Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
TELEPHONE NUMBER, W45.--EIQHTEENTH STREET.
The musical supplement to The Review is
published on the first Saturday of each month.
" ONE OF THE GREAT COnPOSERS."
Prof. E. A. MacDowell of the depart-
ment of music at Columbia University has
just inaugurated a project for developing
the general musical taste and culture of the
students of the university, which should
prove most beneficial in its results. He
has attempted the organization of a uni-
versity chorus, to be trained by himself,
for the purpose of singing not the ordinary
"college songs," but music of a high
order. The Teachers' College already has
a chorus of this kind, and at Barnard the
same thing is to be tried, so that the three
should make a very effective combination
when once they overcome rudimentary
difficulties.
The scheme, if successful,
may be a very significant move in the
direction of raising the artistic standards
of college glee clubs and musical societies
throughout the country, especally if it
induce such musicians as Profs. Paine and
Parker to undertake a similar enterprise
in Harvard and Yale.
Prof. MacDowell, whose portrait ap-
peared in our last musical number, has
been characterized by Philip Hale, the
noted Boston critic, in a recent issue of the
New England Home Magazine as the
greatest of composers now living. This be-
lief is based on his works for orchestra and
piano, and his songs. He says, "I know of
no composer now living who displays in
more marked degree the combination of
these qualities: pure, spontaneous, original
melody ; intimate knowledge of usual and
unusual harmonic effects ; musical, not
merely pedantic, employment of counter-
point ; mastery of instrumental color ;
poetic inspiration and noble imagination ;
persuasive, lovable, authoritative individ-
uality."
bed for it was out of the question. There
was'only one other thing to be done, and
Rossini did it. He wrote another trio.
Rossini's characteristics were so well
known that sometimes strong measures
were taken to secure a composition. The
overture to " L a Gazza Ladra " was pro-
cured in a peculiar manner.
On the day
of the first performance the manager got
hold of Rossini and confined him in the
upper loft of La Scala, under guard of four
scene shifters, who took the text as it was
written, sheet by sheet, and threw it out
of the window to copyists waiting below.
There are other composers who can rival
Rossini in the pace at which they throw
off their work, but who have never been ac-
cused of especial laziness. Sir Arthur
Sullivan is an unusually quick writer. He
began the overture to " Iolanthe" at 9
o'clock one evening, and had it finished by
7 the next morning. The magnificent epi-
logue to the " Golden Legend " was com-
posed and scored within 24 hours.
O
FRANZ RUMJ1EL.
Franz Rummel is to come to us next
month bearing the titulary honor of pro-
fessor, which has been conferred upon him
by the Duke of Anhalt-Desau. Last month
he celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the beginning of his artistic career. He
gave his first concert on November 24,
1872, in Brussels. Three months before,
at the examinations in the Conservatory in
that city, he had carried off first prize
with a performance of Beethoven's Sonata,
op. 106. Commenting on that perform-
ance, " The Guide Musical " said: " T h e
first prize was won by Mr. Franz Rummel,
of London, with the unanimous consent of
the jury and amid the enthusiastic acclaims
of the public. Such perfection as his was
never before disclosed by a pupil of our
Conservatory. One thought he was hear-
ing Brassin himself, so completely has Mr.
Rummel assimilated the eminent qualities
of his master. Mr. Rummel is the grand-
son of Christian Rummel, the friend and
emulator of Hummel; he is only nineteen
years old, which fact promises much."
Among Rummel's competitors was Edgar
Tinel, who has since won fame as a compos-
er, and who took the second prize in 1872,
o
and the first in 1873. Mr. Rummel's profes-
STORIES OF COHPOSERS.
Very remarkable are the conditions un- sional statistics are interesting. He has
der which musical composers have some- played in 660 concerts in 154 cities and
times turned out their work. Rossini was towns of fourteen different countries; his
renowned for his laziness, yet when the programs have contained 326 works by
mood was on him, or when pressure was sixty-one composers; of the works 153
brought to bear upon him, he could write were originally written for pianoforte solo,
against time. " T h e Barber of Seville" fifty-nine were chamber compositions,
twenty-seven with orchestra and twenty-
was composed in a month.
four transcriptions. And he has played all
There is another story of the same com-
these works from memory.
poser in which one hardly knows whether
to consider him particularly lazy or partic-
Franz Rummel will open his American
ularly industrious. He was in the habit tour at Chickering Hall on the evening of
of writing in bed, and on one occasion, February 1st, when he will play with the
while thus engaged, a trio that he had al- Seidl orchestra at one of the Chickering
most finished dropped from his hand and Grand Orchestral concerts. A well-known
slipped under the bed.
authority who recently heard Rummel play
The sheet was too far away for him to said: " Rummel has ripened and grown
reach it, and to get up and reach under the as few artists outside of him have done and
he stands to-day upon the summit of his
pianistic powers."
Evidently there is a treat in store for our
music loving public.
O
INNES AND HIS ACHIEVEMENTS.
If some one discovered that soul-stirring
music could be blown out of a common tin
horn the world would marvel and with rea-
son. Yet, that would not be much more
remarkable than Innes' historic discovery
of the possibilities lying dormant in the
trombone.
When he was a lad in England he used
to follow the gorgeously uniformed cavalry
band known as Her Majesty's First Life
Guards, and it seemed to his young mind
that the soldier with the trombone was the
head and front of the monarchy, and the
sole producer of the welded mass of sound
given out by various brass instruments. He
induced his father to buy him a trombone,
and he was laughed at for his first efforts to
play popular airs and passionate bits on an
instrument that was built solely for per-
cussionary effect.
But the boy, in his
persistent ignorance of that fact, blew on,
and at twelve years he was himself the first
trombonist in the band of Her Majesty's
First Life Guards, and at seventeen, al-
ready known as the greatest trombonist in
Europe.
Pat Gilmore, the once famous bandmas-
ter of America, soon heard of Innes and
made him the soloist of his band, in which
capacity Innes became a sensation through-
out the country and Gilmore's great draw-
ing card.
Innes organized his famous concert band
in 1886, and at once established a new era
in band music. It has since become uni-
versally recognized as one of the few great
concert bands of the world. Innes' Band
is, in short, to band music, what Innes,
the soloist trombonist, was to trombone
music—a marvel and without a peer.
It is not only as a trombonist and direc-
tor that Innes is noted. Some of his com-
positions have earned a national popu-
larity, notably "Danse Americaine" and
"Cupid's Story." Two of Innes' most
recent productions are : "Belle of Nash-
ville," a march, and a unique instrumenta-
tion of Weber's celebrated "Invitation to
the Dance."
Unlike most men in the world of fierce
competition, Innes reaches the limit of
business success early in life, when he is
still able to enjoy the pecuniary reward of
artistic reputation. He was born in Lon-
don, England, in 1854. He came to New
York when little more than a lad, and in
good time became an American citizen.
In speech he is a cultured American. In
manner, he is easy and affable. He has
none of those eccentricities of dress at-
tributed to great musicians and writers of
music.
Innes is a clever story teller, and a good
after dinner talker. He is known among
his associates as a wit, philosopher, and all
around good fellow. In short, he is what
Lord Chesterfield would call " a man of
parts."