A four-manual organ having 65 speaking stops has recently been placed in the Grace Church, Chicago, by the Kimball Organ Company. The great organ contains 15 stops, the swell organ 17 stops, the choir organ 11 stops, the solo organ 6 stops, the echo organ 4 stops, and the pedal organ 10 stops. The organ contains 27 combination pistons. The opening recital was given by Mr. Harrison M. Wild, of Chicago.
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A writer in the Boston Transcript, who seems to have a grievance against the management of the City Music Department, as he failed to secure an engagement in the City Band, has this to say relative to organ-concerts in a recent issue:
“While we all love music, some of us can pay for the pleasure and some cannot. Therefore the city provides it for all of us, but specially for those who are poor. But the poor don’t want organ-recitals, and most other people would rather pay than to listen to them for an hour. We like to hear the organ in the church only when it peals forth with might like a voice in the praise of God. The layman has no other use for the organ, and, if the Commission contemplates educating the musical instinct of the people through that channel, I for one predict utter failure. I have seen how lovers of music, harmony, and sweet melodies were bored to death and left in dismay the organ recital, while masterpieces and fugues were played, saying: ‘We cannot stand it any longer.’ How sorely the Commission misjudged its vocation when it bought the organ! The organ-recital gives enjoyment to the student, and to him only. To almost all other persons it is a torture. How, then, will the commissioners, and how can they, excuse the squandering of $9000 of the public funds for repairs of something the public, as such, does not want?” Evidently our band musicians, judging from the above, do not like the organ; but there are others.
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In New Bedford, Mass., Miss Grace Simmons recently discovered a new source of truly silvery music, but it brought her into the district court to-day, and nothing but the good nature of the court, backed by the forgiving nature of her foster-mother, Mrs. Geneva Allen, allowed her case to go on file.
Grace was charged with the larceny of $6. She said she sat down at a cabinet organ and commenced drumming on the keys, when one of them jingled and produced real coin. The more she worked the key, the more money came out, till at length she had $6. She concluded that she was entitled to the fruits of her musicianly attainments, pocketed the sum, and spent it. Her mother accused her of stealing the money, which Mr. Allen had stowed away in the organ for safe keeping.—Boston Herald.
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The following organists received the Associateship Degree at the recent examination of the American Guild of Organists:
Mrs. Gertrude Elizabeth McKellar, Miss Edna C. Tilley, Mr. Merrill M. Hutchinson, Miss Mabel A. Bennett, Mr. Walter Kellar, Mr. Arthur Dunham, Mr. Harry Ludlow Cooke, Mr. William F. Paul, Mr. Alexander Bachmann, Mr. John N. Frazier.
The Fellowship Degree was awarded to the following:
Samuel A. Baldwin, John Hyatt Brewer, H. Brooks Day, Clifford Demarest, S. Archer Gibson, Warren Rosecrans Hedden, George Francis Morse, John B. Norton, Minton Pyne, R. Huntington Woodman.
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Guilmant has been authorized by the Minister of Fine Arts, in France, to play the great organ at the Trocadero every Monday at 4.30. These recitals, which are part of the organ-course at the Conservatoire, are given only before a limited number of listeners, and are free. They are designed to give an opportunity of hearing the works of ancient and modern masters.
Guilmant has just recently installed a fine organ in his home near Paris. It is a three manual instrument, of twenty-two speaking stops, and six on the pedals, which has a scale of thirty-two notes. It has seventeen combination pedals.
