MUSICAL COURIER
58
March 2 3, 1922
the program, which simply means that it is being respected, that it is being found fit to be placed side by side with the foreign music. People are forgetting that American music is American and are giving it hearty applause, not because they want to be patriotic, but because they like it. And finally there is a strong movement on foot throughout the country, not only in music but also in everything else, against the foreign invasion which is threatening to destroy our American ideals—against what the Saturday Evening Post calls “Goo-Goo immigration and naturalization sentimental-ism”—against the people, mostly idle and ignorant women, who can see nothing at home, but “just love” everything European.
Americans have always known in a vague sort of way what they liked. They would applaud some star performing some highbrow music that they did not understand, but they did not really like it, and when they got home or in the church they would exercise their own judgment and their own taste in their own way. And it is true that American judgment where a great star is concerned is still based entirely upon the art of the performer and never upon what the performer performs. And yet^ the public has a taste in what is performed, and John Philip Sousa, one of the very few American conductors and composers who has won international fame, has found out exactly what it is and has proved beyond question that whatever else it may be, it is not “low.” Sousa’s programs show that the public has pretty average musical taste. They wait for the encores, no doubt, especially when the encores are Sousas marches, but they also fully enjoy the classic numbers.
Conclusion.
In conclusion, it would be well to give some figures, but the figures are not at hand. If they were it would probably greatly surprise most of our readers to learn ^ what vast sums of real American money are being spent in the purchase of American music of the better sort, either in the form of sheet music, talking machine records or piano player rolls. In any event, those who claim that we have no American music and no American idiom simply because we have not yet produced an American Beethoven or an American Wagner are way off. They miss the point entirely. They are barking up the wrong tree, and a lot of very ignorant (musically ignorant) people, the American public, know more than they do about it; they know what they like, and they like what is American without knowing it. We have a lot to learn from them!	F. P-
ACROSS THE COUNTRY
(Continued from page SS)
Worcester, Mass., February 25, 1922.—The fifth concert in the Steinert Worcester course, given February 7 in Mechanics Hall by Hulda Lashanska, American lyric soprano, and Yolanda Mero, pianist, will be long remembered as one of the treats of a season of remarkably fine concerts. Mme. Mero created a sensation. Her Worcester admirers paid her a splendid tribute by rising and recalling her several times with tremendous applause. Mme. Lashanska is now firmly entrenched in the hearts of Worcester concert-goers. Her singing of “Annie Laurie,” to her own accompaniment, was the gem of a delightful evening. R. McC.
LEON SAMETINI
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composers. They would like that music and they would want that music if it was honest American music, in an honest American idiom, but would not have the nerve to ask for it.
There is still another group to blame—and here I will quote a paragraph from a letter from one of the leading American publishers:	“It would be splendid if in your
article you could strongly rap the artists who deliberately and constantly sing the most mediocre of American songs. These singers are prostituting American composition more than any other agency; they are responsible for audiences leaving halls as the American group approaches; they shirk their plain duty of putting the best that American composers have to offer right before the American public where it belongs, and, lastly, they are disgracefully selfish and unpatriotic.”
And finally, as has already been pointed out, musicians in general, when they get into the big cities, forget all about the lowly taste of their home people, the great American people, the people who have made America the greatest country on earth and whose taste, even in music, ought to be respected. The taste of these people is not what we call “high,” but who will say that it is not noble? They do not and cannot understand complicated technical idioms, and they do like a tune, strong rhythm and strong sentiment. And who will say they are not right?
Technic.
Speaking of technic, I have just recently come upon a proof of a thing that I have Jong suspected—that technical deficiency would make very little difference to the American public at large. A pianist was offered a piece by an American composer. It was in manuscript and had been refused by several publishers. It was attractive, but was technically imperfect, especially in the matter of form and development. The pianist decided to play it and not to make any attempt to make it over. He played it just as it was, and it was, at every concert, a great success. At every concert it had to be encored. That it would be more successful if it were technically perfect cannot be denied. That is not the point. The point is, that it was successful in spite of its faulty technic, just as much of our church music and, in fact, a great deal of our music of all kinds, has been successful in spite of its faulty technic. And the point is furthermore that a great many interesting orchestral works have. been refused performance because of their faulty technic where they might well have been successful in spite of it.
And, as to this matter of technic, it is_ a question m my mind whether European traditional technic is suited to the American idiom? I know that it has to be modified in ragtime and other forms of American popular music, and I know that efforts to dress up some American hymns, anthems and male quartets have resulted only in destroying that elusive something which made them attractive to American audiences. In other words, the problem of the American composer is not only to get to know his own idiom but to invent a technic to fit it.
What Do Americans Like?
These articles were undertaken solely with the view of pointing out that we have an American idiom, but the subject got hold of me, as such things are wont to do, and led me far afield. And yet, though perhaps apologies are in order, the discussion is useful. All logical and impersonal discussions are useful. It is only by placing such matters before the public and keeping them before the public that any progress can be made. And, it may be said here, there are many hopeful signs. There is a demand in many parts of the country for singing in English. People are awakening to the fact that they are entitled to an opinion in the matter. That is a long step forward. More and more students are getting their musical education in America, a matter which is also of prime importance. And compositions in larger forms are coming from small communities, from composers who are to some extent unspoiled by life in New York and contact only with foreign art. The “American group” on programs is gradually showing signs of breaking down and American music is being distributed throughout
OUR AMERICAN IDIOM
(Cantinued from page 6)
country at large are those by the great masters, and by some of the lesser masters, which are simple and melodic.
Now it will have been noted in the above lists of American successes that few pieces in larger forms have been mentioned. Is it reasonable to suppose that the American people would have turned their backs on these pieces if they had ever had an opportunity to get thoroughly acquainted with them? I do not believe that it is. I am convinced that if the larger pieces, the orchestra pieces, for instance, of these successful composers had been persistently played they would have been successful. Whose fault is it that they have not been played? Whose fault is it that we almost never hear the orchestral or chamber music works of Harry Rowe Shelly, MacDowell, Foote, Chadwick, Gilchrist, Schoenefeld, Kelly, Carpenter, Powell, Gilbert and some others whose names do not at the moment occur to me? Whose fault is that?
It is the fault first of all, of course, of. some of our foreign conductors who presume to pass upon American taste, a thing that they cannot and never will be able to understand. Do you know that practically all of Europe sneers at us for our generous and altruistic action during the war and after the war and that hardly anybody over there can believe that we did not have in view some material gain? Then if they are unable to understand our nature in such a clearly defined case of American idealism, how can they be expected to understand the expression of our deepest sentiment, which is our art, our literature and our music? Whose fault is it, then, that our orchestras do not play American music? It is first of all the conductors’ fault.
But it is not their fault alone. It is also the fault of the wealthy Americans who support our symphonies. They give their money and wash their hands of it. They get the biggest foreign expert money can buy and leave the matter of program selection entirely in his hands. They are very much to blame in the matter. They should see to it that their orchestras should play a certain fixed proportion of American works, a proportion fixed in the constitution and by-laws of the orchestral society. And I am pretty sure that there would soon be an interest in symphonic music that is not now manifest. For backers and patrons of some of the symphonies have acknowledged to me that the music played was “way above their heads and they did not like it—they only attended^ concerts as a matter of civic and social duty—and why did not the orchestra sometimes play a tune?” Yes! And such remarks were not made before me in some “hick” town, but in (you would never guess it) Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco. And these very people who made the remarks and a whole lot of other people just like them, you may be sure, went home after the concert and played American music on their phonographs by way of relief and solace. And yet those very people, fearing to make themselves ridiculous, do not dare to enforce a rule making it incumbent upon the conductors to give music by American
SUMMY’S CORNER
For EASTER SERVICES USE Solos that have been used with appropriate effect by other singers.
LIFE AGAIN TODAY..........Neidllnger
(2 keys)
CHRIST THE LORD IS RISEN....Foerster
(2 keys)
EASTER SONG ................Rougnon
(2 keys)
CLAYTON F. SUMMY CO., Publishers
429 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago.
EASTERN AGENCY: HAROLD FLAMMER, Inc.
67 West 45th Street	New York City
N.VAL PEAVEY
PIANIST
New York Recital Aeolian Hall
Tuesday Evening, April 18th, 1922
Available for Concerts and Recitals all Season 1922-1923
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