Mascagni is again busy on his opera, “Vistilia,” which he began when eighteen years of age. The plot is drawn from a novel of Rocco De Zerbi which has been done into a libretto by Targioni-Torzetti, also the librettist of “Cavalleria Rusticana.” It is built about a passionate love story of the old imperial Roman life. It is interesting to know that for “Cavalleria Rusticana” the composer has received royalties in the sum of 2,500,000 lire; for “Iris,” 1,700,000 lire; “L’Amico Fritz,” 1,500,000 lire; and “Piccolo Marat,” 1,000,000 lire.
$150,000 for the “Betts Strad” is a record price reported to have been paid by J. C. Freeman, the American collector, to H. C. Waddell, of Glasgow, Scotland, for the instrument mentioned.
A Prize of $250 is offered for a “March” to be used in the motion picture production of Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Particulars from Music Department, Universal Pictures Corporation, 1600 Broadway, New York City.
A Memorial Organ is to be placed in the Town Hall of New York, through the generosity of Mr. James Speyer, widely known for his various philanthropies. The idea back of the movement is that the Town Hall, a center of culture and refinement, should have a musical equipment.
Two San Carlo Grand Opera Companies will be presented this season by the impresario, Fortune Gallo. One of these will appear in a general repertoire and will make an extended tour of the continent. The other, with such distinguished guest artists as Anna Fitziu and Tamaki Miura, will give special productions on a less extensive itinerary. The Pavley-Oukrainsky Ballet will appear in all New York performances containing ballet features.
Music as a Unit for a B. A. Degree has been added to the courses of study offered by two leading British institutions of learning, the University of Durham and the University of Leeds. Slowly but surely the tonal art is winning its way to recognition as a subject for serious consideration by the learned.
Dorothy Howell has appeared as a new star in the constellation Feminine English Composers. At a recent concert she played her own Pianoforte Concerto in D Minor, of which the critics say, “It is an exceptional work in the fact that it is one of the few real concertos, that is, works in which the solo instrument joins with the orchestra and does not merely alternate, since the days before the virtuoso got the upper hand in the concert room.”
A $200,000 Temple of Music and Art is being provided for Tucson, Arizona, by popular subscription aided largely by two prominent business men of the community. This is genuine enterprise in a live little city that could be easily lost in one of the large parks of some of our metropolitan centers.
$2,000 in Prizes is offered by The Friends of American Music, a national organization with headquarters at Kansas City, Missouri. Only citizens of the United States may compete, and the contest closes March 10, 1924. Particulars from Anna Miller, Secretary of Friends of American Music, Kansas City, Missouri.
Dame Ethel Smyth’s new opera, “Fete Galante,” had its premiére at Covent Garden Theater. London, on June 11th, and was “a great artistic triumph” for England’s “most serious woman composer.” The music has been described as “charming, light and fantastic, with a constantly recurring hint of tragedy. The scoring is rich and subtle.”
The National Federation of Music Clubs has more than doubled its number of affiliated organizations during the last two years.
The Oldest Singer of the Handel Festival Choir at the recent Crystal Palace performances, was probably Alderman Charles William Cox, J. P., of Maidenhead. Now in his eighty-third year, he has been in the choir more than forty years. A good reason why Britain has such superb choral bodies.
Theodore Thomas is to have a memorial erected in his honor, in Grant Park opposite Orchestra Hall, Chicago. A half-draped sixteen-feet-high figure, on a five-foot pedestal will stand before a forty-foot granite seat ornamented with a bas-relief of the orchestra, having for the central figure a portrait of the famous conductor.
The German General Music Society (Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein), founded by Liszt, held its fifty-third general meeting at Cassel, during the musical festival held there in June.
Oskenonton, a Mohawk Indian singer, has been most favorably received in London.
M. Paul Dukas, composer of “L’Apprenti Sorcier,” and M. Henri Rabaud, director of the Paris Conservatoire, and composer of several operas, including the successful “Marouf,” have received the decorations of the Legion d’Honneur.
The Salzburg Festival Committee found it necessary to cancel this year’s performances. The unsatisfactory financial condition of the country, and especially the absence of tourists on account of exorbitant rates announced by hotels, are given as the real causes of the decision.
An Unpublished Schubert Trio, for piano, violin and violoncello, has been discovered and the manuscript deposited in the Municipal Library of Vienna. Written in 1812, it is now published and, being of no great difficulty, will be of especial interest to schools and amateurs who love this master’s genius.
“The Cricket on the Hearth,” an opera by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, based on Dickens’ popular novel, has had its first public performance at Glasgow, Scotland, and is to go on tour.
In Respect for the Late President Harding, members of the Ancient Society of College Youths, the old bell-ringing society, rang a half-muffled peal of 1,260 changes, lasting fifty-five minutes, at St. Clement Danes Church, Strand, London, on the publication of the news of his death.
The Swedish Ballet, with the sanction of its home government, is to make a tour of America early in the season.
T. Tertius Noble has been voted to be the most popular composer of anthems and his “Souls of the Righteous,” the favorite work in this class, by a questionnaire circulated among prominent organists of the country.
Navy Bands May not Compete in any way with civilian organizations, according to a ruling of the Navy Department. The Navy musical organizations “cannot be used except in playing for the general public, where no admission is charged and where there is no incidental motive for the gathering, such as entertainments, club luncheons or private parties, where the bands are really substitutes for paid bands, thus interfering with civilian musicians gaining a livelihood.”
Paul Paray has been unanimously elected by the Society of Lamoureaux Concerts of Paris, to succeed the late Camille Chevillard as their conductor.
Children’s Concerts by several leading orchestras of Europe are the result of their conductors’ visits to America. Has “one good thing” come out of the West?
The Italian Committee of the International Chamber Music Festival to be held at Salzburg during the first week of August has withdrawn Italian participation in the event. A letter signed by the composers, Alfano, Cassella, De Sabata, Malapiero, Molinari, Pizetti and Respighi, declares that “In view of the large number of representative works submitted by Italian composers and the comparatively small number chosen for performance, unfair discrimination has been exercised against that country.”
Amy Woodforde Finden, one of the most gifted of recent English song-writers, and best known for her “Indian Love Lyrics,” had a memorial to her unveiled in April at Hampsthwaite Church near Harrogate.
A $5,000,000 Municipal Auditorium is to be built by St. Louis, largely for civic music purposes.
Frederick Delius, the eminent English composer, suffered a stroke of paralysis several months ago and is now confined to a wheel chair.
Lalo’s “Le Roi d’YS” lately had a centenary performance at the Opera Comique of Paris, which was made a gala event.
Gustav Holst, the well-known British composer arrived in New York early in May. Among other activities he conducted a performance of his “Hymn of Jesus” at the Ann Arbor festival. His opera, “The Perfect Fool” had its premiére on the opening night of the Summer Season of the British National Opera Company, at Covent Garden, May 14.
Horatio Parker’s Original Manuscript Scores have been presented by his widow to Yale University. A memorial ode, “A. D. 1919,” to the Yale men who gave their lives in the war, the full score of his prize opera “Fairyland,” and interesting preliminary sketches of the oratorio “Hora Novissima,” with many other instrumental and vocal works, make up the collection.
John McCormack has this Spring been singing in Germany for the first time and has stirred his audiences to enthusiasm.
Albert Spalding, eminent American violinist, is spending the summer in his Italian home in Florence.
Georgette Leblanc, famous throughout Europe on the concert, dramatic and operatic stage, is announced for an extended tour of America, for next season. Mme. Leblanc was the wife of Maurice Maeterlinck, eminent Belgian dramatist, and for her he wrote several of his greatest plays.
The 375th Anniversary of The State Orchestra of Dresden was celebrated by a festival of concerts late in September.
The Library of Henry Edward Krehbiel, late dramatic critic, has been donated to the New York Public Library. Thus 1836 volumes and several hundred pamphlets are added to this library’s musical collection.
The Princess Ingeborg, Sweden’s most popular princess, wife of the King’s brother, Prince Carl, and second lady of the land, could turn her ability as a pianist to good account, in case of necessity.
Serge Koussevitsky is to be the leader of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, beginning in the autumn of 1924. Koussevitsky has never been in America, and he will be the first Russian to conduct this famous organization.
Municipal Musical Enterprises are getting on a safe financial basis. The summer season of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl produced net proceeds of $30,000, while the St. Louis Municipal Opera in Forest Park resulted in profits to the amount of $25,299.
The Bach Choir, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has received an invitation to give a series of productions in Havana next season. Our little sister to the south is developing a strong musical digestion when she sends out an order for Bach.
A Johannesburg Municipal Organ has been installed in this enterprising South African city. It has ninety-seven stops and six thousand one hundred and eighty-eight pipes. By way of comparison, the Philharmonic Auditorium organ of Los Angeles (with thirteen times the population of Johannesburg) has less than seventy stops. The Town Hall organ of Sydney, Australia, with its one hundred and thirty speaking stops, holds first place for size among the municipally owned organs of the world. The Wanamaker organ, in the Grand Court of the Wanamaker Store of Philadelphia, with two hundred and thirty stops, is the premier instrument of the world, for size.
Ernest Van Dyck, who at the height of his career was the most eminent of Wagnerian tenors, died recently at Antwerp. For some years he had held the chair of dramatic singing in the Conservatoire of Brussels. He was the first to sing Tristan and Parsifal in many of the leading opera houses of the world and for many years was one of the pillars of the Bayreuth Festivals.
Eddy Brown is returning for a concert tour, after an absence of three years from his native America.
Sir Hugh Allen, the eminent English musician is on the tongue of Dame Rumor as the director of the Eastman School of Music of Rochester, New York.
More than Twelve Thousand Persons attended the final “Symphony Night” of the free orchestral concerts given on Lemon Hill, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, thus vindicating the wisdom of the City Council in providing these entertainments. Olga Samaroff and Elly Ney were two of the most brilliant of the assisting artists during this summer’s season.
The New York Music Season had its formal opening on the night of September 17, when the San Carlo Opera Company gave an “Aida” production with an “ensemble so effective that the audience rose rapturously to the episode of Rhadame’s triumphant entry and called principals and conductor before the curtain again and again.”
The Third New Symphony Orchestra to be launched in New York within the past year is rumored to be about to be started on a season of twenty weeks, by Dirk Foch, the Dutch conductor.
Joseph Pasternack has been given the leadership of the Symphony Orchestra of fifty pieces, at the Stanley Theater of Philadelphia. This theater is believed to be taking the lead of the moving picture houses of the country, in the standard of its musical offerings and their interpretation.
Marcel Dupré has been decorated with the insignia of the Legion of Honor by the French Government, in recognition of his services to French art throughout the world, and especially to the distinction which he has given to organ playing. He began his second American tour with a recital in the New York Wanamaker Auditorium on September 29; and at Montreal, between October 1 and 20 he played a series of ten concerts in which he performed from memory the entire organ works of Bach.
The Forty-fifth Annual Meeting of the National Music Teachers’ Association will be held at Cleveland, Ohio, December 26-28, 1923. For detailed information address Max L. Swarthout, Secretary, M. T. N. A., Milliken Conservatory, Decatur, Illinois. John J. Hattstaedt, of Chicago, will be chairman of the Piano Conference; and Sister Cecelia Schwab, Master of Music at Seton College, will read a paper on the “Growth of the School of Music in a Catholic College.”
“Alglala,” a New American Opera (or is it a “Buckeye” Opera, since both librettist and composer are Ohioans?) will be produced by the Cleveland Opera Company, in February. The book is by Cecil Fanning, of international reputation as a baritone, and the music by Francesco de Leone, the Akron composer. The opera is founded on an Indian theme of the “Days of ‘49,” for the atmosphere of which Mr. Fanning’s several years of residence on the Crow Reservation of Montana has well prepared him.
A Bronze Tablet, presented to the late Carl Fischer, founder of the firm, by his employees, was unveiled on September 1, at ceremonies commemorative of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the business, and the opening of a large modern building.
The Sixth Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music was held at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, September 27-29, under the patronage of Mrs. F. S. Coolidge. The new Festival Quartet of South Mountain, and the London Quartet, with Mabel Garrison, Elena Gerhardt, Reinald Werrenrath, Myra Hess and Katherine Goodson among the leading soloists, made up a brilliant galaxy of talent.
