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42
THE
American. The consequence is a deadly monotony
of sound in the speaking voices of Americans. It
is joyless. There is no color, no enthusiasm, no
feeling.
"I love our language and believe in it, and I long
to see all Americans treat it better. Who should
respect it if we do not?"
MUSIC
TRADE
RE1VIE1W
MAKING THE PRIZE OPERA.
How Prof. Parker and Brian Hooker Collabor-
ated in Composing "Mona."
' Felix Mottl, director of the Imperial Opera, who
died in Vienna recently, bequeathed his library and
part of his collection of rare autographs to that
city. The collection includes compositions of
Haydn and Beethoven. The compositions of Hum-
mel were bequeathed to Pressburg. The musical
autographs of Wagner, Bellini and Berlioz wilt be
disposed of at auction.
"Mona," the opera which won the $10,000 prize
offered by the Metropolitan Opera Co., was not
planned or written before the competition was an-
nounced, but was called into being by the offer
of the prize.
Jn the spring of 1909 Prof. Horatio W. Parker
of Yale, the composer, called the attention of Brian
Hooker, the author, to the competition and pro-
posed that they collaborate in making an opera
for it. Mr. Hooker conceived the idea of a woman
with a mission, who would brush aside ordinary
humanity from the path of her great idea.
The work was begun at once and the opera
planned that same spring while the collaborators
were together in New Haven. Mr. Hooker began
the actual writing at his home at Farmington,
Conn., early in the summer, sending his rough
draft as fast as it was written to Dr. Parker at his
summer home at Blue Hill, Me., where the original
piano sketch of the musical setting was made.
By the end of the summer the greater part of
the work had been roughly completed, and from
then on the author and composer were continually
together, in New Haven, New York and Blue Hill,
revising, recasting and rewriting. Not until a few
days before the closing of the competition was the
revision complete and the work copied in its final
form. This working together seems not to have
been without its effect, for Conductor Hertz of the
Metropolitan said that at first he thought the opera
was the work of one person, the words and music
pitted so well together.
Brian Hooker, the author, was born in New
York in 1880. Like Prof. Parker he is of New
England descent, and at his present home in Farm-
ington his family has lived since the middlt of the
seventeenth century. After his college and gradu-
ate course at Yale he went to Columbia University
as assistant in English in 1903 and he returned
to Yale as instructor in rhetoric in 1905. In 1910
he left Yale to take up writing as a profession.
While an undergraduate Mr. Hooker was editor
of the Yale Record and the Yale Literary Maga-
zine. In 1901 he won the university prize for an
original poem and in 1909 his "Mother of Men"
won the prize offered for a Yale song by John
Oxenbridge Heald. Although the author of two
novels and a number of stories and critical articles
Mr. Hooker's chief interest has always been in
poetry, and he has been a constant writer and stu-
dent of it ever since his school days.
MONUMENT TO CHOPIN.
REGARDING CHINESE MUSIC.
A "rich Polish woman is taking steps to have a
monument erected to the memory of Chopin at the
Valldemosa Chartreuse, near Palma, where the
musician recided in 1838, when slowly dying.
He lived for a time in one of the cells of the
monastery, and there composed his famous "Noc-
turnes." George Sand joined him and wrote her
book "Spiridon" at the same place. The site is
therefore appropriate, but a bit out of the way.
Interesting Reports Regarding Music, Ancient
and Modern, Together with Some Idea of the
Popular Music of the Day in the Orient,
from the Pen of Deputy Consul-General
C arence Gauss, of Shanghai.
THE KAISER AS_k COMPOSER.
Said to Have Had Only Small Share in Com-
posing Hymn Popularly Accredited to Him.
The "Hymn to Aegir," which was played by the
orchestra at the recent command performance of
"Money" in honor of Emperor William of Ger-
many, is always credited to the Kaiser himself, but
his Imperial Majesty did not have more than a
third share in the composition. The Kaiser was
one day playing over popular melodies with varia-
tions of his own. A somewhat original theme of
his own that he struck upon in connection with
Count Von Eulenburg's Hymn to Aegir" was
taken up by the Kaiser's aid-de-camp, Von Plues-
tow. The two of them, together with Count Von
Eulenburg, set to work in developing the theme,
and the production of the trio soon became known
to Germans as their Kaiser's.
Anybody who could play, and it seems that al-
most everyone in Germany can, showed his or her
loyalty by learning the Kaiser's "Hymn to Aegir."
Every place that Emperor William went he was
greeted by the "Hymn to Aegir." Orchestras made
use of it as an imperial salutation; brass bands,
from the little German ones to the military bands,
let the Kaiser know that they had learned it;
school children sang it at their Emperor when
they got the chance, and choirs added it to their
list of offerings. It is said that Emperor William
once informed a friend that he would have to issue
an imperial edict to put an end to the popularity
of the "Hymn to Aegir."
MOTTL'S MUSIC TREASURES.
Shared Between Vienna and Pressburg—Sale
of Modern MSS.
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Chinese accounts describe ancient music as beau-
tifully sweet and harmonious, but they give no
idea of what it was like. Tsin-shih-Huangti, 246
B. C, ordered the destruction of all books, and as
music books and instruments were included, the
tradition of music was lost. Subsequent emperors,
especially Yuen Tsung, 720 A. D., and Kangshi,
1721, made great efforts to revive music and bring
it back to its old splendor, but the discussions and
contradictory theories of various writers put the
whole system into confusion, and caused the art
of music to sink to the lowest rank.
Chinese music is written, like the language, in
vertical rows of characters from right to left. The
value of the notes or their length cannot be as-
certained, as rests, pauses, etc., are seldom indi-
cated, and there is no division into bars. The
Chinese use no chromatic scale, and they have
nothing resembling our sharps, flats, etc.—that is,
signs which in a piece of music sharpen or flatten
certain notes.
The best Chinese musician can only conjecture
the general form of a written piece shown to him
for the first time; to be able to decipher it he must
hear it played. Therefore, all the tunes are learned
by tradition, and are continually modified by the
individual taste of the performer, so that after a
lapse of time the tunes become quite different from
what they were originally, and scarcely two musi-
cians will be found to play exactly the same notes
when performing the same piece of music.
Chinese music is divided into two classes, ritual
and popular. Under the name of ritual music must
be comprehended all music performed at court or
at religious ceremonies. Under popular music are
grouped all theatrical, ballad, professional and or-
dinary street song music. Among a list of selec-
tions of Chinese music on a program I find one
entitled "Ta-Pa-Pan" ("The Eight Boards"), sup-
posed to emanate from the pen of the great Em-
peror Kanghsi, together with the following en-
titled selections, "Opening the Hand," "The Maid
of the Green Willow," "Mother Understands Me
Well," "Alone at Home," "Dame Wang," "The
Abode of Love," "The Widow's Lament," "Paint-
ing Fans," "Breaking the Looking-Glass," "Mak-
ing Verses with a Bird," "The Locust's Fate,"
"The Seal of Longevity," "The Ladder of Happi-
ness," "The Happy Dream," "The Men Who Fear
Their Wives, "The Crockery Mender."
JUST KEEP YOUR EYES ON IT.
Will Von Til/.er. of the Harry Von Tilzer Pub-
lishing Co., says with an air of assurance, just
keep your eye on "I Want a Girl Just Like the
Girl That Married Dear Old Dad."
Jerome H. Remick is spending the hot spell a'
ha summer home at Bass Rock, Mass.
BUY YOUR IVUJSIC FROM
(Special to The Review.)
Washington, D. C, July 8, 1911.
In connection with his report on the foreign
trade in musical instruments in China, Deputy
Consul-General Clarence E. Gauss, of Shanghai,
prepared the following paper on Chinese music:
The Chinese claim for their music the greatest
antiquity. According to their annals, music was
invented by the Emperor Fuhsi some three thou-
sand years before the Christian era. At that time,
however, music was not regulated by any laws,
nor were the instruments of a complicated kind.
But under the Emperor Huangti, 2,700 B. C, the
art of music made important progress, a certain
note was chosen as keynote, the sounds were fixed
and received names, comparisons were drawn be-
tween the notes and the celestial bodies of the uni-
verse and music became a necessity in the state,
a key to good government. After Huangti his suc-
cessors took pride in practising music and compos-
ing hymns, and the post of music master was con-
sidered the highest dignity in the Empire.
Confucius spoke of music in the highest terms
of sincere admiration, and recommended it as the
best medium for governing and guiding the pas*
sions of men.
BOSTON
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