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June 15, 1922
Opera, whose voice is said to surpass in loveliness the quality of the voice of Michailova (whose records alone are known here), will be one of the artists. The other is the famous Carmen, Maria Davidova, of the Petrograd Opera House. Mr. Rabinoff says that during his recent stay in Europe he heard the Ukrainian National Chorus three times in Paris, twice in London, once in Vienna, Berlin and Brussels. “Five different countries and five different peoples, each having a school of music of its own, and in each and every instance I have seen such demonstrations of enthusiasm as I have never before witnessed.”
MUSICAL COURIER THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL CHORUS
What It Is, What It Sings, Who Leads It—The Sensation It Has Caused in Europe
By Jessie McBride
Prominent Church Position for Peege
To be selected from more than one hundred applicants for one of the most prominent and coveted church positions in New York is one of the best endorsements of a singer’s artistic qualifications. Such is the honor which has just been accorded Charlotte Pegge, the contralto, who on June
© Gerhard Sisters, St. Louis
CHARLOTTE PEEGE, contralto.
4 became the soloist of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Ninety-sixth street and Central Park West.
On May 27 Miss Peege completed a concert tour which began in October, during which time she gave 163 concerts in twenty-seven States and Canada, and traveled more than eleven thousand miles. Be it said to her credit that, in spite of so arduous a tour, the singer filled every engagement according to schedule.
In addition to concert engagements which have carried her to nearly every part of the country, Miss Peege has appeared as soloist with many prominent orchestras and choral societies, including the New York Symphony and St. Louis Symphony orchestras, Boston Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Apollo Club, Boston Musical Association, New York Mozart Society, Providence Arion Club, Milwaukee Musical Society, Schubert Choral Club of Newark, Minneapolis Philharmonic Club, People’s Choral Union of Boston, and the Milwaukee Mannerchor. She has sung at festivals in Newark, Lindsborg, Kan., and Charlotte, N. C.
Miss Peege’s church position will in no way interrupt her concert work, which is under the direction of Walter Anderson.
Koliada! Koliada!
Koliada has arrived!
On the Eve of the Nativity,
We went about, we sought Koliada;
Through all the courts, in all the alleys.
We found Koliada in Peter’s court.
Round Peter’s court there is an iron fence,
In the midst of the Court there are three rooms;
In the ,first room there is a bright Moon;
In the second is the red Sun;
And in the third room are the many Stars.
How fresh it is!
The Russo-Greek Church never interfered in any degree with popular poetry, either secular or religious. Christianity, therefore, merely enlarged the field of subjects. The result is that the Slavonic people possess a mass of religious poetry the like of which, either in kind or quantity, is not to be found in all western Europe.
The Ukrainian National Chorus sings also charmingly naive poems about the Holy Virgin and the Child, revealing the very spirit of Christianity. Then the bride-maidens sing their wedding songs, or we hear how a wild youth gathered the lads of his tribe and raided the neighboring village to kidnap his sweetheart. The music of this choir is something new in choral singing. Quality, not mass, is its method. Yet mass there is when needed, violent massed voices. They scale the whole of the national soul, ranging from the deepest melancholy to outbursts of wild gaiety.
Koschetz, Director.
Prof. Alexander Koschetz is known throughout Russia as a composer and as the conductor of the famous Ukrainian National Chorus. These are not chorus voices, in our sense of just singing together, but are chosen from among the most expert and talented singers.
“He plays upon his choir as he would upon an organ,” says La Lanterne, of Paris, of this famous creator of a symphony of human voices. “He opens and closes the stops of his magic music box. He throws back the tenors and draws out the basses ... he combines and opposes a thousand unsuspected resources of his human instrument.” And from the Demain, of Brussels: “Mr. Koschetz conducts his choir in a really exquisite manner by his elegant and discrete mimicry, as light as it is expressive. One might say he is a sculptor in melody, in rhythm, in measure, in shadings.”
London, too, the land of the great chorale and the mother of the sacred oratorio, sings their praises in extravagant terms: “Some extraordinary and original choral effects were achieved by this choir at their concert at Queen’s Hall last night. It would not be too much to say that nothing quite like them has ever been heard in London before. The basses in particular have wonderfully sonorous voices, but the_ way they sang their national songs surpasses all description.”
And so the praise of the nations goes on. Laudation, imagery. The Berlin Allgemeine Zeitung begins with a legend: “When the Lord was distributing gifts to the children of all nations in Paradise, there remained one little maiden without a gift. ‘Who are you?’ inquired the Almighty. ‘I am a child of the Ukraine,’ answered the little one sadly. Then the Lord was enlightened with a bright thought. He gave the little one the gift of song. At every step,’[ the writer continues, “you notice the clearness of intonation and the correctness of the singing, even in the quickest measures. And what emotion manifested by these Ukrainians!”
Acts as Ambassador.
A writer in Germany has said that if his country had such an organization to send out to the world that would so reveal the very heart of a people they would have no need of ambassadors. The emphasis is upon the word “national” with these singers from the Ukraine because of its inherent characteristics. Here we may know peoples, manners, customs—“through the sweet power of music.”
Two famous soloists Mr. Rabinoff will bring with the choir as a separate part of the program. Oda Slobodskaya, the leading dramatic soprano of the Petrograd Imperial
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“America will hear the most artistic, extraordinary and unique organization of its kind in the world,” says Max Rabinoff in presenting to the American public next season-beginning in October—the Ukrainian National Chorus, which has received superlative praise from the leading critics of Europe, such as is seldom accorded to any single musician or group of artists. Such words of endorsement from the man who was the pioneer in introducing that epoch making art of the Ballet Russe with the inimitable Pavlowa to America, the famous Balalaika Orchestra, and who presented with the Boston Grand Opera Company some of the most notable novelties and brilliant casts we have known, adding to them the luxury of the Pavlowa ballet as an entr’acte needs no justification.
Mr. Rabinoff is a pioneer in the art of music. He believes the coming of the Ukrainian National Chorus will again fulfil a mission in art as well as prove a delight by its marvelous singing and by the varied moods and themes of its songs. These singers will make but half of his program, for with them he brings two distinguished opera artists as soloists, their part of the program introducing also composers of well known classics and compositions that are not known here.
With the Ukrainian National Chorus something new will come out of the East, from the land of the big White Bear. It is a group of human voices that all Europe calls a “human orchestra.” And they sing without accompaniment, the voices responding to the conductor’s command like a human symphony. There are forty singers, under the direction of Prof. Alexander Koschetz, and they have triumphantly toured Europe, coming next autumn to the United States for four months and then going to South America by way of Cuba, Mexico and other Central American countries.
Gogol says that “singing means everything to the Ukrainians.” Song accompanies every action of the Russian peasant from the cradle to the grave. These people of what was formerly Little Russia bring their traditions, their religion, their history, and their temperamental frolic to you in fascinating vocai language as vivid and imaginative as the orchestral score of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s tale of the Arabian Nights in his “Sheherazade.”
America knows the language of tone color, drama, fantasy and fable that the Russians put into the orchestra. But hear the leading critics of Europe wherever this famous Ukrainian National Chorus has passed, leaving impressions that seem to touch their pens with magic ink.
Makes Poets of Critics.
These critics do not bring mere valuation. They immediately begin creating epics in prose. Adolphe Boschet, a leading authority on music in France, wrote of the first concert of the Ukrainian National Chorus in Paris:
“From the very beginning one loses all notion of time and space. One forgets the prosaic hall. One imagines being in some sacred temple and assisting at the performance of some marvellous and hitherto unknown rites of Eternal Beauty. We no longer witness ordinary singers obeying their conductor—these are priests and priestesses of a deep religion reverently bent before a Demiurge, who projects and transmits his own flame with eloquent and dominating gestures, by turns impressive, tragic, wrathful, or imploring.
“He plays, so to say, on a magnificent human instrument, whose forty hearts and forty brains are connected in a telepathic and mysterious correspondence with his heart and brain. What a discipline! What a submission to the idea which is felt to hover over these unique performers! What marvellous precision! What purity! What nuances! Never a hitch in the most daring rhythms, not the slightest hesitation in the most difficult passages; and then what poise and what perfect homogeneity!
“Everything is mingled in unique sonorousness, giving sometimes the impression of an ideally harmonious organ. A great reception was given to Mr. Koschetz and his prodigious singer^. The encores were numerous and the ovations enthusiastic. There were also—I have seen it in many eyes—tears, real tears [of emotion and joy.”
Prodigious!—yet bringing tears of emotion and joy. That is a new language.
The Programs.
“One has to admire without reservation the Ukrainian National Chorus and their marvelous conductor, Mr. Koschetz,” writes the Tribune de Gene. “Their second concert last night gave great satisfaction. It is a series of canticles, Christmas carols and folk songs, melodies coming straight from the soil and of absolute originality. They have been arranged with musical taste of the most correct style and then rendered in perfection.”
What is this music?
Every event, from great wars down to neightbors’ gossip, is recorded in Ukrainian folk melody. It is the oral product of the people’s genius. A thousand years have elapsed and only songs are left to tell us of these barbarous times. Today in America we are just beginning to emancipate the spirit of the young through what someone has picturesquely called “the imaginative ritual of play.”
These Ukrainians have evolved an imaginative ritual of life—and have told it in song. “Have lived it in song” is a better term, for it is ingrained with the customs of daily life. There are choral dances of spring, summer and autumn; the games of the young people in their winter gatherings; marriages, funerals, the harvest. And the ancient gods of Thunder and Sun are revived in all their pagan beauty. Later ballads are full of illustrations of the manner in which the old pagan gods became Christian deities.
For example: Perun, the Thunder god, became in popular superstition, “St. Ilya” (or Elijah), and the day dedicated to him, July 20 (old style), is called “Ilya the Thunder bringer.” Elijah’s fiery chariot, the lightning, rumbling across the sky, brings a thunder storm on or very near that date. Ilya’s characteristic feats, as well as those attributed to his heroic steed, Cloud-fall, are regarded by the school of Russian writers as poems of cosmic myths.
Has this myth some kinship with the legends Wagner used in the “Nibelungen Ring,” with Briinnhilde and her cloud-vaulting horse, Grane?
There is a quaint mingling of the pagan and the Christian in a carol to the “Koliady.” The Christmas festival among the Slavonians was called Koliada; and the sun—a female deity—was supposed to robe herself in holiday attire, with head dress yielding to the cheerful lights of the lengthening days. Carols were sung to Koliada by a train of young people who attended her and received presents in return. One of them runs: