MUSICAL COURIER
66
May 11, 1922
cannot make the best of the “Parsifal” music equally effective, although it succeeds in making the dull parts as drab and dreary as a November fog. “Parsifal, nevertheless, has a potent spell for certain temperaments, and I have no doubt but that the British Opera Company will have full houses at Covent Garden Theater when “Parsifal” is given. I must range myself among those critics who find a stage performance of the whole of “Parsifal” very wearisome. But the three men Shakespeare’s Shylock referred to all had different tastes:
As there is no firm reason to be render’d,
Why he cannot abide a gaping pig;
Why he, a harmless necessary cat;
Why he, a wauling bagpipe.
Enoch and Westminster
On Good Friday afternoon I went to an Enoch concert in Central Hall, opposite Westminster Abbey, and heard a number of secular and sacred and sentimental and serious songs interspersed with organ solos by Arthur Meale, and piano solos by Pouishnoff. The very large hall was filled. 1 could see no vacant seats. I have always found these Enoch concerts well attended. Evidently the programs are skilfully put together by some one who knows how to attract a great number of London music lpvers. The singers are often varied, but organist Meale and pianist Pouishnoff appear at every concert.
At the end of the first part of the program I left the hall and wandered into Westminster Abbey. The usual entrance was so full of people that I was obliged to enter by the narrow, ancient doorway at the Poets’ Corner. I squeezed in slowly and stood for a time with my back against the tomb of Edmond Spenser, “prince of poets in his day,” and listened to the organ in the nave around the corner. Distance and space have a great deal to do with the impressiveness of the organ in Westminster Abbey. The powerful, brilliant, and richly varied organ in Central Hall, which I had just heard, makes a different effect. It rises from the platform to the ceiling, and towers over the organist like the elephant beside the ant in the popular romance, but it lacks something which I am sure is due
CESAR THOMSON,
photographed in London, April, 1922, for the Musical Courier by Clarence Lucas.
entirely to the long drawn aisles and vast spaces under the lofty roof. Literary men with little or no knowledge of music frequently overlook the physical effect of distance and space on musical sounds and write as if they could not distinguish between the music and the sentiments that rise within them when they contemplate their surroundings, as Addison contemplated them in his “Spectator.” Said he:
When I am in a serious humor, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy. . . .
It is right to think that the Abbey is a melancholy place, but wrong to believe that the music of the. organ is the cause of the melancholy sentiment.
When the organ stopped and the voice of a distant ecclesiastic was heard, a number of hearers discovered they had important engagements outside and they tip-toed through the antique door used formerly by the Norman and Plantagenet Kings. I was able to get a little nearer the choir by gaining Chaucer’s tomb, with Dryden on my right hand, and Tennyson and Browning at my feet. The singing by the choir is also mellowed by the spaces of the rambling church. The tones are beautiful and perfectly in tune. They are wonderfully appropriate to their surroundings. On the concert stage, however, such singing would soon become monotonous, for the singers seemed to have awe without enthusiasm and reverence without life. Clarence Lucas.
Sittig Trio Active
Despite the lateness of the season the Sittig Trio appeared at three concerts in one week: On April 20, a recital in the ballroom of the Laurel House in Lakewood, N. J., before a large audience; on April 21, a recital in West New York, N. J., for the School Teachers’ Association, and on Sunday evening, April 23, at a big concert in the National Theater, New York City.
serious female rival. She conducted the performance of her opera the other night and was vociferously applauded.
Coghill on Piccadilly.
I met W. L. Coghill, managing director of the John Church Co., last week walking rapidly through the streets of London. His sole object in life appears to be the welfare of American music, and I knew by the earnest look in his eye that he had some project on hand. An ancient military enemy is said to have exclaimed when he contemplated London: “What a city to sack!” I believe W. L. Coghill was thinking, “what a city to Americanize 1”
Echols, Tenor.
A young American tenor from California, by name Wey-land Echols, was highly spoken of in several newspapers last week as the possessor of a remarkably beautiful voice. He sang in Aeolian Hall, and is to appear in public again shortly. The possessor of a remarkably beautiful tenor voice ought to have a career before him and not behind him, as Artemus Ward casually suggested.
Seven Thousand Applications.
The Gilbert and Sullivan operatic run has been an enormous success. The London season closed on Saturday night with a run of 218 performances in six months. There were 7,000 applications for tickets for the last night through the post alone, and it is estimated that the crowd outside the Prince’s Theater would have filled the seats six times. The works performed and the number of times were: “Ruddigore,” forty-one; “Mikado,” twenty-seven; “Gondoliers,” twenty-five; “Yeomen of the Guard,” twenty-four; “Patience,” twenty-two; “Iolanthe,” twenty-two; “Princess Ida,” twenty-one; “Cox and Box,” nineteen; “Trial by Jury,” fifteen; “Pinafore,” twelve; “Pirates of Penzance,” twelve; “Sorcerer,” eleven.
The company closed the London season only because it was booked for other cities. Another Gilbert and Sullivan season is promised in the near future.
In the meantime Londoners of operatic tastes look forward to the early appearance of the British Opera Company at Covent Garden.	Clarence Lucas.
CESAR THOMSON HOLDS
LONDON’S DEEP RESPECT
Famous Belgian Violinist and Teacher Heard in Recital—■ “Parsifal” Edited—Enoch and Westminster—Five Apostles of “The Apostles”
London, April 17.—César Thomson, the Belgian violinist, who gave a recital in Wigmore Hali last week, must certainly be put in the class with the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, whom Shakespeare says “age cannot wither.” His snow white hair and beard bely the vigor of his bowing and the energy of his rhythm. Thirty years ago I heard him play with the same technical brilliancy and that nobility of style without a trace of sentimentalism. His manner always was more imperative than coaxing and it is the same today. He was sixty-five last month. Beside the veteran Saint-Saëns the Belgian violinist is not very old. But Wilhelmj retired when he was fifty and died at sixty-three. Sarasate, Rubinstein, Von Biilow, all died at sixty-four. At sixty-five Joachim was practically finished, without a reliable ear and stiff in arms and fingers.
If César Thomson was no longer a public artist he would still be of great interest to the musical public on account of his pupils. Perhaps the pupils of César Thomson who are best known to Americans are Adolpho Betti and Alfredo Pochón, of the Flonzaley Quartet, although the American violinist, Francis Macmillen, is very widely known. Several members of the Zoellner Quartet spent some months in César Thomson’s classrooms. That wonderful Polish artist who made such an impression in America last season, Paul Kochanski, is another of the Belgian master’s most successful pupils. Eugene Dubois, of Chicago, is another one. A Russian violinist, who has not yet visited America, so I am informed, is Hlavscha Schkolnik, a pupil of whom César Thomson speaks very highly. The old master has also a warm place in his heart for the brilliant young Pole, Henri Czaplinski, who recently went to the Hambourg Conservatory in Toronto.
Some of the South American pupils are. Lea Epstein, Mora, Alba Rosa, Edward Fabini. Barjanski has made a name, and so has Ida Berson, the Russian. Edmond Lichtenstein is well known.
Other pupils of César Thomson are: Charles Herman, of Paris; Jose Porta, Spain; Lagarde, of Monte Carlo; H. Waagemans, now in Switzerland, and the Italian, De Micheli.
When I took my camera with me and called on him at his hotel in London, just after his recital, he had not a word to say about himself. His pupils were the only subject of his talk. He sat for me in his hotel bedroom only because I proved to him that his pupils all over the world would have no means of seeing what he now looks like unless I got his photograph for the Musical Courier.
A pleasant surprise, in the shape of a testimonial gift from his pupils and friends, awaits him when he reaches Belgium. As the event will be over long before this can be printed, I take the liberty of announcing it.
Edited “Parsifal.”
“Parsifal,” which has now become the musical hot cross bun of Good Friday concerts in London, drew large audiences, afternoon and evening, when Sir Henry J. Wood directed two performances of the choicest excerpts from Wagner’s unequal Bühnenweihfestspiel. I am inclined to believe, however, that the Alpine peaks of the music will consecrate the concert room long after the jungle of the play has ceased to consecrate the stage. Excerpts from the ordinary grand opera are seldom good enough for the programs of symphony concerts. But some of Wagner’s “Parsifal” is as fine as any music ever heard on this mundane sphere and probably up to the level of the seraphic choruses Dante alleges he heard in Paradise. Consequently, the best of the “Parsifal” music gets such magnificent performances in the concert room by symphony orchestras and the most eminent singers that the ordinary opera company

LONDON
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ion at least, the most successful female composer of dramatic music. I have never heard any of her songs in the concert halls, and judging by her operatic excerpts, I
DR. ETHEL SMYTH,
most distinguished of English women composers, tohose opera, “The Boatswain’s Mate,” was recently given at the Old Vic, London. Dr. Smyth, like Melba and Clara Butt, was aioarded the title of Dame by King George V.
should say that she lacks the lyrical charm of several women composers I might name, if comparisons were desirable. But on the stage Dr. Ethel Smyth is without a