Books › Musical Courier 1927-10-27: Vol 95 Iss 17, 1927 › scan 28
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Musical Courier 1927-10-27: Vol 95 Iss 17, 1927
104 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 29. See the scan on archive.org.
1October 27, 1927
3VARIATIONS
4By the Editor-in-Chief
6Just to show how easy it is to get real news, we shall append several bona fide items, verified and attested and hitherto unprinted. They constitute a "beat" on the reporters of the MUSICAL COURIER. Here are the novel tidings:
8During his stay in New York, Fritz Busch will play at one of his orchestral appearances, the Suite Caprese by Theodore Stearns, the musical reviewer of the Morning Telegraph. Also, Busch is to announce while here, the plans for the production of Stearns' Snow Bird, at the Dresden Opera, where Busch is the chief generalissimo of the baton. At the present time, Stearns is living in Dresden.
10Conductor Georges Zaslawsky has placed on the Beethoven Orchestra program for February 17, at Carnegie Hall, the orchestral introduction to the opera, Children of Truth, by George Liebling.
12The Gallo Theater, just completed, will be opened Monday evening, November 7, by the San Carlo Opera Company, which Mr. Gallo is bringing on from out of town, at considerable expense to himself, for a fortnight of performances here. He was loath to give opera in New York while the Metropolitan is active, but many of his friends urged him to have his new house inaugurated by the organization with which he laid the foundation for his greater career as an impresario. Mr. Gallo's latest venture in that field is the acquisition of a managerial interest in the new Coliseum to be erected shortly at Fifty-fourth street and Eleventh avenue, by Fugazy, Tex Rickard's rival as a promoter of sports.
14The latest endeavors of the Metropolitan Opera House to secure a new location, concern the edifice of the Ethical Culture School, on Central Park West, and a Fifty-ninth street site just east of the New York Athletic Club home, now building. The Century Theater, on Central Park West, also has been considered by the Metropolitan house hunters. The Ethical Culture plot was found to lack depth, and the Fifty-ninth street ground proved to be prohibitive in price. Otto H. Kahn and his supporters in the Metropolitan directorate still favor the West Fifty-seventh street project, on the theory that it is comparatively inexpensive, offers sufficient space, and will make easy the approach, parking, and departure of motor cars.
16Rosa Ponselle will sing the title role of Bellini's Norma, for the first time in her career, on Wednesday, November 16, when that old work is to be revived at the Metropolitan Opera House. By the way, if anyone does not believe that Rosa Ponselle can dance the Charleston like an expert—but cavalierly impulse forbids us to put journalistic instinct first, and we refuse to divulge where or how we obtained the information.
18And as a professional music reviewer, we are ethically prohibited from publishing in advance, what we have heard privately about the manner in which Ponselle will sing the role of Norma. However, some of her musical neighbors at Lake Placid last summer, are not bound by such considerations.
20Of course, this artistic Republic harbors uncounted millions of citizens, male and female, who know all about Norma, and also about her sister, Constance.
22Apropos, Manna Zucca, the composer, reports that, "while my husband is not a musician, still he is able to distinguish between cello, the musical instrument, and jell-o, the dessert. My baby, too, is fast learning the difference."
24All of which reminds us again at this time of the year, that many otherwise admirable American men know all about football, and not a thing about Chopin's F minor Fantasie for piano.
26Just after we had written the foregoing three paragraphs, we remembered, too, that Abie's Irish Rose has just closed a run of five and one-half years in New York City.
28L. N. F. (of the Lewiston, Me., Daily Sun) sends us this paragraph clipped from the MUSICAL COURIER, and asks: "What price advertising?"—
29Sign of the time: The Sun of Saturday, October 8, had a forty-page supplement devoted to radio, while the paper proper consisted of only twenty-eight pages.
31A more cheering note is sounded in some passages from an L. N. F. letter:
32You ask if American music is neglected during Music Week. I can answer only for a small section—that is my own State; but I should say that American music is much emphasized in Maine during that period if one should judge by the programs that come pouring in. Indeed, I do think that anyone with an ear to the ground hears a constantly increasing volume of American music—more and more interest is taken in it, without however, neglecting the music of the composers of other lands, ancient and modern. It is a sign of healthy musical growth that the snobbish attitude of other days in regard to our own composers has changed, and that they are given honor where honor is due.
34I believe it to be true that much of the failure in the past to recognize our fine native composers and musicians lies solely in a lack of real musical education—a fear that if a native musician was given any credit, somebody would say that you didn't know anything about music. The American public shows a constantly broadening appreciation of the best in music. It no longer hesitates to praise its own home talent. Let us hope that it will not slop over, in its haste to atone for past neglect, and fail to include on its programs the best in the music of other lands, also.
36The anxious Parisian concert-giver reads the news that the new Salle Pleyel "can hold 3,000 persons," and murmurs to himself: "But will it?"
38Chopin made his Paris debut in the little old Salle Pleyel in 1831, ninety-six years ago, and he played there, too, in an exhausted state, not long before he died in 1849. He never had an audience of more than a few hundred persons. The listeners at his debut were invited guests.
40Still the controversy rages about the "finishing" of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. We have a dim suspicion that the immortal masterpiece will remain uncompleted even if someone else adds a movement or two.
42Here is our idea of the recent summer of many a piano virtuoso. At least, we spent one summer very much like it, when we still were under the impulse to become a piano virtuoso:
43Packing six cases full of music to take to the seashore.
44Missing nine days of practise waiting for the instrument to be freighted from New York.
45Finding a spot to move about in, after the piano is placed in the cottage parlor.
46Neighbor to the right is found to have a radio.
48TUNING IN WITH EUROPE
50The sensation of the day in Germany is the furore raised by Ernst Krenek's opera, Johnny Gives Them a Tune (Jonny spielt auf), in Berlin. The foreign papers "played up" this event as the invasion of the sacred precincts of the Berlin Opera by jazz. It is, of course, nothing of the sort. Krenek uses jazz not as an end in itself, but as a musical symbol of the time, and he applies it in a musically highly sophisticated fashion which lifts it quite out of the sphere of entertainment music. The real jazzists, à la Whiteman, would probably consider it poor jazz. And the classicists certainly consider it poor music. But Krenek's music, ruthless as it is, has a propulsive force and a genuine vitality that is inherent in almost no other contemporary work, and his Johnny is likely to sweep the cobwebs off opera, which has become musty and out of date. It is a serious attempt to relate the art work to the spirit of our time.
52It is a remarkable revelation of Germany's progressiveness to learn that Krenek's opera is scheduled for production in nearly fifty opera houses outside of Berlin and Leipsic, where it had its premiere. It may not be surprising to see it performed in Dresden, Cologne or other recognized centers of art; but think of provincial places like Altenburg, Brunswick, Danzig, Erfurt, Gera, Kaiserlautern, Krefeld, Mainz, Nordhausen, Schwerin and Würzburg! None of them, we believe, has the population of—say, Buffalo. When will America reach that stage of organization and public interest in contemporary art?
54No less remarkable, perhaps, are some of the other premières announced for the season. Berlin is doing Prokofieff's Fiery Angel, Schreker's Irrelohe, and Stravinsky's Nightingale; Breslau has tackled Schönberg's Glückliche Hand; in Erfurt and elsewhere they are producing Stravinsky's Mavra. Hindemith's Cardillac has reached Magdeburg, and Welsz's Alkestis such places as Dessau.
56Russia seems to have plumped for Alban Berg's Wozzeck just as Germany has plumped for "Johnny."
58Neighbors across the street are found to have a player piano, and children who are practising the violin, and tampering with toy trumpets, drums, harmonicas, and ukulele.
60Neighbor to the left has a phonograph.
61It is too warm to shut the windows to keep out the noises.
62It is too damp to keep the windows open.
63Every second day it comes to light that some important piece in the repertory has been left in town, and a trip to the warehouse trunks is necessary.
64The pedals and keys surrender to the sea air and begin to stick.
65The piano goes out of tune.
66A man from town charges $18 to put the piano in order, and has to be asked to remain for luncheon.
67Whenever the pianist drops in at the local hotel, its orchestra pays him a compliment by playing "classical" music (Dvorak's Humoresque, or Tobani's Hearts and Flowers).
68Resident cottagers ask the pianist to play gratis at the Ladies' Aid Society concert; and at the entertainment in support of the fund to widen the beach and build a new breakwater.
69The pianist cannot go bathing for fear of lumbago.
70He cannot play tennis for fear of stiffening his forearm muscles.
71He cannot ride horseback for fear of falling off and breaking an arm or a finger.
72His manager writes him that the dates are filling very slowly for the coming season.
73The manager presents a postage bill for $64.09, which had been overlooked in the May accounting.
74The pianist's wife suggests that he does not make enough concessions to public taste, to be a big money earner.
75The pianist, in reply, smashes $98 worth of bric-a-brac and other matter belonging to the rented cottage.
76His troubled existence has only one oasis of comfort and pleasure—when he receives his MUSICAL COURIER every Friday morning at 9 a. m.
77He discovers at 9:05 a. m. that a comma has been left out in his advertisement, and spends $1.80 to call up ye editor on the long distance telephone, and in order to abuse that wretched culprit loudly and long.
78"Only a woman can teach another woman to sing," declares Mme. Schumann-Heink. As some of the
80(Continued on next page)
82That incredibly difficult work is to be given in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa and Kiev! Its revolutionary character no doubt appeals to the Communists, but is Communism a royal road to the mastery of atonal counterpoint?
84* * *
86There have been all kinds of rumors about opera in London. While Sir Thomas Beecham is airing his scheme of a nationally supported popular opera, a London daily reports that the London Opera Syndicate has quit. That, we are informed in the inner sanctum, is contrary to the truth. But it is admitted that there is a hitch. Probably about Covent Garden itself, where a faint-hearted owner-syndicate is playing dog in the manger and fattening on the grist that comes from the mill of jazz. It is a sign of the times that the Berlin Staatsoper company, temporarily out of a home, had to strike London from its contemplated tour, because there was no opera house available, Covent Garden being booked up solid (for dancing) till spring.
88* * *
90Harold Bauer, who is back in England for a lightning tour, preceding another lightning tour on the Continent, is impressed by the commercialism of Europe after the—well, idealism of America. People in England listen to him in wide-eyed amazement when he tells them that symphony concerts—good symphony concerts—can't be made to pay, aren't supposed to "make ends meet." "Europe," he says, "must be educated up to the American idea of sacrifice for art. At present the whole atmosphere is wrong; the economic factor is the determining one."
92* * *
94He is right certainly so far as England is concerned. In Germany Government support does what private patronage does in America—and even more; in nearly all the other countries music is a business, a job, a speculation. It should be anything but.
96* * *
98Overheard at an English seaside concert:
99"What are they playing?"
100"I think it's Tales of 'Offman."
101"No, I think it's the Humoresque."
102Then, after examination of the placard near the stage:
103"Well, it's neither; it's the Refrain from Spittin'."
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