Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
PUBLIC LIBRARY,.
THE
ARTISTS'
DEPARTMENT.
EM1LIE FRANCES BAUER, Editor.
TELEPHONE
NUMBER,
1745.--EIGHTEENTH STREET
The Artists' Department of The Review is
published on the first Saturday of each month.
WOMEN AS riANAQERS.
\ 1 7 I T H the fact staring us in the face
that women are working into all
commercial fields, it is not astonishing
that the occupation of manager should be
tried and should be one wherein a woman
might be pre-eminently successful. With
this as with everything else there are some
who will make notable successes and some
who will be dolorously and disastrously
unsuccessful. In this respect, if in no
other, they will not be different from many
of their brothers in the same business, as
there are always a few successful ones and
hordes of disappointed in every line of
life.
It has reached the point.where the suc-
cess of musical attractions lies in the hands
of women, whether in clubs or as individ-
uals. The stock in trade of a manager is
knowing the country, having- the ability to
place his press notices, supplying artists
that are what they are represented to be,
having enough capital to "boom" his peo-
ple and having enough fortitude to endure
the strain which, after all, exists in all
commercial life. That the entire scheme
entails risk is certain, as the caprices of a
public and the indigestion of the critics are
exigencies which cannot be anticipated or
prepared for.
In all this there is nothing that a woman
might not control as well as a man, and it
were strange if a woman could not place
an artist as well as a man if her judgment
be calm, cool and commercial, in other
words, if she be able to judge the commer-
cial value of an artist which certainly does
not depend upon art alone:
Everybody is agog at the announcement
that Mme. Paderewska is to manage her
liege lord's business. Wherefore? This will
keep the Paderewski income intact, and
that is all that is necessary for any one to
know. Probably the Madame is perfectly
capable and can endure the strain of a busi-
ness life. When it comes to questioning
any further it ceases to belong to the pub-
lic.
Were Paderewski a poor, struggling
artist whose life must needs be saddened
by the impossibility of marrying and sup-
porting the woman of his choice, her de-
termination to join her fate to his, to as-
sume the commercial burden and help him
MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
into position and happiness would have
caused still greater comment, but the com-
ment would have been one of admiration
for the pluck of a woman who stands ready
to face the brunt and storm of a business
life to be near the man she loves, to share
his good or ill-luck, to be in truth his help^
mate, his companion, his inspiration.
Such a woman would be contributing
with lavish hand her share to art, she
would be giving something of rare and
beautiful value to the world. But, indeed,
after all, the romance that has surrounded
Paderewski and his career, the phase of
his wife as business manager falls with " a
dull and heavy thud " upon the hero wor-
shippers, and in that fall it drags down a
good deal of sentiment that is actually nec-
essary to keep Paderewski where he belongs.
It makes his love seem coldly commercial,
and it makes his art icy to a Klondike de-
gree. It is repulsive to hear the clink of
the dollars between the movements of the
Appassionata Sonata.
It is perfectly reasonable to expect a man
who marries an artist to assume her busi-
ness management. It is to be expected that
a man will take the burden upon himself
and spare the woman he loves. The re-
verse of this is not the case, as the first
thing to be expected of a man is that he
protect his wife from the storms of life
whether he be an artist or a cobbler if he
be successful enough to do this without
her assistance.
It is well for the woman who is com-
pelled to face the world to do so manfully
and bravely. To a woman of innate re-
finement whose delicacy of nature must
shrink from all the blows that any one in
business is open to, a commercial career
at its very best is a hardship and one
which takes the -sweetness of life away
from woman and makes of her naught but
a craft at the mercy of the wind and waves
with no certainty of a safe arrival in har-
bor until the spark of life is extinct and
the journey is over. Is it possible that
Paderewski with all his Polish estates and
his last American capture need subject his
wife to this?
WORDS AND TONES.
T H E subjoined interesting remarks on
the " Clangtint of Words" are by
Rowland Sill:—"It is interesting to notice
what a difference there is in words as to
their atmosphere. Two terms that the dic-
tionaries give as being nearly or quite sy-
nonymous may have widely different values
for literary use. Each has its own envel-
oping suggestiveness—'airs from heaven,'
or emanations from elsewhere. Of two
words denoting the same object or action,
one may come drawing with it a light, a
glory, a fair, luminous cloud; the other
bringing a disagreeable smudge. Accord-
ingly, in the literary art, it is not enough
to use language with an exact sense of defi-
nitions; one must add to this logical
precision a nice instinct for atmos-
pheric effect.
Just as a tone of a
particular pitch is one thing on a flute, and
another on a horn, each having its own
timbre, so a term having a precise mean-
ing is one thing if it has dropped carolling
out of Grecian skies, and from the delicate
hands of Keats and Shelley, but quite an-
other thing if it has come clattering and
rumbling up out of clod-hoppers' horse-
talk.
Moreover, just as the difference be-
tween tones on various instruments is due
to their diverse groups of harmonic over-
tones, one superposed on another, so the
individual atmosphere of any word comes
from its having its own composite set of
associations, some faint and vague, some
strong and definite, that have through all
its history been clustering upon it."
KATHEKINE bLOODQOOD IN VAUDEVILLE.
HTHIS announcement came like a thun-
derclap to those who, interested in
America and its art, were pleased to re-
gard Katherine Bloodgood as one of its
most brilliant successes. Few American
girls had achieved what this handsome
woman, with her rich contralto voice and
wide musical education had done. She
had triumphantly carried off engagements
with most of the Oratorio societies in this
country, including New York, the center
where she won unqualified praise. She
was one American to whom one could
point with pride and who might be quoted
as an example to young singers who are
struggling for recognition. She was one
contralto who might be pitted against the
numbers of foreigners who are brought into
these engagements with the remark, "Well
where are your Americans that can do it?"
Katherine Bloodgood could, and one re-
joiced in saying so.
And she has committed a deliberate ar-
tistic suicide! One can but question why,
and an attempt to arrive at a plausible so-
lution is entirely impossible. No matter
from what side this be viewed it is a piti-
able downfall and can be regarded in no
other light. If the argument be set forth
that she needed it financially, one immedi-
ately remembers that she was past the
struggling period; she had gained both
standing and recognition.
What has lost this to her?
a singer to use her brains as
voice, for it is a great art to
tion after one has attained it.
good has lost it. Her pictures
It behooves
well as her
hold a posi-
Mrs. Blood-
are now ex-