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Musical Courier 1893-06-21: Vol 26 Iss 694, 1893
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1THE MUSICAL COURIER.
3each member having one vote. The officers shall be a President, First, Second and Third Vice Presidents, a Secretary, a Treasurer, a Business Manager, a Librarian and a Stage Manager. Committees on Membership and Programmes shall be appointed. The President, Vice Presidents, Secretary, Treasurer and Business Manager shall constitute a Committee on Finance.
5Mr. Homer Moore shall be the director of all the work of this society for the season, 1893 and 1894, which shall be the first season of its active work.
7It is the present intention of this society to give during the season, 1893 and 1894, seven concerts; two during the latter part of November, two in January and two in May; and for these concerts, to engage the services of the New York Symphony Orchestra and Mr. Walter Damrosch, the Chicago Orchestra and Mr. Thomas and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its director. A concert shall also be given in February or March, in connection with some leading quartet, or other foreign attraction and the programme shall consist as far as possible of novelties in musical composition, both vocal and instrumental.
9We, the undersigned, the organizers of this society, pledge ourselves to attend rehearsals, sing at performances and in all reasonable ways assist in maintaining for it a high musical standard; and we do hereby announce to the public our intentions and the object of this society, and ask co-operation according to the merits of our cause and its value to the musically progressive community, a part of which we reckon ourselves to be:
11The Singers Already Pledged.
13Joseph C. Breil,
14W. D. McGill,
15Frank W. Bearl,
16John A. Hibbard,
17William Sutley,
18Edwin Edstrom,
19J. N. Bebout,
20James Laubie,
21W. C. McCausland,
22Alex. Ross,
23W. S. Weedon,
24J. W. Donaldson,
25Sam J. MacWatters,
26L. H. Harper,
27Charles Armour Gilpin,
28R. H. L. Naylor,
29W. A. McCutcheon,
30C. C. Rinehart,
31J. W. Robson,
32Wm. Reynolds,
33P. Keil, Jr.,
34F. D. Thompson,
35A. C. Fraser,
36Edward Locke,
37S. S. Amberson,
38Robert R. Smith, Jr.,
39E. D. Fuller,
40Thomas J. Smith,
41R. C. Porter,
42John M. Rosser,
43Edw. F. Austin,
44N. R. Lippincott,
45S. H. Vandergrift,
46N. N. Shawe,
47P. McNiven Bennil,
48Ed. Rinehart,
50Mrs. M. C. McCausland,
51Bernice Agnew,
52Olive A. Beach,
53Edith R. Harris,
54Clara E. Keil,
55Irene D. Sample,
56Evelyn G. Day,
57Grace E. Rhodes,
58Ella Day,
59Mary D. McKelvey,
60Etta C. Keil,
61Anny Rhys,
62Margaret Shriver,
63Anna Sproul,
64Charlotte Guyer,
65Winifred Reahard,
66Mrs. John A. Harper,
67Helen Grimes,
68Mrs. P. Lemmer-Stucky,
69Agnes M. Gill,
70M. Olive Lewis,
71Bertha J. Rinehart,
72Jennie A. Bearl,
73Catherine R. Ball,
74Bertha W. Gill,
75Katherine Warde,
76Alice E. Parmlee,
77Nora Hopley,
78Margaret Fraser,
79Mrs. C. S. Lupton, Jr.,
80Eleanor McK. Baldwin,
81Mrs. E. L. Connelly,
82Daisy Hancox,
83Julia E. Beach,
84Nannie Laubie,
86What the Public May Expect.
88The high musical standard of the new organization is assured by the fact that Mr. Homer Moore is to be its first director. It is but simple justice to admit that Mr. Moore's two seasons of work in our midst have proven his adherence to the highest artistic standards as well as his uncommon ability in the various capacities of singer, vocal teacher, musical writer and talker, organizer and manager and choral conductor. In all respects Mr. Moore's actual work and unprecedented success have more than confirmed the original estimate of his abilities given in this department of the "Despatch" in advocating his plan (as it does all good plans of a like purpose) for a symphony orchestra when he came here nearly two years ago.
90This organization, however, is rightly planned so that it may be bigger than any one man. The governing power is vested in the members themselves, who are to elect their own officers, and Mr. Moore's right to the directorship is carefully limited to the first season. This is as it should be. It gives its members the right attitude of responsibility for and loyalty to the society itself, and provides for the permanence and progress impossible to a body run on the one-man-power principle. That one element has largely aided the Mozart Club, for instance, in surpassing and surviving the powerful rivals of earlier days.
92Provisions Which Should Be Made.
94Some few points in the above prospectus are open to question, though. To encourage home singers is a wise policy, no doubt, but to limit the vocal solos exclusively to members of the society will not be desirable at all times. The Eastern orchestras frequently bring on their tours famous singers whose aid under such conditions it would be foolish to reject. Besides there will be certain rôles that no member happens to fit. The principle is good but it does not fit every contingency. It should be made a statement of intended policy, instead of an invariable rule.
96The same remark applies to the provision that every program shall consist of three parts, &c. The "Intermezzo" is a capital idea, but it will not fit every time.
98While the new body will not likely be able to secure the Boston Symphony Orchestra on its long spring tour, when the Mozart's Club's prior right would naturally be conceded, there is no reason why it should not get Mr. Higginson's band to include Pittsburg in one or more of the shorter tours it makes along the seaboard through the season. With the three other eligible orchestras, including Seidl's, the proposed arrangements will meet no other obstacles than the ever present financial one. Of course they will not be engaged until some sort of a financial basis is assured.
100With or without the foreign orchestras, a career of great usefulness may safely be predicted for the Pittsburg Oratorio Society. All local music lovers may well join in wishing success to every such enterprise.—"Pittsburg Despatch."
102Correspondence.
104Des Moines Music.
106Des Moines, Ia., May 17, 1893.
108THE May music festival of the Philharmonic Society, a home organization of the best singers, under the direction of Dr. L. M. Bartlett, gave two very enjoyable concerts on Tuesday afternoon and evening of this week. The Philharmonics had the assistance of Sousa's Concert Band. There is no occasion to speak of the performances critically, and will say the concerts drew large audiences, who were evidently delighted with the music. The Calvary Mission Church, where the concerts were given, is not in any sense a good place for concerts. It is inconvenient in almost every respect. The light is badly arranged, both for day and evening performances, while the seats are as uncomfortable as the stocks for the punishment of criminals in the Dark Ages. The band played more satisfactorily in the afternoon, though the evening program may be considered the better of the two. Most of the singing by the artists was shocking. Mrs. Fursch Madi was evidently out of sorts about something, looking, acting and appearing so. The two quintets were fairly well done. The other singers we pass by. Miss von Stosch plays the violin very nicely, but if she did not appear quite so free on the stage her music would be better appreciated.
110Much credit is due Dr. Bartlett for the effective work he has done for the chorus. When not handicapped by outside surroundings, the Philharmonic sing well. On this occasion they were at a disadvantage, because the band was placed in front and played so loud an accompaniment as to spoil the vocal effect. Chorus and orchestra should always have from one to three rehearsals together, if the music is to be in any way satisfactory, as it is impossible for two strange organizations to come together without rehearsals and produce good results. No matter how well a chorus can sing, or how perfect an orchestra, they cannot produce good musical results without rehearsals.
112JAMES M. TRACEY.
114Cincinnati Correspondence.
116Cincinnati, Ohio, June 6, 1893.
118I HAVE no desire to speak with malice of a city where I have lived for fourteen years and have enjoyed so many musical and literary advantages, but I love truth above all things, and it is nearly outside my comprehension and wholly outside my sympathy that human beings should dread a discriminating analysis of their characters and doings. A lie has never been the friend of man.
120In art affectation is the one debasing element; as a swamp, festering under the glare of a tropic sun, generates fever, so the puffy of amateurs by a perverted press engenders a sickly state of feeling and distorts all judgment. For nine years Cincinnati has been in a condition more or less dyspeptic, more or less feverish, more or less dropsical. Good things have starved, while things no better have put on fatness. The season just passed has been in some particulars the leanest I have ever known, but, strange to relate, in another field it has been especially rich. In the department of string quartet music nothing like it has ever been known.
122At the Odeon, the College of Music has given a series of twenty concerts, which have traversed a very wide region of classic and modern chamber music. The artists in the quartet are Leandro Campanari, chief of the violin department of the college; Adolph Hahn, Emil Wiegand and Lino Mattioli, all members of the faculty in various capacities.
124Taken for all in all the quartet has never been equaled in Cincinnati since that glorious time when the College of Music was opened, fifteen years ago, and Theodore Thomas, S. E. Jacobsen, Charles Baetens and Adolph Hartdegen gave a series of twelve quartet evenings.
126Of our present quartet I must say that Leandro Campanari is an artist of the first rank, who brings Italian feeling for tonal beauty to the work of interpreting the deepest abstract music. He unites in a happy way the talents of the virtuoso, soloist and those of the classic ensemble player. His tone is remarkably large, full and sonorous and his conceptions musical.
128In 1889, after a splendid career with his own quartet concertizing through Italy, one of those strange whirlwinds of destiny which have such an unaccountable influence upon our lives, placed him at the College of Music in Cincinnati as head of the violin and orchestral department of that flourishing institution.
130Zeal, enkindling scholarship to effectiveness, ambition, spurring genius to achievement, and industry filling in the details of a perfect technique characterize all the labors of this high-minded musician, and Cincinnati hopes much from his future connection with her now reviving and widening enterprises.
132Messrs. Hahn and Wiegand are talented and promising, but of course need experience. Mr. Mattioli is a capital soloist, brilliant, facile; also a good quartet player, though here experience will perfect his work, especially as to breadth of tone and classical conception. There has been a very great improvement since the beginning of the season in the oneness of feeling which should bind together the artists of a string quartet, and the enthusiasm burns high, promising a still finer series for next year. Mr. Campanari and his coadjutors during the winter have been cosmopolitan, representing Italian, German, Russian, Norwegian, Hungarian and all other schools which have done any worthy work in this subtle form of pure abstract music.
134Among other notable features I must record the fact that eleven of Beethoven's quartets have been played plus one movement from the op. 135. But now you say, "Where is the dyspepsia in all this?" Certainly not in the grand enterprise with its two phases of large undertaking and satisfactory fulfillment, but in the public indifference. The audiences have been a disgrace to our city. Never have more than 300 people been present except when toward the end of the season. Two pianists of phenomenal talent were added as solo attractions. Despite the apathy of the public, however, both Mr. Campanari and the college are planning with unabated enthusiasm, and determination intensified, a still more complete season for next year.
136Cincinnati has lately had an interesting début, that of Miss Mildred Marsh, a favorite pupil of the Cincinnati Conservatory. As I am connected with both the College and with the Conservatory, and as human nature is quite the same in Cincinnati as it is in New York, you will readily understand that in all the opinions which I express in my tertiary capacity of general critic I am certain to find both applause and censure; I am never without an antagonist and never without a friend.
138I assert, however, without fear or favor, that Miss Marsh, who is a native of this city, is one of the two or three young pianists that I have heard in my fourteen years' residence in Cincinnati about whose future I feel any sort of confidence.
140She has been taught at the Conservatory for nine years and her instructors were first Miss Miller, then Mr. George Magrath and finally Mr. Theodore Bohlmann.
142This last gentleman is a graduate under Klindworth, and is one of those magnificent German musicians who not only has a royal command of the keyboard, but a head amply stocked with all sorts of collateral knowledge. He knows music in all its branches, and is one of the most remarkable young men I have ever met in the ranks of the musical profession.
144Miss Marsh gave a recent benefit recital, in which her program was so terrific as fairly to take one's breath.
146You will comprehend this when I say that it contained the E minor concerto of Chopin entire, the F minor concerto, op. 16, of Henselt, and the sonata characteristic of Beethoven, op. 81, besides other things. Taken for all in all, both technically and musically, I considered her playing as reaching the boundary lines of requirement in more points than many a recital which I have heard given by mature and adult musicians, who at least would have labeled themselves artists. The degree of discipline to which she has been subjected you may guess by a remark of Mr. Bohlmann. When one of the critics was congratulating him upon her remarkable playing of the great sonata by Beethoven and the surprising degree of musical intelligence with which it was played, he said: "Every phrase in that sonata stands for a full hour of my talk."
148Miss Marsh is going to Berlin, where she expects to study under Klindworth and ripen her musical powers by hearing much good music and comparing artists one with another.
150She is one of the few, the very few, to whom I should apply the term genius. Her playing does not sound like a more or less interesting display of skill, appealing chiefly to astonishment, but gives one the peculiar poetic and emotional delight which we get from true music. Of course like so many other astonishing young musicians she may "flash in the pan," but her friends here hope not. She is not a mere "wonder child" for she is already about eighteen years of age.
152VAN CLEVE.
154Columbus Letter.
156Columbus, Ohio, May 16, 1893.
158THE long expected performances of "Bohemian Girl" were given at the Henrietta Theatre on May 3, 4 and 5, and were financially most successful. As the participants, with the exception of Mr. Wm. Xanton, were amateurs, it would be an injustice to all concerned to give a criticism from a professional standpoint. It was the universal opinion that this was the best amateur operatic performance ever given in Columbus. With few exceptions the solos and concerted numbers were well done, and in this particular special mention should be made of Misses Lillian Windle ("Arline"), Clara Buchsieb ("Gypsy Queen") and Mr. Xanton ("Thaddeus"). The latter has a powerful dramatic tenor and fine stage presence, and gave invaluable assistance to his less experienced associates, both musically and dramatically, in many places where inexperienced amateurs can hardly be expected to come up to the requirements of their special characters.
160Mr. Gordon Miles made a capital "Devilshoof," and showed himself the possessor of a good voice. With the exception of a tendency to sing out of time, his performance is deserving of commendation.
162Mr. Harry Scott also acted well, and also gave evidence of good vocal powers, which would have shown to greater advantage if he had not imitated the example of Mr. Miles by singing out of time.
164Mr. Amos Sharp, as the "Count," looked and acted well, but sang so badly out of tune as to mar the beauty of his solo numbers.
166The chorus was very good and reflected great credit upon Mr. Herman Ebeling's long and arduous work of instructing them.
168The stage business was under the direction of Mr. Otto Engwerson, and was the most meritorious part of the whole performance. There was not a single wait or break in any of the three performances, which is a remarkable thing for an amateur operatic performance, and too much cannot be said of Mr. Engwerson's most excellent work as stage manager.
170Neddermeyer's Concert Orchestra, augmented for the occa-
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