Scan 6
Musical Courier 1893-12-27: Vol 27 Iss 720, 1893
107 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
1The Musical Courier.
2PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY
3BY THE
4MUSICAL COURIER COMPANY,
5(Incorporated under the Laws of the State of New York.)
619 Union Square W., New York.
7TELEPHONE: – – – 1253-18th.
9EDITORS:
10MARC A. BLUMENBERG. OTTO FLOERSHEIM.
11JAMES G. HUNEKER. HARRY O. BROWN.
12HUGH CRAIG.
14BUSINESS DEPARTMENT:
15SPENCER T. DRIGGS. FRANK M. STEVENS.
16A. T. KING.
18EUROPEAN BRANCH OFFICE:
19OTTO FLOERSHEIM, 17 Link Str.,
20Berlin W., Germany.
22CHICAGO OFFICE: 226 Wabash Ave.
23JOHN E. HALL, MANAGER.
25BROOKLYN OFFICE: 296 Fulton Street.
26J. E. VAN HORNE, MANAGER.
28BOSTON OFFICE: 32 West St.
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38Subscription (including postage), invariably in advance:
39Yearly, $4.00; Foreign, $5.00; Single Copies, Ten Cents.
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42PER INCH.
43Three Months………….$20.00 Nine Months………….$60.00
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47Advertisements for the current week must be handed in by 5 P. M. on Monday.
48All changes in advertisements must reach this office by Friday noon preceding the issue in which changes are to take effect.
50American News Company, New York, General Distributing Agents.
51Western News Company, Chicago, Western Distributing Agents.
53ESTABLISHED JANUARY, 1880.
54NO. 720.
56NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1893.
58THE MUSICAL COURIER is on sale at all newsstands throughout the United States where weekly papers are handled. It will be esteemed a favor if anyone failing to find the current issue on sale at any point will communicate with this office. A postal card complaint will cause the defect to be immediately remedied.
60It may be accepted as a sure thing that Mr. Emil Pauer, the new conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, will not be re-engaged for the next season.
62If the New York State Music Teachers' Association decides to invite the last remnants of the Music Teachers' National Association to attend its annual meeting at Buffalo next summer, we may see a few members of the latter body in that city; but what object or purpose is there for continuing an association that has no basis of membership except a few dollars initiation fee, and no safeguards about it to prevent a street cleaner or boiler maker from becoming a member if he feels like it?
64We have repeatedly urged a change of the basis for membership and have predicted the destruction of the Associated because of this organic disease—this membership clause that placed a restriction of a few dollars only between anyone, no matter who he or she may be, that desired to join it. Well, let it go as having concluded its usefulness. If it had one important structural act to its credit it deserves an impressive obituary, and it has one—it created the American College of Musicians, and hence we wipe out all scores against it.
66If a new National Organization is to be formed it must come from out of the State organizations, and it must be a delegative or delegated body. This may come about by a co-operation between the various State bodies, but the Music Teachers' National Association is dead, as it should be, and we say, Requiescat in pace.
68NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.
70All THE MUSICAL COURIER Correspondent Cards are hereby revoked. Correspondents will please apply for their cards for the year 1894, which will be mailed on or about January 1.
72The comical though short lived duel between the families of Jerome Buck and Lester W. Hough in Harlem could have been averted if Mrs. Hough had used a Virgil Practice Clavier. Mrs. Hough insisted on playing all day, and the Buck family objected particularly to her scale practice and her interpretation of Paderewski's music. She is said also to have mangled Gottschalk's "Last Hope." This last raises Mrs. Hough in our estimation. Still a clavier would have probably prevented the unfortunate newspaper scandal. Verb. Sap.
74The following is taken from the "Nassau Guardian," a paper published in the British West Indies. The writer probably knows what idea he intended to convey, but it is not probable that anyone else has been able to grasp his meaning. It refers to the efforts of an amateur pianist, and here follows an elogetic "criticism" of his playing:
76We were surprised to learn on our introduction to the talented gentleman that he is not professional, but virtuoso. We may safely compliment him on being a virtuoso in the highest degree, and say that the virtuoso's love is often the sesame which opens up secret depths which the golden key of the profession is powerless to reveal.
78In the account of another concert the same writer praises a quartet composed of a violin, guitar, 'cello and mouth organ, a combination which opens up new fields to composers of chamber music. All of which goes to show that music and musical journalism in the Bahamas are of a high order of merit.
80LEONCAVALLO.
82The editor of the "Berlin Courier" in one of his letters to that journal from Milan, gives an interesting account of a visit to Leoncavallo. He found the author of "I Pagliacci" in his house in the Via Vivajo, a one story vine clad dwelling in a walled-in garden. The visitor was shown into a room decorated with Japanese fans, weapons, lanterns, carpets and hangings, bamboo chairs and couches, and vases full of chrysanthemums, and amid a crowd of slit-eyed deities and masks there was visible a large poster of "Canio" in his white dress beating his big drum. One concession to the comforts of the West was conspicuous—a little gas stove. The working room of the composer is on the other side of the house, and there the conversation between the German and Italian took place. As it was the day of the general rehearsal of the "Medici," they naturally spoke of that work, and Leoncavallo declared: "I have followed in the traces of Wagner, but I go my own way. I turned from legend to verism, to history. I had no wish to make a work like Meyerbeer's "Huguenots," a work à grand fracas, but a work that was thoroughly true. In the "Medici" the events are strictly historical, and the preparation of material occupied me for years."
84"Was it Wagner's example that induced you to write your own text?"
86"Certainly. In Wagner, music and text are blended more perfectly than will ever be done again, and I found it quite impossible for me to 'set to music' somebody else's libretto. I do not understand how any really artistic work can be created in that way. With me words and notes are simultaneous; at least, while I am writing the text the scaffolding, the framework of the music, is going up. The phrasing, the elaboration, comes afterward."
88"If a musical inspiration comes to you, do you write it down at once?"
90"Never! I keep it in my memory, which is remarkably good. When I need the idea, I can find it immediately. I have a horror of rewriting or deleting; the parts of my composition are carried in my head till I can write them down, even to the very last note. Then I do not alter a jot."
92Leoncavallo in reply to a question whether "I Pagliacci" was based on a real event, replied that the idea was suggested by a trial that took place at Cosenza before his father, judge of the court there, in which a strolling player was charged with murdering his wife. The prisoner was a figure of tragic power as he stood before the judge, unblenching, as if petrified with grief. "Even now," he continued, "I hear his rough voice echoing through the court as he cried, 'Non mi pento del delitto. Tutt' altro! Se dovessi ricominciare, ricomincerei.' While Ricordi was still delaying about the 'Medici,' the success of Mascagni gave me the idea of writing a short dramatic work, and at once the awful figure of the mountebank murderer rose up in my mind. I worked with feverish haste, and completed text and music in four months."
94With reference to his projected work, based on Murger's "Vie de Bohème," he said that he would condense the action, make several characters into one and write the libretto in verse. It will comprise four great scenes. The first two would be scenes of mad merriment, the others in a gentler mood and more touching.
96Leoncavallo has on his writing table a framed portrait of Wagner, to which he pointed saying, "Voila mon Wagner, qui me quitte jamais;" and he is also proud of a bust of Massenet, presented by the composer and inscribed "A mon frère, à mon ami Leoncavallo."
98"L'ATTAQUE DU MOULIN" AGAIN.
100The "Ménestrel" is severe on Mr. Alfred Bruneau and his works. It reminds him that in a notice of "Le Rêve" it described him as writing "with little imagination and insufficient knowledge of music, and in a language devoid of orthography," but gives him the credit of sincerity. Now, however, the critic seems to think Mr. Bruneau's eccentricities were part of a plan to attract attention. His mad dissonances and ear-splitting harmonies were but the kettle tied to the dog's tail to make a clatter in the street. The clatter was a success; two or three critics, overpowered by his boldness, dubbed Mr. Bruneau "head of a school." What kind of school? it was asked. Mr. Bruneau replied: "The school of sensationism." Mr. Moreno answers: "The tin pan school."
102In "L'Attaque du Moulin" the young composer shows that he had no very definite convictions, and that at the risk of displeasing the aforesaid critics and the admirers who looked on him with high hope as the founder in France of the vague and incoherent school, he has deviated from his old principles to a certain extent; he is between two systems, trying to sit between two stools, and with the usual result. In his score there are embryos of songs, snatches of arias, ghosts of duos and suspicions of choruses, but nothing that ever comes to flower, because the composer in the middle of his task sees the frown of the terrible critic Z, and turns tail. The score is a compromise. It is a pity, for Mr. Bruneau has great qualities. His accent is often just, he has strength and genuine theatrical feeling, and when he shall become master of himself, he is capable of composing a powerful work. In a real artistic point, and in solidity of writing he has advanced since "Le Rêve," but he needs to familiarize himself with the varied resources of the orchestra. The greatest reproach that can be made to him is want of real emotion. He can interest his audience, not move it, and such superficial interest soon turns to fatigue.
104The German critic in the "Berlin Courier," considers the piece too long by at least one act, and that it is not a "lyric drama," but a cross between opera and melodrama. In "Le Rêve," Bruneau had broken with the conventional form of opera, and ranged himself on the side of Wagner with a boldness which startled the boulevards, and if he had possessed the genius of the master of Bayreuth he might have been regarded as one of the Epigoni of Wagner. But to claim that he had adopted Wagner's method is as absurd as Zola's claim that he follows Claude Bernard's method. No one is so unscientific as the founder of the naturalistic romance, and nothing is so unlike Wagner's work as the French "Lyric drama." Bruneau seems to have seen that the so-called success of "Le Rêve" would not be permanent, and as he was ashamed frankly to go back to the old operatic form, he has attempted a compromise. He gives us an endless "melodylessness," with interpolated duets, trios, quartets and choruses, for which the lyric motives have been in most cases taken from the works of living or dead rivals, and which are worked out in the trivial forms which the Liederkränze of petty towns love to attempt.
106The only original things in his score are his dissonances in violation of all the laws hitherto held sacred in music. These venturesome phrases have found an admirer in Gaston Serpette, who rejoices that Bruneau has delivered French lyric drama from the leit-motives and from the oppression of the Wag-
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