Scan 22
Musical Courier 1897-07-14: Vol 35 Iss 906, 1897
86 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 23. See the scan on archive.org.
1CHICAGO OFFICE OF THE MUSICAL COURIER,
2226 Wabash avenue, July 9, 1897.
4GROSS misrepresentation amounting almost to fraud is conveyed in the placard announcements of the Chicago Orchestra. These placards are seen in the principal music stores, piano houses, colleges and halls of Chicago, and while they state that the season ticket sale is now in progress they also have what purports to be a picture of the orchestra as it is.
6This picture, containing the photographs of Theodore Thomas and eighty instrumentalists, is supposed to represent his company of players, but falsely contains the photographs of twenty-nine men who have not been with the organization for many months past and are not within measurable time of again being connected with it. To mention the most prominent, there are the pictures of Max Bendix, Theodore Spiering, Herman Diestal, Otto Roerborn, Joseph Vilim, T. Yunker, Eugene Boegner, Landers and twenty others, all of whom have seceded from the orchestra, some from motives of self-respect, some from jealousy on the part of the present management. Especially was this the case with Mr. Bendix, and the orchestral authorities have never been able to replace him.
8That this conspicuously misleading card, tending as it does to cheat the musical public, should be permitted to appear is a scandal and shows the greatest weakness, or else the management would not have to resort to chicanery and questionable methods to obtain subscribers. Let us see of what the orchestra is composed.
10There are sixty regular members whose salaries range from $20 to $60 weekly. Some of these are fairly good musicians, but with the exception of Bruno Steindl there is not one well-known name. But few of these musicians could play a solo respectfully, and as for individually being able to draw $25 worth of attendance in a week, there is not one member of the orchestra who could manage this. In addition to the regulars there are twenty men who are not regularly employed by the association, but who are engaged for the season in Chicago, but not to travel when the organization visits other cities.
12These non-attached members have until recently been obliged to play for a salary of from $14 to $18 per week but they have now resolved themselves into a union, and have struck for a uniform salary of $20 weekly.
14Unless the management concedes to this demand there is every possibility of a still further diminished orchestra. Some of the outside men are far more competent than the regulars, and it would be sad if the present muddle results in dispensing with them. It would be absolutely deplorable so far as the orchestral association is concerned if the number was reduced from eighty to sixty musicians this number it is hinted will be the maximum required, and that those who left the orchestra last year will be replaced. It now looks as if the season 1897-8 will be the funeral of the Chicago Orchestra, as people have become thoroughly disgusted with the management or mismanagement and concerts of last year. This, together with the dismissal of all the good musicians and the engagement of a lot of untired men, making a third of the orchestra absolutely new, is not calculated to conduce toward confidence.
16It is of no use for the orchestra people to issue fraudulent cards and try to foster fake schemes on the supposition that the public is so loyal to Mr. Thomas that it will over-
18look any little peculiarities in which an eccentric manager may indulge. While the average person, who takes but little stock in music, but who attends the Chicago Orchestra's concerts because others may believe that the names and pictures which are sent broadcast now represent the orchestra as it is, the musical public cannot be so fooled.
20The Musical Courier is here to enlighten them, and these are the people who look to this paper for their information and in a majority of instances are guided by what it says.
22Not only the placards but the circulars are misleading, as they are devised to make people believe that the present orchestra possesses the same membership of artistic and well-known people as it did the season 1893-4. This again is not so; the Chicago orchestra to-day is a body of nonentities led by an entity and a woman.
24In the preliminary announcements of the Chicago Orchestra the names of but three people appear—Theodore Thomas, Arthur Mees and Anna Millar. Is this the quorum?
26Miss Anna Millar has so far announced the following engagements made: Rosenthal, Marteau and Chaminade. Of these Chaminade is not coming. Therefore the public is asked to subscribe to a mediocre orchestra and two soloists who may and may not present themselves. If the local large organization can make no better proposition and definite announcement, it is an absurdity for it to solicit subscriptions. We're tired.
28Algebraically considered, music in Chicago may be summed up like this: Given X, an elderly hybrid female with a tendency to bifurcated masculinity, + Y, an overworked anti-American conductor with allegiance to beer and Beethoven, + Z, a band composed of the rag, tag and bob-tail of the genus musicus, — A, a disgusted public and a deadhead attendance.
30Music in conservatories is not always what it should be. In a very prominent music school here the following remarkable definitions and answers were given at a recent examination:
31Da capo—Go back to the beginning and end in the middle.
32Staccato—Disconnected.
33Arietta—Solo in an opera.
34Schubert belongs to the Erl King, Händel to the Messiah. Grieg was an English composer.
35The ninth symphony is the greatest work that exists for the piano.
36Brahms was an English composer.
37Wagner was a Scandinavian.
38French composer, Mazzenet.
39Russian composer, Meyerbeer.
40Faust—One of Wagner's principal works.
41Wagner's subjects were usually taken from deep things, and breathed out the primeval in them.
42Massenet wrote the Erl King.
43Mozart wrote sonatas and a concerto.
44Mendelssohn wrote many "songs without words," which are a great improvement on the popular songs of our day.
45Chopin showed how the sentimental could be brought out. His music is flaming and smooth, while that of Mozart is more labored and not so spontaneous.
46A scale is when you progress from one natural tone to another until the octave is reached.
47A symphony is a composition without regular form.
48A sonata is an elaborate composition.
49Palestrina was born in Palestrina, near Italy.
50Bennett is an early English composer.
51Gluck wrote Martha.
52Wagner wrote La Valking.
53Mendelssohn wrote Eligha.
54Verdi wrote Faust.
55Wagner wrote Des Meinstrelsinger.
56Beethoven was a modern Italian composer.
57Clef is the sense of pitch.
58Clef is the five lines and four spaces we write on.
60A symphony is the highest form of tonality.
61A symphony is a poem set to music.
62French composers, Massenet and Wienioskei.
63A sonata is a saranade.
64Beethoven's first composition was the Waldstein Sonata.
66A malodorous odor clings to the name of the M. T. N. A. here in Chicago, and various predictions are indulged in regarding its ill-lived life and the possibility of spontaneous combustion. I have been told by various good people who attended the holy show that the entire week was a fiasco; that nothing had been done for the comfort and convenience of visitors and that the West can give the East a pointer or two in the matter of courtesy.
68In this regard take the case of Mr. W. L. Tomlins, who was requested to take the place of Mr. Frank Damrosch. There was so much talk here relative to this especial case that I interviewed Mr. Tomlins upon the subject.
69I managed to obtain particulars of a most flagrant breach of courtesy, but the story is somewhat long and will be given next week if the M. T. N. A. will permit.
71Godey's Magazine for this month has a capital article treating of music in the Middle West. Mr. Rubert Hughes in a highly interesting essay says that Mr. Frederic Grant Gleason is the most prominent of our composers, and in this statement everyone here, musician and otherwise, will agree. He is not only prominent as a composer who has "written in large form with distinguished success," but he is also distinguished as a critic. Before ill health compelled his retirement Mr. Gleason was connected with the old Chicago Times, the Chicago Tribune and The Musical Courier.
73Mr. Hughes has justly made the history of Mr. Gleason's work interesting, and it will appeal especially to musicians, not only in Chicago, but generally, so I give it.
75Most prominent among the native composers is doubtless Frederic Grant Gleason, Esq., who has written in the large forms with distinguished success. The Thomas Orchestra has performed a number of his works, which is an excellent praise, because Mr. Thomas, who has done so much for American audiences, has worried himself little about the American composer. At the World's Fair, which was, in some ways, the artistic birthday of Chicago, and possibly the most important artistic event in our history, some of Mr. Gleason's works were performed by Mr. Thomas' organization. Among them was Vorspiel to an opera, Otho Visconti, for which Mr. Gleason wrote both words and music. The Vorspiel, like that to Lohengrin, is short and delicate. It begins ravishingly with flutes and clarinets and four violins, pianissimo, followed by a blare of brass. After this introductory period the work runs through tenderly contemplative musing to the end, in which, again, the only strings are the four violins, though here they are accompanied by the brass and woodwinds and tympani, the cymbals being gently tapped with drum sticks.
77The introduction to the third act of the opera is more lyrical but not so fine. Another opera by Mr. Gleason is Montezuma, op. 16. Otho was the seventh opus. Mr. Gleason is again his own librettist. Of this opera I have seen only the Introduction and Priests' March. It has a grain of martial melody in a bushel of trumpet figures and other preparations. "There are a few effectively blantant discords. In this opera the Wagnerian leit-motif idea is adopted.
79Another work played at the World's Fair by Mr. Thomas is a Processional of the Holy Grail. It is scored elaborately, but is rather brilliant than large. It complimentarily introduces a hint or two of Wagner's Grail motif.
81The symphonic poem Edris was also performed by the Thomas Orchestra. It is based on Marie Corelli's novel, Ardath, which gives opportunity for much programmatism, but of a mystical, highly colored sort for which music is especially competent. It makes use of a number of remarkably beautiful motifs. One effect much commented upon was a succession of fifths in the bass. It is said that the copyist, on sending the parts back, wrote in the margin "Quinten!" to which Mr. Gleason added "Gewiss!"
83Possibly Mr. Gleason's happiest work is his exquisite music for that most exquisite of American poems, The Culprit Fay. It is described in detail in Mr. Upton's Standard Cantatas, and liberally quoted from in Mr. Goodrich's Musical Analysis.
85As is shown by the two or three vocal works of his that I have seen, Mr. Gleason is less successful as a melodist than as a harmonist. But in this latter capacity he is gifted indeed. He shows by his use of suspensions and passing
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