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Musical Courier 1894-02-14: Vol 28 Iss 727, 1894
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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.
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39ESTABLISHED JANUARY, 1880.
40No. 727.
41NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1894.
42THE 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.
43It is said that Mr. Carvalho has produced "Werther" at the Opéra Comique in too great a hurry, without sufficient study or care—in fact in a manner to imperil his reputation as an artist director.
44A concert given by the Society of the Holy Innocents, at Brussels, and devoted exclusively to Massenet's works, the composer accompanied on the piano all the artists who were heard on the occasion.
45According to the Bayreuth "Taschenbuch," it appears that during 1893 1,047 performances of Wagner's works were given in sixty-five German towns, whereas in 1892 the number was 820 for the same number of towns.
46The Jena Liederhandschrift, a collection of Minnesängerlieder that will bear comparison with the better known Heidelberg MS., will be reproduced by photography and sold at a reasonable rate as soon as a sufficient number of copies are subscribed for. Apply to Fr. Strobel, Jena.
47The Earl of Dysart has guaranteed all expenses for the Wagner concert to be given at Queen's Hall, London, under Mottl's direction. The noble Earl will be in South Africa when the concert takes place, "a fact which shows," says the "Musical News," "unselfish generosity."
48The Association of Concerts of the Modern School at Paris aims to do for music what the Théâtre Libre does for drama. It will give five grand concerts devoted to foreign and French works, never before given in Paris, the first concert being on February 28. Mr. Lamoureux is the director.
49We present to our readers this week an excellent likeness of Lillian Nordica, the soprano, who has made such astonishing strides in her art recently. She is to sing in Bayreuth this summer by especial request of Cosima I, Queen of Wagnerdom, and altogether has climbed the ladder of fame rung by rung, and with satisfactory results.
50Success to you, fair American!
51The British Museum has increased its musical catalogue by 7,497 titles during the year 1892. Among rare and precious manuscripts acquired are a series of madrigals and motets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, two very rare works of Matheson, the would-be rival of Händel, a "Noël," by Juan Navarro, printed in Mexico 1604; Liszt's autograph of his "Christ," an antiphony and gradual of the eleventh century, a missal of the time of Henry VIII., and recitatives composed by Balfe for Beethoven's "Fidelio." Balfe and Beethoven!
52Tschaikowsky was, it appears contemplating the composition of a new opera, for, among the papers of the dead composer have been found a sketch and several completed numbers of a music drama on the subject of "Romeo and Juliet." As far back as 1876 a "fantasia-overture" on Shakespeare's love tragedy from the pen of the late composer was performed at the Crystal Palace, London. Perhaps this was to have formed part of the new work, but it was only to have been a kind of sketch on the subject. An air and a duet from the work are about to be performed at the Imperial Theatre, St. Petersburg.
53Who prates about fin de siècle culture when that venerable oratorio "Esther, Beautiful Queen," was sung at Anniston, Ala., February 1? The affair was a great success, and we read in the "Daily Hot Blast" that
54Mr. D. G. Hall, as "Haman," was the very personification of arrogance, tyranny and cunning, and though perhaps every person in the audience was Gordon Hall's friend, no one felt sorry when his meanness was discovered and W. B. Barker, as "Harbonah," W. E. Sisson, chamberlain, and D. B. Cater and E. A. Smith, guards, took him out and hung him on the scaffold he had built for "Mordecai." His deep, powerful and well trained voice suited the part exactly, too.
55And yet a week ago we were boasting of latter-day culture and Ibsen and Maeterlinck and others of the new ilk! The country cannot have succumbed to a worship of the devilish in music when "Esther, Beautiful Queen," is sung in Alabama.
56The Court Opera, Vienna, has a corps of 153 singers and 122 dancers. Of the singers twenty-two are entitled to the prefix "Mrs.," while all the dancing girls are "Miss"—a fact which can hardly be explained by dislike of the short skirted sisterhood on the part of the male sex. The orchestra comprises 110 men, including twenty-two performers on the stage; it is under four Capellmeisters, with twenty-three assistants; supers, scene shifters, &c., &c., number 289, including a shoemaker, a washing-woman, an ironer, a scouring woman and a "mistress of the chimney sweeps." Altogether the personal reaches the figure of 732. Since the erection of the new house 183 operas and fifty-six ballets have been produced. "Abu Hassan," which plays for sixty minutes, is the shortest work. The longest is "Die Meistersinger," which takes three hours fifty-two minutes.
57The directors of the Opéra are demanding from the Government the immediate preparation of scenery for "L'Africaine," "Aida," "Don Juan," "Le Prophète," "Romeo et Juliette," "Le Freischütz," "Le Cid" and "La Patrie." The cost will be 650,000 frs., of which the insurance companies will furnish 130,000. Mr. Gailhard, in an address to the committee which had the question before it, asked to be relieved from the Sunday performances, which did not attract the working classes, but withdrew their patrons of the bourgeoisie from the weekday performances. Thus, while the Sunday performances did not pay, they diminished the receipts on other days. The committee insisted on the Sunday performances, but under present circumstances would allow them to be suspended during January and February. As regards the new magazines, it is urged that if the ground in the Rue Richer can be sold at a price to cover the erection of new magazines at Neuilly or elsewhere the surplus should be devoted to restoring the scenery required, without making application for further credits to Parliament.
58A PLEA FOR STRAUSS AND OFFENBACH.
59Mr. Finck in last Saturday's "Evening Post" held a most eloquent brief for Strauss and Offenbach, which we reprint here with considerable satisfaction and approval:
60What has become of Johann Strauss in our concert halls? For several years, ever since Mr. Theodore Thomas left New York, the Viennese waltz has been shamefully neglected here. No doubt Strauss is as much played at balls as ever, but few dance hall bands can do justice to this charming music, which requires for its proper performance a first-class orchestra, like our Philharmonic or Symphony Society. The world is so full of pedants and other persons whose interest in art is purely intellectual and never emotional, that the suggestion that a Strauss waltz should occasionally be introduced at a Philharmonic concert would be received with a howl of astonishment if not indignation. Yet this very suggestion has been made by no less a man than Dr. Hans von Bülow, who once remarked:
61I am very fond of a Strauss waltz, and I cannot see any reason why such a work, which is always artistic and may be classed among the best of its kind, should not be performed from time to time by a large orchestra in serious concert. It would give our ears a little more rest from the severity of the classics, and would act like olives in preparing our palate for a fresh course.
62Nor is Bülow the only eminent musician who has expressed his unqualified admiration of Strauss, father and son. Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Cherubini and others have done the same, and Wagner wrote that a Strauss waltz "surpasses in grace, refinement and real musical substance" the majority of the labored compositions that are placed on concert programs. Why then not produce them at symphony concerts in preference to tedious four story symphonies by garrulous fifth-rate composers? Works of art should be judged by the genius manifested in them, not by their duration or architectural structure. It has been said that "whereas Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven built up the symphony from dance forms, Strauss, conversely, applied the symphonic resources of the modern orchestra to his dance pieces.
63What living composer understands better than Strauss the art of exquisite orchestration? Who writes more piquant rhythms, more original melodies, more fascinating harmonies, than Strauss? His waltzes are intended for concert halls, and they are animated by a poetic rubato, or capricious coquetry of movement, which raises them far above ordinary dance music, and makes them quite as worthy of a place at symphony concerts as Chopin's waltzes at piano recitals. Let us have a little less pedantic dignity, a little more emotion and human nature about our concerts, and good music will make more rapid strides in popular appreciation. Too much dignity is the death of art.
64There is still another point. Why have Strauss' operettas disappeared from our theatres? Their plots, if it is true, are defective, but the music is so full of melody, vitality and everything that is delightful in music, that they would be entertaining even without any libretti at all. We are convinced that if the "Merry War," for instance (musically the best operetta ever written), were revived in the same careful and sumptuous manner as when it was first produced, with good singers and adequate scenic attractions, it would prove a tremendous success, and would help at least one operetta company out of the perplexity in which most of them are now involved by the absence of good new operettas. Former admirers of this delightful music would flock again to hear it, and thousands who have since attained their theatre years would go to enjoy it and long for the good old times when such things appeared annually. The simple truth is that the "Merry War," when it first appeared, was ahead of the popular taste. But it will not be so now; there is a constant growth in such matters. Who will make the experiment?
65LATEST CABLE NEWS FROM PARIS.
66Recent cable dispatches from Paris indicate that nothing startling has occurred in the musical world there. The Opéra has limited itself to "Gwendoline," a lyric work in two acts by Chabrier, written twenty years ago and played eight years ago in Belgium and in Germany. This proves once more the deplorable condition of the first lyric stage of France, which is obliged to go slowly in the mounting of new pieces.
67Chabrier's music is noisy but interesting, and it has met with a success that has given fame to a composer upon whom fortune has not always smiled.
68At the Opéra Comique there have been two productions, "L'Attaque du Moulin," by Mr. Bruneau, and "Le Flibustier," by Mr. Cui. The first of these works has made a great success. The subject is taken from a novel by Mr. Zola, and it is very effective. The music is by a young man of great promise. He had previously composed an opera, "Le Rêve," which was found too Wagnerian. He has endeavored to re-establish his equipoise, and in "L'Attaque du Moulin" has made too many concessions to the old rules of opéra comique. It is possible that Mr. Bruneau may be destined to give a French turn to the German formula of Wagnerism, and thus furnish us with a style of opera suitable to the tastes and instincts of the French race.
69We are unable to say as much for Mr. Cui, who is a general in the Russian army, and one wonders exactly what it was that prompted the production of his "Flibustier." There are Russian composers who are much more interesting than he is, and there are few compositions that are more weak
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