Scan 12
Musical Courier 1897-11-03: Vol 35 Iss 922, 1897
111 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 13. See the scan on archive.org.
1also of its performance of the charming Haydn quartet. The quintet is familiar to all players of classic duets, it having obtained great popularity through a four-hand arrangement for the piano. It also exists as a piano quartet (with strings). It was published by Beethoven simultaneously in this form, and in that performed last evening. It was a great pleasure to hear the quintet, if for no other reason than that it brought together the noted members of the Symphony Orchestra, and Mrs. Hopekirk, who is always among friends when in this city. Of the playing of the wind parts it is superfluous to speak. Mrs. Hopekirk played the piano part accurately and effectively, in spite of some apparent nervousness, and undoubtedly earned her share of the generous applause."
3* * *
5The program of the third Symphony concert in Music Hall last night was as follows:
7Symphony No. 8, in F major………………………………………Brahms
8Recitative, Non paventar, and aria, Infelice, from Il Flauto
9Magico………………………………………………………..Mozart
10Symphonic poem Thus Spake Zarathustra, op. 30………….Strauss
11(First time in Boston.)
12Charmant Oiseau, from La Perle du Brésil…………………..David
13Invitation to the Dance, op. 65……………………………….Weber
14Arranged for orchestra by Felix Weingartner
16Mrs. Marian Titus, the singer, has a voice of unusual compass, nor are her extreme upper tones shrill or a mere fleeting squeak. The tones throughout, although small, have carrying power and they are even and agreeable. To her proficiency in colorature seems a birthright. In the aria of the Queen of Night the recitative and larghetto demand for full effect a more dramatic voice. Mrs. Titus sang them intelligently, displaying a fine legato; and she sang the following allegro with delightful accuracy and with a flexibility that gave no suspicion of long labor. Charming, too, was her performance of David's song from the opera with the queer libretto. Do you remember the story? When the opera was revived in 1883 the libretto was revised by Barbier. At the very last rehearsal Madame Carvalho, the Zora, comprehended the plot and exclaimed with delight, "Oh, I see; the Admiral, then, is in love with Zora!"
18Let me now digress a moment. As you know, Mozart wrote the part of the Queen of Night for his sister-in-law, Josepha Weber, whose first husband was Hofer, a violinist. You would naturally suppose that her voice was of extraordinary compass, and you read in certain books, "Josepha, a bravura singer, with a high and flexible voice, but a poor musician." But in F. L. W. Meyer's "Friedrich Ludwig Schröder," Vol. II., p. 87, you will find Schröder speaking thus of her when he saw her as Oberon, at Schikaneder's Theatre (1791): "Oberon, Madame Hofer, formerly Weber. A very disagreeable singer, whose voice is not high enough for the part." This Oberon was by Paul Wranitzky. If Josepha could sing the music of the Queen of Night, for heaven's sake where did Oberon's music, which she could not sing, lie?
20I do not like to write about "Thus Spake Zarathustra" after one hearing. It would be an easier task to write about the sage known to us as Zoroaster. It would be easier to quote Pliny: How Zoroaster was the only man who laughed on the day that he was born; how his skull was so hot that you could not keep your hand on it; "which foretold his future great knowledge"; how at the age of three he reached one-half of his full stature; how he lived for twenty years in the desert eating nothing but cheese, which he had prepared so cunningly that it did not smell of age, nor was it musty, nor was it worm-eaten. Still more surprising are the things related concerning him. Thus he forbade walking with naked feet and eating dog's meat. But this would not shed light upon Nietzsche's book or the music of Strauss.
22No, I wish to think it over. Obeying the daily newspaper custom that compels expression of opinion immediately after hearing, I recorded impressions, vague impressions. To-day the passages in this stupendous work that are fixed in the memory and still exert a spell are the marvelously broad and impressive opening and the beautiful moments in the Nachtlied. And the finale, with its warring tonalities, its B major opposed to the low and deliberate C—the leaving the eternal riddle of existence unsolved?—still impresses me mightily.
24There are many things suggested by this symphonic poem that deserves thoughtful, earnest consideration. It is not a work to be summed up while you smoke a cigarette or stand waiting for a car.
26PHILIP HALE.
28Resentfulness of Musicians.
29(Continued from issue of October 27.)
31My acquaintance, the musician and composer, would ask for reasons.
33The first and best reason is this: Music is distinctly an inferior art in its own field. At most you can say for it only that it is a means of expressing emotion and of arousing emotion. It has never been intellectual but always sensuous. Addressed to unlettered hearers it has had a certain influence. Americans have seen how much greater is the influence of music over the negroes than over themselves. A Welsh king or a Highland chief found in the harpist or the piper a necessary part of his equipment.
35To-day there is but one instrument of expression which answers the purposes of our complicated and highly educated life. It is prose. That fertile and quick sighted essayist, W. H. Mallock, said in his famous little satire on modern poets: "Poetry was first a work of inspiration, secondly of science and lastly now of trick." The story of music is the same. Modern music is scarcely more than a performance of skillful tricks. Anybody can do it if he will learn a few points. The day of passion is over; the inspiration of music is gone. Overmastering impulse we now call paranoia, and melting sentiment we shut out from every organized society. Where, indeed, does music come in?
37In the revolution of centuries there may come a standstill in the place of progress and a dissolution in the place of unification. Then, somewhere, will be a time of conflict, doubt, despair and suffering; of vaguely generalized hope, of love that yearns for romance because the reality is squalor, of a combativeness that joys in the sound of clashing arms because it dares not fight. Then the great artist of expression will be inspired to use music.
39But in a land where every man has opportunity for the exertion of his power; where individual force is great; where human wants and ideals are numbered by thousands and the gratification of every one a mere matter of voluntary effort—in such a country music will be an entertainment for those who choose it. Those who choose something else will neglect it and will lose nothing for which they cannot find abundant compensation.
41In view of the duties of culture to which exhorts are calling us Americans, the musician-composer should thank his stars that certain numerous bodies of the population—chiefly women—have continued to take up music as a fad, and acquire more or less of taste for the imported article.
43The exhorts expect us to read the novels, the scientific treatises, the political speeches and the moral essays; to play outdoor games and ride the bicycle for our health; to keep up with the drama and the drawing-room; to attend the primaries and the banquet; to know European diplomacy and the routes to the Klondike; to build colleges, churches and gymnasiums; to protect ourselves against malaria and the wiles of the bunco man.
45And all these things, while we are laboring to increase the comfort and happiness of humanity by adding, each of us, a hard day's work every day to the vast productive force that makes the nineteenth century glorious above all history.
47The American child, from the kindergarten on, finds before him fresh duties when each sun rises. As a citizen, as a workman and as a humanitarian, the American man's faculties are busily employed with tasks which create more joy and more refinement than the races and ages of emotion could have understood.
49Musicians are unequal to helping the march of progress. They rail at us because we do not crowd to hear a Beethoven symphony. Beethoven was great. We admire his greatness and concede in detail all the various attributes with which the musicians endow him. But Beethoven lived in one of the periods of unsatisfied emotion. He was the music spirit of the Napoleonic era. Discontent, grief, want and death ruled among the nations. Humor was grim and gaiety was the weariness and hysteria of misfortune. We scarcely pretend to read Milton; why should we pretend to find delight in Beethoven? Boethius was the greatest writer of one generation. His name is in the catalogue, but his work has passed out of sight. Is there a different law of mortality for the work of Beethoven?
51We may rightfully suspect that the clinging of musicians to the Beethoven cult is due to the fact that music is unable to interpret modern life, and is forced back to the lost time when life could be spoken clearly in the language of harmonious sounds and rhythmic melody.
53One afternoon I stood in the big lobby of the Exposition Building. An opera season was on. The company were giving "Siegfried." My companion was one of the leaders in the literary set of St. Louis. As we waited for the music to begin, a lady of the literary set came dashing up, her eyes bright with enthusiasm and her head full of talk. She took possession of my friend, and "discussed." She had the cant phrases of Wagnerism at her tongue's end. She had "read up" industriously; had probably attended several conversations and lectures.
55It was plain that she had no trace of insight into the music itself; and yet she would have sincerely claimed a right to be offended if anybody had intimated that she would better listen to "Siegfried" at least a half dozen times before she ventured to talk much about it.
57Isn't that sort of music worship worse by a great deal than no worship at all?
59And that sort is the only sort the serious opera and the symphony get in this country—or ever will get, I fear.
61Men care little about serious music, because they find that all possible themes are more clearly carried into expression with the national and natural prose language. Music is too limited, too vague, too uncertain.
63Women, I believe, care as little; but, as the Hindoo said of his idol, they feel that it is great, and, while they feel that way, they will be willing to make it the subject of adulatory conversation.
65Memory will not surrender the moments of pleasure given by fine music. We remember when Theodore Thomas introduced us to Wagner with the Tannhäuser overture; when Sarasate showed us for the first time the intense but dainty tenderness of the much-played Mendelssohn concerto; when Parepa poured out the richness of that marvelous upper register; when Wachtel brought us the first real chest C; old or recent, such moments are respected, at least, in recollection.
67But suppose we had not enjoyed them? Not a man of us can truthfully say that his experience would have missed appreciably in its accumulation of beauties or refinements, much less of the useful or the fruitifying.
69Beauties and refinements are many. It is certain that music could be taken away altogether without perceptible interference with the progress of the century in the arts which soften manners. The world is full of compensations. Art as art is a question of taste; and taste has the privilege of being fanciful when it has much to choose from.
71Our musicians and composers ought to be grateful that they are still so flourishing in fashion. Yet they deserve sympathy in their resentment. It is no joking matter to feel that the world is likely to desert your art at any time and is already half in the notion.—J. A. Graham in the St. Louis Republic.
73J. HARRY WHEELER,
74Voice Production and the Art of Singing.
75Voices educated strictly in the Italian school. Teacher of Mme. Eleanore Meredith, Mme. Abbie Carrington, Harry J. Fellows and others.
76STUDIO: 81 Fifth Ave., cor. 16th St., NEW YORK.
78JULIUS KLAUSER,
79Berlin, Germany.
80SEASON 1897-98.
81Care THE MUSICAL COURIER, Link Str. 17, W.
82CAROLYN L. YEATON,
83Accompaniments and Instruction.
84YEATON,
85CONCERT PIANIST.
86Steinway Hall or 363 West 31st Street, New York.
87(no line here) one of two readings
89ANITA RIO
90SOPRANO.
91ADDRESS: 204 West 114th Street.
93ALEXANDER SILOTI,
94Liszt's Favorite Pupil.
95In America, January until April.
96Address THE WOLFSOHN MUSICAL BUREAU,
97131 East 17th Street, New York,
98(no line here) one of two readings
100EMILIO AGRAMONTE,
101… Vocal Instruction.
102For Terms, &c., address
103110 LEXINGTON AVE., NEW YORK.
104Will Continue Teaching During the Summer.
106Clarence De Vaux
107Royer,
108Violin Soloist.
109Pupil of Ysaye, Halir and Marsick.
110Care of The Musical Courier.
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