Scan 37
Musical Courier 1897-05-12: Vol 34 Iss 897, 1897
65 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. No printed page number was found. 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.
1SAN FRANCISCO.
2SAN FRANCISCO, May 1, 1897.
3THE most brilliant luminary in the musical firmament here just at present is Mr. Denis O'Sullivan, a San Francisco boy who, having won laurels in London and New York, has come back to add local leaves to his wreath. And he is doing it. His initial appearance was made last week, when he gave a song recital with a program that provided opportunity for all his best points to be displayed to advantage. The following day he was the soloist at the symphony concert, and Monday night of this week he opened at the Tivoli, in Shamus O'Brien, the part he created in London, and which has become familiar to New Yorkers during the season past.
4Mme. Geneva Johnstone-Bishop, the American oratorio singer, reached here Monday from Los Angeles, where she sang at the recent Fiesta, and at the three concerts of the musical festival given Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and at a matinée Wednesday she scored a pronounced success.
5At the last symphony concert—the fifth in the series of six—Von Weber's Oberon overture, Rubinstein's symphony in G minor, No. 5, and the Tchaikowsky Casse Noisette (Nut Cracker) suite made up the orchestral numbers, and Mr. Hinrichs' men showed no signs of falling away from the high standard of excellence that has characterized all their work. An active movement is on foot to establish a permanent symphony society here, that the season inaugurated so brilliantly may be followed by others, and San Francisco be added, as she should be, to the list of those cities who maintain such organizations.
6MARIAN MITCHELL. one of two readings
7Marian Mitchell. one of two readings
9SAN FRANCISCO.
10SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 1897.
11GRADUALLY the musical season is waning. After Easter there may be a few swan songs, but summer and the regular hegira to watering places and mountains will soon be here.
12The fifth Symphony concert took place on the 1st of the month with a Wagner program, in which the orchestra did some noble work in the overture to Tannhäuser, the prelude in Lohengrin, the Waldweben from Siegfried, Wotan's farewell and the Fire Scene from Die Walküre, and the song of the Rhinedaughters from Götterdämmerung. Considering the time that the orchestra have been working together, only praise can be given for the general and even excellence of their work, not a little of which is due the conductor, Gustav Hinrichs, for his masterly handling of the men. Mrs. Katherine Fleming-Hinrichs was one of the soloists who deserves special mention. Her dramatic contralto has a rich timbre and wide range, and her Ortrud in the Lohengrin and Magdalena in Die Meistersinger were both adequate and satisfying in an artistic way.
13Mme. Camilla Ursio is too well known to need criticism here, and of the three concerts she has given in the past ten days nothing further need be said than that she has never displayed more noble tone, more delicate nuances and more scholarly technic.
14The seventh of the Bacon-Minetti ensemble concerts was given on the afternoon of the 3rd with a very fine program. In the Schumann piano trio, op. 63, Miss Bacon and Messrs. Minetti and Heine gave convincing proof of their mastery over their several instruments, and Miss Bacon and Mr. Heine played the Rubinstein piano and 'cello sonata in D major, op. 18, with the skill and ease of scholarly artists.
15The next attraction will be Mme. Geneva Johnstone-Bishop, who will appear in the oratorio of The Messiah with the California Music Festival Association, April 27 and 28. Miss Nellie Cook will be the solo pianist at both concerts.
16The French Opera Company has finished its season of four weeks, having given twenty performances.
17MARIAN MITCHELL. one of two readings
18Marian Mitchell. one of two readings
20MINNEAPOLIS.
21MINNEAPOLIS, April 28, 1897.
22THIS week, so full of musical events, opened up in a most auspicious manner with a grand orchestral concert, under the auspices of the Manning College of Music, Oratory and Dramatic Art, and conducted by Sig. Francesco d'Auria, who has just assumed the directorship of Manning College. The program was given in excellent form by the Dauz Orchestra of forty-five musicians, under the inspiring baton of Signor d'Auria. To these were added as soloists W. M. Cross (piano), Claude Madden (violin) and Madame d'Auria (vocalist).
23For the most part the compositions were original and played from manuscript. As works they are best described as musical poems, full of all sweet melodies and refined conceits of tonal imagery. The symphony overture Francesco da Rimini possesses the deeper meaning, more vivid coloring and intensity, and was performed very creditably by the orchestra. W. M. Cross has a masterful way of presiding at the piano, and with his admirable scholarship it is to be regretted that he confines himself so closely to studio work, and is so rarely heard in public programs.
24Claude Madden outdid himself, playing the beautiful Wieniawski concerto No. 2, in D, with so much enthusiasm that the audience demanded an encore. To this Mr. Madden declined to respond. No encores were accorded except by the vocalist, the beautiful and accomplished wife of Signor d'Auria. Her program number was I'm Titania, polonaise, trom Mignon. Madame d'Auria is the possessor of a beautiful voice, exquisitely cultivated, and she sang with much finish and style, perfectly evidencing the correctness of her methods. one of two readings
25Claude Madden outdid himself, playing the beautiful Wieniawski concerto No. 2, in D, with so much enthusiasm that the audience demanded an encore. To this Mr. Madden declined to respond. No encores were accorded except by the vocalist, the beautiful and accomplished wife of Signor d'Auria. Her program number was I'm Titania, polonaise, trom Mignon. Madame d'Aria is the possessor of a beautiful voice, exquisitely cultivated, and she sang with much finish and style, perfectly evidencing the correctness of her methods. one of two readings
26In our fair city, with its atmosphere of musical appreciation, its rapid development in love of and demand for good music and work, Madame d'Auria gained from the audience a warm expression of appreciation. She is an artist, full of dramatic fire and enthusiasm. She is a pupil of her talented husband, and certainly her work is sufficient comment upon his ability as instructor in vocal art. Altogether the introduction of the new director of Manning College to the musical public of Minneapolis was a most satisfactory and completely successful event. Whatever the cause that drew the gifted Italian to Minneapolis, we most heartily welcome him and wish him all success in his new field.
27I am glad to note that every new move made in Minneapolis worthy of record is a step gained in the musical progress of the city. We have some musicians, both instrumental and vocal, who work untiringly for the present advancement and future status of the art in Minneapolis, and that, too, against the most fearful odds of discouragement and all sorts of petty distractions. There are a few patient souls who should be canonized for their noble endurance of adverse surroundings. Even in my humble sphere of recording critic I fume inwardly at the contemptible tricks resorted to by some of "low degree," mentally and musically, to gain notoriety. It is an everlasting stigma upon art to class them among artists. I have always contended, and I shall always do so, that real art, "pure and undefiled," needs no champion; it speaks for itself. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," and a mind to understand, let him apply."
28All hail to Carreño and our Thursday Musical Club for bringing her to Minneapolis. More anon.
29ACTON HORTON.
31EL PASO.
32EL PASO, Tex, May 1, 1897.
33MISS NEALLY STEVENS, well known in concert circles as a most accomplished pianist, has been in El Paso, where she favored local music lovers with three fine recitals. Miss Stevens has steadily maintained her reputation as an artist for many years in concert tours about the country, and her enthusiasm in the cause of the divine Muse has never abated. People here were delighted with her. She is now touring through Texas and doing musical missionary work.
34The McGinty Club gave a big musical blow-out at the Opera House recently before a $600 house, so the club is now able to buy new instruments for its concert band of thirty-two men, and the summer band concerts on the plaza this season will be better than ever. The club is proposing to build a big clubhouse.
35Chuch music is looking up in El Paso. Under the able lead and direction of Prof. Joseph Smith, who studied for five years under Dr. Gunton at Chester Cathedral, England, the music at St. Clement's Episcopal Church has gained immensely. The professor is the best organist in the Southwest, and with only a two manual vocation organ and a rather small choir he is successfully introducing here the English cathedral service. The choir knew but eighteen hymns when the professor came, but they now know over 100, and can sing the Psalter through with credit, along with an increasing repertory of anthems.
36The Presbyterian church choir, under the direction of Miss Helen Brown, of Chicago, has wonderfully improved, and the order of music given there is of steadily increasing value. Trinity Methodist Church has secured Miss Florence Beall, a Berlin graduate, as director and organist, and a quartet choir is now maintained in that church.
37Miss Nettie Small, one of the best soprano singers in this part of the country, married Prof. Pierre Douillet, at Sherman, Tex, recently, and has left El Paso for good. Her successor here as a dramatic soprano promises to be Miss Harriet B. Robinson, formerly of the New England Conservatory, at Boston, whose voice has so strengthened and improved in the last two years as to be a source of gratification not merely to the lady herself, but to her many friends. She is a very handsome brunette, and has a charming personality and stage presence.
38Miss Marie Shelton is proving to be one of the most attractive lyric sopranos in this part of the country, and Miss Emma Ulman, as contralto, is widely known in the Southwest as a most promising vocalist. El Paso is becoming quite a town for local concert work, and good church singing. We are not so much given over to chasing after prize fighters as the St. Louis and Chicago papers would have the country believe.
39ROBERT J. JESSUP. one of two readings
40Robert J. Jessup. one of two readings
42Voice Training.
43ARTICLE IV.
44ALL the evil effects noted in the case of the male student employing the abdominal process in breathing are equally to be observed in the efforts of the female student, with the additional danger of physical debility as regards diseases incidental to the sex of the latter.
45The writer desires to impress upon the minds of the female student the almost unavoidable danger attendant upon the adoption of this process of volitional expiration of the breath.
46The necessitated throat action, undue waste of tissue, the posterior location of the column of air, with the attendant false intonation, tremulous tone, huskiness and nasal twang, resulting in premature vocal decay, are items of importance sufficient to condemn the process without the addition of uterine difficulties that must result in broken health and a living misery.
47To destroy the voice and the health both is a lamentable conclusion to the patient and conscientious work of an earnest student seeking cultivation of a naturally good voice, which if properly trained would have gained its possessor the fame and fortune of a successful public career.
48Where there is a tendency to uterine weakness it takes but a short time, through the practice of this fallacy, a few months only sometimes, to bring about physical debility. If one inclined to such difficulties can arrive at such a point in so short a time, then the strongest in this respect must succumb to a more prolonged course of such abuse.
49I could enumerate scores of these afflicted victims who have come under my observation in the pursuit of my profession.
50These cases presented themselves in various degrees of organic debility and physicians had failed to effect a cure because the source of the difficulty had not been reached. It was this horrible fallacy that had engendered and aggravated the organic trouble, and while its practice was continued restoration through medical treatment was impossible.
51My attention was first brought to the abdominal breathing process by Dr. C. A. Guilmette in about the year 1858. It is my opinion that he was among the first, if not really the first, to introduce its abominable practice into this country. Guilmette also had a patent process for "kneading the ribs" which with the exercises for protruding and retracting the abdomen formed a combination act that was supposed to give the singer a most wonderful control over the breath.
52Fortunately I escaped hernia in my abdominal exercises—a little strange, for I was a terribly energetic student, but the rib kneading business so irritated my small intestine that this organ, and all the absorbent vessels and glands which are a portion of it or related to it were woefully disturbed, the result being a morbid state of indigestion that distressed me for two years or more after I had discovered the dangers attendant upon this rib-kneading and abdomen working process and had quit the employment of such exercises forever.
53No other advocate of abdominal breathing, to my knowledge, taught its abominable principles until some ten years after the advent of Guilmette, when Madame Rudersdorff came to this country and opened shop as a vocal teacher in Boston.
54Not only did Rudersdorff employ this abomination and disseminate its miseries, but she also introduced the snout system of placing the voice, another abomination now flourishing as a fad under the more elegant appellation of dans le masque. Between these two vagaries this teacher sowed seed that was fruitful in disastrous results.
55At the time that Rudersdorff was at the height of her notoriety in Boston, and the debilitating processes of her method were in evidence among ambitious students identified with her teachings, a local physician, Dr. Clifton E. Wing, who made a specialty of female complaints, wrote a pamphlet entitled The Abdominal Method of Singing and Breathing as a Cause of Female Weaknesses.
56Dr. Wing was inspired to write the pamphlet because of his experience with five aggravated cases of uterine difficulties, all of which patients were victims of the abdominal system of breathing as taught by Rudersdorff. Upon further investigation Dr. Wing found a number of other female vocal students whose experience with abdominal breathing agreed with that of his five patients. This pamphlet was on sale at the "Corner Bookstore" and no doubt did yeoman service in enlightening vocal students through an exposition of this abominable system of instruction.
57Just think of the misery that alone has come out of a perpetuation of this horrible vagary through its dissemination by pupils graduated from the school of this misguiding preceptress, many of whom, spread over the country, became teachers of the abomination.
58Since Rudersdorff's day a horde of teachers have entered the field, educated at home and abroad, who are advocates of this abdominal fallacy. Nowadays they are to be found on every hand. The miseries of the system and its evil effects have stalked over the land like a pestilence, and its practice should be regarded as such and dealt with accordingly.
59I have noted the course of many students and singers, male and female, who have adopted this means of bringing about premature vocal decay, and in the most defiant manner have defended its employment; but in every case vocal deterioration has followed the institution of its processes as a penalty. I have yet to find an exception to the rule of vocal degeneracy following a positive and habitual employment of the abdominal method of singing and breathing.
60All students, male or female, are warned to avoid this system of abdominal breathing and singing. Also to avoid all volitional control of the diaphragm in the expiration of breath. The diaphragm must be allowed to do its own work, independent of any control upon the part of the singer.
61Concerning abdominal breathing and singing I can say that scores of victims have come under my observation as evidences of its direful results, both as regards its evil effect upon the effort of voice production and its baneful influence in the matter of the health of the female sex. To teach such a system should render one amenable to the law.
62In listening to the singing of the noted tenor, Mr. Ben Davies, quite recently, I was distressed at the result obtained from so noble a voice and so intelligent a musician. There was little or no freedom and flow of the voice in his efforts. The pushing, forcing process of the diaphragmatic-abdominal effort was the dominant method of his voice emission. Occasionally the singer would inflate the upper chest sufficiently to gain normal action and show the inherent beauty of his voice, but the results obtained were almost wholly those arising from the flat chest and protruding abdomen effort. Insecurity in the upper notes was a consequence of this process, and one was constantly in fear that his voice would break, which in fact it was on the verge of doing at times. I don't see what can prevent this disaster sometimes. Besides a stiffness and dryness to the tone, he loses two or three semitones higher that if normally produced would lie easily within his compass.
63(To be continued.)
64Harry J. Fellows.—During the winter Mr. Fellows has given the most delightful monthly recitals at his studio, Erie, Pa. The attendance at these recitals has been large and appreciative. Mr. Fellows will sing in Denver on May 21 and 22 at the May Festival with Geneva Johnstone-Bishop.
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