EDOUARD REMENYI, the violinist, is giving concerts in the South.
Miss NEALLY STEVENS, the accomplished pianist, is giving farewell recitals in California.
CHAS. KLEIN and John Philip Sousa are well advanced on their new opera, “The Bride Elect.”
THE Minneapolis Musical Festival, which was to have taken place this year, has been postponed on account of hard times.
LEOPOLD GODOWSKY expects to return to Europe soon for a permanent residence. Since coming to America he has met with success.
FRANK VAN DER STÜCKEN, musical director in Cincinnati, has been engaged to direct the May Musical Festival in Indianapolis.
THE opening, on the fifteenth of February, of the remodeled Music Hall in Cincinnati, by the Damrosch Grand Opera Company, was an artistic, social, and financial success.
ADELE AUS DER OHE is filling the engagements that Moritz Rosenthal, the pianist, was obliged to cancel because of his illness. She is playing the same pieces he was to have played.
AT the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees of the New England Conservatory of Music, Mr. George W. Chadwick, the composer, was elected musical director, to succeed Carl Faelten, resigned.
THE physicians in attendance on Mme. Emma Eames report that she is rapidly recovering after the operation recently performed upon her, and will be able to resume her professional work at an early day.
WILSON G. SMITH, of Cleveland, is to have charge of the Conservatory of Music of the Bay View (Mich.) Assembly for the summer months. This is the Michigan Chautauqua which has assumed such large proportions the last few years.
MR. AD. M. FOERSTER, of Pittsburg, has been giving recitals in that city, in which biographical and critical matter concerning the composers of Europe and America has been combined. Among the latter are to be noted the names of E. A. MacDowell and Edgar Stillman Kelly.
EDWARD BAXTER PERRY returned to Boston from his winter trip in the South the first of March, and left the following week on his spring trip in the Eastern and Middle States. He has given one or more lecture recitals in 80 different towns and cities the present season.
ROSENTHAL will not play in America again this season. He is to sail for Europe some time in April and will retire to his country house in Abbazzio. He will remain in Switzerland during the summer and will return to this country in September and begin the season on the Pacific Coast early in October.
THERE has been a rumor that Mr. Anton Seidl would retire from the conductorship of the Philharmonic concerts at the end of the season, and that he might remain in Europe after his Covent Garden engagement. Mr. Seidl says, however, that this is untrue. After the season is over in London he expects to visit Bayreuth and his old home, Budapest, and then return to America.
THE new year has brought out a new instrument. It is called the “Princess Organ,” and is of the Æolian type. While smaller in size and scope of registration, it presents the advantages of having a good tone and perfect execution. Playing, as it does, the music from the large catalogue prepared for the Æolian, it is surely destined to become a great factor in education, especially in forming the artistic tastes of the young.
THE general musical course at Columbia College will include lectures by Prof. MacDowell on musical history, musical forms, criticism, the pianoforte, etc., and a series of lectures by prominent men on musical history, opera, folk-song, and various other subjects. The three courses for special students embrace theory, harmony, counterpoint, and fugue, composition, orchestration, and analysis of forms. A library containing scores and books on music will be placed at the disposal of students.
PADEREWSKI, in his three tours in this country, gave 266 concerts, the receipts of which were over half a million dollars. The largest sum realized for a single concert was at Chicago and was $7380. In Texas, entire schools traveled hundreds of miles to hear him, and crowds would gather at stations to see his car pass by. Paderewski was greatly interested in the negro melodies he heard South. In San Francisco, he went frequently to the Chinese theater, and when he left for home took with him a complete set of Chinese musical instruments.
FOREIGN.
A BRONZE bust of Sir Joseph Barnby was recently unveiled in Albert Hall, London.
SAINT-SAËNS has announced his determination to compose no more operas. He declares the work is too laborious.
THE original manuscript of Rossini’s “William Tell,” bound in four volumes, was sold in Paris recently for 4700 francs ($940).
IT seems incredible, and yet it is said that Schubert’s “Symphony in C” was performed at the Conservatoire Concert recently for the first time in France !
ANTON BRUCKNER, one of the foremost German composers, died recently in Vienna, aged seventy-two. He was known chiefly by seven long symphonies.
PADEREWSKI, it is said, can play from memory over 500 compositions. He needs to read or play a composition new to him only twice in order to memorize it.
HANS RICHTER will be a conductor at the music festival at Stuttgart this summer. The festival is to last three days and the chief piece will be Handel’s “Messiah.”
BERTHOLD TOURS, the English composer, died in London, March 11th, aged sixty years. He was familiarly known in England and this country by his songs and church music.
THE Schubert Exhibition, opened recently in Vienna, contains nearly 1300 exhibits, arranged in seven rooms of the Kuenstler Haus. His piano, paintings, water-colors, drawings, autographs, etc., are included in the collection.
IN the coming season Sauret will play on a Guarnerius violin which he lately purchased in London, and which is superior to his famous Stradivarius. It is dated 1744 and resembles in construction the Vieuxtemps violin.
THE oldest piece of music in the world is called the “Blessing of the Priests.” This song was sung in the temple at Jerusalem, and even now in the synagogues of Spain and Portugal is frequently in use. The manuscript papyrus is kept in a small iron box.
CARL MENDELSSOHN, son of the composer, died at Brugg, in Switzerland. Carl was quite young when his father died. Though an amateur musician, he never took up the art as a profession. Frequent mention of him is made in Mendelssohn’s correspondence.
THE City of Mexico has a Philharmonic Society and two quartette clubs. The names of the players are all Spanish, but the music they perform is mostly German. There must be a special piquancy in hearing an emotional, fiery Spaniard play Schumann or Schubert.
M. GASTON PARIS, of the Academie Francaise, declares that many of Wagner’s plots are not German. “Tannhäuser” is an Italian legend of the fourteenth century ; “Lohengrin” is French; while “Parsifal” and “Tristan” are Celtic tales from the King Arthur cycle.
HANDEL’S organ, given by the composer to the London Foundling Hospital in 1750, is being renovated. Handel played on it himself at the dedication, when the crush was so great that gentlemen were requested “to come without their swords, and ladies without their hoops.”
ANTONIO BAZZINI, for sixteen years principal of the Royal Conservatory of Music at Milan, and one of the most distinguished of Italian musicians, died February 19th in his seventy ninth year. For nearly thirty years he was a violin virtuoso and gave concerts in nearly every country in Europe.
SOUSA marches are being played largely abroad. At the Henley regatta on the Thames, British bands played them; at the Stuttgart Saengerfest parade, German bands played them; and it is said at Brussels one may meet a kind of religious procession with an image at its head and a band playing “The Washington Post.”
IT is reported that the Berlin concert-agent, Herr Wolff, is organizing for next year a Beethoven Festival such as has never been given before. He purposes to perform, in the course of three weeks, the whole of Beethoven’s works. The Royal Opera Company, Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, and the Stern’sche Gesangverein are to assist.
THE Bayreuth festival of 1897 consists of three complete cycles of “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” beginning July 21st, August 2d and 14th, and eight performances of “Parsifal,” on July 19th, 27th, 28th, 30th, and August 8th, 9th, 11th, and 19th. The curtain rises at 4 p. M. and falls at 10 P. M. The price of an orchestra stall is, as usual, five dollars.
PROF. WOLDEMAR BARGIEL, the well-known composer and director of the Meisterschule for Music, in Berlin, died on the twenty-fourth of February, aged sixty-eight years. Among his compositions are to be mentioned a symphony, two overtures, a suite, two trios, and pieces for the piano. He was a half-brother of the late Clara Schumann.
A PERFORMANCE took place lately in the new Kaufhaus Hall erected on the site of the old Gewandhaus in Leipzig. The performance was for the purpose of testing the acoustic properties of the hall, and proved satisfactory. The hall contains seats for 900 persons and 60 musicians. The decorations are simple and the pillars bear busts of Bach and Mendelssohn, and reliefs of Schumann and Wagner.
ABOUT thirty years ago, writes a Dresden critic, a Saxon count appealed to Rubinstein on behalf of a young Jew, needy, but highly gifted, and earning a scant living by copying music. The result was that through the generosity of the composer the struggling genius was enabled to develop his powers and finally to produce compositions which attracted the attention of the world. The young man’s name was Carl Goldmark.
THE National Opera House of Paris has published a list of operas given there between January, 1830, and June, 1896. Auber is represented by 1193 performances; Halévy, by 1078; Gounod, by 1031; Adam, by 578; Thomas, by 469; Délibes, by 274; Massenet, by 222; Saint-Saëns, by 160. Among the Italians, Rossini had 1409; Donizetti, 1003; and Verdi, 721. Meyerbeer heads the Germans with 2603 performances; then comes Wagner, with 260; Mozart, with 227; and Weber, with 207.
DR. PAUL RIVERRA, of Munich, is the discoverer of a new treatment for certain diseases, known as the “Music Cure.” The Doctor says: “It is not our purpose to advertise a ‘cure for every ill of mind or body;’ we only purpose to cure diseases of a certain nature. The influence of music has this effect: The patient hears the pleasant sounds and does not experience pain while listening. We lay all stress on curing pain.”
Wagner’s music, since it is largely descriptive, is said to be very successful with nervous patients. Some diseases are said to require soft, low sounds, while others are best treated by loud, compelling strains. Composers should watch this closely. Shall we not some day hear of a “Headache Waltz,” or a “Rheumatism Polka?”
