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Musical Courier 1896-09-16: Vol 33 Iss 863, 1896
47 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
1Fiddled for Dear Life.
2HAWK RUN, August 27.
4COKE ovens, company stores and a very dirty place. That makes up Hawk Run, says the Philadelphia Press, but the good folks that live here have some very funny experiences, in spite of their eighteen-hour laboring day. The Hawk Run folks are always ready to laugh, even at a funeral, and the dangers or solemnity of an occasion have little or nothing to do with their sense of the ludicrous. Johnny Williams, the helper in a bank of ovens, was talking about an occurrence in the place in the early part of last spring, and it seems that everybody thought it a joke except the poor subject.
6"You see," said Johnny, as he rested from feeding one of the smoke and smell producing furnaces, "the way of it was this: Fred Stark made up his mind last winter that he would get married, and, as he had a little money together, he thought he would build a house for his gal.
8"Gal didn't seem to object. In fact, she thought it would be a mighty nice thing to have the best house in the Run. For you see," pointing with an eloquent gesture and a grimy hand, "the houses we people live in are tough enough." He was right, for the habitations are nothing but a series of rookeries. "Mary and he pitched on a spot of ground way up at the 'other end, and paid $25 for it, and it was just on the brow of a mighty pretty little hill. He didn't allow that it would cost much to build it, as he was going to do a good bit of work himself.
10"You see, Fred was a sort of emergency man around here. Sometimes he was at the ovens, sometimes on the slope, sometimes on the tipple, but always had something to do. Just then he was in the mine, and, of course, he had all his tools there and was using them from day to day. After he got the lot of ground in hand he told us he was going to pitch in and dig a cellar to go under the house. Well, that was all darn nonsense, because there was just no necessity for it, as we none of us have cellars, and what's more, we don't need 'em. I told him it was foolish, but he would do it his own way, and that settled it. So we all chipped in to help him punch the hole.
12"We all thought a good deal of Fred because he could play the fiddle, call off figures and make things hum generally at a dance, and I've seen him fiddle the hornpipe and dance at the same time—more than once.
14"Well, sir, we thought so much of him that we used to turn in for a little while on Sundays and chuck the dirt out, for he piled it all up, and then were going to take it away in wheelbarrows, so we had the sides almost as high up as the bottom was down, and it was in pretty fair shape.
16"One Sunday when we went over for a half hour's work we found it so cold that the boys built a fire in the middle and then worked around the sides. One of the crowd said that he saw a snake come up, but we all thought he was off, as we had seen pretty few so far that year, and so we kept on till nigh 5 o'clock. Then we gathered up our tools and went back, leaving Fred up at the house, on our way down.
18"So that night Fred didn't show up at church, to town. Fred was going to work next day, and the last thing he said was: 'Good-night, boys; if I don't see you at church to-night, I'll beat you over to Briar Hill in the morning.' Mary, she came with her mother, and asked me where Fred was, and I said I guessed he was tired and didn't come. So next morning I got over to the slope before 5 o'clock, and when I got there the boss said: 'Jack, two timbers have broken in the main gang, and you fellows will have to go over to the woods and cut some props.' So I took my men and thought I'd meet Fred on the way over and see if he'd go along. Well, I thought it mighty funny, for up to the time we struck his house we didn't see him at all, and so I rapped on the door and asked Mom Stark where he was, and she says: 'Why, Jack, he took his fiddle last night after supper and said he was going over to Mary's, and after church he and her were going to have some music.' I didn't say much, and just went on.
20"Well, about a half mile further on was where the new house was to be, and hang me if we didn't hear Fred's fiddle. 'Gee,' said one of my men. 'Guess Fred made an early break to play in his new home;' and so, by jinks, he had. Only, you see, it was a late break, and a pretty bad one; but, by gracious, I'll never forget it—he won't, either. Yes, it was his fiddle, sure.
22"At about half-past six the night before he started up to Mary's. He got about half way there, and then he remembered that he left his pick in the cellar of the new house, and he knew he'd need it in the morning. So he started off to go back and get it, and take both fiddle and pick along to Mary's. So it was pretty dark when he got to the cellar, and, laying the fiddle down on the earth pile, he stepped over into the hole, and the fiddle slipped in after him. The fire we lit was about out, and he reached for the fiddle, and as he picked it up he heard a snake hiss. So he made a lick at it, but it made another hiss and backed away.
24"Just as he started to look for the pick he heard another and another, and then three or four, and then he started for the fire and bunched the ashes together, and he said the place was full of copperheads and rattlers.
26"Fred said one would make a dab at him, and he'd make a hit at it; then another would, but they seemed to be trying to round him up in a sort of circle. They got closer and closer, and as he spun around one of the fiddle strings snapped and they all drew back a little. That gave him an idea, and he drew the fiddle out and commenced to play, and then the hot ashes commenced to burn his feet and he began to dance. Well, he didn't dare let up, couldn't stop a minute, and the snakes they just fell away respectful and seemed to like it. He'd try to stop, when the whole cellarful would hiss and make a start for him, and he'd commence again.
28"Well, sir, all night long he danced and fiddled. He swore and yelled; he whistled and screamed for help, but none came, for, you see, it was Sunday night, and pretty lonely up there, and he just kept hustling all the time. So, when we heard the fiddle, why, of course, we hurried up and went to see what was the matter, and we yelled at him, and he yelled back for heaven's sake to come pull him out. So we built a fire of brush, and when it blazed up so we could see, we couldn't help it—we had to stand around the cellar and laugh. He'd blistered his feet, broken all the strings of his fiddle but one, and maybe he didn't look like a wreck. Funny? Well, we couldn't do a thing for laughing, and he was mean enough to swear at us for being a pack of fools, and to come down and help him out, or he'd just die. So the boys kidded him a while, and then we started in to do the snakes.
30"First, we threw a lot of brush firewood into the hole, and he'd get a little nearer to it, and after we got two or three piles going we dropped down with our axes. Guess we must have killed about twenty-five or thirty, for he was right—the cellar was pretty full of them. They crawled in to get warm—and then they just stayed there. He said he had enough cellar and fiddling and dancing to last him forever, and he was so tired and his feet so full of blisters that he didn't work for three or four days. And the boys 'kid' him about it, for Mary made him fill up the cellar, and said she wouldn't live in any house that had a snake hole in it like that. And Fred—well, there he comes—you 'kid' him about it, and see how he takes it. Better get a club first, because he's mighty touchy about it."
32I sized Fred up, but as he was over 6 feet and weighed about 200, I thought Jack's story would be sufficient information.
34Ogden Crane.—Mme. Ogden Crane, the teacher of voice culture in New York, owes much of her success to the method she employs in her instruction. The art of breathing that she inculcates is not only due to the thoroughness of her teaching, but to the personal supervision of her work. In appearance Mrs. Crane is decidedly attractive, combining the facial beauty of the Italian with the manners, grace and education of the South. Her studio will be conspicuous this fall and winter owing to the fact that a number of prominent society girls have enrolled themselves as her pupils. She will resume instruction at her New York studio, 3 East Fourteenth street, Tuesday, September 22.
36Popular Fallacies.
38THE notion that large organs, large orchestras, large choruses necessarily make a great deal of noise is a very popular fallacy indeed, writes the well-known American critic, W. F. Apthorp. Of course, a large organ will sound louder, ceteris paribus, than a small one; that is evident enough. But the way to make an organ strong toned is not to increase the number of stops, but to increase the wind pressure. A powerful volume of tone comes, as the saying is, from "the weight of bricks on the wind chest," not from the number of pipes. A single cornet blown hard will make more noise and carry farther than twenty cornets blown moderately.
40The idea that large halls need large orchestras is true enough as far as it goes. But it is far truer that large halls need brilliant and telling orchestration. Mr. Apthorp gives the Boston Music Hall as an instance of a hall which has been considered too large for good orchestral effect. He continues: It would be more accurate to say that it is too large for good orchestral effect in classical music; no one need complain of its being too large for Wagner's Kaiser Marsch! I think no one thought of its being too large for Eduard Strauss' little orchestra of (I think) twenty-four. In the Strauss waltzes and galops this little band made a more brilliant effect than an orchestra of seventy-five in the seventh symphony. It was all the result of Strauss' peculiar style of instrumentation, which is particularly adapted to give brilliancy to a small orchestra, giving prominence to the piccolo-flute, the cornets, the side drum, the big drum and cymbals—in a word, to all the shrill and incisive toned instruments. In a certain sense, it may even be said that Strauss' little orchestra of twenty-four would sound more brilliant in the Strauss waltzes and galops than an orchestra of seventy-five would in the same pieces; for the numerical increase would be all in the strings, and the larger mass of strings would tone down and cover up the brilliancy of the "noisier" instruments. * * *
42Large choruses and orchestras may be powerful, but they are not the strongest. In what are commonly called "strong effects" it is quality, not mere quantity, of tone that tells. I remember a performance of the ninth symphony, * * * at which, when every singer and player was straining every nerve in double fortissimo on Now Embrace Ye, All Ye Millions! the late lamented Saul, who played third trombone, and possessed, besides an excitable temperament, an exceedingly powerful pair of lungs, blew the whole chorus and orchestra to smithereens single handed. All you could really hear was Saul's trombone.
44Many people are so possessed with the idea of how the louder instruments in the orchestra—trumpets and trombones—can cover up and drown out not over strong voiced solo singers that they forget the dampening effect a duller and less determinate quality of tone may have at times. What prevents very large choruses, or most of them, being really brilliant is what is commonly known as the "dead wood" in them—the weak and stuffy voiced singers, who give out a faint hoarse tone and do not come in sharply on the beat. Eliminate this "dead wood" and leave only the strong, fresh voiced, rhythmically precise singers—that is, cut down the chorus (on an average) by two-thirds—and you will double its brilliancy. Mme. Cappiani, the singer, once told me that in Italian opera houses what the principal singers most stood in dread of in the orchestra was not the trombones, but the double basses. These comparatively dull toned instruments could, when ill played, cover up the voice more than all the brass put together.
46It is a widespread popular fallacy that you can always make a movement sound more lively by taking it faster. This is, to be sure, not wholly a fallacy; vivacity of effect certainly does increase, as a rule, with rapidity of tempo. But there are cases where it does not. Vivacity of rhythmic effect depends far more upon the rapidity of the beat, that is, upon the shortness of the rhythmical unit, than upon the rapidity with which one note follows after another. Take an allegro movement in 4-4 time; play it a little faster, and it will unquestionably sound more lively; but, so soon as you play it enough faster to make it sound
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