MUSICAL COURIER
22
April 13, 1922
seats for the Brahms festival there have been sold out.
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When Mengelberg walked to his seat last Sunday evening at the “Chauve Souris” (benefit performance for the needy artists of Russia) the audience applauded. Balieff, the comical regular announcer for the “Chauve Souris,” immediately cried out from the stage: “See! what intelligent and cultured audiences we get here?”
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Nilly: “This is the intermezzo. You know what an intermezzo is, don’t you?”
Willy: “Yes; it’s the little space between the first and second floors in a hotel.”
Leonard Liebling.
pieces of Russian song (I do not care for him in anything but Russian songs) better known. He chooses, apparently, a number of songs that are of no great account in themselves, but that give him chances to show his powers as an actor in song; but surely there are many much better songs that would give him the same opportunities. It would be a pity if so unique a singer should some day send us away from the Albert Hall with an involuntary remembrance of some prima donna we had heard there.”
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In these prohibition days why are there not more frequent hearings of Handel’s “Water Music?”
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Whatever the economic and political conditions reported to exist in Vienna, the fact remains that
WHAT NEW YORK’S MUSIC WEEK WILL BE
Glauber, Mrs. J. D. Rippin, Mrs. Lewis G. Myres, Agnes Buckley, Mrs. George H. Tomes, Felix M. Warburg, Mrs. David Rumsey, Hugo Riesenfeld, Theodore E. Steinway, S. Buelgelisen, George Fischer, Irwin Kurtz, Edna Marione, J. Lawrence Erb, Mrs. Richard M. Chapman, M. Louise Mun-dell, Mgr. Joseph Smith, Prof. Charles H. Farnsworth, George H. Gartlan, Dr. Ernest L. Crandall, Kenneth S. Clark, Mrs. H. E. Talbott, Charles D. Isaacson, Walter T. Diack, Helen Clarkson Miller, Rabbi Lee Levinger, Mrs. Jerome Hanauer.
Innumerable concerts, competitions, lectures, musicales, services in churches and sermons, recitals, musical performances of every nature, public and private schools, churches, settlements, clubs, women’s organizations, musical societies, great musical artists, institutions, church organists, orchestras, motion picture houses, even the city itself will make up the chain of literally thousands of musical events of the week. They will be given simultaneously, everywhere. There is one great single purpose behind it all, to bring by concentration music closer to the hearts and more into the lives of the people of New York no matter of what class, financial condition, race or age,, for the space of one week especially, but the influence to last, the comprehension of music to grow.
Much is still to come and be arranged in the way of detailed plans, but a great deal has already been determined upon. Sunday morning the week will open with special sermons on music and special musical services in the churches. Not only are the city churches to respond to the suggestion that has been made but the suburban churches are quite as anxious and will do an equal part. At three o’clock Sunday afternoon bells and chimes will sound everywhere, from every church tower, and it is suggested that at that hour as many other bells as possible shall be rung everywhere in New York.
A poster that is superb and will be done in blue and gold has been designed by Karel Knauff. It depicts Music, in flowing robes and with wings and a lyre, standing at the City Gate of New York. The buildings at the Battery are behind her, and the sky behind her is a mass of gold. At her feet, typifying the national message of music, is spread out the American Eagle.
The public schools are to play a leading role in Music Week, and every child in the city will be a participant. Children in all grades all over the city are to compete for the best essay on music, and the prize will be Grove’s “Dictionary of Music.” All the school orchestras are to battle for preeminence, the winning orchestra to receive a money prize, which will be used to buy instruments for that orchestra. Some one day during the week every public school , will have a special Music Week Assembly, with a special music program.
The women’s clubs of the city are to be close behind the schools in Music Week’s observance. From their own resources they will provide special individual programs, and, as a coup d’etat, at the annual meeting of the New York City Federation of Women’s Club, which takes place on May 5, a Music Week program is to be the central feature. The Federation of Temple Sisterhoods is to stage what will quite likely be one of the very striking-features of the week, presenting on the occasion of its annual meeting, which occurs on May 4, a program of ancient Hebrew music.
Through the Rotary Club of New York the boys’ clubs of the city are to be given musical entertainments at each of the twenty boys’ club houses. The parochial schools will give concerts and will have essays on mpsic written, very nearly every church organist in New York will give one or more Music Week concerts during the week, and special programs will be featured at the motion picture houses.
New York’s Music Week, its third year historically, is now well under way. The idea behind it, bringing music close to the hearts and minds of all people in a given territory, concentrating it, making it as near as possible the one thought, for a period of seven days, originating here on the banks of the Hudson, has been so successful, so appealing that seventy-eight other municipalities and a number of States already have adopted it. Music Week now is an American actuality. Its third observance starts off under the best and most encouraging of auspices. It comes April 30 to May 6, opening Sunday morning, closing Saturday night.
Financed by popular subscription and with every possible musical element represented on its two score special committees, this Music Week of New York will absorb the attention and arouse the hearts and emotions of at least three million New Yorkers who will be participants, either as audiences or performers. Nor is New York as New York solely concerned. For the great movement is being spread out into the suburbs, within thirty-five miles of the city. The small cities and large towns on the city’s edge are taking as much interest as the city itself.
Otto H. Kahn is the honorary chairman, with C. M- Tremaine chairman, Isabel Lowden, director, and Cromwell Childe, publicity manager. J. Fletcher Shera heads the finance committee, and on the large general committee there are in addition Edward F. Albee, Albert Behning, Philip Berolzheimer, City Chamberlain, Peter J. Brady, Melzar Chaffee, Kenneth S. Clark, Mrs. Walter S. Comly, Charles H. Ditson, Rev. Francis P. Duffy, Thomas A. Edison, Mrs. Julian Edwards, Dr. William L. Ettinger, Lynnwood Farnam, W. Rodman Fay, Harry Hark-ness Flagler, John C. Freund, George H. Gartlan, Charles D. Isaacson, Mrs. J. F. D. Lanier, Richard W. Lawrence, Leonard Liebling, Rt. Rev. William T. Manning, D.D., Charles E. Mitchell, Berthold Neuer, Dr. Eugene Allen Noble, Rev. C. H. Park-hurst, D.D., Hon. Anning S. Prail, Mrs. Arthur M. Reis, Hugo Riesenfeld, Franklin W. Robinson, S. L. Rothafel, Rev. Dr. Joseph Silverman, Theodore E. Steinway, Rodman Wanamaker, Edward Ziegler.
An advisory board of prominent musicians is helping and a group of patrons and patronesses supporting the movement, as followsHarold Bauer, Adolfo Betti, Ernest Bloch, Artur Bodanzky, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden, Leopold Godowsky, Percy Grainger, Henry Hadley, Victor Herbert, Josef Hofmann, Louise Homer, Dr. Otto Kinkeldey, Franz Kneisel, Hans Letz, Willem Mengelberg, Kurt Schindler, Josef Stransky.
Patrons and patronesses are Mrs. Henry Martyn Alexander, Mrs. Barrett Andrews, Mrs. Temistocle Bernard¡, Mrs. Walter S. Comly, Mrs. Henry E. Cooper, Mrs. Henry P. Davidson, Margherita De-Vecchi, Mrs. William A. Delano, Mrs. Gano Dunn, Mrs. Coleman Dupont, Mrs. Harry Harkness Flagler, Mrs. Charles S. Guggenheimer, Mrs. E. H. Har-riman, Mrs. Edward S. Harkness, Mrs. Adrian Iselin, Mrs. Otto H. Kahn, Mrs. F. J. D. Lanier, Mrs. De Acosta Lydig, Edna Marione, Mrs. Charles E. Mitchell, Mrs. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Mrs. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr., Mrs. Douglas Robinson, Mrs. Felix T. Rosen, Marcella Sembrich, Mrs. Hunt Slater, Mrs. J. Frederic Tams, Frederic A. Wallis, Allen Wardwell, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, Mrs. Egerton L. Winthrop.
Forty special committees have Music Week’s detailed activities in charge, and they have as their chairmen John Emerson, Berthold Neuer, Major Edwin W. Dayton, Henrietta Baker Low, John Aspegren, The Rev. Ernest L. Stires, The Rev. Dr. Joseph Silverman, Lynnwood Farnam, Hon. Philip Berolzheimer, Prof. Samuel A. Baldwin, Milton Diamond, Mrs. N. Taylor Phillips, Harriet Righter, Mrs. J. C. Bernheim, Melzar Chaffee, Mrs. Nathan
is nothing, absolutely nothing, they would enjoy more than pheasant shooting.” The titter that followed killed Mrs. Asquith’s argument in that part of the hall.
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And to go on with the question of art love in the masses and the classes, we might quote what we heard Charles Cary Rumsey (son-in-law of the late E. H. Harriman) himself a sculptor of talent, say the other evening when he was asked: “Do you go to the Opera much?” “No, thank God,” he answered. “Do you go to concerts at all?” continued the questioner. “No, thank God, again,” was the reply of Rumsey.
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No wonder that Otto H. Kahn says he would rather see the Metropolitan Opera House boxes filled with earnest, listening men and women of the poorest classes, than with their present gaily, garbed occupants who chatter like parrots when they do not yawn or sleep through the performances.
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Matteo Bensman, composer of operas, symphonies and oratorios, and winner of recognition and even fame abroad, comes to New York and cannot have his works produced here or get himself into the limelight because he has no money. Finally he dies, and at once the daily papers print “human interest” stories about his “broken heart,” and publish his picture, tell of his European successes, and even intimate that his broken heart was hastened by starvation. This episode tells its own story and needs no moralizing.
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A grand opera prize was awarded recently by the “Opera In Our Language, Inc.,” and the winning-work was “The Echo,” a one act opera with words and music by Frank Patterson, one of the associate editors of the Musical Courier. The opus will be produced by the Chicago Opera next season. Meanwhile G. Schirmer, Inc., has published “The Echo” and an advance copy of it is before us. Mr. Patterson, a serious and scholarly musician, went at his task in earnest fashion, and a cursory examination of the piano score and the text reveals “The Echo” to be a well knit allegorical episode, provided with singable words and music of very moder-n thematic and harmonic treatment mixed with merely tuneful material in reserved application. Mr. Patterson’s score does not seek the easiest way to public favor, for it busies itself on the whole with comment and characterization rather than with directly melodious expression. Everywhere is apparent the hand of the sincere and skilled musician. “The Echo” deserves a well done and dignified hearing and such it is sure to have at the hands of the Chicago Opera, upon which occasion these columns will feel more at liberty to go into a critical discussion of Mr. Patterson’s production.
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S. L. Rothafel, artistic director of the Capitol Theater, wrote this letter to be read at the municipal music school hearing before Mayor Hylan:
I am very much interested in the erection of an institution for the advancement of musical education and entertainment. It would indeed be gratifying to have our great city of New York the pioneer in the establishment of such an institution, and the means of spreading the worthy propaganda of music among the people.
I wish you every success in the enterprise, which I am sure you will have the hearty sympathy and support of every eminent musician and musical organization in this city.
Yours very sincerely,
(Signed) S. L. Rothafel.
“The hearty sympathy and support of every eminent musician and musical organization in this city!” Umph! Both the musicians and the organizations were conspicuous by their absence at the meeting of last week.
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“The Downfall of the Occident,” by Oswald Spengler, is a metaphysical work that has taken the reading public of Germany by storm. The volume predicts the downfall of all civilization before another two hundred years have passed. Which five persons or things would you like to have fall down
In the wide chorus of praise for Chaliapin comes a note of discord from Ernest Newman, of London, who expresses disappointment and disillusion after listening to two Albert Hall concerts by the Russian baritone. Among other things, Mr. Newman writes: “It seems to me that a singer of Chaliapin’s gifts might do more to make the unknown master-