Scan 9
Musical Courier 1890-07-02: Vol 21 Iss 541, 1890
68 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 10. See the scan on archive.org.
1brother informs me that there is a roomful of his MS. compositions untouched in London), fighting duels with Ronconi, making love and even flirting with the empress.
3He had to cross the Channel in a great hurry to escape consequences.
5The first time he met Blind Tom in England he improvised for him, and that African phonograph imitated Ascher's inspiration note for note.
7The white pianist ran out of the room, declaring that Blind Tom was a wizard. Joseph Ascher died of paresis at an early age.
9The picture I present on page 9 was lent to me by Albert Ascher and is extremely rare. It represents the pianist at the age of twenty.
11Wilson G. Smith, the composer, of Cleveland, has composed a very pretty and effective love song, "Look in My Heart and See." It is, as are most of Mr. Smith's compositions, as felicitous in melodic as it is in harmonic construction.
13It will be a great meeting at Detroit. Brother Hahn has worked nobly and should get abundant credit for it.
15There will be a meeting of the old clans, and I hope to shake many hands and welcome many old friends. But two faces we will miss, those of Louis Maas and Karl Merz. They have joined the majority, and all we can say is requiescant in pace.
17This wicked little cut (literally cut) is from New York "Life:"
19LISZT, O. LISZT.
20—Hamlet, Act I., Scene V.
22Musical Items.
23—J. de Zielinski, the pianist, was a caller in this office last week.
24—Last Wednesday evening Wilson G. Smith's pupils gave a recital in Cleveland.
25—Miss Judith Graves gave a piano recital at Schwankovsky's Hall, Detroit, last Saturday evening.
26—The second annual commencement of the Des Moines Musical College, M. L. Bartlett, director, took place June 16.
27—MARRIED.—Miss Hattie J. Clapper was married Wednesday, June 18, in Rochester, to George E. Morris, of Ogdensburgh, N. Y. She will not abandon her professional career.
28—The Dayton Conservatory of Music gave two public recitals at the Grand Opera House, in Dayton, Ohio, June 24, afternoon and evening. The ensemble playing of Misses Miller and Schaefer was one of the attractions of the last concert.
29—Mrs. Gerster did not, it seems, achieve the great success on her recent return to Italian opera in London that has been accorded to her. The Athenaeum takes this view of her performance: "It was not without a feeling of pity that the listener noted the decay of the artist's vocal powers. The perfect method was as conspicuous as ever, but the power of Mrs. Gerster to render the music according to her own intentions was not forthcoming. She will be wise to rest content with the reputation she gained in the past, when she was unsurpassed in light soprano parts."
30—The annual entrance examinations of the National Conservatory of Music, 126 East Seventeenth-st., will begin September 25 this year. The order of examination will be as follows: Singing classes, September 25 and 26; violin, violoncello, contrabass and harp classes, September 27; piano and organ, September 30; flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon, October 1, from 9 A. M. to 12 M.; French horn, cornet and trombone, the same day, from 2 to 4 P. M.; orchestra, same day, from 8 to 10 P. M.; chorus, October 6, from 8 to 10 P. M.
32Charles Insee Pardee is the secretary of the conservatory, and from him further particulars in regard to the institution can be obtained. Application for admission to the classes is desired of all who have positive aptitude for music and who wish to pursue a liberal course of musical education. In cases where circumstances may warrant, instruction in any or all of the branches taught in the conservatory will be given free.
34Emil Liebling and the Virgil Practice Clavier.
35CHICAGO, May 12, 1890.
37DEAR MR. VIRGIL—I have always been a decided opponent of all contrivances that claim to facilitate piano playing, or, more particularly speaking, the acquisition of that fearful and wonderful thing a "piano technic."
39It is perfectly appalling to hear the more or less correct statistics which go to show that about 95 per cent. of all piano players go to their graves without ever having been able to produce a perfect legato touch. Vivid pictures have also been drawn of the dreadful physical state which is almost sure to follow regular piano practice.
41My prejudice has been less pronounced in the case of your practice clavier than some of those remarkable looking machines, most of which remind me of the mediaeval instruments of torture which are exhibited to shuddering posterity at Nuremberg.
43But of late years it has really seemed as if any fad, no matter how absurd, could gain a footing even in communities of so-called musical intelligence. I suppose that finally some enterprising fellow will invent a method by which students can be inoculated for music just as for hydrophobia or smallpox. It will be sure to take!
45I am perfectly free to confess that the conferences and explanations with which you have favored me during your late stay in our city have gone very far toward overcoming my former opposition and enlisted my hearty interest in your invention.
47Joseffy, whom I unhesitatingly place at the head of the great masters of piano playing, also drew my attention to a number of valuable features which the clavier possesses. It seems to me that if properly and intelligently used it can be utilized to great advantage with beginners. Advanced players will readily perceive the advisability of using a gradual increase of the heavier touch for endurance and force.
49I would suggest that (if practicable) those who desire to avail themselves of your invention should take some lessons in the practical use of it from someone who is thoroughly familiar with its adaptability to various purposes.
51I shall be much pleased to use and recommend the clavier. Yours truly,
53EMIL LIEBLING.
55A French Novelist as a Wagner Enthusiast.
57THOSE who visited Bayreuth in the summer of 1888 may perhaps have remarked a pale, young man of slender build, with large, deep set, dark eyes and thick, bristly, jet black hair, in a blue velvet jacket and an immense light gray slouched hat, who punctually attended all performances, listened enraptured, and at their close could hardly tear himself away from the theatre. He was a Frenchman, and the unmistakable profound impression that these representations awakened in him called forth all the more astonishment, since France was but seldom represented at Bayreuth, and it was only upon the exceptions among its representatives that these artistic offerings produced any deep impression. This young Frenchman, who was so warmly stirred by the works of the German master, was not a musician by profession, but a writer. At that day his name was still unknown in Germany; even in France he was merely named now and again in the narrow literary circles, and then rather oftener with a scornful shrug of the shoulders than with an expression of acknowledged talent. In Germany absolutely nothing was known of him, his latest writings alone having found a certain recognition at least among judges of French literature, not precisely because of their poetic and aesthetic value, but on account of their fantastic oddness, their mysticism, their fundamental diversity, as compared with the productions of all other contemporary novelists, and, finally, on account of their almost idolatrous worship of Wagner.
59About four or five years ago Dentu, in Paris, issued the first volumes of a series of novels after the Zola model, bearing the remarkable title "La Décadence Latine." Their author was Josephin Péladan, until then a complete homo novus among the French literature of the day. Perchance its title, announcing the decadence of the Latin race, proved repulsive, for the French are the last race who would admit such a suggestion. The few who read these books did not find them attractive in the accepted sense of the term. They contained ideas, it is true, but these were baroque and exaggerated. There was no sign of a connected, clear plot; everything fluctuated hither, thither in a fantastic, fragmentary manner. Besides, the title of this series, so little flattering to a Frenchman, did not signify what the ordinary reader might take to be its meaning; on the contrary, in our day one might rather regard that which the author terms decadence as a step toward progress. This Latin decadence has reference to the fact that the nations of this race are no longer so firm in their religious faith as formerly; that a political liberalism, united in a compact with a pernicious militarism (?), now fills the place of the absolute papal theocracy of former centuries. Even the worldly and diplomatic Leo XIII., who hurls no bans nor claims a kiss of the slipper from the German Emperor, represents to this author a sign of this decadence. In a still greater degree, however, does the French Bishop Freppel, who enters upon a parliamentary war of words and unites in a compact with the political powers, the defenders of a system inimical to the Popehood.
61But what confers a special interest on Péladan on the side of the German public is his excessive Wagner "cult." It is true this sentiment appeared only in the sixth and last volume of his "Decadence" series, bearing the separate title "La Victoire du Mari" ("The Husband's Victory"). How he arrived at this veneration of the great German master and what directed his attention toward the same he does not say. Perhaps it was the Parisian "Lohengrin" performance that, like the erstwhile "Tannhäuser" performance, was transformed into an immense riot by a brutal mob. Péladan speaks freely in regard to this event: "When an attempt was made some years ago," he writes, "to perform this man's works, in order to re-establish the so-called capital of the world, that is now but the capital of 'voyous,' Paris, obeying the voices of its slums and its drunkards, chased through the length of its gutters in effigy and after his death him whom the yellow kids had driven away personally in 1863." He, the author, next made a pilgrimage to Bayreuth, to hear the gospel revealed to him amid its own scenes. How deeply he was moved is shown in his sentence: "In the Middle Ages Christian benevolence established asylums of refuge and of the peace of God; Art in our day has effected for a similar purpose the season of performances at Bayreuth." Péladan and Wagner are in many respects kindred spirits. They delight in the mysterious, the primordial and infinite. Wagner is absorbed in the legends of the pre-German primitive world; Péladan finds his ideals in Indian mythology and becomes absorbed in the philosophical doctrines of Buddhism. "What a pity," he cries, "that Wagner did not know the Kabbala."
63As Balzac gained a presentiment of occultism through Swedenborg, so did Wagner perceive Hermetism through Schopenhauer's unattained Buddhism. The Kabbala would surely have given Wagner but slight uneasiness and as for the conditions of occultism and Hermetism he had probably devoted but little thought to them during his whole lifetime. Nor can this concern us at all, for we have no desire to follow the author through his penetrative philosophic religious speculations. Whether he himself knew what he really meant remains questionable; his readers certainly do not. What interests us most is the Wagner enthusiasm woven in among the transparent, but peculiar mystic fantastic plot of the novel, and breaking out in every page of the book. Hand in hand with the same there goes a wondrous story of a marriage not lacking in those piquant adjuncts inseparable from a French author, although they arise in a comparatively intellectual and refined form, in which, however, the physical and psychical are mingled without restraint.
65The scene of the novel is laid partly in the French Landes, partly in Bayreuth and Nürnberg; time 1888. Izel is a wealthy heiress, who early lost both her parents and was brought up by a foster father in rural seclusion and complete independence of mind. A German musician has awakened her enthusiasm for Wagner's works, thus far only known to her through the medium of her piano, whose texts, however, she has zealously studied until she is quite au fait with the Wagner style in all its tendencies. Izel exists completely in the anterior world of Wagner; dreams but of its heroes, giants, dwarfs and monsters, and takes delight in long, lonely roamings over the heaths of the Landes, ever wondering whether a "Siegmond" may not soon appear for her. Once she meets an extremely interesting young man, in a fantastically decorated hunter's costume, who seems engaged in audible converse with himself. Astonished, she stands still, and as in her naive independence of spirit she cares naught for feminine reserve, she asks him boldly: "Who art thou, stranger, that seemest to converse with the invisible powers?"
67The stranger also happens, strangely enough, to be an admirer of Wagner—in France this crop is so thickly sowed that they meet in the most distant portions of the land. Completely merged in his poet composer, he replies: "I'm
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