Scan 5
Musical Courier 1891-05-20: Vol 22 Iss 587, 1891
104 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 522. See the scan on archive.org.
1It was, despite its overgrown and clumsy music festival, a dull season, a meaningless season.
3The public became plethoric, not from an embarras de richesses, but an embarrassment of notes. The luckless wights who were forced to attend the musical happenings of the season literally became note eaters.
5Musical corpulency and indigestion, superinduced by overloading one's musical stomach with notes, are the results, and a severe course of banting is the only remedy. But even that is to be denied to us, for English opera is looming up before us, Gilmore and Thomas at the Madison Square Garden, and Anton Seidl of course will preside over the musical destinies of Brighton Beach.
7Verily we are right in declaring that the musical season in New York never ends.
9ANOTHER LETTER.
11THE following letter may interest our many readers:
13NEW YORK, May 13, 1891.
15Editors Musical Courier:
17Dear Sir—Messrs. Herrmann, Lilienthal, Hauser and Schenck have just finished a series of concerts in which they have performed all of the Beethoven string quartets in chronological order. Can you tell me, Mr. Editor, why it is that the press of this city has paid so little attention to these concerts? Even if the performances have not been on as high a level as they were (especially in the case of the last quartets), it would seem as if the mere seriousness of purpose of the undertaking would attract the sympathetic notice of any critic having at heart the advancement in this city of music in one of its highest forms.
19Yours truly,
20E. J. De Coffet.
2117 West Sixtieth street.
23We have often deplored the lack of good chamber music in the metropolis, for, with the exception of the concerts of the Beethoven String Quartet last season, we have had literally nothing. The energy and seriousness of purpose of the gentlemen named in the above letter, are certainly very laudable, but that does not atone entirely for mediocre performances. The first violin is a very estimable teacher, but hardly an artist of sufficient capabilities to be intrusted with such a responsible position as leader of a string quartet.
25The whole matter may be tersely summed up by stating that there is not in New York, or for that matter, in America, such a well balanced, artistic organization as the Kneisel String Quartet, of Boston, to whose playing it is a delight to listen, so pure, so musical and so finished is it.
27ITALIAN AND GERMAN.
29YOU say the German opera killed the Italian opera in this country; I say the Italian killed itself. Mr. Abbey's salary list not only killed the opera scheme but ruined the future commercial market for artists." These are the words of an experienced Italian opera manager, and we submitted them to Mr. De Vivo, who cordially agreed with the opinion expressed above. De Vivo tells us that with all the enthusiasm for German opera during seven years past the receipts never averaged in one season the receipts for Italian opera here, say during the Parepa-Wachtel season of 1872. Eighteen performances given at the Academy of Music produced $122,000, and Nilsson was singing in a rival opera at the same time under Strakosch. Naturally the receipts of the two companies went far ahead of any financial support given to German opera, and the directors of the Academy of Music, who controlled a large number of seats, refused to renounce any claim to the same during said season. Had they given up their seats the receipts would have been yet larger.
31Parepa and Wachtel, and also Santley, who sang at the same time, received salaries a little higher than those paid for artists of the highest rank at the Metropolitan; but it must not be forgotten that there was no such attraction as Seidl and his orchestra offered to those who claim to be real lovers of music. And yet these real lovers of music, with a superb orchestra and a remarkable mise-en-scène, especially when compared with that of the Academy of Music, did not fill the Metropolitan Opera House except on certain occasions, and then there were no such receipts as $9,200 and $9,800 per performance, these sums representing the box office and subscription receipts of the first and the last of these eighteen performances.
33The Musical Courier does not propose to suppress this kind of information, if for no other reason than the justice due to both sides of this heated but not unpleasant controversy. It may also be of use at the present time to the firm of Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau, who are about to make contracts of extraordinary financial dimensions, based upon a supposed successful season next year at the Metropolitan. We do not for one moment believe that their receipts, even with Patti and Sembrich, will reach any such sums as those of the Parepa-Wachtel season, and if they do not, why, of course, the stockholders will be asked to come to Mr. Abbey's support, or Mr. Abbey may repeat his first operations at the Metropolitan.
35It is currently reported that the present financial troubles on both sides of the Atlantic are influencing the conduct of all managers, if they have not already influenced Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau, although we do not credit some of the wild rumors of the street affecting the standing of this firm firm.
37ELLIOTT F. SHEPHARD'S RIVAL.
39WE received last week the following interesting screed:
41BKN., 251 Schenck st., May 15.
43Ed. Courier:
44Will you be man enough to publish in your next edition how much the "company" rec'd from Tschaikowsky for the article in this week's COURIER?
45It would be rich reading.
46Yours,
47HARRY FORESMAN.
49The writer of the above rich letter evidently means Tschaikowsky, but we pardon his shaky spelling of the great Russian composer's name, for it is not an easy name to master orthographically.
51The late Mr. Vanderbilt, if he had had the pleasure of Mr. Foresman's acquaintance, would probably have singled him out as a specimen of more kinds of a damned fool than anybody alive. You observe that we do not abbreviate the "cuss" word, for the New York "Sun," that great daily which shines for all, observes succinctly: "If you see it in the 'Sun' it's so." We have seen the naughty word in the "Sun" frequently, hence our warranty for using it. We hope that the above will not be too "rich reading" for Mr. Foresman.
53THE RACONTEUR.
55If a pupil does not succeed he has a very bad teacher; if he is successful he has great genius.
57THERE was more truth than poetry in the letter which I published last week from an unknown correspondent, evidently of the fair sex. When I put my thoughts into cold type I naturally write about people who are supposed to interest the majority of the music loving public, hence many are overlooked; many who fight the good fight silently and bravely, and who go to their last resting place with nothing but the knowledge they have done their duty. A slim reward, you say! Not altogether, for the law of compensation comes into play, and I am sure many unknown teachers get more satisfaction out of their useful lives than does the brilliant virtuoso intoxicated with his triumphs and champagne cocktails!
59It is only human nature to prefer success and to slight the plodder, or rather that which we, in this country, contemptuously term a plodder. But it is your plodder who does the work of this life, and then the world in its characteristic worldly fashion sneers at him, and turns and admires the butterfly.
61Well, butterflies have their uses, but they should remember the chrysalis epoch of their existence and not, when they have their wings, flaunt gaily at cocoons.
63The aphorism which is the text for my weekly sermon was given to me by my young pianist, who insists that technic is needed to be happy. He has suffered the stings of an ungrateful pupil and in a momentary mood of pessimism hurled the partially true idea that heads my column to-day.
65It is not to be lightly denied, either, for it enters into the experience of every teacher that a pupil, after absorbing the very musical marrow from one, goes abroad and returns to his native land a pupil of Herr Dumkopfstein, although he has only had about twenty lessons from that great master, and those were principally spent in putting a high sapolio finish on his technic—a case of varnish and not music.
67Of course the home teacher was paid for his work; of course the boy or girl on leaving said, "Oh, Mr. Smith, you have been so kind; I would not be playing the Chopin etudes to-day if you had not formed my style and technic so carefully for the last five years. Good-bye, dear Mr. Smith; here is a little present mamma gave me for you."
69And then he or she goes gaily off, leaving behind a sense of disgust and an embroidered handkerchief case!
71My dear reader, money can't pay for one's heart blood, and that is what many teachers give you. I know there are but few of them, they are a little old fashioned and going out of fashion, but some are left to us, and they eat their bread in bitterness, for sharper than a serpent's tooth is a thankless pupil.
73Your successful, hustling teacher indulges in no such sentimentality. He is too busy to think (even of music) and he receives his pupils in platoons. "One off, another on, bang, crash; there, that will do for to-day; $5, please. Oh, thanks. Next!"
75Musical barber shops are indeed many of our conservatories. Girls rush in from the country, two hours on the train, twenty minutes in the class room, swallow a chunk of musical knowledge too big to digest, and then become torpid for three days, like an anaconda that has just dined.
77What is the consequence? There are no consequences; that is the trouble.
79Nothing ever eventuates and at the end of five years the young person discovers reluctantly that he or she is destitute of musical ability.
81So I salute those unknown heroes of music, those teachers of Rubinstein, Henselt, Liszt, Chopin, Mozart and many others, whose names are meaningless to us to-day; they builded better than they knew and their reward is—oblivion. Remember, young people, that you may be entertaining an angel unawares when your clumsy Teutonic music master enters your drawing room. What though his hair be towzled, his fingers of dusky hue, his teeth like a bank whereon'the wild thyme grows (this, last, is a rhythmically dental allusion), and his boots thick as to soles; he may nevertheless think beautiful thoughts, far too fine and lofty for your puny, conceited brain to grasp. Remember all this, irreverent pupil, and curb your inclination to laugh at a foreign accent (I do it myself, but that is different, for I am older and know more than you do). Ahem!
83Speaking of irreverence, I was never more forcibly struck with the fact that musicians as a rule are very irreverent to genius than by reading what I wrote about Tschaikowsky last week in my columns.
85I actually had the temerity to call one of the greatest of living composers "Pete," not to his face precisely, but very nearly, for he read the article and begged that the strange word be translated for him. Mr. C. H. Dittman did so, and I am informed that the wonderful Russian gave a Moscow-like laugh and then in revenge set my name to music.
87(If you but knew my real name you would wonder that I ever dared to mock Tschaikowsky's patronymic without fearing the bears would eat me up, as they did the naughty little boys who jeered the prophet Elias about his baldness—or was it Elisha? I forget.)
89Irreverence is the curse of this country. Matthew Arnold said the funny man of America was a national curse (he never read The Musical Courier), and I think he should have added irreverence, for when I read the letter which is commented upon in our editorial columns to-day I simply sat down and despaired for fifteen minutes.
91The writer, who has the nerve to sign his name, is so mentally constituted (I call it mental for courtesy's sake) that when he read my praise of a man whose shoes I am not worthy to unlatch he immediately rushed to the conclusion, poor groveling imagination, that I or the editors of this journal were paid for sounding the praises of a world genius.
93Qui s'excuse, s'accuse runs the Gallic saw, but I am willing to risk the attempt to excuse my feeble praise of a man who is a god when compared with our Brooklyn correspondent.
95We forget far too quickly in this country, in our greed for gold; a man's services are passed over as if he were the veriest sweep.
97As Mr. Floersheim said to me in his energetic and forcible style: "In Germany they honor the birthday of the great Morse, the discoverer of the telegraph, while here in New York not even a wreath was placed at the base of the statue by Pickett in the Central Park on April 27, the centenary anniversary of his birth."
99So it is. Tschaikowsky is with us, a noble thinker in tone, who will be honored when these United States have had another centennial celebration; but Benny Harrison, third-rate President and a fourth-rate Indiana lawyer, gets columns in every paper in the country simply because he is making a junketing tour!
101It makes me sick. And forsooth if I express my keen admiration for beautiful music I am paid for it! Yes, I am paid for it, a thousand times repaid for it, for can I not listen to Tschaikowsky's music, and is that not magnificent pay for my petty praise?
103Let us salute Peter Ilitsch Tschaikowsky. He does not compose like Bach, Beethoven, nor yet Wagner, but he has given us new thoughts, a broader vision, a new gleam of beauty from that wonderful ocean of tone called music; so
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