38
June 8, 1922
not sound as silly, but I have no objection to the words being understood occasionally,-if the singing is first class.
Whitehill’s Success.
Clarence Whitehill was British enough to sing English words to the German music of “Parsifal” with telling effect. Otherwise this great vocal artist is as American as usual and very welcome in London.
The Vatican Choir and Palestrina.
The Vatican Choir from the Sistine Chapel and the Roman Basilicas gave a concert of sacred unaccompanied vocal music in the Albert Hall, under the direction of Mons. Raffaele Casimiri, last Saturday afternoon. Most of the music was by Palestrina, and the great interest in the concert was that the interpretations were as traditionally correct as it is possible to have them today. We did not hear Palestrina sung by oratorio amateurs who amuse themselves with ballads and concert songs at home and then spend an evening a week at “Elijah” or the ‘ Dream of Gerontius.” These Italian visitors have been brought up to sing Palestrina in the chapel for which Palestrina wrote and where Palestrina is always sung. Apart from the educational value of this' study in Palestrina, however, the Vatican Choir has nothing to teach the English choirs which the English choirs will wish to learn. That solid, balanced, blended, choral tone which is the ideal of the English choirs, is the kind of tone the Italian visitors avoid. Their very high and brilliant tenors predominate, and in every group there are certain solo voices which dominate their groups. I do not say one method is better than the other. All I say is that the Italian method, which sounds operatic to English ears, is not the method adopted by the English choirs. The Vatican choir contains some remarkably fine voices, and the training of the chorus under the care of Director Raffaele Casimiri was beyond praise. The choir is making a tour of the British Isle and the Irish Free State and is to give another London concert in the Albert Hall next Saturday.	Clarence Lucas.
CONNECTICUT STATE FEDERATION HOLDS ANNUAL CONVENTION
The Connecticut State Federation of Music Clubs held its annual meeting at_ Hotel Stratfield, Bridgeport, Conn., on Thursday, May 25, 1922. The morning session opened at 11 o’clock, when reports were read by officers, chairmen of standing committees, and presidents of the various clubs in the Federation. Mrs. Frederick M. Card, of Bridgeport, chairman of the Young Artists’ Contest, reported the following musicians as having been asked to act as judges in the 1923 contest: Dean !)avid Stanley Smith and Prof. Isadore Troostwyk, of Yale School of Music; George Chadwick Stock, president of the Horatio Parker Choir in New Haven; Dr. Carl Martin, of Greenwich, Conn.; Professor Cearno, dean of the music department of Women’s College in New London; Prof. John Adam Hugo and Clayton J. Stevens, supervisor of music in public schools of Bridgeport; Ralph I. Baldwin, supervisor of music in Hartford public schools.
The following officers will remain in office for the ensuing year: President, Mrs. John C. Downs, of Danbury; vice-president, Mrs. Albert L. House, of Stamford; second vice-president, Mrs. George Hill MacLean, of New Haven; recording secretary, Mrs. George H. Chadderton, of Stamford; corresponding secretary, Mrs. William McPhelemy, of Danbury; State treasurer, Dorothy Ryder, of Danbury; advisory board, Mrs. Frederick M. Card and Mrs. Harry C. Ives, of Bridgeport; chairman of State publicity committee, Mrs. Clarence B. Bolmer, of New Haven; chairman of State extension committee, Mrs. Albert L. House, of Stamford; chairman of State library committee, Mrs. George Romans, of Danbury; chairman of State memory contest committee, Mrs. William McPhelemy, of Danbury; chairman of State membership committee, Dorothy Ryder, of Danbury; chairman of State young artists’ contest committee, Mrs. Frederick M. Card, of Bridgeport; chairman of State official badge committee, Marion Wickes Fowler, of New Haven.
About one hundred members partook of a delicious luncheon following the morning session, and at 2 p. m. the afternoon program began with a word of greeting from Mrs. Harry C. Ives, president of the Bridgeport Wednesday Afternoon Musical Club, which was responded to by the State president, Mrs. Downes, a musical number was then given by the club chorus, under the direction of Mr. Marshall, and its rendition reflected much credit to her.
“Is It Worth While?” was the topic upon which Mrs. Russell R. Dorr, historian of the National Federation of Music Clubs, spoke, and she told how that organization was formed twenty-five years ago, at a meeting held in New York, by herself, Mrs. Theodore Thomas and one other woman.
Mrs. F. S. Wardwell, president of the Empire district, told of the recent annual meeting held by the New Jersey-Federation of Music Clubs. She read letters of regret from Mrs. Worcester R. Warner, national auditor, and Nan B. Stephens, president of the South Atlantic district.
Adelaide Zeigler, of Bridgeport, gave a piano solo in such a finished manner as to be obliged to respond to an encore.
Mrs. George Hail, of Providence, R. I., recording secretary of the National Federation of Music Clubs, told of the national board meeting held in Nashville, Tenn., in March; of. the preparations being made for the biennial in June, 1923, in Asheville, N. C.; stressed the junior club work, better music in all public schools, and asked for the cooperation of the State in upholding the supervisors of music in the schools.
The club chorus closed the afternoon session with another group of songs, well rendered and with excellent tonal beauty.
Morris Williams Conducts Choral Concert
An especially interesting choral concert was given at the First Presbyterian Church, Erie, Pa., on the evening of May 23, with Morris Gabriel Williams as the director.
Phillip Gordon Plays in Baxter Springs
On Thursday evening, May 25, Phillip Gordon, the pianist, now on tour, played with splendid success in Baxter Springs, Kan.
MUSICAL COURIER
with English music. One great Italian house supplies the greater part of all the Italian operas produced in America, and a famous Leipsic publishing house has a New York branch for the especial purpose of supplying German music. These foreign houses are able to thrive in America only because the American public takes an interest in the foreign music published by these firms. Mr. Coghill therefore believes that the first essential is to create an interest abroad in American music in general. He maintains that it is almost useless to try to create an interest in the catalog of any one particular American publishing house without first having created an interest in American music. It is a very difficult task to sell American music to a foreign public which does not know that America has produced any music worth selling.
During his short visit to London Mr. Coghill received literally hundreds of letters from singers, players, teachers, directors of musical institutes, asking to be kept informed on trend of American musical composition, and promising to make use of as many new American compositions as were suitable and available.
Mr. Coghill also paid a flying visit to Paris, talked American music to Prime Minister Poincaré himself, had half a column of editorial comment in the Paris edition of the New York Herald, and was the subject of an article in a French magazine.
If every American who visits foreign parts did one tenth as much for the cause of American music as W. L. Coghill did, the ignorance of the average European on the merits of the best American music would melt away like snow in the warm rays of the summer sun.	C. L.
AMERICAN GIRLS IN LONDON
(Continued from page 5)
I said: “You see I was right in judging the merits of the violin. You must therefore believe what I write about you in the Musical Courier.” Amy Neill has just informed me that her managers have arranged for her to give several additional recitals in London during the coming autumn and winter season.
“The Pianists, Like the Poor--------”
The pianists, like the poor, are ever with us. A great many of them, unfortunately, are poor pianists. A goodly number of them would be good enough if their torches did not seem so yellow and smoky in the clear electric blue of a few really great players.
Prokofieff, the Russian pianist-composer who has spent so much time recently in America, played a concerto of his own at one of the London Symphony Orchestra concerts under the direction of Albert Coates. The pianist was much more admired than the composer, and many lovers of piano music hoped Prokofieff would have given the customary recital. But such was not to be.
Lamond has given several Queens Hall recitals this spring and his programs seem to indicate that he is trying to live down the accusation of being a Beethoven player. He is much more than that. He played Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, and several French works admirably, as well as the inevitable Beethoven. To me he is interesting in every composer, but^ I think he interprets Beethoven better than most of the recitalists interpret him. In Germany, he is generally considered a Beethoven player.
Moiseiwitsch packed the Queens Hall full with a host of his admirers when he played a very long program of varied musical works, of which one group consisting of the four ballades of Chopin were the most pleasing to me. Perhaps the reason why ^Moiseiwitsch wears so well with the London public is that his level temperament which avoids extremes of_ passion and sentiment suits the tastes of the English poise and calmness. I have seen some of the greatest artists condemned here for overstepping what the English consider the limits of emotional expression. I wonder if Bach’s forty-eight preludes and fugues are highly valued for their equal temperament.
Rachmaninoff was greeted with an enormous audience when he appeared at Queens Hall last week. I enjoyed his Chopin immensely and was delighted with his Beethoven. But a few critics have chosen to find fault with Rachmaninoff because he composed a world famous prelude which they happen to dislike. Setting aside the colossal conceit of the man who places his tastes on a plane so infinitely higher than the millions of his fellow men and women to whom the Rachmaninoff C sharp minor prelude has given unbounded joy for quarter of a century, should like to ask those English revilers of the prelude to name any English composition for the piano which has been accepted by any portion of the musical world.
Lucille Oliver, of New York, a very young lady who has studied the piano with most excellent results under the able guidance of Ethel Leginska, gave a recital in Wig-more Hall and won golden opinions from all who heard her. Of course, she is hardly in the great pianist class yet, but she plays remarkably well and gives promise of more to follow when fingers and hands have grown a little larger and muscles are a little firmer. These physical limitations will disappear with the coming years, though the limitations are not very serious even now.
Opera Thriving.
The British Opera Company continues to thrive as a green bay tree in Cove'nt Garden. I heard "Samson and Delilah” a few nights ago and found the performance on a high_ level, far above the usual touring companies of opera in English. The voices were there and the stage work was as good as opera requires, but the actual singing, the voice production, the vocal method, was the one weak feature of the evening. London ought to have a season of Italian opera, if for no other reason than to keep a higher ideal of singing before the public, though much of the Italian singing today is a long way below the old bel canto days, such as we have heard of late in London, when the incomparable artist Battistini, gave two recitals of vocal music in Queens Hall. This singer, now between sixty and seventy years of age, was announced as the “greatest living exponent of bel canto,” and he fully maintained his reputation. At the Covent Garden Opera at present are to be heard all kinds of voice production, mostly bad, but relieved by several well trained singers with voices of moderate merit, and a few very good voices badly used.
I do not care very much what language is used if the singing is good. In a foreign language the libretto does
AMERICAN MUSIC IN ENGLAND
What Manager Coghill, of the John Church Company, Has Been Doing to Spread Its Vogue There
W. L. Coghill, managing director of the John Church Company’s Publication Department, has spent almost the entire months of April and May reorganizing the London house of the John Church Company. The retirement of Charles Willoughby, after fifteen years of faithful service as manager of the London house, gave Mr. Coghill another opportunity to expend energy on the advancement of the best American music. So, boarding an ocean ferry, he hastened to London with a trunk full of compositions by American composers and at once began to interview conductors, pianists, singers, teachers, directors of colleges, with the object of increasing the demand for American music. Mr. Coghill by no means confined his attention to the publications of the John Church Company as a matter of fact, not one of the orchestral works he laid before the English conductors^ is published by his firm. He maintains that a selfish policy is a poor one and that the best way he can serve the־ John Church Company is to do all in his power for the welfare of American music in general.
The policy of the London branch from now on will be, first, to make known to the British public the best American compositions, vocal and instrumental, in the John Church catalog, and, secondly, to secure for the American market an occasional English work which would be likely to find favor with the American public.-
Mr. Coghill believes that the reason why English publishers sell ten times more music in the United States than American publishers sell in Great Britain is that the British
publishers have branch houses in America, while the American publishers, with the exception of the John Church Company, have no branch houses in England. He finds no prejudice at all in England against American music, except an occasional sneer at jazz by a purist who does not know that the United States produces very much good music which is not jazz. Mr. Coghill has also read in the Musical Courier that several American singers have been unable to find a selection of American songs in London, and he intends that in future the John Church Company’s London branch will be well stocked with the best representative songs and piano pieces in their catalog of American works. Heretofore the policy of the London house has been to supply the British public with the compositions it asked for and to do very little in making known new works by American composers. From a purely commercial point of view that policy was successful enough. But Mr. Coghill believes that, without sacrificing the business interests of the John Church Company’s London house, he can do a great deal more for the cause of American music in England. The English branch houses in America are concerned mostly
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