Scan 22
Musical Courier 1895-03-20: Vol 30 Iss 784, 1895
73 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 23. See the scan on archive.org.
1really, Herr Maestro! I don't pretend to be a professional, you know! I only sing just to please my friends!"
3A Michigan doctor has been testing the effect produced by music upon men in a state of hypnotic trance. In the presence of one unconscious "subject," himself a doctor forty years old and not naturally very susceptible to harmonic emotions, the experimenter caused the Ride of the Valkyries to be performed by an orchestra. Here is what happened:
5"The subject's pulse became more rapid as soon as the music began, and soon rose to 120 per minute. Meanwhile the arterial tension was raised to a marked degree. This immediately began to decrease, but the rapidity of the heart's impulses was continued. The rate of respiration advanced from 18 to 30 per minute, the man's face expressed great agitation, and his body was covered with profuse perspiration.
7"When awakened, the subject said he did not remember the music as something heard, but as a general sensation, a sort of excitation produced by a furious flight through space."
9Nordica is in Chicago mourning the loss of her French poodle, "Turk."
11"Turk," it appears, eloped with a perfect stranger of the canine species the other day, and Nordica has all the Pinkerton force scouring the town for her darling.
13Judging from the dog's name, he is not apt to reappear is a hurry after having tasted the wild delights of the north side.
15Some years ago, you may remember, Patti lost her Mexican hairless pup "Ricci," and at its obsequies I suggested to the prima donna the erection of a little tombstone bearing the touching inscription:
17"Requiespup in Pace."
19(no line here) one of two readings
20But she got angry, and the dog was cremated.
22(no line here) one of two readings
23This is a tip for Nordica.
25One of the first engagements of Alvary was at Kroll's Theatre, in Berlin, during the summer of 1879. Old Engel, the shrewd manager, was a capital fellow, full of wit and never wanting in repartee.
27At that time Alvary's range of voice was more limited than it is now, and the reason was his repertoire during his engagement at Kroll's.
29In fact, Joseph and His Brethren, the antique opera of Méhul, with the not exacting tenor range in the part of Joseph, was the battle horse of Jean Max in those happy times.
31But there are not many operas of such kind, and Max was always eagerly hunting after some standard opera of the same sort.
33One bright summer morning, walking through the beautiful garden of the theatre before the rehearsal had begun, Alvary in an inspiration suddenly seized the arm of his friend Engel and thus apostrophized him: "Here is an idea, Mr. Engel, a capital idea! Why don't you put on Gluck's Iphigenia? There is a splendid tenor part in it, and I guess I could make a big hit with it."
35"Don't bother me with new (mark the new!) classic operas. We have enough of them. There is no money in them—they don't fill the cash drawers of my box office."
37"But," said Max, very anxious to have his scheme carried out, "in case you should feel inclined to put on the stage Gluck's Iphigenia I am almost sure that I could induce my father (the celebrated painter, Andreas Achenbach) to paint a fine decoration for this very occasion, and, I tell you, that will and must draw people to your theatre."
39Engel's face brightened up for a moment and, slowly removing his hat, shifting the back of it to his neck and regarding Alvary with a grim smile, he said:
41"Now, my dear Alvary, I'll tell you something. Get your father to make a fine decoration for Iphigenia—but, mind, a fine one—and you sing the Trouvatore with it, and we'll have crowded houses surely."
43(no line here) one of two readings
44Rather rough on Alvary!
46There was a far fetched story in the World recently about Mme. Anna Bishop, the English singer, who delighted our fathers and mothers, being subjected to the hypnotic influence of poor old crazy Bochsa, the harpist, who directed her tours. One incident was adduced as favoring the Svengali resemblance. Bochsa was taken ill while conducting the orchestral accompaniments for Mme. Bishop. Instantly the singer became pale and ceased singing. Now, in the name of common sense, why should she not have become pale and quit singing? Let Walter Damrosch conduct for a Materna and fall into a fainting spell, and you will see 400 pounds of vocal femininity become instantly silent. And yet no one, unless one of the Trilby idols (and there are lots), would think of accusing Walter of hypnotizing the elephantine Brunhilde. Mme. Bishop was fond of the eccentric Bochsa, who was a queer, dirty looking old genius, so my father has often told me, and of course she would stop if he dropped his stick and swooned while she was singing. Indeed, what orchestra would go on playing after its leader had toppled over? No doubt it could play, but would it?
48Professor Boyesen sent the Lounger of the Critic this interesting anecdote from the Norwegian papers: "Henrik Ibsen was taking his regular afternoon walk the other day on Karl Johan's Gade, the fashionable promenade in Christiania. From the opposite direction came a tall, elderly gentleman, who, seeing the dramatist, stepped up to him and offered him his hand. This was an honor which had scarcely ever before been shown to a mere citizen, for the gentleman in question was his Majesty Oscar II., King of Sweden and Norway. To everybody's astonishment he joined the poet in his walk, and the two promenaded along Karl Johan together, in earnest conversation. An immense crowd gathered and followed the unique pair—the 'king among poets and the poet among kings,' as a Norwegian paper styles them. It was a veritable triumphal progress. The crowd yelled and cheered. Oscar II. has never done a more popular thing since he became King of Norway."
50Emil Sauer has been interviewed by a representative of the Pall Mall Gazette and has given some opinions which are in many respects original. Asked why he has never played one of the five last sonatas of Beethoven in London, he replied: "I know the critics have been surprised at this. I believe, however, I had good reason for acting as I have done. I do not like to play the pieces that every pianist plays. Not that I fear comparisons, but because I prefer to play those pieces that are seldom heard—that are neglected by other pianists. Every pianist begins with sonata op. 110, for instance. As for op. 106, perhaps you will be shocked to hear that I do not like it. In the first place, it is a heavy work—a hard work for the public to listen to—but that is not all. Of course the slow movement is one of the greatest things Beethoven ever wrote; but he has not completed it. The sonata is, unlike his general work, not complete or a perfect artistic unity. The great fugue, which some reckon among Beethoven's masterpieces, I consider his weakest composition. It is not beautiful, and people only rave about it because it is by Beethoven. Beethoven was not a great writer of fugues, and did not nearly equal Bach in this respect. I shall, however, play one or two of the last sonatas when I come to London for the spring season."
52Asked why he did not play the preludes and fugues that Bach wrote for the piano, Sauer replied: "Really none of Bach's piano music is fit for public performance under modern conditions. Pianos and piano playing were so entirely different in his day that it is now only possible to play Bach in arrangements if his compositions are to be effective. The preludes and fugues are intimate music; something to love and to live with and to study, but not for public performance. Of course it is absolutely necessary for every pianist to practice them, and to make them a part of his musical consciousness. I do not think, however, that it would be a great pleasure to hear them performed in a large hall. They would sound weak and thin, and if one plays arrangements, such as those of Tausig and Liszt, the critics exclaim, 'Oh, what profanity to meddle with the great composers—to play disarrangements!' and so on. D'Albert's arrangement of the organ fugue I played the other day is most beautiful, and is most reverently done—there is no pietätlosigkeit about it."
54Speaking of Brahms, he said: "Though a great composer, he is not a great composer for the piano; in fact, the best of his compositions that I know for that instrument alone is the Scherzo in E flat minor (op. 4). Rubinstein far surpasses him as a writer for the piano. I am a great admirer of Anton Rubinstein as a composer. It is true he was unequal and suffered from an over-luxuriance of thoughts. The man who could write the Dramatic Symphony (No. 14), the Fourth and the Fifth Concertos, and such beautiful things as The Demon and The Maccabees contain, and so many masterpieces for the piano and voice, was, in spite of all weakness, a great composer."
56In those years at Cambridge, writes W. D. Howells, in The Ladies' Home Journal, my most notable literary experience without doubt was the knowledge of Tourguénief's novels, which began to be recognized in all their greatness about the middle seventies. I think they made their way with such of our public as were able to appreciate them before they were accepted in England; but that does not matter. It is enough for the present purpose that Smoke and Lisa and On the Eve and Dimitri Roudine and Spring Floods passed one after another through my hands, and that I formed for their author one of the profoundest literary passions of my life. I now think that there is a finer and truer method than his, but in its way Tourguénief's method is as far as art can go. That is to say, his fiction is to the last degree dramatic. The persons are sparely described, and briefly accounted for, and then they are left to transact their affair, whatever it is, with the least possible comment or explanation from the author.
58The effect flows naturally from their characters, and when they have done or said a thing, you conjecture why as unerringly as you would if they were people whom you knew outside of a book. I had already conceived the possibility of this from Björnson, who practices the same method, but I was still too sunken in the gross darkness of English fiction to rise to a full consciousness of its excellence. When I remembered the deliberate and impertinent moralizing of Thackeray, the clumsy exegesis of George Eliot, the knowing nods and winks of Charles Reade, the stage carpentering and lime-lighting of Dickens, even the fine and important analysis of Hawthorne, it was with a joyful astonishment that I realized the great art of Tourguénief.
60Here was a master who was apparently not trying to work out a plot, who was not even trying to work out a character, but was standing aside from the whole affair and letting the characters work the plot out. The method was revealed perfectly in Smoke, but each successive book of his that I read was a fresh proof of its truth, a revelation of its transcendent superiority. I think now that I exaggerated its value somewhat; but this was inevitable in the first surprise. The sane aesthetics of the first Russian author I read, however, have seemed more and more an essential part of the sane ethics of all the Russians I have read. It was not only that Tourguénief had painted life truly, but that he painted conscientiously.
62ARE WE BARBARIANS?
64THE following communication was addressed to the editor of the New York Times, and appeared in that estimable newspaper one day last week:
66You Americans are barbarians in art. When the "poor" Ysaye plays you one of the longest and most difficult Beethoven concertos you expect an encore; after calling him "out" or rather in, again three or four or more times he comes without his violin to illustrate that he is tired of playing, or of you, or of both; but you hang onto him until he gives you an encore. But what must such a polite Frenchman or Belgian think of you and of your musical thirst, which he may call "cheek"—in French they have a longer word, though. Mr. Seidl may have a good influence in this respect through his imperishable serenity and consistency in refusing to give encores, and I think immigration of such teachers of art ought to be promoted rather than restricted, even if they come under contract. I must confess the Americans spend much money to hear good music, but they squeeze every penny out of the artist.
68A GERMAN.
70We are inclined to the opinion of "A German," that encores are barbarous. Clapping and all sorts of applause are a survival of barbaric practices and should be abolished. There is no applause allowed at Bayreuth, and the effect is incalculably fine and refreshing. Encores are a nuisance and it was an imposition to force Ysaye to play after a long and trying concerto. Hand-clapping at concerts is a subject for Max Nordau to investigate, if he has not already done so. He probably will discover in it a trait of degeneration and a reversion to the habits of our esteemed and arboreal ancestors.
72Hiarne.—Frau Ingeborg von Bronsart has written an opera, Hiarne, which was to be produced for the first time at Gothia on March 7. It will be produced later on in Hamburg.
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