A school has been opened in Paris to teach women to be engravers of music. The school is a part of the plan of French publishers to spread broadcast after the war French editions of the classics.
Outville, Ohio, a village of some hundred people, maintains a music club of thirty members, and during the year has given over forty recitals. The success of this organization should be an inspiration to every little town in America.
Mascagni’s new opera, Isabeau is to open the Chicago opera season. The plot is said to be a variant of the “Lady Godiva” legend.
Hartford, Conn., is to have a fine new auditorium, seating 4,000 persons, thus making musical festivals a possibility within the future reach of that music-loving city.
Milwaukee is the scene of an experiment in the line of concert giving—a series of “twilight musicales” at half-past four on Sunday afternoons. Arthur Shattuck, appears at the first one; at the second, the Trio de Lutice. Others are to follow.
The opening program of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra this season was an all-American one. Edgar Stillman Kelly’s New England Symphony, as well as works by Foote, Rubin, Goldmark and Goepp.
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is to make a special feature of our native composers’ works. MacDowell’s Indian Suite and Herbert’s Irish Rhapsodie appear on an early program. Following in the same line, the Kansas City Orchestra is presenting Horatio Parker’s Fairyland Suite, George Chadwick’s symphonic ballad, Tam o’ Shanter, and two Indian Dances by Charles Sanford Skilton.
Joaquin Valverde, a noted Spanish composer, is in this country to look after the production of his new opera, The Land of Joy. The libretto of the American version is by Ruth Boyd Ober.
There is great demand for a new national song in Russia which will worthily voice the sentiment of the new Republic, but in spite of all efforts of poets and composers, nothing really satisfactory has yet appeared. One which was widely circulated as being the “New Russian Anthem,” is already all but forgotten. Meanwhile the Volga barge melody, Ei Ukhnem, is most favored of native songs and the French Marseillaise is occasionally heard.
Lieut. John Philip Sousa, U. S. N., has been training a band of over 250 players, attached to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. From its membership new naval bands are being formed, from time to time, but the entire band has recently performed in New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere, with overwhelming effect. Think of a trombone section of twenty-three players! It is one of the most thrilling musical organizations ever heard.
Britain’s premier, Lloyd George, exhorts his countrymen to “keep on singing.” He recently showed his interest in the matter by attending a Welsh Eisteddfod (a sort of tournament of song, dating from before the year 1000, A. D., and still regularly maintained).
The New York Community Chorus, under Harry Barnhart’s leadership, held a Song and Light Festival in Central Park, in which peculiar and beautiful effects of colored lighting, designed by Claude Bragdon, of Rochester, added to the pleasure of the singing.
Luca Botta, lyric tenor, of the Metropolitan Opera Company, has had a promising career cut short in the prime of life. He died on September 29th.
Campanini is to substitute a concert series for his proposed season of German Opera in Chicago. Other operas, however, will be given as planned, including Hadley’s Azora and Arthur Nevin’s Daughter of the Forest, which will be performed with all-American castes. It is explained that this abandonment of German Opera is not wholly on account of the war, but rather owing to the attitude of patronage during last season.
Cape Town, South Africa, is fast becoming a musical center. It rejoices in a municipal orchestra, which gives weekly concerts in an auditorium in the city hall. Other branches of music also flourish.
The Chicago City Club becomes sponsor for a series of twenty Chamber Music Concerts, largely string quartet.
Lockport, N. Y., was en fête for a week with the American Musical Convention, from September 30th to October 6th. An impressive list of notable names, both musical and general, could be compiled from those present. The programs, with the exception of a few works by English composers, were exclusively American, and all songs were sung with English words. The idea of these conventions, of which this is the second, was first conceived and fostered in the mind of Albert A. Van De Mark.
Seventeen scores have been received in the Hinshaw Prize Opera Competition. The judges are David Bispham, Victor Herbert, Louise Homer. Giorgio Polacco and Walter Henry Rothwell. The opera that receives the award will be produced by the Society of American Singers. The prize is $1,000, together with a royalty on productions.
A new society called the Philharmonic Chorus has been organized in New York, with Louis Koemmenich, formerly leader of the New York Oratorio Society, as director.
Worcester,, Mass., celebrated her sixtieth annual musical festival October 1st to 5th.
Dr. Arthur Mees conducted the festival, and sixty selected players from the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra furnished the instrumental support. More than a dozen noted soloists took part, and through the efforts of Charles I. Rice (supervisor of music in the public schools) several of the soloists visited the different high schools and sang before the students.
Flint, Mich., which we have before mentioned as being the first city to have a municipal musical director, is about to erect a stadium seating 12,000. George Oscar Bowen, formerly of Yonkers, N. Y., has been engaged as director of the Community Music Association.
The death of the grand-nephew of Beethoven, in an Austrian military hospital, is reported—the last person living of that name, it is said.
Dr. Bonavia Hunt, Vicar of Burgess Hill, Sussex, England, passed away on September 27th. He was the author of A Concise History of Music for the Use of Students, which has long been widely known and used.
A bequest of $200,000 to the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, was one of the features of the will of Mrs. Maria Antoinette Evans, widow of the late Robert Dawson Evans, as announced last week (October 17th). This considerable amount is given to the Conservatory without restrictions, and is in evidence of a disposition among the well-to-do in New England and elsewhere to include institutions of musical education in the list of their benefactions. The bequest supplements a previous gift of $100,000 made by Mrs Evans, part of which was applied to creating the five Evans free scholarships which are annually awarded to students of the Conservatory who fulfill the requirements as to ability and grade of advancement and who are in need of assistance. Mrs. Evans was a lover of music and the drama, and in addition to her formal gifts to the Conservatory she helped many music students, dancers and others. Shortly before her death she defrayed the expenses of a new organ for the South Congregational (Unitarian) Church, Boston, of which Rev. Edward Everett Hale was minister for many years.
Philadelphia, on October 13th, celebrated a soul-stirring Festival of Song and Flags, in honor of the absent men who have answered the call to arms. Over 125,000 people assembled in Fairmount Park, including 10,000 singing school children and many local choruses. Mme. Louise Homer, contralto, and Henri Scott, basso, assisted; also the Police and Navy Bands. Airplanes sailing above dropped down small American flags, while cannon boomed. It is believed to be the largest gathering that was ever assembled for community singing. It was given under the auspices of the Philadelphia Community Singing Association, Mr. John Braun president.
The following new additions are announced for the program of the Music Teachers’ National Association, in meeting at New Orleans, December 27th to 29th: A paper on “A National Music Publishing House,” by Giuseppe Ferrata, and another on “The National Harmonic and Rhythmic Sense of the Negro,” by Walter Goldstein, with illustrations by uncultivated negroes. There will also be a “personally conducted tour” through the old French Quarter of New Orleans.
Major Arthur Nevin, recently a member of the faculty of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas, has gone to Camp Grant, Rockford, Ill., and taken charge of one of the largest singing classes in the world, more than 40,000 men being under his instruction. Mrs. Nevin will engage in Red Cross Work, in France, and their two sons have enlisted in the Ambulance Corps.
A concert of Ancient Music was recently given in Holyoke. Mass., for the benefit of the Polish Relief Fund, over $2,000 being realized. Ancient instruments, from the collection of Miss Belle Skinner were heard, at the hands of Miss Deyo and Mr. Hammond, while Mme. Susan Metcalfe Casals, wife of the noted cellist, was the vocalist of the occasion.
The membership roll of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra contains a great preponderance of German-sounding names: nevertheless the members have shown their loyalty to Uncle Sam by subscribing for over $13,000 of Liberty Bonds.
Mayor James H. Preston, of Baltimore, is heartily in favor of municipal musical activities—community singing, band concerts, and even symphony concerts. During the past year Baltimore has spent $100,000 for municipal music. If New York City spent in the same proportion, her figure would be close to $1,000,000 annually, whereas the actual amount is but $39,000
In the fifteenth annual competition for the W. W. Kimball Company prize of one hundred dollars, offered by the Chicago Madrigal Club, the award has just been made to Mr. Will C. Macfarlane, of Portland, Maine. The composition will be sung at the club’s second concert of the present season. The judges were Henry Purmort Eames, Allen W. Bogen and D. A. Clippinger.
Mb. Edward Baxter Perry informs us that, owing to the shock and depression caused by the death of his wife, who was his faithful companion and helper for thirty- five years, he will be unable to keep any concert engagements before the first of the year. Mrs. Perry attended to the correspondence, manuscripts, etc., of her blind husband for years, and his great loss may be imagined.
