NEW YORK, THURSDAY, June 29, 1922.
|V\usical(ourier
VOL. LXXXIV—No. 26. Whole No. 2203.
FIFTY-SECOND GERMAN “TONKUNSTLERFEST” IN
DUSSELDORF ACCENTUATES THREATENING SPLIT
Contradictions Apparent in Program—Few Inspired Works—Orchestral Works by Haba and Webern the Most Significant —Schnabel Quartet Best Chamber Music Work—Posthumous Reger Quintet a Pleasant Surprise—A Violent Incident Precipitates Trouble—Unusually Heavy Participation and Interest Keen—Next Year’s Festival at Cassel.
of its “progressive development” is, it will be admitted, a matter of significance to all cultivated men. The responsibility which weighs upon the music committee and the governing board of the society in selecting its festival program will
be seen to be tremendous, especially now that the beautiful unanimity of purpose and taste which reigned in the society’s militant past no longer exists. That unanimity—or comparative unanimity — was personified in its presidents from Liszt to Richard Strauss. The retirement of Strauss in 1911 signalized one more step in the inevitable paralyz-ation of the society’s progress ; and only during the incumbency of the present president, Dr. Friedrich Rdsch (Strauss is now honorary president), did a■ new progressive tendency make itself felt in the election of three younger members to sit in the important music committee, namely, Hermann Scher-chen, the founder of the quondam New Music Society and the radical review, “Melos,” in Berlin; Dr. Georg Schiinemann, the critic and university lecturer, who is now administrative director of the Berlin Hochschule, and Heinz Tiessen, a composer of decidedly modern tendencies. That was the famous “swing to the left,” which saved the society from complete petrification and saved the “progressive development” from becoming a dead letter.
These three young men represent one half the jury, if one considers the chairman, Siegmund von Haus-egger, as a final and impartial arbiter rather than a decisive factor. The other half may be regarded as definitely conservative. All this is of importance in forming a judgment concerning the present-day musical output of Germany on the basis of the “Tonkiinstlerfest,” and in trying to understand the apparently irreconcilable contradictions of the program. For, unless one understands the basis־ of selection, only two conclusions are possible: either the vein of German music is very nearly exhausted, or the works heard at the fifty-second “Tonkiinstlerfest,” which has just taken place in the beautiful city of Düsseldorf, are not (Continued on page 24)
they hear will be representative of that progressive development. Their expectation appears especially justified when, as is the case this year, the fifteen new works performed are selected from a total of seven hundred־ submitted.
The “Swing to the Left.”
Now considering what German music has meant to the world for the past three centuries the degree and quality
seriously. But to the members of the society—which today comprises all shades of creative and recreative musicians in Germany—it is and has been for the last half century the national forum where the development of musical art is reviewed, discussed and the product of that development presented to a waiting world.
The first purpose of the society is the “cultivation and furtherance of German musical life in the sense of a progressive development.” And to watch that “progressive development” creative and executive musicians and critics from all parts of Germany and also from abroad come to these annual festivals, in the full expectation that what
photo © Underwood &• Underwood	_____
AUGUSTA COTTLOW,
one of America's honored pianists, who recently completed another long season of concerts and will be heard many
times next season.
IIIIIIIIIIIIUI!
Düsseldorf, Germany, June 8.—The fifty-second German “Tonkünstlerfest” has just been held in this beautiful Rhenish city of Düsseldorf. That is a very sober, simple statement of a fact which will seem unimportant enough to the average and casual reader of these lines. But it is not unimportant to the hundreds of German musicians assembled here from all parts of the Reich, nor is it unimportant to the citizens of Düsseldorf. It may even prove to be important to German music itself—but of that more anon.
It appears that the General German Music Society, founded in the year 1861 by Franz Liszt, as a sort of militant brotherhood in the cause of neo-German art (as against the stodgy romanticism of Schumann and Brahms), which has grown so prosperous and powerful with the years that its annual meetings are coveted by all the cities of Germany, has never seen fit to select this famous center of art (incidentally the home of said Schumann and Brahms), as a festival spot. A curious coincidence — perhaps.
But anyhow, the city of Düsseldorf, famous for its good Rhenish wine and its pretty blondes, as well as an important school of art, has had a hankering to play the official host to the musicians of Germany, and it has had its wish.
One wonders whether it is satisfied; whether it feels itself repaid for all the trouble of housing hundreds of musicians, for providing concerts and opera performance of so many new works, with innumerable rehearsals, for spending its Rhenish hospitality and hard cash in these tortuous times. One wonders if the spirit of Mendelssohn, hovering about the house in which he wrote “St. Paul,” a few hundred feet away from the scene of this festival, did not infuse its citizens with a desire to protest against some of these tonal blasphemies, as they would have seemed to him. And it is perhaps only natural that the General German Music Society should want to offset these outbursts of ultra-modern muse, and to placate the spirit of said Mendelssohn, for only ■thus can one account for some of the compositions performed at this festival of contemporary music. Of this, too, more anon.
Not An Ordinary Festival.
I hope the reader is aware of the importance of this event. It is by no means an ordinary festival. It is “festive” only to the citizens of the town that happens to be the host, and they, like all Germans, take their festivities
RAVINIA SEASON OPENS
WITH DISTINCT SUCCESS
(By Telegraph)
To the Musical Courier:
Opening Ravinia season, Saturday night, with “Boris” a distinct triumph for President Eckstein. Huge audience acclaimed Didur, Roselle, Rothier, Harrold and Gentle. Sunday night Claire Dux scored veritable ovation, singing “Butterfly” for first time here, Gentle, Kingston adding to splendor of performance.
Chicago, 111.	(Signed) Jeannette Cox.
(Note relief in center.)
Photos by Cesar Saerchinger	POINTS OF PILGRIMAGE IN DÜSSELDORF.
(1) The house of Robert and Clara Schumann, (2) The house in which Johannes Brahms lived for years, and (3) Where Mendelssohn wrote his “St. Paul."