Scan 18
Musical Courier 1899-10-11: Vol 39 Iss 1021, 1899
68 lines. Read by computer on 22 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 19. See the scan on archive.org.
1Richard Wagner. Yet after all the rout, the critical confusion, he seems bigger and better. Not, however, in the moral or mental, but in the musical sense. Despite his crazy quilt art, despite his inferiority to Bach and Beethoven, Wagner went the right way, the way appointed for him by his Norns. If he had avoided the path of fatuity, of grievous sinning against taste and convention and sanity even, we should not have the real Richard. He is still blowing bubbles, stupendously sweet bubbles of tone for us, and he is the most popular composer since Rossini. He cannot help it. Statistics prove it, and some day it may prove his undoing. Read Ernest Newman's study and wonder at the fillip of fate given Wagner the Thinker. He is voice, nothing more. Further critical warfare would be futile, for the battle has been fought, has been won. The Wagner incident is closed.
3An Electric Orchestra.
5To the Editor of the Herald:
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8LET me present to you a new invention made by a priest, Don Antonio Pagani. It is an electric orchestra. I hope it will be interesting to your readers to know it.
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11With the new invention, one person is able to play a complete orchestra very easily.
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14From the tops of the keys of a keyboard starts a skein of electric wires, which arrive to another apparatus, where are placed several instruments of music, which all play by the means of electro-magnets, giving the movements of the instruments' bows, and producing the same movement ample or shaking, as wished. Many other electro-magnets give action to substitute the work of fingers as keyboards on the strings of the instruments.
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17The maestro Signor Alfredo Donizetti, who has tried to play the new electric orchestra, gave his judgment as follows, in a letter he wrote to a friend of his:
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20"The electric orchestra invented by the priest Don Antonio Pagani is one of the most singular and witty novelties of the moment. Any pianist may easily give action by himself to the complex mechanism, communicating, according to the gravity or acuteness of the sound, with a violin, viol or violoncello.
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23"To Don Antonio Pagani, to whom we owe the first application of electricity to musical instruments, I am very glad to present my best wishes for the triumph of his wonderful and splendid invention."
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26Don Antonio Pagani is the priest at the Church of Madonna del Soccorso, over Lenno, on the Lake of Como.
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29He has put his electric orchestra in a special room close to the Voltean Exhibition, in Como. He wishes to sell his invention.
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32Azzano, September 19, 1899.
34THE above appeared in the Paris edition of the New York Herald, and is reprinted, but without any wish to indorse the rather far-reaching proposition embraced in the described machine.
36Romualdo Sapio.
38Romualdo Sapio has returned to New York from Europe, where his vacation was passed, and resumed his place at the head of the vocal department of the National Conservatory of Music. He has also begun to give private lessons at his new studio, No. 128 West Fifty-ninth street, and is already busy with old and new pupils. Judging from his achievements, he will accomplish good results this season.
40Miss Clara Farrington, a pupil of César Thomson, who recently returned from Europe and is to be heard in concerts this season under Charles L. Young's direction, made her American début as an artist recently at her home, Perth Amboy. The Elizabeth Journal, speaking of her appearance there, said: "New Jersey has contributed many stars to the musical galaxy, and last week one of her fair young daughters, a violinist, stepped forth in the stellar firmament. That she chose her home as the location for her first public appearance lent a charm and atmosphere to the event that differentiated it from an appearance before a coldly critical metropolitan audience, and doubtless enabled the young débutante to make a much more re- poseful and artistic entrée into the musical world."
42Chas. L. Young, manager of Mme. Rosa Linde, the contralto, announces that she has just received a flattering offer to sing in Italy at the conclusion of her engagements in this country. Madame Linde will accept for early in the spring. She is of German ancestry, but she sings Italian and French like a native of those countries.
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45Richard Wagner. Yet after all the rout, the critical confusion, he seems bigger and better. Not, however, in the moral or mental, but in the musical sense. Despite his crazy quilt art, despite his inferiority to Bach and Beethoven, Wagner went the right way, the way appointed for him by his Norns. If he had avoided the path of fatuity, of grievous sinning against taste and convention and sanity even, we should not have the real Richard. He is still blowing bubbles, stupendously sweet bubbles of tone for us, and he is the most popular composer since Rossini. He cannot help it. Statistics prove it, and some day it may prove his undoing. Read Ernest Newman's study and wonder at the fillip of fate given Wagner the Thinker. He is voice, nothing more. Further critical warfare would be futile, for the battle has been fought, has been won. The Wagner incident is closed. one of two readings
47DIVERS.
49ROBERT SCHUMANN, it is related, shook his head wearily when his early work was mentioned. "Dreary stuff," said the composer, whose critical sense did not fail him in even so personal a question. What Chopin thought of his youthful music may be discovered in his scanty correspondence. To suppose that the young Chopin sprang into the arena a fully equipped warrior is one of those nonsensical notions that could only gain currency among persons unfamiliar with the law of musical evolution. Chopin's musical ancestry is easily traced, and I know of no more delightful task than the examination of his early works as a basis of comparison to the mature music of his second period. The germs are all there; in op. 1 and up to opus 22 virtuosity for virtuosity's sake is very evident. Liszt has said that in every young artist there is the virtuoso fever, and Chopin being a pianist did not escape the fevers of the footlights. He was composing, too, at a time when piano music was well nigh strangled by excess of ornament, when acrobats were kings and the Bach Fugue and Beethoven Sonata lurked neglected and dusty in the memories of the few. Little wonder, then, we find this individual, youthful Pole, not timidly treading in the path of popular composition, but bravely carrying his banner, spangled, glittering and fanciful, outstripping at their own game all the virtuosi of Europe. His originality in this bejeweled work caused Hummel to admire and Kalkbrenner to wonder. The supple fingers of the young man from Warsaw made quick work of existing technical difficulties. He needs must invent some of his own. He did so, and when Schumann saw the pages of op. 2 he uttered his historical cry: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius!" To-day we wonder somewhat at his enthusiasm. It is the old story—a generation seeks to know, a generation comprehends and enjoys, and a generation discards.
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52Op. 1, a Rondo in C minor, dedicated to Madame de Linde, saw the light in 1825, but it was preceded by two polonaises, a set of variations, and two mazurkas in G and B flat major. Schumann declared that Chopin's first published work was his tenth, and that between op. 1 and 2 there lay two years and twenty works. Be this as it may, one cannot help liking the C minor Rondo. In the A flat section I detect traces of his F minor Concerto. There is lightness, joy in creation, which contrast with the heavy, dour quality of the C minor Sonata, op. 4. Loosely constructed, in a formal sense, and too exuberant for his strict confines, this op. 1 is remarkable, much more remarkable, than Schumann's Abegg variations.
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55The "Rondo à la Mazur," in F, is a further advance. It is dedicated to Comtesse Moriolles, and was published in 1827 (?). Schumann reviewed it in 1836. It is sprightly, Polish in feeling and rhythmic life, and a glance at any of its pages gives us the familiar Chopin impression—florid passage work, chords in extensions and chromatic progressions. The Concert Rondo, op. 14, in F, called "Krakowiak," is built on a national dance in two-four time, which originated in Cracovia. It is, to quote Niecks, a modified polonaise, danced by the peasants with lusty abandon. Its accentual life is usually manifested on an unaccented part of the bar, especially at the end of a section or phrase. Chopin's very Slavic version is spirited, but the virtuoso predominates. There is lushness in ornamentation, and a bold, merry spirit informs every bar. The orchestral accompaniment is thin. It is dedicated to the Princesse Czartorys ka, and was published June, 1834. The Rondo, op. 16, with an Introduction, is in great favor at the conservatories. It is neat rather than poetical, although the introduction has dramatic touches. If I mistake not it is to this brilliant piece, with its affinities to Weber's Rondo, that Richard Burmeister has supplied an orchestral accompaniment.
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58The remaining Rondo, posthumously published and composed in 1828, as op. 73, was originally intended, so Chopin writes in 1828, for one piano. It is full of fire, but the ornamentation runs mad, and no traces of the poetical Chopin are present. He is preoccupied with the brilliant surfaces of the life about him. His youthful expansiveness finds a fair field in these variations, rondos and fantasias.
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61I have already remarked that Schumann's enthusiasm over the variations on "La Ci darem la mano" seems a little overdone to us. Chopin had not much gift for variation in the sense that we now understand variation. Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms—I include Mendelssohn's "Serious Variations"—are masters of a form that is by no means structurally simple or a reversion to mere spieerei, as Mr. Finck fancies. Chopin plays with his themes prettily, but it is all surface display, all heat lightning. He never smites, as does Brahms with his Thor hammer, the subject full in the middle, cleaving it to its core. Chopin is slightly effeminate in his variations, and they are true specimens of spieerei, despite the cleverness of design in the arabesques, their brilliancy and euphony. Op. 2 has its dazzling moments, but its musical worth is inferior. It is written to split the ears of the groundlings, or rather to astonish and confuse them, for the Chopin dynamics in the early music are never very rude. The indisputable superiority to Herz and the rest of the shallow-pated variationists caused Schumann's passionate admiration. It has, however, given us an interesting page of music criticism. Rellstab, grumpy old fellow, was nearly right when he wrote of these variations that "the composer runs down the theme with roulades, and throttles and hangs it with chains of shakes." The skip makes its appearance in the fourth variation, and there is no gainsaying the brilliancy and piquant spirit of the Alla Polacca. Op. 2 is orchestrally accompanied, an accompaniment that may be gladly dispensed with, and dedicated by Chopin to the friend of his youth, Titus Woyciechowski.
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64"Je Vends des Scapulaires" is a tune in Herold and Halévy's "Ludovic." Chopin varied it in his op. 12. This rondo in B flat is the weakest of Chopin's muse. It is Chopin and water, and Gallic eau sucrée at that. The piece is written tastefully, is not difficult, but is woefully artificial. It was published in 1833, and dedicated to Miss Emma Hosford. In May, 1851, appeared the Variations in E, without an opus number. They are not worth the trouble. Evidently composed before Chopin's op. 1 and before 1830, they are musically light waisted, although written by one who knows the keyboard. The last, a valse, is the brightest of the set. The theme is German.
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67The Fantaisie, op. 13, in A, on Polish airs, preceded by an introduction in F sharp minor, is dedicated to the pianist J. P. Pixis. It was published in April, 1834. It is Chopin, brilliant. Its orchestral background does not count for much, but the energy, the color and Polish character of the piece endeared it to the composer. He played it often, and as Kleczynski asks, "Are these brilliant passages, these cascades of pearly notes, these bold leaps, the sadness and the despair of which we hear? Is it not, rather, youth exuberant with intensity and life? Is it not happiness, gaiety, love for the world and men? The melancholy notes are there to bring out, to en-
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