Music Trade Review

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THE
ONE OF OUR FOREMOST CONTRALTOS.
RS, [SABELLE BOUTON is slowly
but surely coming to the front as one
of our foremost contralto singers. She is
enjoying a most prosperous and successful
season, winning new successes with every
appearance. Her singing at the Arion Club
concert on Sunday evening, Dec. 14, was
one of her latest successful engagements.
She has been re-engaged for the next sea-
son's Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont
festivals. She is also to sing, later in the
7VTWSIC TRHDE
REVIEW
ly, and while his work often is tremendously
difficult and original, and daring in mode
and manner, yet he knows what he asks of
the player, and he never asks what is im-
possible or what will not sound."
j«
POETRY AND POVERTY.
1 S there not something very melancholy in
* the connection which has existed so long
—almost from the creation of man—between
"the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge,"
poetry and poverty? asks Prof. Wm. Math-
ews. Is it not sad to think the practitioners
of this divine art which, as Bacon so finely
says, "doth rise and erect the mind by sub-
mitting the shows of things to the desires
of the mind"—which does more than wine
was ever said to do to brighten man's coun-
tenance and gladden his heart, which gives
him wings and lifts him out of the dust arid
noise" and fret of Earth—should be so gen-
erally steeped in penury? Is it not hard
enough that aside from this source of misery,
the bards who cheer our pilgrimage by their
songs are by their very natures more sensi-
tive than other men to the pricks and stings
which all mortals must encounter—that
"The
hearts that are soonest awake to the
flowers
Are always the first to be pierced by the
thorns?"
MRS.
ISABELLA BOUTON.
winter, at a performance of "Lohengrin" to
be given in concert form, at Providence,
under Jules Jordan, and at the first perform-
ance in this city of Hcnschel's "Requiem"
to be given here on Feb. 26.
je
THEODORE THOMAS ON ELGAR.
"THEODORE THOMAS is a great ad-
mirer of Edward Elgar, the English
composer. When asked recently what he
thought of this writer, he said:
"There is not a composer now prominent
who is so well equipped, so able as he! Not
one in all Europe!"
"Greater than Richard Strauss ?"
"Strauss is a specialist, and as such may
be regarded as standing by himself, but El-
gar has abilities that make him the superior
as an orchestral writer of any man the
world knows now, or ever has known, for
that matter.
"Elgar, you see, is, first of all, a violinist,
and everything that he has written is so
marked that there is absolutely no doubt left
as to how it should be bowed or phrased.
He understands all the other instruments of
the orchestra equally as well, and the result is
everything 'lies well' for the instrument and
is sure to sound as it should. Brahms left
everything to the executant, and even in
Wagner there is always room for difference of
opinion as to what the phrasing and bowing
should be, but Elgar always indicates exact-
It is true a few songsters—Pope, Tenny-
son, Whittier, and others—have won an in-
dependence by their lyres, but they are ex-
ceptions to an almost universal rule. To go
back to the earliest bards—Homer, the blind
old man of Scio, wandered, singing for his
bread, from place to place; Dante, driven
from his, had but few dainties; the author
of "The Faerie Queene" was burned out in
winter and lost his spencer; Dryden, though
he toadied to lords and burned incense to
Charles II., passed his last days in little bet-
ter than a dry den; Gay, involved in debt,
often lacked gayety; Goldsmith was often
on the watch for the means of subsistence,
and his jewels were in his writings only;
Burns was as impassioned and as poor as the
northern scalds; Scott earned piles of mon-
ey, yet could not pass his scot, at last; the
author of "The Excursion" never got his
words' worth; Hunt, coveting ease and
tranquility, was often tempest-tossed if not
wrecked on a lee shore; Moore, but for his
pension, might have been exiled to some des-
olate moor. Even Tom Hood, with all his
varied talents, failed to earn a comfortable
livelihood, though his friends urned a lively
Hood after his death. Even our own pop-
ular Longfellow was "short" in early life,
or he would not have accepted the paltry
sums paid him for some of his poetic gems.
The golden age of poets, in which they
are to be blessed with plenty of aurum pota-
bile—gold, that makes the pot boil—is still
in the far future. Yet it is well, many will
think, for the world, though not for the bard,
that is so. Genius must feel intensely be-
fore it can make others feel even superfi-
cially. The great bards are
Cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in
song."
The songs of those who have never suf-
fered are apt to be works of pure imagin-
ation, or rather of pure phantasy, not the
utterances of a deliriously overburdened soul
speaking to the souls. The goldfinch sings
the more sweetly, it is said, with the hot
needle in its eye; and the hearts of most men
of genius are like the maple tree, which must
' be pierced before it will yield its honeyed
treasures—like flowers that must be crushed
before they will give forth their sweetness..
Had Burns, Byron and Shelley been happy
men we should not to-day be banqueting on
their "nectared sweets"; for "the fullness of
content leaves no room for the sweet and
bitter fancies of an imagination that finds
its hippocrene in the fount of sorrow, whose
source is in the heart, and which can flow
only when touched by the wand of care."
PEOPLE'S SYMPHONY CONCERTS.
A RTHUR MEES will conduct the second
of the People's Symphony Concerts at
Cooper Union on Jan. 13. The orchestra
of fifty will play Weber's overture to "Eu-
ryanthe," Mozart's "Jupiter" symphony, the
waltz from Volkmann's "Serenade," the
march from Raff's "Lenore," and the pre-
lude to Act III. of Wagner's "Lohengrin."
Feilding Roselle, contralto, will sing an aria
from Gliick's "Alceste."
The first concert was given of the series
which have become so well known that they
need no remarks of enlightenment as to the
purpose of this organization. Everyone who
knows of it knows what has been done by
F. X,. Arens and those who made it possi-
ble to carry out his well-laid plans. As is
generally understood, Mr. Arens was com-
pelled to give up the work because of the
duties connected with his own business, and
the conductor of the opening concert was
Herman Hans Wetzler,whowas well received
in his work. W. J. Henderson gave the ex-
planatory notes and said some very interest-
ing things. The soloists were Mrs. Sally
Frothingham Akers and Max Bendix.
MENDELSSOHN AS ORGANIST.
HE Society of Music Lovers in Vienna
has come into possession of a circular
addressed by Mendelssohn, in July, 1840,
to the citizens of Leipsic, announcing an or-
gan recital, to be given by himself, in the
Church of St. Thomas, to raise funds for
a monument to Bach. In the list of sub-
scriptions appended appears the name of
Robert Schumann, who made himself re-
sponsible for about $9. This may not seem
a large sum, but Schumann was about to
get married, and his income was always
small. According to a distinguished author-
ity he probably did not earn as much money
all his life as Sousa gets for one of his
marches in royalties.
ETTA EDWARDS, Vocal
M RS. Boston,
Mass.
Instruction, Steinert Hall
Alt oar instruments contain the full iron frame and
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