Books › Musical Courier 1923-10-04: Vol 87 Iss 14, 1923 › scan 20
Scan 20
Musical Courier 1923-10-04: Vol 87 Iss 14, 1923
72 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 21. See the scan on archive.org.
1VARIATIONETTES
2By the Editor-in-Chief
4By this time the once prevailing American notion that London Punch is not a funny paper has been generally dissipated, but if any of it remains this paragraph from our English contemporary ought to settle the matter conclusively: "According to the Registrar-General's report there is a remarkable falling off in the number of births. Alarming though this may be, it has its brighter side for America. It means that fewer English lecturers are being born."
6Young E. Allison, of Louisville, Ky., makes us sadly proud with this note: "The MUSICAL COURIER is coming again regularly and my soul is steeping itself weekly in the sentimental cynicism that flows through its columns like lava from the blazing heart of Popocatapetl (spelling not guaranteed, but believed in). I love your idea of critics and criticism. You have not yet gone to the extent of saying that all the serious ones will go to Hell when they have ceased from criticism. You don't need to say it—everybody is on."
8As a matter of fact we have been prejudiced only against a certain kind of critics and criticism, but they and their works are becoming more and more scarce as the seasons roll on. Time and the equally relentless evolution of thought and custom have done their usual work and for the moment the critics have caught up pretty well with the ideas and spirit of their own period. Most of the well known musical penmen know their metier thoroughly, are good writers, and realize that the critic does not stand above the persons and products he criticizes. Even the older reviewers, like Henderson, Hale, Finck, Newman, Dr. Leopold Schmidt, Dr. Ludwig Karpath, have adopted a plain and popular style of writing which is of inestimable advantage to the cause of music because it reaches the greatest number of non-professional persons who possibly could be induced to read anything about music and musicians. Any one of the gentlemen mentioned above is worth a dozen Hanslicks, Tapperts, Davidsons, Krehbiels.
10Two weeks ago we published some singularly translated press notices about Rozsi Varady, a cellist, and today we are in receipt of the attached jolly correction:
12INTERNATIONAL ART CONCERT MANAGEMENT
13132 West Forty-third Street.
14New York, September 21, 1923.
16Dear Mr. Editor-in-Chief:
18We aint exactly what you might call a bunch of solemn asses in this here office, and we join in your laugh if you expect us to laugh at the ROZSI VARADY (not VARADY ROZSI) story in your "Variations" columns of September 20th. But as it happens that we are the managers for Miss Varady and responsible for the press matter put out in her interest, please permit us to get up on our hind legs and howl "We didn't do it; Bill Sykes did it." We don't claim to belong in the same class as Henry James, and our batting average isn't quite so good as that other guy, R. W. Emerson, but not even after a night spent with a member of the MUSICAL COURIER staff in pre-Volstead days would we have written "under the hands of this artist the reserved violoncello is transformed into a soft, affectionate instrument which form producing any shrill or howling sound," etc.; of some other "artists" perhaps yes, but of Miss Varady, "jamais de la vie." To prove it, we are enclosing here-with one of the leaflets put out with our sanction, and you will find the Berliner Tageblatt quoted in translation to rather different effect. Our spring of English pure and undefiled makes us say "Under the energetic hands of this young artist the reserved violoncello is transformed into a soft, affectionate instrument with a pure, warm, full tone." We are responsible for the English; the sentiment, be it remembered was "made in Germany."
20Without invading your editorial sanctum, may we suggest that you do us justice and edify your readers at the same time by publishing our versions of the foreign comments, in parallel columns, giving the two performances a "before and after" effect? Many of your readers have our leaflets and they wont believe that what you say is so, unless you deign to explain.
22Very truly yours,
23INTERNATIONAL ART CONCERT MANAGEMENT,
24By EMIL HILB.
26There is not space for the reprint of the excellent and artistically translated notices but we read them and are willing to vouch that they exist. Accompanying the leaflet was a picture of Roszi and her affectionate cello, the latter looking conventional enough, but Roszi is a slim, romantic appearing creature, with dark hair piled piquantly atop a small, well-shaped head, a saucy smile upon her pretty features and because of these things and her billowy, chiffony gown, she bears a striking resemblance to the famous portrait which Lehnbach did of fascinating Saharet, the dancer. Roszi and her cello should find the path easy in our appreciative land.
28A magazine article on lunacy says that many inmates of insane asylums are capable of earning their own livings. Apparently many of them are doing so by writing our popular songs.—Nashville Southern Lumberman.
30The Houston Post liked our pleasantry about the stockbroker's office sign, "Yes, We Have No Bonanzas Today" so much that it adopted the child of our brain and gave the doting parent no credit for relationship of any kind.
32And we know some piano and violin recitals that would attract more patronage if they hung out the sign, "Yes, We Have No Sonatas Today."
34The Asiatic expedition of the American Museum of Natural History discovered a number of fossilized dinosaur eggs on the Mongolian plains. They probably were thrown at Ling Lun, flute player and inventor of the Chinese scale, when he was practising his discovery.
36Things are going to the dogs musically in New York. For three days no new orchestra has been organized here.
38Leopold Auer is the author of a book (published by Stokes) called My Long Life in Music. Maybe it only seemed long on account of the many times he has had to listen to his pupils playing Dvorák's Humoresque and Kreisler's Caprice Viennoise.
40By the way, when persons speak of "the Humoresque" you are supposed to know that they mean Dvorák's, and not Grieg's or Schumann's. "The barcarolle" means the one by Offenbach, of course, and shuts out Chopin, Moszkowski, Rubinstein, et al. "The nocturne" is by Chopin, "the Romance" is by Rubinstein, "the intermezzo" is by Mascagni, and "the prelude" could not possibly be by anybody except Rachmaninoff.
42Recently Nikolai Sokoloff sent a telegram from Saranac Lake, where he was vacationing, to Adella P. Hughes, manager of the Cleveland Orchestra, in which he wished to give her this information:
44The programs for Columbus and Springfield are:
45Columbus—Overture Leonore, Beethoven; Piano Concerto, Mozart; intermission; Scheherazade complete, and March Slav.
46Springfield—Overture Roman Carnival, Berlioz; Symphony Eroica or Second Brahms complete, intermission, Third and Last Movement from Scheherazade, Minuet from Orpheus, Gluck; Molly on the Shore, Grainger, March Slav.
48With the assistance of the unsymphonic telegraph operator of Saranac Lake, Mrs. Hughes received the attached:
5021134 P Saranaclake, N. Y.
51Mrs. Adelle Prentiss Hughes, 210 Caxton Bldg., Cleveland, Ohio. Program for Columbus Overture Leonore Beethoven piano concert; Mozart intermission, Shesha Zodle complete March Slav. Springfield Overture Roman Carnival Derlioz Sympathy Evoke or Second Brahams complete intermission Third and Last Movement from Scheherazade Minuet from Orpheus Gluck Molloy on Shore Graingzev, March Slav, hope you are better, wishes. one of two readings
52Mrs. Adelle Prentiss Hughes, 210 Caxton Bldg., Cleveland, Ohio. Program for Columbus Overture Leonore Beethoven piano concert; Mozart intermission, Shesha Zodle complete March Slav. Springfield Overture Roman Carnival Derlioz Sympathy Evoice or Second Brahams complete intermission Third and Last Movement from Scheherazade Minuet from Orpheus Gluck Molloy on Shore Graingzev, March Slav, hope you are better, wishes. one of two readings
53STROLOFF.
55We asked with some solicitude the other day why Mary Garden and her press agent had maintained so long a silence in the public prints. At once follows Mary's arrival here and a beautiful story adapted to an imminent need of the moment. The tale runs that she has invented some anti-obesity pills and intends to place them on sale for American women. Mary seemed to be somewhat discouraged, however. "It's a dead world," she is reported to have said upon landing; "nothing new save silver and gold gowns and I have a number of each." The bright reporter asked her whether Ford or Coolidge is to be our next President. Mary, up on all subjects, exclaimed enthusiastically: "Ford is marvelous. He and Mussolini are the two most wonderful men in the world today. It is a far distance between Detroit and Rome, yet there is something akin in the two men. In Switzerland I read Ford's The Story of My Life. I always knew that Ford was a genius but this confirmed the idea." Perhaps the most important item in the reporter's account was that Mary "was dressed in brown, with big cubist spots."
57In this town whenever a young Russian-American shakes hands with you with his left hand he is a violinist protecting his bow arm. New York now is the asylum for the fiddling fraternity. Even the spaghetti where most of them eat is getting stringy and the busses make double stops at the street corners. Arco on.
59Someone asked the late Mark Twain how he liked Wagner. "I am not an opera goer," he replied; "I am studying for the ministry."
61Beethoven came from a Roman Catholic country. His dying remark was "Plaudite, amici, comœdia finita est." His bookcase now is in the possession of Alexander W. Thayer's niece in Cambridge, Mass. He wrote something in his diary in 1816. The Mass in D was completed in 1822. We got all this from a book in which we were looking up how many quartets Beethoven had written.
63"Do you have music at dinner?" asked Moriz Rosenthal, of the Swiss landlord. "Oh, yes, indeed," was the proud reply. "Thank you," said Moriz, "you are an honest man. Often I have been deceived by the musicians being concealed until it is too late." Turning to his valet, the great pianist called out: "Shlivovitz, look to our luggage. We are leaving."
65A critic's soliloquy: "Shall I keep on pounding Schönberg, or has the time come when it would be more profitable for me to turn lecturer and expound him?"
67A disgruntled correspondent, L. B., takes the editor of this paper to task, because we "do not publish more articles on aesthetics, on the spirituality of Beethoven's music, the inner aspect of Brahms, the science of song," etc. We can only reply that the MUSICAL COURIER is a weekly musical newspaper and not a magazine. When some critic becomes especially peeved at our publication and tries to hurl at it the worst insult he could think of, he usually terms it a "trade paper." Maybe it is. Whatever it is, it is what our readers make it. They, and not the editors, really make the MUSICAL COURIER. Whenever we publish material that does not interest our readers in a practical way we become aware of their displeasure without loss of time. They have direct ways of letting us feel it. We know definitely that they do not desire—L. B. and perhaps a very few others excepted—to see in these pages long winded analyses of the Beethoven symphonies. That data may be found in special books devoted to the subject. Nor do our readers care for prolix harangues about Brahms' "inner aspect." (He has been dead many years and his inner aspect these days must be something awful.) Then again, our readers would not display the slightest regard for a discourse on the number of laryngeal titillations required to do a trill in Traviata. Some teachers try to advise along those lines and with dire results. We doubt whether anything new remains to be said about Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, and the whole kit and crew of the great classical and romantic composers. Everything worth while regarding them has been thought, written, and collected between book covers and is available at little or no cost to students and other persons anxious to know something of the history of celebrated music and of the lives of those who composed it. We have not come across any recent articles published on those subjects anywhere which we would care to reprint in their entirety in these columns. That style of musical writing has gone out of date. It flowered at its fullest bloom about forty years ago, began to wither and fade and copy and recopy itself about fifteen years ago, and finally died quietly and unmourned just before the war.
69Our correspondent, L. B., should look in the libraries for what he is seeking. He would do well to remember that the world has fixed fairly permanently the place of the famous composers. The MUSICAL COURIER could not, for instance, start any controversies about the value of Bach's B minor Mass or Chopin's Fantasie in F minor; any more than a daily newspaper could start one about the Battle of Waterloo, or the crossing of the Red Sea by the Jews. There are weekly and monthly musical magazines that print articles about hidden meanings and inner aspects, and about how to teach children, and how to read the musical notation of the Pleocene Period, and how to become a Heifetz though butter-fingered. Some of the articles are fairly short, others are beautifully long, some are illustrated and diagramed, and the rest are not. If L. B. is hoping for such matter in the pages of the MUSICAL COURIER, he is hoping in vain. This paper is not an educational journal except in a broad practical sense. With its editors the preparation and publication of purely didactic or aesthetic material is what the German literalists used to call "Ein ueberwundener Standpunkt." If L. B. does not know what that means he may be able to get the translation from the same spectacled pale-eyed gentleman who shall tell him where to find the inner aspects of Brahms.
71All the opera stars no doubt were jealous of the fuss made about the arrival here of the horse
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.