47
MUSICAL COURIER
The Rikers in Joint Recital
Franklin Riker, the tenor, composer and singing teacher, and his wife, Lois Long, soprano, gave a recital December 28, at Statesville, N. C., which was an undisputed success. The Statesville Daily spoke of it as follows:
“Radiant and beautiful as ever, Mrs. Riker delighted her audience. . . . Her singing was illumined throughout by a spirited intelligence. . . . Mr. Riker managed to choose an uncommonly pleasing list of songs. . . His singing was faultless, which is not to suggest that it was mechanical. He makes each number an individual matter, interpreting with great care.”
Mr. and Mrs. Riker returned to New York the first of the New Year and have resumed their professional work.
Listeners-In Heard Saenger Demonstration
Listeners-in, on Saturday evening, January 13, between seven-thirty and eight-thirty, heard a fine radio concert given at the Tarrytown Station, WRW, by Phradie Wells, soprano; Paul T. Flood, baritone, both pupils of Oscar Saenger, assisted by Mrs. Flood, pianist. A demonstration of the Oscar Saenger Vocal Training Records was also given, while Mr. Saenger made an address, and besides singing their various groups, both singers helped with the demonstration. Miss Wells, who has been with the United States Opera Company, has a beautiful soprano voice, and Mr. Flood, baritone, sings with style and finish.
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HARMONY
For Ear, Eye and Keyboard
BY
Prof. ARTHUR E. HEACOX Oberlin Conservatory of Music
Price, $1.50 postpaid
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gesture alone. They are accompanied by music which accentuates the emotions, the situations, etc., and helps to make all clear. About thirty-five years ago there visited this country a company of these French pantomimists who presented with great success the pantomime L’Enfant Prodigue, music by André Wormser. The music was piquant, refined, witty and pathetic by turns and the score was one which even a great composer might have been proud of. Needless to say that the acting was well-nigh perfection. Only those who have seen French actors know just what this means׳. Spoken words would have been an excrescence; the art was complete in itself and no lack of them was felt. The little comedy-drama flowed merrily along and developed—accompanied by its appropriate and especially composed music—in a most unmistakable and perfect manner. It would seem that here, in the French pantomime, we have a fine hint as to the direction in which the development of a dramatic art of the movies may lie; a new art which should be a joy to dramatic poets and a fertile field of expression to the serious musical composer.
More Indications of Polk’s Success in Germany
The appended excerpts from Rudolf Polk’s criticisms of his recent appearances in Germany are further indications of the young American violinist’s success.
The violinist, Rudolf Polk, appeared with the Philharmonic Orchestra in the overflowing Beethoven Hall. He is an artistic personality which convinces sympathetically through its surety and beautiful tone.—Berlin Boersen Courier, November 3.
Rudolf Polk, who already met with favor at his recent appearance at the City Auditorium, appeared last Tuesday, giving^ the performance with piano accompaniment by Waldemar Liahoski. The popularity of this violinist with his eminent technic, his sweet singing tone and his style of interpretation in music by Vivaldi, Handel, etc., was proved again by the insistence to give five encores. . . . The extremely elegant Etude of Kreutzer had also to be repeated.— Niederdeutsche Zeitung, November 2.
Rudolf Polk appeared with the Philharmonic Orchestra in the Concerto Gregorian by Ottorino Respighi. Pilk played the concerto as beautifully as such a characterless and monotonous work can be played at all.—Berlin Vossische Zeitung, November 1.
Rudolf Polk played the composition with beautiful vibrato, and small soft tone, technically clean.—Berlin Vorwärts, November 2.
The artist gave the performance of the sonata magnificently with a beautiful softness. In his forte playing, too, he developed in the slow sentences the suspended tones, and full and great the soulful notes built themselves to an overflowing fullness. In the allegro parts his playing became massive and solid, and he interpreted Handel’s tone building with an absolute mastery. After Spohr’s romantic composition he sought and found an equally lively expression. Often his strings sounded as if the artist looked longingly and dreamed into the distance as if to recall to himself recollections of happier times, and at such times a feeling of mastered emotion went through the hall. He then carried us back to reality with works of such brilliant technic as can only be given by a finished artist.—Hessische Post, November 18.
Polk, whose bearing stamped him as a born American, is without question, a violinist who ranks first and worthy to be placed on the side of the greatest of our time. The evening was for him a full artistic success. We hope to hear this artist again soon in a concert. —Kassel Nachrichten, November 18.
The violinist, Rudolf Polk, who played last evening before a most appreciative audience, entered with love and fullest understanding into the beauty of Spohr’s ninth violin concerto, the one of which the great violinist, Petri, said: “It would be the ambition of my life to play it perfectly.” Polk gave the allegro in the passages clearly and fluently, underlined the cantilenes with warmth, put sipulful feeling and blossoming tone into the deep beauty of the adagio, and revealed in the rondo his mastery of the difficult double-stopping and staccati, in a well developed clearly played technic. . . . The art of this violinist leads not only to the purely technical but he gives especial worth to clearness and beauty of tone.—Kassel Tageblatt, November 18.
Rudolf Polk will also belong to the admired great ones. The advance notices spoke of a genuine art and a faultless tone. That is what one expects from every concert giver. But here we met with much more. This American violinist with his Spanish appearance and his German name, has real artist’s blood in his veins. In the Handel sonata he gave the glorious slow measures with a simple greatness and broad full tone, the allegro with light rhythmic and sure hand. What his bow is capable of in velvet fullness and brilliant soulful temperament, and energy, he reveals in the ninth violin concerto by Spohr. . . . When Rudolf Polk comes again he will not only have success but also a full hall.—Kassel Zeitung, November 18.
This Respighi concerto really shows what musical and spiritual qualities Polk possesses. He succeeded with the assistance of Wolff to convince us completely with this work. In Bruch s Scottish Fan-tasie, he strengthened this impression also regarding beauty of tone and technical nobility.—Berlin Morgenpost, November 9.
The beauty of the work was brought out much more brilliantly when it was played by Polk with complete poetry and technical finish.—Berlin Tageblatt, November 4.
1 D I S K A V H TENOR			\t Present on Tour with Keith Circuit Address Care Musical Courier 437 Fifth Ave., New York City	
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IMIURi K Maestro Aldo Franchetti at the Piano	il	Ippi ♦.« - li m¿::. ^ Sf	GUEST ARTIST San Carlo Opera Company SEASON 1922-23 Available also for concerts Direction: Jules Daiber, Aeolian Hall New York	
January 18, 1923
of vulgar sensation of mere servants—housemaids, cooks and the like. Yet one cannot help being somewhat surprised and shocked to see the movie audiences in this country, composed as they so frequently are of well dressed and prosperous looking ladies and gentlemen, who have nevertheless only back stairs minds. This proportion is, however, no different in the mcr־ie world than it is in the regular theatrical world, as one may see by reading over the theatrical advertisements in any daily newspaper. What cultured persons are interested in is the “art” of the theater, not the theatrical “business,” and inasmuch as a noble dramatic art has developed in the past and is existent today (although in necessarily small proportion) I believe that the phenomenon of the movie has in it a fine art potentiality which will undoubtedly be ultimately developed.
It is comparatively easy to explain the popularity of the movie. Most persons hate to think or in any way to use their brains, unless they are absolutely compelled by necessity to do so. And the movie has eliminated even the little thought and attention necessary for the appreciation of a spoken drama. Incidentally there is no doubt but that the movie has cut into the field of the legitimate drama and injured the patronage of the latter. What I particularly find fault with is׳ that it pretends to offer a substitute for the spoken drama and this substitute is by no means satisfactory. At least one-half of the art of the actor is lost, when we do not hear him speak the words, accompanied by appropriate gesture and facial expression; but we get the gesture and facial expression first and then read in a title what he is supposed to have said. All this interrupts׳ the course of the action and even when these titles do not consist of the supposed utterances of the characters, their sudden introduction tends to break up and disorganize the progress of a dramatic scene.
Another most inartistic feature of the movies at present is the introduction of close-ups, i.e., the sudden flashing upon the screen of an enormous portrait of one of the principal characters, or the fantastic enlargement of a minute detail in a certain scene, such as a key, a box or a knife. The idea of the producer in introducing such things is that, as most persons have but feeble imaginations, nothing should be left to the imagination. It might interfere with box-office receipts, which at present are practically the sole object of the movies. Then there is the introduction of entirely irrelevant scenes which frequently have a large pictorial value, but which are in no way connected with what is going forward dramatically. Both these last mentioned practices are, to my mind, most inartistic and tend yet further to make the movie a most unsatisfactory substitute for the spoken drama.
The Movie of the Future
No, it seems that from a purely artistic point of view the right subject has not yet been attempted in the movies. As a substitute for the drama, the movie is undoubtedly bad and inartistic for the reasons I have pointed out above, but given the possibilities of moving picture presentation, one can prognosticate its possibilities of future artistic development with considerable interest. First, if we eliminate titles, close-ups and views which, however beautiful, tend to break up the clear and logical progress of the dramatic motive, we have a medium, silent and beautiful and capable of presenting any sequence of ideas which can be apprehended through the eye. Secondly, these sequences of pictorial ideas (dramatic or otherwise) should be accompanied by an especially composed musical score which should express in tones the same sequence of ideas (or rather their musical mood equivalent). Thus the progress of a day in the mountains, in the forest, or on the lake—with all the changes of weather-moods׳ and romantic suggestions, could be easily and beautifully thrown upon the screen. This should be accompanied by a symphonic poem, which should sympathetically and simultaneously express all these varying moods of the day. Or it might be the pageant of the year, with its changing seasons from spring through summer and autumn to winter. (For time is easily extensible or compressible on the screen.) These are poetic subjects, not dramatic, but what an opportunity they offer to the poet and composer for the development of one kind of special movie art.
The French have developed an exquisite art of the stage which is quite distinct from the orthodox drama, yet which is dramatic, fanciful, or comic as the case may be. This is the art of pantomime, in which no words are spoken, but in which the actors express their thoughts and feelings by