Scan 23
Musical Courier 1902-03-05: Vol 44 Iss 1145, 1902
63 lines. Read by computer on 22 September 2026. Printed page 24. See the scan on archive.org.
1of von Bülow and the late Manager Hermann Wolff. It is very characteristic.
3Philip Hale recently composed three prose nocturnes. Here is one in the dolorous key of F sharp minor—one that is true as well as beautiful, though the beauty is gruesome:
5"He sits at a table in a cheap eating house where pie is served and cakes flapped far into the night. His coat is spotted with grease and covered with cigarette ashes. His eyes are without light, his cheeks are pasty, there are strings of flesh below and on each side of his chin. He is talking to the newcomer at the newspaper office, the young countryman whose dream is to be associated with literary men.
7"My best work was done nine years ago. Then, I had ambitions, illusions, delusions. I was anxious about style. I shuddered at a split infinitive. I tried to catch the subtle charm of Walter Pater even when I penned the lightest paragraph. I read greedily in street car, at public meetings, wherever and whenever I had opportunity. Some of my articles excited attention. When a local cynic accused me of being a decadent, I was highly complimented; when he said that I was unintelligible, I knew that I was on the right road. I would in those days write a column for the sake of introducing a strange or obsolete word, for I regarded that word as the only one, the inevitable one. I should like to show you some of the pieces I wrote nine years ago: 'The Paradox of Pisander,' a study of the abnormally cruel; 'The Ending of Lucy Jones,' a grim and realistic sketch without an adjective. I once wrote a prose-poem without a verb, and I was a month in writing 250 words. A publisher told me that he would be glad to collect these sketches; but I knew that they were not for the public, and there they are in my scrap book, the receiving tomb of my hopes and aspirations. Ah, I wrote well eight or nine years ago!"
9"Now, I write simply to keep my chair in the office. To support myself, I do outside work. I am willing to dash off a sermon, a biographical sketch of a prominent merchant, the eulogy of a patent medicine with affidavits of joy and gratitude. The more money I make, the more slovenly is my style. I have abused my memory; I loathe the sight of a book; I laugh when I hear about the successes of literary men. But don't let me discourage you from writing a masterpiece. Write it, and then look at it nine years from now.
11"And he drained the stale beer in the glass, nor did he notice the cigarette ashes that floated on the top."
13A tuba player in the Boston Orchestra returned to New York last month, giving as a reason for his resignation that he would have perished of lung trouble if he had remained. Every time he took a full breath Mr. Gericke eyed him and put forth that repressive left hand. The poor brass player had to swallow his own smoke, so to speak, and as consumption threatened he came to this city, where he flatteth as he listeth.
15MINER WALDEN GALLUP.—Master Miner Walden Gallup is playing a series of recitals in the South, and is meeting with success. He has already appeared in some eight or ten cities, and is now playing in most of the large cities of South Carolina, and is everywhere arousing genuine interest both in his playing and in the methods and means by which he has acquired his proficiency.
17"MELOMANIACS."
18[By Hugh Craig.]
20UNDER the title of "Melomaniacs" James Huneker gives us a collection of twenty-four tales, some pathetic, some satiric, some weird, but all marked with originality. The "Piper of Dreams" is perhaps the most powerful, its hero being a Russian for whom the visible word has never existed. He modeled himself on Tschaikowsky, thought Richard Strauss did not go far enough, and that a new art must be evolved, not a synthesis of the old arts as dreamed by Wagner, but an art consisting of music alone, an art for the twentieth century, which would be the tongue of all life, the interpretation of the world's desire, the lever to move the world. Bach was an emotional mathematician, Beethoven a pedant and formalist; Wagner was captivated by the glare of the footlights, a victim to the fascinations of the word, the word which always clogs the free wings of imaginative music. Then he gave a concert and was pronounced an arch enemy of mankind, because he told in his music secrets buried in the shale of a vanished epoch. He was driven from country to country, and everywhere things were not as before. A strange angel had passed that way, filling men's souls with joy, beauty and bitterness. Finally he comes to Paris, and there he produces his new orchestral drama named "Nietzsche," and for the result readers must go to the book.
22It is quite impossible to give any idea of Mr. Huneker's verbal symphony as he tells of tonal timbres made almost visible, of tinted music so cunningly merged as to impinge on the optic nerve, all concluded with the Day of Wrath, with the death of life and the death of love, and then "a corrosive shaft of tone rived the building and went hissing toward Paris in shape of a menacing sword." I have used the words verbal symphony in lack of anything better occurring to me. It would have been better, however, to have used the title prefixed to the "Dusk of the Gods" and style it a mask of music. It reminds me very much of the vision of the Hebrew seer: "Lo, as he saw the violence of the multitude, he neither lifted up his hand nor held sword nor any instrument of war. But only I saw that he sent out of his mouth as if it had been a blast of fire and out of his lips a flaming breath, and out of his tongue he cast out sparks and tempests. And they were all mixed together, the blast of fire, the flaming breath and the great tempest, and fell with violence upon the multitude, and all of a sudden nothing could be perceived only dust and smell of smoke. When I saw this I was afraid."
24Equally weird is the "Disenchanted Symphony," wizard orchestra in four-dimensional space, and the "Corridor of Time," with its legend of the recurring staircase. In all these there is symbolism outdoing Mallarmé and out-Maeterlincking Maeterlinck. Liszt-like rhapsodies, Strauss-like tone words, all things transcendental. Are they written in sarcasm or ridicule? Partly, perhaps, but more like the sarcasm and ridicule of one who may smile at the attempt, but dream of its execution.
26The other stories are of more general interest, being more human. The first one, "The Lord's Prayer in B," is direct, simple and strong. Where the "tap of the drum in the key of B and the mode was major" recur ever as Baruch Mendoza is dying in the torture chamber. In an "Emotional Accident" the drum plays a tragic part. The drummer loves his symphony, for to him there are no instruments of percussion. They have a soul and the rhythmic throb is the pulse of musical life. He loves his wife, too, and then one day when she is doing a trapeze act, bang goes the drum a minute too soon, and she falls dead to the sawdust. The other stories, that may be called in common slang stories of Bohemia, have love, jealousy, renunciation. The melomaniacs are not, however, melomanes; mere fanatici per la musica; they are musicians with notions opposed to conventionalities, and their doings are told in tales of which the leitmotiven are indicated by the titles "Hunding's Wife," "Tannhäuser's Choice," "Siegfried's Death," "Isolde's Mother," "Brynhild's Immolation," and these we can fill up either with Mr. Huneker's variations or our own imaginings. Perhaps after perusing some others we may agree with him that music has a conquering power for evil.
28One part of the irony of fate is not treated in this suggestive little book, namely, the doom of the executive artist. The score of the composer is dead black and white till the musician gives to the printed matter a weight and a meaning which sometimes may be a revelation to the author. He has immediate success; he hears the applauding audience; he can see by his bank book how much greater is his reward than that of the sculptor, the painter or the writer. Then, when the last note has died away, his magic begins to lose its force. His production perishes in the producing. It is gone forever as soon as it is complete. In a few years all that men will know will be that Paderewski used to play the piano.
30In this, as in his other works, Mr. Huneker displays quick imagination, sensitive temperament and originality. He has courage, too, for he dares to think of an art consisting of music alone; an art which will be the tongue of all life, the interpreter of the world's desire.
32NATIONAL CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC.
33Summer Term Begins May 1.
35THE summer term at the National Conservatory of Music will begin on May 1 and continue on until August 12. Many of the students are arranging to study into the summer. At the February concert the program by the students of the conservatory was as follows:
37Trio, G major………………………………………………………..Haydn
38Miss Halleck and Messrs. Tolleson and Munzer.
39Aria from Magic Flute…………………………………………..Mozart
40Cello solo—
41Air………………………………………………………………………….Bach
42Mazurka…………………………………………………………………..Popper
43At the Fountain………………………………………………………..Davidoff
44Miss Sarah Gurovitch.
45Piano solo, Impromptu……………………………………………..Chopin
46William Eckeberg.
47Duo from Marriage of Figaro………………………………………Mozart
48Miss Hancock and Mr. Ballantyne.
49Violin solo, Reverie…………………………………………………Vieuxtemps
50Stanislas Nowak.
51Piano solo, Polonaise……………………………………………….Chopin
52Miss Edith McMillan.
53Aria from Faust………………………………………………………..Gounod
54Miss Helen Adams.
55Piano solo, Gigue and Variations……………………………….Raff
56Mrs. Blanche Bruner Levy.
57Violin solo, Les Adieux à l'Alhambra………………………….Monasterio
58Master Nicholas Garagusi.
59Quatuor, from Rigoletto…………………………………………..Verdi
60Misses Wainwright and Adams, Messrs. Giles and Ballantyne.
62All of the pianists who appeared at the concert are pupils of Miss Adele Margulies, and their playing reflected greatly to the credit of their accomplished teacher. Little Sarah Gurovitch, the 'cellist, is a pupil of Leo Schulz. She is a gifted child, and her playing shows the results of good training. Both the violinists are pupils of Leopold Lichtenberg, and they both are a credit to their teacher and the conservatory. The vocalists who appeared are pupils of Wilford Walters, Miss Annie Wilson, Royal Stone Smith and Eugene Dufriche, and the singing of all of them evoked hearty applause from a discriminating audience. The monthly concerts are given at the hall of the conservatory.
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