lO TH E ETUD E was seventeen, and several of his most finished pieces were published ere he had reached the age of twenty. JANUARY 31st will be the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Schubert, creator supreme of rare and noble gems of melody, fitly framed in golden harmonies. LUTE playing is to be revived in Italy, a Societa del Liuto having been organized for that purpose at Florence. Mascagni is going to compose a piece especially for the instrument. EUGENE YSAYE, the violinist, has bought for £1000 the Stradivarius violin known as "Hercules." It is dated 1732, is one of the most perfect of its family, and is beautifully preserved. GRIEG, who has spent the most of his time in Ger-many during the last few years, has now returned to Sweden, where he has directed two concerts at Stockholm and took part in a musical festival at Christiania. MR. OTTO FLOERSHEIM writes, in the Musical Courier, that the best paid of all European conductors is Arthur Nikisch, who, during the coming season, will make over $15,000. He is in demand all over Germany, as well as in England and Scandinavia. THE consensus of critical opinion seems to concede Rosenthal the palm as the greatest pianist of the age, from a technical point of view. That he is not lacking in feeling and sentiment is admitted, but it is undeniably his technic that chiefly impresses. MME. MARCHESI prohibits bicycling amongst all her "singing birds," as she maintains that such rapid pas-sage through the air may be fraught with positive danger. Mmes. Melba and Calvé, and many other singers of renown, however, are said to be "slaves to the wheel." BRAHMS has made a wholly unexpected present to the Society of the Friends of Music, at Vienna. He has sent the committee a check for £600, absolutely free from all condition, except that the money is to be devoted to any purpose which the society may think will best advance the interests of the art of music. THE famous singer, Catharina Klafsky, was buried at Hamburg. The grave-stone is to bear no other inscription but her Christian name. She wished to be buried in the white robe of penitence of Elizabeth, in "Tannhäuser," and over the grave the chorus of Isis and Osiris, from Mozart's "Magic Flute" was sung. MOZART'S "Magic Flute'' has recently been performed at the Carola Theater, Leipzig, entirely by pupils of the Royal Conservatorium of Music. The performance elicited high praise, and led to the engagement of Herren Steinbeck and Ulmann, the former to the Sondershausen, the latter to the Rostock Opera House. LUDWIG SCHYTTE'S Piano Concerto in F minor is now making le tour du monde interpreted by some of the lead-ing piano virtuosi. Rosenthal is playing it in America, Rummel in Germany, Friedheim in England, Mark Hamburg in France, and Frau Longeschan-Hirzel in Switzerland. Truly a most gratifying success for the composer. IT is said of Delle Sedie, the famous vocal maestro, that he never puts people back, when commencing study with him, merely to vindicate his own method or credit. If ready, he lets them go right on, and seeks only to correct the faults of the unprepared without seeking to extinguish their former teachers. An illustrious example well worthy of imitation by the numerous smaller fry of teachers, who are not so just and generous. ENGLISH musical writers are quarreling over the question of Liszt's inspiration as a composer. Even Wagner's enthusiastic admiration of him as a creative genius is attributed to the overweening partiality of a fond son-in-law. These objectors go so far as to assert that Liszt never had a "genuine impulse" to compose music. "Yet of all published music in advanced pianism," says Presto, "none has had so great a demand as some of Liszt's. And as a matter of fact, what would the piano-recital be without him? " Of a truth, Liszt's mission as a composer is not yet finished, however future generations may dispose of him. A FORMER accompanist of Mme. Anna Bishop writes that the latter was sixty-three years old when she made her last "farewell'' tour of America. She sang in concert for the last time when she was seventy-one years of age, and even then astonished and charmed with the remark-able preservation of her voice and grand style of singing. On the stage she appeared not more than fifty years of age. Her method must have been a most pure and correct one, to have enabled her to sing at so advanced an age. She drew crowded houses, easily holding her own, even against Jenny Lind. Patti may still have a career before her and favor us with 15 or 20 more "farewells" if she should decide to follow the example of Mme. Bishop. letters to pupils. B Y JOHN S. YANCLEVE . G.W.—You ask what is meant by false notes, and is anybody free from them ? My reply is, false notes are of three kinds, they arise from three causes, and require three distinct cures. First, there are notes positively wrong and definitely sounded. Such, for instance, as the very common mistake of beginners or careless readers in striking notes out of the scale, by neglecting to keep the signature in mind. We often hear such a mistake as this. In the scale of C minor the pupil will often strike C natural or neglect to observe the mark changing the B flat of the signature into the B natural demanded as a leading tone and the major third in the dominant seventh. This is sheer inattention, and must be cured by increas-ing the tension of the brain current. However, wrong notes that sound precisely like this and stand out with startling prominence often result from dangerous leaps or from muscular delinquencies of even the most skilled players. Such performers as Joseffy and Rosenthal, who are famous for their note perfection and superhuman accuracy, sometimes strike wrong notes, and it is usually recorded by the critics with a degree of emphasis which is the highest possible compliment. Second, there are flaws which cannot be called false notes exactly, because the actual tone required is really sounded but along with it a neighboring note is slightly pinched, as, for example, when making a reach for C in the scale of A flat, your finger slips and strikes B natural as a sort of grace note. Rubenstein has made a curious, noisy, but to my taste not especially beautiful, etude of this kind called an Etude on False Notes. The cause and cure of this defect are both identical with the cause and cure of the second class of false notes above mentioned. The cause is mus-cular inaccuracy of measurement and the only cure is thoughtful practice. Third, a species of note imperfec-tion much worse than either of the two above mentioned is the dropped notes, which are little gaps of silence re-sulting from failure either to touch the key or to move it with sufficient decision. This fault, wrhich is very wide-spread, is exceedingly ugly, and a tone figure with notes gnawed out is as repulsive as a leaf made ragged by the ravages of insects. To cure this wretched habit of drop-ping notes you must train your pupil to strike with a quick, mallet-like blow, moving the key down to the bottom of its bed, but without stiffness and with quick-ness, as of winking of the eyelids. This quickness is a mental rather than a physical attainment. No musician should ever play the piano except in an alert and intense state of mind. Music is not for the phlegmatic. To K. H.—You ask what effect music has when em-ployed as a therapeutic agent in counteracting physical maladies. This is a question which hardly belongs to a musician but rather to the physiologist. The ancient Greeks believed that musical sounds had a powerful effect on the diseases of the physical frame, and even so great an authority as the greatest of them all, Galen, attri-buted certain very strange and singularly definite bodily effects to the hearing of music. Plato also attached to different styles of music a degree of effect upon charac-ter which very much puzzles us, in trying to comprehend them. Thus, music in the Doric mode was said to in-spire manliness and steadfast dignity ; that in the Phry-gian mode, frenzy ; that in the Lydian, mildness, soft-ness, and effeminacy. They went further, and believed that the tone quality of instruments affected the emo-tions and the health. Thus, the flute produced melan-choly and tenderness; the trumpet, gladness and cour-age. In modern times, the experiments upon elephants, horses, and the like, as well as the well-known skill of the Indian snake-charmers, have led physicians to think that various kinds of music might be helpfully applied to the nervous unrest of lunatics. Thus, cheerful, sprightly music is helpful to those who are afflicted with brooding melancholia, and soft, tender music is some-times found to be efficacious and soothing to the more frenzied lunatics. I do not, however, believe for a moment that anything so crass and definite as a direct result of music upon the liver or the lungs or the diges-tive organs can be maintained. I have myself heard music which made me quite sick at the stomach, but this was exactly the reverse to a curative influence, and the music had traveled around a long circuit through my phrenological bump-of disgustibility. To A. M.—You ask if with your little ten-year-old pupil, whose hands are flexible and small, it is wise policy to omit the large chords. I should say to this first question, yes, with a proviso. There are two ways of getting out of such a difficulty, and much depends on your sagacity and good judgment. The first way to deal with a small hand, whether it be that of a child or an adult, is to choose such music as will not require many stretches and will be narrow across the knuckles in most of the positions taken by the performing hand. This will be a serious drawback, however, particularly for the performance of modern music, or for the matter of that, Beethoven also. The power to span an octave with ease and to arch over the intervening tones so as to deliver middle voices, cannot be regarded as indispensa-ble for any one who would be a pianist. Therefore stretching exercises, such as those of Dr. Ward Jackson and some of the Technicon gymnastics, should be pa-tiently but sparingly applied to the hand. The second way of evading the difficulty of large chords may claim the sanction of so supreme an authority as that of Dr. Hans von Biilow. It is this : whenever it is more con-venient to transfer a note in the middle from the right to the left hand, or vice versa, do so. To this proposition I will venture, on my own respon-sibility, to add this corollary: In some rare cases, the lower note of an octave may be omitted without serious detriment to the harmony. For instance, if the left hand has second space C, F, A, and the right hand continues the harmonic structure with C, F, A, C, this middle C could be omitted. Such reliefs, however, are of little importance, and the best way is either to steer clear of these expanded chords or break them into arpeggios. One other thought occurs to me in this connection : as you probably know, the chords in Chopin's music frequently extend to the tenth, twelfth, and even fifteenth. You may also, perhaps, know that Chopin's hand was small, like that of a dainty little lady. He could only reach one key beyond the octave. I once had a course of les-sons with a charming old gentleman, Mr. Werner Stein-brecher, of this city, who from 1844 to 1846 studied with Chopin himself. I once asked him how Chopin contrived to play those oceanic chords of his, and Mr. Steinbrecher told me that Chopin would seize as many tones as he could, then spring to the others ; for instance, if you are required to strike in the right hand, first line E flat, A flat, C, and A flat, he would catch the first three notes and leap to the A flat. By a little practice this can be done with great celerity and certainty. I will amplify and apply this idea by a little lesson. Suppose you are required to play the following progression of chords, D-G—B—D , C—F#—A—D, B—D—G—B, do this: Strike D—G together, then throw the hand quickly to the right and strike B—D, then similarly divide the other two chords. This must, of course, be done deftly or it will be ugly. As to your second question, of course if the child cannot reach the pedals, you will have to omit them. This will greatly limit the range of music which she can study, since the pedal is the very medulla oblongata—that is, the center between the brain and spinal marrow—where resides the very life of the piano. The sonatinas of Kuhlau, Clementi, and their confreres, the easy sonatas of Mozart, many of the most bewitching pieces of Schumann, and a large number of dance and march pieces by various composers may be drawn upon for her education.
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