Books › Musical Courier 1928-03-01: Vol 96 Iss 9, 1928 › scan 27
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Musical Courier 1928-03-01: Vol 96 Iss 9, 1928
69 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. 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. EBERT, President
6WILLIAM GIFFPERT, 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: Muscuerier, 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 LIEBELING, Editor-In-Chief
14WILLIAM GIFFPERT
15FRANK PATTERSON
16CLARENCE LUCAS (Paris)
17RENÉ DÉVRIÈS
18CESAR SAECHINGER (London)
19THORNTON W. ALLEN
20J. ALBERT RIKER, Managing Editor
21Associate Editors
22General Representative
23OFFICES
24CHICAGO AND MIDDLE WEST HEADQUARTERS—JEANNETTE COX, 820 to 828 Orchestra Building, 220 South Michigan Ave., Chicago. Telephone, Harrison 4-112.
25BOSTON AND NEW ENGLAND—270 Huntingdon Avenue, Room 202, Boston. Telephone, Back Bay 518.
26LONDON AND AFRICA—EUROPEAN HEADQUARTERS—CESAR SAECHINGER (in charge), 124 Wigmore Street, W. 1. Telephone, Mayfair 6453
27LONDON BUSINESS OFFICE—175 Piccadilly, W. 1. Telephone, Gerrard 5267.
28Cable address: Muscuerier, London.
29BERLIN, GERMANY—C. HOOPER TRASK, Seesenheimerstr. 27, Berlin-Charlottenburg. Telephone, Wilhelm 444. Cable address, Muscuerier, Berlin.
30PARIS, FRANCE—M. LIEBEL, 108 Rond Point de l'Académie de l'Opéra. (Take elevator to 5th floor.) Telephone, Central 14-85. Cable address: Muscuerier, Paris.
31MILAN, ITALY—ANTONIO BASSI, 21 Via Durini.
32VIENNA, AUSTRIA—PAUL RECHERT, Schellinggasse 12, Vienna 1. Telephone, Vienna 72-0-47 and 19-7-07. Cable address, Muscuerier, Vienna.
33For the names and addresses of other offices, correspondents and representatives apply at the New York Office.
34SUBSCRIPTIONS—Domestic, Five Dollars; Canadian, Six Dollars; Foreign, Six Dollars and Twenty-five Cents. Single Copies, Fifteen Cents at Newsstands. Back Numbers, Twenty-five Cents. American News Company, New York, General Distributing Agents; Western News Company, Chicago, Western District; Associated News Company, New York and Western District; Australian 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 Buildings, London, E. C. 4, England.
35The 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.
36Copy 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 agent is not made for mortgaging, notching, leveling, and lay-outs which call for special set-up.
37Entered as Second Class Matter, January 8, 1883, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879.
38NEW YORK MARCH 1, 1928 No. 2450
39Guest conductors are companionate conductors.
40Toscanini Week is every week in New York these days.
41Opera really is becoming musical here since it has ceased to be a fashion show.
42Lindbergh and the plans for our new opera house seem to be in the air most of the time.
43Washington's recent birthday reminded one that he never told a lie, and yet he turned out to be the greatest press agent for his country.
44Scratch a young modernistic composer and find Stravinsky, Schönberg, Satie, and Honegger. Have the youthful musical "creators" no voice of their own?
45Out of the 200,000,000 population predicted for the United States in 2003, at least 199,000,985 will be saying, "I love the cello because it sounds so much like the human voice."
46Six weeks more of opera in our town and then lyric stage activity, heeding oncoming summer, will prepare to present itself in the open air at our several American al fresco operatic enterprises.
47Probably the reason modernistic composers are going "back to Bach" is because Herbert C. Hoover, Presidential candidate, said not long ago: "We no longer have the right to think in terms of our own generation."
48A frog was found alive in Texas the other day after having been buried in a cornerstone thirty-one years. However, the animal has not yet been tried out at an unabbreviated performance of Meistersinger or Götterdämmerung.
49The Academy of Arts and Sciences presented John Philip Sousa with a gold medal last week—the first award of the kind ever made for music by this organization. Sousa is highly worthy of the honor and the praises showered upon him by the speakers at the accompanying dinner had fine truth as their basis. He is one of the most respected and beloved musicians of our day. As one of the orators remarked: "John Philip Sousa, your fame will keep step with your music as both march unforgettably down the tuneful corridors of Time."
50These are the days when sadness and gladness mix in equal proportions, the concert performers being sad because the musical season is waning toward its close; and the critics being—but finish this sentence for yourself.
51Strauss' Don Quixote now seems as futile (as far as general popularity is concerned) as that hero's fantastic fight against the windmill. Nevertheless the Strauss poem is a great work and in some respects the best from the pen of the master. Its pages are filled with tonal creation of a high order of originality, fancy, poetry, pathos, and expertness and brilliancy in orchestral coloring and construction. Don Quixote should be in the permanent repertoire of our symphonic organizations.
52Wagner regarded the overture to Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis, as "Gluck's most perfect instrumental piece." Then the generous Wagner proceeded to rewrite its ending, adding thirty-three measures of his own to the original score. However, Wagner had a worthy precedent to justify him, for Mozart also had tinkered with the same finale and tacked a conclusion to it long before Wagner's refashioning in 1854. And still there are simple souls today who groan in pious protest when a modern composer merely transcribes or adapts the music of an old master.
53The new Royal Opera House in Rome (refurbished from the old Costanzi Theater) was opened on February 25, with Premier Mussolini in attendance. He had been instrumental in having the renovation made, and in bestowing the new name of the institution. The initial performance was that of Boito's Nerone. Mussolini received a much greater ovation than was extended to the weak music and ineffectual drama of Boito. In his concentrated and generous patronage of music and the allied arts, Mussolini is following the excellent example of that other famous dictator, known to the world as Napoleon Bonaparte.
54Charles D. Isaacson is the new music critic of the New York Morning Telegraph. His contributions are sound musically but in addition they make a popular appeal because they combine news with criticism and refrain from the kind of technical dissection which interests only a negligible percentage of the readers of any daily newspaper. A new Isaacson book called The Simple Story of Music is about to issue from the press. It should be a boon for the tired business man who thinks that Bach is merely mathematics and that Wagner wrote most of his music loud in order to keep the somnolent business man awake when he is an unwilling listener at the Opera.
55The announcement made by the four members of the Persinger Quartet that at the end of this season the quartet will disband will be received with genuine regret by music lovers all over the United States. The quartet was organized some years ago by the late Elias Hecht and became a chamber music organization of such excellence that it could fairly meet the competition of any other similar organization. At its head was the distinguished musician and violinist Louis Persinger, and its other members were musicians of the first order. That such an organization, after the long years of study it has put into its endeavor to attain perfection, should now disband is indeed a matter for sincerest regret.
56Leaders of Chicago orchestras whose performances are broadcast from local radio stations via remote control were recently summoned to a meeting at the headquarters of the Chicago Federation of Musicians to receive instructions regarding a possible tieup in a number of theaters, cabarets and hotels. The meeting was called by James Petrillo, head of the union, in consequence of a controversy with Chicago radio stations over the remote control system. He demanded employment of ten players in the larger stations and five in the smaller ones. Definite news as to the outcome of the matter is not yet at hand. Chicago musicians are fortunate in having a union that is both powerful and efficient; in practically every branch of orchestral work they are the best paid "musical laborers" in the country. Now that the prices in New York are controlled by the new local, No. 802, there is a probability that East will be West in regard to the adequate payment of musicians.
57MUSICAL COURIER
58March 1, 1928
59DRY FACTS
60It is surprising that some enterprising publisher does not print an encyclopedia of musical facts—dry facts. Encyclopedias there are, plenty of them, but it takes looking through their too-well-filled columns to find what one wants to find. The sort of thing one wants is detail—detail of compositions, detail of composers, of artists, of all sorts of things. There may be encyclopedias of this sort. If so, this writer must acknowledge ignorance of them.
61Facts, to be quickly and easily found, must be tabulated under headings. All of the facts should be given first. If, then, there is to be any discussion of them, extended biographical data, etc., these matters should be given after the mere outline facts. When composers are mentioned, their compositions should be tabulated and classified—symphonies, songs, quartets, operas, etc. Sometimes the large dictionaries have this (and, strangely enough, one of the largest used to have this in early editions and has changed its policy in later editions!)
62With artists, what one wants to know, besides birth and death dates and such externals, is the standing of the artist, the tours made, the sort of programs played, and so on. Also, one would like to have tabulations of the names of the famous performers of certain music: the famous Chopin players, the famous Wagner singers, the famous Toscas, or Wotans, or Carmines. One would like to find somewhere, quickly, what roles the famous operatic stars have sung and where.
63There is endless detail that is needed. Today it is not easy to find. Dictionaries are too good. They have too much detail, and this detail is put in such a fashion that the seeker for information has to read pages and pages to learn what could be put, easily, into a single paragraph.
64The curious thing about it is that, in the end, it is dry facts that best tell the story. Schubert is best advertised by merely telling how many of his songs have been successful. The dictionaries do not tell this. Writers in the dictionaries rave over all sorts of songs that one never heard, and never heard of, but do not list the ones that have lasted the best. Schubert's place in music might also best become known by telling exactly how many performances his various works are having today. Instead of this one reads of wonderful chamber music—that is so wonderful it is never played but has been dropped from the programs! One reads of ten great symphonies of which only perhaps two are known, and of which only one is really great.
65And this sort of thing is true not only of the really great Schubert but of a number of composers whose greatness may well be doubted. Why not give facts—facts! Those are the things that tell, and, in the end, tell the truth. Some composers may be neglected for a time, but in the ultimate the public selects what it wants, and no argument contrary to the public's will is likely to prove valid.
66One of the most interesting features of the question is that dictionaries, which, surely, ought to be international and free from prejudice, are national and full of prejudice. In Grove—the best of all the dictionaries—we read of great British composers, who are great only to the biased British mind. To read Grove, one would get the impression that Purcell was the equal of Bach, Gluck or Handel. From French sources one may easily get the impression the Rameau was the equal of the composers whose works are seen on nearly every program; and from other sources we are handed out equally misleading material.
67Naturally, any professional musician, any constant recital patron, gets to know what is the truth of the matter—especially when some misguided artist or conductor subjects his public to the boredom of sitting through the performance of a work by one of these locally great composers. This could perfectly well be avoided by the publication of facts—figures.
68By all means let some enterprising publishing house give us a dictionary of musical dry facts!
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