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THE
THE PIANO GIRL HAD COMPANY.
A middle-class apartment house sat perspiring
at its windows one evening. It was one of the
first hot nights of the season, when a withering
breath had fallen suddenly on the wilted city.
People still had on their winter clothes. Tired
wives and mothers had not yet had time to rout
out last summer's underwear from boxes in the
basement.
The house had wanted ice cream and frozen
pudding for dinner and had received mostly pork
chops and potatoes. It was not a foreign house.
It was inhabited by the common or garden va-
riety of Americans, trying to be happy, though
married, on from $60 to $100 a month.
Windows were open and people half-clad and
two-thirds baked sat beside them. Suddenly a
well-known bang broke on the evening air. The
insurance agent on the third floor threw down
his paper and said:
"That girl is going to whoop it up again!"
The girl lived in the next house. She opened
her window every night and played an old tin
piano right beside it for hours and hours. She
played "Hiawatha" and "Bedelia" and "On n.
Sunday Afternoon."
The house could have stood "Hiawatha," and
even the two others, if she had played them cor-
rectly. But she always missed the same note.
She always stuck in the same place. She always
made the same old mistakes.
There was a general movement at all the
windows. The flathouse felt as if i t could not
stand it to-night, along with the weather.
Suddenly the girl stopped. There was a mo-
ment of conversation, and then a new hand
touched the piano.
It was the same old piano that the house had
longed to see roped out of the window. But now
it sent forth a sudden strain of melody. The
piano girl had company.
The unknown played "Hiawatha" first; but
such a "Hiawatha!" Its lifting notes danced
forth, sweet and gay as a bird, light as a Spanish
dancer.
Newspapers dropped. Curses died. The house
leaned on the windowsills and listened.
Then the unknown glided into another strain.
Soft and smooth and sweet, "linked notes" of
melody—comforting, soothing, quieting—Men-
delssohn's "Consolation." The house settled back
in its chairs and grew peaceful and retrospective.
The unknown dashed into a queer, foreign
strain, rapid but not banging, velvety smooth in
all its galloping, cool and bright as northern
skies—a quaint, wild little thing of Grieg. The
house listened greedily. It was odd music, but it
liked it.
From that the unknown glided into a wealth
of expressive harmony, exuberant, delicious, as
if the composer could not control or rein in his
own rejoicing genius—part of Schubert's great
symphony in C.
On the third floor the insurance agent stirred
uneasily.
"Good Lord," he muttered; "if that girl begins
again to-night there'll be murder in this house!"
And the unknown changed into a dreamy, im-
aginative strain, like the music Shelley would
have written had his trade been notes instead of
words. It was poetry in music, and the perspir-
ing house forgot the weather and the 6 o'clock
crush and the deviltry of the landlord, and
thought of queer things it had never experienced,
and never expected to—although it did not know
it was listening to Schumann. A tired little
dressmaker up on the fourth floor made a sud-
den spasmodic applause with her shears on the
window sill.
"More, more!" she shrilled nervously, hanging
out of the window.
And the unknown slid softly into a subtle
strain; sensitive, restless, longing; fanciful, mys-
terious, abounding in rich ornamentation. All the
wild life of the old Polish race was in it; all the
polished elegance of French salons. Gypsy memo-
ries haunted it; broken hearts sighed through it
—a nocturne of Chopin.
The unknown played no more. Upstairs the
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
little dressmaker was crying silently to herself.
A little, wandering breeze crept up from the
river. The house, soothed, calmed and peace-
ful, dropped off, one by one, to bed.—The Sun.
DECLINE OF GERMAN MUSIC.
Eugene d'Albert announces in the Frankfurter
Zeitung that German musical art at present is
passing through a crisis which is not only criti-
cal for the concerns of to-day but threatens the
fruitfulness of the future. He says that with the
exception of Richard Strauss Germany to-day
contains only three great composers. The fault
Is directly due to the fact that Germany has be-
come the land of materialism within the last few
years. In former times we had artists who lived
solely for their ideals, thinking little of material
things; at the present time matters have com-
pletely changed, the artist, placing his ideal, if he
has one, after his love for material things. All
means have become good, continues Herr d'Al-
bert, from the most vulgar advertisement to the
most absurd seeking after foreign prestige, if the
one great result is obtained of drawing the crowd
and filling the theater. It may be said that even
the teachers of piano-playing have become busi-
ness men exactly as in England and America.
The public no longer believes in true talent, and
yet the German youth does not lack in genius.
There are many among the younger generation
who would reach vast heights if they did not
come in contact with professors who are not art-
ists and consequently destroy the real soul of the
pupil's talent. How is this evil to be remedied?
First and above all it is necessary that all those
who have not an absolute confidence in the power
of their vocation give up the artistic career, for
every other career is open to them and will
bring them in greater profits. The instructors
should speak in this way to their pupils and they
should also stifle their personal desire of mak-
ing their pupils appear in public. Instructors
should spare no pains in the formation of the
vocation, for on this the entire future of the
artist depends, and the pupils should be advised
of the dangers and disillusions of the artistic
career.
AN IRISH FOLK SONG SOCIETY.
An Irish Folk Song Society has been formed,
which it is to be hoped will do much to rescue
from oblivion and preserve the hundreds of
charming old Irish folk songs, that with the
progress of civilization were being stamped out
and forgotten. Ireland has always been the home
of the folk song, and it would be a great pity
were we, with our progress, to disdain and lose
this simple and charming body of literature.
More valuable, of course, than the words are
the lovely and very old airs to which they are
wedded. The lady who has founded the so-
ciety is one who, traveling through the remote
parts of Ireland during a holiday and interview-
ing our old men and women, has done very much
personally toward the preservation of these old
songs and old airs. She is Mrs. C. Milligan Fox,
who is fast making a reputation as a composer
of Irish songs that are now being sung by the
first singers.
Mrs. Milligan Fox is a daughter of the well-
known antiquarian, Seaton Milligan, F.R.S.A.
and M.R.I.A., of Belfast. Mrs. Milligan has in
contemplation a lecturing tour in the United
States during the coming winter, under the
management of the Columbian Lyceum Bureau.
Her subject will be Irish folk songs. If she de-
cides to go she will be accompanied by an Irish
piper and an Irish harpist.
ERNEST SCHELLING COMING.
Among the pianists who have never been heard
in America one of the most interesting artists is
Ernest Schelling, an American who has been
identified with Europe so long that he is regarded
as a European by all who have heard him.
Mr. Schelling is a pupil and intimate friend of
Paderewski and spends much time with that well
known pianist at his home in Switzerland. Mr.
Schelling is over six feet in height, and he is a
rarely accomplished gentleman in addition to
being an artist of distinction and charm, as we
are informed from all parts of Europe, where he
has been heard and where he has created a clien-
tele entirely his own.
Although early in the thirties, Mr. Schelling
has played in many cities and has won the en-
thusiasm of the" foreign press in a marked de-
gree. The American tour will open in November
with the Boston Symphony orchestra, with which
organization Mr. Schelling will have five or six
concerts in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore
and Boston. A very excellent portrait of the dis-
tinguished pianist appears on our cover page
this week.
$100,000 TO PRODUCE BRITISH MUSIC.
Mr. Palmer, the Reading millionaire, has re-
solved to offer young musicians a chance, and he
has placed no less than $100,000 in the hands of
certain trustees for the purpose of giving a pub-
lic hearing to hitherto unperformed music, in the
hope of ultimately discovering the much-talked-of
unrecognized genius. The committee invited new
works from the past or present students of the
leading London and provincial schools, and they
received nearly fifty compositions for considera-
tion. From these they selected eight, which
were produced at the first orchestral concert of
the "Patron's Fund," given at St. James's Hall
last month. Most of the composers were, accord-
ing to our London namesake, more or less well
known, so that for the discovery of the unrecog-
nized genius we must wait. There were a sym-
phonic poem (excellent as to workmanship,
though rather too long) and a song set to Her-
rick's poem "The Hag" (sung by Mr. Ivor Fos-
ter), both by Mr. Frank Bridge; a Wagnerian
scena, "Grettir's Departure," by Mr. Paul Cor-
der; a Wagnerian scena entitled "Manfred's So-
liloquy," by Mr. Von Carse; some variations on a
Swedish air by Mr. Hurlstone; a bright and ef-
fective overture, "In the Harz Mountains," by
Henry Geehl; an Overture in G minor by Yorke
Bowen; and a Ballet Suite in E flat by Mr. Von
Hoist. Mr. Bowen's overture was the best of a
selection, which, if it did not contain a work of
genius, was nevertheless a highly creditable one.
THAT "MUSIC CURE."
Periodically, the daily papers publish interest-
ing stories about music as a cure for worn
nerves and other ills to which the flesh is heir.
This time music as a therapeutic is credited to
Boston, but the idea is as old as Christianity.
It is amusing to read of the claimants who
are cropping up in New York and elsewhere
seeking credit for originating this so-called
music cure. No one can deny the influence of
music in nervous troubles, but from the way the
daily papers serve it up to the reader, it would
seem as if light were thrown upon a new discov-
ery which would revolutionize medical practice
like some of the cure-alls advertised for serious
troubles like consumption and other maladies.
But then in the summer time it is a change to
write about the music cure instead of penning
the stereotyped summer jokes.
SEUMAS MAC MANUS.
FRANZ VON VESCEY COMING.
Franz von Vecsey, the little Hungarian boy
violinist, aged eleven years, whose extraordi-
nary success in London has been chronicled late-
ly in this paper, is coming to the United States
next January for a four months' tour, under the
management of Daniel Frohman, who made a
fortune out of Kubelik's tour here.
WHY THERE ARE NO FOLK SONGS.
Smoking is no doubt a nasty habit, Injurious to
most people, but it remained for a German, Dr.
Stanger, to discover the harm it has done to
music. Why, he asks, are there no more new folk
songs? Because, he answers, the peasants and
mechanics no longer sing, but smoke instead.
"In place of song, smoke now issues from their
throats."