Scan 24
Musical Courier 1897-09-15: Vol 35 Iss 915, 1897
75 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 25. 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.
1what analogous), the fact remains, Swedish musicians know little of the music of other countries—the balance of Scandinavia excepted—and make no attempt to know more.
3The programs of the six festival concerts contained works only by Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Swedish composers. This restriction, though appropriate at a national festival, ultimately becomes a bore to a foreigner who is not stimulated by local patriotism into boundless admiration of everything Scandinavian. The peculiarities of Norse music are eminently suited to hymns, war songs and psalms, which exciting compositions are not expected to contain more complicated harmonies than changes from the tonic to the dominant and an occasional detour into a neighboring minor key, but when these characteristics are introduced in sheer endless profusion into symphonies, overtures, songs and sonatas the effect on the listener is extremely wearisome, not to say enervating.
5The duration of the festival meant for me a time of ineluctable minor keys, Norse intervals—especially that of the fourth—and haunting peasant dance rhythms. The landscape took on an indigo-purplish, misty mirror hue, horsecar bells jingled trills in E flat and B flat minor, the faces of the pedestrians on the streets expressed longing, pain, and what the Raconteur would love to quote as "Weltenschmerz," the hum of conversation in crowded places resolved itself into the lilt of lulling minor vibrations, and the very atmosphere seemed big with lowering, heavy gray minor intervals. How Poe, Swinburne, Baudelaire and Verlaine would have enjoyed it! Here is a comprehensive list of the works presented:
7Symphonies—Gade, Svendsen, Baerwald.
8Symphonic Poems and Overtures—Drapa, Rubenson; Asgardsreien, Ole Oleson; Haermaendene, Hartmann; overture on Swedish themes, Norman; suite, Ivan Holter; nocturne, P. E. Lange-Muller; suite, Gustaf Wasa's Saga, Hallen.
9Sonatas—For piano and violin, Sinding Eyvind, Alnoes, Gade.
10Chamber Music—String quartets, Grieg, Nielsen, Baerwald.
11String Quintet—Svendsen.
12Piano Quintet—Malling.
13Piano Sextet—Norman.
14Oratorios and Other Choral Works—Birth of Christ, Wennerberg; Mass, Sodermann; cantatas, Norman, Hornemann, Valentine, Gade and Josephson.
15Concertos—Violin, Jos. Dente; piano, Wm. Stenhammar.
16Songs—Hallstorm, Rosenfeld, Heise, Barnekow, Hartman, Bechgaard, Geijer, Kjerulf, Elling, Grondahl, Akerberg, Sjogren, Soedblom, Grieg, Dannstrom, Korling, Berger.
18To criticise all these works in detail would require a more patient pen than mine, but I shall subjoin a running commentary on the most important compositions.
20Gade's symphony sounded antiquated; it is too obviously Mendelssohnian. Baerwald's work served to show that myriad of notes strung together and divided into separate movements by no means constituted a symphony. Svendsen's glorious tone poem in D major was not generally appreciated—possibly because he is Norwegian. The symphony should be included in the repertory of our large American orchestras. It is broad, noble, inspired. Svendsen is not one of those who writes to order; he works only when the mood is upon him.
22Olsen's symphonic overture was magnificently orchestrated, streaked lavishly with bold blobs of Oriental color, but paucity of thematic invention interferes with complete enjoyment of the work. Holter's suite suffers from lack of tonal variety. The composer seemed afraid to wander too far from the initial key. Hallen's suite contains some mildly interesting moments, but on the whole sounds machine made and lifeless. Lange-Muller's nocturne for orchestra is a pretty idyll with a haunting theme and bizarre harmonies. Sinding's sonata disappointed me. It was robust and bold, but not convincing. At times Sinding seems to lack sincerity. I think him too good a musical mathematician.
24I like none of the choral works, though I admired—and was deeply grateful for—the tremendous clash of cymbals and triangles with which Sodermann's Mass concludes, for one is enabled to awake at the right moment and join in the applause as if nothing had happened.
26Of the songs, I thought those by Berger, Elling and Geijer very interesting, and am very enthusiastic about Kjerulf's Soomen and Ingrids vise; Agathe Grondahl's Maiuat, Host pa heien, Liden Kirsten and Viol; and Sjorgen's set of songs, Fogden pa Penneberg.
28Grondahl's Hors pa heien is a remarkable creation, full of wild gloom and sombre Norwegian poetry. The accompaniment is momentously effective, especially at the close of each strophe, where weird, lurid fifths illustrate the words "over the desolate fields." Sjorgen's lyrics follow French tradition and remind one of Bizet, Massenet and Chaminade.
30Stenhammer played the first movement of his concerto for piano in B flat minor. The work has been fully analyzed in these columns. The composer is a tall, blonde, insipid looking young fellow of 24. In his conversation and manners he is unpleasantly supercilious and arrogant. He is not popular in Stockholm, for most of the older Swedish musicians are jealous of his success in Germany and of his friendship with such men as Joachim, Brahms and Reinecke. one of two readings
31Stenhammar played the first movement of his concerto for piano in B flat minor. The work has been fully analyzed in these columns. The composer is a tall, blonde, insipid looking young fellow of 24. In his conversation and manners he is unpleasantly supercilious and arrogant. He is not popular in Stockholm, for most of the older Swedish musicians are jealous of his success in Germany and of his friendship with such men as Joachim, Brahms and Reinecke. one of two readings
33The choruses sang excellently, and the orchestra, though hampered by playing under so many different leaders, did little less than nobly. Of the conductors I liked Svendsen best.
35Excepting Christmas, Vallborgsmässan (Walpurgisnacht, or the eve of Eruption Week) is the most generally observed holiday in Sweden. The Stockholmians celebrate it in Skansen, a model Swedish village that serves as an open air museum for antique Swedish houses, peasant costumes and Norse relics of all kinds. Here, just outside the city, the throng congregates, while the inhabitants of Skansen light huge bonfires, sing, dance, and make the scene oddly picturesque through the observance of quaint old traditional customs. On the evening in question I was one of the crowd, numbering at least 1,000, who scrambled to cover every inch of ground on one shore of the small lake in the centre of the village. On the opposite bank is a wooded patch, and beyond that a high red tower, on top of which blazed six enormous fires. Beneath and behind us twinkled a forest of lights—Stockholm, the Venice of the North.
37A Laplander, clad in wooly furs, who spoke very good English, explained that the fires are lighted to drive away the evil spirits abroad on the ghostly night of April 30. I also learned the not uninteresting fact that the Laplander had been a waiter at one of the leading Chicago hotels during the Columbian fair.
39A mighty burst of song, coming from an invisible male chorus on the opposite shore of the lake, announced that the students' concert had begun. Four hundred strong, gifted with voices more lusty than mellifluous, they sang Swedish national songs and folk melodies.
41These are also threaded with an ever present minor strain, which lends an indefinable charm, half sad, half gentle, plaintively poetical.
43Swedish peasant melodies, with their unconventional combinations of major thirds and diminished seconds, their irregular periods and unexpected intervals, are thoroughly characteristic of this gentle, dreamy nation, and their sparsely settled, rocky country, with its vast deserted valleys, its quiet bays and dreary fjords.
45It is difficult to account for the dirge-like character of Swedish peasant melodies, for the tragic events of Swedish history all took place long after the complaining cadences of the national music had become its dominant characteristic. Most of the students' songs are by Bellman, the great Swedish poet-musician. The house on the verandah of which Bellman was wont to sit on soft summer nights with his friend and admirer, King Gustav Adolph III., reciting his extempore stanzas and accompanying them with improvised music on the guitar, still stands within a very short distance of Skansen. Some superstitious persons say that Bellman's ghost has been seen on Vallborgsmässan, listening to the singing at Skansen and plucking the strings of a silent guitar.
47The inky darkness about us, intensified by the blazing fires in our vicinity, the rustling trees—it was a windy night—the vast celestial vault above, the shimmering lake trembling in the reflection of the moon, the distant twinkling city, the great crowd, silent and awed, in spite of their holiday humor, and last of all, the mysterious sobbing music that seemed to be blown into the embrace of the wind, there to tremble for an instant, then be carried rapidly into black space, leaving behind faint, dying, tremulous vibrations—all this was most weirdly romantic.
49When the singing had ceased there followed a long pause, and then, as if to shake off the unwonted mood into which they had been lulled, the auditors applauded with rapturous vehemence.
51I left the crowd thus occupied and wandered about the grounds, peering into the cottage interiors, where I saw immense old open fireplaces, quaintly carved wardrobes, bureaus and cradles, wrought iron window lattices, pewter tea kettles and shining drinking mugs, fantastical wood frescoes, candlesticks that would tempt honest collectors to steal, antique horn powder-flasks, clumsy blunderbusses, formidable battle-axes and spears, inscribed chairs and benches and—uncommonly pretty Swedish girls in national costumes, who watched over all these treasures and told their history for the modest sum of 10 öre and a chuck under the chin. I was liberal and gave two chucks.
53At the end of the village I came upon a series of low huts representing a Laplandish settlement. A group of English tourists were gathered about one of the doors. I joined them and found the attraction to be my Laplander of the early evening, who was cooking a juicy steak over a blazing fire, and explaining to the interested spectators—in very broken English—that he was preparing reindeer meat. The party were delighted, especially so one young lady of about sixteen, who carried the traditional red book, from which she read aloud various exciting details of life in Lapland.
55The ex-waiter exhibited from afar a bottle of familiar shape, and announced nonchalantly that he would warm himself with a swallow of "walrus oil." The English gentlemen made wry faces, the ladies shuddered, and she of the red book turned to page 29, and read entertainingly of the nutritious qualities of walrus oil. The performance concluded with a national dance, and the tourists, highly pleased, rained princely emolument on the wily native. Verily things are what they seem, not what they are.
57I had a letter from my talented and valuable associate, Mr. Otto Floersheim, in which he writes that he is en route to Berlin via the Rhine and Ostend, and shall arrive here in about one week. Mr. Floersheim spent his time in Geneva bicycle riding, boating, swimming and walking. An American friend of mine who saw my genial chief in Geneva told me he is looking painfully thin.
59I just learn that Mr. A. K. Virgil will conduct a three months' course of "Virgil Method" at the Stern Conservatory. The course is announced to begin in September.
61LEONARD LIEBLING.
63Mme. Doria Devine.—Mme. Doria Devine is taking her vacation during the month of September, resuming instruction at her new studio in the Mason & Hamlin Building, 136 Fifth avenue, in October.
65Miss Katherine V. Dickinson.—Miss Katherine V. Dickinson, the well-known principal of the vocal department of the Alton, Ill., Conservatory, left this city September 3 for that school, having devoted the summer to a study of the principles of the Lamperti method of singing with Mme. Doria Devine.
67Henry Wolfsohn's Musical Bureau,
68131 EAST 17th STREET,
69NEW YORK.
70LILLIAN BLAUVELT, Farewell Season.
71Mr. and Mrs. GEORG HENSCHEL, October-March.
72HENRI MARTEAU, January-May.
73SILOTI, January-May; MISS THUDICHUM, the English Concert and Oratorio Soprano; MISS NEDDA MORRISON; JENNIE HOYLE, Violinist; GERTRUDE MAY STEIN; ADA MAY BENZING; TIRZAH HAMLIN RULAND; EVAN WILLIAMS; CHARLES W. CLARK; JOHN C. DEMPSEY; GWYLLIM MILES.
74By special arrangement with Messrs. Damrosch and Ellis, the artists of their Opera Company, GADSKY, KRAUSS, CAMPANARI and FISCHER.
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