Selected Content from the July 1893 Edition of The Etude
HOME. Dr. Pachmann returns to America and plays in Chicago in November. The Conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is still unsettled. Gustav Heinrichs is giving various Eastern cities good opera at popular prices. Materna has renewed her artistic triumphs… Read More
One of your subscribers does me the honor to ask for information in regard to my edition of the “Deppe Method.” Also, who Deppe is, where born, and if still alive and teaching. I have forgotten where Deppe was born,… Read More
That Hanslick and his fellow critics were stupid will now be generally, although not universally, admitted. The Wagnerian music-drama has now made its way to genuine popularity. There are thousands of men and women who find in it greater evidence of genius and more of inspiring, uplifting power than in any other music whatsoever. Read More
Get the pupil to realize that she is to use a certain mechanical movement, not to play certain notes; it is how and not what she is to do. Perhaps the pupil is timid and over-much fears to make a mistake. She should know that a good, lusty blunder now and then is better than continual namby-pamby correctness. Read More
Many teachers instruct their pupils to raise the pedal at each change of harmony. This is a very good rule as far as it goes, but the property that a vibrating string has of giving out overtones (an explanation of which may be found in any work on Sound) often renders it unadvisable to retain the pedal, though the harmony remains the same. Read More
The apparent admiration for classical music is simply a fad—a fashion born of cowardice, conceit, and ignorance. There is ignorance on the part of the public, many of whom do not know what really good music is, and they are too cowardly to express an honest opinion as to what pleases or displeases them. Read More
It has been my ambition of late years to analyze certain compositions of one of the greatest masters the world ever saw. It is to him I owe the discovery of a new way to expose analytically the construction of the fugue-form, by means of colors and differently shaped notes. Read More
The statement that but few, if any, effective art works for the piano are produced in the busy present has been heard quite frequently of late, and the wail is ever increasing in monotony. It is said that the modern composers, in the search for orchestral color, are treating the piano in a decidedly exaggerated style; that the reaches are impossible for normal hands, and that the dissonances hold out so long that when they do resolve the effect is lost—especially on thin-toned pianos. As is usual in sweeping assertions, there is a shadow of fact for a base. In this case it is but the merest shadow, and it is almost impossible for those who know the truth to stand by in passive abeyance. Read More
In looking over a trunk containing old letters a few days ago, I found a package carefully tied with ribbon and marked, “From Nellie, the Music Teacher, 1863.” The envelopes were of every hue, shape, and size imaginable, an indication of the mood of the writer at the time they were sent. Instantly memory rushed back over the many years, to the days when Nellie Phillips and I were room mates in a large boarding school near Philadelphia, and I seemed to see her in her rôle as prima donna as plainly as though she stood before me. Read More
Poland will some day honor Paderewski as it now honors Chopin; but in order to win the great fame and wealth which have fallen to his lot at the early age of thirty-two, he was of course obliged, like Chopin, to leave his native country and seek the great musical centres of the world. Three years ago he played in London to a $50 audience. To-day he often makes $5,000 in two hours, with $7,000 for the high-water mark. Read More
Poetic, Schumann ever was. Poetic by nature and by culture. Poetic in his work both as composer and as criticiser of the works of others. Poetic in his every thought—every idea. And this poetic spirit he infused into the music of his time, and cultivated it wherever and in whomsoever he found it. And it is for this that I have called him “Robert Schumann—Poet,” and it is as poet that I shall here regard him. Read More
Notices for this column inserted at 3 cents a word for one insertion, payable in advance. Copy must be received by the 20th of the previous month to insure publication in the next number. TWO ladies desire positions as Teachers… Read More
