The next meeting of the Illinois Music
Teachers’ Association will be held June 16th to 18th.
Harold Bauer’s tour includes South
America. From there he comes to the United States next October.
A German exchange announces that Richard
Strauss has nearly finished two new symphonic poems.
The London County Council has voted the
sum of $60,000 for music in the public parks during the coming summer.
Harold Bauer, who was so successful in his tour of
the United States last season, is to give a series of recitals here next
season.
A mahogany log suitable for sawing into veneering
for piano cases was recently sold for over $10,000. It contained about 50,000
feet.
Walter Damrosch has been invited to
conduct symphony concerts in Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, and Warsaw during
the spring of 1904.
Mr. Clarence Eddy’s concert tour is to
be lengthened to include the Pacific Coast States. The veteran organist has
transferred his residence to Paris.
Emil Paur was engaged to conduct a series of
Wagner operas at Madrid: “Tannhaüser,” “Lohengrin,” and
“Die Meistersinger,’ but later decided not to accept.
A Weimar, Germany,
merchant left $500,000 to the local Wagner Museum. As the collection is now
nearly complete the problem is what to do with this large sum.
An institution of the name Schola
Cantorum Lucia Marenzio has been founded at Brescia in Italy, for the special
study and performance of the works of Palestrina and his school.
The Cologne Singakademie recently
gave an historical concert in which choruses by Palestrina, Lasso, Senfl,
Hasler, Morley, Calvisius, and solos with accompaniment of lutes were given.
The eightieth anniversary of the
establishment of Chickering & Sons, piano-manufacturing business was
celebrated April 14th, in Boston. Edward Everett Hale was the orator of the
occasion.
A Chicago exchange says that the next series of
concerts by the Symphony Orchestra will be played in the Auditorium. The
trustees of the Association have guaranteed the deficit for another year.
Mr. Walter Damrosch, whose term as
conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra has expired, has refused to
allow his name to be considered for the directorship of the orchestra next
season.
The Paris Schola Cantorum gave a
brilliant Bach Festival at Bordeaux. The success of the concert enabled the
organization to establish a branch society which will concern itself with the
cultivation of the classics.
Frau Ingeborg von Bronsart recently celebrated
the fiftieth anniversary of her entry into professional activity in 1853, when
she gave her first concert and also appeared as a composer. She was a pupil of
Henselt.
Mr. Charles N. Allen, a well-known
violinist and teacher of Boston, died April 7th, in his sixty-sixth year. He
was born in England, but came to the United States when a young man, and
contributed much to musical work in Boston.
The deficit of the Pittsburgh Orchestra
the past season was $28,509.51. The guarantors have renewed
their obligations for another year, and the orchestra will be
under Victor Herbert’s direction. The experiment of high-priced soloists did
not bring increased returns as was expected.
A Handel Festival is
to be held in London in June. In 1784 “The Messiah” was given in Westminster
Abbey, with a chorus of two hundred and fifty voices, then esteemed a very
large body of singers. At the great festivals now held in the Crystal Palace,
the combined chorus and orchestra numbered four thousand.
An Italian composer, Gallignani, director
of the conservatory at Milan, has written a large choral work with the Latin
title, “Quare” or “Wherefore.” The titles of the sections
of the work are “Humanity,” “The Stoics,” “The
Epicureans,” “Skeptics and Atheists,” “Mystic Chorus,”
“Song of the Sun,” and “Invocation to Supreme Love.”
Omaha, Neb., had a music festival, May 7th
to 15th. A chorus of one hundred and fifty voices assisted. The Chicago
Festival Orchestra, under Adolph Rosenbecker, gave some of the concerts, and
the Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra, New York City, under the direction of
J. S. Duss, with Madame Nordica and Edouard de Reszke as soloists gave the
last.
According to statistics published by the
Monde Musical, of Paris, there were 187 performances at the Opéra in 1902,
the receipts of which were over $600,000. “Siegfried” drew a house of
nearly $4000, “Tannhäuser,” a very little less, with
“Lohengrin” and “Die Walküre,” about $3500 each. A remarkable fact is that Wagner’s
operas drew larger houses in Paris than Gounod’s “Faust.”
Louis Diemer, the
noted French pianist, has given money for a prize to be competed for
triennially by students of the Paris Conservatoire who have gained a first
prize for piano during the past ten years. The prize is $800. The test pieces
are either Beethoven, Sonata, Op. 57, or Schumann, “Etudes
Symphoniques,” first day; second day, four selected from
“Ballade,” Op. 49, Chopin, a Mazurka by Chopin, a Prelude by Chopin,
“La Clochette,” Paganini-Liszt, or “Etude in Waltz Form,”
Saint-Saëns. These pieces are to be played from memory.
A number of
music lovers of Baltimore are making an effort to establish a permanent
Symphony Orchestra. The Peabody Conservatory of Music is interested and will
place its concert hall at the disposal of the organization and co-operate in
the management. The present effort is to raise a fund to guarantee the success
of the concerts for five years, by which time it is hoped there will be
sufficient patronage to make the concerts self-supporting. Ten concerts are
planned for, six to include symphonies, the other four to be popular in
character.
