in the various parks, hospitals and other institutions of the city. The concerts have been educational in character, each program containing explanatory notes describing the music rendered.
This organization has rendered many compositions of the masters that have never before been performed by band. Certain evenings are devoted to the works of some special composers, including Wagner, Tschaikowsky, Schubert, Beethoven and MendelsT sohn. There have been special Russian, Italian, French and American programs. Several symphonies were performed in their entirety.
The band consists of sixty musicians, the personnel of which is made up of the leading wind instrument players from the various symphony and grand opera orchestras. Each member of the band must be an American citizen. Mr. Goldman is the organizer of the concerts and has managed and conducted them from the very start. The coming tour will be under the management of S. Hurok and Roger De Bruyn.
to have won the confidence of its hearers in him and in the players. Stransky’s work in New York, aside from its inherent art, has been of real value in helping to augment the ranks of symphony concert devotees and for that he is entitled to an especial measure of thanks from this community.
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The story of a shortage of $36,000 in the• box office of the Chicago Opera, published on Tuesday of this week in some of the New York dailies, is as a matter of fact nothing new, but merely an echo of the troubles of last spring. Those best informed claim that there was a large shortage and that the person responsible for it was known, but, for some reason or another, was never prosecuted.
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Ten days ago, when the Spanish soprano, Lucrezia Bori, was sick, Alice Miriam, a young American soprano, stepped into the title role of “Snegour-otchka” at a day’s notice and gave a fine performance of the difficult part; last week, when Tito Schipa was ill, Tom Burke, the young Irish tenor, jumped into the part of the duke in “Rigoletto” and won the heartiest approval of critics and audience. One wonders if the operatic impresarios read the handwriting on the wall.
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The consolidation of three orchestras—the Philadelphia and the two local organizations—at Carnegie Hall on February 27, will recall the days of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore and the great jubilees. The proceeds of the concert are to go toward the establishment of a perpetual Walter Damrosch Fellowship in Music at the American Academy of Music in Rome, a fitting monument to the half-century which the veteran conductor has spent in giving America the best in music. The conductors for this mammoth concert are to be Bodanzky, Coates, Mengelberg, Stokowski and Stransky. One regrets, only, in view of the distinctly American character of the proceedings, that the committee did not include at least one native-born son somewhere in the program.
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The directors of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, taking the course which would cause them the least amount of thinking and exertion, have engaged Pierre Monteux to lead the organization for two years more. Mr. Monteux is a better conductor today than when he first came to this country—the Boston Orchestra has taught him quite a little— nevertheless he is not and never will be the strong man who can take the magnificent material in the band and make out of it what it should be. However, now that the decision of the Boston directors has been made there is nothing to be done except to wish both the orchestra and Mr. Monteux the best of luck; only it will be a bit discouraging to continue to see for another two years Carnegie Hall— which every Boston Symphony concert crowded to the doors for many, many years gone by—half empty ever time the visiting band comes here.
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Fable of An Opera Singer: Last December there was in Paris an Opera Singer, who received an Offer to sing Four Special Performances in Spain during the Holidays. Being a Conscientious Person and being engaged to sing in New York late in January, the Opera Singer cabled to ask if it would be All Right should she arrive in New York not later than January 13. The Cable she received in Reply stated that she must be in Chicago not later than January 7; so, being, as already stated, a Conscientious Person, she took the next steamer, arrived in New York on December 28, so as to allow herself plenty of Time to Rest before making her debut in the United States, and immediately sent a Wire to Chicago, asking on what Date she must appear there for Rehearsal. She was astonished to receive an Answer saying that she would not be needed at all in Chicago; so she remained quietly in New York until she made her Debut there on January 26. Moral: Greater Love has no Man for the Opera Management than this Conscientious Singer.
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“SALOME”
There is talk of a production of “Salome” at the Metropolitan Opera House with Mme. Jeritza in the title role, a part which she has sung abroad. As illustrating the New York Times’ idea of news value, that paper on last Tuesday devoted over a column, with top of column headline on the front page, to the story which is related in full in the preceding sentence. Mme. Jeritza, in a sensational role like this, could doubtless sell out the Metropolitan for every one of the half-dozen or more performances that would be given during a season, and this fact is bound to weigh heavily with the Metropolitan authorities. The first Chicago “Salome” here, two
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New York Thursday, February 16, 1922 No. 2184
Cincinnati has renewed its orchestral contract with Eugen Ysaye for another year greatly to the delight and artistic security of that very musical city. Ysaye is one of the outstanding tonal figures of our time and as such occupies a fitting position in the one he now holds.	3
It is funny to listen to the New York reviewers talking about Mme. Pareto as if she were a newcomer to the stage. Mme. Pareto’s career has covered a goodly number of years and she was known long ago in practically all the operatic centers except New York and Chicago. She is a special favorite in South America.
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Having cast the operatic horoscope for next season, we discover that all signs point to an elaborate revival of ־*‘Les Huguenots” at the Metropolitan. And our contemporary, Musical Canada, casting its horoscope, predicts that “Lorenzaccio,” by Ernest Moret, a French work on an Italian subject that was first produced in Paris two or three seasons ago, will also figure in next season’s Metropolitan repertory.	-----------
It remained for John McCormack to go to Kansas City and break the record, as far as S. R. O. was concerned. W. A. Fritschy, well known local manager of that city, informs the Musical Courier that he was obliged to put out the S. R. O. sign twenty-four hours before the tenor’s recent concert there— the first time this has been done in Kansas City. Such a record is not unusual for McCormack, for he has established a reputation for drawing packed houses in nearly all of the cities he visits. Mr. Fritschy was so pleased, however, that he took a photograph of the S. R. O. sign as a personal memento.	^
When Josef Stransky led his (temporary) farewell concert with the Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall recently he was given a reception and an “au revoir” the like of which even the most ancient New York concert goer could not remember witnessing so far as a resident conductor was concerned, particularly one who has functioned at his post as long as Stransky. Time does not seem to wither his popularity nor to stale the enthusiasm of his devoted following. After the “Eroica” symphony the audience rose to its feet, and while standing, cheered and handclapped the conductor, wreaths were piled upon the stage, and finally he was forced to make a speech, which he did in a most felicitous vein and manner, calling the moment the happiest of his life and expressing his pride and pleasure that his years of labor with the Philharmonic seemed