Books › Musical Courier 1928-12-13: Vol 97 Iss 24, 1928 › scan 38
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Musical Courier 1928-12-13: Vol 97 Iss 24, 1928
102 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 39. See the scan on archive.org.
1December 13, 1928
3Variations
4By the Editor-in-Chief
6The stricken staff of the MUSICAL COURIER is served with the attached communication, and no lettre de cachet during the Reign of Terror ever overwhelmed a recipient more:
8The Musical Courier:
9Dear Sirs:
10I am so thoroughly fed up on reading wisecracks from the pens of your staff at the expense of their betters—really great men, that hereby I wish to cancel my subscription to THE MUSICAL COURIER.
11I have special reference to a sneering article about Parsifal, to which your humorist alluded wittily as "Parsley-fal," as far back as last spring, and more recently to a sneer at Strauss, and particularly your jeers at Marcaign, who certainly has achieved more musically than any of the representatives of THE MUSICAL COURIER who are so free and easy with their disdain.
12These are just a few of the irritating causes contributory to my cancellation of my subscription. I may add finally, that I am against wisecracking in any form, and, as at least one pioneer I shall attempt to blaze a trail for others in registering my objection to what has become a vulgar American pastime.
14Yours very truly,
15HELEN POLLACK.
17P.S.—Incidentally, your reporter may not have liked Mr. Newman Flower's book on Schubert, but was it necessary for him to be offensive about it?
19The wisecracking staff was immediately called into plenary session and had the missive read to them by the wisecracking ringleader. As a solemn duty to the few remaining MUSICAL COURIER readers whom our subscription department is frantically trying to keep, the despairing debate that followed the reading of the letter is reported herewith in full:
20Patterson: "As far as I am concerned, wisecracking is out of my life forever. I never should have written that Strauss' 'future is behind him.'"
21Allen: "Serves us right. Now one of the dry musical papers will get her subscription."
22Nylen: "Hereafter I'm going to cry when I write my articles."
23Vila: "The telephone book and the MUSICAL COURIER should never try to be humorous."
24Riesberg (in German): "Noch ist die Polakei nicht verloren."
25Schmoege: "Five dollars is five dollars. Cut out the jokes."
26Devries (by wire from Chicago): "Cannot attend meeting. What shall I do about writing up funny recitals here?"
27Saerchinger (by cable from London): "It's all right with me. Let George Bernard Shaw do it."
28Lucas (by cable from Paris): "Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, 'wisecrack'?"
29Office Boy: "Hot dog." (He was discharged at once.)
30Liebling (overcome by weeping and unable to speak as united staff demanded his immediate resignation.)
32Some persons have unearthed (gleefully, too) the fact that Sadah Schuchari, the young violinist who played at the first Schubert Memorial Concert, in reality is named Sadie Schwartz.
33The discovery carries not the least artistic significance. Many other musical performers have undergone similar metamorphoses and without enduring any reproach. A name never has determined the merit of its wearer. Some persons with beautifully exotic names failed dismally, and others with plain appellations became luminous successes.
34Several Schwartzes and Schwarzes have figured prominently in musical annals. If Sadie does not like the name of her fathers, or considers it a drawback in a professional career, she has the right to call herself anything else she chooses, even Schuchari.
35It is a strange fact, by the way, that the greater number of Americans cannot even pronounce correctly the names of some of the artists and composers whom they admire most.
37To T. F., however, the matter of names seems to be a serious question. He asks with wrinkled brow "whether any music by the English composer, Bridge, has made a grand slam"; and also, "why Wolf is kept from the door of the average singer?" T. F. winds up his screed with a dictum: "It is not true that a wonder lasts only nine days. I heard Egyptian Helena three weeks ago and I am still wondering."
39Dr. I. M. Haldeman, well known preacher, says that the destruction of the world now is imminent at any moment. That will be another excuse for those unwilling orchestral sponsors who are always seeking to dodge out of contributing to the guarantee funds.
41A headline informs: "Duke of Abruzzi Negotiates Nebi Scbebeli." Do not rack your memory for unfamiliar Donizetti and Bellini characters and arias, but read further and learn that the Duke is an Italian explorer, and Nebi Scbebeli is a mysterious African river never before traversed.
43Some of the Philadelphia City budget guardians oppose an appropriation of $100,000 for a municipal Musical Bureau. Why not change "Bureau" to "Brewery" and thereby do away with all objections?
45An Illinois woman asks a divorce because she couldn't awaken her husband mornings "with the combined noise of twelve alarm clocks." Before pressing her suit any further she should place her somnolent spouse near the drums at a performance of Puccini's "Turandot."
47The latest American locomotives are 175 feet long. Honegger will have to add a coda to his Pacific 231.
49Several of the season's favorite indoor musical sports in New York are, starting organizations to help young artists; composing Jewish music; standing in the draughty Carnegie Hall lobby waiting for a symphonic movement to end; and—guessing where the guest conductors will be conducting next year.
51In Italy everyone must obey Mussolini. He should tell some competent Italian composer to write a successful opera.
53It is predicted that New York's population in 1963 will be 20,000,000. That is, unless the immigration of Russian violinists to this town be restricted or stopped.
55From Minna Noble's Chromatics in the Evening World:
56As Max Rosen and his bride, Nanette Guilford, emerged from the chapel of the Municipal Building after their marriage a few days ago, the new Mrs. Rosen turned to her mate and queried: "Darling, do you think it will be very difficult to get a divorce?"
58FOR SALE, guaranteed complete, one pair of aisle seats, full season, for Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Cheap. Will trade for pocket score Atterberg's Sixth Symphony. Room 349, Park Central Hotel.
60Everyone is waiting for the sound movies to present certain Italian opera singers eating spaghetti.
62Marion Talley is said to be the calmest of the performers who sing over the radio. When this was told to L. A., he said: "Well, what's she got to worry about?" And the same sceptic, hearing that Maria Jeritza allows no one to be in the broadcasting studio when she sends her voice over the air, made answer: "Yea, but just the same, the announcer tells the listeners how beautiful she is."
64Hello, here's a composer named MacDowell, whose Sonata Eroica for piano was played by Katherine Ives at her Steinway Hall recital last Tuesday evening. To judge by the scope, spirit, and musical content and facture of the work, this fellow MacDowell appears to have decided talent and his future will be watched with interest. One wonders what else he has composed.
66And what, by the way, would most of the young composers of today do, if Rimsky-Korsakoff, Brahms, Wagner, Strauss, Tschaikowsky and Debussy never had lived and written? The answer is simple. Most of the young composers of today would echo Chopin, Liszt, Rubinstein, Moszkowski, Schumann, and Mendelssohn.
68No wonder the amazing Kurt Atterberg denies that he lifted his $10,000 prize symphony from the works of the masters. The spectacle of a composer insisting that he is a plagiarist would have upset all tradition and usage.
70Last week this column, in writing about Leo Newman, the music-loving ticket-broker, said that "he values the composition above the composer." The intention was to write "performer" instead of "composer." Whether a slip of the pen or of the typesetter is to blame, has not been determined at this moment, and furthermore, it is of no consequence. The idea is not bad as it stands.
72From Charles D. Isaacson's music department in the Morning Telegraph (December 4):
73We understand the other night, Victor Wittgenstein and Artur Bodanzky were partners in a bridge game, and the former didn't play to the liking of the latter, whereupon the conductor let out on the pianist. Wittgenstein is reported to have remarked: "This is not a Wagnerian performance. You are not my conductor."
75The Schubert-Barnett exhumed E major symphony heard here at the Cleveland Orchestra concert last week, did not enhance the reputation of the already immortal Franz Peter, but it added largely to the stature of Sokoloff as a creative conductor and to the fame of the Cleveland players as a body of fine and finished reproducing symphonists.
77Borrowing inspiration and material from a composer usually goes unpunished. But when someone cribs a mechanical or mercantile idea from someone else, oh, la la! The Bethlehem Steel Corporation accuses the United States Steel Corporation of infringing upon a patent owned by the former and promptly claps upon the alleged offender a lawsuit for the comfortable sum of $250,000,000.
79Open covenants openly arrived at, make one think of contracts between opera houses and opera singers. Secret diplomacy plays no role in those agreements.
81Several of the major Eastern colleges sent their orchestras to New York last Saturday to engage in a competition, before a jury of music critics, the best orchestra to be presented with a holiday trip to Havana by the Cunard Steamship Company. Not one of the organizations was disqualified for offside play or holding, and strangely enough, no kicking took place either before or after the decision of the umpires.
83President Coolidge's recent speech tells Europe that this country is neither militaristic nor imperialistic. The Executive did not say whether we are artistic. No doubt he felt that Europe has made up its own mind in that regard.
85M. K. sends an advertisement (clipped from a Chicago paper) which offers a free booklet telling of a "New Silent Method of Voice Training," guaranteed "to improve the learner 100%." Persons with 1% of voice should procure the volume at once.
87Thanks, too, to B. G. R. who forwards a diversion from the New York Times (page 34) of December 5. It is fac-similed herewith:
89LOST AND FOUND
91MUSIC
92By OLIN DOWNES.
94Cleveland Orchestra's Concert.
95Nicolai Sokoloff and the Cleveland Orchestra gave probably the first performance in New York and the second in America of Schubert's so-called "sketch" symphony in E major last night in Carnegie Hall. Schubert conceived this symphony in the year 1821. He wrote 110 measures in full score. The rest of the work he sketched in outline. Sir George Grove that this immense "sketch" a few hours, which
97The "Lost and Found" is peculiarly appropriate in the case of Schubert's "in again—out again" posthumous compositions.
99George Bernard Shaw, that cynical seer, is always prophesying. If his peerings into the future show anything about the ultimate course of music,
101(Continued on page 41)
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