Carl Piutti, one of the best-known organists and composers of organ-music in Germany, died recently in Leipzig, where he had been organist of St. Thomas’ Church for more than twenty-five years. He was an instructor in the Conservatorium and had taught many American pupils.
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They are a very unsophisticated lot in the old English villages. Take the funny experience of an organist who landed recently at a quiet out-of-the-way place in Kent. He happened to stay in the village over the Sunday, and went to the little parish church, where after service he was introduced to the organist and invited to try the instrument. As he began to play, the people gathered about to look and listen. By and by, in the course of his improvisation, he introduced a piece of rapid pedal-playing, upon which a rustic youth blurted out: “Blow me, if he ain’t playing and dancing to it himself!” It is as good as the story told by Sir A. C. Mackenzie of his early days in Scotland. “The Messiah” was to be given at a country-town, and Mackenzie went from Edinburgh with other players to provide the orchestral accompaniments. A crowd of rustics awaited the train, as usual. One was quite staggered by the big bass fiddle in its case. “What’s that?” he inquired of a fellow-yokel. “Do you no ken?” was the response. “That’s ‘Messiah’; they’re goin’ to play th’ nicht.” It is a little irreverent, perhaps, but it’s good, all the same. —Ex.
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A celebrated organist slipped off his bench, while playing a Bach fugue as a postlude. He was immediately expelled from the church as a Bach-slider, and is now a fuguetive.—Musical Herald. The next time he plays a “postlude” he had better hold on to the “post.”—Richmond Baton. To which “post” do you “a’lude”: his post as organist or the U. S. mail?
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The choir was singing a new arrangement of the beautiful anthem: “Consider the Lilies.” The pure, sweet voice of the soprano rose clearly and distinctly in the solo:
“They toi-oi-oil not,
They toil not,
They toil not.
Ny-y-y-ther do they spin.”
She paused, and the tenor took up the strain:
“Nee-ee-ee-ther do they spin.
They toi-oi-oi-oil not,
They toil not,
They toil not,
Nee-ee-ee-ther do they spin.”
The tenor ceased, and the basso—a solemn, red- haired young man with a somewhat worldly looking eye and a voice like a fog-horn—broke in:
“Nay-ay-ay-ay-ther do they spin,
They toi-oi-oi-oil not,
They toil not,
They toil not,
Nay-ay-ay-ay-ther do they spin.”
Then the voices of the three were lifted up in semi-chorus:
“Ny-y-y-ther
Nee-ee-ee-ther
Nay-ay-ay-ther—do they spin.
They toi-oi-oi-oil not,
They toil not,
They toil not,
Ny-y-y-ther
Nee-ee-ee-ther
Nay-ay-ay-ther—do they spin.”
“Brethren,” said the gray-haired, old-fashioned pastor, when the choir had finished, “we will begin the services of the morning by singing the familiar hymn:
“‘And am I yet alive?’”
—Chicago Tribune.
