Scan 16
Musical Courier 1895-03-20: Vol 30 Iss 784, 1895
61 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 17. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1BROOKLYN
2BROOKLYN, March 18, 1895.
4THE early hour at which I sent away my last batch of local news prevented my relation of the fact that the little pianist Frieda Simonson was prevented from playing at the Columbia Theatre with Gilmore's Band. The meddlesome people who can always see a talented child at a distance of 1,000 miles, but are unable to find any wretched little bootblacks and paper carriers about the lower streets and ferry houses after dark, probably thought that it would injure Miss Simonson's young nerves if she played for a few minutes and sat up late to do so. As a matter of fact she sat up just as late as if she had played, for she was in a box ready to do her part. The public would have a good deal more patience with some of these reformers if they gave their attention to the thousand cases of real suffering that exists among the children of the poor, instead of the cases among the fairly well to do that give these gentry a chance to advertise themselves. Nobody denies that they do good and have done good, in spite of their wickedly autocratic way of doing it, but when one meets these poor, breechless waifs on the pave at 11 o'clock at night, trying to sell papers or shoe strings or such matters, it does seem as if their time might be better employed with really deserving objects of sympathy than with pianists. What great amount of difference does it make, anyway, whether the child practices three hours a day at the piano—in which case the S. P. C. C. would not think of interfering—or plays for ten aggregate minutes in the evening? In each case the child has a plenty to wear, to eat and time to sleep. The loudest protests against this interference often come from the children themselves.
6The appointment of Mr. Giovanni E. Conterno as music instructor at West Point is gratifying to his many friends in Brooklyn, where he lives, and where, I believe, he was born. I do not quite understand what the position is, for the cadets are not instructed in music, are they? at least in no more of it than suffices to teach the bugle calls to them.
8Mr. Conterno is to rank as an officer, though he does not hold a commission, and a cottage in the officers' row is set apart for his use. He is a soldierly looking young man, straight as an arrow, with black eyes that are lightened by a genial gleam, and he stands among his fellows at a conspicuous height of something like 6 feet 2 inches. He recently returned from Europe, where he had hopes of getting a hearing for his opera, Columbus, but though he had encouragements from men like Massenet and the leaders of famous orchestras and some of the German critics, and had the distinction of having extracts from the work played in concert in England, Germany and France, he could not get the thing done in its entirety. But now that he is a Government official he may do better. Look at the pull that Mr. Sousa enjoys through having for so many years been leader of the Marine Band.
10Mr. Sousa, by the by, is about to leave for the West, but he gave us another concert last evening at the Columbia Theatre, and his spirited marches were mixed with music appropriate to the occasion, for, as you may be aware, Sunday was St. Patrick's Day. He played things from Balfe and Moore, Godfrey's Reminiscences of Ireland and a Hibernian jig. In June he will be with us for some time, as he is to have the music again at Manhattan Beach. And there is never a doubt that he will have a crowd, is there? For public taste may swing between the Italians and the Germans, between the classicists and the Brahmsists, and between the Mendelssohns and Wagnerites, but the Washington Post March and the Liberty Bell March always have a hearing. Some people never get too much of anything, and are always sorry when a street song has ended its run. There is one fellow in this city who has for years been playing Comrades. He has to play it on the piano with one finger, and the neighborhood, from being a peaceful and law abiding congregation, has become more devilish than Chicago. But sometimes the musician of that kind gets his comeuppance, as they say in the South. For instance, Antonio Sepho, while attending court here last week, broke out with I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard, and the judge sent him to jail for three days on the spot. It is a mighty pity that we can't have a few judges in perpetual session in the districts that are most severely affected by or afflicted with Daisy Bell and other lyrics of that ilk. one of two readings
11Mr. Sousa, by the by, is about to leave for the West, but he gave us another concert last evening at the Columbia Theatre, and his spirited marches were mixed with music appropriate to the occasion, for, as you may be aware, Sunday was St. Patrick's Day. He played things from Balfe and Moore, Godfrey's Reminiscences of Ireland and a Hibernian jig. In June he will be with us for some time, as he is to have the music again at Manhattan Beach. And there is never a doubt that he will have a crowd, is there? For public taste may swing between the Italians and the Germans, between the classicists and the Brahmsists, and between the Mendelssohns and Wagnerites, but the Washington Post March and the Liberty Bell March always have a hearing. Some people never get too much of anything, and are always sorry when a street song has ended its run. There is one fellow in this city who has for years been playing Comrades. He has to play it on the piano with one finger, and the neighborhood, from being a peaceful and law abiding congregation, has become more devilish than Chicago. But sometimes the musician of that kind gets his comeupance, as they say in the South. For instance, Antonio Sepho, while attending court here last week, broke out with I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard, and the judge sent him to jail for three days on the spot. It is a mighty pity that we can't have a few judges in perpetual session in the districts that are most severely affected by or afflicted with Daisy Bell and other lyrics of that ilk. one of two readings
13Aunt Polly Bassett, Belinda Bassett and other celebrities were here last week at the Plymouth Bethel with their peripatetic Singin' Skewl. It isn't much as music, but when the history of music in this country comes to be written, the real Singin' Skewl and the modern representation of it will have to go on record as a factor of a certain consequence in the development of taste and understanding.
15Mrs. Anna Burch—she no longer signs herself Anna Mooney Burch, as she did for long years—has not been heard much in her old home of late, but she sang a few solos in her usually delightful manner at the Academy of Music on the night of the benefit to the Brooklyn Nursery. Her performance of Arditi's Tarantelle showed that her voice has gained in elasticity and brightness.
17A new chorus of over sixty members, organized at the Nostrand Avenue Methodist Church, under lead of Mr. I. N. Sievwright, gave its first concert in the chapel of that church on Thursday night. It is called the Händel chorus and it sang Daniel, or, the Captivity and Restoration. Sang it pretty well, too, considering its newness. For a young chorus it has a considerable spirit.
19Another musical by the Euterpe Society filled Remsen Hall, and Mr. Carl Venth won new honors by his cleverness in directing these amateurs. If there was an occasional jar, and if you thought away down in your secret soul that you had heard the Tannhäuser march better played under Seidl and Damrosch and Thomas, there were many other people in the audience who had never heard it better played; and where ignorance is bliss—and the rest of it. There was another march, a respectable effort composed by Mr. E. W. Williams, of the orchestra, and the musicians likewise played the Cavalleria intermezzo, Czibulka's Fly minuet and a Grieg dance, and there were solos by Miss Kaetchen Eiswerth, Dr. George G. Van Mater and Mr. C. L. Blossfield.
21Mr. August Arnold gave a recital in his studio on Greene avenue on a recent evening, in which he was assisted by Mr. Emil Gramm, violinist. Mr. Arnold is a promising pianist; he has intelligence, artistic feeling and a good method. His program comprised selections from Rubinstein, Chopin, Liszt, Paderewski, Grieg, Schumann and Henselt. Mr. Gramm, a conscientious and useful player, gave us a romance of Wilhelmj, a caprice by Hille and with Mr. Arnold performed part of two sonatas, that of Rubinstein in A minor being especially successful.
23Prof. Conrad Frank, of the Park Theatre, played at the Press Club a few nights ago at one of its receptions, while Keller and his wife mystified the company with mind reading and "spirit meejum" tricks.
25There was a well attended organ recital by Mr. E. J. Grant at the Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday evening at the German Evangelical Church a concert was given in aid of the music fund of the church, by Mr. Hugo Troetschel, the organist. At the church of Our Lady of Angels, last evening, Mercadante's Seven Last Words and Rossini's Stabat Mater were sung by the choir of the church, aided by a chorus, soloists of note and an orchestra.
27On Friday afternoon and Saturday night the last of the concerts—properly a rehearsal and a concert, though I have never seen or heard a piece rehearsed at one of these afternoon performances since Thomas' time—by the Boston Symphony Orchestra occurred at the Academy of Music. There was a fair audience at the night performance, but the matinée was disgracefully attended. It is no secret that the people of the band and the managers are not pleased with Brooklyn. The lack of interest is not due to defective management, so far as I can see, and it is certainly not due to any want of aid from the press, because the papers of the town have done their best to bring people to the concerts. It is not apparently due to lack of wealth, because there are several dollars here, and a good many people would resent the imputation that it was caused by a lack of public taste. One thing is sure, and that is that Mr. Seidl, with a small orchestra that plays under him hardly once in a week, draws better than Mr. Paur's big and altogether admirable band. Nobody would be surprised if Mr. Seidl, or the Seidl Society, had the field alone next season. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, however, has been maintained by Mr. Higginson for years as a sort of musical missionary enterprise, and perhaps if he labors with us benighted Brooklynites for a couple of seasons longer we shall come around to the belief that there is pretty good music in it, after all.
29The bill comprised the Egmont overture, Bizet's Arle- sienne suite, Raff's In the Woods, Liszt's first concerto and his second Hungarian rhapsody—a bill to catch the people, surely, if anything can. But it didn't. Mr. Bernhard Stavenhagen was the soloist. He played the concerto with delicacy, alternating with noise. He was a kind of musical Jekyll and Hyde, and although on artistic and picturesque grounds I don't object to Mr. Hyde, I must say that Dr. Jekyll is better to live with. Stavenhagen's fortissimi were to my ear coarse, his pedal was open in transitions of key, his bass was wiry and metallic; but one can but admire his soundness, his freedom from eccentricities and affectations, his sympathy and his conscientiousness. It was regrettable that he did not give us a work with a little more soul than the Liszt piece, for I fancy he would have done something with Schumann or Chopin.
31Mr. Paur was in his usual good spirits and gave us strong, manful if not highly refined readings of the other numbers. His hold was a little lax at times, and in the overture there were audible disparities of attack between the brass and string divisions, but the temper of the band improved as time went on, and only the inevitable percussionists were at fault in the later numbers. Why is it that a drum cannot be made to keep time? It is the easiest of all instruments in several respects, and is the one of all others that we expect to mark the beat in an authoritative fashion. The Bizet suite was played with a great deal of charm. What a pity Bizet could not have been spared for another dozen years! The Hungarian rhapsody was given with all desirable speed and elan, and the Raff symphony was played nearly as well as I have ever heard it. No doubt it is not proper to admire Raff very much. He is too frank and simple in his forms, too obviously melodic, his harmonies seldom have wrong notes in them, and he suggests pictures, which is also wrong. But, whenever the Wood symphony or the Lenore symphony is played I shall try to be there.
33Once in a while I have enough of pumpernickel and salt ham, and am to be pacified only with candy. Keep your Brahms and the rest, and be reverent when they are speaking, but let us likewise hear Mendelssohn's violin concerto once in a while and a Raff symphony. When Mr. Krehbiel tells me that parts of the Lenore symphony are the worst things ever written I am sorry for Raff, sorry for myself, but there is a sneaking sorrow for Mr. Krehbiel, too. On my word, there are few times when the orchestra seems a grander institution than when it is employed with such affairs as the Wild Hunt in the Im Walde. And it is the great creation of the age. The pyramid and temple periods have passed, we shall perhaps never see any more Gothic cathedrals, the press and the telegraph and railroad and such things are useful, but not beautiful—but we have the orchestra.
35Franz Kneisel and his three associate players, together with Mrs. Rivé-King, pianist, played on Saturday afternoon in Wissner Hall, Mrs. King making her first appearance on that occasion in a dozen years or so. The attendance was large, the conduct of the audience cordial, the concert brief but highly enjoyable, and the affair was altogether pleasant and creditable. We await the recovery of Mr. Seidl for a continuance of musical activities.
37Mr. Carl's Success in the South.
39MR. WILLIAM C. CARL won the praise of both press and public for his organ playing in the South during the past week.
41In Charleston, S. C., the success attending Thursday evening's recital was so great that he was engaged for a second one the following day at 12 o'clock noon, and notwithstanding this unusual hour a large audience was in attendance. After the recital a reception was tendered Mr. Carl previous to his departure at 4:30 p. m. Following are notices of his playing in Atlanta, Ga., from two daily papers of that city:
43The organ recital in the Second Baptist Church last night by Mr. William C. Carl was one of the rarest musical treats Atlanta has enjoyed. Mr. Carl's program was a splendidly arranged one, and in the rendition of it he showed himself to be a master of the instrument. He is possessed of a brilliant technic, and he brings into play all the resources of the organ, which, added to an intellectual interpretation of the composition before him, gives a performance that ranks him as one of our greatest organists. He was repeatedly encored.—Atlanta Constitution.
45Mr. Carl's program was one that tested a performer's ability, but he went at it in a manner that showed his thorough knowledge of the resources of the instrument and an intelligent interpretation of the compositions before him.
47He is possessed of a brilliant technic, and his combinations and registration, together with a clean and clear manipulation of the pedals, presented a more than usual result, which places him as one of the greatest organists we have.
49Mr. Carl was repeatedly encored, the audience showing its appreciation of his playing by a double recall. Mr. Carl gives his second recital this afternoon.—Atlanta Journal.
51Negotiations have already been made for Mr. Carl's reappearance in both cities after Easter.
53GARCIA'S HINTS ON SINGING.
54GARCIA'S HINTS ON SINGING.
55GARCIA'S HINTS ON SINGING.
57"The most practicable, useful and reliable singing tutor yet written."
59London: E. Ascherberg & Co.
60New York: Edward Schubert & Co.
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