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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
plied by order of Sir Hudson Lowe were
justified. "By way of remedy, Bonaparte
conceived the notion of breaking off the
gold and silver eagles from his covers and
plates, which my grandfather, who was de-
voted to him, used to sell for him in or-
der to furnish necessaries for the table."
It is interesting to note that in the days
of their greatest prosperity Gilbert and
W A L E University has done a dignified Sullivan are said to have divided between
* and laudable thing by associating its them $200,000 a year, but their successors
musical department with the New Haven have not yet been found, in spite of this
Symphony Orchestra. The university great reward for work so well done.
thus takes under its protection the musical
life of the city, and affords its musical de- T H E experiment of carrying across the
partment a wider scope for the spread of
* country such an expensive organiza-
culture in the tonal art. Prof. Horatio tion as that of the Maurice Grau Opera
W. Parker, head of the department of Co. seems to have been so far successful.
music at Yale, is. a sound musician and a The San Francisco season has been a bril-
composer of distinction. With the weight liant and profitable one. The Wagnerian
of the university's influence behind him, operas, which are not as well known as the
he will be able as conductor of the sym- French and Italian on the Coast, readily
phony orchestra to accomplish even more acquired popularity, the first production
in the future than he has in the past.
of the Nibelungen Ring, which occurred
during the past week, being largely at-
'"THE exaggerated stories that travel from tended and widely acclaimed. The con-
* time to time throughout the country ductor, Walter Damrosch, has apparently
about high-salaried choir engagements in a big following on the Coast and his con-
this city seem to attract year after year a ducting of the German operas is giving the
large number of candidates for positions. greatest satisfaction.
Travel where you will in musical circles,
and you come in contact with a host of D O E has long been acclaimed the musical
ambitious singers from out of town whose *
poet. Music runs throughout his po-
voices have been lavishly praised by their etry. It is the first thing that strikes the
local teachers. Soon, however, they under- ear. Louis E. Van Norman, in a recent
go the painful ordeal of realizing that the address on 'Poe and His Poetics,'said: "It
salaries paid singers in this big city are not is not surprising that this is so, for he
adequate and that the market is overcrowd- believed the musical element to be the
ed. They have little recourse but to drift very soul of verse. It is to be regretted
into choruses of the opera, unless they that American musicians have over-
have the good sense to return, from whence looked Poe in their lyric and operatic
they came, where the same amount of work compositions. The poems of Poe are a
and energy applied cannot fail to result in field of fresh, untrodden lyrical beauty.
securing an income and a standing far in Euphony, forcible diction, rhythmic flow,
advance of that realized in New York. intelligibility, the lyric and dramatic
The obstacles to be surmounted in New spirit—all the qualities necessary for
York are those to be encountered in every descriptive music are present in their
large city the world over. Paris, London perfection. What a grand, weird, soul-
and Berlin constantly attract an army of stirring opera or oratorio could be built
aspirants in the vocal field, and, as in New up around ' The Raven' as a central
York, the results are pretty much the same. theme, if there was only some American
Competition is keen, and the fittest does Wagner to call forth the music!" Leigh
not always survive. " Pull " and " influ- Irvine, in a.recent number of "The Com-
ence " seem to b e a " paramount issue " in ing Age," echoes the same idea when he
the matter of church appointments, as in speaks of Poe's "alliterative melodies."
politics.
Says Mr. Irvine: "Poe viewed poetry
through the eye of art. He studied effects
N the volume of reminiscences written
and attained them. He wrote with elocu-
some time since by the late Sir Ar-
tion in view as the actor studies his art.
thur Sullivan, he tells the story of how his
He wrote for the heart. He was an actor,
father and grandfather became connected
in the role of the poet, and had an intense
with the English army. It appears that
nature born to realize the dramatic."
Sullivan's grandfather was an impover-
ished squire of Kerry, who shortly after
he was married got tipsy one night after a T H E present revival of interest in Shake-
* speare inspires one writer to ask
steeplechase, and when he woke up next
morning found to his dismay that he had what manner of man is this whose grave
taken the King's shilling. There was, has remained undisturbed for three cen-
however, no help for it, and accordingly he turies, whose resting-place is more fa-
was shipped off to the Peninsula, serving mous as a pilgrimage than that of Ma-
with credit at Vittoria, Salamanca, and Bad- homet, St. Peter or Buddha, whose bones
ajos. After the battle of Waterloo his earn more than he did in life, and who,
grandfather was ordered with a detachment after 300 years of silence, speaks more elo-
to St. Helena, and became a great admirer quently than any poet of these times?
of Napoleon. He seems to think that the Our best actors continue to hold his plays
complaints of the poorness of the food sup- above all others and win most fame in
hearing of his acknowledged masterpiece,
the "Pathetic" Symphony. One must have
heard his fourth and fifth symphonies, his
symphonic-poems, and other works of the
same magnitude, to appreciate to the full
both the beauty of the "Pathetic" in par-
ticular, and his other compositions in gen-
eral.
I
them. Mr. Sothern is wealthy. He can
afford to buy manuscripts from Sardou,
Rostand, Jones or Pinero. He refuses
their works and spends his time and
money m an elaborate production of
"Hamlet." Richard Mansfield is rich. He
can buy anything that pleases him, from
yachts to antiques. He needs a new play,
having exhausted the popularity of "Cy-
rano de Bergerac." Does he choose the
ingenuities of our most celebrated play-
wrights? He goes to Shakespeare's tomb
and spends $20,000 in reviving by no
means the best play of the dead man.
This business has continued for centuries.
It is not because Shakespeare is old, for
Sophocles is older. It is not because
Shakespeare was a wit, for Moliere and
Scribe, Congreve and Farquhar were wits
also.
C V E R Y musician, whether amateur or
*—' professional, forms for himself by de-
grees certain ideals both as regards a com-
poser's work in general and his composi-
tions individually—their rightful mean-
ing, sentiment, "reading," and so forth.
In some cases he will, by painstaking and
critical study of the composer and his
text, have prepared a sufficiently safe and
correct basis of understanding; at other
times, we shall have him trusting rather
to his artistic intuitions for chief if not
sole guidance to a sympathetic interpreta-
tion of some particular work. It is difficult
to determine just how far an artist is
justified in superimposing his own idio-
syncracies of feeling upon the ideas of
the composer in his "reading" of the lat-
ter; the more especially as it is not at
all an easy matter, despite the common
way of thinking, to say when the com-
poser's own sentiment is exactly appre-
hended and conveyed. Let us imagine it
possible for an artist to reproduce a sonata
of Beethoven in a manner and style pre-
cisely "as the composer intended it;" let
us suppose, also, a number of other artists
performing the said sonata after the same
perfect model—all the performances, in
fact, being characterized by the like idea
of fidelity to "composer's intentions," and
self-same fiawlessness of interpretation.
It is safe to say that in such an instance
our interest in the executive, interpretative
media, for their own sake, would at length
evanish altogether, and as a writer in Mu-
sical Opinion well says, the artist might
then be almost compared to a phonographic
machine. The opposite evil, however, we
often discern when, say, an ambitious,
egotistic pianist—perhaps without that
necessary practical conversance with or
the no less necessary intuitions of his
author—projects an ideal of his own, mani-
festly distorting both the sense and senti-
ment of the declared original. How many
Chopins, it may be asked, have been thus
ideally created of late? Certain of these,
however diverse, may be accepted as legiti-
mate creations, maybe; as for the rest,
they are of the nature of art monstrosities,
—neither Chopin nor yet original produc-
tions; the artist here over-topping and
finally ousting his composer.
The Saunterer.