MUSICAL COURIER 20 April 19, 1923 AMERICA'S GREATEST! Who is America’s greatest living composer? You do not know? You hesitate to say? You turn over a few names in your mind, trying to cast up a single one that seems to stand supreme? Well, you need not be ashamed of that, for it is just what every one of us would do, confronted by the same question. MacDowell and Griffes being dead, and not one of the living so preeminently superior to the rest as to stand out prominently in every mind beyond cant or cavil, we hesitate to give a name. But, hark, ye, and ye shall be told! An article in the current issue of one of our musical contemporaries does the telling. Here is the essential paragraph, with names omitted, for we do not feel that we should permit ourselves to deliver such a shock to our readers without warning (Some of them may have weak hearts.) “ ... . the most important contributor to the contemporary music in America is X----------. That music must sound is his chief principle; and his does.” (What does that mean? Editor.) “But his music does not only sound; it reflects a magnificent well-organized entity; X------, not a modernist—great men have never been modernists—is a universal force. . . . His music expresses with an incomparable craftsmanship the most contrasting moods, from astounding rhythmical combinations to the simplest, purest, delicate phrase. X--------’s music is always vital, full of grave joy, tremendously healthy, powerful, elemental. But above all it reflects generosity and pride. So does the man. As has been written by one of his admirers (here the name of one of this composer’s works is mentioned), is a truly contemporary American work, the first of its kind. This monumental achievement may be considered as the symbol of American music.” Can you think of any American composer whose work merits such praise as that? Can you even think of any one of the great classic masters of Europe of whom more could be said? This paragraph fittingly describes the “monumental achievement” of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, and even the work of those masters would not reach any such level until they were well on in life, until their life work was nearly completed. Who, then, is this “contributor to the contemporary music in America?” Evidently he must be a man well on in years, a man whose opus number has already reached a high figure, a man who, like Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner, has written symphonies, or operas, or oratorios, or chamber music, not one or two such works, but a mass of them. Who can it be? Who can have written this “symbol of American music?” Where may he have hid himself all these years, while he was interpreting America, that his name does not resound from the housetops? Let him stand forth that we may cheer him and plant upon his fervid brow a crown of laurels! Why must the great man hide his light under a bushel and walk in secret places? Surely he has never been seen on the platforms of the metropolis or his name and fame would have been broadcasted the world over, his monumental achievements bound in illuminated vellum, and his statue set up in the market place for all to worship. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, the cities of America, stand with bated breath awaiting his coming. Let him unfold himself in the toga and reveal his*face to his subjects, bowed down in lowly gratitude to the master mind that has made a symbol of America, the man-god who has written a truly representative American work, the first of its kind, the work that reflects the generosity and pride of the great man, not a modernist, a universal force whose music sounds. It was in our mind to give his name that the world may know how greatly America is honored by the presence within its midst of such majesty. But we hesitate. We tremble in fear. We dare not let those symbolic syllables pass our lips. We must wait, must have patience, until, from the desert places, the name flies swiftly over the countryside. Then, at last, we may say to ourselves that America is, that through the magic of this monumental, symbolical music, we are made whole. Till then let us hold our breath and still our fluttering hearts. have absolutely no redress for having her name thus gratuitously lugged into an absolutely baseless rumor. --------------------------$------ .A•flood of “dope” plays is threatening to crowd our stage, and, of course, grand opera, never far out of fashion, is on hand with Tristan and Isolde, Got-terdammerung, Gioconda, Romeo and Juliet and other works in which narcotic pills and potions play a leading part. ----^------ Umberto Giordano, best known as composer of the operas Mme. Sans Gene and Andrea Chenier, has completed a new opera, La Cena Delle Beffe. The book is by Sim Bennelli from his play of the same name, which made a tremendous hit in this country as played by the Barrymores under the title of The Jest. Bennelli is also the author of the splendid book of The Love of Three Kings. -------- Putting on our clairvoyant’s cap once more and going into the usual trance, the spirits from above, below, or wherever they may be, tell us to predict that Fedora is due for a revival at the Metropolitan next winter and that Laparra’s Habanera is apt to figure among the novelties. If memory serves right, the latter work figured at one time on the repertory of Henry Russell’s Boston company and it was also produced by Ralph Lyford’s summer company at Cincinnati. -----®----- This is the season’s last week of grand opera at the Metropolitan and soon all the Elsas, Mimis, Cio Cio Sans, .Briinnhildes, Isoldes, Aidas, Toscas, Violettas, Amonasros, Siegmunds, Pinkertons, Vascos, Samsons, Tells and Don Joses will become merely mortal again and disport themselves very very humanly in bathing suits, tennis garb, mountain climbing costumes, riding togs, golf rigs, and the like. It must be quite a relief to step down from the rarefied altitude of a godlike existence into the comfortable world of plain everyday persons who can voice their weals and woes in spoken language without worrying about vocal quality, the conductor, the critics, and the impresario. -----<$>--- From May 1 to 5, Cincinnati will celebrate its fiftieth May Festival and this constitutes an important milestone in the musical history of this country. Since their inception the Cincinnati May Festivals have held a high place in artistic esteem and always have maintained that position through legitimate means. Great musical achievements fell to the credit of the city’s festivals during the half century just being completed, and the institution was of incalculable cultural and ethical benefit to Cincinnati and to our country at large. The forthcoming May programs are an index to the kind of work the association still is doing, for the main compositions to be heard are Elijah, Bach’s B minor Mass, Liszt’s Ad Nos, Pierne’s Children’s Crusade, Hadley’s Resur-gam, etc. The choral concerts will be conducted by Frank Van der Stucken, and the orchestral concerts bv Fritz Reiner. -----®----- Philip Hale was recently ruminating in his Notes and Lines column in the Boston Herald on things Wagnerian. He recalls the season of ’89, since when the Ring has not been heard complete in Boston until it was brought there this month by the Wagner Festival Opera Company, mentions the Wagner “craze” of those days, and then goes on to say: “Today no one speaks or writes seriously of Wagner’s ‘philosophy. His gods and goddesses and heroes are operatic characters, not symbolic creatures. People go to hear his operas for the sake of the music and no longer hear them on their knees. They even laugh when the bird in Siegfried falls through the fault of stage hands.” And, Mr. Hale might have added, when Parsifal’s spear jams on the wire and the “pure fool has to perform antics to get it down and put the kibosh on Klingsor’s garden. “The dragon is no longer viewed with awe,” goes on Mr. Hale; “There is criticism of the_ ships in Tristan and The Flying Dutchman. Nor is this merely a post-war attitude. For though Wagner was great, he, too, was mortal.” True talk, Brother Hale, true talk! -------- FROM ATCHISON, KANSAS There is an enthusiast writing for the Atchison, Kansas, Globe, an enthusiast who has a very direct way of expressing his enthusiasm—or hers, perhaps. Here are two little paragraphs from the screed: “After the concert last night, we thanked Providence for ^ having given us ears instead of brains. Galli-Curci! The incomparable! Galli-Curci sang like a lark, and bowed like a wren. We did not consider her human—she seemed to have the voice of a goddess. Her every tone had a quality indescribable and not of this earth.” M US] [CAI LÍ01 ÍR1 IE R U/eekly Review « r rue World's Music Published every Thursday by the MUSICAL COURIER COMPANY, INC. ERNEST F. EILERT.....................................President WILLIAM GEPPERT..................................Vice־president ALVIN L. SCHMOEGER.............................Sec. and Treas 437 Fifth Avenue, S. E. Corner 39th Street, New York Telephone to all Departments: 4292, 4293, 4294, Murray Hill Cable address: Musicurier, New York Member of Merchants׳ Association of New York, National Publishers* Associa tion, The Fifth Avenue Association of New York, Music Industries Chamber oi Commerce, The New York Rotary Club, Honorary Member American Optimists General Manager ALVIN L. SCHMOEGER .......Editor-in-Chief .......Associate Editors General Representatives LEONARD LIEBLING II. O. OSGOOD WILLIAM GEPPERT FRANK PATTERSON CLARENCE LUCAS RENE DEVRIES J. 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New York Thursday, April 19, 1923 No. 2245 Isn’t music the real Esperanto? ——e-------- Other things the world needs are more sympathy, more symmetry, more symphony. -----<$>--- It is clear that Satan is not an operatic tenor or he never would take orders to get behind anybody. ------------------------®------ Someone discovered that America pays more for beauty preparations than for musical education. Yes, but look at our women! -----<8>---- New York is supposed to be having a crime wave. Now is the time to try out the real efficacy of good music by putting a player piano or a phonograph in the home of every burglar. -----®----- It was Philip Hale who said that Radames in Aida usually is represented by. a tenor “with a stentorian voice, standing between two fair women like the ass between two bales of hay.” ----------- It is reported from the South that “a mocking bird sang for twenty-four hours at a stretch perched on the topmost branch of a blasted cottonwood tree.” It is difficult to understand what he had to sing about. ------------------------®------ The New York World reports that at a recent Metropolitan Opera House performance, seated among the gallery gods between the acts, people were seen playing pocket chess, knitting, eating from lunch boxes, and one man was reading the Bible. -----®----- No new spring songs for voice or piano have been received at this office up to the moment of going to press. It must be that winter, lingering in the lap of spring, made the young composers’ thoughts turn too heavily to coal bills, rent, and the price of synthetic gin. -----«>---- A leading citizen who was approached by a committee collecting guarantee funds for an orchestra, told them that the organization had his moral support. “With that,” answered the only lady on the committee, “we couldn’t even got the piccolo to play his tiniest note.” -----—• A special dispatch from Paris in the New York American, April 14, began with this paragraph: “Both Lucien Muratore and Lina Cavalieri hastily denied today that he is suing for divorce and planning to marry Rosa Ponselle.” Naturally the rest of the dispatch was given over to further denials from both the tenor and his wife that there was anything in the story. The most ridiculous part of it is the fact that Muratore and Ponselle have never even met; and the pitiful part of it is that Miss Ponselle should