Scan 11
Musical Courier 1891-11-11: Vol 23 Iss 612, 1891
92 lines. Read by computer on 22 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 544. See the scan on archive.org.
1Leavenworth News.
2Leavenworth, Kan., November 2, 1891.
3I have just finished reading the October number of your interesting journal devoted to music and art, and noticing "a little new broom" correspondent from Chicago, who makes some pretty clean sweeps, it occurs to me that a Kansas cyclone of news might interest your readers; for, although we are some 500 miles south and west of that great city, which, emulating the example of the "Father of his Country," aspires to be first in all things, we, too, make some pretensions to aspirations for greatness. We have an Art League of fifty ladies, who, besides holding their weekly meetings for study, maintain an art school and a monthly art journal called the "Art League Chronicle." But it is of a recent art loan exhibition I wished to tell you, made by Mr. William Weber, now of Kansas City, but formerly of Berlin, and of the musical attainments of his little sister Lina, a prodigy of fourteen years, who played at a reception given during the exhibit.
5Mr. Weber, although a young man, shows the result of wonderful work and energy in his chosen art. He exhibited 110 studies in charcoal, water color, oils, pastels, portraits, &c., which were the finest ever brought to this part of the country. Many of the head and anatomical studies were accepted by the Royal Academy of Berlin and exhibited there. He is a pupil of Paul Thurman, Gustaf Goerner, Anton von Weiner, Paul Meyerheim, Scarbena and Bracht, each in his specialty. During his seven years' study he has proved himself to be an artist of great versatility and energy. The floats designed by him for German Day in Kansas City were the most elegant in detail and masterly in conception. Although there was a large art exhibit at the Kansas City Exposition his pictures took the first prize.
7We are now congratulating ourselves that we have been able to engage Mr. Weber for our Art School as its master. Pupils no longer need go to Chicago or St. Louis to study, but can have equal benefit here, with the advantage of a quiet, clean city for study. Our Art League room presents a very charming appearance for way out West, with Mr. Weber's pictures and studies, our casts and library and a fine Chickering grand piano kindly loaned by Mr. Carl Hoffman, with whose name you are most familiar.
9The league gave a reception Saturday evening, October 24, to Mr. Weber and his little sister Lina, who proved herself to be as great a surprise musically as her brother was as an artist. Lina has always studied with her father, Mr. August Weber, and shows the advantages of careful watchfulness and training. Her facility, technic, phrasing and expression are wonderful, and that she understands what she does was evinced by her rendering of one of her own compositions, which for delicacy, originality and melodious measure was most remarkable. That you may judge of her work I will give her program, which she played without notes and with great strength and correctness:
11"La Fileuse," op. 157, No. 2. ………………………………………….. Raff
12Humoresque, op. 26 ……………………………………………………….. C. Stenberg
13Second mazurka ……………………………………………………….. Gounod
14Gigue ……………………………………………………….. Gravina
15Ballad, op. 47, A flat ……………………………………………………….. Chopin
16"Valse Brillante" ……………………………………………………….. Moszkowski
18Possessing a strong physique, large hands and a taste and love for music, everything seems to be possible to this child. She plays the D flat Chopin valse in thirds, arranged by R. Josephy, with as great fluency and ease as many an amateur plays the single notes. Her octaves are played with a free wrist, and indeed she is a wonder, and the West is proud to claim her. We predict a brilliant future for her.
20This is not much of a cyclone after all, but you may not know that Kansas' reputation in that respect is a very great exaggeration; we usually come in, "the edge of the great storm," as in everything else in the way of art.
22By the way, the Mendelssohn Quintet Club, of Boston, give us a feast on Thursday evening of this week.
24George Koman, the great Siberian traveler, gave one of his interesting lectures in Chickering Hall last week to a large audience. He is under engagement with Manager Brady to give two more this spring.
26Leavenworth has its Chickering Hall, its Carl Hoffman, proprietor and owner, its Carl Preyer, teacher and composer, its conservatory of music and its compressed air.
28Elizabeth R. Jones,
29President Leavenworth Art League.
31Providence Music.
32October 31.
33The De Vere-Campanini Concert Company were with us on the evening of October 19. A large and enthusiastic audience was on hand to greet them. No other soprano has made herself so thoroughly well liked here as Clementine De Vere, and it has become quite a matter of course that she will be heard two or three times every season.
35What funny things we read in the musical column of the average daily paper! Here is what the reporter of one of ours delivered himself of apropos of De Vere's singing of the "Shadow Song," from Meyerbeer's "Dinorah": "This is a solo requiring exquisite finish and a fine flow of light emotions. She has sung it better than she did on this occasion, but it went off very well." Note, if you please, the analytical and alliterative comment upon the "solo" itself. Observe how the truly critical mind is able—unmoved by the turmoil of a wildly applauding audience—to retain its just balance and render its verdict impartially between the present performance and those superior ones (which the critic probably never heard) of the past. If the people who write this sort of asinine twaddle under the name of criticism would one and all go and hang themselves I'm sure I should experience a "fine flow" of pleasurable emotion. And were I called on to write their obituary, I would not fail to emphasize the fact that they "went off very well" indeed.
37But to return to the concert. In addition to the well-known De Vere and Campanini we had the pleasure of hearing Miss Rosa Linde, a fine contralto, with a phenomenal voice; Franz Wilczek, the Austrian violinist, and Jacques Friedberger, pianist. I heard Wilczek at Worcester last month. He gets a pure but not powerful tone, and his harmonics are exceedingly good. I can't find a bit of fault with his playing, but somehow he doesn't "take hold" of me like—well—Maud Powell, for instance. The same sapient critic to whom I have already alluded remarked that "his expression indicated unusual talent." Whether facial or musical expression did not appear from the context, but it reminded me of what Josh Billings or some other professional humorist said of Beethoven, that "he was thought to have been a person of some musical talent."
39The Boston Symphony Orchestra gave its opening concert of the season on the 21st. Quite a number of changes have been made in its ranks since last year, but no difference was perceptible in its steady good playing. This was the program presented:
41[Élégie.]
42Suite, op. 55: Valse Mélancolique… Tschaikowsky
43Trio, op. 49: Menuetto… Tschaikowsky
44Aria from "Queen of Sheba" Gounod
45"Good Friday Spell," from "Parsifal" Wagner
46Polacca from "Mignon" Thomas one of two readings
47Polacca from "Mignon" A. Thomas one of two readings
48Overture, "Benvenuto Cellini" Berlioz
49Soloist, Lillian Nordica.
51Both the first and the last numbers had never been given here before. What delightful music that Russian with the consonant besprinkled name can write! I am charmed with every new thing of his which I hear. As for the playing of the orchestra it was, save for an occasional too vigorous use of the brass, unexceptionable.
53An unusual interest was manifested to see and hear Nordica, who has not sung here since the days when, as simple Lillian Norton, she was known as a rising young singer of more or less promise. Another point of personal interest lay in the fact that probably half the audience were friends or acquaintances of the man whom she married. Frederick A. Gower was a well-known man in Providence a dozen years ago. An editorial writer on one of the daily papers, a popular club man, a crack oarsman and all round athlete and good fellow generally, he had a large acquaintance and many warm friends. Becoming associated with Prof. A. Graham Bell, of telephone fame, he went abroad to introduce the new invention there, where he met the charming prima donna whose star was just beginning to grow upon the musical horizon. It was said to have been a case of love at first sight on both sides. As the old song goes, "He was dark and she was fair;" one the very embodiment of vigorous manhood, the other at the crown and height of feminine beauty and accomplishment. And so they were mated. But after a while the apple of discord invaded their Eden and there came estrangement and separation. There was neither divorce nor scandal (I doubt if anyone ever knew the story, if there was one), but each went their separate way. Gower made money out of the telephone, experimented with other things, became interested in aerostation, and lost his life in trying to cross the English Channel by balloon.
55And this is why quite as many people went to Infantry Hall the other night to see Mrs. Fred. Gower as went to hear Mrs. Nordica sing. The critic was on hand again; if not Miss De Vere's mentor, another of the same sort. After using up all the adjectives in the dictionary in praise of Nordica's singing it evidently occurred to him that the first duty of a critic is to criticise; so he suddenly discovers her voice to be unsympathetic and cold. But that doesn't seem to fit very well with what he has already written, so he squares it by announcing, with the portentous gravity of a physician about to receive a $100 fee, that "it was due entirely to her temperament." Ye gods and little fishes! how do they find out these things? Hold on, though; I have it! They must be mind readers! We already have the music of the future. The critic of the future will certainly have to show a diploma from the nearest college of psychological research before we can safely permit him to practice his profession.
57Temperament or no temperament, Nordica is a delightful singer. I had almost said a great artist, but that is the very utmost that could be said of anyone, and it seems to me that she falls something short of a Patti or a Parepa. But who wants to measure such a singer with a musical yard stick? It is enough that she has fairly earned a place as one of the best and that her performances do not belie her reputation.
59Mr. Louis C. Elson's lecture on the 23d was on "Folk Songs of Scotland," and that of the 30th "Seven Centuries of English Song." Both were well attended, and the lecturer lent an additional interest to his discourse by playing and singing many examples of the music of a bygone time.
61A very enjoyable chamber concert was given this week by two well-known Boston artists, Miss Marguerite Hall, mezzo soprano, and Miss Harriet Shaw, harpist. Miss Hall is the possessor of a beautiful voice, which she uses with discretion, and proved herself a singer of much versatility by rendering equally well songs of Schubert, Grieg, Bizet and others in French and German as well as English.
63The Arion Club have announced the date for their performance of Verdi's "Requiem," which will be December 2. The soloists will be Miss Genevra Johnstone-Bishop, Mrs. Julie L. Wyman, William H. Rieger and Mr. Antonio Galassi. With the society's fine chorus and an efficient orchestra a notable performance should result.
65The composers' concert of the Rhode Island Music Teachers' Association came off last week and proved quite an interesting affair. I must, however, defer any extended notice of it until next week, as I have taken up so much space already in running a tilt against alleged music critics, all of which, I presume, will be productive of about as much good as Don Quixote's memorable attack upon another species of windmill.
67Wm. A. Potter.
69Providence, November 7.
71The composers' concert of the Rhode Island Music Teachers' Association took place on the 23d of last month. The association has endeavored at various times in the past to arouse an interest in the work of local music writers. At one time a money prize was offered as a stimulus to the inventive powers of our Mozarts and Beethovens; but inasmuch as the honorarium proposed was necessarily a small one and coupled with the condition that the accepted MSS. remain the property of the association, but few competitors appeared. More successful was the experiment of giving, in the course of each season, a public performance of the works of "home talent," to which all who felt any inner workings of the divine afflatus were invited to contribute. Three (including the present) concerts of this kind have been given. Of these the last proved to be the most satisfactory as a whole. Although some things of merit have appeared upon the two former programs, there have been other things so grotesquely crude as to rather excite wonder than to provoke criticism. This latest exploiting of the talents of Rhode Island (or rather Providence) composers proved to be free from such blemishes, the contributions—chiefly of an unpretentious nature—containing many evidences of real musical ability. I give a list of the pieces and the persons responsible for them, grouped together without regard to the order in which they were respectively played or sung.
73Alice L. Pitman.
74Two songs for tenor: "Serenade." "Good Night." one of two readings
75Two songs for tenor: "Serenade." "A Good Night." one of two readings
76Song for contralto: "Blue Bends the Sky Above." H. C. Macdougall.
77Trio for piano, violin and 'cello.
78Melody for violin. William A. Potter.
79Quartet for women's voices: "Come Unto Me."
80Two Christmas carols for men's voices: "In Excelsis Gloria." "The Boar's Head."
81Song for baritone: "My Love Is Like the Red, Red Rose." Hans Schneider.
82Anthem: "Nearer, My God, to Thee."
83Song for soprano: "In Spring Time."
84Melody for piano. N. B. Sprague.
85Selections from unpublished operetta, "The Dumplings." a, Solo for baritone. b, Duet for soprano and baritone.
87The entire program (except the first and third numbers of my own set) consisted of manuscript compositions, all of which received their first hearing at this concert.
89Mr. Macdougall received hearty congratulations from his fellow musicians for his trio, which produced a very favorable impression. Good judgment was displayed in the assignment of the themes to the different instruments, and while no attempt was made to go outside of conventional lines of treatment, a sound musical knowledge was apparent in the skillful combining, development and "working out." The excerpts from Mr. Sprague's operetta were melodious and pleasing, and if a fair sample of the score I shall be curious to hear the whole work. Every number of the program was well received by the audience, in which naturally the professional element was strongly represented.
91A bit of novelty in the concert line was afforded this week by the appearance here of the boy soprano, Albert Stettenbenz, soloist of Trinity Church, Buffalo. He seemed a very bright lad, remarkably well developed physically and vocally for his thirteen years. His voice is of large com-
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