Everybody realizes the great work done by musical clubs in America. The need for activity in the musical club field is not nearly so much with the adult who employs the music club at times as a kind of social pasture in which to get away from the problems of business or the home, as it is for the child who is just beginning to get an acquaintance with music. Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, who doubtless ranks as the greatest living composer of her sex and is certainly one of the comparatively few “great” American composers, has found time and enthusiasm to assist in many ways a club formed in her honor in her home, at Hillsboro, N. H. The Etude has made it a more or less strict rule not to publish pictures of clubs, because we have so many hundreds of applications to do so that we can not accommodate all. But the instance of an extremely busy woman, standing at the top of her profession, finding time to promote the interests of a children’s club is so noteworthy that we desire to call Mrs. Beach’s example to the attention of others. Do not say that you are “too busy to form a children’s music club.” If you really want to do it you will find a way. The following report of the activities of the club coming from one of its supporters will be interesting to our readers:
To The Etude:
Here we are! The Beach Club, of Hillsboro, New Hampshire, and the happiest group of children in the whole State. We had this picture of ourselves taken on purpose to give to our dear Mrs. Beach, for a Christmas present.
We are very proud of our Beach Club, and think we have reason to be, for we are the only Federated Juvenile Music Club in New Hampshire. And then, as Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, the most noted woman composer in America, lives in Hillsboro, we have her present at all our meetings.
We all love Mrs. Beach; she is so jolly and kind to us; we are not a bit afraid to play before her. She seems to enjoy it and then she always plays for us.
As we are too young and do not play well enough to belong to the grown-up Music Club, our piano teachers helped us to organize the Beach Club. There are nearly thirty members in all; and most of us are under twelve years of age. We have one drummer, a violinist, and a singer; all the rest play the piano.
We have officers just like the grown-up club. When we elected our first president by ballot, some of the boys voted for themselves. They said afterwards, they really wanted Marguerite, but did not know how to spell her name. The president we have now can not talk plain, but she is very dignified and we never think of whispering.
After the business part of the meeting is over, the president announces our names and each one tells the name of his piece and its composer. Some of the names are hard to pronounce, but we have to learn to say them correctly. We do not sit in the room with the piano: but when Mrs. Beach plays she lets us all stand around her.
One day we had a Bach and Beach program and one of the boys, knowing that Mrs. Beach would be at the meeting, asked his mother if Bach would be there, too. He knows better, now, for in December we gave a Bach play and learned many things about him. We played some of Bach’s music and Mrs. Beach played two pieces of his she learned when just a little girl. There is a whole book of these plays written by Mr. James Francis Cooke. We are glad, for we think it is more fun to act plays than to read about the composers.
We wish all children could have a Beach Club, and of course they can, but there is only one Mrs. Beach and she belongs to us.
Lisabel Gay
THE BEACH CLUB
If Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, the most distinguished woman in American music and also one of the busiest, can take time to foster a musical club, should not others follow her example and fine initiative? There are hundreds of clubs like this in various parts of the country. Unfortunately this one picture must remain as the prototype of many, many similar pictures simply because THE ETUDE has not room to print such pictures regularly. The Young Folk’s Musical Clubs are the real foundation of all American musical club activity. Why not follow Mrs. Beach’s example and found a club?
