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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
TELEPHONE NUMBER, 1745.--EK1HTEENTH STREET.
The musical supplement to The Review is
published on the first Saturday of each month.
WHAT LITERATURE OWES TO flUSIC.
What a debt of thankfulness authors and
poets owe to musicians! Thanks to Mo-
zart, Weber, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Gounod
and Wagner, the tales, plays, and remark-
able characters which appear in the literary
works of others have obtained a fame and
a popularity they would never have attain-
ed to unless music had been employed to
aid in the illustration. Goethe's "Faust"
—obscure as the second part of this char-
acteristic play seems to an English reader
of the text—will no doubt long maintain
its position as a psychological study of
deep import; and our own Shakespeare's
plays will suvive very well without a musi-
cal setting. But this can hardly be assert-
ed in respect of "Figaro," "Carmen,"
"Tannhaeuser," and historical subjects not
of national importance which have been
selected as themes for operatic treatment.
The musician has enshrined such subjects
in works which have arrested and secured
popular attention, and brought them into
a general prominence such as they would
not have attained in the mere literary form.
Some poems by the Meistersinger Hans
Sachs have recently been found in the li-
brary of his native town, Nuremberg, and
it is not to much too say that if Wagner had
not immortalized the cobbler poet, in his
imposing and picturesque opera, we
should care very little for the new poems
of this early writer of rhymes of the
people.
©
THE MUSICAL HAWAIIANS.
Now that there is every prospect of
Hawaii becoming a possession of the
United States, it is only just to state that
the inhabitants of that country, no matter
what their other faults may be, are in-
tensely musical. Like most other southern
people they display their emotions under
its spell. The Kanaka is an inspired
musician, in that music is the mainspring
of his being. A discord tears him to his
heart's center. A harmony translates him
to the stars. He is a human harp, answer-
ing to the touch of the practiced player,
but his strings snap in twain when per-
formed upon by the bungler.
A writer who has made a study of the
Hawaiian and his country says he sings
always—at work or at play, in misery, or
happiness—and his wife, his sweetheart
(be he unmarried), his sisters, all of his
people, sing in unison with him. Wagner,
who spent his life in twining wreaths to
adorn the shrine of nature, would have
gathered themes from the harmonies of
these Kanaka voices, lifting in the nine-
teenth century even more beautiful and
more in touch with the soil than those
which he was only able to grasp by the pro-
jection of his musical spirit back to the
Teutonic middle ages.
Some great composer of the future shall
render into music the martial chants of
triumphs, the plaintive minor wails of suf-
fering, the lute-like trills of happiness
achieved, which iill through the inspired
hearts of these natural improvisatores.
One whose path is crossed in the moonlit
waters of Honolulu Harbor by a long
canoe load of Kanaka men and girls, the
voices of all of them elevated in reverential
salute to the southern stars, will carry with
him through life the memory of a supreme
musical experience.
To have heard the wild and mournful
death chant, in which 10,000 Kanaka men
and women joined, when the body of their
dead King, Kalakaua, was brought into
Honolulu Harbor from the United States
on an American man-of-war, was to have
listened to a requiem of nature such as per-
haps had never before been heard in the
world. The Kanaka voices, both of the
men and women, are of extraordinary
sweetness and plaintiveness. The native
songs are for the most part pitched in a
minor key, not unlike the music of the
Magyars, and it is all tinged with an
almost unbelievable degree of sadness.
o
MUSIC'S POWER FOR GOOD.
The influence of vocal music as a moral
force has been universally acknowledged;
and how it secures this result may well be
worthy of our consideration. Direct in-
struction will not prove very successful in
instilling in the minds of children those
moral and religious truths which will
shape their lives and control their future
actions. But when a child learns some
truth expressed in the words of a favorite,
song, its influence goes with him at all
times. The boy forgets the oath or
impure jest when through his mind comes
stealing some sweet melody he has learned
in the schoolroom. Dr. Brooks has wisely
said, "A school song in the heart of a child
will do as much for his character as a fact
in his memory or a principle in his intel-
lect."
Because the impressions of early child-
hood are the most lasting, does vocal
music become one of the greatest agencies
in the formation and moulding of character.
We cannot begin to estimate the influence
on the future life of the children exerted
by the songs learned in the schoolrooms of
to-day.
To develop the intellect is not sufficient;
we must go deeper than that if we would
do the greatest good to the child, and show
him there is a higher development,—a
development of the soul life. Only as we
recognize the inefficiency of "direct teach-
ing" to secure higher development do we
value and appreciate the influence of the
music in securing the desired results.
Good music exerts a wonderful power
for good over the heart, and a little song
may influence the destinies of the world.
It is said a song heard on the street so
touched a good woman's heart that she
made a home for a boy-singer in her house,
and saved to the world—Luther.
Music is the universal chord to which the
hearts of all men vibrate. Well has a
writer expressed: "Songs containing mor-
al precepts, and lessons and songs of the
affections generally, will surely develop
like sentiments in the children who sing
them. In no way can a code of morals be
taught, or the sensibilities and emotions
be so trained and developed into their bet-
ter and higher uses, as through the instru-
mentality of song." Recognizing this,
the time may soon come when music will
be considered the most important subject
taught in our schools. The best means of
culture is singing. Music is at home a
friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude
a solace, in society an ornament, and we
heartily agree with the following beautiful
quotation: "Music is God's best gift to
man; the only art of heaven given to the
earth, and the only art of earth that we
can take to heaven."
©
INFLUENCE OF THE BELGIAN SCHOOL.
The reappearance on our concert stage
the coming fall of M. Ysaye directs atten-
tion to the prominence enjoyed by the
Belgian school of violinists and to the
many noted artists that that school has
turned out. From the time of De Beriot
down to the present Belgium has been
foremost in the production of violinists of
the first rank. The French school has
depended largely on Belgium for its teach-
ers. Leonard, for many years a teacher in
the Paris Conservatoire, was a Belgian.
Massart senior and Massart junior, both
famous as teachers in Paris, came from
Belgium. Marsick, equally eminent as a
player and an instructor, is a Belgian.
Vieuxtemps was of the same nationality,
also Artot, Prume. Sauret was a pupil of
De Beriot; Wieniawski was a pupil of
Massart; also Lotto and Teresina Tua.
Sarasate was a pupil of Alard, and Dengre-
mont of Leonard. Ysaye and Thomson
are both of the Belgian school, and the
list of great artists who have studied under
Belgian masters might be greatly extended.
With the exception of Joachim and Wil-
helmj there are few violinists of the highest
repute who are not products of the Belgian
school. Highly polished and brilliant
technique, largeness of bowing, keen musi-
cal intelligence, purity of intonation and
warmth and vigor of style are the leading
characteristics of the school.
Unfortunately, while Belgium has pro-
duced many violinists of the highest
worth, she has not given forth much in
the way of composers for the instrument;
that is, composers who have written any-
thing of permanent musical value. De
Beriot's concertos, while they contain many
things that are charming in their grace
and brilliancy, and are very effective in
their way, are, on the whole, trivial, and
too generally devoted to mere virtuosity.
Vieuxtemps has written better, and much
of his violin music has taken its place