MUSICAL COURIER
22
May 17, 1923
tion of citizen orchestras. Pretty soon every one will be playing an instrument. After a while we may be able to have a concert in every car of the northbound subway at rush hours.”
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OIL
Every once in a while the name of Clara Stetson Butler sails onto the front page of the dailies—and every time it does, there arise memories of that dear Interstate Opera Company, which lasted for an oh !-so-brief season several years ago. Last year Mrs. Butler achieved fame by being indicted, in connection with the Century Consolidated Oil Company, for using the mails to defraud ; and Monday of this week she sprang into the limelight once more by reason of references to her and her business methods made by an eighty-nine-year old gentleman, Charles B. Man-ville, founder of the H. W. Johns-Manville Company, who grinned and cheerfully admitted he ought to have known better at his age.
“Mrs. Butler is beautiful, Titian-haired and not more than thirty,” said Mr. Manville, who, it is understood, will soon be presented with an engrossed and framed testimonial of gratitude by Mrs. B. The funny part of it is that Mrs. Butler, being absolutely green at the game when she started the Interstate Opera, seemed really to believe that she was going to make money out of grand opera. There appears to be more in oil—using the word “oil” in all its senses.
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WHY?
Three cheers for the protection of home industries ! Just because Victor Herbert and Henry Hadley proved in past seasons their competence as leaders of the Stadium Concerts, the entire season this summer is given to Willem van Hoogstraten. We do not question in the slightest Mr. Van Hoogstraten’s ability as a conductor. He proved in his half season at the Stadium last year that he has talent which very likely will develop with experience, for that was the first conducting of importance he had ever done in his life. But why either Mr. Hadley or Mr. Herbert or some other competent American was not re-engaged for part of the season escapes us. Both of them are men-of much more experience than Mr. Van Hoogstraten, who incidentally had not been here long enough to become an American citizen, if that be his intention. If we were looking for an orchestra job in this country, our first step would be to go to Liberia, or Esthonia, or Siam, get naturalized, and then return home as a foreigner. That seems to be the principal qualification.
so they get in debt for the honor of being a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Prestige, prestige, prestige! You don’t buy a meal with prestige. It is all very well to say that it is a certain honor to be a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, but that honor does not help to pay bills. To be a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra a musician must be of the highest order and yet he gets much less money than those employed by jazz orchestras. Why, there are many jazz men who turn up their noses if they are offered fifteen dollars a night. Some of them hardly know how to read notes and play by ear, yet they want eighteen dollars per night.”
Mr. Petrillo took well the defense of the members of the Federation, and his side is here shown in the same impartial vein as that of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be taken, if necessity arises. At the present writing no new development is worth mentioning even though a reporter from the Chicago office of this paper met Philo A. Otis, active member of the Chicago Orchestral Association, who emphatically says that the Association will not give in to the Federation ; that, happen what may, the men will not be given one cent raise ; the Association prefers to suspend the concerts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra than to meet with the present demands of the Federation. Business Manager Frederick J. Wessels being away with the Orchestra on its Spring Festival tour, Mr. Otis’ remarks, made probably as an individual, could not be substantiated by a statement from the management and his utterances are quoted only to show the determination of the Orchestral Association to stand by its guns, for, though Mr. Otis is not the only one who will have to pass on the question, in his official position of secretary, trustee and member of the Orchestral Association, his voice, with those of the other officers, will certainly be heard. However, the Musical Courier representative is as positive as ever that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will go on uninterruptedly and that the size of the orchestra will not be reduced.
sky programs with the certainty that they will assure a full house.
Why should any of these drawing cards be permitted to be used without a cent of payment to the owners of the copyrights? Why should it be possible for such works to be in the public domain without any ownership?
Why, furthermore, should it be possible for the radio people to install their broadcasting apparatus into an opera house or concert hall and thus broadcast the voice of some artist who sings exclusively for the Victor or Columbia people? It is reproduction, not in the ordinary sense of singing for a single audience, but in the real sense of manifolding, and ought to be just as wrong as it is wrong to make hand copies of copyrighted works. The objection of the Ricordis to having the Puccini works in the libraries was well founded, for they discovered that they could not prevent people from copying the scores and using them without paying any royalties, without the Ricordis ever hearing anything about it except by accident. This is only a single instance of many abuses.
There is also another side of it that is beginning to be agitated in France. Dance halls are dismissing their orchestras and depending upon broadcasting stations for their music. Is this a real danger? We hardly think so, for the talking machines would long ago have lessened orchestra men’s receipts if this were the case. As a matter of fact, all of the predictions that were made when talking machines first became popular, that they would lead to the end of concert and opera, have failed to materialize. They have had just the opposite effect. And then, even so, the talking machines are run on a business basis, paying royalties for the use of music, paying the artists who make the records, and it costs something to get records. It costs nothing to listen in on a radio concert or dance.
The whole thing resolves itself to this: the artist should be granted absolute control of the reproduction of his interpretation; the owner of copyright should be granted absolute and permanent control of the works copyrighted. Reproductions of soundwaves, whether in print or in the air, should be recognized as actual, tangible, permanent, saleable property, under the control of those to whom it belongs. The sooner music is put on a business basis the better it will be for all concerned.
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Coming—the symphonic subway. If you don’t believe it, read this in the Morning Telegraph of May 7: “New York is making great strides in the forma-
For the last few weeks each issue of the Musical Courier has contained an article regarding the Chicago Symphony Orchestra strike situation. Both sides of the question have been taken up by this paper, first one and then the other. This week, the side of the Federation is expressed by James C. Petrillo, president of the Federation, in an exclusive interview to a representative of this paper. What was gleaned from his talk is here reported:
“The members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are one hundred per cent, with the Union. They know that they are underpaid and that the stand of the Chicago Federation is the right one. Musicians of the calibre of those employed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra should not have to beg for a raise; it should have been granted at once. Many men from the Chicago Orchestra have to borrow money from the management during the summer months. If the Chicago Orchestral Association would employ the men forty-two weeks out of the year instead of twenty-eight, we would be willing to talk business with them. If the season were prolonged to forty-two weeks, the men would not have to borrow money during the summer. Louis Eckstein, president of Ravinia, has given an increase of fifteen dollars a week to the men, and though the minimum wage is sixty dollars per week at Ravinia, there is not one orchestra player who will not be making there at least seventy-five dollars a 'week. In fact eighty dollars in round figures will average about the weekly salary of each man. The men are paid sixty dollars a week and can always count on three rehearsals, for which they are paid five dollars each, making a total of seventy-five dollars. Generally, however, they rehearse four times a week, making their pay check eighty dollars a week at Ravinia. The Orchestral Association has absolutely nothing to do with the Ravinia engagement. Louis Eckstein is the responsible party and then many of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra men do not play at Ravinia during the summer season. Many are idle for months and the few dates they get here and there are not sufficient for a livelihood,
PERFORMING RIGHTS
A special cable to the New York Times reports that Georges de Launay, conductor of the Paris Orchestra, and the members of the orchestra, refused to go on with a concert at the Salle Caveau until the radio broadcasting apparatus had been removed from the hall. The concert was a charity affair and Mr. de Launay said friends of his had refused to purchase tickets because they had wireless receiving sets in their homes and could enjoy the concert just as well without paying the price. Mr. de Launay is also quoted as saying that for the struggling young musician the radio was no doubt useful as an advertisement but that men like Paderewski, Kreisler and Ysaye had nothing to gain and everything to lose in allowing their performances to be broadcasted. M. Devries, of the Opera Comique, is reported to have said that he was offered five dollars to sing for one of the wireless companies.
This is of more interest than would appear. It is by no means confined to wireless broadcasting. The entire matter of performing rights and reproductions is involved, for there is a difference between the voice of a singer reaching those within a hall and, perhaps, the entire population of a country. There is also a vast difference between the sale of the music, the use of score and parts of orchestra pieces, performing rights and the like.
No one will suppose that it is a simple matter to be settled in a moment. Its settlement demands a lot of common sense on the one side and a lot of business fairness on the other.
From the common sense point of view there would appear to be only one way to look at it: How much is a thing worth to the person who is using it ? That is, after all, the only real question involved in equity. There will be no contention, for instance, about the reproduction in any form of a piece of music for which there is no popular demand. There will be no question of necessary payment to an artist who is just starting out, who has no reputation, who has not been advertised, whose name has no sale value. Such an artist could not sell tickets to a recital given in any hall, but would have to paper the house. Such a recital would cost the artist five hundred or more dollars, and one would think that he or she might even be willing to pay the broadcasting company or the talking machine or reproducing piano record makers for the publicity involved in the reproduction. So it is also with a piece of music.
But there are other rights that are of real importance, the rights of those who have something to sell for which there is a great demand, be it an interpretation or a composition. The common sense point of view would seem to demand that such works or such interpretations be absolutely protected, be regarded as private property, and no more to be sold at an arbitrarily fixed price than a house and lot may be sold at a fixed price. The Government, certainly, arrogates to itself the right of condemnation of a house and lot for public construction, railroad, street, or park. That is on the principle of majority right, the right of the public over the individual.
But is any such principle involved in music? It is difficult to see in what particular. It is difficult, even, to see why, for instance, the family of Richard Wagner should be denied the right to inherit the only thing that Wagner left: his works. Where the business man works no harder than the composer, and with far less benefit to the public as a whole, he is permitted to save what he can and to leave not only what he has made and saved but also permanent ownership in the business he has built up. It never falls into the pulic domain. But the composer, a certain number of years after his death, loses all rights in the things he has made.
‘ That is unjust, and it illustrates better than anything else could the attitude of governments towards musicians. What seems in ordinary business the most elemental principle of the protection of personal rights is, in the world of music, refused recognition. And perhaps one reason for this is that musicians themselves do not agree in the matter. Instead of burying their differences and standing together with a solid front, they argue over details.
There are those, for instance, who argue that, since the publishers of popular music give away orchestrations in order to popularize their newest publications, they should never afterwards demand performing rights for concert or vaudeville performances of these pieces. And that brings us right back to where we began: the question of the value of the music to the person using it. The popular song or dance is absolutely essential to the success of a vaudeville act or musical comedy show. In the same way certain concert artists will feel that the use of the latest and most popular serious music will add greatly to the success of their recitals, just as our symphony orchestras advertise Wagner or Tschaikow-
THE UNION SIDE OF THE CHICAGO ORCHESTRA STRIKE SITUATION