MUSICAL COURIER
24
March 9, 1922
experiment in the operatic field was quite unfortunate for the Chicago Opera.
It is true that many of the artists of the Chicago Opera Association are paid too much. It is true that they could not get the same salaries in any other theater of the musical world. It is true that at the Metropolitan, many of the good artists do not get half the salaries of some Chicago Opera Association artists. Yet it must be remembered that the Chicago Opera is, after all, a traveling company and as such must pay more than a stable institution. It is a long way from Broadway to the Coast. It is trying for singers to travel thousands of miles to sell their wares, but they are rewarded for the wear and tear with fat checks that they could not get if the company had only a twenty-five weeks’ season in the city they advertise all over the continent.
As to Miss Garden not remaining at the head of the company, that would make little difference. Since January 24, 1922, she has not commanded in chief, as from generalissimo she became only a brigadier-general. If the writer were making a betting book as to the future general director of the Chicago Civic Opera Company, he would make out a table as follows:
Mary Garden ................................. 2 to 1
Henry Russell (Mary Garden’s choice for successor) 50 to 1
Hans Gregor ................................. 4 to 1
Giorgio Polacco ............................. 20 to 1
Fortune Gallo ............................... 6tol
Andreas Dippel .............................. 50 to 1
John Alden Carpenter ........................ 6tol
Karleton Hackett ............................ 6 to 1
Herman Devries .............................. 15 to 1
Clark A. Shaw ............................... 4 to 1
Arturo Toscanini ............................ 10 to 1
Morris Gest ...................:............. 4 to 1
Herbert M. Johnson .......................... 50 to 1
Antonio Scotti............................... 5 to 1
Charles L. Wagner ........................... 50 to 1
Then there would be one four-to-five shot and a few one hundred to ones; but first of all, Mr. Insull and his colleagues must raise that $500,000 guaranty. Up to date, $338,000 of the guaranty has been raised, and of that $82,000 has been pledged since the intensive campaign began February 1. Although the last $100,000 may be the hardest to raise, the amount, no doubt, will be overguaranteed by May 1, but Mr. Insull must be careful in making statements in regard to a business with which he is not yet conversant. A man of great intellect, most successful in his own enterprises, he must not be led to believe that managing artists and directing the destinies of an opera company is similar to selling public utilities or commodities. Many excellent business men have been big failures when entering fields outside of their own line, and the operatic ground is perhaps the hardest for a business man to understand. The public, likewise, does not understand, generally speaking, either the artists or the opera. It follows the leader, and when the leader errs the situation, to say the least, is most perilous.
Miss Garden last season was going to do wonders. Her business manager then, George Spangler, who came to the company with a reputation as a shrewd business man and with the support of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, issued statement after statement that made the wise ones smile and a few insiders cry, as they saw right away the handwriting on the wall; and if Mr. Insull is to profit by all those mistakes, he should follow the example of the wise old owl—who hears a great deal but says very little.	ф
WHO IS RIGHT?
It may be, of course, that Willem Mengelberg is right and all the rest of us wrong; it may be that, as he thinks, Gustav Mahler was one of the great, the most inspired composers of this age or any other; or again—and we feel especially strong on the subject after having been obliged to listen to the dreary lengths of the third Mahler symphony— it may be that we are right and Willem entirely wrong. Anyway, we’ll know in another quarter of a century or so. As it is, New York critics agreed for once—in condemning it. It is a bit hard to understand the deliberate plugging that is going on in Europe (especially Central Europe) for Bruckner, a very dead issue; Mahler, scarcely less so: and Schoenberg, who may be a genius, but for whom the public shows few signs of liking after a good many years of waiting for him to develop in some definite direction. Are we wrong in our impression that the works of all three of these composers are published by the same house ?
-----Зь----
THE EFFECT OF EXCHANGE
When Josef Holbrooke gave an orchestral concert of his works in Munich a short time ago, the rate of exchange enabled him to engage an orchestra of eighty-five men for the sum of six English pounds.
anything that had ever gone before in the history of the world of music.
The American composer is doing just that thing, consciously or unconsciously, in his works in the smaller forms. Is he doing that when he writes in the larger forms? Sometimes, yes—generally, no. But what do the larger forms matter, after all ? They will come in time—they will come all the faster if we only have respect for ourselves, our own people, our own country, our own composers. Let your symphony conductor and your concert artist know what you want, and you will get it!
But we will never get it until we get respect for Americanism and curiosity about American compositions,	F. P.
-Ф-
WHERE HAVE WE HEARD IT BEFORE?
Samuel Insull, president of the Civic Opera Association of Chicago, speaking on Monday night, February 27, in that city to the Friends of Opera at the Arts Club, stated that “Opera stars who appear with the Chicago company next year will receive less money or do more work. There will be no extravagance, no experiments, but we will have no trouble obtaining first class talent. There is no other place for the singers to go. If they want to stay at home and receive stage money, they may do . so, but they will have to come here to get real money. Some say that if Mary Garden quits, we will never raise the $500,000 guaranty. Others say if she should quit, we would raise much more; but whether she goes or stays we are going to give opera on the same basis as in years before—and at less expense.”
Where have we heard that statement before? If memory serves right, Mary Garden, general director of the Chicago Opera Association, and her ex-right hand man, George Spangler, made approximately the same remarks about the same time of the year in 1921, and, although the public was inadvertently informed that the salaries of the artists appearing with the company would be materially reduced, the Musical Courier promptly told its readers that the statement was misleading, inasmuch as the majority of the singers, on the contrary, would have their salaries greatly increased. Although the Musical Courier was not the official organ of the Chicago Opera Association, its statement was at the beginning of this season proven absolutely well founded in truth, as the salaries of all the artists were substantially increased over those of the previous season.
Did Mr. Insull, by this announcement, hope to increase the confidence of Chicagoans? If so, he erred in his judgment, as the public at large has been fed on those generally exaggerated salaries of stars, and if the public is to be taxed the same price as heretofore for tickets, it will necessarily believe that it is not getting its money’s worth any longer, since the prices of the artists are to be lowered. Secondly, Mr. Insull has been unintentionally misinformed when he thinks that stellar artists will be willing to be cut down on their present contracts. Miss Garden, last season, tried to cut down the salaries of several artists and they did not return this season. Mr. Insull also may not be aware of the fact that several of the trump cards of the Chicago Opera Association are appearing with that organization solely in view of the huge salaries they draw from the association, for, were they willing to reduce their cachet, a certain wise man in New York City would secure those opera aces and reduce the efficiency of the Chicago Civic Opera Company almost fifty per cent.
Mr. Insull may not know that the American public has been brought up on the star system, but if he has looked at the receipts of the present season at the Manhattan, he must, no doubt, be acquainted with the fact that the loss to the company of Titta Ruffo, and Galli-Curci and the illness of Lucien Muratore, cost the Chicago Opera Association a great deal of money, besides prestige. Mr. Insull was present in New York at the Manhattan at performances where paid admission was at the lowest ebb, and he must have, no doubt, wondered what was the matter with the New Yorkers. The writer of this article is in no sense a New Yorker. He lives in Chicago, loves the city and has been since the very beginning one of the most sanguine boosters of the Chicago Opera and up to last season upheld the management, even when in the wrong. His change of heart was due solely to the mismanagement of the company by an extravagant woman and an unprepared business man, who may knew a great deal by now about the shoe business but whose
which we must be ashamed, something we must not love. Is this a fact or an exaggeration? Just go back in your own experience and think it over and decide for yourself.
No Curiosity
I am indebted to W. L. Coghill, of the John Church Company, for this thought: American musicians, music teachers, music lovers have no interest and no curiosity as to American music. And the amazing feature of this is that they (at least the music lovers if not the musicians and teachers) are constantly using American music. Mr. Coghill gives me a list of some real successes which are also real music—a list which squashes the idea that American taste is “low,” just as it squashes the idea that there is “no American music.” And Mr. Coghill says to American musicians, music teachers and music lovers, “You have got to acknowledge that these are great. Why have you no curiosity as to others? Why must you wait until some great, generally foreign, concert artist puts the stamp of approval on these things before you can ‘see’ them ? Why do they lie fallow for years, as some of them have done, until they are thus introduced.”
Here is the list: Damrosch, “Danny Deever”; De Koven, “Recessional” ; Hawley, “Sweetest Flower That Blows”; Kramer, “Last Hour”; MacFadyen, “Cradle Song” and “Inter Nos”; Ethelbert Nevin, “Mighty Lak’ a Rose” and “Mon Desir”; Parker, “The Lark Now Leaves His Watery Nest” and “Love in May”; Speaks, “On the Road to Mandalay”; Spross, “Will o’ the Wisp” and “Yesterday and Today”; Harriet Ware, “Boat Song” and “Mammy’s Song.” Sacred songs listed are: Dudley Buck, “My Redeemer and My Lord”; W. G. Hammond, “Behold the Master Passeth By”; Hawley, “Lead Kindly Light”; Spross, “I Do Not Ask, O Lord.”
Small Forms
These are a few, from one publisher, of American musical successes in serious music. There are many other composers, many other compositions. Americans have succeeded admirably •in the small forms. They have succeeded in these forms and failed more or less in the larger forms for just one single, simple, and obvious reason, and that reason is summed up in the word: “Demand.”
Music, like everything else, is subject to the laws of supply and demand. American composers wrote evangelistic hymns because there was a demand for them; they wrote popular anthems because there was a demand for that kind; they wrote ragtime and “jazz” because people liked it and wanted it; they wrote heart songs because that sort of sentiment is part of our American makeup—and so on, down through the whole list of successful American production.
Kind hearted and patriotic Americans who say they will “make” a demand for music in larger forms —symphony, opera,' etc.—will fail unless they first get rid of the class distinction that now exists. In other words, American composers will never be really inspired to write in the larger forms until they feel that they are writing for the people, the masses, and not for a few symphony or opera patrons who have listened to foreign masterpieces until they have lost touch with American feeling altogether, or who have learned to pretend that they like Brahms and Wagner better than they do Cadman and Speaks and the rest of the American “popular” composers. It is a pose with many of these symphony and opera patrons, you may be sure, as witness their real delight in the grind-organ tunes of Verdi and the hearty applause that welcomes anything like a “tune” on symphony and concert programs, or the lighter numbers from the Chopin-Rachmaninoff repertory.
This inspiration, this demand, must come from the people. The American composer must feel that he is speaking to the people, his own people, just as he feels that he is speaking to his own people when he writes in the smaller forms. Under present conditions, because of the difficulty of having his works presented to the people, he will never do that in the larger forms—at least, only a genius of immense force of will and character could do it. And probably just such a genius will arise some day and will sweep away present conditions, just as Wagner swept away old operatic conditions in Germany. Only—and mark this well—Wagner was conscious all the time of writing for the German people. Whatever discouragement he may have suffered, whatever may have been his burden of poverty and exile, he knew his own people and he knew with every note what he wrote that he was expressing German massconsciousness. And, once class prejudice was overcome, and the people had a chance to hear the works, they took them to themselves with a love surpassing