Scan 24
Musical Courier 1902-06-04: Vol 44 Iss 1158, 1902
79 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1Where are we going to get the talent necessary to fill all these professorships? Well, that is easy. The most of them we would bring over from Europe; they will be glad to come on a five-year contract. There are many good men in America who can be employed. If we bring to America Europe's greatest masters and have them cast their musical influence over the land, is not that sowing the seed, and will it not yield us a big crop of musicians? It is said, "Oh, it is in the air in Europe." Well, we will put it in our air.
3America has a large cosmopolitan population. The blood of our foreign ancestors has not left all of our veins as yet, and the music that filled the souls of our forefathers is smoldering and only needs awakening.
5WHY A NATIONAL CONSERVATORY IS NECESSARY.
7Because no private institution can create a standard that would or could be accepted by the nations of the world. But what America does as a nation will be respected and honored by the world without question, and when this Government places its stamp on the diploma of the graduate it will mean that he is armed with a high class credential that makes him the equal of any man who steps out of the royal conservatory of Leipsic, Liege, Brussels, Paris, Munich or Rome.
9It is important to consider how grand the opportunity will be for the genius of the American boy and girl who cannot go abroad, but who can become a master in his own native land, in music as well as in painting. The price one pays for an old master in these days of great wealth is so fabulous that only the rich millionaire can be their possessor. Our walls contain enough of European scenes. Nature in her grandeur bestowed upon us a few specimens of its wonders, and there is natural beauty beyond the brush of mortal man in the Yellowstone, the Yosemite, Niagara Falls, Hudson River, the Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountains, our grand rivers, the home life of the New England farmer or the rugged Westerner, all grand and great subjects, as well as our birds and cattle. Let us produce all nature on canvas. Europe will buy from us, and if she doesn't, we can sell American painted pictures to Americans in America.
11THIS IS THE TIME TO ACT.
13Some people say, "Well, this will all come by and by; not in our time." This is the time to commence; now is the accepted time. The country is rich, we lead in many things, let us try and crawl up in the arts. By and by we will be able to walk, and maybe when we are better and bigger grown we can run or sprint a little.
15It is said rich people will go abroad anyhow. Well, let them go and take their children and produce all they can out of them, while the children of the American toilers remain and are educated in the American National Conservatory, and see which finishes first and with what success. Why, of course there is only one conclusion that can be arrived at, and that is in favor of the boy and girl who is fostered and cared for in their own country, where the love and sympathy of the parent is ever near to aid and guide them and where they are treated as the welcome scholar and not as a foreign intruder.
17And speaking about intruding. In France they have national operas and theatres, as well as conservatories, for teaching the arts, that qualify the singers and thespians who are employed, and they accept a small percentage of foreigners—about 3 per cent. Russia quite the same, if not worse.
19WHY FOUR INSTITUTIONS?
21Because it is not conducive to the welfare of the student to have his attention diverted by too much companionship, and where you congregate a large number of pupils you endanger the tranquility of studious atmosphere.
23Musical natures are nervous, sentimental and high strung, and must be catered to, and their surroundings must be considered, so that nothing mars his progress—for the slightest reverse often dulls the ambition of highly nervous organizations and spoils a career.
25HOME INFLUENCE NECESSARY.
27Then it is important that a student should not be more than a two days' ride away from home, so that he can feel the home influence and that the paternal eye is on him. Students will work harder and produce more to please their parents and friends than their teacher.
29Then, again, many students are from the same city, town or near by, and all within the circuit in which the conservatory is located, and the natural ambition to compete with each other whom the student is sure his family knows of is always an incentive.
31Competition is the great whip and spur, all in one.
33Now, if the student is a girl all the more reason for home near at hand, as the good influence is always a proper halo over the tender member of our household.
35Again, the competition for high scholarship of one conservatory over another will be the great superintendent that will be ever on guard.
37And as it costs no more to maintain the four than it would one that would accommodate all, why not extend to the scheme the best advantages? It costs the pupil little to travel within his district, while from California to Washington it might be a financial hardship, and vice versa.
39OUR WOMEN IN MUSIC.
41Your daughter, your sister, maybe your wife, is musical. She does not want to become a professional, but she does want to obtain a high state of perfection in her music.
43If you are acquainted with the customs and habits of foreign cities, where a woman does not venture forth unchaperoned without the risk of insult, by what they consider polite gentlemen in Paris, Berlin or Rome, you will hardly take the risk.
45But if you dare to venture the future of one of your beloved to a foreign school, you must (to be easy in mind) go to the extra expense of providing an attendant. It would cause a tear to flow from the listening American to hear of the hardships and insults that are heaped upon our virtuous maids abroad unattended.
47This could and would not occur in any part of our own country, for an American gentleman always treats an American woman with the respect she commands.
49As it was said by a gentleman on shipboard coming from Europe, that already the foreign ladies were accepting the American gentlemen as the highest type of the gentleman, because of his high respect for women and his courteous treatment of them and the protection he accorded them.
51But think of the pall and sorrow that comes to the parent who is made to realize that their beautiful child never returns to the home of her youth because she has been trapped and beguiled.
53And again, when our young women have attained a high degree of cultivation in singing and offer themselves to the foreign manager, how much he demands of her womanly consideration before he will consider her. And if she accepts, she has forfeited all that is dear and sacred to her honor. This does not always occur, but it is almost a rule.
55AN AMERICAN CONSERVATORY IN PARIS.
57When the French newspapers published the fact a few months ago that a bill had been offered in the Senate of the United States by a prominent Senator to establish an American conservatory of music in Paris all Paris smiled, and Yankee smartness dropped somewhat in the scales of those who hold high opinions of American go-aheadness.
59Good, said the native Frenchman. Come over to Paris, Mr. Yankee Doodle, and help build up Paris; spend your money that you earn in America here in Paris. We are your Sister Republic, and we like you; bring over your sons and daughters, for they soon acquire our habits and soon forget your humdrum American life. Let music be the actual object of their coming, make anything you like the pretext, but soon—as it has always been—your young man will at once assume the dress of a Frenchman, for he will soon learn that unless he does he will always be overcharged as an American; so he will wear baggy pants, a big black tie tied in a flowing bow, a broad brim black felt hat, let his hair grow long and wear a scraggy beard, and so my dear Mr. Young American will look the part of the artist, which he seldom ever realizes, in fact, but you can rest easy; he lives in students' quarters, attends their balls and fêtes, drinks absinthe and smokes cigarettes, and devotes most of his time to some pretty little French shop girl at the cafés in place of his music in the conservatory.
61He seldom, if ever, returns to your country, for when his family has awakened to a full realization of what the French or any other European capital has done for their son—well, he's ashamed to come home and they are ashamed to have him. So he remains abroad and becomes an American interpreter or guide about the hotels and resorts—if not worse.
63To one who has had an opportunity of studying the situation the proposition to take Americans to Paris under the care of our Government is simply a surrender of all American pride, aside from the evil that it promotes, without a remote chance for doing the slightest good. Respectfully,
65HENRY I. KOWALSKY,
66San Francisco.
68Dr. Bowman's Eastern District Choir.
70THE choir of the Central Baptist Church, in the Eastern District, Brooklyn, gave a concert last Thursday evening in the lecture room of the church, Marcy avenue and South Fifth street. This is the choir organized by Dr. Edward Morris Bowman on the same plan as the Temple Choir. Dr. Bowman conducted the concert, and in addition to the choral numbers selections were played by the Temple Orchestra. There were also several soloists. More about this concert next week.
72Tenor Calthrop in Watertown.—Mr. Calthrop sang at the Watertown (N. Y.) May Festival recently, and made a great hit.
74MRS. EDMUND SEVERN
75Successful Voice Builder.
76Concert, Opera, Oratorio.
77In New York entire Summer season.
78STUDIO: 131 West 56th Street.
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