Scan 20
Musical Courier 1900-10-31: Vol 41 Iss 1075, 1900
42 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 21. See the scan on archive.org.
1is not made in a day, and the Boston Symphony band has few equals on the globe. A capable conductor is an excellent thing; but a capable orchestra is quite as good. The pair supplement each other. Mr. Scheel, for all we know, may be the greatest conductor since Bülow, but where is his band? For five years at least he will have to drill, drill, drill; and only then will his work begin to show. To think of competing with the Boston Orchestra before a decade or so is a wild feline dream.
3THE JEW IN MUSIC.
5A PUBLICATION has been started in Leipzig edited by Dr. Adolph Kohut. It is called "Berühmte Israelitsche Männer und Frauen," and is to be devoted to celebrated Jewish men and women in all manners of professions, arts, industries and literatures. The first four volumes are given over to musicians of Jewish origin. The list is fairly large, but not nearly so large and comprehensive as that published a year ago by THE MUSICAL COURIER. We miss the names—among others—of Richard Wagner—who had some Jewish blood in his veins and much in his music; of Eugen d'Albert—a full blooded Jew; of Melba; of the De Reszkes; of Paderewski; of Conductor Felix Weingartner; of Marcella Sembrich; of Otto Floersheim; of Verdi—who has some blood of the race coursing in his veins; of—but the list is so large that it would take up more space than we can spare at present. So let us be content with reproducing the names we find in the four volumes referred to:
7It begins with the Englishman, John Barnett, whose real name was Bernhard Beer. Then follow the names of Julius Benedict, George Leopold Bizet—the composer of "Carmen," who married the daughter of Halévy; Max Bruch, Ignaz Brüll, Frederick Hymen Cowen, the English composer; Ferdinand David, Frederick Gernsheim, Carl Goldmark, Eli Halévy, Ferdinand Hiller, Salomon Jadassohn, Robert Kahn, one of the strongest men in the young Germany group; Edward Lassen, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Ignaz Moscheles, Moriz Moszkowski, Siegfried Ochs, the conductor; Jacques Offenbach, Anton Rubinstein, Julius Schulhoff, Joseph Abenheim, the opera conductor; Max Joseph Beer, Rudolph Bial, Henry Cohen, Jules Cohen, Joseph Dessauer, Baron Alberto Franchetti, composer of "Azrael"; Sigismund Goldschmidt, Jacob Axel Josephsohn, Bernhard Klein, Gustav Lazarus, Arnold Mendelssohn, Alexander Neumann, Martin Roeder, Jacques Rosenhain, Salomon Rossi, Albert Rubenson, Siegfried Salomon, Leopold Auer, Adolf Brodsky, the Russian violinist; Ernst, Gregorowitsch, Jacob Grun, Miska Hauser, Gustav Hollaender, Bronislaw Hubermann, Joseph Joachim, Leopold Demuth, Ferdinand Laub, Isidor Lotto, Tivador Nachez, Eduard Rappoldi, Eduard Remenyi—whose real name was Hoffmann; Arnold Rosé, Edmund Singer, Henri Wieniawski, Carl Davidow, the 'cellist; Heinrich Gruenfeld; David Popper, Philipp Roth, Anton Door, Robert Fischhoff, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Alfred Gruenfeld, Heinrich Herz, Georg Liebling, Moriz Rosenthal, Nicolaus Rubinstein, Carl Tausig, Joseph Wieniawski, Albert Eibenschütz, Arthur Friedheim, Robert Freund, Carl Heymann, Ignaz Tedesco, S. Bachrich, Rafael Joseffy, Joseph Rubinstein, Gusikow, Elie Parish-Alvars, who taught Thalberg a trick or two at his harp; Sir Michael Costa, Leopold Damrosch, Felix Dessoff, Alexis Hollander, Herman Levi, Gustav Mahler, Julius Stern, Emil Breslaun, Heinrich Ehrlich, Julius Epstein, Otto Gumprecht, Sigmund Lebert, Adolph Marx, Joel Brühl, Eduard Birnbaum, Samuel David, H. Goldberg, Emil Jonas, Louis Lewandowski, Solomon Sulzer, Albert Goldberg, Frederic Gumbert, Georg Henschel, Paul Kalisch—where is his wife's name, Lilli Lehmann? Leopold Landau, Jean Lassalle, Victor Maurel, Adolph Muhlmann, Rothmühl, Heinrich Sontheim, Ludwig Strakosch—all the Strakosches are Jews; Werner Alberti, John Brahams, the English singer; José Lederer, Julius Lieban, David Ney, Adolf Robinson, and others. The actors follow next in order, with the handsome and intellectual face of Ludwig Barnay.
9But why have been omitted the names of the Pattis—Adelina and Carlotta—Eduard Hanslick, Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, Kalkbrenner, Thalberg, De Pachmann, Godowsky, Arthur Nikisch, Heller, Arthur Sullivan, Theodore Ritter, Leopold Lichtenberg, Georges Mathias, Theodor Leschetizky, Paganini (?) and numerous others? We even miss—last but not least—the name of the active impresario and composer, Oscar Hammerstein. Let Dr. Kohut revise his list, and if he cares for it THE MUSICAL COURIER can furnish him with a supplementary list a mile long.
11READS LIKE ONE OF OURS.
13THE New York Herald of last Sunday contained an editorial which seemed to have been taken bodily from some one or other copy of this paper published during the past years. We are not able to dispose of the time at this moment necessary to look through the files to find the exact date of the publication in our old copies, but our readers will, at once, recognize one of our old editorials (for we published many of the same sort) in this Herald editorial referred to.
15The Opera and Society.
17The grand opera season is more of a society than a musical event. To be sure, it is insisted that the company must be the best that is possibly obtainable, but after all the opera house is nothing more nor less than a grand gathering place for the display of brilliant toilets and for chat and gossip with pretty women, to the accompaniment of most delightful music.
19Society is anxious to know what sort of a season we are to have at the opera this winter, where they will pass so many evenings. Mr. Grau and many of his artists, including Madame Melba, who was an absentee last winter, arrived yesterday, and in to-day's Herald they talk interestingly of the season to come.
21There it is; but the Herald should at least have credited us with this opinion if not with the idea. For years and years have we preached that our opera at the Metropolitan is merely a fashionable fad and not a musical or artistic production. For years and years we have asked for a permanent, not a shifting, operatic orchestra, a competent chorus, rehearsals, mise-en-scene and congruous scenery and an artistic director, but none of these necessary adjuncts of opera were necessary and for good reasons; the opera is merely a gathering place for fashionable people to meet, to be seen and to chatter and gossip.
23Suppose the situation be accepted then and, in accordance with the Herald, many others and THE MUSICAL COURIER the opera here be considered as a part of a fashionable function and not as a musical event, and its operations passed by in silence by the conscientious and intelligent musical world, which cannot tolerate the mutilation produced by the star system and the general ignorance prevailing at the Opera House?
25It would not be a bad idea to ignore it completely from a musical point of view. It is really not musical and certainly not artistic and surely fashionable with a total disregard of its natural tendency. Depending entirely, as it does, upon fickle fashion it may at any time lose its only support and end its inglorious existence, for it lacks the one great basis of all art including the art of music—the artistic conscience.
27Opera in English.
29And this leads us to state that when we advocated so strenuously the opera in English we did not refer to the class of work that has up to this time averaged at the Metropolitan Opera House. It is, of course, essential to have time and experience for a proper development of the scheme, but we are afraid it is based on a false principle and if it does not show an artistic spirit and the artistic conscience, if it is to be merely a low salary crime as against the high salary crime and the acceptance of more mediocrities and people who are utterly devoid of the rudimentary laws of stage action, much less artistic sense or discrimination, we shall be compelled to renounce all further sympathy with the movement. This kind of performing is not the opera in the vernacular which THE MUSICAL COURIER has been advocating.
31THE OLD CRITICS.
33THAT brilliant and observing writer and critic, "R. Peggio," has some amusing and pertinent remarks to make in the London Musical Standard about our old friend, the Wagner-hater, Joseph Bennett. Mr. Bennett has been telling his readers that the late Beatty-Kingston once rose from his seat and swore a mighty oath that he would never again listen—if he could help it—to "Siegfried." Says "R. Peggio," taking this as a text for demolishing the "old" and "brilliant critics":
35The spectacle of the amiable Beatty-Kingston rising in his box and calling Heaven to witness that he would never again attend a performance of "Siegfried" must have been magnificent. But even more magnificent is the courage of Joseph Bennett in printing such fustian. In truth, the old critics took themselves very seriously indeed. They were a race of immortals living apart from men. Not one of them but in the opinion of another (unless he happened to be an opponent) was endowed with the most extraordinary talent. One sees this in Mr. Bennett's eulogy of the late Beatty-Kingston. He was certainly a brilliant, all-round journalist of the old type, but to the end of his life he was nothing but a journalist. Mr. Bennett says he was a brilliant amateur musician. It may have been so, but that would not necessarily make him a good musical critic. And as to his exceptionally fine achievements in writing of "Tristan," when first produced in Berlin, we have a standard by which we can judge how extremely on the surface was his talent. I wish I had a copy of the article by me so that I might quote some of its wrong headed ineptitudes. "Ah," Mr. Bennett would say, "that is the language of the Wagnerians." But it is not so. "Tristan und Isolde" is a fact—there is the libretto plain for all men to read, and there is the score for musicians to analyze. Clumsily brilliant journalism was all that that vaunted article was. It was on a par with Clement Scott's almost willful misunderstanding of Ibsen's plays. Goodness knows, there is room enough for criticism in noticing "Hedda Gabler," "Ghosts" or "The Doll's House" without launching into a sea of emotional misunderstanding. The public would not, or should not, like such things, and that was enough for Clement Scott. These old-fashioned journalists always take their cue from the public—in reality it is a second-hand cue, for it is the theatre manager who caters for the public and sees to it that the newspapers that want his advertisements do not fly in the face of the public.
37We submit the above to the New York Herald, which openly disavows criticism. Such old-fashioned practices call for derision.
39THE New York Herald is mixing its musical events badly. When Mrs. Jacoby sang at the Kaltenborn concert a week ago Sunday the Herald praised her for singing a song which Mrs. Schutmann-Heinck did not sing, and on Monday the Herald stated that a singer at the last Sunday Kaltenborn concert "played" well. If the Herald has decided not to criticise music and the drama it should at least get its facts.
41MR. GRAU is said not to be financially interested in the English performances at the Metropolitan Opera House. Mr. Grau rents the house to the Savage Company and gives the use of his name for a possible interest. It looks to us as if Mr. Grau is interested in opera in English for the purpose of killing it here. We do not believe that Mr. Grau has been interested financially in the engagement of the singers, but a percentage is sometimes paid on engagements. If Mr. Grau gets any money in that manner it is good business judgment. Business is geschäft.
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