Five Rossini “String Quartets” have been discovered in the Library of the Royal Academy of Music of London. They had been written for Lord Burghersh, afterward Earl of Westmoreland, the founder of the Royal Academy. They have no marks of expression and seem never to have been played.
Carl Faelten, for many years prominent in American musical life, was drowned on July 20, at Readfield, Maine. Born in Thuringia, December 21, 1846, he was largely self-taught in music, and, before coming to America, was for ten years associated with Joachim Raff at the Conservatory of Frankfort-on-the-Main.
The Metropolitan Opera Company, of New York, through Giulio Gatti-Casazza, has forwarded to the Society of Italian Authors the sum of twelve thousand lire (about six thousand dollars, at normal exchange) to be used toward placing a Puccini memorial in La Scala of Milan.
A Handel Festival was held at Leipzig, June 6-8. A new version of “Tamerlane,” together with several other operas and choral works of “The Old Saxon,” made up the programs.
The Salzburg Festival has been officially recognized by the Austrian Government. Tickets of admission to the festival have been ordered to be accepted at the frontier in lieu of the usual passport with its customary fee of ten dollars.
The “Beggar’s Opera” is having another “revival” in London. Perhaps the cycle is repeating itself, and we are to come again to the time when we may sit back easily at the opera and enjoy a “tune” without being a passé target of lorgnettes.
“The Australian Musical News,” a most interesting and enterprising journal, now in its fourteenth volume, visited our office this month. Welcome! It is good to know that musical achievements are so vigorous in quarters so distant that the news we receive is scant.
Conneaut Lake Park, Pennsylvania, opened its musical season with a week’s Fesitival (sic) of Concerts and Oratorio, by a chorus of a thousand voices, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, and well-known soloists, ending with a gala production of the “Messiah.”
A National Conservatory of Music has been founded at Buenos Aires, with Carlos Lopez Buchardo as the director.
Zandonai has been entrusted with the completion of the score of “Turandot” which was left unfinished at the untimely taking away of Puccini. It is scheduled for its premiere at La Scala some time during the coming season.
The New York Symphony Orchestra, with Walter Damrosch as conductor, has given twenty-two compositions their “world premiere,” fifty compositions their “first performance in America,” and thirty-nine their “first New York hearing.”
Baltimore, Maryland, is the only city of the world so far reported to us as having a Music Department as a regular branch of its city government. Frederick R. Huber is the present and first Municipal Director of Music for Baltimore.
Walter Helfler, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been awarded the Walter Damrosch Fellowship in musical composition at the American Academy in Rome. This is the fifth award of the kind, the others having gone to Randall Thompson, Leo Sowerby, Howard Hanson and Wintter Watts.
Arthur Foote, of Boston, one of the most eminent of America’s composers, received the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Dartmouth College at its recent one-hundred-and-fifty-fourth commencement. Real achievements are sometimes late of recognition.
Three Leading Prices of the recent Eisteddfod, at Youngstown, Ohio, went to Cleveland. The Orpheus Male Choir won the $1,000 prize; the Mixed Chorus of one hundred and seventy-one voices received the $500 prize, while the Glenville High School Chorus carried off the $100 prize.
A New Piano Pedal, enabling the performer to hold, swell or diminish tones after the key has been struck, has been invented by John Hayes Hammond, Jr. It has had a successful private trial in Symphony Hall, of Boston.
A Choir of Over Five Thousand Children gave a concert at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham (London), on June 20, as a part of the annual festival of the London Sunday School Choir.
5,000,000 Radio Receiving Sets are reported to be in use in the United States, and these against 9,000,000 instruments using talking machine records.
A Music-Writing Machine is reported to have been perfected by a Czecho-Slovakian priest. After seven years of work and experimentation he has an automatic mechanism which records the notes as they are played on the piano or organ.
Beethoven’s Manuscript of his Opus 129, which Schnidler (sic) christened, “Fury Over a Lost Farthing, Vented in Caprice,” at the recent sale of the Henry Schlesinger collection brought $1,250, this trifle now bringing more in the market, we believe, than the great master received during his lifetime for all his monumental symphonies.
The Musical Fund Society, Philadelphia’s oldest musical organization, is offering $10,000, divided into $5,000, $3,000 and $2,000, as prizes for the best three Chamber Music compositions for combinations of from three to six instruments.
Ralph Lyford, for the last five years managing director of the summer opera season at the Zoological Garden, has been made associate conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
“Resurrection,” an opera by Franco Alfano, with the libretto adapted from Tolstoi’s great novel of the same name, has won a considerable success at the Nice Municipal Casino, because of its rich and colorful orchestration and pronounced melodic elements.
The One-Thousandth Anniversary of the Lower Rhine Music Festival, which convenes in succession at Dusseldorf, Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) and Cologne, was celebrated this year at Cologne, by concerts, from June 11 to 14.
A Bust of Puccini, to be made by the Russian sculptor, Troubetskoy, has been ordered for the La Scala of Milan.
Erik Satie, one of the best known of the modern French composers, passed away July 3. An intimate of Debussy and Ravel, and a champion of “The Six,” his lectures served to introduce several composers who later became famous. His compositions include ballets, incidental music to plays, and numerous piano pieces, mostly with fantastic titles.
The Beethoven Monument in Heiligenstädter Park, near Vienna, has been desecrated by vandals, who have broken an arm from the statue as well as badly soiling the monument.
The Centenary Celebrations for Johann Strauss were initiated lately by a concert in the house at Salmannsdorf, a suburb of Vienna, where his father spent the summers of 1831-1836 with his family, and where Johann, at the age of six, wrote his first composition, a little waltz, which his wife had published forty years later as a surprise to her husband.
George Ashdown Audsley, born in Scotland, but having spent most of his life in America as a leading ecclesiastical and organ architect, and the author of several authoritative works on organ building, architecture and the allied arts, died in the last week of June.
Polyglot Casts at the Metropolitan and Auditorium have been the incentive for recent comment. Even then, La Scala of Milan might claim the palm in this achievement. for at a performance of “Pelleas et Melisande.” in French (but the only opera of the season which was not sung in Italian), the artsts (sic) were: Pelleas, Belgian; Melisande, Belgian; Genevieve, Argentinian; Doctor, American; Arkel, Egyptian; Golaud, French; Yniold, French; conductor, Toscanini, the only Italian sustaining a principal part.
Francesco Berger, eminent musician and musicologist, of London, recently celebrated his ninety-second birthday. Eighty- two years ago he made his first public appearance as a pianist. Charles Dickens was his personal friend, and the active nonogenarian still busily pursues his professional work.
“Il Trovatore” was recently “revived” at the La Scala of Milan, after an absence since 1903. And this in Italy!
Fifty Rehearsals are required by the leaderless orchestra organised by the musicians of the Moscow State Opera Orchestra before a work may be presented to the public. The brilliancy of the state opera has been attributed largely to the training of many of the orchestra members without a leader.
“Countess Mariza,” by Emerich Kalman, has broken the record set by Lehar’s “Merry Widow,” having had over three hundred performances in Vienna and more than two hundred in Berlin.
L’Oeuvre Inédite (Unpublished Work) is a new organization for the purpose of presenting unknown music and works of young composers in Paris. The Corporation for New Music is performing a similar service in Rome. With the British Music Society active, almost an epidemic of organizations engaged in this good work in America and in other countries to be heard from, the aspiring composer need not repine about hearing his work.
A Choir of Three Thousand Voices sang before King George, Queen Mary and the Duke of York at the Wembley Stadium on May 25. The performance was conducted by Dr. Charles MacPhersch, organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“Sang Po,” an opera founded on a Chinese Don Juan, the musical score by Rodolf Tlascal and libretta by R. E. Burgssun, had its premiere at Vienna on May 22.
Lucienne Breval, dramatic soprano, has received the decoration of the Legion of Honor, being one of the few women to receive this distinction. For years Mme. Breval sang dramatic parts at the Paris Opéra, a particular achievement having been the creation of Brünnhilde in the first French productions of “The Ring.” She was heard in America, with the Boston Opera Company, in the seasons of 1900-1902.
Lord Berners’ new opera, “La Carosse du Saint-Sacrement,” has been performed at the Théâtre Trianon Lyrique of Paris, arousing considerable enthusiasm in both the press and public.
La Colon Theatre of Buenos Aires opened brilliantly for its opera season on July 2. Verdi’s “Falstaff” was the opera of the evening, with Cesare Formichi as Falstaff and Rosa Raisa as Mistress Ford. Tullio Serafin conducted.
The Hollywood Community Chorus won first place in the recent Eisteddfod of Southern California.
Gustave Garcia, son of the celebrated Manuel Garcia, and himself at one time an eminent baritone of England, after which he became one of that country’s most favored teachers of singing, died recently in London at the age of eighty-nine.
A One Thousand Dollar Prize for an orchestral composition is again offered by the Chicago North Shore Festival Association. Particulars from Carl D. Kinsey, 64 East Van Buren Street, Chicago, Illinois.
P. C. Hayden, a pioneer in the field of Public School Music in the United States, and editor of the periodical, School Music, passed away recently at his home in Keokuk, Iowa.
The Music Department of the Chicago Library has one of the largest collections of music of every type to be found in America, outside the Library of Congress.
The Hebrew Opera Company of Jerusalem has in its repertory the well-known works of Verdi, Wagner, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Saint-Saens, Puccini. Rimsky-Korsakoff and Halevy, as well as “The Pioneer,” by a young Palestinian Jew, the first modern opera written in Hebrew.
The First Carillon in South Africa is being installed in Cape Town and will consist of forty bells.
Sir Henry Wood made a special journey from London in order to conduct four concerts at the Hollywood Bowl on July 14-18.
A New “Mozart” Discovery is reported. A manuscript “Requiem in E Minor” has been discovered by Dr. Roderich v. Moksisowics, director of the Graz Music Society, among some old papers, and bearing the name of Mozart on the wrapper. It is being submitted to the severest tests as to its genuineness.
The War Memorial Opera House, of San Francisco, is to have one of the most modernly equipped stages of the world. Pericle Ansaldo, stage director of La Scala of Milan, has been brought over to design it. He was the designer of the stages of the Buenos Aires Opera and of the Grand Opera of Rio Janeiro.
The Scottish Music Merchants’ Association is organizing a National Music Week “with the object of focusing public attention on the necessity of music in the lives of the people.”
The Boston Civic Opera Company is the latest organization of this character to be announced. It has been incorporated under the State laws; and, after a season in Boston, beginning in the early fall, there will be a tour as far west as Denver.
A Prize of $100 is offered by the Rubinstein Club, of Washington, D. C., for a composition for a women’s chorus. Particulars from Mrs. Harvey L. Rabbitt, 312 Cathedral Mansions Center, Washington, D. C.
The Lodi Oratorio Society, of Lodi, California, recently gave a performance or Mendelssohn’s “St. Paul.” Last year they gave presentations of “The Creation” of Haydn, and of Handel’s “Messiah.” No mean accomplishment for a community of but ten thousand inhabitants.
The Morris Loeb Prize of $1,000 for advanced study of composition, either in this country or abroad, has been awarded to Miss Phyllis Marie Kraeuter.
Jean Sibelius has completed a new symphony which is to have its first public hearing at the Three Choirs Festival, at Gloucester, England, in September.
Rhené-Baton, conductor of the famous Pasdeloup Concerts of Paris, has been decorated by the King of Sweden with the insignia and title of Chevalier of the Order of the Polar Star, the highest honor in that country The recognition comes as a mark of appreciation of the conductor’s success in the leading of concerts in Stockholm.
Max von Schillings’ opera, “Mona Lisa,” had its one-hundredth performance at the Berlin State Opera on June 8. Already it has been presented in seventy-live German theaters.
Geza Horváth, widely known for his beautiful compositions for the piano. died July 19. Born at Komaron, Hungary, May 27, 1868, he was educated at Vienna, and became director of school music there, as well as librarian of the Association of Music School Proprietors.
