Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
JULIA MARLOWE TABER.
" It is a great thing to have on the Ameri-
can stage a woman who looks upon drama-
tic art not from the standpoint of the box
office, but whose steadfast aim is to exalt
in her art. Such a woman is Julia Mar-
lowe, who with her husband, Robt. Taber,
have scored such a brilliant success in the
beautiful play ' 'For Bonnie Prince Charlie"
at Wallack's Theatre, this city-
It was only last year that New York be-
came fully aware that there were such an
actress and such an actor in America; prac-
tically unknown and almost unheralded
they came—and conquered. As Shakes-
pearean interpreters they are unique, and
afford the keenest pleasure by their sympa-
thetic and conscientious scholarship and
their painstaking efforts to produce plays
of a refined and educating character.
Commenting upon the failure of New
York to sooner recognize Julia Marlowe's
greatness, a noted critic of this city says,
"You know perfectly well, all of you, that
if she had been an English woman, com-
ing over here, let us say, with a smirched
reputation, or with some strange eccentric-
ity of manner or method, and not one hun-
dredth part of her ability, we should have
broken our necks to see her. That is a
truth, fellow patriots; lay it to heart. But
because she was only an American and hon-
est, and going about in a quiet way attend-
ing to her business, she has been seven
years winning a place in our favor.
"But very likely, as a consolation to those
who admit with repentance the national
fault, reputation thus slowly gained and
gained (by character and merit, is sur-
est and longest. In any case we know now
what Julia Marlowe is, and not likely soon
to forget the insight, poetry, grace and in-
spiration with which she illuminates the
Shakespearian text. The public has not
failed to intelligently appreciate that pecu-
liar and sympathetic [adaptability to the
great master's heroines which Shakespear-
ians like Rolfe, Furniss, Talcott, Williams
and Ingersoll recognized in her long ago."
Julia Marlowe and Robt. Taber will
remain at Wallack's until the end of
March.
0
nUSIC AND CULTURE.
In the course of an interesting article on
the peculiarities of the musical tempera-
ment and its manifestations, in the current
number of Blackwood, Mr. Hutchings
touches upon the subject of musical genius
and general education. "The lives of the
great composers do show," he writes in one
passage, " unwelcome as the truth may be,
that music of a very high order has been
produced by men who were indisputably
dunces, if not simpletons. Hence the de-
graded alliances which noble music has con-
tracted with mean and foolish words; hence,
too, the little that has been done by com-
posers of the first rank in the way of eluci-
dating the laws which their genius has
evolved."'
Now, as a matter of fact, we very much
doubt whether, with one solitary exception
at the present day, a single instance of the in-
JULIA MARLOWE TABER.
spired dunce can be discovered in the musi-
cal annals of the nineteenth century. Even
Schubert himself, though his surroundings
were bourgeois, showed a considerable liter-
ary flair in his choice of words. Weber,
though certainly not fortunate in his chcice
of librettos, was a well educated man.
Mendelssohn was a regular admirable
Crichton. Schumann, Berlioz, and, in a
minor degree, Liszt, had all remarkable
literary gifts. Of the accomplishments of
Wagner it is not necessary to speak. At
the present day the cultured musician is
especially represented by Saint-Sacns,
Boito, Dr. Hubert Parry, and many others;
but Brahms is known to be well versed in
the masterpieces of classical and modern
literature, while Verdi's choice of subjects
—of late years —certainly furnishes no in-
stance of those "degraded alliances" of
which Mr. Hutchings speaks. Indeed, as
he himself admits, " a t present the com-
poser is as often as not a more or less com-
petent critic." And he supplements this
admission by the bold remark that the in-
stances of Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, and
Wagner "show little more than that in
days of widely diffused education even
musical genius lacks the opportunity, or
can hardly dare, to be ignorant." We take
it that the advance, assuming that it is an
advance, is not confined to music alone, but
to other callings, says the "Musical
Times," and that the average level of gen-
eral culture to be found among, say, doc-
tors and commercial travelers would exhibit
a similar elevation in the course of the last
hundred years. The danger that besets a
musician no\v-a-days is not so much that of
knowing too little outside his own sphere
as of knowing too much. It is so hard for
him to isolate himself, and, as an illus-
trious writer once said, " though conversa-
tion may enrich the intellect, isolation is
the true school of genius." Some well-
known modern musicians have presented
the extraordinary spectacle of men who
combined musical composition with special
scientific studies—Borodin and Ce"sar Cui
are, perhaps, the most remarkable cases in
point. And one cannot help feeling that
this remarkable enchevftranent, as Daudet
calls it, of modern life tells against the
quality of the work produced. One would
not be in the least surprised nowadays if a
fine Symphony were to be written by the
author of an exhaustive work on bimetal-
ism,or if a Senior Wrangler were to compose
a particularly lurid one-act opera. As a
proof of our versatility, it is no doubt very
gratifying; but one is sometimes beset by
the awkward suspicion that if we were not
quite so "good all round" we might go
considerably farther in special directions.