M U SIC AL COURIER
10
PROGRESSIVE MUSIC?
By J. Landseer Mackenzie
Copyrighted, 1923, by The Musical Courier Company.
March 1, 1923
fflents won her considerable praise. The interpretation 01 her solo numbers and the technic displayed in them were also admirable.
GRAND RAPIDS HOLDS
MUSIC MEMORY CONTEST
Whole City Unites to Make Contest Successful—St. Cecilia Society Has Many Activities—Schubert Club and Civic Orchestra Present Concerts
Grand Rapids, Mich., February 10.—The first Music Memory Contest in this city was held by the Student League of the St. Cecilia Society, under the direction of Marguerite Kortlander. The next year the contest was repeated by the league and the following year was taken over by John W. Beattie, supervisor of music in the public schools, and the Grand Rapids Evening Press. This year the third public contest is being held under the same auspices, with Mr. Beattie as general chairman and Mrs. J. A. Michael-son as chairman of the concerts committee. Concerts are given almost daily in the schools, churches, community houses, music stores and theaters. Even visiting artists have been glad to add some of the contest numbers to their programs. Prizes have been offered by the music dealers to the amount of $1,000. Eight official concerts have been given in Press Hall, with overflow concerts in St. Cecilia auditorium and in Westminster Presbyterian and Park Congregational churches. The programs have been in charge of Mrs. Loren J. Staples, Mrs. Harry Osborne, Mrs. Joseph Putnam, Reese Veatch, Augusta Rasch Hake, Mrs. William H. Loomis, Katherine Jan-sheski, Nellie Goss, Caroline Heth, Frances Morton Crume, George Amos, Conway Peters, Forrest Buchtel and A. A. Biferno. Biographies of the composers and sketches of the contest numbers which have been appearing in the press each week, were written by Mrs. William H. Loomis, Irene Dunn Burns, Cornelia Hopkins, Bessie Lindley, Carol Holt, Forrest Buchtel and Mr. Beattie. There are forty-eight compositions on the contest list, eleven by Americans. Mr. Beattie reports that children of foreign born parents show a keener interest and appreciation of the music than American born children and that the boys seem to be more interested than the girls. Holland and Grand Haven are also holding contests, using the Grand Rapids list, and will come later to compete for the West Michigan prizes.
Activities of St. Cecilia Society.
The second artist recital of the St. Cecilia Society season presented Guy Maier and Lee Pattison. They played an interesting two-piano program and were enthusiastically received.
On January 19, the annual Flower Day was celebrated by the St. Cecilia Society with a program of nature music. Those who participated were Josephine Swan White, pianist, of Pasadena, Cal.; Mrs. A. D. Fraser, soprano, of Detroit; Myrtle Koon Cherryman, Mrs. H. Monroe Dunham, Mrs. Heber Knott, Mrs. Russell Cole, pianists; Mrs. C. B. Newcomb, Hazel Clark, violinists; Elsa Hoertz, harpist; Mrs. Frank Montelius, contralto, and Florence Williams, soprano.
On February 2 the society presented Mrs. Reuben Maurits, soprano, and Augusta Rasch Hake, pianist, in recital. Mrs. Hake played the Beethoven sonata, op. 27, No. 2, and the C sharp minor scherzo by Chopin, with fluency and a good grasp of musical values. Mrs. Maurits’ numbers were given with musicianship and charm. The Snow (Lie), The Bird (Fiske), Major and Minor (Spross), and I Wish I Knew (Fish), were especially worthy of mention. Helen Baker Rowe played the accompaniments.
Concert by Schubert Club.
The Schubert Club, a chorus of male voices, gave its annual concert in Powers’ Theater, January 30. Director J. Francis Campbell had planned an attractive program which was sung with spirit and excellent ensemble. Solos were sung by Fred Caro. The concert soloist was Orpha Kendall Holstman, soprano, of Chicago, who sang three groups of songs. Harold Tower was accompanist for soloist and chorus.
Civic Orchestra Presents Ambitious Program.
The Grand Rapids Civic Orchestra, Ottokar Malek conductor, gave the first of this season’s series of concerts on January 31, in Central High Auditorium. The orchestra is improving in smoothness and musicianship with each concert. The most ambitious number on the program was Beethoven’s fifth symphony, which was given a fluent and conscientious reading. The program included A Midsum-mernight’s Dream overture (Mendelssohn), Bridal Song from Rural Wedding Symphony (Goldmark), Angelus from Scenes Pittoresques (Massenet), Danse Arabe from The Nutcracker Suite (Tschaikowsky), Praeludium (Jarne-feldt), Intermezzo from The Jewels of the Madonna (Wolf-Ferrari) and Marche Militaire (Schubert).
Notes.
A recital was given in St. Cecilia Auditorium on January 26, by Mildred Andersen, mezzo-contralto, and Ruth Breyt-spraak, violinist, under the auspices of the Bethlehem Lutheran Brotherhood. Miss Anderson has a voice of beautiful quality and wide range. Miss Breytspraak’s two groups showed ample technic and musicianly feeling. Mrs. H. Monroe Dunham added much by her accompaniments.
Two concerts were given in St. Cecilia Auditorium, under the auspices of Custer Women’s Relief Corps, by Bernardo Olshansky, baritone; assisted by Agnes Pringle, violinist, and Josef Martin, pianist. Mr. Olshansky, who has a voice of sympathetic quality and a pleasing personality, had planned an interesting program which he sang with artistry.
At the last two Browning Hotel musicales, the performers have been Marjorie Beardslee, pianist, and Dorothy Edsall, soprano, and a newly organized trio consisting of Elizabeth Barker Van Campen, first soprano; Mary E. Skory, second soprano, and Bernice Phillips, contralto.
H. B. R.
Festival Appearances for Macbeth
Florence Macbeth, coloratura soprano of the Chicago Civic Opera Company, has been engaged for the Ann Arbor Festival, which takes place in May. Other festival dates include Newark, N. J., and Spartanburg, S. C.
although they compensate by employing intervals of a finer degree than we can appreciate.
Personal Predilection.
Hence the appeal of all music remains a matter of personal predilection and education, and the appeal it makes should not be taken seriously as forming any test of artistic merit. No one can say what the music of the future will be, but when the scientific principles which underlie true musical art are discovered and become part of every musician’s training, there can be no doubt that all our ideas of music will undergo very radical change. When that time comes the variety of individual musical expression will be infinite, instead of there being the tiresome monotony produced by mere theory, to which we are now subject.
In efforts to escape from the monotony to which music is held for lack of understanding of basic principles, revolutionists, under the name of “moderns” are striving in vain to seek new music merely by producing or “composing” vague outpourings of cacophonous sounds. This, the perpetrators arrogantly term “new” music, and put its lack of popular appeal down to the ignorance and stupidity of the public which is said only to accept that which is familiar to the ear. It forgets that the appeal of music is to the soul. The intellect has not concern with music beyond the technic of its transcription into symbol, and the study of a technic for the interpretation of these same symbols into sound.
Rhythm Is Universal.
Rhythm is the basic foundation of music, and rhythm is of the soul and is universal. There are no rhythms the soul could not sense, although the intellect might fail to identify them, for rhythm is the speech of nature. Now the mistake of the seekers after new music lies in forever trying to manufacture new forms at the expense of rhythm, instead of strengthening rhythm so that it is free to find its own form according to the great law of nature.
Understanding of the vast study of rhythm has not yet begun, for many musicians still confuse measure and beat with rhythm itself, and are unable to recognize rhythms outside the stock measures and beats to which they are accustomed. Rhythm has certain essentials which are not consistent factors of the music we know. Therefore on the very little that is as yet known of rhythm, it is certain that much of the revolutionary music written today can play no greater part than to free the ear from the crystallization of musical form to which it is accustomed.
Modern Music and Free Verse.
Analogies can be drawn between music of set form and metric rhymed verse, and between the music of the new school and free verse. Either form of poetic expression can be equally beautiful, each in its own way, but there is no known test to determine the intrinsic artistic worth of^ one or the other, or whether either is consistent to the principle involved. Many would-be poets have indulged in the wildest verbal license split into erratic lines, and called their efforts free verse, when if the visual deception be ignored their outpourings prove to be mere prose, and often meaningless at that. These foolhardy upstarts have rushed info verse of the “free” order in ignorance of the fact that the freedom is accorded only to the rhythm and not to the poet.
Free verse is that form of poetry in which rhythm is left free to determine its own form while the poet concerns himself exclusively with his inspiration, instead of seeking to confine it in set and predetermined form. The characteristic of true free verse is its rhythmic strength, even though the rhythm may change with every line. This is the fact that the self-styled “new” schools of expression have failed to take into consideration. They allow themselves unbridled license with form and weaken the rhythmic foundation, instead of sensing the rhythm so strongly that its form is self determined.
Opinion Versus Sense.
All expression must be the natural outcome of rhythm as its fundamental impulse. In order to be vital and therefore progressive there must be a consistent expression of rhythm; not necessarily the fixed rhythm and measured beat to which we are accustomed. Form must be the logical outcome of its underlying rhythm, and this is the point at which so much “composed” music seems to fall down. As yet there are no specific means to ascertain whether this is so or not, but frequently in the course of a composition the musical sense will be jarred by an unexplainable something which breaks the continuity of the impression. The soul has sensed a discrepancy in rhythmic expression and doubts the sincerity of the form, although the mind may be totally unable to supply any explanation of what has happened.
Until all doubts and disputes as to what constitutes intrinsic merit in music can be brought to the arbitration of science, they must continue to rage ineffectively, while experimenters vainly grope in. the darkness of ignorance. In the meantime the listening public continues to possess itself in patience, waiting for the music that will capture its eager soul without doubt or suspicion as to its artistic sincerity.
Pupil of Agnes Brennan Pleases in Recitals
Helen Kremelberg, talented pupil of Agnes Brennan, well known piano teacher and coach, played at the Carrol Club, February 4. Her program included Rachmaninoff’s G minor prelude, two Debussy numbers, a group of Chopin, and the andante finale from Lucia arranged for left hand alone by Leschetizky. The later number showed not only a skillful left hand but one of unusual power as well.
On February 5 she played for the benefit for the Freeport Memorial Library at the Freeport, L. I., theater. She was also the accompanist for the soprano soloist, Frances Kiernan. On February 8 she was soloist at an entertainment given by the Japanese Association of New York, at the Engineering Society Building on West 39th street. At that time she also appeared as accompanist for Cherry Goda, soprano. Her sympathetic and capable accompani-
There are certain groups of people today who assert that only the music which departs from set and familiar form is progressive. Others point to music written in the past and affirm that the fact of its popularity today is proof of its vital elements. Whereas the popularity of any music is merely an indication of famililarity with a certain type of stimulus. Personal opinions as to the relative value of this or that form of music have no effect on its intrinsic worth. Their only value is to the psychologist as a study of personal reaction. Hence all disputes or discussions as to the beauty, vitality or progressiveness of different schools of composition are futile.
Oriental Music.
If the merit of music is to be tested by the duration of its popularity, then that of the Orientals is the only music that can be considered, for it has existed for untold centuries in its present form. But the music of India and China, which is probably the oldest extant, does not appeal to us, any more than our music appeals to the Oriental. Each is equally offensive to the musical taste of the other.
Yet we have a great deal to learn of the underlying principles that produced a music that has so long_ continued to satisfy its exponents. Certain definite principles gave rise to that music which suits the race that produced it. With us, some such basic principles would produce forms suited to our expression. In other words, a principle will produce forms according to the species through which it generates, each after its own kind.
Art Is Impersonal.
The point of all this is that art is impersonal, and must be based on scientific principles. Each species of tonality has its science whether it be known or not The basic principle of all music is the same, and it is the universal law of rhythm. Hindu music is the outcome of a vast study of many forms of rhythm, this music being classified by its rhythm rather than by its form. We identify our -music by its form, its inner rhythmic value being an unknown and unconsidered quantity. We do not even know whether its form be consistent with its rhythm.
The Orientals, particularly the Hindus, condemn our music as rhythmically inarticulate and incoherent. Possibly it is, we do not know. We reject theirs because their tonality is not ours, and our ears are accustomed to a greater number of over and partial tones than they use,
BENCHELEY METHOD OF VOICE DEVELOPMENT
־־ By -
MARIE BUCKLIN BENCHELEY
INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN AS THE ORIGINATOR AND FOUNDER OF A SIMPLIFIED VOCAL METHOD, BASED ON PRINCIPLES MANIFESTED IN NATURE’S LAW OF DEVELOPMENT.
The author of this innovation in technical study calls attention to the motive of tone production identified with the original teaching of this method. This motive of tone production is maintained without coercive interference of voluntary vocal factors which more completely energize the developed singing voice. Breath pressure as required to maintain the developed singing voice, stimulates the action of energizing (voluntary) muscles ־ which should remain relatively passive in the process which assures unimpeded vocal resonance and unhampered development of tonal beauty.
Program of a “tryout” recital after two years of study with the Bencheley System of simplified voice training. Previous attempts to acquire pianissimo tones—the diminuendo and the legato proved unsuccessful after continued practice with indirect and over strenuous methods of vocal exercise.
MISS ROSE TURNER
Soprano
Mrs. D. M. Greene
Accompanist
Tuesday Evening, June 7th 1107 HARMON PLACE, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.
Program
Who Is Sylvia?..............................Schubert
In Thy Dreams...................................Buck
Pierrot ................................. Hutchinson
Berceuse from Jocelyn.........................Godard
Tutto e gioja from La Sonnambula.............Bellini
Intermission
By request Miss Turner will add a number—“The Plaint of the Little Bisque Doll.” Music by Herman Avery Wade.
The May Queen.....................i........Ballantyne
Embarrassment .................................. Abt
II n’aime que moi	(Swiss Echo Song)...........Eckert
The Valentine .............................Bencheley
Celeste ................................... Newcombe
Lullaby ..................................... Brahms
During the brief intermission an impromptu and entirely unexpected feature of the recital proved of interest to the audience assembled by invitation. A former president of the Apollo Club stated that the program as given by this student, whom he had previously known, was an amazing revelation as he recognized a new voice, entirely different in tone quality, control of pianissimo tones, with marked increase in volume of tone as shown in the interpretation of the selection from the opera “La Sonnambula.” At the close of the recital this tribute was emphasized with special reference to the artistic rendering of “The Swiss Echo Song” and “The Last Rose of Summer.”
THE BENCHELEY STUDIO 1107 Harmon Place Minneapolis, Minn.