May 24, 1 923
MUSICAL COURIER
of ten people had traveled eighteen hours to attend his recital!
Kreisler is another example of a man with a universal appeal in his work. Surely his experience as a soldier had something to do with that whole-souled something in his work which perhaps not many understand but all feel. Can there be any doubt that the suffering which Chaliapin has seen and his close contact with all kinds and conditions of men has made him sing with a depth of feeling and an artistry that has swept all his hearers off their feet?
Yes indeed, the truly great are always good mixers and thoroughly at home wherever they may be. A great artist has never beet! a snob, for unless the artist learns to forget self and to throw himself into the lives of others he can never hope to be truly great.
Will you forgive this long letter, for truly when I started out I did not intend that it should become almost a novelette, but I do feel strongly on the subject. With all good wishes,	Cecil Arden.
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I live in a town so small,” apologizes M. B. H., “that I can call Central and ask her what concert there is tonight.”
The Russian young lady judge who calmly condemned twenty-five men to death is not more remarkable than the youthful female pianist who with her own hands has executed every one of the great composers.
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When great composers write a few dull measures such lapses only serve to emphasize the worth of their many .masterful pages.
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Wagner was right when he asked for financial support so that he might have leisure for the creation of masterpieces. The Rockefeller millions, relieving noted scientists from material cares, have enabled them to give to the world at least a dozen new discoveries for the successful combatting of disease and prolongation of life.
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Two new Italian jockeys at the Jamaica racetrack are named Caruso and Giordano.
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Musical announcement by Roy K. Moulton in the Evening Mail: “The well known New Jersey tenor, Amos Ouito, is tuning up for his annual tour of New York City.”
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A hitherto unknown waltz by Rossini has been discovered. It is called Castor Oil. One may be sure that children won't like it.
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Received from a former staff member of the
Musical Courier:
New Rochelle, N. Y., May 4, 1923.
Dear V ariationettes:
Your remarks about the pay of New York’s music critics are very much more painfully true than most people imagine. The whole subject of criticism with its pros and cons is too lengthy for one to go into, and it is useless besides.
Years ago when I went over to the New York Press, through the influence of Hillary Bell, a powerful dramatic critic and friend of the owner at that time (Irwin Wardman, dead this last year also, and who at death was the vice-president of the Munsey Company) was the editor-in-chief. He had gone to the Press from the Tribune, and Bell told me that he had absolutely no use for music critics on a daily paper as he could not see how they brought to the paper the equivalent of their salaries 1 Wardman told me very often how he thrashed this out with Krehbiel, and what a pretty picture it is and what a far from silent commentary! I fancy precious little would be known of music or musicians these days had there been no critics to labor, starve and die. When I went over to the Telegram under the regime established by James Gordon Bennett, the lengthy interview I had with the editor in charge was a classic. I was told all the things I would not be expected to do, all the angles the policy of the paper tabooed from reviews and criticisms until finally I said: “Then, you are to pay me to have no brains.” Being in exactly the same boat himself the editor answered sourly: “Exactly.” However I took the position and whenever my critic’s conscience compelled me to write simon pure criticism, I wrote it in such a duplex form that it read one way for the evoluted office cat who too often sits in judgment about one a. m., and quite another way to the outside musician who knew the ropes. What a man with a family can do with the salary offered this highest form of mental effort, is a mystery, and unless he has outside interests, it would take a moral stalwart not to sell out his integrity and his stultifying paper. As long as Huneker stuck״ to the Musical Courier he had little to worry about, but as he wrote and said about himself he was not of the stuff of which heroes are made, and he did not relish standing by his guns, when these caused petty friction or annoyances.
Those of your readers who nourish a secret passion for music critics may wish to start a propaganda for better pay for them, so I am contributing the above more feelingly than anyone else could, having graduated from the fold.
With best wishes I am sincerely,
Emily Grant von Tetzel.
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Rachmaninoff has a particularly admirable trait in his compositions and nowhere is it exemplified more strongly than in his G minor prelude (the one Hofmann plays so marvelously). Rachmaninoff stops when he has nothing more to say.
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We shall flatter Rachmaninoff by imitating him. herewith.	Leonard Liebling.
VARIATIONETTES
By the Editor-in-Chief
interpretation and execution that one hardly ever finds together in the same artist. There is tradition in this playing ; there is authority; but there is something just a little greater than even those valuable ingredients, and that something was imparted by the gods alone. Hard work will do a lot, but it was more than hard work that set the audience spellbound by the magic delicacy of the Romanza.
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Lawrence R. Bacon asks : “Confidentially, what is the difference between a Steinway, a Knabe, and a Mason & Hamlin?” Confidentially, the difference is the same as that between a Concert Bureau, a Concert Management and a Concert Direction.
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Independence Day is on July 4 and the Stadium concerts begin July 5.
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The Chicago Musical College is in receipt of a letter which opens up an entirely new scientific aspect in the teaching of singing :
Portland, Ore., April 29, 1923.
Chicago Musical College.
Dear Sirs :—Does the wearing of false teeth in any way effect one’s career in vocal?
Thanking you for this information, I am,
Yours very truly,
Cora ------- -------.
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The Evening Telegram amends one of our recent paragraphs to read : “Genius is composed of equal parts of sweat, temperament and headlines.”
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“What is larger than a conceited opera tenor’s head?” asks J. P. F., then answers himself, “Only the skulls of the Cardiff Giant and the Neanderthal Man,” and finally inquires again, “Do you know any better comparisons ?” We only know what is smaller than an atom-—the bass drum part in a Mozart symphonic adagio.	5« S» J»
The young baritone who has just left his teacher’s studio and came to the Musical Courier office to get advice on how to start his career began his speech with this sentence : “How can I succeed without discovering an oil well?” Another visitor, slightly cynical, heard the young man’s query and replied : “Well, bricklayers are getting twelve dollars per day now.” This particular baritone student turned out to be a sensible sort of fellow who fully realized the difficulties of his profession and admitted that the world did not owe him a living. Those young persons who begin a musical career by expecting some one else to start it for them, and come to see us with a chip on their shoulder, usually have a set form of address, like this : “I have just finished my studies and it has cost my family a small fortune. I have no money with which to give a recital, advertise in the music papers, or pay a manager for working for me. The managers all tell me that they cannot use me if I have no reputation. Now, if Î do not get engagements, how can I make a reputation ; and if I have no money, how can I give recitals and advertise? What am I to do?” If the tirade is delivered testily enough, generally we answer : “That is your problem, not mine.” Such musical molluscs always remind us of the youth who went to see Massenet and asked him to correct his manuscript compositions. The master looked at them and said : “These things are very immature. How old are you?” “Sixteen.” “You must learn much more before you begin to write.” “But, maitre, you composed when you were seventeen.” “Yes,” admitted Massenet, “but I didn’t ask anyone how to do it.” n H t!
Dear Variationettes :
The article in last week’s Musical Courier on Mixers is a true sermon which every one who aspires to be an artist should thoroughly digest. How genuine is everything stated there ! However there is one point which the writer did not touch—and that is how much this very mixing goes to make the real artist. I do not speak of wonderful technicians but of the men and women who have endeared themselves to all people in all walks of life and whose message has been understood by all.
We have the proof in the crowd gathered under Caruso’s balcony at the Knickerbocker on Armistice Day. I can see him now as he stood radiant, waving the Italian and American flags and tossing American Beauty roses to the crowd below. That was one instance where he proved what a good mixer he was. Then on the night never to be forgotten when he came out after many recalls at a concert in Ocean Grove and sang “Over There.” Will anyone who was present ever forget the thrill that ran through the whole audience with his final “And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.” There was such a salvo of hurrahs and waving of handkerchiefs as even he said he had never experienced before. ־ Had he not been a good mixer could he ever have been able to interpret that, at the time, most popular song?
This year’s tour of Paderewski has proved (although he was a wonderful artist before he entered world politics) how much he has grown in his art and in the hearts of his public. I was in certain towns in the West where parties
A slight difference of opinion in our local critical ranks. Mr. Henderson, of the Sun, says that in this country musical audiences are going to the demnition bow wows. “Beautiful ideals are fast vanishing,” and in their place are ideals “thoroughly materialistic, gross, and debasing.” On the other hand, Mr. Finck of the Evening Post asserts that American audiences are progressing surprisingly, and he points out how they have advanced over the old days in the nature of the programs they demand and in the degree of their understanding of them. The truth is that a few persons have gone back, many have stood still, and some have gone forward. Our present age shows more general musical understanding because of the wide use of the mechanical piano and recording instruments. Broadly speaking, however, these days are not much different inherently from those that went before. Every period has its enthusiasts and its calamity croakers. The hopes, fears, strivings, and pessimisms of today were those too of yesterday and the day before yesterday.
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Mr. Aldrich, of the Times, also sees through dark glasses when he remarks that it is not the province of great symphony orchestras to play in the back yards and on the front stoops of the masses. He does not tell us the reasons for his decision or offer any proof of the truth of the proposition. It is difficult to see how either the orchestras or the masses could be harmed by such contact. Several of the New York music critics held forth violently at one time when Richard Strauss and his orchestra were engaged to give a concert in the auditorium at Wana-maker’s department shop. The writers laid down beautiful ethical laws in their denunciations of Strauss. Yet not so very long afterward two of those critics were engaged by Mr. Wanamaker to deliver musical lectures on the self same spot where Strauss had stood when he committed his terrible crime. The critics delivered excellent lectures, were paid, and took the money. This is the moment, now that Mr. Wanamaker is dead, to reveal that he had a sly sense of humor, and to tell also that the man—dead, too— who• suggested the joke to the great merchant was Marc A. Blumenberg, then editor and proprietor of the Musical Courier.
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The movement to develop American orchestral players appears to be almost more than timely, if one glances over this, from the Tribune of last Sunday:
The following musicians are announced in leading parts in the Philharmonic Orchestra during the stadium concerts: Bela Loblov, concertmaster; E. Tak, assistant concertmaster ; F. Lowrack, second violin; J. J. Kovarik, viola; Cornelius Van Vliet, cello; U. Buldrini and A. Fortier, bass; N. Kouloukis, flute; E. F. Wagner, piccolo; B. Labate, oboe; P. Strano, English horn; G. Langenus, clarinet; E. Roelofs-ma, bass clarinet; B. Kohon, bassoon; B. Jaenicke, horn; H. Glantz, trumpet; M. Falcone, trombone; F. Geib, tuba; A. Friese, tympani; S. Braun, percussion; T. Celia, harp; Maurice Van Praag, orchestra manager.
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If Bethlehem, Pa., is having its Bach Festival this week, at least New York last week had its contest for the harmonica championship.
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The world isn’t such a bad place after all for no one has thought of giving summer performances of Parsifal in New York.
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“Pianists and pickpockets have long fingers. Does that suggest any comment to you?” hazards W. B. It might suggest something if it were true, but it isn’t. As a matter of fact, some of the greatest pianists had very short and stubby fingers. Rubinstein was a striking example of that class. Joseffy’s fingers were exceptionally short. Godowsky’s could by no stretch of the imagination be called long. Rosenthal also has stocky, abbreviated digits. So has Bauer. Paderewski’s, Siloti’s and Schelling’s are longer and slimmer. Gabrilowitsch and Hofmann are medium sized. Friedman and d’Albert belong in the Joseffy-Rosenthal class. Furthermore, we believe that no pickpocket’s fingers are as nimble as those of any of the aforementioned gentlemen.
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Rosenthal, whatever he the length of his fingers, always has had tremendous power and speed but of late years he has acquired also gentleness and delicacy. The other day he played Chopin’s E minor concerto in London and the Daily Telegraph wrote:
A more superb performance it is simply not possible to imagine—the kind of statement one may make seldom in a lifetime. Here, in perfect equipoise, were those qualities of strength and gentleness, of rhythmic perception, of phrasing, of faultless (and exquisite) technic, of tonal beauty, sonorous, plaintive, limpid, delicate, brilliant, qualities of