March 22, 1923
MUSICAL COURIER
22
cities. More of them might follow the good example. And when most of them have put it in practice, another fine dream might be brought forward for realization, that of a permanent opera company for every community able to afford it.
Another “different” Stokowski program is that which he leads in Philadelphia, March 31: Schön-berg’s Chamber Symphony, Debussy’s Nocturnes, and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony.
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Evening Telegram wisdom: “To the man who gets no press notices a clipping bureau seems shear nonsense.”
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London Punch of February 14 had this delicious travesty, too good to escape complete quotation: “COMPLIMENTARY."
(An attempt to explain the unlikely people one encounters at musical recitals).
Mrs. Highbrow (at the ’phone).—Is that Mrs. Smith? I wonder if you have Wednesday evening free next week. If so, I can send you a couple of tickets--
Mrs. Smith (with palpitating eagerness).—Theater tickets? How perfectly sweet of you to think of me, dear! So glad that I’m free next Wednesday. What’s the show?
Mrs. H.—It’s a pianoforte and violin sonata recital at the Mongolian Hall. We can’t go ourselves, and it does seem a pity to waste the tickets.
Mrs. S. (in a small voice).—Ye-e-es, of course it does. We shall love to go—that is if nothing unforeseen happens to keep us at home next Wednesday. Anyhow, thank you so much. (To Mr. Smith, after she has rung off) She’s sending us seats for a beastly sonata recital. I call it mean, considering Mr. Highbrow is a dramatic critic and gets tickets for everything.
Mr. Smith.—Well, you’re not compelled to go.
Mrs. S.—I couldn’t get out of accepting them. And in any case it seems a pity to waste the tickets. We owe those dreadful bores, the Browns, a dinner. Suppose I send them the tickets instead? It seems a good idea.
Mr. S. (doubtfully),■—The idea is all right, but do you think the Browns-----? (Left ruminating).
The Next Day.
Mrs. Brown (reading letter from Mrs. Smith).—“.	.	.
of course I’m so fearfully disappointed I can’t go myself. It’s sure to be a delightful recital, and I know how you will appreciate it.” Why, I didn’t know Mrs. Smith was musical.
Mr. Brown.—She probably isn’t ; that’s why she’s sending you the tickets. Wants to get rid of ’em.
Mrs. B.-—Well, I really , can’t spare the time just to go to a sonata recital. Still, it seems a pity to waste the tickets. I think I’ll give them to Miss Thompson. Poor girl, it would be a real charity. These day-governesses don’t get much amusement, living in a boarding-house and all that. Then it will be a good opportunity for improving her mind. Luckily the tickets are for her afternoon off. I couldn’t spare her if they were for another day.
The Same Evening.
Miss Thompson (to boarding-house cook).—By the way, Cook, I wonder if you’d like to go to this performance on Wednesday? I can’t go myself because I’ve arranged to go to the pictures with a friend. Can you go? It seems such a pity to waste the tickets.
The Day after the Recital.
Cook (relating her experience to the Housemaid).—I tell you it was a fair treat to see ’im at the pianner swinging ’is ’ead about and .banging and thumping on them keys until I thort they’d break in two in ’is ’ands. And thé perspiration fair rolling orf ’im. It was a bit of all right for me to sit there quiet and see anyone workin’ so hard. Why, it ivas better ’n the pictures.
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Income tax day is over and many musicians regretted that they had no income large enough to be taxable.
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No, Choridia, it was not appropriate for your phonograph to play Wie Gruen Sind Deine Blaetter on St. Patrick’s Day.
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A columnist estimates that 362,874 Russian princesses have been discovered working in menial positions to get a living. This is the moment, then, to mention that New York harbors 121,721 Russian princes who shot Rasputin, and more of the shooters are coming over by every steamer.
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A London faker advertised that “Bernard Shaw acquired the ability to play music by taking my newly devised system of lessons.” Promptly Shaw wrote to the Westminster Gazette : “I congratulate my namesake on his new accomplishment, but to avoid confusion and avert offers of engagements as a virtuoso in competiton with my friends Busoni and Walter Rummel, perhaps you will allow me to inform the public that I play as badly as ever if not worse, and that I have never heard of this new system.”
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There are only two inhabitants of the Orkney Islands. Just imagine if both were singing teachers, «e
It is Lent and every year we give up something piously in deference to the occasion. This year we intend to give up going to Fidelio.
Leonard Liebling.
VARIATIONETTES
By the Editor-in-Chief
leben is in one section almost an apotheosis of noise and discordance, and in another marks the departure of modern music into the decadence of unmusic, yet as a whole perhaps represents the high-water mark of music in our time.”
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“The stars were millions of years in the making. You see, they had no press agent.”—Evening Tele-
We are glad to inform our worried and trembling readers that a magistrate, just as Marcus Aurelius and wise as Solomon, dismissed the charge against us of being the century’s boldest and most brilliant financial footpad.
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Our whole critical profession feels flattered (like the old actor who was asked to change a five pound note) because Mme. Gadski has sued Henry E. Krehbiel for $250,000 for libel.
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We do not intend to mention the name of that prima donna who bought a copy of Norris’ Certain People of Importance and threw it out of the window when she found no mention or picture of herself in the volume.
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Premiers, however, when they fall out among themselves, are as bad as prima donnas. Look at Poincare and Clemenceau, and Lloyd George and Asquith.
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The terrific tennis defeat of Molla Mallory by Suzanne Lenglen at Nice last week •was promptly avenged by Albert Spalding at Carnegie Hall on Sunday when he conquered Schubert and Mozart easily. America must hold her own against these foreigners.
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Students of Newcomb College, in New Orleans, were obliged to undergo an “intelligence test to determine their knowledge of everyday subjects.” Some of the answers were to the effect that Francis Scott Key was a woman who wrote poems; Sequins were described as a variety of fish; brilliantine was declared to be a preparation “that young ladies put in their eyes to make them shine”; maraschino was a “Premier of Russia before the war”; Filet Mignon was an opera by Puccini, and Lot was “the man in the Bible who had a salty wife.”
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A plan is on foot for a permanent orchestra in Buffalo, and several novel features are in contemplation in connection with the organization. First of all the personnel is to be confined strictly to Buffalo local musicians, and the soloists also are to be home products of that city. This will extend “opportunity for self expression and self development.” Also it will serve to keep the salary budget down and lessen the deficit, if there is to be one. Furthermore, it is planned to employ seventy musicians for part time services at current rates, and to employ the conductor and leaders of the first violins, violas and cellos for full time service. The leaders of the string sections are to be organized into a string quartet, “which will advertise the orchestra and raise money by concerts.” The financing of the organization also has unusual aspects. One-third of the annual fund required is to be asked for by appropriation from the City Council. One hundred underwriters, at $100 each, are in contemplation. The ticket sale, at 50 cents for all the seats, is another means relied upon to get money. For the financing of the string quartet it is intended to secure 1,000 members of the association at $10 and to offer these subscribers two free tickets for a series of five chamber music concerts. In connection with the orchestra its sponsors purpose to organize a conservatory of music to train new talent and offer the student a way to support himself. Also a junior orchestra, under the concertmaster, is one of the related projects. The concerts may be held Sunday afternoons with public rehearsals Saturday mornings—possibly preceded by an explanatory lecture. Orchestras, like everything else requiring a large outlay to make maintenance (and especially permanency) possible cannot exist without sound business principles underlying the handling of the exchequer. The Buffalo promoters seem to have hit upon a set of ideas combining practical, ethical and esthetic advantages. The evident scheme to make the orchestra a pivotal base for all musical effort in the city is excellent. It has been tried partially and successfully in Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati and other American
It is amazing how sometimes an intended jest in reality conceals a great truth, as this valued communication shows:
New York, March 12, 1923.
Dear Variationettes:
I noticed the attached in a recent issue of your esteemed paper—on its editorial page at that:
“In music we have the Russian Five, the French Six, and the German Three. In this country we have the American Nine—but that has nothing to do with music.”
Can it be that your department forgot that the American Nine now stands numerically for the American Guild—and that it has everything to do with music (American preferred) ?
Cordially,
Rosalie Housman.
K K
Music for the working classes is no new thing. In the London Musical Times of March 1, 1863, there was this cheerful notice: “Mr. R. Andrews’ concert for the sewing classes in the Chorlton district took place on February 21, in the Temperance Hall. The performance commenced with the Dead March on the harmonium, by Mr. G. S. Andrews, who also played a Fantasia on the pianoforte.” Variations, possibly, upon Chopin’s funeral march, or the Dies
Somewhere, sometime, some place, O. G. Sonneck wrote the following brave words: “It is a hypocritical chauvinism in a parade of self-intoxication that ranks MacDowell with Bach and Beethoven, and sheds tears of patriotic emotion over every American composer to the exclusion of Europe’s greatest writers. It is a policy of exclusion that will get us nowhere.”
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Eugene Goossens declares that he does not know a single piece of modern music “that has not got a tune. It is, however, often difficult to detect.” One feels like exclaiming with Dr. Johnson: “Difficult, sir? It is impossible.”
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A violinist may be proof against all other flattery but his vanity throws somersaults of delight when an orchestra asks him to play the Brahms or the Beethoven concerto.
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A silk hat is something tnat men used to wear at the Opera.
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Mary Ellis Opdycke’s “A Trend of Musical Criticism in America” (in The Sackbut, March) expresses many striking phases of the subject, but none more trenchant or truthful than this:
Further consideration of our two critical schools seems to show a general age division. Most of the older men write judgments, more of the younger ones record reactions. A natural development this, since youth lacks criterion for judgment and age the naivete to admit personal preference. Indeed, when an elderly person feels a preference _ he is apt to disguise or justify it in general terms, savouring of an actual sentence, while the modest fledgling prefixes his technical dictum with an apology: “It seems to us .	.	;
or, “Our feeling was ...”
But there are exceptions. To the end James Gibbons Huneker retained the adventurous spirit in his nightly sojourns through the concert halls. However _ faded his strength, his pen expressed an excited and sensitive personality. Similarly a few grave young men carry scores of the third Leonore Overture to each performance and turn the pages as if in search for evidence on which to base a statutory decree.
Apart from these notorious examples, whom we tend to classify, after all, as eternally young or prematurely old, the age division holds. And every day it seems more clear that the stock of criteria is the necessary passport for the judicial critic. The man who has heard perhaps five Aidas hardly dares to pass a verdict on a sixth with the same authority as the man who is judging his sixtieth. For less and less is being said about the eternal principles of art on which any qualified expert may judge any artist. The very wisdom which qualifies an expert is but the accumulation of a number of individual experiences. Good singing is to sing as Mme. So-and-So sang, combined with certain other qualities of Mme. Somebody Else.
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From A. P. G. we learn this: “It might be worth while for you to learn that I know a man named Violin who does not play the violin.” We cannot comment on this until we get an answer to our cable to Sir Frederick Bridge, the London musician, asking him whether he plays bridge.
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The Chicago Tribune’s opinion is that Massenet’s Cleopatra is “the world’s worst opera.” What is your choice for last place ?
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The opposite extreme is represented by an estimate • which the Boston Transcript republishes from the Manchester (England) Guardian: “Strauss’ Helden-