Books › Musical Courier 1927-10-27: Vol 95 Iss 17, 1927 › scan 27
Scan 27
Musical Courier 1927-10-27: Vol 95 Iss 17, 1927
71 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 28. See the scan on archive.org.
1MUSICAL COURIER
2Weekly Review of the World's Music
3Published every Thursday by the
4MUSICAL COURIER COMPANY, INC.
5ERNEST F. EILERT, President
6WILLIAM GEPPERT, Vice-President
7ALVIN L. SCHMOEGER, Sec. and Treas.
8Steinway Building, 113 West 57th Street, New York
9Telephone to all Departments: Circle 4500, 4501, 4502, 4503, 4504, 4505, 4506.
10Cable address: Muscuer, New York
11Member of Merchants' Association of New York, National Publishers' Association, Rotary Club of New York, The Fifth Avenue Association of New York, Music Industries Chamber of Commerce, Advertising Club of New York, Honorary Member American Optimists.
12ALVIN L. SCHMOEGER, General Manager
13LEONARD LIEBLING, Editor-in-Chief
14WILLIAM GEPPERT
15FRANK PATTERSON
16CLAUDE LUCAS (Paris)
17RENE DEVRIES
18CESAR SAERCHINGER (London)
19THORNTON W. ALLEN, Managing Editor
20J. ALBERT RIKER, General Representative
21OFFICES
22CHICAGO AND MIDDLE WEST HEADQUARTERS—JEANNETTE COX, 820 to 830 Orchestra Building, 220 South Michigan Ave., Chicago. Telephone, Harrison 6110.
23BOSTON AND NEW ENGLAND—270 Huntington Avenue, Room 202, Boston. Telephone, Back Bay 3181.
24LONDON AND OTHER EUROPEAN HEADQUARTERS—CESAR SAERCHINGER (in charge), 124 Wigmore Street, W. 1. Telephone, Mayfair 6453. LONDON BUSINESS OFFICE—175 Piccadilly, W. 1. Telephone, Gerrard 5267.
25Cable address: Muscuer, London.
26BERLIN, GERMANY—HOOPER TRAUS, Seenheimerstr. 27, Berlin-Charlottenburg 1. Telephone, Wilhelm 9144. Cable address, Muscuer, Berlin.
27PARIS, FRANCE—NATALIE DE BOGORY, 47, Avenue de l'Opera. (Take elevator to 5th floor.) Telephone, Central 14-85. Cable address: Muscuer, Paris.
28MILAN, ITALY—ANTONIO BASSI, 31 Via Durini.
29VIENNA, AUSTRIA—PAUL BECHER, Schellinggasse 12, Vienna 1. Telephone, Vienna 12-9-47 and 19-7-67. Cable address, Muscuer, Vienna.
30For the names and addresses of other offices, correspondents and representatives apply at the main office.
31SUBSCRIPTIONS—Domestic, Five Dollars; Canadian, Six Dollars, Foreign, Six Dollars and Twenty-five Cents. Single Copies, Fifteen Cents at News-Stands. Back Numbers, Twenty-five Cents. American News Company, New York, General Distributing Agents. Western News Company, Other Western Distributing Agents. New England News Co., Eastern Distributing Agents. Australasian News Co., Ltd., Agents for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania. Agents for New Zealand, New Zealand News Co., Ltd., Wellington. European Agents: The International News Company, Ltd., Bream's Building, London, E. C. 4, England.
32The MUSICAL COURIER is for sale at the principal newsstands and music stores in the United States and in the leading music houses, hotels and kiosques in Europe.
33Copy for advertising in the MUSICAL COURIER should be in the hands of the Advertising Department before four o'clock on the Friday previous to the date of publication. The advertising rates of the MUSICAL COURIER are comparatively very low, and the advertising space is always filling up as soon as the rates have been once brought before the attention of advertisers. An extra charge is made for mortising, notching, leveling, and lay-outs which call for special set-ups. one of two readings
34Copy for advertising in the MUSICAL COURIER should be in the hands of the Advertising Department before four o'clock on the Friday previous to the date of publication. The advertising rates of the MUSICAL COURIER are comparatively very low, and the advertising space is always filling up as soon as the rates have been once brought before the advertising departments. An extra charge is made for mortising, notching, leveling, and lay-outs which call for special set-ups. one of two readings
35Entered as Second Class Matter, January 8, 1883, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879.
36THE MUSICAL COURIER EXTRA
37Published on the 1st and 15th of every month by
38Musical Courier Company
39Devoted to the Interests of the Music Trade
40NEW YORK OCTOBER 27, 1927 No. 2481
41Is not every good performance of a Beethoven work, a Beethoven celebration?
42Do not try to force your musical tastes on other persons, as force usually is met with force.
43The Milo Venus and Schubert's Unfinished Symphony are the greatest incomplete works of art.
44The most important day in a musician's life is when he realizes that he is not as important as music.
45"If this is the land where our fathers died," writes J. P. F., "it also is the land where our grandmothers dance."
46If reckless driving is a crime in law, why could not reckless music-making be made at least a misdemeanor?
47"De Valera is one of the idols of the Irish," says a political editorial. The other is named John McCormack.
48Taking time by the forelock is a good maxim to observe; but not when performing in a musical ensemble.
49While some singers smoke cigarettes (according to the advertisements), the only kind of puffing others prefer is of themselves.
50It is difficult for this country to discover an American Beethoven or Wagner, while it continues to be busy seeking new fields of oil.
51The monarchs who seem likely to last longest in Europe are Bach, Beethoven, Gluck, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, and Wagner.
52Harder than venturing any other kind of guess would be a prediction about the number of compositions by Americans to be performed in this country this winter by European artists.
53A lady violinist, whose high notes caused her teeth to ache, went to the dentist for an examination. He pronounced her teeth perfectly sound. It is very likely that if she had her high notes examined by a violin doctor he would find them to be far from perfect sound. We have heard many violinists whose high notes gave us a pain.
54Successful vocalists who do not give credit to their teachers are amazing and amusing types. Could anyone imagine a sea captain refusing credit to his compass?
55A few years ago six dollars per performance was the salary of the male star who enacted the chief role, that of Christus, in the Oberammergau Passion Play. As there were thirty representations, the gentleman received exactly $180 for his summer's work. Opera stars please note, with a shrug of incredulous disdain.
56Italy is to have a brilliant opera season, with Milan, Bologna, Naples, Venice, and Genoa leading, in the number and importance of their productions. La Scala (Milan) opens November 16, with Toscanini conducting. Some of the performances will be led also by Richard Strauss, whose operas are nearly as popular in Italy as in Germany.
57Why do violins, frail as they are, last so much longer than pianos, strong as they are? Some day an individual piano builder may appear who will make keyboard instruments entirely by hand, and long after his death, $20,000, $35,000, and $50,000 might be paid cheerfully by collectors, for those examples. At the present time, such large amounts for pianos are paid only for those with woodwork specially designed, carved, or decorated.
58Some person with a finical regard for the verities writes to the MUSICAL COURIER asking why New York claims to lead the world in opera when Strauss' Ariadne, Guntram, Intermezzo, Fuersnoth, and Woman Without a Shadow, have not been heard here and seem to have no prospect of any early production in the metropolis. We pass the question to those in control of New York's operatic delights at the Metropolitan.
59The necessity again of holding the Worcester Music Festival in Mechanics Hall, Worcester, Mass., once more brings to mind forcibly the limitations of this old building, and the great need of a more extensive auditorium. The lack of a suitable structure for these festivals is not a new question; the need has been recognized for some time. It is understood that several years ago Conductor Albert Stoessel was given to believe that Worcester was intending to erect a memorial auditorium. The question seemed later to have lost its immediate significance, but the splendid success of the festival just held seems more than ever to warrant a structure with an adequate seating capacity for the thousands of musicians and music lovers who flock annually to that city.
60Mengelberg, conductor of the Philharmonic, again is winning the warm favor of the patrons of that organization. He has become an abiding favorite in New York. In his performances, as revealed so far this season, he continues to insist upon fundamentally correct lines, and to garnish them with trimmings of his own artistic imagination. The freedom of his interpretations, however, never takes on the nature of license. He manages to keep the musician-listener pacified and the lay-hearer fascinated and often excited. He is a conductor of never-failing interest. His audiences here are leaving him in no doubt of the fact, for he wins renewed ovations at each concert. The Philharmonic Orchestra, too, is in excellent estate this autumn and it must be a joy to Mengelberg to function in artistic association with so fine a body of instrumentalists.
61Says Gilbert Keith Chesterton in a little essay entitled Conceit and Caricature: "If a man must needs be conceited, it is certainly better that he should be conceited about some merits or talents that he does not really possess. . . . Because the merit is an unreal merit, it does not corrupt or sophisticate his real merits. . . . If a man's mind is erroneously possessed with the idea that he is a great violinist, that need not prevent his being a gentleman and an honest man. But if once his mind is possessed in any strong degree with the knowledge that he is a gentleman, he will soon cease to be one." Neatly put—quite Marcus Aurelian! But is not conceit always based on something unreal? Conceit is vanity, false pride. Self esteem based on the possession of real merit is quite proper and produces a confidence that is necessary to success. Without it a violinist, pianist, singer or public performer of any other sort would be without the courage and repose to face an audience. Justifiable self esteem is not conceit; conceit starts where justifiable self esteem ends, and therefore it is always based on what Mr. Chesterton terms unreal merit.
62OPERETTA
63There is one class of music in America which has grown to extraordinary proportions without thus far gaining any great amount of recognition from the critical faculty or from musicians who interest themselves chiefly, if not solely, in the classics. This class is the school operetta.
64The school operetta is not exactly of the Broadway type, though much of the music would no doubt find favorable reception in our musical comedy theaters. It is rather modeled after the ideals of Gilbert and Sullivan, being full of wholesome fun and offering the public a wealth of excellent music, which lies far closer to the Sullivan idiom than it does to the present day American idioms which are utilized in the making of jazz.
65The fact that these operettas are made so simple that they may be available for use in schools with children of various ages in the cast does not render them quite as unacceptable to grown-ups as this limitation might apply. The fact is that almost any one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas might be given with children, provided some of the male parts were transposed. There is nothing in the music of the Sullivan comic operas that presents any difficulties insuperable to amateur performances and the American composers of school operettas have wisely chosen a similar type of music for their youthful interpreters.
66It might seem an exaggeration inspired by enthusiasm to say that the school operettas are the best things in light music that are being made in America today. Such sweeping statements are likely to be misleading, and presuppose a knowledge on the part of the person making the statement of which this writer cannot boast. But many musicians will agree that where the choice is to be made between the jazz of this decade and the best light music of the period immediately preceding the rise of jazz, that choice will fall on the older music. It is impossible to deny a certain importance to jazz, because of its tendency to widen the harmonic and instrumental horizons of popular music, but there are few tunes in all the jazz literature that are worthy of extended life, or are at all likely to live, and a great deal of the harmony that is used in the development of these tunes is altogether out of place in popular music.
67Every musician of taste must realize the incongruity of suddenly being cast from the heights of thoughtless gaiety into the depths of turgid Wagnerian passion, or to find one's self at one moment enjoying an imitation of a Strauss waltz and at the next moment an imitation of the Verlainesque mysteries of Debussy. The harmonies themselves are often beautiful, but their use, under the circumstances, is simply ridiculous. However, as in all modern music of this transition period, these experiments will undoubtedly lead to a general advance in the harmonization of all popular music.
68The composers of American school operettas have avoided these pitfalls, whether by design or instinct this writer cannot say. Most of their work has been built upon a far richer harmonic structure than Sullivan ever attempted, and this richer harmonic structure has been introduced without any sacrifice of tunefulness. The result is something very fine indeed, something which should be far better known, and should attain far wider recognition than it has as yet, except among those who have come into immediate contact with it.
69There has been, and there is today, a great deal of talk on music appreciation for young people. Music appreciation would be, of course, an excellent thing for every young person, as well as every adult, in America. It would not only increase their own enjoyment, but it would increase the income derived from music, of which musicians certainly would not complain. But it is greatly to be doubted whether the usual methods of attempting to teach music appreciation have any effect except to bore those who are being taught to such an extent that they thereafter fight shy of music. The idea that, if a person is forced to take bitter medicine, he will, after a time, come to love the bitter medicine is rather absurd.
70We have heard music appreciation classes called a foil to jazz, which is likewise absurd. The real foil to jazz is the school operetta, which gives the young people a thoroughly good time, first rate enjoyment, in connection with music that is of the best type of popular music and often approaching the standard of the classical.
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