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Musical Courier 1893-07-01: Vol 27 Iss 695, 1893
71 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 7. 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. 695.
9EDITORS:
10MARC A. BLUMENBERG. OTTO FLOERSHEIM.
11JAMES G. HUNEKER. HARRY O. BROWN
12HUGH CRAIG.
13BUSINESS DEPARTMENT:
14SPENCER T. DRIGGS. R. S. MAXWELL.
15A. T. KING. FRANK M. STEVENS.
16EUROPEAN BRANCH OFFICE:
17OTTO FLOERSHEIM, 17 Link Str.,
18Berlin, W. Germany.
19CHICAGO OFFICE: 226 Wabash Ave.
20JOHN E. HALL, Manager.
21J. E. VAN HORNE, Assistant Manager.
22BOSTON OFFICE: 32 West St.
23LEIPSIC, GERMANY: GEHRBRÜDER HUG, Königstrasse 16.
24VIENNA, AUSTRIA, IX Schwarzenpflanzer str. 15.
25LONDON AND PARIS: BRENTANO'S.
26Subscription (including postage) invariably in advance.
27Yearly, $4.00; Foreign, $5.00; Single Copies, Ten Cents.
28RATES FOR ADVERTISING.
29PER INCH.
30Three Months………….$20.00 Nine Months………….$60.00
31Six Months……………..40.00 Twelve Months…………80.00
32Special rates for preferred positions.
33Advertisements for the current week must be handed in by 5 P. M. on Monday.
34All remittances for subscriptions or advertising must be made by check draft, or money orders, payable to the MUSICAL COURIER COMPANY.
35American News Company, New York, General Distributing Agents.
36Western News Company, Chicago, Western Distributing Agents.
37NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 1, 1893.
38Telephone – – – 1253-18th.
39WITH sincere regret we announce the death of the mother of our European editor, Mr. Otto Florsheim.
40IN another department of this issue may be found an advertisement referring to a prosperous conservatory. Those interested in such matters would do well to read the same.
41IN our next issue we shall print a complete account of the meeting of the New York M. T. A. at Rochester, which occurred at Rochester June 27, 28 and 29. The programs have already appeared in these columns several weeks ago.
42AS we announced in the trade department of our last issue, this number of THE MUSICAL COURIER appears July 1, combining in itself the issues which would, under ordinary circumstances, fall on June 28 and July 5. Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday being holidays we are compelled to merge the two issues.
43A REMARKABLE legal decision respecting pupils' fees was given in England the other week. A young working man with a good voice joined a free singing class in Manchester and gave such promise that he asked the teacher to take him as a private pupil and prepare him for the operatic stage. Having no means to pay for the lessons, the youth undertook on obtaining an appointment to reimburse his master out of his professional earnings. The arrangement was made and carried out with the full knowledge of the young man's father, an elder brother also assenting. On these terms he received lessons weekly for upward of a year. When sufficiently advanced, the teacher recommended him to a manager, who at once engaged him; he has been singing in this gentleman's opera company ever since, and has been in receipt of a regular and increasing salary. When he obtained his appointment, his indebtedness to his teacher, who had thoroughly done his duty by him, and put him in the way of earning his living, amounted to $85; in the course of two years (then being of age) he reduced this by small instalments to some $60. He then refused to pay any more, and on a writ being issued pleaded infancy. The judge directed the jury to find for the defendant on the ground that lessons in music are no necessaries for a young man in a fustian cutter's shop.
44THE following letter about a subject we wrote of but recently is singularly interesting:
45WILMINGTON, Del., June 12, 1893.
46To the Editors The Musical Courier:
47SIRS—In a recent issue you invite communications on the subject of piano playing and paralysis. Kindly permit me to make the following remarks on the subject:
48PIANO PLAYING AND PARALYSIS.
491. Light gymnastics are conceded to be the best preventative of paralysis, in partial affliction even a cure.
502. Piano playing under any good "method" is one of the very best systems of "light gymnastics" devisable, calling as it does into play more of the unimportant and usually unused muscles than any other occupation whatsoever, in addition to the demand it makes for a generally good muscular organization.
51This would seem to account for the pianist's immunity from paralysis.
52W. B.
53P. S.—Kindly publish this "note" anonymously if you think it deserves space. It has been my pleasure for years to devote time both to athletics and piano playing. On the subject from this standpoint I don't believe more could be said in a book, unless it were crowded with anatomical demonstrations and technicalities.
54Yours truly,
55* * *
56IT is now known that the band of the Garde Republicaine, of Paris, will not be at the World's Fair. This decision has been arrived at in an interview between General Saussier, Governor of the Paris military forces, and Colonel Mercier, of the Garde. The Exposition authorities had proposed to contribute to the expense of the trip of the band by allowing to the artists who compose it an individual daily allowance, but Colonel Mercier could not accept the suggestion and General Saussier was of the same opinion. The decision not to come to the United States has been ratified by the minister for war. one of two readings
57IT is now known that the band of the Garde Républicaine, of Paris, will not be at the World's Fair. This decision has been arrived at in an interview between General Saussier, Governor of the Paris military forces, and Colonel Mercier, of the Garde. The Exposition authorities had proposed to contribute to the expense of the trip of the band by allowing to the artists who compose it an individual daily allowance, but Colonel Mercier could not accept the suggestion and General Saussier was of the same opinion. The decision not to come to the United States has been ratified by the minister for war. one of two readings
58The "Temps" says that it is the conditions surrounding the agreement to come that have caused the bother. Generally the band's expenses are paid by the society or the government whose guests the musicians are. The conditions of the trip are known beforehand. An agreement of this nature was drawn up between the band and the American representative, and called for high indemnities for the leader and his men.
59"Only, we are assured, the American representative had not received full powers to treat, and the propositions he made have not been favorably received by his senders, who have found them too onerous. In this state of affairs Colonel Mercier referred the whole thing to General Saussier, who has taken the decision above referred to."
60BARITONE who was famed throughout France at one time has lately passed away. Reference is made to Ismaël, whose proper name was Jean Vital Jammes. He was born in Agen, and as a child was a peripatetic singer. He then became a chorister, and eventually was in demand among the small traveling troupes.
61His voice was magnificent, and he possessed a remarkable dramatic temperament. At the end of 1862 Carvalho engaged him for the Théâtre Lyrique, at which he created several characters, notably in "Mireille," "La Fiancée d'Abydos" (by Barthe), "Les Joyeuses Commères" (by Nicolai), "Cardillac" (by Dautresme), and Verdi's "Macbeth." He made a sensation in "Rigoletto."
62In 1868 Ismaël quitted Paris, but after the war returned and was seen at the Opéra Comique in Flotow's "Ombre," where he exhibited much talent as a singer and as an exquisite comedian. He also was cast in "Le Médicin malgré lui" and in Delibes' first opéra comique "Le Roi l'a dit."
63A throat affection forced him to quit the stage at this period, and he was appointed professor of opera at the Paris Conservatory, where he remained until 1879. At this time, after an appearance at the Renaissance in "La Jolie Persane," by Lecocq, and in the "Tzigane" of Strauss and Victor Wilder, he left Paris and took up his residence at Marseilles, where he devoted himself exclusively to teaching singing. He was seventy years old when he died.
64FELIX WEINGARTNER will not take the position of conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, so Manager C. A. Ellis says. Boston had better devote its energies toward getting a music hall first. What it should do is to build an opera house, and then who could dare to question its supremacy as the first musical city of the nation?
65HEBREW MUSIC.
66A late meeting of the London Musical Association at the Royal Academy of Music (says the London "Musical News") the Rev. Francis L. Cohen read an erudite paper on the "Ancient Musical Traditions of the Synagogue." The lecturer said that the Jewish nature, ever since the days when the Temple of the Hebrew capital stood pre-eminent for its elaborate and highly organized musical service, had had an affection for melody; and there was no lack of continuous contemporary testimony in Hebrew literature to bear witness to the delight with which the Jew associated his daily worship and literary exercises with some form of vocal tunefulness.
67As tradition required the celebrant to utter with the singing voice every word he recited, the chants which had been handed down were very numerous. From the period of the compilation of the Psalms the Jew had always been exhorted to devote his highest musical attainments to the service of the Sanctuary. From an early date it had been found expedient to employ a professional precentor. Down to to-day there had been a sequence of specialists in Hebrew melody. In brief, there was incontestable external evidence for the antiquity of some portion of the Jewish worship music. The precentor had to devote considerable time to learning by heart the chant melodies of the chapters he had to read, as all marks in the text for public reading were omitted.
68The cantillation no doubt existed in a highly developed form long before any notation for it was invented. The accents themselves, the mere dots and strokes, were probably evolved by the Masoretic school of Tiberias, about the seventh century. In appearance and employment they somewhat resembled the pneumae found in the ancient Gregorian ritual books. Their functions, however, were much more complex. They marked the tone syllables of each word, indicated a most delicately shaded, syntactical punctuation, and denoted a chant which with scrupulous fidelity designated the mutual relation of the words of the text. The signs, some thirty in number, formed a notation at once sufficient to answer every need of the grammarian and the student of the cantillation.
69Analytical examination of these chants indicated that they had been founded upon the same Asiatic systems as the Greek music of the same age. They nearly all were in scale forms, known to musical students as Aeolian, the Mixo-Lydian modes, &c., and good evidence could be adduced in favor of the obscure headings of the Psalms, being simply the names of the form of chant or scale or mode in which the psalm was to be chanted. If this were so, it followed that the Psalms used to be chanted in the temple in a form tonally parallel to the plainsong of the Western Church, and still more to the antiphons of the Byzantine Greeks. When scriptural passages were quoted in the synagogal ritual it was customary to utter them with appropriate cantillation, and the precentor intoned them with a liberal embellishment of the ornaments ever favored in oriental melody. Thus in course of time a florid form of recitative became developed. The melodic essentials of the passage which were reserved for certain particular portions of the text were traditionally fixed.
70In the subsequent discussion, in answer to questions asked by Sir John Stainer, who occupied the chair, the lecturer said that the reason of the Semitic music having been discarded by the Gentiles was, he thought, owing to the hatred with which everything
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