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Musical Courier 1892-05-25: Vol 24 Iss 640, 1892
145 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 6. See the scan on archive.org.
1masters have embodied in their works, and such as the musical genius will produce to the end of time.
3Little need of Hanslick telling us that music cannot give us the definite quality of speech; on that rock many of the writers of program music have split, but that it cannot present emotion to us, the fundamental emotions of humanity is to relegate the art into the limbo of mere mathematics.
5It is impossible, Hanslick says, for music to express "love" in the abstract. "However, certain attributes of emotions, such as changes of strength, motion and ratio, the ideas of intensity waxing and diminishing, of motion hasting and lingering, of ingeniously complex and simple progression, &c., can be conveyed to the mind through the organs of hearing by musical means; and that is as far as music can go in the expression or representation of feelings."
7We all know the idea of pure beauty contained in the works of Bach and Mozart, but—and this "but" is not to be escaped—musical art has ever been the product of its environment, and with Beethoven, a child of his century, older forms were thrown off and music became freer. That tremendous license of necessity ensued cannot be denied, and the advocates of realism, in a word of the purely ugly, in music, like Liszt, often Berlioz and latterly Richard Strauss, have too long had sway.
9But there are signs, portents, that warrant us in feeling that idealism in music (not mere empty euphony or bigoted observance of rules) will again prevail—that the banner of beauty for beauty's sake will once more flaunt in the vanguard of the cause.
11Hanslick, when he treats absolute music is on firm territory, but he loses his head, like many others, when he touches on the Wagnerian question. He fails utterly in his apprehension of the numberless beauties in the works of the great music dramatist—musical beauties at that.
13To be sure many composers use a poetic title as a peg to hang thereon their maudlin imaginings, and there can be little doubt that much of the so-called realistic music is realistic only from association of ideas, particularly when heard in conjunction with action, but Dr. Hanslick would limit us too much to formal beauties of tone when he attempts to banish entirely the music drama and its wealth of music. About the origin of music itself, why the minor mode induces melancholy, the major cheerfulness; in a word, of the thousand and one pathological effects of music Dr. Hanslick frankly confesses ignorance, as indeed must everyone. The book is one well worthy of perusal, however, and above all gives to music its purely intellectual dues.
15PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY ELECTION.
17THE Philharmonic Society of New York has selected Mr. Anton Seidl as its conductor for the coming season, the fifty-first of its existence. At the annual election of officers Mr. E. Francis Hyde was elected president, Mr. F. Rietzel vice-president, Mr. A. Roebelen secretary, and Mr. H. Schmitz treasurer. The directors elected are: Messrs. Richard Arnold, F. Bergner, G. Wiegand, A. Hoch, R. Klugescheid and L. E. Manoly. Mr. Anthony Reiff, Mr. T. Jacoby and Mr. C. Sohst were elected trustees, and Mr. E. Uhlig was made librarian. The coming season's concerts will be given in the Metropolitan Opera House.
19UNDER the leadership of Director Frank Van der Stucken a musical feat of unusual importance will be accomplished this summer by the Arion, the great German-American singing society of New York. A chorus of sixty of its active members, accompanied by 200 passive members, will sail for Europe on June 25, on the steamer Wieland, specially chartered for the occasion, in order to give concerts in Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfort and Cologne, besides visiting Dresden, Mayence and celebrating a summer night festival in Bingen on the Rhine. Miss Maud Powell, Miss Olive Fremstadt, Mr. William Rieger and Mr. Franz Rummel, the well-known American soloists, will appear at these concerts. The Arion is to be received by all the leading German singing societies, among others by the Vienna Maennerchor, the Stuttgart Liederkranz and the Cologne Maennergesang Verein. Great preparations are being made in all the above named cities to give a rousing welcome to the first American singers who cross the ocean to visit their European brethren in song. All the receipts of the concerts are to be devoted to charitable purposes.
21THE RACONTEUR.
23WHEN FROM THE TENSE CHORDS OF THAT MIGHTY LYRE.
25I.
27When from the tense chords of that mighty lyre
28The Master's hand, relaxing, falls away,
29And those rich strings are silent for all time.
30Then shall Love pine and Passion lack her fire,
31And faith seem voiceless. Man to man shall say:
32"Dead is the last of England's Lords of Rhyme."
34II.
36Yet stay! There's one, a later laureled brow,
37With purple blood of poets in his veins;
38Him has the Muse claimed; him might Marlowe own;
39Greek Sappho's son! Men's praises seek him now.
40Happy the realm where one such voice remains!
41His the dropt wreath and the unenvied throne.
43III.
45The wreath the world gives, not the mimic wreath
46That chance might make the gift of king or queen.
47O finder of undreamed of harmonies!
48Since Shelley's lips were hushed by envious Death
49What lyric voice so sweet as this has been
50Blown to us on the winds from over seas?
51—Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in the "Century."
53* * *
55ARE they not superb, those lines? What rhythmic instinct, what sustained fire! N. man not musical to his finger tips could have penned such verse, and mark how Aldrich has caught the Swinburnian "lilt." How in describing the music of the master he voices his harmonies. Are there not times in your life when after a plenteous season, tone silent verse makes echoing music in the halls of your imagination and causes to vibrate chords whose very existence was unsuspected?
57So I feel at the end of a musical season, the pace of which has been tremendous, and which was certainly killing in a soul sense.
59How often is not the professional taster of music accused of cynicism, of the blighting indifference that comes of satiety? "You music critics," said Lady Windemere to me the other night, "should be suppressed."
61"Why so, my lady?" quoth I, with a dangerous fire in my eyes.
63"Oh, you delight in finding fault. Suppose," and her ladyship toyed with a large turquoise ring on the thumb of her left hand, "Suppose," quoth she, "you went to performances and only praised them, what would be the result?"
65"The artists criticized would surely die from the shock or else have a commission de lunatico inquirendo instituted," said I, very promptly.
67"What then would be the outcome if a music critic always told the truth?" she hazarded, very sweetly.
69"From 'man to chaos,' " I solemnly replied.
71* * *
73Frankly, would not a revolution ensue if irrespective of advertising by managers in the great dailies, irrespective of personal friendship's twixt critic and artist, the former wrote boldly the truth and nothing but the whole truth? And yet what incalculable good would ensue, how shams would be shown up, how humbug exposed, and what gore would flow. The critics of the dailies dare not do it, their official heads would be guillotined at once. Imagine going to a Patti concert and telling the absolute truth about her voice; fancy making fun of her frolicsomeness. This was done in the last issue of THE MUSICAL COURIER, and people of tender sensibilities at once cried aloud "Harsh criticism." Coddle artists and hoodwink the public is the motto of all the so-called musical weeklies and monthlies. Take a man of W. J. Henderson's calibre, who seldom beats about the bush, and yet how often he has been charged with undue severity. The truth of the matter is that he writes just as he believes, not to tickle the palates of the artists, who, be it remarked en passant, are usually capable of swallowing flattery by the bucketful. What Mr. Henderson can't say on the "Times" he contrives to write in the Boston "Musical Herald," of which he is at present the editor. Just read this skit in the May number: "Speaking of music critics, they sometimes say worse things in conversation than they do in print. A certain prima donna, who labors under the twin delusions that she possesses a rare voice and a pretty wit, recently addressed a somewhat mild-looking critic thus: 'Mr. Pedal Point, you are becoming quite too seraphic; you haven't said anything nasty for a month.' Whereupon the scribe smiled with heavenly benignity and answered and said unto her: 'Why don't you give a concert?'"
75* * *
77All of which leads me to remark that art is eternal and this life of ours extremely short, that Maggie Cline, late prima donna at Tony Pastor's Pantheon of Song, has elements of grandeur in her personality, and that "Ta ra ra, boom de ay" is with us.
79* * *
81Little need, when the warm season impinges upon us, to deliver homilies about truth in criticism, particularly when the anonymous but amusing letter writer is abroad.
83His latest effusion came to these offices scrawled on a postal and signed, of course, "An Old Subscriber." His cause of complaint is that the "Raconteur" is not funny and not wise! He expects too (or two) much, but then as he spells "intellect" with one "l," what can we expect? Worst of all, and here I frankly acknowledge he wounds me in a very tender spot, he sneers at the story of the Gospadin Bundelcund and calls his venerable and classic visage a chromo, but as he wrote "sketch" in the same sentence thuswise, "scetch," I was somewhat appeased. Think of a man with a soul so dead as to openly mock on a postal card at the face of Bundelcund! He must be a disgruntled pupil of Liszt who never studied with the great master except by proxy.
85Go to, go to, thou anonymous scribbler and scrambler of the keyboard, go to—Manhattan Beach and gloat with Gilmore musically.
87* * *
89What must have been Reginald De Koven's feelings last Sunday morning when he saw the following in the New York "Recorder:"
91HANGED AND TELLS OF IT.
93STRUNG UP BY A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE IN DEADWOOD CITY.
95HENRY T. ROBINSON'S EXPERIENCE.
97CAREFULLY NURSED BACK TO LIFE BY THE MAN WHO HAD FIRST TRIED TO HANG HIM.
99And then to find almost under it a faithful reproduction of his own handsome features?
101The music critic of the paper fled to Canada to escape the talented young composer's ire. Possibly the Tornado editor of the "Recorder" was to blame for the mistake, but fancy the "Bostonian's" rage.
103* * *
105I like "Robin Hood" exceedingly, and as every composer has a weakness for special parts of his work, I agree with Mr. De Koven that the second act contains the brightest things of the sparkling operetta.
107Still, and here comes the disagreeable truth telling, I feel that the composer has better things in him than penning clever reproductions of old English catches, madrigals, glees and roundelay. He writes with such evident ease and in such an unaffected manner, when he is at his best, that I'm sure he will do something later worthy of serious criticism. I don't mean to assert that "Robin Hood" is trivial utterly. It contains many excellent moments and possesses, mirabile dictu, atmosphere—something hitherto lacking in American operetta. But there is much that is interjected musically that is pure conventionality. What could be more capital, however, than the six part music in the second act with its orchestral accompaniment? The color of the early English orchestra is admirably caught even in the tympani. You have done something strong for the comic opera stage, Mr. De Koven. Now do do something for the legitimate opera.
109* * *
111I found this in the "Pall Mall Gazette:"
113OPENING FOR WHISTLING GIRLS.
115I have just heard of at least one new branch of work which would come into the category of new employments. So far it is only practiced by its inventor, who is a Parisian. Here is a facsimile of his address card:
117CHARLES RICHON,
118IMITATOR OF NIGHTINGALES,
119FOR GARDENS AND RESTAURANTS.
121It appears that this artist is fully employed during the summer months. If the good Parisian bourgeois who owns a dozen square yards of garden gives a "garden party," Charles Richon takes his stand behind flower pots or pomegranate tubs and thence produces warbles, such heavenly sounds compared to which those of the famous nightingale of the Emperor of China are poor music indeed.
123* * *
125Did you ever read this poem of the late Frank Saltus? I have transcribed its lurid muse for your edification:
127EN SOURDINE.
129A MOOD OF MADNESS.
131The one I loved would my sad presence spurn,
132When with my weary heart I sought the balm
133Of Chopin's dreamy, worshipful nocturne,
134Or Schubert's sighs and Weber's puissant calm.
136Soft, tearful songs on trembling pedal low,
137Chilled her dull heart as would dark, icy vaults;
138But happy crimson on her cheek would glow
139When with quick bass I thumped some noisy waltz.
141And when, within my silent studio's gloom,
142My spirit blent with melodies most rare,
143Her rich contralto from a distant room
144Would trill in ecstasy some vulgar air.
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