MUSICAL COURIER
21
ing for fresh surprises and sensations. In the war they had “shock troops.” Where are the new “shock” dramatists and composers?
»?»?»?
From far off Tokyo, David Kanner, of G. Schir-mer, Inc., sends us a Japanese picture postal with the message: “Carrying and planting the service flag of our firm in the Far East. See you next in Shanghai and Manilla.”
H H *t
This invitation sounds most attractive:
Sacramento, Cal., February IS, 1922.
Dear Mr. Liebling:
“The days of ’49 Celebration” that comes here next May is going to be one of the biggest things ever pulled off since the “Gold Rush” and I wonder if you can’t make mention of it in your “Variationettes.”
The main street of Sacramento will not see a street car, automobile, or any modern conveyance for five days. There will be a universal adoption of early customs. Men will have beards, and will dress like miners and frontiersmen. There will be the old time gamblers and the dive keepers. The old Casino will be here. The streets will be literally alive with frontiersmen and women. Pack teams of horses and burros will be common. Wagon trains drawn by oxen will be in evidence. There will be a fight with the Indians as General Sutter and his party land at Sacramento. There will be a “Gold Rush.” In fact everything will be enacted just as near as possible to coincide with history.
I wish that you would make mention of the “Days of ’49 Celebration” so as to keep it before the musical fraternity. Better make your plans to call out this way and take it in. My car is at your service. Cordially yours,
A. Wilmer Oakes,
Sacramento Correspondent Musical Courier.
»? »? »5
Paderewski has been requested to write his memoirs, says Life, but does not state who requested him. That paper suggests as a title for the proposed book: “Remember the Mane.”
*: *, *
The self-determination of unwilling young piano pupils has not yet arrived. The World of Wednesday, February 15, headlines: “Hates the Piano, Girl of Sixteen Runs Away.” She was recaptured by her parents and one account has it that she now is doing double doses of Czerny, Cramer, and Clementi, with some Bach fugue and “Lambert’s Piano Method” thrown in for good measure.
»?»?»?
The attached communication, just received, throws an interesting sidelight on the litigation between Mme. Gadski and the Chicago Opera Association:
New York, February 20, 1922.
Dear Sir:
The statement of Mr. F. T. Kelsey, of Lewis & Kelsey, attorneys for the Chicago Opera Association, in your issue of February 16 in which he says: “The Opera Association has treated Mme. Gadski with the utmost consideration and fairness” has just come to my attention.
The facts are, that, although the Chicago Opera Association contracted with me in November here in New York (not in Europe), for two performances as Isolde in “Tristan and Isolde,” in Chicago, with the option of four more performances in Chicago, New York and San Francisco, the first performance of which shbuld occur before Christmas, the first intimation that I was not to sing, which I had from any source whatsoever was the publication in the Musical Courier . that the contract had been cancelled and another singer been engaged in my place.
Though I communicated immediately by telegram and registered letter with Miss Garden enclosing letter to the board of directors, requesting information as to the accuracy of newspaper statements, I have never had even the courtesy of an acknowledgment.
Also I beg to state that I have not received any remuneration or settlement for the terms of the contract.
Very sincerely yours,
Johanna Gadski.
»? *? *
Harold Bauer says that one of the secrets of Paderewski’s success was his great physical power. It caused him to bang the piano unmercifully at times. His delicacy made much more of a general appeal than his pounding.
»? »? »?
Attacks on “jazz” are being made from every side, but they will be fruitless. Serious musicians need not worry about “jazz.” It is a form of entertainment, of tonal amusement, and keeps no one from going to concerts or taking piano or violin lessons. “Jazz” will disappear ultimately, but—■ something else as disturbing to the oversensitive musical ear will be sure to take its place.
H »? »?
From F. P. A.’s column in the World: “Candor unusual in an artist is that of Elena Gerhardt, who announces for February 26, at the Town Hall, ‘Farewell Recital (By Request).’”
* ׳* ?*
At the “Love for Three Oranges”:
S.: “Who wrote this music?”
B.: “Urban, I guess.”
Leonard Liebling.
February 23, 1922
VARIATIONETTES
By the Editor-in-Chief
and sought less expensive quarters. When he left here he had to pay a large amount to this country, and a large amount will be taken from him in Germany. Those sums represent taxes.
The trips to South America and the United States were undertaken so as to provide for his family in case of his death, and also with the hope that he will be able to continue undisturbed work at his compositions.
Miss Strauss, of The Nation, has treated Dr. Strauss with such great unfairness that I feel that his friends and admirers should defend him, and I have always considered you as such.
*, »? *.
“ 'Eat King oranges; three per day will keep you healthy’—advertising line in fruiterer’s window on upper Broadway. ‘The Love of Three King Oranges,’ as Prokofieff-Montemezzi might say.” The foregoing is contributed by the twelve year old daughter of a violinist who does not wish the little girl’s name to be published “for fear that the fame she would get from being in ‘Variationettes’ might cause her to take up the career of a music critic.”
?« ,׳* ?«
When told that Stravinsky recently has written music so difficult that it can hardly be played, Richard Strauss expressed his scepticism and said that “the most difficult music of all is the music of Mozart.” Of course it is. The interpreter cannot befog the set standard of the listeners and the performer cannot hide his technical shortcomings behind a barrage of unfamiliar sounds wreathed about by a smoke screen of complex orchestration.
?« ?« ?« ־
Truth comes by way of the Berlin Signale, which observes : “This is usually the way German composers go to work when they write a comic (grand) opera: they become sentimental and dreamy, or uncouth and heavy when they try to be witty.” As, for instance, “Die Meistersinger.” Wagner called it a comic opera but it is one of the most lyric and romantic—and lovely—ever written.
H K K
“What’s too silly to be said can be sung,” is an old saw proved by many operas, but G. Lowes Dickinson tries to reverse the process by writing an allegorical story of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” in which the silliest text ever devised is set to some of the most beautiful music ever conceived. If Mr. Dickinson can demonstrate otherwise, good luck to his efforts.
»? »? »?
Very tender and touching is John Strong Newberry’s translation from the French, of Paul Fort’s poem, “The Sweetest Song,” with (as the Times Book Review says) its delightful wording, its sense of old time Christianity, and its intricate interior rhyming, a triumph of technic :
THE SWEETEST SONG.
I would sing no louder than the shepherd’s pipe, nor than the croon my osier cradle weaves, less loud than the lark, no louder than the ripe barley that sways, beneath the belfry’s height, at dawn’s immaculate threshold rustling sheaves—no louder than the rain upon the leaves. .	.	.
I long for song more soft than murmuring leaves, daintier than the brook through osiers singing, remoter than the soaring lark that cleaves the skies of June, unfathomed azure winging, more fugitive than at dawn the bell’s faint ringing, or the hid sweet note that in my oboe grieves.
But, oh ! the song of love. ... O to recapture the pensive nonchalant, caressing air with which the Virgin mild, to wide-eyed rapture, beguiled the lovely Christ-child heavenly fair, the tune that Joseph whistled, debonair, above his joiner’s bench one holy morn when, to its lilt, the Dream of the Babe was born.
O frailest sounds! O song’s supreme delight that Jesus breathed to the skies of Bethlehem, or that the Syrians murmur in the night, waking their cytheras, while over them, with slender shafts to the wistful cadence bent, their harkening fountains from a firmament.
»? »? »1
We nearly always are pointing out how much money is spent in this country for prize fighting and baseball and football matches. Now let the fact be stated that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has distributed among 999 educators, for retiring allowances and pensions, the sum of $8,920,861 during the sixteen years of the existence of the fund. The total amount now available for future benefactions of the Foundation is $25,513,000.
»?»?»?
Nobody is shocked at “Salome” these days, or at “Ghosts,” or “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” all of them current revivals in our town. Are we really a blasé public, or only temporarily dulled through familiarity with those ■works, and unknowingly wait-
An obliging correspondent favors us with some clippings from the Buffalo Express and Niagara Falls Gazette (the latter of December 13) in which professional complaint is made in the one paper about certain modern musical pieces, while a lay contributor in the other journal comments thereupon in lines strophic, and, one fears, slightly satirical. Here the clippings, reproduced :
(Buffalo Express.)
The Goossens sonata for violin and piano, which was enthusiastically received at the last Echota Trio concert here, seems to have been rather over the heads of a Buffalo audience, to judge from the following criticism in the Buffalo Express:
“Sandwiched in between the trios was the first sonata (and it may be his last!) for violin and piano by Eugene Goossens, an English composer living in London. In this work, violin and piano are so constantly at odds, so tonally antagonistic, that, except for a certain rhythmic accord, one wonders if the performers are not accidentally playing two different pieces. The composer has the grace to permit the two instruments to end each movement in the same key, but most of the time they are in different and uncongenial tonalities.
“There is only one advantage in presenting such music: it is of no consequence whether one plays false notes or not, as the listener would never know the difference. But it does seem a pity for good musicians to waste time and effort in mastering such a burlesque, when there exist so many treasures of musical invention, both familiar and unfamiliar. The writer can but echo the words of the greatest of poets, ‘This music mads me! Let it sound no more,’ and hope for the swinging back of the pendulum to the melody and consonance of the real master creators. Doubly refreshing was the wonderful Tschaikowsky work, after the riot of discord, and the players were very cordially recalled at its close.”
(Niagara Falls Gazette.)
I wish they’d play the old things I learned long years ago—
With “consonance” familiar And “melodies” that flow.
There are “so many treasures”—
“Swing back the pendulum !”■—
Some Mendelssohn, for instance; Tum-tum-tee-tum-tum-tum.
I do not like these new things,
They do not soothe the ear;
One really has to listen,
And then they are not clear!
First Wagner’s cacophony came,
Next, Strauss I had to swallow,
And recently the whole-toned French—
It seems there’s worse to follow.
A “certain rhythmic” unity Might keep my feet on land;
But sequences of seconds I do not understand.
And in such “discords riotous”
That simply sound like Hell
“Whether one plays false notes or not”
How shall a critic tell?
I do not like these new things.
They puzzle me—and so
I wish they’d play the old things,
The sort I really know.	—F. A. L.
»?»?»?
“The contest for musical paraphrasing of proverbs, as now being conducted in the funny column of the Tribune,” writes J. P. F., “leads me to suggest that ‘a rolling tone gathers no Mozart.’ ” Or, as we communicated to the conductor of the column: “It is never too late to Mendelssohn.”
»?*?»?
A little late but not quite untimely is the attached, received several weeks ago but hitherto crowded out of this department owing to lack of space:
Dear Mr. Liebling:
This is the first time I have ever addressed a newspaper or magazine and the first time I have sent out a letter without my signature, but being very timid of publicity, I have to do this.
I have always been seriously interested in music and have been a large contributor to every large orchestral movement for New York. So many unfair remarks have been made about Dr. Strauss and his taking a large sum of money out of this country that I am sure you would treat the matter more fairly if you knew the history of his affairs, which is as follows:
At the outbreak of the war Dr. Strauss had all his money invested in England, where it was confiscated by the government. He found himself minus the savings of thirty years, and you can imagine that since then his income from Austria and Germany has been almost nothing because he is giving his services, I think, almost free. That is why he had to go to South America last year and came to this country last autumn at a great sacrifice. In the first place, Dr. Strauss is a man who loves his family and home and the separation from both was a great sacrifice. The visit here meant traveling night after night or else living at a hotel in New York. He stopped at the Hotel St. Regis for a few days, but he felt that he could not afford the extravagance