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Musical Courier 1891-06-03: Vol 22 Iss 589, 1891
100 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 578. See the scan on archive.org.
1beyond question, no money was expended on the mounting of the Wagner operas. They were presented with the old scenery and costumes which have been familiar to our eyes for several seasons. Whatever money was expended on productions was paid for the mounting of the three operas before mentioned and the remarkable ballet called "Dresden China." And yet these were the very things which, according to the box office showing, pleased the public least.
3It is hardly conceivable that sufficient money was spent on these to account for the whole of the increase in expense. To account for some of it we have the record of a larger company than that of the previous season. Instead of two sopranos we had three, and we had an additional contralto whose excellence as an artist must have commanded a considerable salary. There must have been an increase in the salary list somewhere, though we should have supposed that, on the whole, last season's company was one of the cheapest ever brought together in the house. However, the money must have been spent on the people; it never could have been spent on Mr. Fontana's conubial heaven in "Asrael" nor on Rolf's mixed poison in "The Vassal of Sigeth."
5One conclusion may be fairly drawn from this whole matter. Opera is an expensive luxury, and it will pay those of the stockholders who are disposed to view the occupants of orchestra chairs and galleries with arrogance and contempt to pause and consider whether it would not in the long run be easier to maintain an opera house with their assistance than without it.
7It is noticeable that one paper in speaking of this matter quotes an anonymous stockholder as saying that the financial deficit had a strong influence on the decision to abandon German opera in favor of Italian. Either that stockholder has not a speaking acquaintance with the truth or he is woefully ignorant of the affairs of his own corporation. At the time when the change was decided upon the stockholders did not know anything about the outcome of the recent season. Their season's balance had not been struck, and they one and all with loud voices asserted that they were not dissatisfied with the results of giving German opera.
9Moreover, Mr. Abbey personally told the writer of this column that he had been in correspondence with Mr. Stanton and President Roosevelt since early in the fall, and the decision made in February was simply the result of a final settlement of their negotiations. It is simply nonsense for anyone to pretend at this late day that the change was determined upon on account of causes which have just made themselves definitely known.
11The name of the stockholder in question, which Mr. Henderson withholds, is George Henry Warren, a gentleman who will probably interfere as much in the managerial affairs of the forthcoming season of Italian opera as he did in the affairs of the past season of German opera. Mr. G. H. Warren will always be Mr. G. H. Warren.
13HAMMERSTEINIANA.
15MR. HAMMERSTEIN'S circular reads something like the following:
17Oscar Hammerstein will call the theatre which he has begun to build in Thirty-fourth street the Manhattan Opera House. It is to be a handsome structure, to seat 2,400, and possessing the novelty of two semicircles of boxes. Mr. Hammerstein would like to devote the Manhattan largely to German opera, and, before giving it over to other entertainments, he will undertake sixty operatic performances, beginning in December next; but that will depend on the securing of a sufficient number of subscribers to the boxes for the season. "The recent strong and enthusiastic demonstrations in favor of opera in German are the incentive to my project," Mr. Hammerstein says. "I pledge myself to execute it on a scale of grandeur and excellence, provided the boxes are subscribed for in advance. Nevertheless, no payment of the subscription price will be demanded until the contracts with the best obtainable principal artists have been effected and the position of conductor has been adequately filled. After that the subscription money is to be deposited in a banking institution, and turned over to me on the day of opening of the house for the opera season. These terms assure the subscriber of the earnestness of the project, and at the same time relieve him of any responsibility except the payment for his box. The price for each box for the season of sixty performances will be $2,500. The location is to be determined by draft under the supervision of a committee of boxholders. It is absolutely necessary to complete the subscription list within ten days, so that I may effect contracts with leading artists in Europe before they have concluded upon engagements elsewhere." Mr. Hammerstein is a rich man, and it is likely that he will put this enterprise through. At all events he will build a fine theatre.
19This is all very well, and we certainly wish Mr. Hammerstein luck in his new and somewhat risky enterprise, but we wish for something definite on the subject. Where will Mr. Hammerstein get a competent conductor? Where are his artists? And, most important of all, where are the subscribers at $2,500 a head for the boxes?
21This last is a very important question, Mr. Hammerstein.
23DEFICITS.
25THE trustees of the mortgage bonds of the Amberg Theatre, on Irving place, have called a meeting of creditors for to-morrow morning, and the deficit is so large that they will no doubt decide to dispose of the property at once. If a syndicate of lovers of German drama and light opera can be formed, these forms of amusement will be resuscitated and Gustav Amberg engaged as artistic director.
27The officers of the recent Pittsburgh Music Festival have just issued a circular showing a deficit, and propose an entertainment to make good the loss. "Generous rivalry among box bidders and ticket sellers" is the element they are speculating with to secure pecuniary results.
29The Baltimore Oratorio Society reports a deficit and the guarantors have been asked to make up the loss.
31We understand that there are many losses of like nature in the large list of music festivals this season, which is a happy omen, as it indicates that music is being paid for by those who are blessed with abundant earthly goods.
33It is a gratifying thing, however, that none of the artists employed has suffered pecuniarily, which is but meet and just.
35THE RACONTEUR.
37Exercitium arithmetice, occultum nescienter se numerare animi.
39—LEIBNITZ.
41Music is as direct an objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself.
43SCHOPENHAUER.
45BE not afraid; these hurtling quotations are not the text of my discourse, but one for a woman about whom I shall presently speak.
47I sat with four recently, and we topicked from Ibsen to Moselle wine, from woman's rights to piano technic.
49The question—the old, venerable, moss eaten, decayed, almost defunct, extremely tottering, semi-paralyzed, tiresome, maddening and monotonous question arose (it always arises, but never sits down after it has arisen). Of course, I refer to women's mental abilities. Don't smile. Everybody conceded that they had some talent in that direction, but one of the four asserted that a woman by her very physical conformation could not be otherwise than subjective, or, in a word, could not handle as do men abstract questions.
51Thereupon a wrangle ensued as to what constituted the abstract, and the male lords of creation (you notice I say "male," for I am acquainted with several female lords of this universe) came to the conclusion that femininity was, as far as they were concerned, a dark and unexplored continent.
53The next morning Helen M. Sparmann's little pamphlet, "An Attempt at an Analysis of Music," published by Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, was placed in my hands for review, and I found so many fruitful ideas in it that it struck me at once as a complete refutation of the arguments advanced the previous night as to woman's cerebral limitations.
55Helen Sparmann, who was formerly professor of music at the College of Music, Cincinnati, certainly has the courage of her convictions, for she beards no less a person than Schopenhauer in his metaphysical den. Leibnitz, as you may see from the quotation, is not worth powder and shot, but the great Arthur, the pessimist par excellence, has no terrors for bold Helen Sparmann.
57Let us see what she says, and the best way is to quote her summing up:
59"Music is a form of motion.
60"Music represents motion.
61"Music, by association of ideas, evokes thoughts infinite in number and variety.
62"If anyone thinks it strange that it should not have been known before what music is and represents, this answer might be given. Men of science probably take it for granted. Other men have never thought of it.
63"It is perhaps the greatest triumph of music that the motion it represents is so beautiful as to lead us to ignore its origin."
64There is a taste of the writer's quality.
66She states as a generality that music can not, like sculpture and painting, represent the color and shape of material objects. "If arts are the imitation of nature, what does music imitate or represent?"
67She disposes of Schopenhauer's mysticism by remarking that "the model of which music is an image must be sought in the world of realities, just like the models of any other art."
68"Sculpture and painting represent shape and color, and music represents motion." That motion is the physical basis of music cannot be denied, for sound is a mode of motion as truly as is light or heat; but Helen Sparmann goes a step further when she combats the popular idea that music represents or pictures sentiments. She says it touches our sentiments, and "we especially associate music with all emotions, and for various reasons."
69"Emotions move.
70"Emotions sometimes produce vocal sounds, or make the sounds of the human voice more musical. All musical sounds on their part produce emotion by means of the diffusion of the musical sounds from the auditory nerve through the nervous system.
71"Certain sounds which can be nearly imitated by musical instruments produce very violent emotions, on account of the cause with which we connect them when they occur in nature.
72"Various feelings produce or influence our bodily movements or the movement of the blood and heart, and music, by being the art which represents motion, recalls to our mind more than any other art the emotions which are the cause of these movements."
74Hanslick's definition of music as "sounding forms" possibly suggested to the writer quoted the idea that music is a form of emotion. As to music being the language of emotion alone, she thus writes: "If, as Herbert Spencer says, music is the developed language of emotion, at what stage of the development did it become an art?" Since he says nothing on the point, must we assume that all resonant and impressive vocal sounds produced by emotion are music? We should then have to call the mule a musician. If not, emotions cannot be said to be the origin of the art. So long as man produced no other musical sounds than those of emotion it was impossible for the art of music to be developed. To say that music is nothing but the interpretation par excellence of emotion is to put it on too low a scale altogether. It is the intellect, and not the emotion, that separates us so far from the animal, which also knows joy, grief, fear, terror, agony, rage. And music is a most intellectual art, if rightly understood."
76Bravo, Helen Sparmann! The world is indeed moving when woman, who has always been looked upon as the defender of the simply sensuous side of music, clamors for its intellectual rights.
78There is still hope for a feminine composer.
79Why not? Music is in its infancy compared with the other arts, and women are just beginning to cast off the enfranchising yoke which they allowed circumstance to burden them with.
80A George Eliot in literature, why not a woman in harmony?
81Hail to the great unknown, wherever you are!
83But more of this interesting book.
84The author relegates to its proper and lowly position all music that is merely imitative. The argument is, of course, a trite one. She dips into physical philosophy and describes the model of unrest, motion, after which music patterns, but I refer you to page 17 of the pamphlet for the daring way in which she refutes the popular fallacy that music represents sentiments.
85Hanslick has made some such argument, but he could hardly be more terse and forcible than this writer.
86Wagner is aptly chosen as an example of absolute freedom in music, "the freest, the most unbindable of the arts."
88Here is a sentence that will delight the heart of Henry T. Finck: "And in truth, the forms of the sonata and four part symphony have become almostimpossible for modern composers. The tree has long sent its young shoots through the wall of learned prejudice. Unfortunately there are still people who say it blossoms not, even though they are surrounded by its fragrance."
90And again:
92"It would seem that Wagner strongly felt the discrepancy between the indefiniteness, the want of individuality of that which music can represent and the narrow musical forms he found in use.
93"He discards all those forms. * * * His music is absolutely free in this respect, and most true to its 'Urbild' motion. It was only natural for him after that to think that music could not stand alone. That is the reason why he united it with the drama, which with its firm and well articulated frame gives his music its form. The occurrence and elaboration of his themes depend absolutely on dramatic necessity. * * * Certainly it cannot be said that the drama is incomplete without music, but Wagner's dramas receive from it a lustre alike to that which the form of a beautiful woman receives when draped with a veil that emphasizes rather than conceals it, and a power almost as great as that which Tanit's veil imparted to its possessor." Charmingly put! Even the Wagner criticism as old as the idea is, gains in being told by Miss Sparmann (I hope she will pardon me if she is a Mrs.)
94In one sense the sphere of music is infinite like the universe, endless like eternity.
95"Its subject has a grandeur and an immaterialness even beyond that of poetry.
96"Motion is far more interesting than shape and color. Motion is life. One is tempted to say motion is mind." Why not say it is mind, Miss Sparmann? The refreshing part of the modern Aesthetik of music is that it is free from the sickening gush and talk about "heaven born," inspired," and such nonsense. Once one realizes the physical basis of life (matter and spirit are now interchangeable terms) a clearer, wider vision is gained. The materialistic (so called) theory is far from belittling. Read Miss Sparmann a few quotations above.
98Better still, she (and herein she is very unwomanlike) believes that artistic beauty lies not in the subject but in the treatment. It must be truthful to be beautiful.
99Oh, what a slap in the face to the virtuous, priggish Phil-
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