Scan 10
Musical Courier 1896-07-01: Vol 33 Iss 852, 1896
97 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026. Printed page 11. See the scan on archive.org.
1—Is in the sight of the people. The players tune, chatter, grin, recognize friends. The leader appears and makes sundry motions with stick, arms, legs, whole body. The music is heard in a room glaringly lighted. There are little books distributed without price, that give information concerning the appearance of conclusion themes, and thus many follow the service as with a prayer book.
3Is this the way to hear great music? The musician or the music lover that finds enjoyment at such a concert wrests it from the surroundings.
5***
7"But how would you listen to music?" asks some brother, groping after truth. Here is the subject for a future discourse.
9PHILIP HALE.
11Boston Music Notes.
13BOSTON, June 26, 1896.
15Mr. Louis C. Elson has already booked sixteen lectures for next season. He will make three trips West on lecture tours during the winter.
17The commencement exercises of the Copley Square School at Association Hall June 22 were exceedingly interesting in every particular, and held the attention of a very large and cultivated audience to the close. The three graduates, Misses Villa Marsh, Nellie Edwards and Clara Morrison, acquitted themselves like artists, and showed superior and exceptional training. The violin and vocal work was up to a high standard. The trio sung by Mrs. Katherine Barnard, Messrs. Sturgeon and Clifford, was so enthusiastically received that it had to be repeated. The assistance of that veteran artist, Mr. Wulf Fries, added interest to the program. Surely the Copley Square School appears to be in a most flourishing condition.
19The engagement of Mlle. Antoinette Szumowska, the young Polish pianist and a favorite pupil of Paderewski, to Mr. Josef Adamowski, brother of Mr. T. Adamowski, and 'cellist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is just announced.
21Mme. Luisa Cappiani passed through Boston on her way to her summer cottage at Ferry Beach. She returns to New York to serve on the jury of the American College of Musicians, and then sails for Europe on the Havel, July 14, returning on the Kaiser Wilhelm October 13.
23A special meeting of the executive committee of the trustees of the New England Conservatory of Music was held in the directors' rooms Tuesday afternoon, after which there was a meeting of the full board in the elocution hall. This was specially called to enable the trustees to meet members of the alumni and hear letters from others in connection with misunderstandings between them and the management.
25The annual meeting of the Alumni Association, for the election of officers and other business, was held last night. The following were elected:
27President, Charles H. Morse; first vice-president, E. D. Hale; second vice-president, Charles E. McLaughlin; recording secretary, Mrs. Everett E. Truette; financial secretary, C. E. Reed; corresponding secretary, Mrs. Nellie Nichols-Stevens; treasurer, Everett E. Truette; auditor, S. G. Nobbs; directors, J. D. Buckingham, F. E. Morse, F. Addison Porter, A. W. Keene, W. J. Kugler, Fred A. Ladd, Miss Elizabeth H. Metcalf, Mrs. Lizzie Tourjee-Eastabrook, Miss Mary La Favour, Miss Amy W. Bagg, Miss Lena Hayden, Miss Maud E. George.
29Mr. Charles H. Morse, who was re-elected president of the association, is organist and choirmaster at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. He was formerly a member of the faculty of the conservatory.
31Mr. Frank A. Kennedy, violinist, will pass the summer months at the Grove Hill House, Kennebunk Beach, Me.
33Mr. James H. Ricketson, tenor, will pass the summer after July 15 at the Breezy Hill House, Lisbon, N. H.
35Mr. S. Kronberg has been engaged to sing for the city of Boston on July 4 at the celebration in Faneuil Hall, where there is to be an oration at 10 o'clock in the morning. He will sing O God, Protector of the Nations, which was composed expressly for him by Eayrs. There will be orchestral accompaniment by the Germania Orchestra. This is the first time in history that a singer has been engaged by the city to participate in the celebration of the Fourth.
37At a special meeting of the board of directors of the Alumni Association of the New England Conservatory, held Thursday, a committee was appointed to prepare for the press a brief statement of the transactions of the annual meeting of the association, which occurred on June 23, and which had been reported only in part. The statement follows:
39"After the association had listened to the usual reports from the officers, the special committee of investigation into the controversy at the conservatory presented its statement, the essential points of which are as follows:
41"This investigating committee asked from the president, Mr. Dana, a statement of the matter from the standpoint of the executive board, and the substance of his reply is as follows:
43"For reasons which will readily occur to you I cannot go into the circumstances of the cases of the several teachers whose contracts were not renewed. The statement in each case, even if it were proper to make it, would have to be extremely long and detailed, as many of our reasons for action in one case and non-action in another are founded on several years of observation."
45"The committee reported that although they had a long interview with the director they could not get a definite statement from him. He said the contracts between teachers and the executive board were private matters.
47"Two of the dismissed teachers say they do not know why they are dismissed. One says that he has been notified officially 'that he had violated one clause in his contract; how he does not know. The fourth gentleman informs us that the president of trustees told him that he was to be dismissed because the trustees felt that some of the teachers should be punished for participating in a movement against the trustees.
49"The report contains further a statement of an attempt by the director to capture the Alumni Association. After the hearing of the report an explanation of this statement was called for. In reply the following affidavit of Miss Lena E. Hayden, sworn to before Samuel C. Irwin, justice of the peace, was read:
51"In January of the present school year, ending June 24, 1896, Carl Faelten, director of the New England Conservatory of Music, approached me with the request for my assistance in carrying out certain plans of his in regard to the Alumni Association of the New England Conservatory of Music.
53"He represented that the Alumni Association was working in opposition to the good of the conservatory, and explained that it was desirable that a change in the management of said Alumni Association should be made, and this could only be done by influencing a large majority of the alumni, principally his own graduates, and inducing them to be present at the annual meeting, and gaining their votes to the ticket of officers and directors which he should propose. The said Carl Faelten obtained a list of the graduates up to the time of conference. We went over it, and he picked out those of his own graduates who would make good leaders in the movement. These leaders were to be written to on some pretext, asked to meet me, and I was to explain to them the so-called unfavorable state of affairs in the Alumni Association as opposed to the wishes of the director.
55"Each person thus approached was to promise to obtain at least a dozen votes for the annual meeting, first making sure that the dues of all those people were paid in and that they were members of the association. Some of these were to be told of the plan at once, others were to be kept in ignorance of the movement until the last moment before their votes were needed. These persons were to be approached in different ways, as the nature and temperament of each demanded, and promise of office held out as inducement to such weaker natures as needed such inducement to work. This work was not even begun by me, because (at the first) of the sense of tremendous responsibility resting on me, and ignorance as to how to proceed, I not even having the addresses of the persons to be approached, and later because I knew it was wrong.'
57"The opposition (to use Mr. Dunham's epithet) then proposed that the director be allowed an opportunity to vindicate himself, and by vote of the meeting a member of the opposition was commissioned to order a carriage and bring him to the meeting.
59"On his arrival the affidavit was read to him. Then, at his request, it was reread, and Mr. Faelten replied to each charge in detail. Two statements only were denied, viz., that relating to the proposed bribery of members approached, and that to the effect that he obtained a list of graduates. The first statement was very forcibly characterized by Mr. Faelten as a 'lie.'
61"At the close of the rereading Miss Hayden arose and, apparently possessing a clearer memory than the director, recalled some of the conversations to him, whereupon he confessed the charge fully.
63"Regarding the other statement Mr. Faelten had been equally positive, but here again the conversations were recalled to him; the circumstances of privacy, of even the dropping of the slide which covers the loophole in the directors' (and no other) classroom door. The book was also recalled to him—not the positively alleged small one in which his own pupils write their names, but the large and important book preserved in the safe in the bookkeepers' office, from which it was ordered by the director of the New England Conservatory for this business.
65"Mr. Faelten was then, by general consent, given full opportunity, which he used to his admitted satisfaction, to explain himself. He was allowed to be present at the reading of the statement prepared by the trustees in the afternoon.
67"The judgment of the meeting may be fairly inferred from the overwhelming vote in support of the opposition. No attempt whatever was ventured by the supporters and henchmen of the director to break down a single point in the report of the special committee of investigation."
69The above statement is signed by E. D. Hale, Elizabeth H. Metcalf and Clarence E. Reed, who constitute the committee appointed by the directors, and is attested by Fannie S. Tuttle, secretary.
71Consonating Vibrations—No 5.
72The Only Controllable Element of the Vocal Process.
74THE first thought that came to mind was to continue the subject of Singing in French more directly, by showing, through argument and personal experiment, the complete disregard each individual Parisian teacher has shown for the only element of voice production that he or she could possibly control, to prove that such presumptive maestri as Delle Sedie, Wartel, Sbriglia, Faure and Bouhy are not even skirting the edges of the really practical problem of artistic voice training, but have flown off at a violent tangent into the unfathomable regions of hypothetical absurdity—and their professional savurs have accompanied them!
76But the reader is so firmly bound by the riveted chains of superstitious awe when the human body, especially his own flesh and bones, is concerned in discussion that a literary vivisection seems almost to require a different mode of argument or description. A curious instance of this instinctive shrinking may be of some value as showing that it survives even professional familiarity and must be disregarded by force of will.
78While dissecting in the Ohio Medical College the writer, to secure more time, was intrusted with the key to a small room used for preparing subjects. One midnight, the instant after closing the door and striking a match, the tiny flame went out, and at the precise moment, as luck would have it, a pile of bones, remonstrating at the untimely intrusion, fell from a corner shelf with an ominous clatter.
80"Professor Scilly, I must confess that for a moment I felt a little streak-ed!"
82"Well, Howard, I'll admit that I feel a little that way myself when I'm alone at night and there is any unusual noise. Of course it's nonsense, but it is 'the nature of the beast!'"
84Surely, if a veteran professor of anatomy pleads guilty, the amateur student of voice is excusable for harboring a little of the same shrinking impulse, that natural instinct shared by all animals, which the erudite Scaliger thought was parcell with divine inspiration. But let the earnest reader, so far as in him lies, exorcise this ghostly spirit and constrain himself to realize, as common sense will teach him, that all physical mechanical laws do apply to the animated human framework as strictly as they do to frameworks of inanimate materials. For these papers deal solely with mechanical laws, with the physiologic and acoustic conditions of tone, not at all with style or expression nor even with the manner of connecting tones, whether legato or portamento. Mr. Lang, of Boston, made a woful mistake at the Saratoga meeting of the National Association by affirming that piano touch depended upon, or was decided by, the manner of striking a single note. But it is true that one single tone is the sole subject of these writings; for the physiologic and acoustic conditions of one tone may be established for other single tone and will wholly decide the artistic or inartistic nature of the entire vocal output.
86ELEMENT OF CHANGE.
88Some one or more of these conditions must be changed if there is need of a teacher. He is expected to improve his pupils, to make them sing better—that is, differently. The tones must be produced in a new manner, not in the formerly habitual one. Now, which one of the vocal organs, or, rather, which class can he teach his scholars to control—that is, compel to act in different ways, as he may decide.
90THE VOCAL ORGANS.
92In the very largest sense the vocal machinery includes every bodily part that moves its position or changes its conditions or state to produce voice. This includes bones, cartilages, ligaments, muscles, tendons, connective tissue, membranes and nerves. Even glands and blood vessels must be enrolled in the list. For instance, if certain glands of the throat excrete too freely, as in a cold, the voice will be greatly impaired. Such glands must be called a vocal part, just as much as the wood, wire and felt are essential parts of a piano.
94THE CONTROLLABLE ORGAN.
96Yet there is but one of these parts that is controllable. It is impossible for the pupil to say, "I will discharge a current along this particular nerve or that one. Physiologists have only recently discovered fully which nerves govern the different vocal muscles. Equally are the blood vessels, the veins and arteries, and the glands beyond all possible government. It might look, at first glance, as though the bones and cartilages involved in voice were controllable; but the pupil has no direct power to push the lower jaw forward (much less the upper jaw, as the suicidal La Valla advises!), or to raise or depress the cartilaginous larynx. All these parts are pulled, never pushed, into new
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.