Scan 6
Musical Courier 1893-09-27: Vol 27 Iss 707, 1893
82 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
1The Musical Courier.
2PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY
3BY THE one of two readings
4—BY THE— one of two readings
5MUSICAL COURIER COMPANY,
6(INCORPORATED)
719 Union Square W., New York.
8ESTABLISHED JANUARY, 1880.
9No. 707.
10EDITORS:
11MARC A. BLUMENBERG. OTTO FLOERSHEIM.
12JAMES G. HUNEKER. HARRY O. BROWN
13HUGH CRAIG.
14BUSINESS DEPARTMENT:
15SPENCER T. DRIGGS. R. S. MAXWELL.
16A. T. KING. FRANK M. STEVENS.
17EUROPEAN BRANCH OFFICE:
18OTTO FLOERSHEIM, 17 Link Str.,
19Berlin, W. Germany.
20CHICAGO OFFICE: 226 Wabash Ave.
21JOHN E. HALL, MANAGER.
22J. E. VAN HORNE, ASSISTANT MANAGER.
23BOSTON OFFICE: 32 West St.
24LEIPZIG, GERMANY: GEHRDTER HUG, Königstrasse 16. one of two readings
25LEIPZIG, GERMANY: GEHRBÜHR HUG, Königstrasse 16. one of two readings
26VIENNA, AUSTRIA, IX Schwarzenbergstr. 15. one of two readings
27VIENNA, AUSTRIA, IX Schwarzspanier str. 15. one of two readings
28LONDON: J. B. CRAMER & Co., 201 Regent St.
29PARIS: BRENTANO'S.
30Subscription (including postage) invariably in advance.
31Yearly, $4.00; Foreign, $5.00; Single Copies, Ten Cents.
32RATES FOR ADVERTISING.
33PER INCH.
34Three Months………….$20.00 Nine Months………….$60.00
35Six Months……………40.00 Twelve Months………..80.00 one of two readings
36Six Months……………..40.00 Twelve Months………….80.00 one of two readings
37Special rates for preferred positions.
38Advertisements for the current week must be handed in by 5 P. M. on Monday.
39All remittances for subscriptions or advertising must be made by check, draft, or money orders, payable to the MUSICAL COURIER COMPANY.
40American News Company, New York, General Distributing Agents.
41Western News Company, Chicago, Western Distributing Agents.
42NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1893.
43Telephone – – – 1253-18th.
44MR. VICTOR HERBERT has been practically nominated conductor of the once celebrated Gilmore Band. He will assume full control at the end of the four weeks' season which the band plays in Pittsburgh. Mr. Herbert is in every way qualified for the position, and will doubtless infuse some of his vitality and musical enthusiasm into the performances of his organization. We congratulate both the band and Mr. Herbert.
45MR. WILLIAM L. R. WURTS has written a very sympathetic memoir of the late Florian Oborski, the pianist and conductor, who did so much to advance the musical culture of Paterson, N. J. The book contains a portrait of Mr. Oborski, who was one of the warmest friends of THE MUSICAL COURIER, and also a detailed sketch of his useful musical career. Art lost a true friend in Mr. Oborski, whose private life was spotless and whose ideals were ever lofty.
46WHEN the engagement of "The Other Man" terminates at the Garden Theatre Mr. Gustav Hinrichs and his opera company will begin an engagement of five weeks beginning, Monday, October 9. Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci" and "Cavalleria Rusticana" will be given on the same evening, and other excellent selections will be presented. Perhaps Materna may be persuaded to sing once in "Fidelio." Altogether the engagement should be a popular one, as the ensemble of Mr. Hinrichs is excellent, and the performances under his baton are very smooth. Manager T. Henry French's régime in the Garden Theatre about terminates at the end of this engagement. Mr. Palmer will be his successor.
47THE "Sun" made a very curious mistake last Saturday. In the book reviews the following was printed:
48Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who sees to it that the citizens of Boston and Cambridge shall have the best of symphony concerts, and who keeps himself busy also with his charming essays, has just finished still another undertaking for the good of Americans.
49The usual accuracy of Brother Dana's mighty journal of civilization can for once be impeached. Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the essayist, is not the financial backer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, nor is he connected with it in any manner. Mr. Henry L. Higginson is the gentleman who controls the destinies of the famous orchestra.
50THE Archimage Sar Peladan is preaching the faith in the French provinces. He gave a lecture lately at Saint-Enogat with the following program:
51Ordre de la Rose et Croix du Temple et du Graal.
52GESTE ESTHÉTIQUE III I (1888-94)
53Au profit de l'Ordre
54CONFÉRENCE-AUDITION
55DU
56PARSIFAL
57De RICHARD WAGNER
58Expliqué et commenté par le SAR PELADAN
59EXÉCUTÉ AU PIANO PAR BENEDICTUS
60Les fragments du Parsifal seront exécutés dans l'ordre suivant:
611. Prélude.
622. a. Entrée du Parsifal dans le château Graal.
63 b. Consécration du Graal.
64 c. Sacre du Parsifal.
65 d. Le Vendredi saint.
663. a. Enterrrement du roi Titurel.
67 b. Retour du Parsifal au château du Graal.
68The visitors at the little watering place are worthy Parisians who know what to expect. The effect on the natives is still to be learned.
69AFTER LISZT, WHAT?
70WHEN Franz Liszt made some suggestions over fifty years ago to the Erard people on the score of increased sonority in their instruments he sounded the tocsin of realism. It had all been foreshadowed in Clementi's "Gradus," and its intellectual resultant—the Beethoven sonata; but the material side had not been realized. Chopin, who sang the swan song of idealism in surpassingly sweet tones, was by nature unfitted to wrestle with the tonal problem. We find in his music abundant traces of the passé, the so-called "elegant" school of pianism.
71The arpeggio principle had its attractions for the gifted Pole, who, however, used it in the most novel combinations and dared the impossible in extended harmonies. But the rich glow of idealism was over it all—a glow not yet sicklied by the impertinences and affectations of the Herz-Parisian school; for be it said, despite the morbidities and occasional dandyisms of Chopin's style, he was in the main manly and unaffected. Thalberg, who pushed to its limits scale playing, and made embroidered variant the end and not the means of piano playing—Thalberg, aristocratic and refined, lacked dramatic blood. With him the well sounding took precedence of the eternal verities of expression. Touch, tone, technic were his trinity of gods.
72Thalberg was not the pathbreaker; that was left for that dazzling Hungarian who flashed his scimetar at Leipsic's doors and drove back cackling to their nests the whole brood of old women professors—a respectable crowd who swore by the letter of the law and sniffed at the spirit. Poverty, obedience and chastity were the three obligatory vows insisted upon by the pedants of Leipsic. To attain this triune perfection one had to become poor in imagination, obedient to dull, musty precedent, and chaste of finger. What wonder then that when the dashing young fellow from Raiding shouted his uncouth challenge to ears plugged up by the cotton of prejudice a wail went forth and the beginning of the end seemed at hand. Thalberg went under; Chopin never completed, but stood a slightly astonished spectator on the edge of the fray. He saw his own gossamer music turned into a weapon of offense. His polonaises were so many cleaving battle axes, and he had perforce to confess that all this noise, this carnage of tone, unnerved him, disgusted him. Liszt was a warrior; not he.
73Schumann both by word and note did all he could for the cause, and to-day, thanks to Franz Liszt and his followers, Tausig, Rubinstein, d'Albert, Rosen-thal, Joseffy, Friedheim and Paderewski, we can never retrace our footsteps. Occasionally a derelict idealist like the unique Pachmann astonishes us by his marvelous play, but he is a solitary survivor of a once powerful school, and not the representative of existing methods. There is no gainsaying but that it was a fascinating style, and modern giants of the keyboard could often pattern with advantage after the rococoisms of the idealists; but as a school pure and simple it is of the past.
74We moderns are eclectic as the Byzantines. We have a craze for selection, adaptation; hence the pianist of to-day must include many styles in his performance; but the foundation, the keynote of all is realism, a sometimes harsh realism that drives to despair the apostles of the beautiful in music, and at times forces one to take lingering retrospective glances. To all is not given the power to "summon spirits from the vasty deep," and we have many times viewed the mortifying spectacle of a Liszt pupil staggering about under the mantle of his master, a world too heavy for his attenuated, artistic frame. But the path was blazoned by the great Magyar, and we can now explore with impunity the hitherto trackless region.
75Modern piano playing differs from the playing of fifty years ago principally in the character of touch attack. As we all know, the hand, forearm and upper arm are now important factors in tone production, where formerly the finger tips were considered the end all, be all of technic. The Viennese instruments certainly influenced Mozart, Cramer and others in their styles, just as Clementi inaugurated the most startling reforms by writing a series of studies and then built a piano to make them possible of performance. With variety of touch—in a word, tone color—the old pearly passages, rapid, withal graceful school of Vienna vanished, or, properly speaking, was absorbed.
76Clementi, Beethoven, Schumann and then Liszt forced to the utmost the orchestral development of the piano. Sonority, power, enormous dynamic variety and a new manipulation of the pedals combined with a technic that included Bachian part playing and the most sensational pyrotechnical flights over the key board, these were some of the characteristics of the new school.
77In the giddiness produced by freely indulging of this heady new wine from old bottles an artistic intoxication ensued that was for the time fatal to pure scholarly interpretation. The classics were mangled by the young vandals who enlisted under Liszt's victorious standards. "Color, only color, all the rest is but music," was the motto of these bold youths, who had never heard of Paul Verlaine.
78But time has mellowed them, robbed their playing of its clangorous quality, and when the last Liszt pupil gives his last recital we may wonder at the charges of exaggerated realism. Tempered realism is now the watchword of the school. The flamboyancy which grew out of Tausig's efforts to let loose the Wagnerian Valkyrie on the keyboard has been toned down into more sober, grateful coloring. The scarlet vest of the romantic school has been outworn; the brutal brilliancies and so-called orchestral effects of the realists are now viewed with more amusement than anything else.
79We are beginning to comprehend the possibilities of the instrument and—of ourselves. Wagner on the piano is absurd, just as absurd as Donizetti or Rossini. A Liszt operatic transcription is as obsolete as a Thalberg paraphrase. Bold is the man who plays such in public. One rash pianist ventured on the "Masaniello" tarantella last winter, and at a Philharmonic concert, but he was politely hooted at in the press and otherwise. Realism in piano playing beyond a certain point is dangerous. We are in a transition period. With Alkan the old virtuoso technic ends. The new is being preached in piano music by Johannes Brahms, whose music suggests a continuation of Beethoven's last period with an agreeable amalgam of Schumann-like harmonies. one of two readings
80We are beginning to comprehend the possibilities of the instrument and—of ourselves. Wagner on the piano is absurd, just as absurd as Donizetti or Rossini. A Liszt operatic transcription is as obsolete as a Thalberg paraphrase. Bold is the man who plays such in public. One rash pianist ventured on the "Masaniello" tarentella last winter, and at a Philharmonic concert, but he was politely hooted at in the press and otherwise. Realism in piano playing beyond a certain point is dangerous. We are in a transition period. With Alkan the old virtuoso technic ends. The new is being preached in piano music by Johannes Brahms, whose music suggests a continuation of Beethoven's last period with an agreeable amalgam of Schumann-like harmonies. one of two readings
81The gray is in fashion; red is tabooed. The drunken, tattered gypsy who dances with bell and cymbalum accompaniment in the Lisztian rhapsody is just tolerated; that is all. He is too strong for our polite nostrils. The Brahms' rhapsodies say more, for they deal not with externals but with soul states. The glitter is absent, brilliancy is wanting, but there is a fullness of emotional life, a depth and eloquence of utterance that makes Liszt's tinsel ridiculous. To this new school, not wholly realistic exactly, yet certainly not idealistic in its aims, is piano playing and
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