Books › Musical Courier 1927-11-17: Vol 95 Iss 20, 1927 › scan 31
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Musical Courier 1927-11-17: Vol 95 Iss 20, 1927
66 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 32. See the scan on archive.org.
1GOOD SENSE!
2According to the London Musical News and Herald wisdom comes from the London Board of Education, which offers suggestions on the choice of subjects taken in schools and remarks that under certain circumstances it is wise to omit the subject altogether. The reason is that, in some schools, there may be no teacher capable of dealing adequately with some particular subject, in which case it will be better to omit the subject rather than to teach it badly or half-heartedly—"a teacher, for example, who has little taste for or knowledge of music, will produce no results of any value and may easily do actual harm."
4This is true all through music, in private as well as public teaching. All sorts of plans have been devised to correct this evil in America, but without appreciable result. Our country is still crowded with teachers who teach music badly and half-heartedly, indigent females whose men-folk fail to provide them either with adequate education or adequate income. For many of them teaching is merely a stop-gap to tide them over the time occupied in seeking a "meal-ticket," and they teach music because music is the only subject wherein one can "get by" without any knowledge whatever.
6But the "actual harm" referred to by the Board of Education refers solely to children's voices where singing is badly taught in the schools. One doubts if the piano or violin teacher in America does any real harm except, perhaps, by giving children a distaste for music. The ignorant "neighborhood teacher"—and every American neighborhood has a few—no doubt obtains money under false pretenses, but that is, after all, no great harm.
8One may say that this ignorant teacher—teaching often at the rate of a few cents a lesson—takes money out of the pockets of real professionals. But that is to be doubted. Children of the sort who patronize the neighborhood teacher (this sort of neighborhood teacher) could pay no more than they do, and could not go long distances to real teachers' studios. These teachers are like everything else "local" in poor neighborhoods—poor, like the neighborhoods. Escape from them is as difficult as escape from the neighborhoods. And, after all, is not a little music badly given better than no music at all? When a family buys a piano or some other musical instrument for the children, it cannot generally go to much additional expense for teaching. The local teacher has to suffice. The children who have talent are soon discovered and adequate teaching provided, and the others? . . . What do they matter anyway!
10CLEVELAND'S MUSIC WEEK
11The Cleveland, Ohio, Music Week, held recently, was a distinct success, and should serve as an encouragement to those cities which have not yet taken up the idea of specializing for seven successive days each year in the tonal art and its allied industries. The Cleveland Musical Association, sponsoring the movement there, arranged fine programs and an unusually practical general working scheme. There was special music in the churches; artist concerts took place at three large auditoriums; the radio broadcasting took pains to make its tonal contributions of a high type; music in the public schools expressed itself through concerts given there; the Cleveland Orchestra, under Sokoloff, held one of its regular symphony concerts, and also a "Pop," and a Young People's program; the New York Philharmonic, with Mengelberg, paid Cleveland a visit; Edwin Arthur Kraft, organist, several choral bodies, and soloists, united in a Gala Concert. All the telephone companies, department and other stores, civic bodies, hotels, railway companies, theaters, men's and women's clubs, the Y. M. C. A., cooperated in helping the Music Week activities. The Museum of Art arranged special exhibits. It is such combined effort based on the deep realization of the cultural civic value of good music, that ultimately will eventuate all over our land and place the art properly in the estimation of every American, many of whom still regard it as a luxury for the few, an exotic, and an affectation or a fad for highbrows. That viewpoint is changing rapidly, however, and such a Music Week as the one held in Cleveland is a potent influence toward the much desired end.
13WHAT IS THE MATTER?
14Lest New Yorkers imagine that all the important lyrical delights are confined to their Metropolitan, it is well to emphasize the fact that performances are blazing brilliantly just now, also at the Civic Opera of Chicago. The organization possesses an assemblage of first class singers, a representative repertoire, an excellent orchestra and chorus, and a conductor, Giorgio Polacco, who ranks with the best of the brigade that keeps singers from riding rough shod over the music and the tempos.
16Opera in Chicago is a highly artistic institution, and it should have the encouragement and admiration of all Americans, who would have to feel heartily ashamed if New York were our only city with permanent grand opera on the most dignified scale.
18Nearly every fair-sized city in Italy has its local opera season; likewise Germany; likewise Austria. Why shall America come limping after?
20Our dearth of opera companies is lamentable. We have the singers, we have the theaters, we have the money. What is the matter with us?
22AN EXCELLENT CHOICE
23Leon Sametini's election to the vice-presidency of the Chicago Musical College is a progressive move on the part of the directors of the institution of which Herbert Witherspoon is president and Myron D. Kinsey manager. With a brilliant record as violin soloist, concertmaster and teacher, Mr. Sametini is an authoritative figure in the violin world, and his ripe experience in matters musical cannot fail to be of great value in shaping the present and future policy of the institution of which he is now one of the executive heads. Many of the eminent teacher's graduate students are promulgating his methods in various parts of the United States and Europe, a fact which cannot but redound to the credit and material benefit of their Chicago alma mater. The choice of Mr. Sametini as vice-president culminates his connection of fifteen years with the institution—years of unqualified success as head of the violin department.
25DESERVED SUCCESS
26After scoring a tremendous success before an enormous audience in the Coliseum at St. Louis on November 4, the Westminster Choir of Dayton, Ohio, duplicated the feat in Washington, D. C. The choir is on a tour which takes it as far South as North Carolina and to the Atlantic seaboard. European appearances have been arranged for later dates. The rapid rise of the Dayton choir is due largely to the thorough schooling received by its members. At the Westminster Choir School there are classes in theory, history of music, psychology, English, hymnology, voice teaching, public speaking, conducting, harmonic analysis, counterpoint, religious education, Bible, and orchestra organization and understanding. Members of the school must pass satisfactorily in personality and leadership, as well as in all those studies which unite to make thorough musicians. Another important factor in the excellence and success of the choir is Mr. Williamson, the extraordinarily gifted leader of the organization.
28PLAYING WITHOUT NOTES
29Hans von Bülow, famous pianist and conductor of the latter half of the nineteenth century, introduced the custom of playing and conducting public performances from memory. At the present time practically all instrumental soloists, most singers and some orchestral conductors dispense with the notes in their performances; chamber music is still played from notes, for the obvious reason that it would be dangerous for an ensemble to depend upon the accuracy and reliability of the memory of each individual member. Some years ago the late Theodore Spiering and a lady pianist from Germany played the Kreutzer Sonata of Beethoven at a London recital. It was a pleasure to see no music on either piano or violin stand, and no hurried flapping over of leaves with the resultant tempo irregularities. At another performance of the same work by two prominent artists the same season there were four people on the stage, as both violinist and pianist needed the assistance of a page-turner. The man who turned for the violinist sat down between "turns," and bobbed up at each psychological moment, which was very disturbing to the audience. At another London recital a pianist who was playing without notes suddenly forgot what came next. Nothing daunted, he left the piano, went off the stage, returning with the score in his hand. He sat down and finished the composition triumphantly.
31PORCO A PORCO
32A Perth (Scotland) newspaper says that the city has a Hebrew, "who is so religiously conscientious that he won't let his children study Shakespeare. He says the plays were really written by Bacon!"
34No doubt the same gentleman wouldn't permit his youngsters to listen to the piano playing of Hamourg.
36TUNING IN WITH EUROPE
37If London is not the musical center of Europe it certainly is its favorite half-way house. Musicians come and go in constant cross currents—from or to America, from or to Australia, running over from the continent for a variety of reasons. Some come to give concerts, some to make records, some to get their violins repaired or trade them in for new old ones. A certain little shop on Bond Street seems to possess a magnetism that extends to the four corners of the earth.
39* * *
41Just now the city seems to be a Mecca for pianists. Pachmann, Bachaus, Gieseking, Rubinstein, Levitzki, Myra Hess, Cortot are all here, giving, or about to give, recitals. Rachmaninoff, barely escaping the danger of an engagement, has just slipped off on the Leviathan, and Percy Grainger left still more stealthily on the Republic. Harold Bauer spent a few hours here on a record dash from Scotland to Spain.
43* * *
45Rachmaninoff, taciturn as usual, just managed to confide to us the fact that his latest two works, the fourth concerto and the Russian part songs with orchestra, were being printed in Paris. They are not entirely new to America, for Rachmaninoff performed them in New York, under Stokowski, "without success," as he says. Some critic or other said it was his Waterloo. "Does it make you sad?" we asked him. He replied in the negative. If any modern compositions make Rachmaninoff sad, they are not his own. . . . * * *
47Levitzki we met at Pagani's, still, as in the old days, the haunt of melomaniacs. Highly delighted with his London success, he was off to Germany, Scandinavia and Spain to succeed some more. In another corner sat Albert Coates, off to Madrid to do opera by royal command.
49* * *
51Bachaus has come back from Australia, where they still demand Beethoven and more Beethoven. So he thought he'd try it here, playing four sonatas in one afternoon. It worked. Gieseking is beginning to celebrate Schubert, and brought the house down with the B-flat major sonata. This, by the way, is the third Schubert sonata heard here within a short time, Myra Hess playing the A-major and a young man from Germany the D-major sonata. This composer is looking up.
53* * *
55Cortot we did not see, but we saw a little paragraph about him that made us forgive much. "What dismays me about modern music," he is quoted as saying, "is that the adjective we hear most often applied to it is 'amusing'!" He surprised his interviewer by calling Stravinsky the outstanding genius among modern composers; a genius who "holds you in an iron grip. Rather than bend my individuality I prefer not to play him—much."
57Cortot, by the way, has played in the Albert Hall—a strange anomaly, for the Albert Hall holds 10,000. "I have always refused to play there," he said, "but I could not refuse when I was asked to join that great artist, Elena Gerhardt. Yes! that we should be on the same platform, surely that is the spirit of Locarno." A graceful excuse, at any rate.
59* * *
61As for Pachmann, now eighty-two, he is racing through the provinces giving one concert a day and feeling sick when he misses one. He put in a Sunday in London, in order to inaugurate the latest drive for a "Brighter London" by playing the first "after dinner recital" at the May Fair Hotel. These recitals are the inspiration of Sir Francis Towle, the proprietor of said hotel. He charges his guests $7.50 for their Sunday dinner and then throws them a musical headliner by way of dessert. "Pearls before—" a certain great composer would have said. The post-prandial Philistines didn't phase Vladimir one bit. He told them who is the greatest interpreter of Chopin—the only one, in fact. And before playing he gave them a scene-shifting exhibition that was better than any cabaret they could have seen. And anyway they couldn't see a real cabaret on a Sunday. Thanks to Pachmann one London Sunday was less deadly to a privileged few. Will those to follow him—Kreisler, Gerhardt, McCormack, etc.—succeed as well?
63* * *
65"Music as an Aid to Politics" headlines a London daily. Shouldn't it be vice versa? C. S.
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