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April 20, 1922
lack of intellectual exercise, finally reach the degenerate state of the goose which has had its liver artificially fatted? They produce works over which a certain specially cultured coterie of admirers rave with an enthusiasm equal to the relish of the gourmand for fat liver pie—his pâté de foie gras.
The general public, however, desires more substantial fare in greater abundance. Nobody but the goose suffers in the production of the fat liver delicacies. And no one but the anserine composer is any the worse for the pâté-de-foie-gras music.
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TRAGEDIES
No one can fail to be shocked by the two most recently reported tragedies of the music world— the orchestra player who committed suicide because he would not play “jazz” and could get no other employment, and the composer who died of heart failure when he realized that the scheduled concert of his compositions at Carnegie Hall could not be given because he was unable to pay the musicians—and they are not pleasant things to dwell upon. Yet they should not be too hastily dismissed. We do not get rid of an evil by shutting our eyes to it or turning our back upon it. And the evil of exaggerated stupidity is ever with us, more in the world of music than in any other form of human activity —people.who will squander their entire fortunes in order to get a public hearing ; people who, because of some imagined “principle,” will refuse to earn their living in the only work at hand; people who will sacrifice themselves, their families and friends, to satisfy an ambition not justified by their talent or culture; people who take up music as a profession when they are entirely unfitted for it. The list is endless, and at the bottom of it all is invariably ignorance. Employers of musicians, managers, publishers, orchestra leaders, conductors, and the like, all tell the same story—90 per cent, of the people who come to them are not only incompetent but do not even know how ignorant they are. Very often they are deceived by teachers—not consciously, perhaps, but no less destructively. A word, sometimes a sarcasm or a joke on the part of the teacher, is frequently exaggerated into meaning that the pupil is not only greatly talented but ready for a public career. A kindness (misplaced) on the part of a critic sometimes leads a composer or artist to get an entirely false impression as to the value of his work.
But generally it is a sort of monomania. The artist, or would-be artist, dwells so long upon himself and h'is work he gets into a chronic state of self-deception. Even artists and composers who have palpably failed, been tried and found wanting, are too prone to believe that they are misunderstood (whatever that means), and strive and strive again for another hearing. They are not practical—this is, perhaps, their greatest fault. A “practical” composer was heard to remark one day not long ago that he had the habit of sending his compositions around to a few publishers. If they were refused he took it for granted that they were not suited to the taste of the moment. He put them away and left them for a few years and then tried again. “And often,” he remarked, “when I dug them out of their hiding place I wondered that I could ever myself have found them good.” He has been eminently successful. He is certainly eminently wise.
It is, of course, impossible to advise in individual cases. People who come and ask if they have talent, if they will succeed, cannot expect any definite answer. It would be unfair to the asker and asked alike to attempt to give one. It is also not always true that an artist can begin at the bottom and climb up. That, especially in opera, is likely to be harmful. Nor is it true that an artist should always be in a position to earn his or her living. It is sometimes impossible to keep a class of pupils and arrange for a tour.
What this all leads to is the fact that an artist should be fairly sure of sufficient funds to make a career before starting out. If the funds are unavailable there is always the smaller road, the road of the teacher, of occasional concert appearances, wherein a comfortable living can be made. It may be possible to get on in the world of art in Europe with little or no money ; in America it is impossible. It costs money to get lessons, it costs money to live during the study period, it costs money to get a manager, it costs money to advertise, it costs money to wait until things materialize, it costs money for clothes and photographs and all sorts of things.
If you are determined to be an artist, be careful to take the safe road, and not to enter into mad schemes that lead to suicide or death of a broken heart !
MUSICAL COURIER
musical festivals and three dramatic ones—enough to keep this paper’s European staff occupied all summer long.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Americans are very properly annoyed when a visitor from abroad spends a few weeks rushing from New York to the west and back and then publishes his impressions of America. But Americans are guilty of the same practice often enough when they spend two or three months in Europe and come home with settled convictions about existing conditions in Germany, France, Austria, Italy, England. In fact, we knew of one American visitor to England who told an old Londoner that his first impressions gave him a better judgment of the English than the long experience gave the Londoner. Needless to say, such a notion is entirely wrong. The traveller cannot help judging from the point of view of the country he has long lived in. Herbert Spencer pointed this out long before us. Said he :
There is a story of a Frenchman who, having been three weeks here, proposed to write a book on England; who, after three months, found that he was not quite ready; and who, after three years, concluded that he knew nothing about it. And every one who looks back and compares his early impressions respecting states of things in his own society with the impressions he now has, will see how erroneous were the beliefs once so decided, and how probable it is that even his revised beliefs are but partially true.
Some seventy years before Spencer wrote the work from which we have just quoted, an article by Sydney Smith in the Edinburgh Review was filled with examples of wrong first impressions. We shall omit the examples and give but one or two comments by Sydney Smith:
The same expressions are of so different a value in different countries, the same actions proceed from such different causes, and produce such different effects, that a judgment of foreign nations, founded on rapid observation, is almost certainly a mere tissue of ludicrous and disgraceful mistakes ; and yet a residence of a month or two seems to entitle a traveler to present the world with a picture of manners in London, Paris, or Vienna, and even to dogmatize upon the political, religious, and legal institutions.
The volume of American travel to Europe during the summer will soon swell to its former size. Many musicians, young and old, will visit strange places and see unfamiliar conditions. May we ask the younger ones in particular to keep in mind the words of Spencer and Sydney Smith?
Judgments founded on first impressions have done much wrong to many a new composer. The musicians and critics who could make neither head nor tail of Chopin’s music when they first heard it, were exactly like travellers in foreign lands. They heard it with ears accustomed to Mozart, dementi, Hummel, and the advanced Beethoven. They could judge properly the Chopin world only when they were at home in it.
In 1859, John Ella, a well known writer on music of the period, was so startled by the extraordinarily crude and advanced harmonies of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” that he gravely prints the Pilgrims’ Chorus as a horrible example, and remarks that: “I am inclined to think it is not calculated to please an English audience.”
In another essay Ella lets us see the kind of world he lived in—a world in which such works as “Tannhäuser” were unfamiliar objects. Ella says:	“To
my mind there is no more striking effect of powerful imagination suggestive of the darkest^ imagery of tragic incidents than the whole of the introduction to ‘Les Deux Journées,’ by Cherubini.” He quotes forty-two measures of this formal and now forgotten music to prove his assertion.
׳ Coming down to our times, we have but to recall our own first impressions of the tone poems of Richard Strauss. Today we find those once so revolutionary works so clear and full of melody that we turn with relief to them from many a new thing which we feel sure was only composed in a dare-devil spirit of seeking for novelty. Wait till the first impressions are obliterated by familiarity. We may yet live to see that Beethoven’s abominable rashness in beginning his C major symphony with the dominant of F was only an offence to first impressions.
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PATE DE FOIE GRAS
No normal, healthy goose would be troubled with a fatted liver. Only under abnormal conditions of forced overfeeding and close confinement does that inelegant and none too intellectual bird develop the unwholesome delicacy the French call Foie Gras, otherwise fat liver.
Are there not musical works of the foie gras order? Are there not uninteresting and none too brainy composers who, by overdoses of lurid romance and sentimental passion, combined with
EUROPE’S FESTIVALS
These are the piping times of peace—at least so it would seem from the enormous number of festive musical events announced for the spring and summer seasons. These multifarious activities, in which European musicians seem to work off their surplus energies, are a fit subject for the Man from Cooks, and the American to whom Europe is once more becoming a summer playground will have ample opportunity to satisfy his thirst for music (and other things) as he goes along. We have attempted to compile a list of these festivals as far as data is available. It was printed in last week’s issue of the Musical Courier and may be supplemented and amended from time to time. It presents a remarkable range of choice and furnishes material for several musical tours, for it would, of course, be impossible for any one man to take in the whole.
As usual, Germany leads in the number of festivals, sixteen being announced to date. Foui of these (at Bremen, Munich, Godesberg and Essen) are Brahms festivals, in commemoration of the composer’s death, and probably more or less perfunctory affairs Still another Brahms festival takes place in Vienna this month. Bach, Beethoven, Handel and Reger are also honored by one festival each.
More important than any of these are the German Tonkünstler Convention, held in Düsseldorf this year, which will give a fair idea of the quintessence of contemporary German composition, and the chamber music festival at Donaueschingen, a rather exclusive affair under princely patronage. Last year this event brought to light some really vital modern works by Germans and others. A similar venture is announced for Nuremberg in May, although this is likely to be more conservative. More genuine enjoyment, surely, may be expected fiom the Munich festival plays, which can be visited any time during July, August and September, and which are in effect a Bayreuth festival on a broader basis. Americans going to Munich will, of course, want to visit the Passion Plays at Oberammergau, which are not far distant.	־,, .	_ _.	.
Concerning the Zurich Festival, held m May this year, a good deal has already been printed in these columns, and in quality and diversity, if not m quantity, this promises to one of the highest efforts. The juxtaposition of German and French opera, given by representative national ensembles, ought to prove especially interesting, and to judge from last year s beginning the festival ought to be a tremendous success now that Switzerland has again become the choice tourist’s goal. Next to it in interest and attractiveness is the Salzburg Festival, presided over by Reinhardt and Strauss. “Don Giovanni,” done by Viennese artists under Strauss’ baton, and probably “Adriadne auf Naxos,” both staged by Reinhardt, are by no means ordinary events, while the “Great World Theater” of Calderon, with new music by Strauss, will intrigue many modern stage enthusiasts. Immediately preceding this festival there will be a week of international chamber music, at which even America is to have a voice.
Of equal interest with the German and Austrian festivals are the large British ones of which four have been announced thus far, and to these may perhaps be added an interesting English opera festival at Glastonbury, where Rutland Boughton is establishing a sort of English Bayreuth. The Three-Choirs Festival at Gloucester and the Leeds Festival, in September and October of this year, both have promising and diversified programs. Then there are the two Welsh festivals, in August and October, which will both take account of modern as well as older music this year, and will both have the co-operation of the London Symphony Orchestra. Wholly modern and wholly British, however, is Dan Godfrey’s festival in Bournemouth at Easter time. This will be under the aegis of the municipality and will give the best opportunity to judge native creative endeavor this year. Those who are able to go to it may follow it up by a visit to Stratford-on-Avon to witness the great bard’s drama on native soil.
No festivals have been reported from the north this year, although Scandinavia is full of great choirs that like to compete. They are saving their strength for next year, it seems, when there will be a great exposition at Stockholm. There will be, on the other hand, at least one festival each in Spain and France, and Spain is moreover giving a review of Spanish music in Berlin this month. Italy’s open-air opera performances are somewhat in doubt, because of the great deficits of last year, but the Greek drama performances in Smyrna at the end of April have some musical or rather musicological interest because of the attempted restoration of Greek music. Altogether our list records twenty-nine projected