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Musical Courier 1902-08-20: Vol 45 Iss 1169, 1902
29 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1places the population is almost purely agricultural, and difficulty is experienced in getting together a body of vocalists sufficiently large for a chorus."
2"And what was your experience with the critics?"
3"Do you mean the newspaper critics?" asked Mr. Mills, with a smile. "Well, some of them are smart, or think they are. But in many instances their knowledge of musical matters is not great. However, in the fairly large towns there are newspaper men who have considerable knowledge of things musical. At Winnipeg, for instance, there are some able men on the papers, one of whom was formerly connected with the Birmingham Press, and a very clever fellow, too."
4"Which were your most popular numbers during the fifty recitals you gave?"
5"It is difficult to tell you, but I think I should be right in saying that 'She Alone Charmeth My Sadness' (Gounod) and 'I Am a Roamer' (Mendelssohn) were the most appreciated. Handel's 'Droop Not, Young Lover,' and Schubert's 'Two Grenadiers,' however, ran them very close. Coming down to the popular ballads, my audiences liked 'The Pretty Creature,' 'Richard of Taunton Dean,' 'A Hundred Pipers,' and 'Father O'Flynn.' Scotch and Irish people form a very considerable proportion of the population, and they delight in listening to their own old ditties, but there are some songs which are quite cosmopolitan in their popularity. An old English ballad 'Here's a Health Unto His Majesty,' which I 'turned on' at the time the coronation was to have taken place, was warmly welcomed."
6"And you were everywhere most enthusiastically received?"
7"Yes, everywhere, and nowhere more so than in British Columbia and Manitoba. When one has to sing about fifteen songs nearly every night, it is not always easy to sustain the interest of the audience, but I invariably found that my hearers wanted more, and I don't remember an instance of anyone leaving the hall before the recital was over."
8"Was this your first tour in the States and Canada?"
9"It was the first occasion upon which I had traveled beyond Brandon, but I have been as far as Winnipeg three times previously."
10"And how does the encore custom work in the colonies?"
11"Well, the audiences want all they can get for their money. They have not much consideration for the singer, but to a performer applause is life, and as far as I am concerned I feel that a double recall should be responded to. You must understand that in the States and Canada only the better class people attend concerts. There is practically no shilling public. A program should be very varied. Even in the classical portion there must not be two songs of the same style, and a spice of humor is absolutely necessary."
12"Generally speaking, in what class of buildings have your recitals been given?"
13"Mostly in opera houses as they are called. But even the city halls have well fitted up stages. The arrangements are almost perfect, and there is only one thing I have to complain of. The audiences are scarcely ever 'on time.' I have known many cases in which it has been from twenty minutes to half an hour after the advertised time before the concert could begin. During June and July it is useless to start before 9 o'clock, or while the sun is still shining. Perhaps my most enthusiastic reception was at Vancouver, British Columbia, where I had never before appeared. I had to give two extras in my first group of three songs. I found many in the audience who had heard me in the mother country, and they gave me a most hearty welcome. Perhaps it was more of a personal welcome than anything else; still, it was very gratifying. Everywhere the cry was 'You must come back again,' and I have already cabled to my Canadian manager to say that I will return next spring. I shall sail on April 11 for another three months' tour. One reason for my going is the desire of my British Columbian audiences to hear me again; another, and a very important one, is that Winnipeg is most desirous to give its first musical festival and to retain my services as principal basso. The works already chosen are 'The Messiah,' 'The Creation' and 'St. Paul.' The chorus will consist of a combination of church choirs, in which the city is very strong, and from whom great results may be expected.
14"Are there some good choirs in the city?"
15"Yes, very good. The Grace Church (Methodist) and Knox Church (Presbyterian) have excellent choirs. At the latter I gave a sacred recital, and on the Sunday evening previous to my leaving I sang a solo at the evening service. At Sherbrooke, Quebec, I had a funny experience. Just before the concert one of the committee, a very young man, came to me and said he had a favor to ask—would I do my very best that night. I assured him I always did my best and asked him if I did not do my best when I was there two and a half years before. He admitted that I did, but went on to say that he had got some very critical people coming in from the country, and he therefore wanted me to be at my very best. I replied, 'My young man, my very young man, you don't seem to know what you are asking, I always do my best before the public.' He went away a sadder, and, I hope, a wiser young man. This incident naturally found its way into the papers."
16Mr. Mills showed me quite a pile of cuttings about himself, from the American and Canadian press, and seeing that he had been a much interviewed man, I was merciful, and left him with a word of congratulation at the fact that he had become a Torquianian, his parting remark in reply being, "I am proud to live in Torquay, it is such a lovely place."—Crow Quill, in Torquay Times and South Devon Advertiser.
18VITALITY IN MUSIC.
19Editors The Musical Courier:
20SUMMER experiences give new force to what has been with me the old question, as to when we may hope to see vitality, art, music, take the place of dead technic, mechanism, display, as the object of pursuit of our piano students—aye, and their teachers, too.
21One hope that I have indulged with regard to the pneumatic, mechanical piano players that are now so much in evidence, particularly in the advertising pages, is that by their startling superiority to human fingers in accuracy, velocity, clearness, endurance and repertory, they would tend both to raise the standard of performances by pupils, and also to lead human piano players to aim more at emotional expression, touch, interpretation, art—departments in which no mechanical device ever has or ever can compete with mind acting through fingers.
22But the pupils who come to our summer schools from all over the country, and most of them are teachers, are still coming to learn, not music but technic; not how to fathom or better interpret the thought of the composers, but how to play more notes in a given time; not to increase their knowledge and perception of the beautiful ideas that have been committed to music paper, but to become more astonishing, more acrobatic, or to wonder more at the greater virtuosity of some famous technician.
23Perhaps the statement of a recent summer pupil of more than ordinary intelligence, a professor of theory in a high position, who said to me, "I hate definitions," may have expressed the views of too many others. It seems to me there would not be quite such a rush for technic if it were once clearly understood that technic is simply to be defined as the way of doing things. Many a person has found that by trying himself to do some mechanic's job about the house, he has wasted much time, probably done some damage, surely made a botch, and very likely had to send for the mechanic in the end to do a bigger job than there was needed at first. The mechanic was trained in technic, and got through the work in the most direct and simple way. But the mechanic didn't attempt to display his technic; he simply did his job. In learning to do it he did not pick up and lay down his hammer twenty times in succession by the metronome every day; he did not adjust bit and brace to each other over and over to see if he could do it more times in a moment than could a neighboring mechanic. He simply undertook to accomplish a job, was shown what experience had demonstrated to be the most excellent way of doing that job, and did the job over and over till the boss was satisfied with his results. The technic came through practical attempts to reach a definite goal—a perfect article.
24Method also, it seems to me, would be less worshipped for its own sake if its definition were firmly fixed in mind. It is simply the plan or order in which are arranged the steps that must be taken to arrive at the necessary skill required in the performance of any task.
25Suppose a person in The Musical Courier office had an appointment at the post office at 3 o'clock. He might walk down, he might go in a hansom, he might go in a surface car or he might take the elevated railroad. So long as he reached the post office at 3 no sane person would find fault with his method of getting there. Yet, let a pianist produce a most entrancing effect, so beautifully and faithfully interpreting the composer as to bring delight to the hearers, some of his critics will yet find fault because his wrist is too high or too stiff, or his fingers are too straight. It is as if one said the man who walked to the post office failed to keep his engagement because he did not walk in the sitting posture, or the man who rode in the surface car failed because he rode backward, while the true method of going to the post office requires one to ride standing, as on the elevated road. Is the craze for the Leschetizky method, or the Virgil method, or the Mason method, or the Deppe method, about anything of any more importance than is one's attitude in traveling?
26Of course it goes without saying that technic and method are necessities, that each method has its advantages, and that it is important for a pupil to follow out the method best adapted to his special needs; but it seems to me it is of prime importance in the interests of true culture to urge upon our music teachers to brush aside some of the trivialities of technic and method, to care less for muscles and joints, and to fix their aim more upon music, art, beauty. What we want is soul to soul revelation of the power of tones—what we get too often is a striving after that perfect but meaningless manipulation of a keyboard wherein the modern pneumatic mechanical piano players are so far superior to fingers, no matter by what method soever yet discovered they may have been trained.
27Why should we not strive for music as a means of emotional expression and a thing of exquisite beauty, and develop technic in the effort for ideal interpretation? No machine ever has or ever can compete with fingers in that realm and on that plain. Nor can anything short of absolute perfection of technic attain to that sort of interpretation. But such a thing as Schumann's "Des Abends" so interpreted is worth twenty "Emperor" concertos played by a machine, whether pneumatic or human. And such an ideal of interpretation is the strongest possible stimulus to the acquirement of adequate technic. If we can get the pupil to love the music, to perceive the meaning of the composer, to realize the importance of faithful and significant truth telling in the playing, we shall establish the highest motive for that study of mechanism which is absolutely necessary. We shall make practice intelligent and delightful, and I believe we shall get even more perfect results in pure technic, although we may omit much that is useless and wasteful of time. I stand for less technic, more education; less mechanism, more art.
28HENRY G. HANCHETT.
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