Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
impossible to estimate the number of stu-
dents that come from all over the country
for study in New York. Not alone to be
with the best teachers, but to hear music,
should be the aim of all of these students.
The opera is a great school, too great,
indeed, to be overlooked, even if they can
afford no better seats than the topmost
row of the top gallery, but too few stu-
dents of singing remember there is any
music outside of the vocal; this is a piti-
ful mistake and the failure of most singers
is due to this short-sightedness. The stu-
dent who confines himself to the narrow
study of vocal music is totally unfit to
meet the demands of the public, and the
public should not tolerate many things
that it does, although to its credit be it
said that it is growing more fastidious all
the time. Therefore, to fit one's self for a
vocal career the student should attend or-
chestral, and chamber music concerts,
should study piano carefully to the point
of virtuosity, and by all means study the
English, French and German languages.
HP HE RE is, perhaps, no musical an-
nouncement made that is hailed with
more delight by the truly musical people
than that of the Kneisel quartet, whose
present season is the ninth in New York.
However hard these people may have
striven to win favor by adhering rigidly to
. the best and noblest in music and in meth-
ods, they stand to-day in a unique and en-
viable position. The houses will be full to
overflowing as they always are and the au-
diences will represent the culture and re-
finement of New York's people, for to
them the Kneisels are as they should be
to all who are capable of understanding
the embodiment of art in its purest and
highest form. Some interesting assistants
will be announced later.
less clavier. It is worth its price over
again, if only to save the wear and tear of
a magnificent piano, to say nothing of the
wear and tear of the nervous system of
those within hearing distance of the pa-
tient practicer.
The results have been very flattering to
the Virgil people, and great as the appre-
ciation is of what has been done, the
scheme is in its incipiency and will be until
the clavier is as much of a necessity in the
home of every musician, as the piano is.
j*
IN the professional card column of a San
Francisco paper a tenor advertises his
services and adds "no thank-you engage-
ments desired." This looks grotesque
only for a moment to those who know how
many "thank you engagements" fall to
the lot of those who make a living by their
musical talents. Fortunate are they if
even a "thank you" goes with it. For the
greater part services given are not even
considered of enough importance to say
"thank you." In different parts of the
country the gratis services are due to
different causes, but whatever the causes
are, a stand should be taken against
them.
For instance, teachers should not encour-
age their pupils to public appearance; if a
pupil is not finished enough to be paid for
his or her work, the pupil is not fit to be
heard, and probably does the teacher more
harm than good. The music clubs and the
women's clubs are in a great measure re-
sponsible for much of the "thank you"
work, and the professionals should certain-
ly draw the line here.
There is a very great difference between
becoming well known and being hack-
neyed, and that is what the most of them
become. People like to hear novelties,
and one must choose between being a nov-
elty or a favorite, and it is in the power of
very few to be the latter.
day follows Sunday and there are many
churches.
That there is a great dearth of sacred
music of dignity is proven by the enor-
mous amount of wretched stuff that even
good musicianly organists permit upon
their programs, and to use melodies that
are banal and adapt sacred words to them
should be beneath the dignity of any self-
respecting singer.
A publishing house will give considera-
tion to an anthem or a mass about ten
times as quickly as it will to a ballad.
Try it and see.
A MONG the different devices to facili-
tate chord structures and relations,
nothing is more feasible and intelligent
than the chart just invented and issued by
H. M. Bosworth, of San Francisco, who
has given the larger part of his life to the
workings of this system. His chief aim
seems to have been accomplished, and that
was to make it perfectly lucid, yet forceful
and exhaustive withal. It carries a great
deal of the personality of Mr. Bosworth,
and that is to eliminate everything that is
not meat and sinew, to have a purpose and
to set it forth briefly, concisely and exact-
Mr. Bosworth is one of the strongest fig-
ures in the musical life of the Pacific coast,
and his work will doubtless make itself felt
east and west; in fact, Mr. Bosworth has
no more complimentary comment than has
been given him by Rosenthal, Ysaye,
Paderewski and other musicians of under-
standing and note.
T H E Yersin sisters, who have had large
classes in New York in French dic-
tion, spent the summer months in their
home in Paris. They are expected back
shortly and will locate for the season in
Boston, where they should have extremely
1VIOW is the season to be dreaded by
large classes.
those unfortunate enough to have
There is a hugely mistaken idea con-
musical tastes, especially, if they be house-
A LOIS LEJEAL, of San Francisco, has cerning a language and its application to
hunting, flat-hunting, or apartment-hunt-
just published his sixth mass, and it is the voice, especially the French with its
ing. It was bad enough to have property
a
truly
beautiful composition, being tune- many nasals. Let no ordinary teacher of
owners, or rather the all-important agents,
dictate as to how many children a family ful and well-written. Lejeal is no stran- languages believe that he is capable of
might be permitted, in order that they ger in the repertory of the fine organists of equipping a singer with the proper diction
might live in the localities where gentle- the country, as he has done some of the unless he understand tone production, at
folks abide, but to put pianos and their best church work of any of the American least a proper speaking tone production,
operators, (mechanical or otherwise) sing- composers, and his masses are well-known and by the way, when one listens to the
ers, etc., under the ban—indeed, it is too and appreciated in the Catholic churches. abominable speaking tonal quality in many
heartless. May all the piano-organs of He is a scholarly musician and is very who pose as singers it makes one tremble
New York infest those neighborhoods, and prominent in San Francisco.
at the thought of what the vocal tone must
may Allah grant that the organs be out of
be.
j*
HTHERE is a vast field for composers; for
tune!
much as has been accomplished, it DEROSI has not become discouraged by
the merciless scoring he got from all
/"^AN it be possible, that the energetic counts for almost nothing where the de-
sides,
but he set to music a Hymn to the
mand
for
good
church
music
is
so
great.
projectors of the Virgil clavier, are
in league with these property owners? But The old music will never grow too old to Redeemer, by Leo XIII, which will be per-
what a relief, after all, is the almost noise- do its duty in divine worship, but Sun- formed Dec. 24, at St. Peter's,