AT HOME.
The Hope-Jones Organ Company are installing a fine organ in St. Paul’s Church, Buffalo. The organ will resemble in many ways the organ at Ocean Grove, N. J., but will be, in some respects, superior.
The ballet recently produced at the Royal Opera House, in Berlin, is said to have cost the Government 350,000 marks. The name of the ballet was “Sardanapal,” and the object was to represent the costumes and civilization of Assyria. The German Emporer (sic) is said to have taken a great interest in the event. Let us trust that the German taxpayers feel satisfied with the educational results. Eighty-five thousand dollars is a little high for a ballet even though it is intended for public instruction.
Frederick S. Converse has gone to Lausanne, Switzerland, for the winter with his family to devote himself to his work and incidentally to look out for new singers for the Boston Opera.
Arrangements are being made by the MacDowell Association to open a clubroom in the theatrical center of New York, near the Metropolitan Opera House.
The Symphony Society of New York is to perform Elgar’s new symphony under Mr. Damrosch.
The Musicians’ Union of Denver has given $500 to a fund for the establishment of a permanent orchestra in Denver.
A number of orchestral scores used by Theodore Thomas have been arranged and donated to the Newberry Library, Chicago, by Mrs. Rose Fay Thomas.
A monument has been erected on the grave of the late pianist, Alfred Reisenauer, in Konigsfturg, Prussia, by his friends and admirers.
“Lamia,” an early tone-poem of MacDowell’s, was heard for the first time at the last concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Over $6,000 was taken at Mme. Chaminade’s opening concert in New York. Standing room was sold at $1.50 and 2,000 people were turned away from the door.
Emil Liebling gave his first recital of the season in Chicago on Monday evening October 19.
Dr. Frank Lawson, who for a number of years held the position of tenor soloist at St. Bartholomew’s, is back again in New York after a summer spent in study with Frank King Clark and in Bayreuth. Dr. Lawson is one of the foremost tenors of this country, but he never feels past the point when he wants to learn all there is to be gained, and as a member of the class of that noted American teacher in Paris, Frank King Clark, he found admirable ideas which he embodies in his own teaching. Last year Dr. Lawson studied with Jean de Reszke, and therefore he is not narrow upon things which bear upon vocal study. Dr. Lawson opened his concert season October 14 with a recital at Ogonz Seminary. He will sing November 15 at the Klein popular Sunday concert, and his manager is booking a series of recitals through the East.
The success of the young American violinist, Albert Spaulding, seems to he founded upon something far more substantial than the deceptive press notices that artists sometimes forward from the other side. Mr. Spaulding, who is now only twenty years old, already has a European career behind him of which many more mature artists would be proud to boast. The son of wealthy American parents, he was brought up in refined circles and was given every possible advantage. At the age of fifteen he passed the examinations for a professorship at the Bologna Conservatory. The only musician who had previously passed this examination at so early an age was Mozart. Mr. Spaulding studied in Paris with Lefort, and his European tours, made in company with some of the most celebrated virtuosos of the day, have been a long series of successes.
A clever swindle has been perpetrated on the Omaha public by an enterprising gentleman named Mr. Rice. By paying for newspaper articles in advance, and exercising a blandishing manner he persuaded some prominent business men in that city to support him in securing a brilliant reception for one “Zamona“—a violinist of world-wide fame, who was to honor Omaha with a recital. It was to be a brilliant function, and the tickets sold like hot cakes, the sales amounting to something near eight hundred dollars. On the night of the concert it was discovered that “Zamona” was the suave Mr. Rice himself with the addition of a mustache. It is said that he played on the violin as execrably as he played on the credulity of the Omaha public!
Carl Venth, formerly concertmaster of the St. Paul Symphony Orchestra, is now connected with the Kidd Key Conservatory at Dennison, Texas.
Mrs. Margaret Young is to sing at a Pittsburg concert. She is seventy years old.
The W. W. Kimball Company Prize of $100, offered by the Chicago Madrigal Club in its sixth annual competition, was awarded November 1 to Mr. Chas. H. Bochau, Baltimore, Md., for his setting of “I Know the Way of the Wild Blush Rose.”
The one hundredth anniversary of Chopin’s birth, which occurs on March 10, 1910, is to be celebrated in Brooklyn, March 1 next.
Mr. Frank J. Brodsky, who studied under Sevcik in Prague and is first violinist in the Pittsburg Orchestra, has been added to the faculty of the Von Kunits School of Music and Art in Pittsburg, Pa.
An orchestral class in the East Side of New York has recommenced its season under the direction of Mr. Sam Franko. Its members are from ten to twenty years old, and are taught free with the understanding that they will help others less fortunate. They perform simple Mozart and Beethoven music.
Mr. Frederick W. Wodell has commenced rehearsals with the People’s Choral Union, of Boston. This being the first season under his leadership, he was much applauded at the end of the rehearsal.
Adele aus der Ohe, the pianist, is to tour Europe this season.
Louise Homer, the contralto of the Metropolitan, N. Y., is to make a “festival tour” in April.
The New York Sun says opera-goers ought to be interested to know that the name of the new managing director of the Metropolitan Opera House is not nearly such a mouthful as it looks. Nobody ever calls him “Gatti-Casaxxa.” Among his friends and business associates he is known only as Signor Gatti, and all that follows goes into the discard.
San Francisco is to have a new opera house on even more magnificent lines than the last one. The land on which it is to be built is held at $300,000, while a considerably larger sum will go into the building. In connection with the opera house will be a school of music on the ambitious lines of the New England Conservatory, and a hall for recitals and chamber concerts. The proposed site is on Sutter street, near Powell, in the heart of the new shopping district.
ABROAD.
The Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra is coming to America for a four weeks’ tour next spring.
The series of summer festival performances at Bayreuth has closed with a deficit.
It is rumored that Gustav Mahler is in negotiation for the post of director of the Berlin Royal Opera House.
A protest has been issued against the performance of Richard Strauss’ “Salome” in Buenos Ayres.
It is said that for several years the late Pablo de Sarasate’s annual income in Europe amounted to $50,000.
Christine Nilsson, the Swedish soprano, celebrated her sixty-fifth birthday a few weeks ago at the cottage in Sweden from which she started out on her career. She made her début as Violetta in 1864 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris.
Marguerite Lemon, the American soprano, has resumed duties at the Mayence Municipal Opera, where she interprets the chief lyric rôles.
Heinrich Zoellner’s opera, “Faust,” was produced for the first time under the direction of the composer at Antwerp in the Flemish Opera House. It received a very favorable reception, and the production was said to have been very artistic. Zoellner was in America for some time as conductor of a German singing society in New York. He is a man of charming personality and made friends everywhere.
A leading German musical paper refers to Frank Van der Stucken as the American composer who is best known in the Fatherland. Van der Stucken was born in Texas, but eighteen years of his youth were spent in Europe, whither he was taken to study music at the age of eight.
A musical organization, known as the Bach, Beethoven and Brahms Musical Society, has been formed in the Pennsylvania Railroad town of Renovo. Let us hope that the club will be as successful as its title is ambitious.
Sir Edward Elgar’s new symphony was recently played for the first time at a Halle concert in Manchester, under the direction of Dr. Hans Richter.
Sarasate bequeathed to the Paris Conservatoire the sum of 100,000 francs and his two favorite Stradivarius violins. In appreciation of this gift the conservatoire will erect a bust of Sarasate in the institution. Sarasate studied at the conservatoire in 1856 Sarasate also bequeathed the sum of 100,000 francs to the Conservatory at Madrid, and from the interest upon this sum a Sarasate Prize will be founded. His entire fortune amounted to about three million francs. He gave his sisters each 1,255,000 francs; all of the furniture of his fine Parisian residence he bequeathed to his native city of Pamplona. Sarasate’s most valuable violin was given to him, for the period of his life, by Queen Isabella. It was a magnificent Stradivarius. Now that the great virtuoso is dead it falls to the lot of the present Queen of Spain to award this $20,000 instrument to another Spanish virtuoso for lifetime.
There have recently been found in the possession of a grandchild of Paganini several valuable manuscripts of the famous virtuoso.
Hofrat Professor C. H. Döring, the noted composer of studies and a vast number of highly instructive teaching pieces, many of which have appeared, from time to time, in The Etude, celebrated his fiftieth anniversary as a teacher on October 11.
Capetown, South Africa, boasts of an excellent musical society, and a festival is held yearly at which the chief oratorios are adequately rendered.
Mme. Sembrich has signed a contract to appear at the Dresden Opera House, and the fact is interesting in view of the way she has hitherto been ignored there in consequence of a broken contract in earlier days.
The prize of 10,000 francs ($2,000) for the best opera, offered by the grand international competition in Paris, initiated by the publisher, Gabriel Astruc, has been awarded to a work composed by M. Louis Lambert, entitled “Penticosa.”
The Saxon General-Musik-Direktor, Herr Ernst von Schuch, has just celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his appointment as conductor of the Royal Court Opera, Dresden, surely a record difficult to beat, and all the more wonderful as Herr von Schuch is still esteemed—and rightly so—as one of the greatest living conductors.
The German Government proposes to move a resolution at the forthcoming International Congress that a composer should have sole right of mechanically reproducing his music or of permitting or refusing a public performance thereof. But when once a composer has done this, anyone else may reproduce the same for an equitable consideration.
Covent Garden Opera House, London, is said to be in the builders’ hands, who are carrying out certain alterations in the interior.
Musicians appear to be long-lived, or, at all events, to be able to boast of a healthy supply of veterans among them. Ernst Reyer, for instance, is eighty-four; Camille Saint-Säens is seventy-three and Edouard Colonne is seventy. Pauline Viardot, though she does not sing nowadays, is said to be very lively, in spite of her eighty-seven years of life.
The five hundredth performance of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” took place at Berlin recently, the first having been given on September 14, 1790.
It is reported that the Munich Prinz Regenten Wagner performances have resulted in a deficit of about $25,000, in addition to which the municipality had paid a subvention of $15,000 in advance.
Professor Michael Hambourg, the father of the celebrated pianist, Mark Hambourg, has been appointed senior professor of the piano at the Guildhall School of Music, London.
Madame Melba has given $10,000 to the London Hospital as an anniversary gift.
The eightieth birthday of Francois August Gevaert has been musically celebrated at Brussels. In May, 1847, aged nineteen, he won by composition the Belgian competition prize answering to the French “Grand Prix de Rome.” He went to France Spain, Italy and Germany and made notable reports. The division thus begun between composition and literary pursuit has marked his life. Opera composer in Paris till 1870, the siege of Paris drove him back to Brussels, where in 1871 he succeeded Fetis as director of the conservatoire. Since then he has given himself to administration and musical literature. He is president of the Belgian section of the International Musical Society.
Richard Strauss’ “Elektra” will be given in Dresden and Frankfurt before being mounted in Berlin.
Mr. Bernard Shaw’s play, “Arms and the Man,” has furnished material for the libretto of a comic opera, composed by Oscar Straus, of “A Waltz Dream” fame. Mr. Bernard Shaw is careful to point out that none of his lines are included.
Isadora Duncan, a “classic” dancer, who has arranged dances for the music of Chopin, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, and who has been “the talk of Europe” for years, is coming to America next season.
Mascagni has been severely criticised for conducting popular priced performances of his operas at Trieste. He justly maintains, however, that he has offered the poor people of the city an opportunity to hear him.
