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Musical Courier 1892-05-25: Vol 24 Iss 640, 1892
53 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 5. See the scan on archive.org.
1The Musical Courier.
2PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY
3—BY THE—
4MUSICAL COURIER COMPANY,
5(INCORPORATED)
619 Union Square W., New York.
7ESTABLISHED JANUARY, 1880.
8No. 640.
9EDITORS:
10MARC A. BLUMENBERG. OTTO FLOERSHEIM.
11JAMES G. HUNEKER. HARRY O. BROWN.
12BUSINESS DEPARTMENT:
13SPENCER T. DRIGGS. R. S. MAXWELL.
14A. T. KING. FRANK M. STEVENS.
15WESTERN OFFICE: Chicago, 226 Wabash Ave., John E. Hall, Manager.
16BOSTON OFFICE: 157 Tremont St., John E. Pinkham, Manager.
17BERLIN, GERMANY: PHILIPP ROTH, 84a Lützow St.
18LEIPSIC, GERMANY: GEHRBRÜDER HUG, Königstrasse 16.
19LONDON AND PARIS: BRENTANO'S.
20Subscription (including postage) invariably in advance.
21Yearly, $4.00; Foreign, $5.00; Single Copies, Ten Cents.
22RATES FOR ADVERTISING.
23PER INCH.
24Three Months………….$20.00 Nine Months………….$60.00
25Six Months……………..40.00 Twelve Months…………80.00
26Advertisements for the current week must be handed in by 5 p.m. on Monday.
27All remittances for subscriptions or advertising must be made by check draft, or money orders, payable to the MUSICAL COURIER COMPANY.
28American News Company, New York, General Distributing Agents.
29NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 1892.
30THUS Mr. Stevenson in the last issue of the "Independent:"
31A word as to the "popular"—in every sense—air, the street tune. Shall space be given to it when it is such a matter as this omnipresent, unbanishable, everywhere heard, everywhere penetrant stream of sound, the "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay?" Be it remembered, however, that all popular, all vulgarly popular, tunes that have come up, or shall come up, are not necessarily bad tunes. We will not go back to the ancient days of the Lingards and of the melodies they cast to the winds, in which, as in the cases of "A-Walking Down Broadway" or "Captain Jinks," there was a genuine touch of French vivacity and snap; nor need we recall the song of "The Mulligan Guards" (far from being a bad melody) or the sparkle of the Boulanger March, with odd hints of the fifth symphony(!); nor cause to chime again in our ears the languishment of "Aileen Alanna," one may note that in the refrain of "Maggie Murphy's Home," now a deposed favorite, there was a waltz theme, worthy of Lanner or Strauss, and that in "Comrades" a touch of real Offenbach. But of all flimsy, cheap, inconsequent, irritating wafts of feeble tuniness this "Ta-ra-ra" can be singled out for reprehension. It is the essence of the vulgar and stupid in popular music, as to verse and chorus. It is saying a great deal to say that it perfectly and faithfully carried out the tone of the song's text. That is just what it does—to a wonder. It is hopeless of apologetics, first and last, this ditty of the common music hall and hand organ, impressing itself hourly on the public ear, memory and nerves like an incantation from the Goddess of Triviality.
32ARCHÆOLOGY AND CRITICISM.
33THE latest defense of one of the anti-Nikisch critics in Boston consists of a resuscitation of a series of criticisms published in a New York musical paper, defunct for more than a year. These criticisms are now published as a sort of evidence that Mr. Nikisch was attacked by other critics outside of Boston, and that therefore those Boston critics who are now abusing the great conductor are not alone in their attitude. The fact that these criticisms are taken from a defunct paper is good evidence of the extremes to which our Boston friends are driven, who are also forgetting that the dead paper owes, to a great extent, its demise to the ridiculous nature of its criticism and its reactionary tendencies. The man who wrote these absurdities about Nikisch claimed that Mascagni was a greater composer than Richard Wagner, and also asserted that much great Italian music was neglected here on account of the extravagant worship of Bach and Beethoven.
34When intelligent musicians or critics can find no better material to draw from than such as is given out in this instance, it might be judicious to admit at once that there is no defense. Mr. Warren Davenport is the gentleman who is responsible for this archæological triumph, for he signs his name to the article, Mr. Davenport has been excoriating Nikisch and his orchestra in a rather rough manner. We should like to ask him to give us the names of the great orchestras and great orchestral conductors under whom he made his practical studies of criticism. Has he ever heard (for any length of time) any other symphony orchestra than the Boston Symphony Orchestra?
35THE ROOT OF THE EVIL.
36MANY disquisitions on the subject of music criticism have recently appeared in the various music journals of the country, the purpose of all of them being to show why criticism has practically become a lost art. The views expressed have been varied and interesting, and many of them contained a wealth of truth, but it is a little singular that in not a single instance, so far as one remembers, was the censure for the chief cause of the present deplorable status of affairs laid at the proper door. The newspapers have been roundly and heartily condemned, first, for granting too little space to art matters; second, for refusing to print an honest, impartial criticism, and third, for permitting the reviewer's chair to be filled by an incompetent person. This condemnation is right, and cannot be too strongly uttered; but it doesn't strike at the root of the difficulty.
37Newspapers are managed as business enterprises by men of practical business sense, not as schemes to aid in the propagation of art, and in this view of the case there certainly seems some little reason in the argument against the devotion of much space to music. The number of people who care enough about music to pay to hear it and afterward to read about it is dismally small compared with those who love to read the sensational stuff with which our great newspapers teem; and it doesn't require any unusual business shrewdness to determine which class to cater to. It would be business suicide to sacrifice much of the space demanded by the army of readers to the wants of the art loving corporal's guard.
38Of course this is the editor's argument, and we lovers of music meet it with the assertion that he might give us at least a column of the space every day, and the great army would never miss it. But he understands that this "corporal's guard" must read the news, and the answer affects him not at all; so that it seems almost hopeless to expect the newspapers conducted on such rigid business principles to ever of their own accord change their views on the subject. And yet while we may not get as handsome a concession from them as we would like, it seems utterly absurd to insist that they will not grant us the pleasure of reading honest criticisms.
39It is not likely that the musical public will get this pleasure for the asking; whether or not they shall have it remains with the persons who are directly responsible for the distorted reviews (?), so pregnant with "facts w'at ain't so," which now find their way into the papers. These persons are the heads of music schools, the managers, and frequently the artists themselves. The printed reports mean a great deal to them, and as a natural consequence they are exceedingly anxious that only favorable reports should appear. The editor knows this, and in order to prevent a possible withdrawal of an advertisement which he may have, instructs the poor critic (who must keep his own opinion carefully concealed within his skull) to write a fulsome article about the concert.
40These concert givers want flattering reports for business reasons; the artist depends upon them for engagements, the manager for the financial success of subsequent concerts, and the head of a music school for an increase in the number of its students. If these glowing reports are paid for, if they are not an honest expression of the opinion of the authors, then the person who causes them to be published is guilty of practicing a deception upon the public and is liable to public censure. In the case of a school faculty concert, mayhap the teacher of violin will appear, and although he may be a performer of the most inferior kind (and possibly a poorer instructor) the principal of the school will manage somehow to have the most wildly extravagant and absurd things said about him in the public press.
41Unfortunately the report does not stay at home where the violinist is known, and where it will only cause a smile; it goes out into other cities and attracts the attention of somebody who is looking for a teacher. Here is exactly the man he wishes to study under; he accepts the flimsy evidence he holds in his hand of the man's ability without a question, makes his arrangement with the school, packs his trunk and in a few days has taken a lesson. If he is a person of average intelligence it will not take many lessons to convince him of his mistake; and if he has heard the professor play, not knowing the methods pursued by the managers of the school, he will quickly put down the music critic whom he believes guilty of perpetrating the article which fooled him, as an idiot.
42It really seems the young man would be sustained in an action to recover his money on the ground that the school had taken it under false pretenses. More than that, the professed aim of every music school is to give its students a musical education. The term may be variously interpreted, but it seems to us that a musical education which will not permit its possessor to discriminate between good music and poor music (with respect to both composition and performance) is not thorough; and a school that will send out pupils so educated (?) shirks part of the contract.
43Honest, intelligent newspaper criticisms will do as much to help the student acquire this part of his musical education as any instruction he may receive in the class room, and the school that discourages it in order to increase its business, or for any other reason, can only be characterized as a gigantic falsehood. It promises what it does not give, teaches what it does not practice, is false to the public, to the art, to the students and to itself. Instead of a blessing it becomes a public nuisance, and as such it should be treated. There are such institutions in the land, and they are the ones that are directly responsible for the low state to which music criticism has been reduced. If all the music schools, managers and artists will encourage honest criticism, the newspapers will not refuse to let us have it, and the art of music will receive a strong and healthy stimulus. Will they do it?
44DR. HANSLICK'S BOOK.
45DR. EDUARD HANSLICK'S little brochure, "The Beautiful in Music" (Novello, Ewer & Co.), has made a mild stir among our musical aestheticians and one point must be conceded it; it certainly does, with all its curious errors, stimulate one to thinking about the art of music, about which we are all presumably interested.
46As there are many workers in the vineyard of the art there must be some to whom any inquiry of underlying causes is superfluous. To those Dr. Hanslick's book will seem an impertinence, for they are better adapted to the task of "chronicling small beer;" but for the earnest thinker and groper after truth books of this sort are ever welcome, no matter how strenuously one disagrees in this case with the clever but narrow viewed Hanslick conclusions.
47In this, the seventh edition, the author publishes a preface from which the following extract is culled, for it voices the worthy doctor's position, and that too in no uncertain tones:
48Certain vehement opponents of mine have occasionally imputed to me a flat and unqualified denial of whatever goes under the name of feeling, but every dispassionate and attentive reader will have readily observed that I only protest against the intrusion of the feelings upon the province of science—that I take up the cudgels against those aesthetic enthusiasts who, though presuming to teach the musician, in reality only dilate upon their tinkling opium dreams. I am quite at one with those who hold that the ultimate worth of the beautiful must ever depend upon the immediate verdict of the feelings. But, at the same time, I firmly adhere to the conviction that all the customary appeals to our emotional faculty can never show the way to a single musical law.
49This conviction forms one of the propositions—the principal but negative proposition—of this inquiry, which is mainly and primarily directed against the widely accepted doctrine that the office of music is "to represent feelings."
50The negative proposition referred to is complemented by its correlative, the affirmative proposition; the beauty of a composition is specifically musical—i.e., it inheres in the combinations of musical sounds and is independent of all alien, extra musical notions.
51The author has honestly endeavored to make an exhaustive inquiry into the positive aspects of the "musically beautiful," upon which the very existence of our art and the supreme laws of its aesthetics depend. If, nevertheless, the controversial and negative elements predominate I must plead the circumstances of the time as my excuse. When I wrote this treatise the advocates of the music of the future were loudest in their praises of it, and could but provoke a reaction on the part of people holding opinions such as I do. Just when I was busy preparing the second edition Liszt's "Program Symphonies" had appeared, which denied to music more completely than ever before its independent sphere and dosed the listener with it as a kind of vision promoting medicine. Since then the world has been enriched by Richard Wagner's "Tristan," "Nibelungen Ring" and his doctrine of infinite melody, i.e., formlessness exalted into a principle, the intoxicating effect of opium manifested both in vocal and instrumental music, for the worship of which a temple has been specially erected at Bayreuth.
52I trust I may be pardoned if, in view of such symptoms, I felt no inclination to abbreviate or temper the polemic part of this essay; but pointed, on the contrary, more emphatically than ever to the one and immutable factor in music, to purely musical beauty, such as our great
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