April 27, 1922
MUSICAL COURIER
22
young dancing gentleman is going to do something of Debussy’s that is translated “It is a Bird Flying,” and the young writing gentleman’s comment on this is “Subjective patterns unseemingly betraying the Playboy of the Western World. Subtle treason to the Spanish.” Next comes Moszkowski’s “The Juggler,” which is “Syncopation with gold balls all flying to a dubious heaven.” Then there is Debussy’s “Narcissus at the Pond”—“plastic abusiveness dripping with sentimentality”; while Proko-fieff’s “Caprice” is labelled “geometrical blithness sacrificing its angles with unusual candor.” Next comes an intermission while the audience recovers its balance (and perhaps the young gentleman dancer as well), after which there is Ravel’s “Pavanne for the Death of a Royal Child”—“Royal Child pompously celebrating the removal of its earthly intentions.” Later Cyril Scott’s “Tango Orientale” suggests “Langorous invocation to the Smells ( !) of the Orient,” and to end with there is the same composer’s “Danse Negre”—“sensuality playing with the dregs of the negro race, and begging for shades of perfumed vengeance.” Just so things shan’t get too over-esthetic, a young pianist-composer is to play two groups of his own pieces. One of them is called “Antinomy,” doubtless the scherzo from the Zinc Sonata—which suggests the possibility of an endless series of metallic fantasies for the steel strings. What was that phrase of our childhood days—“Just too utterly utter!”
AMERICAN PUBLISHERS NOTE!
American music is difficult to get in Europe, it seems, because American publishers either have no agents in many countries or do not supply these agents with an adequate stock. Moreover, there is no good in having agents if they do not advertise as such. Inquiries are reaching our European offices constantly as to where a “selection” of American music can be obtained. It is not reasonable to expect European musicians to order this music outright, hit or miss, basing their selection on hearsay only. They want to see the scores. This applies not only to orchestral music (Sir Henry Wood has tried vainly for months to obtain the material of a work by Henry F. Gilbert), but also to chamber music and small forms as well. The situation is worse, of course, with regard to Central Europe, and it seems that here something should be done to overcome the barrier imposed by the depreciation of exchange. A correspondent in Budapest, anxious to get to know some American music with a view to public performance, suggests that a generous selection shipment be placed with the leading house of music publishers, Messrs. Rozsavolgyi, which could act as a sort of trustee. This correspondent is apparently well informed about American composers, and inquires particularly for the works of Charles M. Loeffler and composers that write in characteristic American idioms. Ensemble music, orchestral music, and especially music for chamber orchestra, is desired, as well as vocal music with instrumental accompaniment. As similar requests have come from Berlin, Warsaw and Vienna, it seems that far-seeing business policy would dictate taking advantage of this—perhaps ephemeral—sentiment for things American, even if substantial financial returns can only be counted upon for the future.
C. S.
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IN EARNEST
Mme. Aurelia Arimondi, the well known Chicago voice teacher, has among her pupils a young woman named Jessima Ceriale. Miss Ceriale recently dedicated a poetical effusion to her teacher. One cannot fail to be impressed with her earnestness even though it appears that, wrestling with the English language, she came out a rather poor second. Here it is:
TO MY TEACHER, AURELIA ARIMONDI,
These few lines, I’ll dedicate,
But it’s impossible to tell you How beautiful voices she does make.
For she’s wrapped up in each pupil,
Be she poor or millionaire.
Money does not fascinate her It’s the voice for which she cares.
When God made this little woman He gave her brains and lots of them.
She’s a genius, above all others,
I simply can’t tell you with my pen.
,	She’s not like other teachers
Who think of other things When giving one a lesson Don’t care just how you sing.
I thank God a million times each night For sending her to me For I love her very dearly,
And may her life a long one be.
CIVIC OPERA
the figure they ask from Chicagoans for a guarantee fund is greatly exaggerated if the figures of losses registered during the Campanini régime should be used as a criterion. True, in those days the artists were not paid such high salaries; true also, there was less extravagance than has existed in the past year of the Chicago Opera Association, but it is true also that the price of tickets was more within the reach of people than today. Paying $6 for a stall entitles the purchaser to hear the best, and the best Chicago will have, but, as a matter of record, it must be stated that it was a mistake—nay, a blunder —to call on Chicagoans to raise the guarantee fund for the future of the opera in that locality. There is a Marshall Field, whose grandfather made his money in Chicago and who himself is now worth millions of dollars and who is a patron of grand opera inasmuch as he subscribes for a box at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. What does he do for Chicago? A thousand dollars from him is less than a farthing from a stenographer who is asked to contribute $10 to the fund. What about the Armours, the Mitchells, the Swifts, the Man-dels, the Cranes, the Carsons and Piries, the Reynolds, the Meekers, the Morris ? Could they not between them have made up the deficit, as Harold F. McCormick and Edith Rockefeller McCormick practically did for ten years? Possibly J. Ogden Armour does not like music. Maybe to Mr. Swift opera is an expensive and boresome divertisement, but financial prosperity of a community should interest good citizens far more than their personal likes or dislikes. Opera needs philanthropic men— men who have big ideas, men who want their city to forge to the front not only through commercialism, but also as an art center. Chicago some day, perhaps, when the subway has been built, will rival New York City as a commercial center of the world, but it should copy its elder sister in other than commercial enterprises, and as rich men have contributed to the Metropolitan welfare, rich men should contribute here.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is not a civic enterprise, even though the people at large contributed for its maintenance. Rich men of the city are the trustees, and even with money the poor people of yesterday—rich today—could not buy or subscribe to a box and possibly not to an orchestra stall for a Friday afternoon, as the first rich guarantors of the association saw to it years ago to reserve those seats for themselves, yet Chicago is justly proud of its orchestra, which in a large measure has contributed in bringing renown all over the world to this city, not only as the biggest packing house city but also as a musical center second to none in this hemisphere.	R. D.
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CONSTRUCTIVE?
Here’s one of the bright paragraphs of the late Bert Leston Taylor, whose famous column, “A Line-o’-Type or Two,” was for so many years the chief attraction in the Chicago Tribune for most of us:
“Very well, here is a constructive criticism,” declared Colonel Roosevelt, tossing another grenade into the Administration trenches. The Colonel is our favorite constructive critic. After he has finished a bit of construction it takes an hour for the dust to settle.
Whenever we hear of constructive criticism, a broad smile diffuses itself within our sleeve. What is constructive criticism? Our idea is that the term “constructive criticism” is in itself a negation. Criticism is inevitably destructive. Its constructive value can only arise from two things : first, its absolute correctness ; second, through the artist taking heed of what the critic has said about the incompleteness or falsity of his art, and then taking steps to get rid of the faults which are pointed out.
But how many artists will admit that criticism of themselves, however gentle, is justified? A tenor once told us that he studied the faults found with his singing by reputable critics and tried to rid himself of them. The answer was one of two things : either the man lied or he was a mighty poor ridder.
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COMMENTS
Somebody sent us a program of a young gentleman dancer—to speak euphemistically. We might even have gone to see him had the thoughtful person who mailed us the program included tickets as well. The program at least held out promises. It had what are described as “comments,” by a young writer who is so well off he can afford to do nothing more than write “comments.” The
THE CHICAGO
“Opera is not for the rich alone; they are not the ones who patronize the company. It is for the common people, for the general culture of the public,” said B. J. Mullaney, former Commissioner of Public Works and present manager of public and industrial relations of the People’s Gas, Light and Coke Company, speaking recently in Chicago. This statement, like all others emanating from the People’s Gas, Light and Coke Company, may be true, but it will not help to get new subscribers for the Chicago Civic Opera. It seems that anything civic, municipal, or even national in opera is generally doomed to failure. Quoting from J. A. Fuller-Maitland’s introduction to the book, “The Opera,” by R. A. Streatfeild, “in connection with every operatic enterprise the question arises of how to cater for a great class, who attend operatic performances for any other reason rather than that of musical enjoyment, yet without whose pecuniary support the undertaking must needs fail at once. In countries where the opera enjoys a government subsidy, the influences that make against true art are as many and as strong as they are elsewhere.”
Rich merchants derive a direct benefit from the opera, not only in Chicago but also everywhere else where opera is given, and it seems only logical that those rich merchants should be made the guarantors of the Chicago Civic Opera. A big business man in Chicago told the writer that during the opera season the Marshall Field & Co. store makes upward of $5,000 profit a day in the women’s apparel departments. Now then, John G. Shedd and his associates derive a good income indirectly from the opera and they should contribute largely in making up the deficit of the Chicago Civic Opera rather than to call on the purse of less fortunate business men. It is true that the poorer people of Chicago have supported grand opera. They have bought tickets consistently since Chicago has had an opera company of its own, but they have looked toward the rich element in that community to pay the deficit, and this, following the general rule as far as grand opera is concerned. It has always been the duty of rich men to open their coffers to art to benefit the people from whom they really receive their money. In olden days, in Greece, in Rome, even in Babylon, it was the rich men in those communities who gave liberally to worthy art enterprises, their civic pride urging them to give plenty to make their city first in art, and they endured all through the centuries only through the benefit they derived through those benefactors of art. Kings and emperors that make names in history were all patrons of art; they encouraged artists and they subsidized opera, as they recognized in that branch of music “heaven’s young-est-teemed star.” Business men of Chicago have different ideas. They believe that the people at large should contribute to the guarantee fund of the Chicago Civic Opera, as only by their contributions can they make the opera civic in that community. Would it not have been much more generous for those rich business men to poll the yearly losses of the future Civic Opera Company and to solicit Chicagoans to buy tickets for the opera? Now then, with good solicitors, the Auditorium could be sold out every night during the week and if with sold-out houses the deficit should be large, the fault would lie only with the management, as there should be no reason for a deficit if the Auditorium were sold out nightly. Why should a deficit of $500,000 be expected by the Chicago Civic Opera management? What business enterprises ever at its start looked for a deficit? American people judge the success of an enterprise by its financial returns and the Chicago Civic Opera looks to be, as it is presented by its directors, a very poor investment. “No opera company in the world has ever made money,” said one of the directors recently, but this statement, like many others made recently, does not hold water. There are many opera companies in the world which in the past have made money and there are some today which still make money. The directors of the Chicago Civic Opera Company do not know that there was a director at the Paris Opera who made a fortune there. This, if memory serves right, during the exposition of 1889. Then, there is Mr. Gallo, who, when he entered the operatic field, was not a very prosperous man. Today he lives in fine style and has a pretty good banking account. Antonio Scotti, without begging the support of anyone, is able to travel all through this vast continent, usually coming out on the right side of the ledger. Cleofonte Campanini did not lose at an average any $500,000 for the Chicago Opera Company. The directors of the Chicago Civic Opera have access to the books and they will notice that