Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
This was in November, 1890, and the ef-
fect produced upon the audience at his de-
but was electrical. From that time to the
present, David Bispham's work has always,
of whatever sort it has been—concert, ora-
torio or opera—maintained the highest in-
tellectual level, and has, in consequence,
commanded the attention of those whose
opinion is best worth having. His reper-
toire is large and his own taste inclines
towards the classical, but is very broad,
and his belief is that an artist must be cos-
mopolitan in his outlook upon the world of
art.
"Any quantity, hundreds of girls, go to
Europe each year to perfect their voices.
Their teachers here in American know
that their voices carry no warrant of an
ultimate career and yet they seem to be
unwilling to tell them the truth. And so
it happens that these poor girls go over
there, learn the truth and struggle to
prove that the truth is falsehood. They
fail and then comes the tragedy in one
form or another, but always heartrending.
In my opinion it is the paramount duty of
J*
TN a contribution to the International
* Monthly on " Grand Opera in Europe
and America" it is stated that most Amer-
ican cities do not care to support good mu-
sic for the simple reason that such music
bores the audiences. The Hartford Cour-
ant does not agree with these conclusions
but admits that we are, as a nation,
far behind Germany in musical culture,
and ventures the following suggestions:
America is not Germany. Our problems
and our methods of solving them must be
our own. We must wait many years for a
music tradition, though we need not forget
that Germany's music is in a sense our
heritage. Grand opera, as at present con-
ducted, is the rich man's luxury, and it will
certainly depend for its success or failure
on his whims. We are inclined to think
that the churches can do very much for
music in America. Puritanism left our
services pretty bare. But isn't it time to
re-introduce great music into the churches?
They have always been the people's insti-
tutions, and are a conservating force in
culture. We venture to think that good
music would do as much as long prayers to
uplift men and women. We need in most
of the churches of the country better in-
struments, better organists, and better se-
lections. Above all, we need to have many
more services of music and song, on week-
days as well as Sundays. It is probably
necessary to make it easy and natural for
people to hear good music before they
come to know that they really care for it.
JWI ME. NEVADA, who has been touring
* * * the far West and Northwest since
her appearance in this city, has been win-
ning golden opinions wherever she has
journeyed. Her beautiful voice, faultless
vocal method and winsome personality have
been the constant theme of the commenda-
tory notices which have appeared from the
pen of the leading critics.
In one of the western cities recently,
while talking about teachers and their
methods, she was asked: "What about
tbe American girl who goes to Europe to
obtain an education in music? "
" I t is usually tragic and occasionally
beneficial," answered Nevada. '' Of course
the student in Europe has the advantage
of an artistic atmosphere which, as yet,
one does not obtain in America. That is
a great consideration, very great. The
trouble is, there are too few teachers of
music in this country who have the cour-
age to tell the truth to their pupils.
MME. NEVADA.
every teacher of music to be absolutely
honest with their pupils."
The portrait of Mme. Nevada, which ap-
pears on this page is reproduced from one
of her most recent photographs.
T^HERE never was, and is not now, a
*• standard orchestra. This is the icon-
oclastic statement made recently by a wri-
ter in the Saturday Review. Let us analyze
the subject: Beginning in the crudest
way, the orchestra grew, until by Mozart's
time, it consisted of violins, first and sec-
ond, violas, 'cellos, double-basses, flutes,
oboes, bassoons, horns, trumpets and
drums, and occasionally clarionets. It was
not then perfect, or nearly perfect. To
mention only a few of its worse defects,
the trumpets and horns of that day could
play, really play, only certain notes of the
scale, and produced mere asthmatic gasps
on the others; and the middle part of the
strings, owing to the weakness of the viola,
was so thin that composers had constantly
to thicken with the horns or bassoons, often-
est the bassoons; the bass was also gener-
ally weak, and always ridiculous owing to
the range of the double bass being shorter
by several notes than that of the 'cello.
The great part of the art of writing for
this orchestra consisted in a sufficient
knowledge of fakes. Everyone of the
period could write for it—everyone worth
counting as anyone — and knew when
to thicken the middle parts and when to
strengthen the bass; and this orchestra is
the "standard" orchestra of almost every
professor save Prof. Prout. Mozart and
Haydn put tip with it, Mozart because in
his brief tragic life he had no time to do
more than he did in
the way of broaden-
ing the uses of the
orchestra, and Haydn
because in his long,
bourgeois, industri-
ous life he had hard-
ly another end in
view than that of
pleasing his g o o d
patrons. Had Mozart
l i v e d for another
twenty o r thirty
years—but who can
say what might have
happened had Mo-
zart lived for another
twenty o r thirty
years?—anyway Mo-
zart died and was
succeeded, in the
matter of orchestra-
tion, by Weber, Wag-
ner and Berlioz; and
the orchestra con-
tinued to grow. New
colors were added:
the tubas,the double-
bassoon, the b a s s
clarinet, and later the
pedal or double-bass
clarinet, the cor ang-
lais, the clarinets
(properly used), the
—but why enumerate
all the instruments of the orchestra—the
point is this: that all these new instruments
wereadded, not as more strings were added,
to make more noise, but mainly to add colors
to the composer's pallette. Of course,
from the very beginning the orchestra had
been getting noisier: Haydn's orchestra
was much noisier than Sebastian Bach's
(even with the two organs of the Matthew
Passion thrown in); and Mozart's so much
louder than anything that had been heard
before that an Imperial gentleman said
there were too many notes in his scores.
It was chiefly the desire for an increased
range of orchestral color that led, step by
step, to the huge orchestra of to-day. It
goes without saying that the desire of the
excited ear for ever greater and greater
intensity of sound had something to do
with it, but the chief cause was the desire
for additional color. So the orchestra grew
to what it is now. It had never been a
fixed, absolute thing; and it is not now.
Even since Wagner's time, every composer
has added to, or altered it. The com-
posers of to-day who happen to understand
the orchestra—for instance, Fritz Delius
and Richard Strauss—are at work altering
it as vigorously as they call,