April 5, 1923
MUSICAL COURIER
22
game by writing in his first leading article (April 1) : “Operatic plans, of course, are probably the most uncertain in this uncertain world.”
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Another proof that Mr. Perkins is a more keen and truthful observer than his predecessor is in his remark to the effect that the German opera season at the Manhattan-Lexington, “showed a good sized demand for Wagner, and showed, incidentally, that the war reaction to German music and the German language had vanished with hardly a trace. There was little, if any, opposition to the importation of a company from Germany and the giving of performances in German.”
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And in concert, so far as the New York Symphony Orchestra is concerned at least, old Mr. Wagner still is holding his own as a program provider. The season which that orchestra just closed here shows that Wagner led with fourteen compositions, while Mozart had twelve, Brahms eleven, and Beethoven and Tschaikowsky six each.
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Modernistic composers do not write Easter music because their scores lack the power to express naive gladness, to jubilate, as Wagner put it.
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The only excuse for the existence of program notes is that some of them are written by Philip Hale and others by Lawrence Gilman. We spent ten delightful minutes last week reading what the latter had to say about Debussy’s orchestral nocturnes performed at the Philadelphia Orchestra’s home concerts March 31 and April 2. Gilman is the ideal man to write about Debussy for he has the same power with words that the composer had with tones; he is a master of literary delicacy, grace, euphony, and imagery. No one has analyzed the Debussy genius and style better than Lawrence Gilman.
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Say what they will about Ganna Walska the fact remains that prior to sailing for Europe last week she spent her evening listening to Tristan and Isolde at the Lexington Opera House.
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By the way, it was a remarkably intense and gripping Tristan and Isolde performance. Knote, while vocally a trifle lacking in the tender episodes of Act II, was irresistibly poignant in the stressful heroics of the last act. Alsen was a joy throughout as Isolde. This young German woman delivers her music with kindling warmth and acts with her last shred of feeling and sincerity. The Liebestod was a great piece of vocalism and had every second person in the audience weeping unashamedly: Moerike, the conductor, did wonders with his enthusiastic players. We should love to hear him lead the Metropolitan or Chicago Opera orchestra.
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Whoever would have suspected serious Maria Ivogiin of such a wealth of comedy talent as she displayed in Nicolai’s Merry Wives of Windsor? She made a merrily vivacious, fascinatingly arch personage of Mrs. Ford and she sang the music of the second act with a dash and brilliancy that reminded one of Mme. Sembrich at her best as Rosina in The Barber of Seville. It is good news to learn that New York is to hear more of Ivogiin as an opera singer when the German company makes its reappearance here next season.
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Commenting on The Merry Wives of Windsor, as given by the German Opera Company, W. J. Henderson, Herald critic, writes:
It ,became evident that high comedy was not the field of this organization. The action of the play was presented with much movement, generally ill directed and without dramatic significance. The fat knight was impersonated in a fashion which suggested that the Germans believed him to be a half witted crossing sweeper, not a hard drinking, swaggerer possessed of some definite human traits worthy of contemplation.
On the other hand, Deems Taylor, World critic, has it:
The German Opera Company’s excellent production of The Merry Wives of Windsor comes as a disquieting reminder that our boasted musical culture is after all at the mercy of economic considerations. .	.	. The hook is
Shakespearean comedy at its best; and that best is very funny, particularly when it is played as the Germans play it, in the spirit of farce, instead of as we play it, in the spirit of too much reverence. It is funny in its German translation, and could easily be translated back into English so as to be funnier still. .
The decision goes to Mr. Taylor, who seems to feel that a piece called The Merry Wives of Windsor should be played merrily.
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Whistling, as a sign of approval, is to be banned from Paris theaters—it was introduced there by the
VARIATIONETTES
By the Editor-in-Chief
fessor Jowett’s question about the object of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. ‘And after they had found the Grail, what did they intend to do with it ?’ ”
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Non-stop flights of inspiration have been achieved by many of the great composers who soared into the Empyrean and stayed there until they reached their goal.
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Everyone does not share in the praise which has been lavished upon the late H. E. Krehbiel in the obituaries written about him by his local colleagues. In fact one of those colleagues, Henry T. Finck, points out some of the less likable traits of Krehbiel, in an Evening Post article of March 31. “He was not an angel,” declares Finck; “he never tried to
take out the wrinkles in the portraits he painted of musicians, dead or living, wherefore I am going to relate a few things that help to show him as he really was. His passions, his adorations, and hatreds were as huge and imposing as his body. No one could fail to notice those broad shoulders, that big curly head as he walked down the aisle at the Metropolitan or Carnegie Hall. No one, too, could fail to see at a glance that he had a mighty good opinion of himself ; he believed, with Goethe, that only nobodies are modest: nur die Lumpe sind besheiden.
Dominating and arrogant, he would brook no opposition. Woe unto any one who doubted that he was a musical arbiter whose word was final. He could hate like a caveman, as not a few artists found out to their cost. He never forgave a faux pas, from this point of view, and his vengeance persisted a long time.”
That is literally true. Many years ago Krehbiel formed a violent prejudice against Edgar Stillman Kelley because of some purely personal misunderstanding and thereafter he never lost an opportunity to take a whack at Kelley’s works whenever and wherever they were produced. Krehbiel considered himself an authority, one of the early ones, on Indian music. When Miss Fletcher and others made independent investigations along the same lines and published books on the subject, Krehbiel either took no notice of the volumes or reviewed them adversely. Charles Wakefield Cadman dared to write to Krehbiel, pointing out an error the latter had made in a reference to Indian music. Krehbiel launched into a furious attack on Cadman, did not publish his letter, and as in the case of Kelley, forever afterward wrote disparagingly and sarcastically of Cadman’s own compositions. But to continue with Finck’s estimate of Krehbiel:
His vanity also was as big as his body, and he was ludicrously jealous of his colleagues when they did anything• that he thought might dim the lustre of his own fame. And while he was daily distributing unfavorable criticisms about others—writers as well as musicians—he fiercely resented being criticized himself, even mildly—a trait shared with not a few other critics....
When the editor of the Nation wrote and asked him if he would review my book, Grieg and His Music, Krehbiel replied with an emphatic no, on the ground that the book “was more about Finck, anyway, than about Grieg.” The basis for this ludicrous assertion was the fact that in the introduction to this book i had printed some twenty letters Grieg had written to me. They are among the most interesting letters he ever penned, because they were answers to questions. I asked him about his life and works. In them he paid me a few compliments—but those were the only things about me in the book.
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Finck relates, too, that Krehbiel “hated Liszt as the devil hates holy water and even suggested he wasn’t much of a pianist!” Nothing could shake his belief that “sonatas, however uninspired, are greater things than short pieces, however inspired.”
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To get the proper perspective on this ridiculous attitude of Krehbiel toward Liszt, one should turn back to the Boston Symphony program books of eight years ago, in one of which Philip Hale translated a Jean Marnold article from the Mercure de France. The subject of the article is César Franck, and of him Marnold declares :
His musical sensitiveness was sister to that of Schubert, but he descended first of all from Liszt, then from Bach. The influence of Liszt, of whom he was in a way a pupil, is shown by the dedication of the beginner, by the admiration and unchangeable friendship of the man. His influence is plain in the manner of writing for the pianoforte, in the style of the first period. It remained no less deep and enduring in the last compositions of Franck, not only as revealed by harmonic contests, but in many details of workmanship and variation ; and to such a point—and I have often undergone the experience—that in playing over at my house Liszt’s fugue on the name Bach (1855), Prelude (1863), Variations on the theme of the cantata, Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, or such pieces as the Pèlerinages en Italie, young musicians would stop to cry out : “But this is Franck!”
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Krehbiel’s successor at the Tribune appears to be a gentleman named F. D. Perkins and he shows a great knowledge of the inner workings of the musical
Another sign of spring is that music teachers are beginning to let pupils’ mistakes go by unreprimanded.
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From the Morning Telegraph: “We hope our office boy will learn a new tune to whistle during Music Week.” Our office boy is not a whistler but a wit. The other day he laid on our desk an envelope inscribed “Cement Information Service,” and remarked : “That information ought to stick.”
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We had unaccustomed operatic pleasures last week by dropping in for one act of Bori’s Traviata at the Metropolitan and a couple of acts of Claire Dux in Martha at the Lexington. Mme. Bori, whom we had not heard for many months, surprised us with her artistic growth. She now strives for larger dramatic expression and achieves it. Her voice sounds bigger and she uses it less timidly than formerly. She put many novel touches into her singing and acting interpretation of Violetta. But one thing we would like to ask Mme. Bori. Did ladies in the crinoline and hoopskirt period cross their legs when they sat down in drawing rooms? Which reminds us that in the entr’acte at the Lexington a party of visitors went behind the scenes to congratulate Mme. Dux and when most of the admirers had finished one lady said to her: “And your feet! I think you have the most expressive, twinkling feet and ankles. I couldn’t keep my eyes away from them as you pitter-pattered about the stage. Your feet positively have personality.” Strange to relate the compliment seemed to please Mme. Dux more than all the extravagant praise of her singing.
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We gazed at the top of Leo Schultz’s head while he persuaded his cello in Schelling’s Victory Ball at the Philharmonic, and affrightedly we ruminated on the galloping passage of time. We remembered Leo’s long, straight black hair when he wore it a la Liszt and gave comic imitations of that master at the piano. Barren inlets later ran up the sides of Leo’s forehead and finally made such inroads that only a centred top crest of hair remained and for years it rose and fell in time to the rhythmic wagging of Leo’s head as he swayed to the music of the masters. Now, alas, the tufted little island has disappeared entirely and there is left only a glassy sea of baldness bounded on the sides by two hirsute continents of snowy white. Leo’s spirit remains young, however, and he still bobs about rhythmically as he sways to the music of the masters.
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An organization which every musician of this city should join is the Musicians’ Club of New York, whose dues are slight and whose benefits are many. In union lies strength and together the musicians of our town are able to accomplish things which they cannot put through as individuals. Let the members and officials of the club—whose permanent rooms are at 173 Madison avenue—tell you the specific reasons why you should join their organization. Go to some of their musical and social reunions and note the spirit that prevails there. Walter Damrosch is the honorary president of the club, and J. Fletcher Shera is its untiringly active vice-president. Among honorary members, trustees and governors are Amelita Galli-Curci, Ignace Paderewski, Frances Alda, A. M. Bagby, Henry Hadley, Victor Herbert, Dr. Eugene A. Noble, John Philip Sousa, Albert Spalding, Alexander Lambert, Paul Cravath, H. H. Flagler, Louise Homer, W. W. Hinshaw, Pasquale Amato, Mme. Schumann-Heink, and others of equal importance.
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The moment we try to banish Willy and Nilly from this column we receive letters protesting against their exile. Very well, then, Willy and Nilly have moved in again to stay indefinitely and will make their reappearance next week.
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What a virile, masculine, musical pianist is Lamond. Perhaps his long training as a Beethoven player fitted him pre-eminently to play the Tschaikowsky B flat minor concerto as granitically, passionately, overwhelming as he did at the Philharmonic last week. Chopin, the books tell, used to retire into long periods of Bach playing before he gave the recitals of his own nocturnes, valses, ballads, mazurkas, and impromptus.
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Its notice of the Good Friday performance of Parsifal was opened by the Evening Telegram with this paragraph: “In this period of disillusionment the hard-boiled and the wise-crackers like to quote Pro-
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