MUSICAL COURIER
April 6, 1922
23
It is not so in the concert
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it should be so in opera, field.

Following our paragraphs on jazz last week, a member of the Musical Courier staff reports: “Add another to the list of prominent jazz victims. I was passing through the Grand Central Station (underground arcade) recently when I passed a blondish, artistic looking young man who stood rooted to the ground in front of a shop wherein an automatic, piano was grinding out a piece of complicated jazz. The individual with the pale hair bore an enraptured expression on his countenance and after I recognized him I had to nudge him three or four times before he came out of his profound trance. ‘Oh, hello,’ he said finally; ‘I say, isn’t this stuff just too splendidly fascinating?’ The speaker was Percy Grainger.”
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“Tosca” at the Metropolitan last Thursday, and also at the Rialto. The publishers of the opera appear to be “playing both ends against the middle,” as they say at the faro conservatories.
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From Isabel Wister, of 69 Oak street, Atlanta, Ga., comes this:
Dear Editor:
Here’s something for the joke column, if you care to use it:	_
HEARD IN A MUSIC STORE By Isabel Wister
Customer: I want a good ragtime piece.
Salesgirl: Have you Cobb’s “Russian Rag?”
Customer: Cobb? Which one—Irvin or Ty?
Reading the Musical Courier splendid correspondence from California seems like seeing some one from “back home,” and the New York news of musical “history in the making,” inspirational and educational. Yours sincerely,
Isabel Wister.
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Why is it that when some persons write about music their imagination gallops wildly into the ether and their vocabulary spills itself all about the place? In last Sunday’s New York World, the Berlin correspondent draws a harrowing picture of musical conditions there today as compared with the period before the war, and says, among other things: “The people were music mad a decade ago. .	.	. The
World correspondent remembers perfectly the night Caruso sang in ‘Aida,’ in 1908, on which occasion women of high society took the horses from the traces of his carriage and pulled him through the streets with wild acclaim. Gone are such days. One recollects how at the Philharmonie, after her final concert before returning to America, Miss Farrar was mobbed by Berlin’s music lovers among the aristocracy. In a frenzy of enthusiasm women literally tore the gown from her back that they might have bits of the material as souvenirs. Artists appearing .now evoke no such demonstrations.” First of all, the World writer is mistaken in saying that Berlin was “music mad” at any time. “Music mad” is a phrase whose alliteration has made it popular with penny-a-line reporters. No city ever was “music mad.” Berlin was no more music mad than New York, and New York never was music mad at all. In Berlin, as in New York, there always were, and there are now, a limited number of persons interested in music and they constitute the musical public year in and year out with small additions proportionate to the regular increase of population. The Berlin papers never printed personal news about opera artists or concert performers, never published their portraits, their salaries, or their preferences in salads. The World correspondent did not see Berlin women of high society drag Caruso through the streets in a triumphant chariot, and likewise the World correspondent is mistaken about Miss Farrar having her gown clawed from her back. No such incidents happened and when we make that statement we know whereof we speak. It is very late in the day for a reporter to send such stuff to a common sense newspaper like the World, and it is as well an insult to the intelligence of its readers. The writer of the correspondence must be pen cousin to the wild eyed one who first declared in print that New York is “opera mad.” Bunk!
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At Romano’s Restaurant, the Musical Courier and the Police Gazette hang on the wall side by side. Make your own paragraph about this.
H K K
Between acts at the Metropolitan, Nahan Franko told an amusing story the other day about the late David Bispham when both were on tour with the Metropolitan Opera Company many years ago. The Westbound train, without a dining car, had stopped
VARIATIONETTES By the Editor-in-Chief
these cooling and lovely lines by Jeannette Marks, in her recent volume, ‘Willow Pollen’ ”:
RAVELLO.
(A Recollection of the Garden in which Wagner composed “Parsival.”)
Words glimmering like candles in the dusk,
You tell your golden tale of Italy—
Ravello and its starlit, tranquil sea
Among massed trees, sleep-hung with jeweled fruit;
Antiquity against a shadowed sky,
And everywhere old gardens where men loved So long ago, and the moon rose on vows And thirsty human lips aching to meet;
And the moon set on darkling ivory-petaled rows Of lilies and on hands dim with loneliness:—
Below, Amalfi’s campanile plays Its evensong, full chant and antiphon,
A wish, a hope, a call from star to star.
O Compassionate One, nightlong with you I hark The traveling of that music lost in space,
The echoing of those faithful feet of men,
And touch the blurred chalcedony of tears,
And breathe those candle-lighted thoughts, faint musk Of old days vanished in silence now!
Night-long I dream your face pressed close to mine Is lily of Ravello in its sleep,
Touched with some ancient sorrow gardens keep—
An ivory-petaled dream whose ghostly passions shine Like fingers in the dark struggling with fears:—
Oh, set your love for me, my own, my Sweet,
The whiteness of your breast and brow aglow With God, like candleshine before my feet 1
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It has grown to be a habit for poetically inclined persons to break into verse when they hear a performance or a composition they like. Usually the performer or the composition, as the case might be, is better than the verse. In the case of A. Rosenthal, editor of The Modern View, who wrote the attached (dedicated to the St. Louis Orchestra and its leader, Rudolph Ganz) decision is reserved:
A slender baton waves 1 The wizard wand Binds many men as one great instrument.
Where high and low with equal heart respond—
A true democracy of sound, well blent.
Flute, oboe, trumpet, cello, violin:
Now soft, now loudly their tone-torrents flow!
Harp, piccolo, drum and the cymbals’ din:
Now fast, now slow in varied measures go.
Now sings the swan. Anon the cannons roar,
The wounded groan. Then forest murmurs play:
Swift fiery coursers gallop, storms break on the shore, Melodic minors change to major chords more gay.
Mournful, then martial—winsome, savage, wild—
Sighing—then raging—tender, sweet, sublime;
On wings of wonder, carried like a child,
We traverse Fancy’s mazes, leaping lands and Time!
The Largo’s loveliness, the March’s measured stroke,
The Rondo’s rhythm and the Scherzo’s pure delight, Visions and memories their harmonies evoke:
In ecstasy the minutes take their flight.
The baton rests 1 The last notes trembling die 1 There dawns a vision—glorious prophecy—
Of an united world, a war-unclouded sky With all mankind in one great Symphony 1
Music—that from the first unto the final hour,
From crib to bier, all human feeling wakes!
Music—great gifts of some kind, generous Power—
To make atonement for Life’s ills and aches!
What witchcraft Music is! that through the ear Through grotesque things of sinew, wood and brass Makes passions rise, brings tears and heaven near!
How different the drab world of everyday—alas!
But why “Alas ?” Bathed in the magic spray Of melody, refreshed we rise, the combat to resume Against the sordidness of everyday With freshened spirit and faith in bloom! r. »׳
Headline in the Evening Mail of March 28: “Noted Musicians on Evening Mail’s WJZ Program.” We feared that WJZ might be some sort of successor to jazz until we found out that it is the symbol for the Westinghouse broadcasting (radio) station at Newark, N. J.
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A young singer who gave a concert here recently tells (see the New York American of March 28) that before he sailed for Europe on his last voyage Caruso said to her: “Little lady, you have a marvelous voice. There is a great future before you. You must manage to go to Italy and study and win some laurels there. Then, when you come back to America you will be famous.” Always, and always, and always it is, “go to Italy, win laurels there, then become famous in America.” One wonders why
When Mengelberg conducted in Boston recently, Philip Hale lambasted him unmercifully and H. T. Parker praised him unreservedly. Marcus Antoninus never heard Mengelberg but ages ago he wrote that “Everything is mere opinion.’
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For instance the attached is the opinion of one of our esteemed and valuable coworkers on this paper:
Dear Leonard Liebling:
Differences of opinion make newspapers as well as horse races, and I am sure you won’t mind a member of the Musical Courier staff expressing a different opinion from
your own.	.	.	,״
My grudge concerns your quotation in your January ly issue of a piece of writing by Deems Taylor, champion of “common sense” in musical criticism. Not that I am against common sense, though I always thought that a critic is, or ought to be, such by virtue of his «»-common sense. But I should like to make a distinction between real common sense, which is the primitive form of wisdom, and a practice which the man in the street very aptly calls “shooting off one’s mouth.” A favorite form of this indoor sport is to take any bit of accepted popular opinion and assert the contrary, ex cathedra, thereby flattering the lowbrow, who has hitherto timidly acquiesced, into thinking that he is not such a lowbrow after all. Such utterances of common sense are bound to find applause every time.
Criticism, to be sure, is not an exact science, but there are certain critical standards which cannot be overturned without the weight of fresh evidence. If a certain New York critic for instance, asserts Grieg to be the equal of bchu-bert and the superior of Brahms, one is inclined to ask what additional evidence he has to adduce to alterone s estimate of the Norwegian lyricist. If Mr Deems Taylor suddenly asserts that a work of Victor Herbert is superior to one of Verdi, one is startled, though even here one should call for the “evidence,” for the proposition is not, per se, impossible. But when he says that “La Donna e Mobile is vulgar rubbish it is time to protest. A man ״who can call so characteristic and so beautiful a melody rubbish ought to be called upon to write a better one to prove it.
The best proof of a good tune is its lasting quality, and it may be said that this particular tune, despite its intentional blatancy, gets better and better as time goes on. Herbert’s melodies may be as good as Verdis, though I should hesitate to say so until they have been sung half a century or more and hackneyed by a million gramophones. I am sure of one thing, however: that not one lover of V erdi, millions of lowbrows included, will like “La Donna e Mobile” one bit less because of Mr. Taylor’s ^ dictum. ihe gramophone fans do not choose it because tenors sing it at the Metropolitan” (for most of them have never heard it that way), but because their healthy musical common sense (of the genuine kind) makes them enjoy it. It often takes educated folk a long time to arrive at the same healthy judgment, as was proven by Hans von Billow, who once called Verdi the “hurdy-gurdy man,” but was man enough to take it back later on. Be a man, Deems Taylor! And, Mr. Editor, don’t reprint cheap rubbish parading, as common sense. Very truly yours, César Saerchinger. Selson House, London, March 1. 1922.
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In spite of Mr. Saerchinger’s gentle castigation we feel obliged to reprint this from the Deems 1 aylor column in the World of last Sunday:
It is rumored that when Josef Urban was at work on the scenery for “Cosi Fan Tutte” he wanted the prompter s box removed from the middle of the stage apron so that the prompter, in the costume of Mozart’s period, would be seated on the stage in full view of the audience, exactly as when “Cosi Fan Tutte” was first produced. Refused this request by the horrified management of the Metropolitan, Mr. Urban has compromised by covering the prompter’s box with a decorative screen, in the center of which is a medallion portrait of Mozart. This is a charming and appropriate scheme and should be carried further; there should be a different screen for every opera the Metropolitan presents, ornamented with a pictúre of the man responsible for the music. Thus, on the nights when Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt” was the attraction a screen could be used large enough to contain portraits of Massenet, Strauss and Puccini. When Catalini’s “Loreley” is given the screen can be
M. B. H. is on hand with the suggestion that: “The price of onions now having gone up very high, those of us whose opera seats are near the standees space should combine to bull the price of garlic also, and to a prohibitive figure.”
The New York Evening World is running a series of articles called “Musical Classics and How They Were Written.” It is not fair to reveal the secret and have everyone writing classics.
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Prices high in our land? Not at all. For instance, the advertisement of a singing teacher in the New York World of March 22: “For best lessons go to
---------. Class lessons, 5c.”
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J. P. F. communicates: “To hold you awhile in your frenzied utterances against ‘Parsifal,’ read