Scan 26
Musical Courier 1901-12-25: Vol 43 Iss 1135, 1901
39 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 27. See the scan on archive.org.
1FRENCH THE DOMINANT LANGUAGE?
2(From last Sunday's New York Sun—See Editorial.)
4IN the eighteenth century French was spoken currently, if not exclusively, at almost every court on the Continent of Europe, and was accounted indispensable, not only by English diplomatists but also by English travelers. It then bade fair to become the medium of universal intercommunication. There has been so marked a change in this respect that the prospect of French becoming a world tongue, so far as civilized peoples are concerned, is commonly looked upon as extinct, even by Frenchmen themselves, who since 1870 have taken a gloomy view of their future under all its aspects.
6A very different forecast is made by H. G. Wells, the author of the remarkable series of articles entitled "Anticipations," which have been in course of publication in the Fortnightly and North American reviews. In a recent number of the Fortnightly the conviction was expressed by Mr. Wells that neither English nor German, but French, has the best chance of becoming a world language; that is to say, the language which educated persons in all countries will be most powerfully incited to learn in addition to their own.
8It is pointed out that among persons not actually subject to British or American rule, and neither waiters nor commercial travelers, the inducements to learn English rather than French or German do not increase but actually decrease. The decisive factor in the matter is the amount of science and thought which the acquisition of a language will open to the man who learns it. It is, therefore, pronounced a fact of great significance that the number of books at present published in English is less than that published in French or German, and that the proportion of serious books is very greatly less.
10Moreover, the existing conditions of book production for the English reading public offer no hope of any immediate change in this particular. Mr. Wells directs attention to the fact that there is neither honor nor reward—there is not even food or shelter—for the American or the Englishman who devotes a year or so of his life to the adequate treatment of any spacious question; and so small is the English reading public with any special interest in science that a great number of important foreign scientific works are not even translated into English. Such translations as do see the light are made only to sell, and are too often the work of ill-paid women and girls, who have no special knowledge of the matter to be translated. English publishers do not care to bring out serious books, alleging that these do not pay, which is but another way of saying that there is no reading public for such productions. There is no body of great men either in England or the United States, no intelligence in the British court, that might by any form of recognition compensate the philosophical or scientific writer for poverty and popular neglect.
12In fine, the more powerful a man's intelligence, the more distinctly he must see that to devote himself to increasing the scientific or philosophical wealth of the English tongue will be to sacrifice comfort, the respect of the bulk of his contemporaries, and all the most delightful things of life, for the barren reward of a not very certain righteous self-applause. Mr. Wells concedes that these things, if they were merely the grievances of the study, might well enough be allowed to rest there. He insists, however, that they must be recognized in any forecast of the future of the English tongue, because the intellectual decline of the literature published in English involves ultimately the decline of the language, and of all the political possibilities that go with the wide extension of a language.
14Mr. Wells has no doubt that German will be disseminated beyond its natural limits during the coming years, but not to the same extent as French. It is admitted that there are more books published in Germany than in France, just as there are more books published in France than in England; but it is pronounced questionable whether the reader of German has quite such a catholic feast spread before him as has the reader of French. Whatever may be said of French fiction on some grounds, it is indisputably attractive to foreigners; on the other hand, there is a mass of German fiction that is probably as uninteresting to a foreigner as are the great majority of English and American novels.
16Then, again, German, as compared with French, is unmelodious and unwieldy; and, in print, it is cursed with a blinding lettering that the German is now too patriotic to sacrifice. Before the War of 1870 there was a growing tendency to print German books, that looked forward to an audience wider than a national one, in the Roman type which is used by Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese; but there has since been a reaction in favor of the Gothic type, which is so trying to read. A similar patriotic tendency has checked the development of new words of classical origin. By insisting upon the evolution of scientific terms from Teutonic roots the Germans have obstructed the international use of such terms. The indigenous German technical word is clumsy, and remains compromised by its every-day relations, to the end of time dragging a lengthening chain of unsuitable associations. The shade of meaning, the limited qualification, that a Frenchman can attain with a mere twist of the sentence, the German must either abandon or laboriously overstate with some colossal worm cast of parenthesis. That the German and French tongues will come into conflict for ascendancy in Continental Europe Mr. Wells feels assured, and he is disposed to believe that French will become preponderant in the great urban region that will arise about the Rhine.
18We have said that the number of books published in French is greater than that published in English. This fact of itself demonstrates that the French reading public is something different and very much larger than the existing French political system. Other facts, often overlooked, are noted by Mr. Wells, to wit, there is a critical reception for a work published in French that is one of the few things worth a writer's having; and, again, the French translators are the most alert and efficient in the world. One has only to see a Parisian bookshop, we are told, and to recall an English one, to realize the unattainable standing of the French. The English shopful is either brand new fiction or illustrated narratives of travel, or gilded versions of the classics of past times, done up to give away. The French bookshop, on the other hand, reeks of contemporary intellectual life; the serried ranks of lemon covered volumes cover the whole range of human thought and interest.
20Then, too, as we have said, the Frenchman has with the Englishman and the Italian a certain community of technical, scientific and philosophical phraseology, so that it is often easier for an Englishman with some special knowledge of his subject to read and appreciate a subtle and technical work in French than it is for him to read a French novel. Moreover, French technical terms, being derived from the Latin or the Greek, are not so immediately and constantly brought into contrast and contact with their roots as they would be if, like so many patriotic German technicalities, they were derived from native radicals. They are, consequently, free to qualify and develop a final meaning distinct from their original intention. In the growing and changing body of science this counts for much.
22As between French and German, it is finally to be noted that against the former tongue are arrayed hostile frontiers. Germany has hostile neighbors who fear her ascendancy, and have set their hearts against the use of her language. Among the Slav, Bohemian and Hungarian peoples, and in Roumania, French will attack German in the flank, and will have a clear prospect of predominance.
24NATIONAL CONSERVATORY
25Aids the McKinley Memorial Fund.
26A MODEL program was presented at the concert which the National Conservatory of Music gave at the Madison Square Concert Hall last Wednesday evening for the benefit of the McKinley Memorial Fund. This conservatory, founded by Miss Jeannette L. Thurber, has now a world-wide reputation. Men and women of international fame are at the head of the departments. The work of four of these departments, by the way, was shown to great advantage at the concert, namely, the orchestral, directed by Leo Schulz; the piano, directed by Rafael Joseffy; singing, directed by Eugene Dufriche, and violin, directed by Leopold Lichtenberg. The National Conservatory Orchestra is composed of students and teachers of the conservatory. For special concerts, professionals are engaged sometimes to assist the wind choir.
28The playing of the orchestra last Wednesday night was excellent, and no end of the credit belongs to the conductor, Mr. Schulz, for the smooth performance. Evidently there had been more than one rehearsal. The numbers played by the orchestra were Mendelssohn's Fourth Symphony in A major and the overture to Beethoven's "Egmont." The orchestra also accompanied Miss Grace Halleck, who played the first movement of Schumann's Piano Concerto, and Master Julius Casper, who played Vieuxtemps' Fantaisie Appassionata. Miss Halleck, who is now herself a teacher at the conservatory, is a pupil of Miss Adele Margulies. After Joseffy, Miss Margulies is the power in the piano department. Miss Halleck's playing proved a strong feature of the concert. She has the musical tone and clean cut technic of the Margulies pupils, and some of her own individuality as well.
30Master Casper managed his violin skillfully and surmounted the technical difficulties of Vieuxtemps' composition with comparative ease. Casper is a pupil of Lichtenberg. A career is predicted for the gifted boy. Besides his solo, young Casper occupied the seat of the concertmeister during the performance of the orchestral works. The vocal soloist of the evening, Harry T. Burleigh, sang the Romanza to the "Evening Star," from "Tannhäuser." His sympathetic baritone was heard with pleasure. After no end of recalls Mr. Burleigh seated himself at the piano and accompanied himself while he sang one of his own songs, a pathetic plantation melody. Mr. Schulz accompanied the singer at the piano in the "Tannhäuser" Romanza. Mr. Burleigh, who is a graduate of the conservatory, is now one of the assistant teachers in the singing department at the conservatory. He is the baritone soloist in the choir of St. George's Protestant Episcopal Church, where Mayor-elect Seth Low and J. Pierpont Morgan are communicants.
32CARL'S SPECIAL SERVICES.—The congregation of the Old First Presbyterian Church, together with a throng of visitors, were treated by Organist William C. Carl to exceptionally fine musical services last Sunday. A specially prepared program was given in the morning, and in the afternoon parts of "The Messiah" were sung. Mr. Carl gave in his musicianly and impressive style several organ selections. At the morning service his beautiful anthem, "The Decennial Te Deum," was sung.
34PADEREWSKI'S
35TOUR IN AMERICA
37SOLE AGENT: Mr. W. ADLINGTON, London.
38TOUR MANAGER: Mr. C. E. ELLIS.
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