Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
age of the teachers not only fail to teach
anything, but often spoil talent."
Not long ago, to cite another example
showing American simplicity in such mat-
ters, a well-known German singing profes-
sor told two of his American students, Chi-
cago young women, to shove small steel
rods down their throats three or four times
a day to enable them to procure a desirable
tone quality. The result is that throat spe-
cialists now find their vocal chords lacerated,
and all hopes of an artistic career ruined.
In Italy much of the vocal instruction is
as foolish, if not so surgical. Music study
in Europe is like mining in the West. Where
one is successful the ruined hopes of hun-
dreds weight the other side of the balance.
Paris is regarded as the center of vocal
art nowadays, and yet many an American
voice goes there to be ruined. And this pro-
cess is not confined to third-rate teachers.
A recent writer says in Paris and the prov-
inces of France there is a tacit understanding
among managers that there is no use giv-
ing an audition to pupils of three different
teachers, whose names are, perhaps, the most
familiar in America. Medical throat special-
ists in Paris have named a certain throat
trouble "the
throat," thus honoring one
of these teachers because this teacher's meth-
od produces that trouble in numerous cases.
TRKDE.REVIEW
ONE OF BROOKLYN'S CLEVER MUSICIANS.
A MONG the many prominent musicians
^*- who have done so much to make Brook-
lyn the musical center it is may be counted
Prof. Charles A. Brown, organist and choir-
master of the Union Baptist Church in that
borough. Mr. Brown is a graduate of the
Pennsylvania University and has a large fol-
lowing in Brooklyn as a teacher of piano,
organ and harmony. His studio is at i n
Kent street, and he is widely known for his
conscientious, thorough work.
An interesting event at the church of
j*
DEPARTMENT STORE CONCERTS.
HP H E department store concerts are a god-
send to many of the smaller musicians.
CHAS. ANDREW BROWN.
With almost daily concerts in the large stores
there is a much larger demand for singers which Mr. Brown is organist occurred on
than there ever was before. So, many a mu- Sunday evening, Dec.. 21, when the sacred
sician who struggled hard for engagements cantata, "Shiloh," was sung by a chorus of
before the new departure in these stores twenty voices. The soprano soloist was
now finds his talents in demand at a fair Mrs. Marie Boyce Mooney, whose solos,
"Lullaby" and "The Old Story" were most
compensation.
In this field, at least, the concert singer delightfully rendered. Mrs. Mooney im-
finds that he is free from the competition bued her numbers with rare feeling and
of the foreign artists brought here to sing much individual charm and helped to make
in the opera. None of them is likely to be the affair the great success it was. Agree-
heard in the department stores, says the able to many requests Mr. Brown has con-
writer on musical topics in The Sun. Soon sented to repeat the cantata some evening
after Maurice Grau's return to this country this month.
last fall the demand for the opera singers
GOOD NEWS FROM WORCESTER.
began.. First Mme. Sembrich was asked to
T" H E lack of interest in the last Worcester
sing in one of these concerts, then Mme.
festival was such and the resulting de-
Schumann-Heink and later MM. Campa-
ficit so large that the discontinuance of these
nari and Bispham.
time-honored functions was seriously consid-
Mr. Grau settled the matter by ruling
ered. Some of the public-spirited citizens
that none of the singers in his company should
of the town have now come together, how-
take part in free concerts. Virtually, Mr.
ever, to put the festival on an assured basis
Grau is willing for them to appear wher-
by means of a guarantee fund. The most
ever their services are desired so long as a
pleasing feature of the meeting at which
sufficient sum is paid and the opera com-
this step was taken, according to The Wor-
pany receives its commission. But he
cester Spy, was the fact that it was decided
thought the opportunity to hear his singers
not in any way to change the nature of the
gratuitously in a department store might
selections or alter the quality of the music
have its effect even on the audiences at the
performed with any idea of "popularizing"
Metropolitan.
the festivals..
j*
A NEW VIOLINIST STAR.
JOACHIM and all other great musicians
^
of Berlin promise this week a new vio-
linist star of the Kubelik order, named Karl
Klinger. He will appear under the same
auspices as Kubelik did when he went forth
to astonish the world. Klinger is Kubelik's
£qual in technique and his superior in spirit,
WILL IT BE ANOTHER FAREWELL TOUR?
I N view of the oft-repeated talk "going
the rounds" about Patti, it was not en*
tirely out of place for Daniel Frohman to
deny that he has any idea of bringing Ade-
lina Patti to this country next year for a
farewell tour. As a matter of fact his mu-
sical energies will next year be occupied
with the tour of Jan Kubelik, who is to
fiddle his way as far as San Francisco. But
Mme. Patti would not be in the least averse
to making such a trip to this country,. Last
summer her youthful Swedish husband, who
is scarcely half her age, came in great haste
to the office of an American manager in
London. Baron Cedarstrom was plainly
laboring under great excitement until he was
a*ble to announce that he had thought of the
great scheme of having his wife return to
this country and sing for a season in con-
cert, "and we would announce this visit as
a 'farewell tour,' " he said, with evident de-
light at the originality of the idea.
The manager looked at the youthful hus-
band, and then seemed lost for a minute in
computation. "I was going to say," he re-
plied, "that your wife must have made her
first farewell tour of the United States be-
fore you were born, but that would have
been an exaggeration. But it must have
been while you were learning your letters
in Sweden. So you see, the plan's not al-
together original."
TO GIVE AN EDUCATIONAL COUR5E.
T"" 1 H E Philadelphia Orchestra, with its sym-
phony concerts in Philadelphia and the
surrounding cities and a series of "popular
concerts" devoted to popular music, has de-
termined to give a "Young People's Edu-
cational Course" of five lectures and five
concerts, all in Philadelphia. This is one
of the many movements toward the estab-
lishment of a musical public which will give
the organization its patronage,.
The course which has been determined
upon consists of a series of five primary lec-
tures, illustrated by the orchestra playing
appropriate demonstrations. The first will
be by W. J. Henderson on the subject of
"The Orchestra and Its Instruments"; the
second by William F. Aptorp, on the sub-
ject of "Old and Modern Orchestration";
the third by Louis C. Elson on the subject of
"Wagner's Theories and Wagner's Music";
the fourth by Dr. Hugh A. Clark, professor
of music in the University of Pennsylvania,
on the subject of "Form," and the fifth and
concluding one by H. E. Krehbiel on the
subject of "Beethoven."
JI
MME. MELBA CONCERT.
T T is a long way to October, but that is the
time scheduled for the appearance of
Mme. Melba in a concert tour of this coun-
try. Melba has cancelled her engagement
PEOPLE'SSYMPHONYCONCERTS INCORPORATE. for Covent Garden in June and will remain
A RTICLES of incorporation of the Peo- with her father in Melbourne, her native city,
* * pie's Symphony Concerts of New York until s'he sails for this country.
City were filed on Monday with the Secre-
Jl
tary of State. The objects are to provide
Helen Henschel will sing the soprano part
musical entertainment and instruction to the in her father, Georg Henschel's "Requiem"
public and to encourage and develop the here in New York on the evening of Feb.
study of and taste for music.
26, its first performance in New York,