Music Trade Review

Issue: 1912 Vol. 55 N. 22

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
CADMAN ROYALLY^ ENTERTAINED.
Composer Guest of B. M. Davison, of the
White-Smith Co. at Several Affairs—New
Piano Cycle by Cadman—New Musicians'
Library Volumes Published by Ditson Will
Have Tremendous Vogue—Christmas Issues
by B. F. Wood Co.—Other News of Interest.
(Special to The Review.)
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
Ditson house has just put out include selected
songs of Tschaikovsky edited by James Huneker,
and a volume of sixty patriotic songs of all nations,
edited by Granville Bantock, wnfch is a compre-
hensive collection of the remarkable songs of the
people. The English translations given with the
original texts are entirely satisfactory, and those
who are lovers of folk song will be especially in-
terested in this collection. "The Interpretation of
Piano Music," by Mary Venable is a most desir-
able book for teachers and students of piano music
and playing. There is a collection of twelve songs
by Claude Debussy, edited by Charles Fonteyn
Manney, which is sure to find many friends. There
are newly published works of Franz Schubert, be-
ing a collection of selected piano compositions
edited by August Spanuth, also twelve short pre-
ludes for the organ by Arthur W. Marchant;
"Folksongs of Eastern Europe," edited by Ralph
Radcliffe Whitehead, and "Creature Songs" (three
of them), by Louise Ayres Garnett. A short can-
tata, "Haakon the Strong," by Gustav Lazarus, has
a flavor of a medieval balladry.
"Christmas Morn," a sacred song, with words
by Julia C. Dorr and music by F. Huntington
Forbes, is one of the holiday numbers of the B.
F. Wood Music Co. which already has found
favor with lovers of Yuletide music. "The Wind-
ing Path" is No. 3 of the "In My Garden" series
of piano music by Otto Barth. Two other instru-
mental pieces just put out by the Wood company
are "Danse Carnavalesque," by Jules Devaux,- and
another by the same composer, an intermezzo,
"Rhodora," both of which are high grade com-
positions and among the best that this composer
has issued in a long time. Business at the Wood
company is all that could be desired. The travel-
ing staff has thus far had a very large season.
Walter Jacobs' two publications, Jacob's Orches-
tra Monthly and The Cadenza, are chock full
lately with good things for the music lover. The
latest editions of these two publicatios show a
wonderful improvement over previous issues, good
as these already have been. Best of all they are
brim full of good advertising and more than once
lately Mr. Jacobs has had to increase their size,
this being especially true of the Orchestra Monthly.
Mr. Jacobs has several new pieces that are to be
put out in a few weeks.
Boston, Mass., Nov. 25, 1912.
Charles Wakefield Cadman's stay in Boston was
made exceptionally pleasant by many persons
prominent in the musical world who were anxious
to entertain this celebrated composer from the
West. While in Boston as the guest of B. M.
Davison of the White-Smith Co. Mr. Cadman was
tendered a reception one evening by the Harvard
Musical Association at its rooms, and many promi-
nent musicians seized the opportunity of meeting
Mr. Cadman, who has now entered upon his South-
ern tour.
Just now the White-Smith Co. is sending out
postal cards advertising a piano cycle on idealized
Indian themes by Mr. Cadman. One side of the
postal bears a facsimile of handwriting telling of
this cycle, which it says "consists of four thor-
oughly characteristic sketches which will no doubt
take their place with Mr. Cadman's other con-
tributions to Indian music literature." The sig-
nature of the White-Smith Co. is at the bottom of
the postal.
Business with the White-Smith Co. continues
large and the Christmas rush has well begun. Two
Christmas operettas, one "Alice in Wonderland,"
have been issued and are in large demand. The
music of this latter one is by H. B. Gaul of Pitts-
burgh, and already it has been given by a large boy
choir in that city under the direction of the com-
poser.
Harvard, Harvard everywhere is what one sees
in the window of C. W. Thompson & Co. at the
corner of Tremont and Park streets. Anticipating
the great Harvard-Yale game, Mr. Thompson
decorated his window with Harvard music, vocal
and instrumental, and one immediately is sur-
prised at the amount of music that has had the
Cambridge college for its theme or inspiration.
There is "O, John Harvard," "Down the Field,"
"Harvard Every Day," "'Harvard Union Waltzes,"
"Up the Street" and many others. Needless to say
that the covers of most of the numbers are more
FOR A REST, WHY NOT?
or less crimson in color.
Helen Rowland, the wise "Bachelor Girl," said
Mr. Thompson is enjoying a large business,
which is likely to keep up right to the end of the that in place of telling tales about men and hus-
season. He has several vocal and instrumental bands, which necessarily were hard luck stories, she
would briefly knock the typical "Dear Old New
pieces that are to be put out at the beginning of
the new year.
Ambassador Furness, of the Oliver Ditson Co.,
MILLION CORY HIT
reached home from a long trip a few days ago and
Mr. Desmond, still away at this writing, is ex-
pected back in a few days. Both have had most
Also New Hits
successful business trips. They will not start
Ntw WHEN WE WERE SWEETHEARTS New
away again for a few weeks.
New
UNDER THE OLD OAK TREE New
Two new Musicians' Library volumes which the
New
WAY DOWN SOUTH
New
New
RAG RAG RAG
New
McKINLEY MUSIC CO'S NEW HIT.
New
THAT SUBWAY RAG
New
New
FRANKIE AND JOHNNY New
Down By The Old Millstream
TELL TAYLOR, MUSIC PUBLISHER
OHYOUSATURDAYNIGOT!
NEW YORK
York" song with which the Broadway shows are
infested. This she did in a parody of Kipling's
"Road to Mandalay," with the following refrain:
"Ship me somewhere west of Denver—
Even out to San Jose,
Where there ain't no ragtime ditties
Boosting Little Old Broadway."
SOME NEW PRODUCTION NUMBERS.
Recent Additions to the Catalog of the Jerome
& Schwartz Publishing Co. That Are Being
Used in "Broadway to Paris," and "The
Follies of 1912."
The Jerome & Schwartz Publishing Co. has two
excellent numbers in Gertrude Hoffmann's new
revue, "Broadway to Paris," which is at present
the attraction at the Winter Garden, this city. The
MR.YANKEE DOODLE
t-r
•,
:, GERTRUDE HOFFMAN'S \ , v - :,
BROADWAY
TD PARIS'
songs in question are "Mr. Yankee Doodle," one
of the hits of the production, and "You're the
Girl," the lyrics of both being by Grant Clarke
and Edgar Leslie, and the music by Jean Schwartz.
The Jerome & Schwartz Co. also has two num-
bers in the "Follies of 1912," now playing at the
Moulin Rouge, the songs being "There's One in a
Million Like You," and "That Wonderful Tune,"
words by Grant Clarke and music by Jean
Schwartz.
John A. Creed, a furniture dealer of Red Bluff,
Cal., has installed a line of pianos in his store.
NOW PLAYING IN NEW YORK
Four Big Musical Successes.
At the Globe Theater
"The
Lady of the Slipper"
Book by Ann Caldwell and Lawrence McCarty.
Lyrics by James O'Dea.
Music by Victor Herbert.
CHICAGO
At the Park Theatre
FROM
Book and Lyrics by Frank Pixley.
Music by Gustav Luders.
"The Gypsy"
BUY YOUR
IVUJSIC
BOSTON
Publishers
"Under Many Flags"
WALTER JACOBS
167 Tremont St.,
_
BOSTON, MASS.
Publisher of
"Kiss of Spring," "Some Day When Dreams Come True,"'
And Some Others World Famous.
OLIVER
DITSON
COMPANY
BOSTON
NEW YORK
Anticipate and Supply Every Requirement of Music Dealers
WHITE-SMITH MUSIC PUB. CO.
Published in Chicago.
At the N. Y. Hippodrome
PUBLISHERS, PRINTERS & ENGRAVERS OF MUSIC
Main Offices: 62-64 Stanhope St., Boston
Branch Houses: New York and Chicago
Conceived by Arthur Voegtlin.
Book by Carroll Fleming.
Music and Lyrics by Manuel Klein.
At the Casino
"The Merry Countess"
Book by Gladys Unger.
Lyrics by Arthur Anderson.
Music by Johann Strauss.
All the Muaic Now Ready.
M. WITMARK & SONS
Witmark Bldg., 144-146 West 87th St., N. Y. City.
Chicago San Francisco London Paris Melbourne
Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
"NATIONAL SPIRIT" IN MUSIC.
The Fallacy of Dwelling Upon National Char-
acteristics in Commenting Upon the Work of
Various Composers Set Forth by British
Writer—Some Interesting Examples.
We have heard a goad deal during the last few
years of the "national spirit" in music and the ne-
cessity of founding a "national English (or Amer-
ican) school" upon the native folk-song. Only in
this way, we are told, can English (or American)
music hope to rise as a whole to the level of that
of France and Germany. The people who talk in.
this way have apparently never stopped to examine
very closely the meanings of the terms they are
using.
When we find one of them, for example, telling
us that "when every English child is, as a matter
of course, made acquainted with the folk-song of
his own country, then, from whatever class the
musician of the future may spring, he will speak in
the national musical idiom," we are constrained to
ask: What is the "national musical idiom"? It
is a high-sounding (term, and an easy one to make
a certain kind of merely verbal reasonance with;
but can anyone show us that it has any meaning
whatever in terms of concrete fact?
MUSIC TRADE
55
REVIEW
"typical" Frenchman or German were either not
French or German at all, or only partially so?
The greatest "Frenchman" of modern times—Na-
poleon—was a pure Italian, without a drop of
Fiench blood in his veins. The greatest "English"
general—Wellington—was an Irishman, as Lord
Roberts is. The greatest modern "English" novel-
ist—George Meredith—was a Welshman.
Cesar
Franck—a '•French" composer—was a Belgian.
Offenbach, who wrote the "typical" French comic
operas, was a German Jew. Or IOOK at some of the
great names of "German" music. Beethoven was
half Dutch, Liszt a pure Hungarian Joachim a
Hungarian Jew, Mahler a Bohemian Jew, Mendels-
sohn a German Jew, Nikisch a Hungarian, Richter
half Hungarian, Weingartner a Dalmatian. Yet
all these people are supposed, in some mysterious
way, to express a "national idiom" in their com-
positions or their performances!
Is not, in fact, all this talk of "national" music
a little wild? Is there such a thing as "the" Eng-
lishman, "the" German, or "the" Frenchman? It
is a form of language, it is true, that we all use at
times, but merely by way of a kind of shorthand', a
swift generalization that can do little harm so
long as we remember that it is no more than that,
says Ernest Newman, in the English Review.
We have only to look without our own borders,
or at our own artistic and literary specimens of
The truth seems to be, as Mill and Huxley long
every mental and moral history, to see that the
ago pointed out, that of all ways of accounting for
so-called English race puts forth specimens of every
the differences between the arts and customs and
mental and moral type—stable and unstable, ascetic
constitutions of nations that of attributing them
and voluptuous, intellectual and sensuous, reckless
all to "race" is the most superficial. The lax habit
and careful, extravagant and' precise—that could
of mind that allows people to be satisfied with
these pseudo-explanations almost invariably decoys be raked together from all countries on earth.
"The" Englishman is a fiction. And when we speak
them into a maze of self-contradiction.
Is it not the mere beginning of reason in the of other nations as capable of being summed up
under a single formula of this kind, it is only
matter to give up the notion that all the inhabitants
because we have not sufficient acquaintance with
of a nation are tarred with the same brush, or
them to see them in detail. Were it not so we
even that the "characteristic" work of the nation
should not commit the gross error of speaking
is being done by people indubitably of one presup-
of "the" Russian school of music, as if that vast
posed racial "type"? Would it not sober the "na-
empire with its multiplicity of languages and of
tionalists" to learn how many men who stand' as the
human types, had but one mind and one purpose.
As Melchior de Vogue once pointed out, we can
never see an unfamiliar land in such detail as a
familiar one; a Russian landscape has a uniformity
of outline and of tint for the Western eye that it
never has for the eye of a Russian.
- If the Bismarck build, with its physical massive-
ness, its heavy, square jaw, is to be taken as "typi-
cal" of the German, what are we to make of the
gaunt and lanky and nervous Richard Strauss?
As there is no such thing as "the" Englishman
to-day—'Only Englishmen of the most diverse phys-
ical and mental types, passions, appetites, ideas—
how can any one composer hope to express the
"national" mind in music? Suppose a composer
never to have heard a folk-song in his life, how
much worse off would he be? The enthusiasts
who assert that there is some peculiar efficacy in'
the folk-song should be able to tell us precisely how
A BLIND STUDENT COMPOSER.
Francis V. Brady, Cleveland's blind bard, who
four years ago, while attending higlh school, com-
posed "I'm Going Back t o Cleveland" and "The
Mollicoddle Man," is held in high esteem by his
fellow students. The revenue from the sales of
those songs helped Brady through Oberlin Col-
lege. Studies compelled him to neglect the muse
until recently. He has just produced an exquisite
song entitled "Pipe Dreams," which is having an
extensive sale, and which he expects will aid him
through Western Reserve Law School. The omni-
present girl, an armchair and the pipe are threaded
into tune pleasingly in this latest of his works.
3 Great Pianos
With 3 sounding boards
in each (Patented) have the
greatest talking points in
the trade.
SCHULZ
SINCERITY
You find it all through the product of
this company
We fix " o n e p r i c e " —
wholesale and retail.
M. SCHULZ CO.
The Heppe Piano Co.
Erie, Curtis, Ohio and Carpenter Streets
d M
and Superior
Streets
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
Office and Wareroom, 711 Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, 111.
N. W. Sales Department, 901-903 First Ave., South, Minneapolis, Minn.
South Atlantic Sales Department, Room 730 Candler Bldg., Atlanta, Ga.
SMITH ft BARNES and STROHBEft
HIGH GRADE PIANOS,
y SMITH, BARNES ft STROHBER CO.,
••..,,.
D«al«r
C. KURTZMANN ft CO.
S2«-^36 H ! - * * '
, . Buffalo. H.
DECKER & SON.
ESTABLISHED 1856.
NEW YORK
WARNING TO INFRINGERS
Any piano bearing the name of Decker
& Son in any other form than that shown
above is an infringement on the genuine.
All makers of stencil pianos, piano deal-
ers and users of pianos using the name of
Decker & Son will be prosecuted to the
full extent of the law.
DECKER & SON, 697-701 East 135th St., New York

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