US-THE PUBLISHER OF THE ETUDE CAN SUPPLY ANYTHING IN MUSIC. VOL. XVII. PHILADELPHIA, PA., FEBRUARY, 1899. NO. 2 ©H E GliUDE . M Jtaattil y Publicatio n lot* th « T«»«feetf® Student s of Jftusie. SUBSCRIPTION RATES, SI.50 per year (payable in advance). Two Subscriptions or two years in advance, . . . $1.35 each. Three Subscriptions or three years in advance, . . 1.30 each. Single Copy, ! 15 cents. Foreign Postage, 48 cents. DISCONTINUANCE.—If you wish the Journal stopped, an explicit notice must be sent us by letter, otherwise it will fo® continued. All arrearages must be paid. RENEWAL—No receipt is sent for renewals. On the wrapper of the next issue sent you will be printed the dtat« to which your subscription is paid up, which serves eg ? rs^elpt for your subscription. THEODORE PRESSER, 1708 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, P« Staterec* at Philadelphia P. 0. as Second-class Matter. COPYRIGHTED 1899, THRODORR PRRSSRR. EVIDENCES are accumulating which prove that there is more and more encouragement and chance for the really earnest and studious music teacher. People are beginning to think that possibly there is something quite serious in music as an art. Nothing will help this tendency more effectively than musical lectures. Al-though there are many who perhaps have not the qualifications requisite for arranging an entertaining lecture, it is nevertheless within the power of every teacher to formulate for himself a few sentences which may be dropped into the conversations we have with our fellows, which may make them think. Suppose that for this purpose one should commit to memory a few short and pithy quotations dealing with the serious im-port of music. So many persons are disposed to treat music with indifference, or even with a certain spirit of agnosticism ! Instead of encouraging such a frivolous and careless attitude toward the art, quote what Carlyle said about 4' thinking deep " and "thinking musically." It might be well if the music committee of your church were gently reminded of what Luther said of music as being next to theology. At any rate, musicians ought to be prepared to give something better than the outer husks to those about them who are willing to learn more concerning our art. What Dr. Holland said concerning educational methods is particularly appropriate in this connection : " The dispensation of sawdust is over. If you want your horse to win, feed him oats." NOTHING is more harmful to a young student of music —or to an old one either, for the matter of that—than to be broken in upon during the hour of practice. Music is closely allied to mathematics, and in the old Greek days, when every art was held divine, music was taught as a branch of mathematical science. The witty satire against the mathematicians in the 11 Voyage of Gulliver to the Flying Island of Laputa " was but little exag-gerated as to the absent-mindedness of the true mathe-matician, and the same is true of the musician to a con-siderable degree. Many and many a fine moment of composition and of fruitful practice has been rendered useless by the stinging touch of interruption. It is a singular piece of inadvertence that our educa-tors fail to recognize this condition in music study. The other evening I called at the house of a friend, and found the boy of the family making noble but rather futile efforts to practice. The piano was in the chief room of the house ; a very cosy and sociable way of arrangement, of course, but not very conducive to concentration of thought. The sister, at a table, was studying, or, rather, fuming, at her arithmetic lesson, with some quite snappish assistance from an elder sister ; the little three-year-old brother was prattling and laughing in glee ; the father and mother were chatting of news and various matters; and last, I, as a visitor, was added. The father sharply roUuked the boy for not attending to his work and playing smoothly ahead. Poor boy ! It would have taken the mental concentration of Archi-medes when he sprang from the bath, or the "raptus " of the deaf Beethoven, to have studied music under such conditions. Parents wonder naively why Miss Sophronia Smith, the new city teacher, does not make their boy play without stumbling. It is very strange, indeed. The lawyer studying his case demands deathlike silence in his office ; the preacher at work upon his sermon sits in a hush, warmly walled with the books of his sanctum ; but the juvenile music student is expected to follow the gossamer threads of abstract music thought in the very citadel of bedlam. Parents, put the piano in a quiet room for your children to practice, and see to it that the thermometer is not one notch below 70° Fahrenheit, and perhaps the child will not be so inattentive or the teacher so inefficient. THIS has been called the scientific age, the age of invention, the age of breaking the powers of the physical universe into forms in which they can minister most completely to the necessities and comforts of mankind. Inventors are imbued with the commercial spirit, and all departments of science and art are the fields in which they labor. Music is by no means exempt from their researches, and to-day, as may be gathered from the article by Mr. Braine, on another page of this issue, thousands of dollars are invested in plants for the man-ufacture of automatic musical instruments. Every day witnesses the exploitation of some new piece of ingenious mechanism for the rendering of musical compositions. The music-box, with its silvery, bell-like tongues, has long been with us, and varies in size and repertoire from a hymn book to a melodeon; from a single tune to many score. The rolled paper stencil, with its many-shaped and many-sized holes, which operate either the air puffs of an organ or the hammers of a piano, seems like a veritable magician. Everything up to the most intricate polyphonic score of Wagner can be made to sound by this giant ribbon. Has it struck the death-knell of the artist? the key-note of a lazy world, in which humanity will lie supine and receive all its music by outward pressure? By no possibility. The extremest ingenuity of man has never yet made mechanical mimicry to possess that mystic charm which we call life. An orchestrion is not an orchestra—the warm blood, the flowing breath, the beating hearts, the alert brains of the players have a mystic efficacy. The most wonderful Swiss clock, with its dancing figures and mechanical birds, deceives no one. A watch is wonderful, but it is not so wonderful as a child. A photograph is a marvel, but you do not mistake it for your dead friend. The photogram, which performs its miracle in the Edison phonograph, can not replace the living, speaking man. Mechanical music may have its value, and doubtless will serve important uses in future, but the joy of producing the music—fresh, pew, alive, out of your conscious, intense, active self—is, sui generis, a thing not to be obliterated or replaced by any effective substi-tute. LITERATURE and art, not less than politics and dress, must obey the fickle moon of fashion. One of the most interesting philosophic studies is the comparing and con-trasting of ages and epochs of intellectual development. Thus, the style of an Elisabethan author can be readily distinguished from that of an author of the age of Queen Anne, or that of Victoria—the style of an American dialect poet like J. Whitcomb Riley from that of a French declaimer like Victor Hugo. Equally in our be-loved and most significant art, music, the styles of the epochs of evolution differ widely. Thus, in the days of Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, and Rameau, counterpoint and everlasting tinkling of the sixteenths, set off with the trill and the mordent, were all the rage ; then, in the age of the great Viennese masters, the sonata was the thing ; and the only thing now-a-days—it is dance-forms and folk-music. The true student must deal with all these, and must extract from all the strong and varied tinctures that make good blood. IT is not unusual to find paragraphs in musical papers or in the musical columns of the daily press making cynical comment on " fashionable fads " in music, or on "society and music." And yet fashionable society in more than one city has taken the lead in the cultivation of the best music, interpreted in the best way and by the best artists, and the general public has followed. The present writer has seen it stated that Colonel Higginson, baeker of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, said that some men spent their money and found recreation in yachts, some on fast horses, some in globe-trotting, and in other ways. His hobby is his orchestra. And a noble hobby it is, one that has done an incalculable good for the heightening of the musical standard of the United States ! And Mr. Higginson's work has been successful, in part at least, because society has voted that these concerts are to be supported. In Philadelphia a number of women belonging to the " smart set " have undertaken to raise the money neces-sary to establish a symphony orchestra of the first rank. Here is society mixing in again, and as the large in-comes are usually found among people who are 1 'in society,'' the mixing in seems thoroughly practical, un-less they are but following out the whim of the moment. Professional musicians may talk about raising the standard of music, but practical work requires money, and the musicians are not the persons to furnish it. If a number of teachers and artists in any city wish to do good and effective work they must enlist the cooperation of the music lovers in the fashionable circles, those who have both wealth and social influence, and who can be depended upon for permanent interest. A WORD or two to ambitious young men and women who contemplate entering the career of concert singer. Do not be content to acquire simply the technic of the vocal art, but gain a broad education in these things that make up good musicianship : accurate time, keen feeling for pure intonation, development of the harmonic sense, knowledge of the form and structure of compositions,
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