21 MUSICAL COURIER J un e 14, 1923 wishes to save on the bill for illumination ? The few fanatics who remain until the total eclipse are not “the audience.” Most of the audience depart in such a hurry after a concert that one imagines they have been waiting impatiently for the last note in order to stampede out of the hall. The non-stop or joy applauders engage in a sort of game with the artist to see how long they can keep their victim trotting on and off. One or two persistent applauders always are able to make hundreds of other persons resume handclapping even after they have stopped. Some join in the belated demonstration out of pure good nature and others do so out of politeness. This subject of applause never has been studied scientifically enough or its psychology analyzed properly. Some day, when we have time, we shall ask some one to do it. H n »? Now the happiness of orchestral concert goers may be complete, for the New York Times Magazine (June 10) reveals the long guarded secret that “the 30-inch kettle drums are toned from low D flat to B flat; those of ordinary size—27 inches—from G to middle C, and the small ones—22 to 23 inches—from D to high A.” *s »? *? They used to have a pretty anecdote about the young man in Paris whose ambition it was to become a kettle drum player. He went to the most noted master of the instrument, bought from him the proper paraphernalia, and next day appeared for his first lesson. He was shown the proper position and told to take the sticks in his hand. Then the teacher proceeded: “We shall start with a Mozart symphonic adagio in which the drum has 494 measures rest. I am the conductor. Watch me beat the time and you must count aloud with me. It is of the greatest importance to count accurately so that you make the correct entrance. Now let us begin.” The instructor beat the proper funereal tempo and counted : One-two-three-four-five-six-” and went on slowly and successively to “one hundred and twenty-one, one hundred and twenty-two, one hundred and twenty-three”—and in due time arrived at “two hundred and sixty-nine, two hundred and seventy, two hundred and seventy-one, two hundred and seventy-two, two hundred and”—he paused, looked at his watch, laid down the baton and said: “The lesson is over for today. Please'come again on Friday at the same time and we will continue.” »? »? »X “I don’t know,” ventures M. B. H., “but I would be willing to make a chance wager that all reactionary music critics wear suspenders.” *? »? *, In grand opera love never is a matter of slow growth; it always takes place at first sight. *? *>. *? When you consider what some musicians think of others, why do you wonder that the nations of Europe do not get on better among themselves ? *? n »? A very foolish friend of this column writes: “The other evening I suddenly got distance on my radio and I heard something which seemed to me to be either modern French music or a Chinese amateur orchestra tuning up. Finally I thought I had located the source of the strange sounds. A shutter on a neighbor’s window was loose and creaking rhythmically on its hinges. And even then—maybe—I don’t know—perhaps I was wrong and did have a Paris concert hall on my outfit, after all.” »? »? »? Let those whom it fits take unto themselves the evening paper philosopher’s dictum that “The reason ideas get into some heads slowly is because they have to wedge themselves in between prejudices.” H , *. Nilly—“What is your favorite instrument?” Willy—“The corkscrew.” Leonard Lieblxng. VARIATIONETTES By the Editor-in-Chief “Suddenly,” says Siegfried, “Richard Wagner entered, the room and began to dance to the classic strains of the scherzo of the symphony in the jolliest and most natural manner. It was as if we were looking at a gay youth 20 years old, and it was all we could do to keep from bursting out into loud, delighted laughter. You may rest assured of one thing: Beethoven could not have imagined his scherzo danced more beautifully. Isadora Duncan will be perfectly justified if she harks back to my father’s example next time she is reproached with dancing to the strains of Beethoven.” K It X Thankfully acknowledged herewith, the receipt from B. T., of Ivan Wright’s Farm Mortgage Financing, for summer reading. »?»?»? If all one hears is true about Strauss’ latest opera, young persons going to hear it will have to be accompanied by a chaperone. »t * »X “Now is the summer of our discontent,” writes an out of town annual contributor to the orchestral guarantee fund in his city. He should look forward, however, to the winter made glorious through his generosity. ^ We have been trying vainly to think of something that interests us less than the daily paper stories of the Farrar-Tellegen divorce details. *i »X H Dr. Gordon Campbell says that he never has encountered more burst ear drums than during the recent unseasonable cold spell. The doctor is wrong. The trouble came about because the patients were trying to listen to their radio, phonograph and player piano all at the same time. »? *? * Charles R. Baker was telling some listeners around the table that he used to be in the circus business. “And what line are you in now ?” asked one of the lesser acquainted. “The same,” answered Baker, “I’m associate manager of the San Carlo Opera Company.” XXX According to the New York World, “mummy songs have replaced mammy songs since the Egyptian craze hit Broadway.” XXX Anyone need a full sized, sound winded, kindly dispositioned, and thoroughly broken grand opera company? In England the Carl Rosa Opera is for sale. Fortune Gallo should become the Frank Mun-sey of his field and buy up all the operatic organizations except the Chicago and the Metropolitan. Then he ought to combine with the Chicago Opera and sell out the whole thing to the Metropolitan. This is 100 per cent. American business advice and we trust that Gallo will follow it. *x *X »? Meanwhile grand opera in England seems to have gone back to its more naive days, according to what the London Telegraph says about the stage management at a recent Covent Garden performance of Hansel and Gretel given by the British National Opera Company: “Eggs that fall from a table and don’t break should be avoided; likewise a pitcher—if the suggestion of a domestic catastrophe is to be maintained. The artists concerned should agree as to which way a door opens—outward or inward—and having decided the point, to act accordingly when the critical moment arrives. Furthermore, the witch who eats children having been successfully burned alive in her own oven should be warned that her emergence therefrom, after death, must be kept the darkest of stage secrets. And when Hansel arid Gretel are playing about with the broom in the first act Hansel should be told that to jump before Gretel gets anywhere near his toes may be intelligent anticipation, but it is not very convincing acting.” »? n *? It is as complimentary to say of a conductor that he made his orchestra sound like one instrument as it is to say of a pianist that he made his instrument sound like a whole orchestra. >x »? »? A touring soprano writes from London: “They are to have a Handel Festival here soon with a choir of 4.000 voices. What do you say to that ?” We should say that it would be a delightful matter if all the 4.000 decided individually to cheat on the same high tone. »?»?»? We always are puzzled when we read that “the audience would not go home till the lights were put out.” It cannot be that the artist tires of bowing acknowledgments, so can it be that the management “There is something very touching about the close of a musical season,” writes W. J. Henderson in the Herald. He must have been conversing with some orchestral guarantors. »? «X * A suggestive misprint is that in the New York Tribune (May 27) which makes the L silent and speaks of the Amoureux Orchestra in Paris. »? «X »? In the same paper is a most interesting and instructive article by Lawrence Gilman, setting forth the inferiority of Parisian orchestras to our American symphonic bodies. Stock, Damrosch, Sokoloff and other American conductors, says Mr. Gilman, would have hung their heads in mortification if their men had played d’lndy’s Symphony on a French Mountaineer’s Song as the Colonne Orchestra played it under M. d’lndy himself. That performance, and those of other orchestras heard in Paris recently by Mr. Gilman he refers to as second rate. What surprises us most is to hear that the Parisian brasses— always regarded as superior—sound harsh to American ears. Mr. Gilman explains that the poor results obtained at the orchestral concerts in the French capital are due to the lack of funds for adequate rehearsing. A passage that should be large lettered and hung up on the bulletin board of all the American orchestras and musical unions, is this : “These Parisian musicians, one understands, are poorly paid. An unselfish devotion, for which they deserve all possible praise, holds them to their desks in the orchestras when they might be playing elsewhere—in the cinemas, for example.” »?»?»? Especially arresting was what Mr. Gilman wrote about Koussevitzky, a conductor who seems destined to be heard in this country before many more aeons have passed : Mr. Koussevitzky is incapable of dullness ; nor has he the depressing habit of being invariably right. _ He is a man of impassioned convictions, erratic and capricious, and sometimes he is gloriously wrong. We heard his performance of the “Unfinished” Symphony of Schubert, during whtcn Schubert, like General Sheridan on a certain occasion, was at least twenty miles away. Mr. Koussevitzky conceived this tender and wistful music, with its subdued undertone of tragic brooding, as the product of a Viennese Tschaikovsky, full of violent dynamic contrasts, vehement, highly colored, unrestrained. It was exhilarating to listen to; and a good case might be made out for the contention that Schubert, with his keen sense of the dramatic, would have liked it— after he got used to it. But it is not easy to believe that he intended it to sound that way. Undoubtedly, though, it sounds that way to Mr. Koussevitzky, whose^ artistic sincerity is unimpeachable. This brilliant Russian is a conductor of singular magnetism.' Some of his confrères dismiss him as an amateur. But to any one who has watched Mr. Koussevitzky at close range as he conducts a score like Stravinsky’s Chant du Rossignol (which now, in its thira incarnation, exists as a concert piece) that aspersion will seem merely stupid. His judgment is sometimes questionable, but he is a technician of skill and resource, and in such music as Moussorgsky’s Tableaux d’une Exposition (scored delightfully by Ravel), in Khovantchina—which Koussevitzky is conducting at the Opéra—4n Stravinsky s Nightingale and Honegger’s Chant de Joie Mr. Koussevitzky is exceedingly persuasive. »? «X »? A new monthly review, The Adelphi, is to be published in London and in his prospectus the editor, John Middleton Murry (late of The Nation and Athenaeum) says about the department to be known as Music, Art, Drama : “We believe that the general practice of chronicling every new concert, every new exhibition and every new play tends to gossip and trivialty. It is interesting only to the interested. The Adelphi will deal with these subjects when it feels it has something to say about them worth saying.” »?»?»? Siegfried Wagner’s recently published reminiscences is a modest, informative, and humorous volume, full of anecdotes and personal touches about papa Richard, grandpa Liszt, and mama Cosima. Siegfried confesses that in spite of his heroic name, he has “split no anvils, killed no dragons, gone through no seas of flame.” Also he refuses, he says, to feel shamed because some people consider him a tragic figure, one crushed by the fame of his super-renowned father; nor does he consider himself either a fool or a criminal because he chooses to compose operas. He does not regard his operas as masterpieces nor yet does he consider them _ entirely lacking in merit. Siegfried tells one especially engaging story. In Siena, when Franz Liszt, Wagner’s father-in-law, who was paying the Wagners a visit, sat down at the piano and began to play one of Beethoven’s symphonies, ' Siegfried, who was a little boy then, and the rest of the Wagner children, crept close to the door of the music room to listen.