Musical Items

 

The German Vocal Union has a membership of 109,399.

 

Weber's "Freischütz" had its six hundredth representation at Dresden this year.

 

The daughter of the composer Dvorâk recently made her debût as a concert-singer.

 

At a sale of musical copyrights in London in September last, Half's "La Fileuse" brought $2000.

 

Seroff, the Russian composer, did not take up music seriously until after his forty-third year.

 

A National Saengerfest is to be held June 17-20, 1903, in the World's Fair Grounds, St. Louis.

 

Musin, the Belgian violinist, will teach in New York and appear as soloist at concerts this winter.

 

The Maine musical festivals were held October 2d to 4th in Bangor, and October 6th to 8th in Portland.

 

Grieg has declined an invitation to attend the Bristol, Eng., Music Festival on account of ill health.

 

It is now announced that Slivinski's concert-tour of the United States has been abandoned for this year.

 

Mr. George W. Chadwick's overture, Melpomene, was played at the last Worcester, Eng., Music Festival.

 

Mascagni and his company are now touring the country, having opened their season in New York, October 8th.

 

An American inventor has put on the market a kettledrum in which mahogany-wood instead of copper is used for the shell.

 

Paderewski has arranged for a series of forty recitals in England. He will play but once in London, on November 11th.

 

The next meeting of the New York State Music- Teachers' Association is likely to be in Troy. Mr. Carl G. Schmidt is president.

 

Richard Strauss has completed two new works, one a symphony, the other a setting of a ballad by Uhland, for soli, chorus, and orchestra.

 

It is announced by a London paper that Edward Lloyd, the English tenor, is to make a concert-tour through the United States and Australia.

 

Statistics relative to the manufacture of pianos show that during the last year 127,065 were disposed of in Leipsic, for home and foreign trade.

 

The collection of rare musical instruments presented to Yale University, by Morris Steinert, for which a hall has been built, is open to the public.

 

The last Worcester, Mass., Music Festival is considered a greater success than previous ones. A suggestion has been made to have the festival held biennially.

 

According to a German exchange, there are 2019 large and small theaters in Europe, of which 420 are in France, 412 in Italy, 279 in Germany, and 217 in England.

 

A Detroit correspondent says there is an effort on foot to establish a permanent orchestra in that city. The project includes the building of a new music hall.

 

Leonora Jackson, the American violiniste, has gone to Berlin, where she will take up special studies with her former teachers, giving up concertizing for the present.

 

S. E. Jacobsohn, a distinguished violinist and teacher, died in Chicago, October 3d. He was the teacher of many well-known violinists, both in Europe and the United States.

 

Rudolph Bibl, an eminent Austrian organist, who died this summer, succeeded Preyer, the friend of Schubert, as organist at St. Stephens. He was an authority on church-music.

 

At a concert in Pittsburgh, last month, by the New York Symphony Orchestra, Walter Damrosch, director, an excerpt from Mr. Damrosch's new opera, "Cyrano de Bergerac," was played.

 

Jordan Hall, the auditorium in the new New England Conservatory, will seat over one thousand persons. There is also a smaller concert-hall with a seating capacity of about four hundred.

 

The Pittsburgh Orchestra cost $90,000 last year, but its supporters consider the money well spent. Thirty other places were visited. For this season the orchestra will number seventy-three players.

 

Mr. Georg Henschel will be connected with the New England Conservatory, Boston, this winter, as a vocal teacher. After this year Mr. Henschel expects to devote his entire time to composition.

 

The latest Bohemian violinist to seek laurels and dollars in the United States plays with Richter's Orchestra at Manchester, England, on the 8th, and several days later will sail for the United States.

 

A playbill for a small provincial theater in Germany, in announcing a performance of "Lohengrin," offered, as a premium, a consultation and professional work with a local dentist, who was also the director of the theater.

 

For the season of open-air concerts which lately closed in London, the County Council voted $62,500, which provided for one hundred and twenty-eight players. In addition fifty-two extra bands assisted in the concerts.

 

A German paper cites the case of an organist named Delan, of the Cathedral of Lund (Sweden), as the oldest living organist. An English musical journal mentions Mr. Gervaise Cooper, of Duffield, who is over ninety years of age.

 

E. F. Walcker & Co., a noted firm of organ- builders in Germany, recently erected the one thousandth organ made in their factory. For three or four generations the name of Walcker has been associated with the pipe-organ industry.

 

St. James' Hall, London, has been remodeled at an expense of $150,000. A system of double windows has been used to exclude street-noises. A London paper, in giving an account of the changes, says that no arrangement has been made to heat the hall.

 

A Musical-Art Association is being organized in Indianapolis, the object being to promote the giving of high-class concerts. Walter Damrosch and his orchestra have been engaged for a two-night music festival, one concert to be devoted to Wagner's music.

 

Mr. Louis V. Saar, of New York City, is the winner of the contest for the composition to be sung in the competition for the prize offered by the Emperor William at the Saengerfest to be held in Baltimore next June. Three hundred and ninety-eight compositions were submitted.

 

The third volume of the "Oxford History of Music" is now ready. It was written by Sir C. H. H. Parry, and is devoted to "The Music of the Seventeenth Century." It is one of the most valuable of the series, and seems to be on the plan adopted in the author's "Evolution of the Art of Music."

 

A Chicago manager says that Mr. Henry W. Savage, of the well-known opera company, has put on the stage at least 5000 performers from Chicago and vicinity during the past five years. The applications for positions from the various music-schools of Chicago are upward of 10,000 a year.

 

The first organ constructed in the United States has been attributed to John Clark, who built an organ for the Episcopal Church in Salem in 1743.

 

There are now 129 organ factories in the United States having a capital of over $5,000,000. The annual product is valued at more than $5,600,000.

 

At Beziers, the "French Bayreuth," where St. Saëns' new dramatic work was produced last September, the number of performers surpassed all other well-known opera-houses. The orchestra numbered 400, including 35 harpists. The performances were given in a large arena formerly used for bull-fights. The audience, on the first day, numbered 12,000.

 

Mr. James G. Huneker, the well-known New York musical critic, and author of some of the most valued works in musical literature, has retired from musical journalism, and will act as dramatic critic for the New York Sun. He has several important works in musical literature under way. Mr. W. J. Henderson has left the New York Times and will be the music critic of the Sun.

 

Speaking of the famous composers of the new Russian School, a well-known writer says that Balakireff was a mathematician; Cæsar Cui, a general of engineers in the Russian Army; Rimsky-Korsakoff, an officer in the Russian Navy; Seroff and Tschaikowsky followed the law; Borodin was a military surgeon; Solovieff an author; and Dargomyzsky, a land-owner.

 

 

The following from the Philadelphia Times:

"A committee appointed by a church to act upon the matter of music for the services advertised for somebody to take charge of the choir and play the organ. The following was among the replies: