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THE!
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
A PHONOGRAPHIC PANTHEON.
Phonographic Archives to Be Established at Wash-
ington, D. C, at Harvard and Yale—Emperor
of Germany Is First to Hand Down His Voice
to American Posterity.
Music Dealers!
We are advertising in the
giant mediums of the
country to make it easy
for YOU to sell
DITSON MUSIC
Look in the April issues of the Ladies' Home
Journal, Delineator, Youth's Companion, Mun-
sey's, McClure's, Cosmopolitan, Everybody's, Re-
view of Reviews, Outlook, World's Work, Success,
Saturday Evening Post, Christian Herald, Ains-
lee's, Star Monthly, etc., and see what we are
doing for you.
Here is the advertisement:
Music Lovers
Send us 5Oc
If your music dealer cannot supply you,
in U. S. stamps and we will send (prepaid) one of the
Ditson Half-Dollar Scries
Full folio size and the greatest value
ever given in music collections
Do not confuse these with CHEAP music
They represent such composers as Mascagnl,
Bohm, Behr, (Jabriel-Marie. Ascher, Braga,
Boccherlnl, Mendelssohn, Rubinstein, Raff,
Schumann, Handel, Burgmuller, Reinecke, etc.
are beautifully printed on extra quality paper
and well bound.
If bought as Sheet Music these collections
would cost $5.00 or more each
Dance Waltzes for the Piano. 64 pages.
Easy Four-Hand Pieces (2d & 3d grades). 62 p.
Easy Pieces in Easy Keys. 56 p.
Easy Salon Music for the Piano. 64 p.
Favorite Duets for Violin and Piano. 60 p.
Forty Very Easy Piano Pieces. 64 p.
Four-Hand Recreations (3d grade). 62 p.
Marches & Two-Steps for the Piano. 62 p.
Very Easy Piano Duets (1st & 2d grades). 60 p.
Sold by Music Dealers or mailed as above.
OLIVER DITSON COMPANY
B131
Sept. 0, ISO Tremont St., Boston
We have also adopted another idea to help
you sell IMtson M u s i c . Every catalog that
we issue hereafter will bear this imprint:
" Insist on the Ditson Edition — everything
contained in this catalog can be obtained of
your own music dealer. If he is unable to
supply, send us his name and send the order
to us. It will be promptly answered."
__ We are going to keep this thing up, and to
make- Pitson-products the easiest to sell and
the most satisfactory to liandle.
Music, Musical Merchandise
AND
Musical Instruments
in the greatest variety, largest stock, and at
the lowest prices that can be shown by any
house in the world.
Our Musical Instrument Department is up-
to-date and complete.
It means $ $ $ $ $ to you to do business with
us, and you can't do better than begin now.
Write to-day for Discounts,
Terms, etc.
OLIVER DITSON COMPANY
150 Tremont Street, Boston
The plan of preserving the voices of the
great men of the present generation for the
future by means of phonographic reproduc-
tion is at last about to be realized. The sug-
gestion has been frequently discussed of es-
tablishing a living pantheon, to be carefully
preserved for the benefit of civilization cen-
turies hence. As a rule, however, the public
has refused to take the phonograph seriously
or as anything more than a toy. Within a
few days, however, phonetic archives have
been formally established at Harvard Univer-
sity, in the Congressional Library and in the
National Museum at Washington. A similar
collection is contemplated at Yale.
The three phonetic archives recently estab-
lished have commenced their collections with
several excellent reproductions of the voice of
the Emperor of Germany. The cylinders
were prepared under the direction of Dr. Ed-
ward W. Scripture, the psychologist of Yale
University. Two cylinders were prepared
with the Emperor's assistance. One of these,
intended especially for Harvard, contains the
Emperor's observations on Frederick the
Great; the second is a short disquisition on
"Fortitude in Pain."
The advantages of such a collection to the
present as well as to the future are of course
endless. It seems extraordinary that, in view
of the comparatively trifling cost of such an
enterprise and its immense service to art, to
history, to science, to scholarship in general,
the founding of the great human pantheon
should be longer delayed.
One is likely to dwell upon the human in-
terest of such an enterprise. Its actual scien-
tific value is even more important; The use
of the phonograph has been unimportant
from a scientific point of view. It is capable
of a much wider utility than most people now
imagine. The phonetic survey to be carried
out by Cornell University indicates the possi-
bilities of one line of scientific investigation.
The study of language would, besides, be
greatly assisted by such records.
To mention one example, imagine that
among the autograms in this living pantheon
were extracts from the speech of the Greeks
and Romans. The study of these dead lan-
guages would be immensely assisted. A
thousand points in dispute, which have been
the subject of discussion for generations,
could be instantly determined. The study of
old French or early English, with its import-
ant effect ^pon the language as spoken to-
day, would be greatly facilitated. There
would be no lost languages in the future. '
PRETTY HARD ON CHICAGO.
Heinrich Conried told a story this week
about the visit he paid to Chicago before the
opera season began there. He arrived at the
hotel late one night and a reporter was await-
ing him.
"Well, what kind of opera are you going to
give us ?" asked the reporter. "Who are your
singers ?"
"I shall open the season with 'Tristan and
Isolde,' " said Mr. Conried.
" Tristan and Isolde!' " repeated the re-
porter, slowly, trying to write down the
names. "Are they new people ? Did they ever
sing here ? Seems to me we've had 'em with
Grau once before."
Herr Conried says he closed the interview
then.
WHAT IS AMERICAN MUSIC?
According to Constantin Von Sternberg the Plan-
tation Song Is Not African, but Has Been
Americanized From a Spanish Original and Is
Our National Folk Song.
In the course of an interesting article writ-
ten by Prof. Von Sternberg on the subject of
American music, he says in part: "There is
undoubtedly sterling merit in many works of
our native composers, and I prize them very
highly, indeed; but I cannot help admitting
that the one element is missing in them which
could impart a homelike feeling to the average
American listener. They are cosmopolitan.
Perhaps this is a virtue. I am not prepared
to say more on this score than that it does not
seem so to me. Whether virtue or fault, it
may be taken for granted that, as a nation, we
will never appreciate the ultimate meaning,
i. e., the quintessence, in the music of other
nations until we have an art music of our
own.
"Where is this music of our own to come
from? Undoubtedly from the plantation
song!
"I must not be understood to say that the
themes of our future symphonies must be
plantation songs. Far from it. But I do mean
that the plantation song should be earnestly
studied by our musicians in order that it may
influence their genius in the same manner and
degree in which Norse, German and Russian
folk song has influenced Grieg, Brahms and
Tschaikowsky. The melodic curve, the rhyth-
mic quality, the peculiarity of spoken lan-
guage as focused in this song, the sentiment,
in short, all the traits of the plantation song
are distinctly American. Hence, it is there
whence the truly American symphony must
come.
"That the plantation song has been identi-
fied with the negro is a mistake. The tempta-
tion for this mistake was great, I admit, but
a mistake it is nevertheless. For the Ethiopian
has no song, in our meaning of the word.
Africa does not know our diatonic scale. The
negro did not bring the plantation song with
him when he was imported by the early Span-
iards. He learned it from them. True, the
Spanish original has filtered through the
negro mind by its purely oral transmission
through these many generations, and in this
process it has acquired its weird and plain-
tive note. But by this very process it was
also—so to speak—translated into English.
Its rhythms were little by little changed so as
to <7on fr >rm to the cadence of English speech.
"We need only to look at the texts of the
plantation songs to find that they never treat
of Ethiopian traits."
ETTA EDWARDS, Vocal Instruction, Steinert Hall,
M RS. Boston,
Mass.
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