Books › Musical Courier 1927-11-17: Vol 95 Iss 20, 1927 › scan 29
Scan 29
Musical Courier 1927-11-17: Vol 95 Iss 20, 1927
124 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 30. 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: Muscier, New York
12Member of Merchants' Association of New York, National Publishers' Association, Rotary Club of New York, The Fifth Avenue Association of New York, Music Industry Chamber of Commerce, Advertising Club of New York, Honorary Member American Optimists.
14ALVIN L. SCHMOEGER ………………………………………General Manager
16LEONARD LIEBLING …………………………………………..Editor-in-Chief
17WILLIAM GEPPERT …………………………………………..Editor-in-Chief one of two readings
18WILLIAM GEPPERT one of two readings
19FRANK PATTERSON …………………………………………..Associate Editors one of two readings
20FRANK PATTERSON one of two readings
21CRESCEDE LUCAS (Paris) one of two readings
22CESAR SAERCHINGER (Paris) one of two readings
23RENE DEVRIES ………………………………………………….Associate Editors one of two readings
24RENE DEVRIES one of two readings
25CESAR SAERCHINGER (London)
26THOMAS J. ALLEN …………………………………………….Managing Editor one of two readings
27THOMAS J. ALLEN …………………………………………..Managing Editor one of two readings
28J. ALBERT RIKER ……………………………………………..General Representative one of two readings
29J. ALBERT RIKER …………………………………………..General Representative one of two readings
31OFFICES
32CHICAGO AND MIDDLE WEST HEADQUARTERS—JEANNETTE Cox, 820 to 830 Orchestra Building, 229 South Michigan Ave., Chicago. Telephone, Harrison 6110.
33BOSTON AND NEW ENGLAND—270 Huntington Avenue, Room 202, Boston. Telephone, Back Bay 2181.
34LONDON AND GENERAL EUROPEAN HEADQUARTERS—CESAR SAERCHINGER (in charge), 124 Wigmore Street, W. 1. Telephone, Mayfair 6453.
35LONDON BUSINESS OFFICE—175 Piccadilly, W. 1. Telephone, Gerrard 5267.
36Cable address: Muscier, London.
37BERLIN, GERMANY—C. HOOFER TRASK, Seenheimerstr. 27, Berlin-Charlottenburg. Telephone, Wilhelm 144. Cable address, Muscierer, Berlin. one of two readings
38BERLIN, GERMANY—C. HOOPER TRASK, Seenheimerstr. 27, Berlin-Charlottenburg. Telephone, Wilhelm 144. Cable address, Muscierer, Berlin. one of two readings
39PARIS, FRANCE—NATASCHA BORODIN, Arc de l'Opera. (Take elevator to 5th floor.) Telephone, Central 14-85. Cable address: Muscierer, Paris. one of two readings
40PARIS, FRANCE—NATASCHA BORISOFF, Arcente de l'Opera. (Take elevator to 5th floor.) Telephone, Central 14-85. Cable address: Muscierer, Paris. one of two readings
41MILAN, ITALY—ANTONIO RASIL 31 Via Durini.
42VIENNA, AUSTRIA—PAUL BROHER, Schellinggasse 12, Vienna 1. Telephone, Vienna 72-0-47 and 19-7-07. Cable address, Muscierer, Vienna.
43For the names and addresses of other offices, correspondents and representatives apply at the main office.
45SUBSCRIPTIONS—Domestic, Five Dollars; Canadian, Six Dollars. Foreign, Six Dollars and Twenty-five Cents. Single Copies, Fifteen Cents at Newsstands. Rack Numbers: Twelve-five at American News Company, New York, General Distributing Agents. Western News Company, Chicago, Western Distributing Agents. New England News Co., Eastern Distributing Agents. Australian News Co., Ltd., Agents for New Zealand, New South Wales, Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania, Agents for New Zealand, New South Wales, Co., Ltd. Wellington, European Agents, The International News Company, Ltd., Dream's Building, London, E. C. 4, England.
47The 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.
49Copy 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 computed on a flat rate basis, no charge being made for setting up advertisements. An extra charge is made for mortising, notching, leveling, and lay-outs which call for special set-ups.
51Entered as Second Class Matter, January 8, 1883, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879.
53THE MUSICAL COURIER EXTRA
54Published on the 1st and 15th of every month by
55Musical Courier Company
56Devoted to the Interests of the Music Trade
58NEW YORK NOVEMBER 17, 1927 No. 2484
60Wanda Landowska proves that there's life in the old harpsichord yet.
62The North breezes blow the concert flood to its fullest rush. And the critics supply the frosts.
64Music is beautiful, but nevertheless there is such a thing as making a concert program too long.
66The shot that was heard 'round the world came from America; and from America, too, comes the jazz that is heard 'round the world.
68Orpheus, torn to pieces by the ecstatic listeners, has his modern counterpart in those musicians torn to pieces by our dyspeptic critics.
70Whiskers for doctors and long hair for pianists now seem definitely relegated to the limbo of tradition and unsanitary barbarism, where they belong.
72"Lortzing's operas had 542 performances in Germany last season."—Exchange. Ha! ha! So far as America is concerned, there is no such composer as Lortzing.
74Otto Kahn says that the Metropolitan Opera does not make money. Somewhat, then, like the general of antiquity, Mr. Kahn may well exclaim: "A few more packed houses and we are ruined."
76A great advantage in hearing a symphony concert on the radio, lies in the fact that the listener is not bothered by a regiment of late arrivals and early leavers, a host of program rustlers, and a battalion of coughers.
78In this issue of the MUSICAL COURIER, a series of articles called Fundamentals of Violin Playing, by George Lehmann, make their beginning. These reflections and practical suggestions on violin playing, should be of interest and value to those readers of the MUSICAL COURIER who are acquainted with his previous contributions to this paper and remember them as the writings of a deep thinking and exceptionally well equipped musical educator and essayist. He handles his topics with authority and is a literary stylist of uncommon ability. Fundamentals will be found to cover particularly well, many questions that concern and perplex most players, teachers, and students of the violin.
80A New York tabloid prints a half column story called: "Singing Hen Can Trill Grand Opera." Why not, if a Kücken could write songs?
82"Back to Wagner" seems to be the cry everywhere," remarks a Munich weekly. Why the cry? In opera, the world never advanced beyond Wagner.
84The possessors of a faulty technic stress the importance of feeling, interpretation and temperament—so do the good technicians; and the latter are of the opinion that feeling resting on a substructure of wrong notes is more or less of an absurdity if not a tragedy.
86At a meeting of the directors of the Chicago Musical College this past week, Myron D. Kinsey, assistant manager of the school, was elected one of the institution's directors. Mr. Kinsey has worked assiduously since he was brought to the school by Carl D. Kinsey, the general director.
88The musical season is galloping steadily onward. It is so far a good musical season, artistically and financially. Those who are satisfied with it, largely outnumber those who are not. For the MUSICAL COURIER it is the best season in the almost fifty years of the existence of this paper. Small wonder that we look upon it as a good season.
90On November 4, the Dayton Westminster Choir sang at the Coliseum in St. Louis, Mo., to an audience of exactly 9,004 people. The clever local manager who was responsible for the advance publicity given this concert, when asked what she did to get this vast amount of publicity that the concert received, said she "believed in three T's. Telegrams, telephones, and Tell-a-woman."
92The harmonica is useful in places other than the streets, the back rooms of saloons and the forecastles of ships. A Rushville, Ill., man uses the instrument (according to the Telegram) for catching wolves. He conceals tame animals in a haystack, and makes them howl by playing on a harmonica, thus attracting the wild wolves to traps laid about the haystack. The trapper might get better results from the use of the saxophone, whose tone carries much farther than that of the honeycombed wind instrument.
94Several of the critics on the daily newspaper criticized Gatti-Casazza for presenting the new American tenor, Frederick Jagel, in Aida, which they claimed was too heavy for him. The MUSICAL COURIER is informed by reliable authority that it was Mr. Jagel himself who chose Radames for his debut because he had had his greatest success in that role in Italy. The general manager kindly allowed the young tenor to make his choice and, therefore, Mr. Gatti should be absolved from censure.
96Would Americans love symphony more, did they love football less? It is a question that arises in some thoughtful minds each year when the pigskin balls go hurtling through the autumn air, hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts gather in chilled and cheering outdoor crowds, and newspapers give up whole pages to descriptions and pictures of touchdowns, punts, end runs, offside play, and massed buckings of the line. By the way, our modest wagers on the Army-Navy and Yale-Harvard games are ready for takers. We prefer Army and Yale.
98There is nothing like being an early bird. The European Festivals Association announces that the 1928 Wagner-Mozart Festival season at Munich will begin on July 26 and end August 30, with performances of Wagner works at the Prinzregenten Theater and of Mozart operas at the more intimate Residenz Theater. Besides the Ring cycle, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, Lohengrin will be given with new scenery, staging and lighting.
100Jules Daiber, Steinway Hall, is the American representative for this annual festival and announces that he has tickets on hand for the convenience of Americans who wish to visit the music or dramatic festivals at Bayreuth, Salzburg, Stratford, Munich, Heidelberg and Vienna. No official announcement has come from Bayreuth, but it was authoritatively stated last summer that the same repertoire—the Ring, Tristan and Parsifal—would be repeated next year, with no festival in 1929, when preparations would take place for 1930. It was indicated that Wagner festivals would take place at Bayreuth in future in two out of every three years, with Parsifal and the Ring as fixtures, and one other work changing with each pair of festivals.
102MUSICAL COURIER
104AUDIOGRAPHIC MUSIC
105A development in music that will prove important not only for the pleasure seeker and through him to the general musical culture of the country, but to the music teacher, student and interpreter as well, has just been brought to fruition by the Aeolian Company. It is called Audiographic Music, and is an improvement on the ordinary Duo-Art Music Roll to be used in the recording piano.
107A great many classical and modern compositions have been issued in this new form, and a long list of important names are added to them as editors or annotators. They will soon be placed on the market for general consumption, and will fill a long felt want—a desire for some sort of explanation of the music beyond merely the title or opus number and the name of the composer and the artist by whom the music has been interpreted on the music roll.
109Printed on the roll so as to be read while the music is being played, Audiographic Music rolls have details of the form of the piece and suggestions of its possible meaning. There are also rather extended paragraphs at the beginning of the roll giving biographical and historical data, a picture of the composer, and so on.
111In order to understand what this will mean as an asset to musical culture as well as to the enjoyment the average listener derives from musical performance, one must think back to the mental state of the average man or woman who will sit down to listen to music played by a recording piano in the privacy of the home. Here is tranquility and peace, a love for music—but, an active brain! The active brain, if it is interested in musical technicalities, will find fruit for thought in the music itself. If the active brain is not interested in musical technicalities it will seek diversion beyond the music. It is likely to become bored with the music. The dream-state necessary to the contemplation of music as music is difficult to attain.
113Audiographic Music tells the listener so much, and makes the music so interesting, that the average listener will find himself fully satisfied with it. In a way the music ceases to be merely music. The Audiograph furnishes program notes, just as program notes are furnished at a symphony concert. It does not furnish a program where there is none, but it furnishes material for thought, material that will draw the mind away from mundane affairs and towards the music.
115Music is, if one may be permitted so to describe it, of two kinds. There is music that is purely entertaining, passes in one ear and out of the other, and is scarcely listened to—popular music, music for which a program is unthinkable and would be more or less ridiculous. Often enough that sort of music is mere sound, sound which can be listened to while one is talking, while one is reading, while one is doing any variety of things. It needs no interpretation—and gets none.
117There is also the music of the serious and classic writers. Real music, that must really be listened to. But in listening to that sort of music one often wonders what it means, why it was written, what circumstances led to it, what the composer had in mind when he wrote it, how old he was at the time and what were the circumstances—and so on, and so forth. In other words, properly to enjoy such music, to get the mind properly centered upon it, one must strive to some extent to get back into that mood that led to its original conception, to feel as the composer felt.
119One is helped to that by the Audiograph. It tells about the composer, it tells about the manuscript, about external conditions, about all sorts of things that refer directly to that particular composition.
121Now one may have a dictionary of music in the house, but to get detailed information from such a dictionary about any particular composition is difficult, to say the least of it. Generally it means that one must read the entire biographical sketch of the composer—and even then one may be disappointed. The editors, compilers and annotators of the Audiograph have done all that work in advance. It is on the music roll. One has but to read it and one will know, actually, all that is to be known about the music.
123The value of such an offering to musical pleasure and culture is obvious.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.