"The Etude" Music Magazine

Tooting a Horn for Fifty Years

Etude Magazine. April, 1939

Departments:

Interviews

B. A. (BENJAMIN ALBERT) ROLFE, known to all his friends as “B. A.,” has played for years to millions of people, “over the air.” He is distinctly a self-made musician, in every sense of the word. Literally brought up from childhood in a circus band, his progress to Broadway, and his large variety of enterprises, make this one of the most colorful articles The Etude has ever presented. “B. A.” was born in Brasher Falls, St. Lawrence County, New York, and— but we had better let him tell his own “Horatio Alger” story.—Editor’s Note.

* * * * *

The “First Person” Musician

“Of course you know the old saw about the man who bragged that he was a self-made man, and how his neighbors all said that it must be true, as no one else could have made such a bad job of it. I have been bumping through life for over fifty years, and I have come to the conclusion that the only men worth while (particularly in music) are self-made men; and that includes Wagner and Elgar, as well as dozens of fine folks who did not let the lack of opportunities bother them very much. If colleges and conservatories could make superlatively fine musicians in every case, there wouldn’t be room enough for them in life. Even if the student has had the advantage of the top notch instruction in the toniest schools with the so-called best teachers to be had, it just will not get him anywhere, unless he starts out to make himself according to his own individual pattern, in his own way, with his own hands, mind, heart and soul, count upon it, that he will turn out as a dud.

“We have been hearing a lot of fun poked at the rugged individualist and his possible extinction. Take it from me, there is little room at the top in art for anything but the rugged individualist. Unless you are that, you are just a cog, and in music you are doomed to play second fiddle all your days. One of the things that appeals to me in modern ‘stream lined’ jazz, from the earliest Paul Whiteman period to this day, is that the players are not expected to spend their days tooting out umpahs on a horn or sawing out la la’s on a fiddle, but each fellow is expected to be himself and to play with individuality. My, what a difference there is between the ‘now’ and ‘then’ in music. Now thousands and thousands of students in public school bands and orchestras have study advantages that were almost unknown in conservatories when I was a lad; and these kids just take this as a matter of course. They have no idea of the value of the gems that are literally hung around their necks. And how is this all going to work out? I have an idea that the things we have to work our heads off to get mean a whole lot more to us. If every boy and girl could be made to see that it is only the ‘plus’ work that they do that matters, the situation would not affect them. But, if they accept what is laid before them without putting in their utmost efforts, they cannot expect to get very far in any endeavor.

And so “Excelsior!”

“NOW WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN? It means that the general average of musical ability among young people has rocketed up enormously. This, in turn, means that for every capable youngster of forty years ago, there now are probably a thousand. This feeling is but natural to me, because I was considered a prodigy at six years of age. Thus the median line of ability is vastly higher than it was forty years ago. But if all the students stay on the median line, we will have thousands who will be mediocre and nothing more. The successful student must rise above the level of all of his fellows, if he expects to amount to anything.

“Both my father, who played the violin and the cornet, and my mother, who played the clarinet, were amateur musicians. Father was foreman in the saw mill of the Chippewa Lumber and Boon Company, at Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. There he organized Rolfe’s Independent Band. Remember, entertainment in those days was limited, and the town band was as important to the community as the soldiers’ monument and the iron deer on the lawn in front of the City Hall. There must have been a thousand such bands in America, in towns of five hundred to ten thousand people. They were often dignified with the name of “The Silver Cornet Band”; the word silver seeming to have connoted sweetness of tone, although the material out of which an instrument is made has little bearing upon the tone quality. The highly polished horns looked luxuriant, however; and, when the Silver Cornet Band marched down Main Street, the town was thrilled to a new sense of civic prosperity and importance comparable only to that when the Fire Company turned out. Many of the town’s leading lights took a great pride in belonging to the band. One such instance was President Warren G. Harding, who was always thrilled by his musical beginnings in the Marion (Ohio) Silver Cornet Band. The bands were usually supported by the members and by private contributions.

“It was about this period that a very unusual enterprise swept the country and that was roller skating. Every town of ten thousand or so suddenly found itself in possession of a humpbacked building which looked like a huge Saratoga trunk. The interior was bare, save for the polished floors and a mammoth cylindrical stove in each of the four corners.

“In the center of the building, hanging from the ceiling, was the bandstand. In order to get to it one had to climb a ladder, which was drawn up after him. The band played waltzes, which seemed to lend themselves to skating; and no one will ever know how much this regular support to players may have then contributed to the development of bands in the United States. The craze was just as widespread as the “jitterbug” madness of to-day. There was no mechanical music in those days, and, with the rumble of the skates, a band was the ideal music. It seemed as though the whole country was on wheels, and the rink proprietors discovered one important thing. Music was absolutely necessary. If there was no music, people would not skate. They liked the rhythm, and thousands forgot their inhibitions as they rolled around the rink to the tunes of Strauss and Waldteufel.

And Then to the West

“During this craze my family moved to the West, and one of my first recollections in life is that of having a piccolo placed in my little hands and being told by my parents how to play it. This, to a six year old boy, was a great thrill; and before I realized it I was actually playing in the band. The next summer I was put in possession of an alto trombone, which delighted me still more. Readers of The Etude will certainly find a picture of this band interesting. The uniform consisted of ordinary clothes, plus a ‘plug’ hat. That was all that was necessary. The plug hat gave a touch of municipal dignity and social éclat to the group. The plug hat on a bandsman gave him much the same distinction that it conferred upon a cannibal king. The one outstanding uniform, however, was the drum major, who may be seen at the extreme left of the picture. No Balkan potentate was ever more resplendent. In the picture you will also discover a very small boy with a horn, and I was that boy. The band was my life. It had among its members many interesting characters, particularly Chick Phillips, who played the circular alto (Helicon) horn. In the first place, he had to put on the horn like a kind of sash, which was always a fascinating operation; and then Chick had one gift which distinguished him among artists. He could wiggle his ears up and down in time with the music. Sometimes I got so interested in him that I could hardly look at the music.

An Insatiable Paterfamilias

“Father, having tasted the joys of art, and having the trouper’s arrogant outlook upon trade and work in general, decided to devote himself to music. He was a character that could have been created only by his age. Like Micawber, he was an unrelenting optimist. Hard luck and failure were merely the overtures to great triumphs which were at all times awaiting us, and might come at any time. In appearance he resembled W. C. Fields (minus the vermillion proboscis), but with Field’s (sic) long cloak and inevitable top hat worn at a rakish angle. He wanted to be conspicuous, because he knew that in those days the public looked upon show people with a kind of awe and mystery which are a part of the showman’s stock in trade. Therefore he took a pride in his bombastic self-assurance and his charlatanlike flair. It meant business for us.

“After playing in the band for three years, father returned to our home in New York, where he joined a traveling wagon show (Lewis and Wardrobe). It was a very poor affair, with a few acrobats, a clown and some monkeys, performing bears, ponies and dogs. We aimed for the head waters of the Ottawa, in the French speaking section in far northern Canada. The band was as much of a sensation as the circus. Our trip was through a wild country and one very intriguing to a growing boy. The season finally closed, the circus broke up and, as usual, we were likewise broke. But nothing daunted father; and we were merely released from an in-appreciative and unremunerative public to go on to greater heights.

“Our next expedition was with a Concert Company, so-called. It was really a kind of traveling vaudeville show, with a comedian whose daughter was the ingenue. Her mother played straight parts. My father played the violin and the cornet, and my mother the melodeon and the clarinet. As a ‘boy wonder,’ I played the cornet. These, together with a string bass, a trapeze performer, and an Indian club swinger, made up our company. But it was ‘art music and drama’; and father was happy. Forty dollars at the box office was tops, and really very fine for eight people in those days. When we landed in town and made our way to the ‘op’ry’ house, we were objects of great curiosity to the town folks, who looked upon us as a people from the outside world, much as we would regard a man from Mars. Father reveled in this and made the most of its publicity value.

The Picturesque Circus Period

“In 1888, when I was ten, father signed as bandmaster of the John H. Sparke’s Show. We were coming up in the world. The first year we ‘Tommed’ it. That is, we played ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ under canvas. The next year we became real circus folks. The show wintered in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and started out with eight full sized railroad cars. Count ‘em! Those were the days! Many a ‘Hey, rube’ fight have I witnessed from a vantage point underneath a band wagon seat. In a mining town, for instance, the miners would come down with lamps in their hats and announce that they had no idea of paying for seats. Someone would cry, ‘Hey, rube,’ and thereupon the circus performers automatically tied handkerchiefs on their left arms, for identification purposes, and started battle. They laid hold of tent stakes which, from much hammering, were mushroomed on top and made deadly weapons. Father seemed to rejoice in these fights and earned many a black eye. The circus folk were organized, trained and armed warriors; and the townsmen had little chance with such a crew.

“What the circus did for me was to furnish a chance to play an instrument four hours every day of the week; and somehow I got the idea that, by playing very well at every performance, I would go ahead. My ambition was to become another famous cornet soloist, like Jules Levy, Pat Gilmore or Arbuckle. I heard the great Levy once, and I learned his much played polka, Leviathan, which in its day was a famous ‘war horse’ for cornetists.

“The foregoing is a fair sample of most of my life up to my twentieth year. The shows were on the road in the summer, and this permitted me to get a schooling in the winter. We played with Indian Wild West melodramas and other artistic organizations. Back at home again, I ‘picked up’ the organ and soon found myself conducting a Catholic choir. I was not afraid to tackle anything, and there was no one to stop me. My great ambition, however, was to become another John Philip Sousa, a real bandmaster. In order to progress, I felt that my next objective should be Broadway, the heaven of all show interests. I was conscious of my own shortcomings and realized that, at the age of twenty-one, everyone thought that I knew more than I actually did. Furthermore, it was clear that I needed more study and experience.

“It took four years to make my way to the Great White Way. In this time I was a band conductor and then a theater conductor ‘on my own,’ and in such callings I just had to learn things. For a time I was at the head of the wind instrument department of Louis Lombard’s famous conservatory in Utica, New York; and there it was discovered that one of the best ways to learn a thing is to teach it. Finally I went to New York and formed a partnership with Jesse L. Laskey. Our idea was to improve the musical acts in vaudeville, then at its height, by making these acts musically better, dressing them in smart costumes and securing handsome and efficient young women and young men to play in them. The scheme made an immense hit. We had as many as six acts a season continuously booked. The acts would bring from eight hundred to fifteen hundred dollars a week, and the profits were excellent.

And Other Worlds We Conquer

“In 1913 I BEGAN TO LOOK AROUND for different fields and decided to go into the production of motion pictures with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. We produced one hundred and ten features, five to seven reels in length. In 1918 I became an independent producer, under the name of B. A. Rolfe and Columbia Pictures Corporation. After producing thirty-six pictures the venture failed, and in 1920 I found myself broke. That is, all but my cornet and my ability to play it. Always, when on the rocks, I have gone back to my cornet. There was little trouble in getting engagements; but soon it was realized that a great change had come over popular music. This was largely due to the genius of Paul Whiteman, who gathered around him a group of players of astonishing ability; and also to the talent of composers and arrangers

of great skill, such as Ferde Grofé, and George Gershwin. Whiteman’s style ‘caught on’ immediately, and he had many followers. Here was a kind of music I did not know, and which must be learned. Consequently a job was accepted in the band of Vincent Lopez, at the Hotel Pennsylvania of New York City. By 1927 I had my own band and secured a fine engagement at the Palais d’Or in New York. This was a great advantage, because the café had a radio wire seven times a week, and we played to millions. Commercial broadcasting was just coming into vogue, and we were engaged for the ‘Lucky Strike’ hour. This obliged me to create a fine, strong organization. There were fifty-five men in the band, but that was only part of the group.

The public has a very scant appreciation of the amount of labor, in the way of preparation and rehearsals, required for radio hours. We played several times a week and, in order to secure enough of the right kind of music, it was necessary to have twenty-three arrangers and copyists. We played on an average of sixty-seven numbers a week—many entirely new and very ‘tricky.’ In order to get material, I had to ransack the files for fine old tunes of other days and to dress them up in new clothes. The tremendous value of advertising in connection with the promotion of sales, may be demonstrated by the fact that the dividends of the cigarettes sponsoring our program rose from twenty-six million dollars in 1928, to sixty-four million dollars in 1931, and much of this was due to radio advertising.

“Modern musical tendencies in popular music are, in a large measure, due to the change in the general attitude toward dancing; and this in turn is due to youth, insatiable youth, in its fling for vivacious and hilarious expression. The old traditional dances have been discarded, temporarily at least. The beautiful waltz, in its proper form, is almost as archaic as the minuet. Our present day dances are not founded upon tradition but upon unrestrained bodily expression, let the chips fall where they may. Hence, the ‘jitterbug.’ The uncontrolled rush and urge of the age has kidnapped youth; and the musical result is like a cork popping out of a bottle. I am not railing against it, as it would do little good if I did. I am merely chronicling the situation, as everyone with sense must see it.

“The main ideas of the modern radio band are orchestral tone color and rhythm, with always rhythm predominating. For this reason the composition of the band has changed very materially. The instruments I now employ for a representative group are two oboes, four clarinets, a bass clarinet, two horns, two flutes, two bassoons, two pianos, two string basses, two banjos (for marking rhythm), four trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, six saxophones, and percussions. Such a band is not designed to play the classics. It is a dominating, effective and direct group, designed to command and hold attention every second. It must present a great variety of tone color, and must be exceptionally flexible at all times. The modern radio band is by no means a fixed organization. It will keep changing until the public determines just what it wants, if that point ever arrives.”

SOUSA MEMORIAL PLANNED

Plans for a Sousa Memorial Monument in Washington, D. C., are under way• This picture shows, left to right and seated, B. A. Rolfe, Mrs. John Philip Sousa, and Arthur Pryor; standing, Priscilla and Helen, daughters of Commander and Mrs. Sousa; as they discuss the Memorial.

Sing With Your Heart! By Frieda Hempel, Internationally Renowned Prima Donna

Etude Magazine. April, 1939

Departments:

Interviews ,
Vocalists

A Conference Secured Expressly for The Etude Music Magazine

By ROSE HEYLBUT

IF I WERE ASKED to define the singer’s art, I should not explain it in terms of vocal technic. I should say that it lies in the ability to move an audience, in a worthy manner. That, to me, is the summing up of the meaning of art. You go to a concert and hear great songs performed by a great voice—and it may still happen that you come away bowed down by all your own troubles. You go to another concert, and hear the very same songs sung by a different voice, and you come away so buoyed in mood and lifted in spirit that your troubles cease to exist. You can move mountains, sheerly on the strength that concert has provided. The difference between those two reactions marks, not a quality of voice, but the power of the singers’ art. The singer who performs notes alone is merely a technician. But the singer who can face a hall full of listeners—of different ages, races, and temperaments—and lift them all to the same pitch of emotional release, such a singer is an artist.

How, then, shall the young singer set about making herself an artist? The first requisite can neither be taught nor learned. It must be inborn. We know that a person, who lacks a talent for drawing, never can become a great painter. In the matter of singing, we are less reasonable. Everybody has a voice; therefore, everybody ought to be able to sing, if only he is lucky enough to find the right teacher to show him the right “tricks.” Which, of course, is a profound mistake. Everyone has a voice, true enough, and can be taught to make that voice more agreeable. But a singing career requires a great and unusual voice. Thus, the first study in which the ambitious young singer should engage is the all important self-analysis which alone can indicate the direction of future work. Make sure your inborn gifts do not fall too far behind your ambitions. Then assure yourself that there are no “tricks.” Only conscientious work can build an art.

I have said that the measure of art is the power to move; and many qualities besides voice are necessary to project that power. Regardless of vocal discipline, the singer must build a picture in her own mind and send it out, into the minds and hearts of her hearers. At once, a great many activities come into play. She must create in her own mind the exact image she wants to project. She must feel it deeply enough to make it convincing. She must express it clearly enough for others to understand. In this sense, she sings not only with her voice, but also with her brain, her heart—with her whole body.

Art Is Simplicity

We talk much of specialization, of methods, of short cuts to fluency. We crowd our pupils’ minds with technical sounding problems, and lose sight of the fact that all this talk about singing leads us farther and farther away from singing itself. It is always a pity to let the trees block out one’s view of the forest. We need a return to simple, natural, fundamental singing.

The young singer should be given as little confusing theory about singing as possible. She should be permitted to sing. Only in this way will her personal problems reveal themselves—and no two singers have exactly the same problems to solve. The young singer should be trained to draw a perfectly natural breath and to release it naturally. Does that-sound too simple? It is the best foundation upon which to build. Let the problems be solved after they

have asserted themselves; do not anticipate them. A singer need not be troubled with complicated theories of breath support until it is shown that she needs special development along those lines.

The first year of study should be devoted entirely and exclusively to tone building. I cannot express that too emphatically. Tone building, and nothing else, is quite enough for that important first year. Each tone of the voice must be explored and made certain. The separate tones must be combined into a smooth scale which encompasses the entire range evenly, passing from low tones to the middle register, and thence to the upper tones, and all this without the least suspicion of a break. Nothing can take the place of full, even scales. Next, these tones must be taken in different values — staccato, sustained, spun out, in trills, in arpeggios. The perfection of these various values is the work of a lifetime. A single year, in the formative stage, is hardly too much to spend in concentration upon them. Complete songs should never be attempted before the second year of study; and then only the simplest songs! Not until the third year, when the tones are sure and “settled” enough to be carried over into songs and vocalises, should the student begin to work on arias. The first arias to study are the Italian ones. They are easier for the voice, and lay the foundations for greater finesse.

No Excellence Without Labor

Time is perhaps the chief ingredient of artistry. Studies must be not only acquired; they must be allowed to ripen, within one’s mind and within one’s throat. The saddest mistake a young singer can make is to try to work quickly. Indeed, it cannot be done! Let us make no mistake about this matter of learning. One can manage to sing a scale or an exercise inside of a week. But it has not been learned until it lies in the voice easily and naturally. The one who has studied a foreign language will appreciate the difference between mastering the individual words and putting them together in a full, spontaneous sentence. At the beginning, one must stop and think out each word, and he may utter those words quite correctly. But such a halting process is a very different matter from speaking the language. It is the same in singing. To know how to combine eight tones into a correct scale is a very different matter from having learned to sing scales. The tones must sit naturally in the voice. The technical disciplines must fall naturally into the tones. Only then can one speak of singing.

My own vocal production was always easy and natural. I had no special problems to trouble me, and I could have gone ahead very quickly—but I was not allowed to do so. For three long years I was kept at the study of tone building and technical drill. At sixteen, I was offered a part in opera; but it was necessary to refuse it while I was getting a reliable foundation in singing. At the time I regretted what seemed a crushing waste of years. To-day I am thankful for the discipline which built my voice into a sound organ, and which has kept it so. Even now I am as careful in my work as I was in my earliest student days.

I love my songs and learn them easily. After scanning a page of music for five minutes, I know it by heart. But I never sing a song in public until I have spent at least six months living with it, working at it, polishing it—taking it into my system until it becomes a natural part of me. On one occasion, this finishing process had interesting results. The late Roland Farley sent me his alluring Night Wind; and, after months of study, it seemed that the song could be improved by some slight changes, both in the accompaniment and the melody. I made my suggestions to Mr. Farley, and he kindly accepted them, saying that henceforth, Night Wind was my song.

The soundest advice I can offer the student of singing is, do not hurry! Be patient. Allow yourself time to take your art seriously. The student who accepts engagements within twenty months of study, will be finished and forgotten years before the careful artist is beginning to assert herself.

The life of the voice depends upon the thoroughness of early training, and upon constant exercise. There is no such thing as tiring a voice through singing, provided its production is natural and sound. The very fact that the voice becomes tired is an indication of incorrect singing methods. The well used voice is not only able to continue singing—it needs to sing. Imagine how your hair would look if you gave the scalp muscles a “little rest” from brushing. The voice fares no better. Every day, at all times and seasons, the singer should spend two hours working at scales, arpeggios, leaps, trills, sustained tones, spun tones. Practice may never cease. I spend two hours every day at my work, in half hour intervals exactly as I did during my first year at the Conservatory. It is my law. And my voice is the fresher for it.

The Soul of Song

But vocal ability alone is only one of the requirements of art. It is important as a means of expression. Equally important is the emotional value to be expressed. We call this “interpretation.” Actually, it is more than interpretation. It is the creation of a mood which lifts and moves one’s hearers. This must be an eminently personal thing. One can imitate “effects” (though it is an unwise procedure) but she cannot imitate emotional conviction. That is why great, warmth giving artists are rare. It is also why interpretation is so difficult to teach. When artists come to me for advice and study, I can tell in the first moment of their singing whether they actually feel the song deeply and sincerely enough to convince others. If their powers of conviction are not very strong, I never attempt to tell them what to do. Instead, I try, by examples, to stimulate a warmer feeling within them. Is it a lullaby that a young girl wishes to sing? I take her away from the music and the business of singing, and ask her if she has ever held a little child in her arms. Did she enjoy the experience? How did the baby look? What did it do? At once, the girl drops her “audition” self and becomes natural, telling me of some little sister, or niece, or friend.

“Now, don’t tell me any more,” I say. “Take everything you have in mind, and put it into your song.”

And immediately, the lullaby becomes warm and real and convincing. It ceases to be a “concert number”; it becomes a reality, a part of human life.

Again, take Schubert’s lovely “Ihr Bild.” Let the student get away from singing problems, and concentrate on the text. Has she ever looked long and yearningly at some picture—a picture, perhaps, of some loved one who has died? As she looks at this picture, has she never felt the sudden conviction that the beloved face has come to life and smiles in affection and encouragement? Let that personal experience, with its personal reactions, be the keynote for the mood of the song. When she plans her effects according to what they “ought to be,” they become artificial and cold. Only sincere emotion can reach the hearts of her hearers.

There must be an eminently personal bridge between the singer’s heart and the hearts of her audience. The notes of the music are merely the messengers who cross the bridge. Be as natural in your effects as you can. Do not stand stiffly on the stage, because someone has told you it is undignified to move your hands at a concert. Spend much time studying the inner, personal meaning of your songs, and then express it in the way that you think it should be expressed. There is no one right way! Each artist will express the same song differently—and that is why art remains alive. After one of my recitals, a friend who was ill and could not go, told me she had heard that, in one song, I had made a pretty effect with my hands. She wanted to know just what I had done. I was quite unable to tell her what I had done. I do not remember using my hands while singing, any more than I remember what I did with them when someone wished me “A Merry Christmas.” In each case, I did what came naturally, as the only spontaneous thing to do. Planned “effects” never move.

The Imponderable Lied

Lieder singing is an art quite by itself. It is difficult because it depends entirely upon the projection powers of the singer. There are no stage settings, no costumes, no buoying orchestra. One comes out upon the stage, and the entire effect to be made rests solely upon what one has to give. Further, lieder singing is intimate in style. Most of the songs are brief, and center around a mood or a feeling; and each requires the most sensitive kind of interpretation. We often find singers whose style and nature are too robust to lend themselves gracefully to this essentially sensitive type of music.

The first requisite for artistic lieder singing is imagination. Nearly every great lied either paints a picture or describes some personal emotion. The art of the singer lies in visualizing the picture, reliving the mood, and in sending both out across the footlights so convincingly that the listener in the farthest row will feel himself personally and intimately included. This is no slight task. One must have a thorough mastery of the mood and remain deeply imbued with it, in order to project so evanescent a thing through the length and breadth of a large public hall. Imagination must therefore be part of the singer’s inborn equipment; also, it must constantly be stimulated and refreshed, in the way that has been suggested.

The Approach to Study

Always begin the study of a song away from the music, working entirely from the text. Let the meaning and the beauty of the poem sink into your mind. Recite it, as a poem. You will be surprised, in working at a new song, to find that the natural lilt and emphasis of the words suggest the line of the melody. In Schumann’s Du bist wie eine Blume, the climax of adjectives, “so hold und schoen und rein” suggests a natural upswing of the voice, which is exactly provided in the music. Paint a picture with the words, and express it through the music. When the opening notes of the accompaniment are sounded, they should serve as the frame into which your picture mood must fit.

I see no harm in learning by imitation, provided that the models are worth imitating, and that the imitation does not become mechanical or slavish. Where could one find a better standard for the singing of the Caro nome than the record by Nellie Melba? But—do not try to be Melba! Use her interpretation as the basis upon which you may superimpose your own ideas. Naturally, you will not do as well as Melba. But you will bring something to your singing which is freshly and truly your own, and which will therefore be better than copying anybody.

Above all, work! Work with your brain and your heart, as well as with your voice. A New York critic recently wrote that the day may come when it will be no longer possible to present Mozart’s operas, because the present day singers lack the suavity of line and the polish necessary to do them full justice. That would be a dreadful day to which to look forward. There is no lack of fine vocal material. But vocal material alone is a long distance from worthy art. The great operas of pure bel canto—those of Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, and some of Verdi—lacked nothing when they were sung by artists of the stamp of Melba, Lilli Lehmann, Battistini, and the De Reszkes. And those artists, in their turn, devoted their entire lives to the perfection of their work. They did not merely coach parts for next week’s performance; they made musical history! It is regrettable that our own day, which has brought us such progress in making music accessible, should be contented with standards that are less splendid than those of the past. There is a reason for it, of course; an age of speed and spectacular successes makes it possible to go ahead on less than perfection; and, if this can be done, there is the inevitable temptation to do it. But the artist who is worthy of the name will not surrender to such temptations. She will continue to strive for perfection, for the sake of her own inner peace. The students of to-day will be the artists of to-morrow. It is to them that I appeal. Let the flame in the torch go on burning clearly. Only by honest hard work and honest sentiment can one succeed in moving the hearts of others.

New Concepts In Present Day Music

Etude Magazine. April, 1939

Departments:

Interviews

From a Conference with

PAUL WHITEMAN
Secured Expressly for The Etude Music Magazine
By JAMES FRANCIS COOKE

Paul Whiteman was born in 1891, in Denver, Colorado. His father, as Supervisor of Music in the Public Schools, was one of the first to champion orchestras and bands in high schools. Paul started his career by playing the violin in one of these high school groups. Then he became the first viola player in the Denver Symphony Orchestra. At twenty-two he went to San Francisco, where in 1915 he played in the World’s Fair Orchestra. Later Alfred Hertz engaged him for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. In the following article he tells many interesting facts about the remainder of his career.—Editor’s Note.

SOUND IS WHAT I AM AFTER— sound and rhythm, for these are the materials that all composers must use, in some form, to create the designs by means of which they must express their ideas and their inspirations. Music is a thing of the ears. True, one can imagine music without sound, just as a trained musician can take a score and read it silently. Beethoven and Smetana had to do that, because in their later years they were almost stone deaf; but to most people music is meaningless unless it is heard. For years, musicians seem to have to go upon the basis that music could sound only in one way, and that only certain sounds were legally permissible. In fact, the musical lawmakers in the past were like the gentlemen in Congress who sit up nights thinking how many restrictions they can throw about life, rather than trying to make life , more prosperous, abundant and enjoyable. Nobody will ever know how much music has been held back by the verboten boys who are far more interested in telling what not to do than in making really worth while music themselves. I was brought up to believe, for instance, that parallel fifths were a venomous species of musical mayhem or assault and battery. Puccini and others have shown that, if one knows how to use fifths, they may be tremendously effective. The same obstructions applied to the introduction of new instruments. The saxophone had a fearful struggle at the start; and when we introduced banjos and guitars in our group, because there were no other instruments which could etch in the rhythm quite so well, some of the older musicians looked aghast.

On a Sound Base

“Possibly my own orthodox bringing up has had much to do with the direction of my work. You see, my father, who was of Welsh and Scotch extraction, was a pedagog, a school music superintendent, and a rather severe and unrelenting one. He played in the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and was a strong believer in the union. He got me into the union as a youth, and I played the viola in the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (later in the Denver Symphony Orchestra) and became acquainted with the symphonic repertoire from Bach to Debussy.

“There was a union rule that, when opportunities to play turned up, the members of the union should be given the first

chance. In this way I played with visiting opera companies and thus added to my experience. The year round income from this however, was not enough to support me. My pay stopped when the symphony and orchestra season ended; and I realized that if I did not want to “go broke” I had to find some other source of income.

“Jazz was just beginning to be popular and I made the surprising discovery that, while I was able to earn only forty dollars a week in the symphony orchestra, I could get ninety dollars a week playing what was then called “jazz” fiddle. I received work in Tait’s Cafe Orchestra in San Francisco, and after a short time I was fired. I was not good enough, I who had played the classic symphony and opera repertoire. This made me mad, and I determined to find out why. The great war came on and I enlisted in the navy. Then I played all manner of vaudeville programs. Equipped with this unique experience, I faced a new problem. Of course, what there was of jazz in those days was lamentable. The music was often of a very cheap type, the arrangements inexpert, and a great deal was left to the improvizations of the player, as it is with the so-called swing music of to-day. I began to wonder if it were not possible to combine these appealing themes with something of the technic of the symphony orchestra. Was there not some way to take this music, however humble its origin, and make it acceptable to the great public and at the same time musically worth while?

In Lighter Vein

“In other words, I was convinced that lighter music with spontaneity could be written in a way which could be played from notes by expert players, with the same accuracy and precision demanded in the symphony orchestra. Would such music lose whatever flavor might come from the jazz improvizations that were derived from what is now called a swing “jam” session, in which the players extemporize upon their parts. My reply to this is that my orchestra still has “jam sessions,” and, if any of the players invents anything particularly clever in the way of a variation, this is carefully noted down and preserved so that it may be put in notes for future use. Now, it must be stated that there is a vast differ-

ence between the type of highly trained and educated musician in my band, who does this, and an absolutely untutored person who indulges in all kinds of musical extravagances which might destroy the whole harmonic structure of the work.

“What has been the result of all this? It has, in the first place, developed a new type of musical virtuosity from the standpoint of versatility, tone and technic. Our boys have to think very fast in these days, far faster than in the regular symphony orchestra. I have been obliged continually to reject symphonic players, because they do not think quickly enough for our programs. Such a player as Bix Biederbecke, is one of the most marvelous performers upon the trumpet ever known. Benny Goodman has a terrific technic. If he developed his legato and some other things, there would be no finer symphony clarinetist in the United States.

“All this has made a new field for musical arrangers. Special arrangements have had to be made; and my bill for arrangements has run at times as high as forty-two hundred to six thousand dollars a week. Ferde Grofé played the piano in my group and had new and fresh ideas upon arranging which have since made him famous. It was Grofé who advised with George Gershwin in constructing the famous Rhapsody in Blue; and then he (Grofé) made one of the most famous orchestrations in recent musical history. This does not reflect in any way upon the obvious genius of Gershwin. Grofé supplied what Gershwin did not have.

We Invade the Classics

“One of our first attempts was Rimsky-Korsakoff’s “Song of India,” which has essentially a dance rhythm and lent itself marvelously to the new style. There was a great hue and cry about “jazzing” the classics. We were ruining musical taste. What was the result? Mme. Alda and Fritz Kreisler had made records of this, for the Victor Talking Machine Company. After the popularity of our records the sales of the Alda and Kreisler records increased three hundred percent. Surely no injury was done to the classics by our widely heard version.

“The great music of the past is a storehouse of musical thematic material. I refer particularly to Bach. Bach is a mint of themes of great value from a dance music standpoint. There are literally thousands of them tucked away in the contrapuntal fabric of this great master who is the basis of everything in music. Combine the glory of Bach with the sweetness of Mendelssohn and the grandeur of Beethoven, and you have touched the horizons of all music.

“I look upon the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy as the greatest musical instrument of its type in the world. There has never been anything in the way of an orchestra so exquisitely perfect and responsive. In my opinion the best orchestras in England could not stand with our foremost similar American organizations. The English orchestras are superb in their finish, but the rich color is not there. Combine the fire of Ole Bull, the vibrato of Elman, the youthful vigor of Menuhin, and the soul of Kreisler, and you have them all in the Philadelphia Orchestra. The fastest developing symphony orchestra in America, to my mind, is unquestionably the National Symphony Orchestra under Hans Kindler.

“The orchestra I use in broadcasting at present is made up as follows:

9 saxophones
These expert players all double;
that is, they play the following
instruments when the arrangements
call for it:
9 play clarinet
5 play bass clarinet
3 play flute
2 play oboe
2 play English horn

2 play bassoon

6 brass including

3 trumpets and 3 trombones

2 pianos

2 guitars

2 drums

1 string bass

6 violins

2 violas

(I am often asked why we do not use horns. Well, if a horn player in a symphony orchestra is an expert, he is usually too old to learn to play our complicated rhythms. If he has not this technic, it takes him too long to get it.)

“After many years of experience and innumerable tours with my group, during which time we have combined with the greatest symphony orchestras in the land, to show the public what this new form of music is; I am coming to the opinion that we do not belong with a symphony orchestra, and a symphony orchestra does not belong with us. In fact I am continually looking for something new, as the opportunities of the times make this possible.

The Ever Widening Horizon

“Broadcasting and radio have made new and important obligations. Many people, who are acquainted only with the established type of symphony orchestra, in which the player takes one place at the beginning of the concert and never moves until the intermission, are amazed when they attend one of my broadcasts and find the players continually moving about. One humorous observer said that they seemed to dart from here to there on the stage like goldfish in an aquarium. This is not done for visual effect, of course, but merely to bring certain groups nearer to the microphones so that some particular part will be properly stressed. For instance, the drummer may run up to the microphone with a cymbal and a wire fly-swatter and, holding both right up before the “mike” hit it one swat. That is because that particular sound effect would be lost to the air if the drummer were in his usual place. All these things must be very carefully studied and tried out many times, before they are introduced.

“Some years ago (in 1924), I gave the first concert of music in the modern style at Aeolian Hall, which included the famous Rhapsody in Blue and also an original work written for the occasion by Victor Herbert. Besides Gershwin and Herbert, almost the whole concert consisted of well-established jazz numbers, such as Yes, we have no Bananas.

“Last Christmas night, at Carnegie Hall, I gave another program which included for the first time music especially written for electrical amplification, and many different novelties, embracing the new palette of musical colors and tonal values made possible by modern conditions. We have now in our orchestral scores new musical pigments which are adding to music a new interest. I am seriously interested in the future possibilities of this expansion of musical materials, as may be understood when I state that, although the house was sold out on Christmas Eve, the various expenses of the concert exceeded the receipts of six thousand dollars.

A HISTORIC MEETING

This group came together to discuss the famous Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin. From left to right the individuals are Ferde Grofé, who made the memorable orchestration of the composition; Deems Taylor, composer; Paul Whiteman; Blossom Seeley, and George Gershwin, the composer

What Do Bands Mean to America?

Etude Magazine. April, 1939

Departments:

Interviews

From a Conference with FRED A. HOLTZ

PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BAND INSTRUMENT MANUFACTURERS, 1933-1939

Secured Expressly for The Etude Music Magazine

By WILLIAM ROBERTS TILFORD

OCCUPYING THE FOREMOST POSITION in the band instrument manufacturing industry in America, Fred A. Holtz takes pride in the fact that he is just one of the many who, seeing a horn displayed in a music store, became ambitious to master that horn and play with a band. As he recounts, it was a second hand low grade imported slide trombone carrying a price tag of five dollars. His weekly pay at that time (he was fourteen) being just two dollars, he finally ventured in and made a deal to buy the horn for a one dollar down payment and fifty cents per week. Four years later, shortly after becoming eighteen, he was proudly marching in the front rank of the U: S. Military Academy Band at West Point, among the other trombonists in that famous organization. Then followed two years with an Army Band in the Philippine Islands and several years with circus bands, “opery house” orchestras, dance bands, and so on, until in 1912 he joined the sales department of one of the largest lime producing companies in the United States. In 1920 he entered the sales department of The Martin Band Instrument Company, becoming Sales Manager, and later, in 1931, he was elected President of the company, as well as President of each of the two affiliated companies, The Pedler Company (manufacturers of clarinets and other reed instruments) and The Indiana Band Instrument Company. In 1933 he was elected President of the National Association of Band Instrument Manufacturers, Inc.; and, at the last Music Trades Convention, held in Chicago in August, he was re-elected to that office for the sixth term.—Editor’s Note.

A Mighty Musical Phalanx

“That instrumental music, and particularly band music, is a tremendous and powerful force for individual benefit to young Americans, girls as well as boys, can no longer be denied by anyone. On every side we see and hear marching and concert bands, which perform classical as well as martial music with all the assurance and all the technical proficiency which characterize the performance of professional organizations and, during the winter concert season, we hear school symphony orchestras whose performance is almost unbelievably excellent, considering the youthfulness of the members. There must be somewhere between eighty and one hundred thousand musical organizations, not considering vocal groups, in the schools of America, ranging all the way from twenty to one hundred or more pieces. If we consider the average membership as forty or fifty, quick computation will indicate that from four to five million youngsters in all parts of America are blowing cornets, clarinets, saxophones, trombones, and so on, or playing the various string or percussion instruments.

This rapid development during the past fifteen years, of musical organizations in our schools, and particularly bands, which we have described, has been due to the indisputable fact that the movement had everything to recommend its development with

nothing that any opponent of the program (should there by any) could offer in objection to more music in the schools. There have been parents who, misunderstanding the proposition and considering it vocational rather than cultural, have objected to the participation of their youngsters, because they did not want their children to become professional musicians. The prime purpose of the movement, apart from the physical, mental and moral benefits which the young musicians derive, is to make it so that the merchants and manufacturers, doctors and lawyers, engineers, and so forth, as well as the wives and mothers of the next generation, will, because of their own participation in band and orchestra work during their school years, be devotees of music, interested and active promoters of more and better music in the lives of their children and their children’s children.

The Band Appeal

“The greater popularity of school bands over school orchestras is obviously due to the greater opportunities for outdoor performance, thereby “selling” the band to citizens of each town who seldom, if ever, hear their school orchestras. No high school or college football game would have its present glamour, were it not for the marching, maneuvering and playing of the bands with the strutting drum majors, gay uniforms and carefully conceived and perfected band exhibitions which delight the eyes as well as please the ears. Therefore, the school band goes hand in hand with school athletics and, in many schools, such as Elkhart (Indiana) High School, for instance, when there is a home game, we not only see and hear our fine concert band of one hundred pieces but also an almost equally fine “Regimental” or Marching Band, made up of reserve players who step into the first, or concert, band as vacancies are created through graduations.

“The first ‘national’ high school band contest was held in Chicago just sixteen years ago, in 1923. There were no preliminary elimination contests, and any band with the desire and means wherewith to get to Chicago and participate was welcome. Gradually the country was organized into districts and divisions, with only state winners eligible to participate in national contests; but these national contests became so large that we now have the United States divided into ten regions, each of which has its own ‘national’ contests or tournaments, the organizations and soloists taking part in these ‘regional-national’ tournaments having qualified by previous performance in district and state tournaments. The 1938 tournament in Region 3, comprising the states of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana, was held in Elkhart, and we had some seventy bands and several hundred unattached musicians who took part in the solo, quartet, sextet and similar events. Considerable management was required to handle properly the affair; but the Elkhart Chamber of Commerce did an outstanding job, to the satisfaction of all visitors as well as to the considerable pecuniary benefit of the downtown merchants in our very progressive community.

“Occasionally we learn of some educator who wonders if music in the schools is not overemphasized. Sometimes we suspect that there might be a bit of envy involved, because of the popularity of the successful band director (Mr. David Hughes, director of the Elkhart High School Band, was awarded a gold medal for the outstanding achievement of the year, a couple of years back) but I believe that if there is any overemphasis it arises out of misconception on the part of sincere and conscientious school music supervisors, and band and orchestra directors, who try to make thoroughly good musicians of all their pupils. All of us, music educators in particular, must remember that school music is not a vocational proposition, and that youngsters who are to-day members of school bands are to be the commercial and professional men and women of the future. Some of them, of course, will develop aptitude and ambition for musical careers; and these find their way, after high school, into the various institutions of higher musical knowledge and, later on, into the ranks of school music educators.

And So a Good Investment

“An answer to the question—‘What does a band cost?’—is very difficult, because of the variation in conditions and circumstances involved. It is becoming a generally accepted practice for parents of youngsters to provide the cornets (or trumpets), clarinets, trombones, saxophones and other small instruments, while the schools purchase and provide the tubas, baritones, bass drums, tympani, bassoons and oboes. Likewise, in the instrumentation of orchestras, schools provide the string basses and other large instruments, with the pupils providing their own violins, clarinets, flutes, trumpets, and so on. If a new band were being organized and all the instruments were to be supplied by the Board of Education, the average purchase price of good instruments would be about one hundred dollars per pupil—small instruments less and larger instruments more. It is well to remember that the lowest priced instrument is not always the best buy. In musical instruments as in nearly everything else, we get pretty much what we pay for, and it is not just the first cost that must be considered.

“Too many times School Boards advertise for bids and consider only price. If the highly proficient professional player requires a fine instrument in order to do justice to his ability and talent, is it not reasonable to assume that the young player, however talented and ambitious he might be, should be given a really good instrument and not be put up against the handicap of an inferior one, selected only because of its low price? Proper comprehension of all benefits and advantages which the young players will derive, both now and throughout the rest of their lives, as well as due appraisal of the credit and enjoyment which they will bring to their teachers, classmates, parents and others, demonstrate that the cost is not too great even though the finest instruments are purchased and placed in the hands of the youngsters.

A Builder of Character

“Not a school band instructor who does not know of at least several boys who were never amenable to school rules, never quite in step with the rest, until they joined the band. A national authority on juvenile delinquency once said, ‘Teach a boy to blow a horn and he’ll never blow a safe’; and, next to and just about on a par with athletics, there is nothing that will attract and hold the interest of the restless, ‘full of pep’ boy in school as will a band instrument and a chance to play in the school band. Therefore, and purely from a hard boiled business standpoint, it is perfectly safe to say that every dollar of public money ever invested in putting or maintaining a band in a school has been well spent.

“A rapidly growing realization of this is evident from the fact that so many school band instructors are now employed on a twelve months basis, devoting their time during the vacation months to the class instruction of beginning players as well as in weekly (at least) rehearsals of the concert and junior bands. This undoubtedly provides an outlet for that restless energy so apt to lead idle youngsters into mischief and keeps them in step with school discipline the year around, with no need of readjustment when schools reopen in September.

“Parents often ask ‘Which instrument shall I select for my boy or girl?’ The answer to that is—‘Don’t.’ I mean that the youngster should make his own selection, this selection to be checked with the school band instructor, who will point out any physical handicap to proficiency on the particular instrument fancied by the youngster. When my oldest son was in his ninth year, I ‘selected’ the cornet for his instrument. He practiced and made very excellent progress, playing solo cornet in the Elkhart High School Band two years before he entered high school and during the four years that he was in high school. But, immediately after graduating and even before, he played saxophone in dance orchestras, studied clarinet and flute, and spent several years playing these instruments in some very fine, nationally known organizations. I also ‘selected’ saxophone for our second son and later on trumpet, but he took up bass when he went into high school and became one of the very finest tuba soloists I ever have heard. Incidentally, neither of these boys is now a professional musician, the elder being Assistant Sales Manager here at the Martin Band Instrument Company, and the other, since his graduation from Notre Dame last June, having been engaged in accounting work with a large utility company. Another son is now playing baritone in the band at St. Joseph’s College, Rensselaer, Ind., and he also has no idea of following music professionally.

“I hope all readers will pardon this personal reference. It is also hoped that what has been written here will help, in some degree, to bring about the greater and more nearly correct appraisal of the importance of instrumental music in our schools. The millions of boys and girls who have already enjoyed the advantages of membership in school bands and orchestras owe a deep debt of gratitude to the superintendents and members of Boards of Education who have made it possible for them to have bands and orchestras with which to play, as well as to their instructors in music. And I am sure they are, without exception, properly appreciative of the opportunities lavished upon them, far in excess of those given boys and girls in any other country on earth.

“Music has been aptly termed ‘the fourth essential,’ only food, clothing and shelter preceding music in importance in a well rounded and happy life. And to participate in a musical performance, even one of mediocre degree of excellence, is ever so much more enjoyable than merely to sit and listen. The progress or retrogression of a nation depends on its home life; and a musical home is a happy home.

“So, in addition to continuing and expanding the program of music in the schools, we should all promote more instrumental music in the home, more informal gatherings of small groups in duets, trios, quartets, and small orchestras.”

The Renaissance of the Band

Etude Magazine. April, 1939

Departments:

Interviews ,
Musicology

From an Interview with the Noted Bandmaster

Edwin Franko Goldman

Secured Expressly for THE ETUDE Music Magazine

By ALLAN J. EASTMAN

FIFTY YEARS AGO the great reign of the doughty Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore was coming to an end. Gilmore, always a wonderful showman, had made a magnificent contribution to the promotion of interest in the band and band concerts, and there were numerous bands in all parts of the country. Touring bands thrived and band concerts were profitable ventures. Fortunately, after the passing of Gilmore, a still greater star was to arise in the band firmament, in the person of the unforgettable John Philip Sousa, who, in addition to being a wonderful conductor, was also an enormously successful composer, and he soon eclipsed everyone in the band field both here and abroad. He made splendid innovations in his band and in his instrumentations, and raised the technic of bands to new heights.

“Toward the latter part of Commander Sousa’s life two new factors commenced to command American attention—the automobile and the radio. Time was when thousands of families, seeking a pleasant evening excursion, would hop on a trolley car and run out to an amusement park and listen to a fine band. After the automobile came, the owners were not content to stop at amusement parks when they could roam around the country. Those, who did not have autos, had radios and were content to stay at home and listen to them. But, all things go in cycles; people again have begun to long to hear bands “in person”; and now, to my joy, I have the pleasure in the summer of playing nightly to audiences of from fifteen to fifty thousand and even sixty thousand people. When I see these huge crowds there can be no disputing that there is now an amazing renaissance of the band.

And So We “Forward, March!”

“THE BAND HAS COME BACK to a new audience and it is built upon lines which command far greater respect. The band itself was largely to blame for its own downfall. The musicians felt that they were secure in their positions; and their chief interest, and in many cases also their only interest, was in the pay envelope. The result was that many of the bands were terrible. In the case of some of the traveling bands, they were badly dressed and likewise badly behaved. No wonder that the band got a “black eye.” Many of the bands were composed almost exclusively of a low type of foreign immigrant musician. They could hardly speak our language and turned up their noses at almost everything American.

“Many of the American bands were assembled only on the Fourth of July, Decoration Day, Labor Day, and other high days and holidays. Their harvest was during political campaigns, when they often marched both day and night. Their repertoire consisted of Onward Christian Soldiers; Adeste Fideles; a few hackneyed marches; the Star Spangled Banner; or America. Usually they played from memory, each player employing his own version of the national airs. The leader would often announce, ‘America in E-Flat, boys’; and then things broke loose. Who knows, this may have been the origin of swing; for unquestionably every fellow went his own precious way.

“Bands in those days rarely had any libraries of worth while music. They played the pieces given away by publishers as advertising matter, and these were rarely worth the paper they were printed upon. There were no dignity, no finished effects, no fine tonal quality. How fortunate it is that this type of band is now practically extinct. Better still is the fact that it can never, never return. The fine training, received everywhere, by youngsters in our public schools, has raised the standards so greatly that we need have no fear that such bands as we have described will ever again afflict our country.

“What moved me to go into the band field? First I saw new and greater opportunities for a superior organization. In addition to this, the opera season at the Metropolitan was only seventeen weeks long, and it was necessary to make a living in the summer. Accordingly I joined some of the park bands. Most of the players reported for work like hands at a factory. There were no rehearsals. In fact, the men resented the time spent at rehearsals. They showed an appalling lack of interest which was most discouraging to a player who had spent years under the batons of such conductors as Mahler, Damrosch, Mottl, Hertz, Toscanini and Mancinelli. I spent many hours of disheartening and discouraging unrest with the mercenary bands of the day. It was most painful to play under such conditions. The only bands that could be excepted were the Sousa band, and the Gilmore band, which was then conducted by Victor Herbert. My contracts with the Metropolitan Opera Company prevented my joining these organizations. Accordingly I started my own band and struggled with it for six years before I began to receive the fine support which has since made it possible to play for an aggregate of many millions of people.

The Better Band Musician

“In THE MEANTIME the whole band situation has changed entirely. A new type of American player has arisen second to none in the world. These are players with a new technic and a new virtuosity, and they had their beginnings in our own public schools. Therefore I say that there are greater opportunities for professional bands than ever before; because, for everyone who a few years ago gave attention to bands, there are now hundreds of people intelligently interested in them. Unquestionably there will be opportunities for traveling bands; but, to be superior to the splendid high school and college bands, they will have to be super-bands.

“It should, however, be remembered that fine players alone do not make a fine band. They must be trained, coordinated, and drilled, drilled, drilled, by an able and inspired conductor; and all this cannot be done in a few weeks or a few months. Success can be bought only through interminable, careful rehearsals.

“Band instruments have been vastly improved in every way, and American manufacturers have made an invaluable contribution to this advance. In fact, foreign made brass instruments have virtually disappeared from American bands. It is amazing to note how the technic of every instrument has gone ahead. This is confined not merely to tone, rapidity and tonal control. The actual range of players has been, in some instances, extended several notes. Most of the trumpets in Gilmore’s day did well when they went safely above the treble staff without painful blasts. Now they soar to extraordinary peaks of tone. We no longer marvel at high E-flat. Imagine what a difference this makes in orchestrations. In the days of Mozart and Beethoven, the orchestra trumpets could not play a chromatic scale. If the old masters could hear a fine modern concert band, it would both delight and astound them. The technic of writing for the orchestra of to-day, even shows an advance over Berlioz, which some musicians feel is as marked as that between a one horse shay and the latest Sikorsky air-liner.

“One hundred years ago practically all bands were military. They were as much a part of the army as muskets and sabers. Even the instruments were made with a military purpose in view. In the Civil War the bells of many of the horns were turned backward with some idea that the music would be shot backward to inspire the troops.

“The modern concert band began with Gilmore and came to its own with Sousa. Even now there is no such thing as a standard band orchestration. The bands of almost every country differ in instrumentation. When Sousa took his band abroad it was to thousands an entirely new kind of a musical organization. Americans, on the whole, are nearer in instrumentation to the fine British bands than to those of any other nation. The bands of France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Russia are notably different. The French bands for instance, are marked by a very large saxophone section. Whether one band of one the art world. The publishers would have a secure international market for their catalogs. As it is now, it has been only after a long struggle that the associated band interests have been able to make a standard instrumentation for American school bands. How long this will last in this fickle age, no one knows. The popular dance orchestras have introduced all sorts of new tone colors and sound effects, and the whole band literature seems persistent in keeping in a state of flux. However, we are all praying for standardization, so that more and more leading composers will be inspired to write original music for the band.

“It must be remembered that it is possible for American bands to take European instrumentations and play from them by adjusting the parts, but the original orchestrator’s ideas are distorted. The same condition would apply to American instrumentations played by a foreign band. In some of the German bands, for instance, there are no oboes or bassoons; while there are more trumpets, and also other instruments such as Flugel horns.

“To my mind the instrumentation of the American concert band is nearer to an ideally comprehensive group for the performance of the works of great masters than that of any other nation. It is better balanced and more a kind of wind counter - until it is played again. But every performance brings out new colors and shades. Every thread of this marvelous design must come exactly in its right place, with the right tonal effect at the right time. Think what a wonderful training in precision and coordination this is to every young person who takes part in it. Surely the young people who are going through these musical experiences will have more responsive minds and better nerve control than the “jitterbugs” who abandon themselves to license in a frenzied riot of noise.

“Verdi and Wagner favored making arrangements for band. Some orchestral works are, to my mind, very badly adapted to the band and should never be arranged for it. Some of the works of Debussy, Ravel, Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin do not sound well with the band. Some are like pastels and are too delicate to be translated to the rich pigments of the band. With very few exceptions the piano works of Chopin do not lend themselves to the band. They call for the peculiar sonority and sympathetic overtones achieved through the use of the piano pedal. Percy Grainger and I have often discussed this matter, and we are agreed that certain compositions written for orchestra sound much better with the band, Sibelius’ choral-like ‘Finlandia,’ for instance.

“Band contests have been very helpful in stimulating interest in school band work. I have heard and judged at hundreds of them. One judges of course, for tone, interpretation, intonation, technic, attack, phrasing, and so on. From what I have observed I have come to the conclusion that the average musical intelligence of groups of boys and girls in different parts of the country is singularly uniform. It is the conductor who counts. If he is an able, well trained man, who has labored faithfully and with good judgment with his group, the results will be corresponding.

“The school bands in the West and particularly the Middle West are astonishing. European musicians visiting America have been dumfounded by what these young men and young women do. In fact I am told that this is having an effect upon European school bands; but it will take years for them to equal the great strides that have been made in America.

Westward the Musical Empire

“In THE MIDDLE WEST the school bands are a part of the regular school schedule, and the educational results may be best estimated by the fact that the students are going in for this work more enthusiastically than ever before. They receive credits for this work, as they properly should. In most places in the East the boys have to practice after school hours and the students receive no credit.

“The midwestern school bands are so exceedingly fine that in many instances they have passed the professional bands. At first the professional band players and the unions resented this as an invasion upon their rights; but, since the school bands cannot play for money, they cannot take business away from the professional bands. The only solution for the careless professional musician of other days is to forget his past and get down to work. He must not expect results without copious rehearsals and hard home practice. Fine conductors, a broad progressive spirit and work, work, work, should result in a superband; and, with the new interest in everything pertaining to the band, he will find a new field. The days of the old tooting, “umpah” band are done, and the sooner the professional musician finds this out, the better.

“For open air events the band is still supreme, notwithstanding modern amplification as applied to the orchestra. At the Golden Gate International Exposition, where my band will play from March to July, the wonderful California climate will enable immense numbers of people to attend the concerts; and I am looking forward to this engagement, with great joy. I am sure that they are ready for just as fine programs as it has been possible to give in New York. Last year for instance, in sixty open air programs, we gave three Wagner programs, four Russian programs, three Italian programs, one French program, two Bach programs, two grand opera programs, two Tschaikowsky programs, one Schubert program, two Beethoven programs, two symphonic programs, one Sousa program, one Verdi program, one Czechoslovak program, one Johann Strauss program, one Gilbert and Sullivan program, one English program, one Victor Herbert program, one Polish program, two German programs, one comic opera program, two original band music programs, and two ‘old music’ programs. Notwithstanding the fact that this large array of special programs was devoted principally to what the public calls ‘classical music,’ the popular response, both in numbers and in enthusiasm, was described by the papers as immense. Popular taste has changed marvelously in the last two decades; and, despite all that we hear about the lure of ‘jazz’ and ‘swing’ music, the appeal of finer music is growing stronger and stronger every hour.”

"Sound the Trumpet, Beat the Drums!" (From Handel's "Judas Maccabeus")

Etude Magazine. April, 1939

Departments:

Musicology

EDWARD VII and his son the Prince of Wales (later George V) were, according to the Court Calendar, to appear in a military ceremony to take place before St. James” Palace in the heart of London. As an American youth studying abroad, we stood for hours in the “kerbstone” crowd, awaiting the royal party. Finally the portly, bearded king-emperor appeared, wearing the gay scarlet uniform of the guards. He was mounted upon a huge white horse. His tall bearskin hat was at an unintentionally rakish angle. He wore a tired, Oh! so tired expression, which made us realize that his calling was not altogether* a joyous matter.

The band which preceded King Edward, with the solid tread of the British Tommy, likewise wore red tunics. It was composed of “wood winds and brasses.” An old Londoner, seeing the clarinets and flutes, blurted out in disgust, “Thet ahn’t a band. Look at them black sticks they’re tryin’ to play on. My word, there ahn’t no proper band, fit for His Majesty, but a brass band!” Thousands of others in the past thought likewise—a band, to be a real band, should be a brass band, one composed exclusively of horns, trumpets and trombones. In some places there are still brass bands. Now that flutes, clarinets, and other instruments formerly made exclusively of wood, are being constructed of metal, bands of to-day are almost entirely metal.

The wide adoption and development of instruments of the wood wind family in the modern concert band is due largely to John Philip Sousa. When Sousa first took his wonderful concert band to Europe, serious musicians were amazed at its flexibility. Here was a hand that could play not only the great band repertoire but also that usually heard through the symphony orchestra, including such an accompaniment as that which it played when the much loved Maud Powell, as soloist for the band, performed the chaste and delicate parts of the Mendelssohn “Concerto for Violin.”

Recognizing to the fullest extent the great industry and effectiveness of the work of Patrick S. Gilmore, who in his day was called “the unsurpassable,” it was, however, not until the arrival of John Philip Sousa that the concert band came into its own. Sousa, although born in 1856, did not begin to exhibit these remarkable possibilities of the band until about 1892, when he resigned as conductor of the United States Marine Band and organized what became one of the greatest of all bands in musical history. His was the first high class American musical organization to tour the world and the first large musical group from this country to command universal interest. This was due to three considerations:

First—To the irresistible personality of Sousa himself, as a human being rich in understanding, humor and sympathy.

Second—To his highly organized musical knowledge and the distinctive character of his instrumentation.

Third—To his very remarkable and original gifts as a composer.

There are many who feel that from the standpoint of originality, dynamic power and highly individual effects, Sousa’s compositions still outrank those of all other American composers, even including our notable symphonic writers. His was an inimitable genius. He was a most patriotic American, a sincere example of the fine Christian gentleman. Born in Washington, D. C., almost under the shadow of the dome of the Capitol, he was trained in the public schools of that city, during and just after the civil war. His father was Antonio Sousa, and his mother, Elisabeth Trinkhaus. The elder Sousa had been born in Spain, of Portuguese ancestry, and had served as a musician in the United States Marine Band. Two honorable discharges from the U. S. Marines indicate that, when he first came to America, he spelled his name Suacca (possibly a Spanish or colloquial spelling of the Portuguese Sousa). His second discharge bears his name properly as Sousa. This evidence, which is at present in The Etude Office files, should put to rout forever the absurd rumor that the name was originally John Philipso (or So, or Siegfried Ochs, or Sam Oaks), to which he has been alleged to have added U.S.A. (S.O.U.S.A.). The name Sousa is a very frequent one in Portugal. Many members of the old Portuguese nobility hear this as a family name.

With the success of the Sousa Band, the type of American concert band was established, and the fine professional hands of Conway, Goldman, Pryor, Herbert Clarke, and Simon were instituted. All of these leaders hailed the genius of Sousa in establishing a type—a type which has served as a model for an unlimited number of hands in schools and universities. Mr. William D. Revelli, in his Band Department in this issue, has been fortunate in securing statements from the directors of many municipal bands. The weekly, Life, in December estimated that there are some one hundred and fifty-six thousand bands in America. If that is the case, we can safely conclude that for the equipment of all kinds, including instruments, music, uniforms, and other items, there must he at least one hundred million dollars invested in American bands.

New influences commenced to invade the hand field before the end of the last century. Just as the waltz influenced the Strausses in Vienna, the dance began to affect music in America. Negro jazz, emanating from the South and spreading to Western honkey-tonks, grew from the ground up and finally began to make an extraordinary impression upon music throughout the world. Irving Berlin (Irving Baline) singing waiter in a slum Chinese restaurant in New York, wrote 64Alexander’s Rag Time Band,” and set continents prancing to it. Europe then imported Negro jazz bands galore. German and French pedants and pundits began to philosophize upon the aesthetics of jazz. The serious old Stuttgart Conservatory actually started a course in Jazz. The leader of one of the famous American Negro bands, that “played Europe” for eight years, was Sam Wooding, a really worth while musician, now conducting the admirable Negro spiritual choir, “Woodland Echoes,” who tells in this issue some of the unusual experiences of his group while abroad as “The Chocolate Kiddies.”

Rhythms, as near to the heart of the jungle as possible, started veritable musical riots everywhere. The whole world seemed bent upon a rhythm “jag.” In California a young man named Whiteman, with a symphony orchestra training, began to recognize jazz as a force, both financial and musical, and set out to capture it. In this issue of The Etude he tells how he did it. His hands are neither orchestras nor bands, but rather a kind of musical hybrid—half band and half orchestra.

After Whiteman came “name bands,” unless you want to date them from the days of Rolfe and Laskey. The hands are named for their conductors, the success of each of whom depends upon his individual and distinctive appeal to the public. The whole dance world started in to emulate this American merry musical warfare, and at this writing there are in New York, London, Chicago, Paris, San Francisco, Rome, Havana, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Warsaw, Tokio, Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Toronto, Dublin, Constantinpole, Nome, Shanghai, Brussels, Athens, and in a thousand other spots, literally armies of men and women rehearsing and performing American jazz. These dance provoking “name bands” are too numerous in America to be mentioned—they include such names as Louis Armstrong, Blue Baron, Cab Calloway, Leo Delys, A1 Donahue, Tommy Dorsey, Eddy Duchin, Benny Goodman, Kay Kyser, Hal Kemp, Wayne King, Ted Lewis, Guy Lombardo, Jimmy Lunceford, Phil Spitalny, Rudy Vallee, Fred Waring, Chick Webb and Paul Whiteman.

The natural law of competition in a lucrative field set them to securing finer and finer musicians and arrangements. The radio sponsors, knowing the interest of the public, paid the hill, until some of the “streamline” name bands presented notably beautiful performances, such as those of Kostelanetz, Vallee and Wilson. They have become the classic organizations of their type. Their directors and players commenced to earn unheard of salaries, clarinet and saxophone performers earning many times as much as most bank presidents.

We do not attribute all this advance to Paul Whiteman, but we do desire to give him credit for sublimating jazz, for directing it to higher levels, and for thus making available new tonal possibilities. This he has done at great personal expense of time, money and effort. His ten “Experiments in Modern American Music” have been really nothing more nor less than ambitious concerts, demanding a much larger group of players and a huge auditorium such as Carnegie Hall. This year Carnegie Hall was sold out for the Whiteman Christmas Concerts at three dollar “tops”; and yet the cost of the “experiment” was such that Mr. Whiteman’s expenses exceeded his receipts by six thousand dollars. His first experiment, in 1924, brought out the George Gershwin-Ferde Grofé Rhapsody in Blue. Victor Herbert (not quite in the idiom) wrote three of his finest numbers for the Whiteman group, for that concert. Subsequent experiments made way for the now famous suites of Ferde Grofé—“The Grand Canyon Suite” and the “Mississippi Suite.” This year’s concert was made notable by brilliant new works from Nathan Van Cleave, Roy Bargy, Morton Gould, Ferde Grofé (a thrilling vision of New York’s World’s Fair called Pylon and Perisphere), and a notable posthumous Cuban Overture by George Gershwin.

A Talk with Alberto Randegger, By William Armstrong

Etude Magazine. January, 1904

Departments:

Vocalists

Taking advantage of exceptional opportunities of observation and very early realizing the importance of an exact chronicling of the results, Mr. Alberto Randegger has made his life an unusually useful one. With a solid musical foundation and a quick, analytical mind he has, in the last fifty years, gathered a vast deal of musical knowledge through contact with great singers.

No one realizes more keenly than the man whose calling brings him into daily association with noted musicians the value of that association; but few make the privilege of practical value to others as well as to themselves. In this respect Mr. Randegger has been an exception. With score and pencil in hand he has attended rehearsals of the oratorios sung in England during the last fifty years, marking every phrase and nuance of the great soloists who have passed before the public in half a century. Certain of these arias he has published from time to time with the annotations made in the moment of performance. By this plan he has gathered the best from an authoritative source; for the soloist of worth is bound to give deep thought and long study to works demanding sound artistic interpretation. This has been but one phase of Mr. Randegger’s musical activities, the others, teaching and conducting, have served to apply and to extend his fund of knowledge.

Had not unexpected events turned the course of his career toward London, New York would have been his field of labor; for, accepting an engagement of Max Strakosch as opera conductor, he got as far as England on his way, when a cholera epidemic prevented his sailing for America. That was in 1854; and since then he has found London a congenial home. There Sir Michael Costa became his friend, and through him he obtained at once an opportunity to begin the study of great works in their rehearsal and performance, works in many instances that were given a first hearing under the composer’s direction.

In 1868 Mr. Randegger took the position of first singing teacher at the Royal Academy of Music, a post which he has held uninterruptedly since. From 1880 to 1887 he conducted at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, in the earlier days of Mme. Melba and Mr. Jean de Reszke at that institution. Again in 1898, under Sir Augustus Harris, he was recalled to the same position, mainly for Mozart performances. In 1881 he assumed the conductorship of the Norwich Triennial Musical Festival.

Born at Trieste in 1832, he will be seventy-two on the thirteenth of next April, bearing his years well as people do who are kept young by love and pursuit of their art.

It was in the studio at his home in Northumberland Place, a room made to work in, that he talked with me for the benefit of the readers of The Etude. The walls are lined with bookshelves holding his scores, many of them closely annotated; above hang autograph portraits of Liszt, Saint-Saëns, and many of their contemporaries, and of Mr. Randegger’s pupils who have made their way in the musical world. In the center of the large, high-ceiled room is the grand piano where it catches to the fullest the light of the hazy, London day.

Conversation turned at once to the oratorio style, on which Mr. Randegger holds broad views; and the better to enforce his ideas at the outset he took up Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” at the scene between the prophet and the widow at the moment of her son’s resurrection from the dead.

“Too many sing oratorio piano and forte,” he began, “without any trace of insight or knowledge of the meaning of the words, when it demands, instead, every element of the lyric and dramatic.

“Take this scene, short, full of strong contrasts, capable of such range of emotion in delivery. The widow at sight of the prophet exclaims in rage, and grief-stricken: —

“‘What have I to do with thee, O man of God? Art thou come to me to call my sins unto remembrance? To slay my son art thou come hither?’ Then, still unconvinced of his supernatural powers, but clutching at escape from her misery, she supplicates:—

“‘Help me, man of God! my son is sick! And his sickness is so sore that there is no breath left in him! I go mourning all the day long; 1 lie down and weep at night. See mine affliction. Be thou the orphan’s helper!’

“Then, when the miracle has happened and her son is restored to life, comes the passionate outburst of full conviction, to be delivered with tremendous faith:—

“‘Now by this I know that thou art a man of God.’

“It is necessary to read, to study, and to ponder on the text of such passages to get at their full sublimity and dramatic import. Without a complete knowledge of the text, the ability to read it understandingly and to carry to the hearer its full meaning, no singer can expect to sing with convincing authority.

“I do not mean by that to exaggerate or to overdraw, but to give the meaning completely as if the idea had spontaneously developed in our own intelligence and under the conditions in which its delivery is placed. Ability to read in this way is of preeminent necessity to the singer not alone of oratorio, but of all musical works down to the song where all is in miniature and to be approached as such.

“Those capable of only a colorless reading will convey simply the impression of reciting by rote; they make nothing individual or spontaneous in expression. There is no better test of the intellectual and emotional powers of a singer than the reading of some such sublime passage as that quoted from ‘Elijah.’ Here, too, comes into play to high advantage purity of diction, which carries to the hearer the value of the word in its true sense. Until a singer is capable of reading a passage with absolute finish it is wiser to leave the words unsung; for without a correct reading there can be no correct singing of it. To this very reason may be attributed the lack of success of so many who go upon the false lines that to deprive the text of dramatic value is to give it what some are pleased to call the ‘oratorio style.’

“As I just now asserted, in oratorio singing every element of the lyric and dramatic is required according to the situation.

For fifty years I have attended rehearsals and performances of the oratorios, score and pencil in hand, and have marked every phrase, every breath, every cadence of the great singers. Of details I have been a careful student, realizing the importance of gaining an exact knowledge of the immense study which these great singers have given to numbers that they have interpreted. A knowledge of these things is a firm foundation to build upon, and such a method of study pondered over, and redeveloped, as it were, by our own intelligence, gives us the best of insight and traditions.

“My whole life long, from my early years, observation has been the keynote of my studies. I have learned from the great singers with whom I have come in contact. A knowledge of the importance of observation has always remained with me. I have not trusted to memory, but followed at the moment with my markings every phrase as it was delivered. I have kept the scores with these same markings for the last fifty years. Some of them I have given out in print, but always with a preface which stated that I was merely a transcriber of the thoughts of others. By this course of observation I have developed my own knowledge; but I hold that there are no hard and fast rules in the singing of oratorio. The character of the work must be understood. Scan the words thoroughly; put your heart in them. Take, for instance, the passage in ‘Elijah’ between the prophet and the widow, full of dramatic power and contrasts. Yet what would even this passage be without intelligent appreciation.

“In teaching I make my pupils read the words first, to see their intelligence, and the power of their emotions; then I read them aloud myself that we may to the fullest extent get at the meaning and import. Without complete knowledge of the declamatory value of the text no singer can command either an intelligent delivery or one that will impress his audience. But here again extreme thought must be exercised. You must discriminate between the small lyric and the large dramatic. You cannot put into a miniature that which you would put into a big picture. It is in singing as it is in painting: You may use the same colors, but you must be true to nature; the atmosphere is quite different in painting indoor subjects and those under a broad, free sky.

“Guided by the teacher the good student will find out how things should be done; but he will never appear before the public as a good pupil. He will get all from the teacher that that teacher can convey, but he will make that all his own. And he must make it so completely his own that it will be spontaneous.

“Much has been said of relying upon the impulse of the moment, but there should be no such thing as waiting for the impulse of the moment to give us our inspiration. That inspiration may be heightened by the conditions of the moment, but it must be developed and thought out beforehand.

“Tomaso Salvini, the great tragedian, once gave a forcible illustration on this same point. It was during a dinner, and a noted tenor who sat next us was speaking of the tremendous impression that Salvini had lately made upon his audiences, carrying them with him by some unpremeditated piece of acting done on the spur of the moment. Salvini smiled and said:—

“‘Have you been on the stage so long and yet tell me that I do these things on the impulse of the moment? Nothing is left to the moment. I may act no scene twice alike; but every detail, every move is thought out before I do it, and is the outcome of sleepless nights.’

“Mme. Pistori, of all great actresses, was the most difficult to act with, for the reason that she placed immense stress upon tone quality and value. The end of every speech that preceded hers had to be delivered in a quality of tone that led up to and blended with her own, and gave that which followed it fullest effect. Over and again the luckless player who lacked insight had to repeat his lines until she was satisfied. What a hint lies in this to the singer!

“English is a good language to sing, no matter what is asserted to the contrary. Personally, I class English, next to Italian, as the best language for singing. But the worst of the matter is that so few speak it properly. Quite unfortunately the English do not study English diction, yet they should study it as they study spelling and grammar.

“It was once my fortune to listen to a series of lectures by a distinguished English clergyman. When he was through I congratulated him not on their contents, for of the intellectual standard we were assured as a matter of course, but on the diction of their delivery. It was the purity of that diction, absolutely musical, that had so charmed me. Untion (sic) in English as is the case in other languages, and as to the pronouncing dictionaries, nobody consults them. Avoid conversational English in singing; for that is English in its worst form.

Keep your ears open; hear the beginning and end. of every syllable. People listen with their ears and mind, and not with their eyes.

“English is music, if you only know how to speak it. The Italian as a singing language I place, of course, first; the English next; French, pretty for small songs, and distinguished by elegance and refinement of diction, I place third; and German, a great language and forcible, I place fourth. But a tender song is not good sung in German; for songs of that type the English language is far more beautiful if properly spoken.

“America has good voices, good teachers, and good methods. That the females have better singing voices than the males I attribute, not to the inferior natural quality of the American male voice, but to the fact that speaking nasally, while it injures the deeper voice of the man, has no effect upon the higher voice of the woman. Yet I have numbered fine American men singers among my pupils, the elder Whitney, Charles Adams, and Alberto Lawrence being of that class.

“To begin right is with the singer an all important matter. Many have fine voices, yet they do not develop as they should. One of the great drawbacks to which this is due is neglect of a sound system of respiration.

“Learn gradually, master one difficulty at a time.

“Do not overstrain.

“Develop the technical and the esthetic hand in hand. Cultivate the mind as well as the voice.

“Use your powers of observation, and apply to your needs the example of great artists to whom you listen.”

The Influence of Our Composers Upon Vocal Art in America.

Etude Magazine. June, 1903

Departments:

Vocalists

BY JOSEPHINE LEONE RHOADES.

In presenting this subject, I am not unstrangely reminded of our recently much lamented littérateur, Frank Norris. There is such a close parallelity in youth, in spirit of work, in promise and in power, between him and the American song writer, that I cannot help using it as the medium for making known by way of introduction, the object of a series of papers on American composers, which will appear in The Etude from time to time.

The untimely death of Mr. Norris has awakened the literary world to the fact that a great influence has been unfolded in it; it feels that it has had within its circles a man affiliated with Truth, not by convention, not by superstition, not by tradition, but by raw nature. Why such an affiliation is rare, we do not know. Obvious it is that it is the basis and purifying element in every art, for all art is truth, and all truth is art, whether it be the hesitant confession of the child to its mother or the soul-charged of the brilliant orator. Norris interpreted the truth as he saw it, and because his divergence is so far from the accustomed way, he compels our consideration.

Briefly stated, Frank Norris was a young American; his body, new red blood and strong muscle; his mind, searching, discriminating, and imaginative; his spirit, sincere, aggressive, and convincing. Such diverse qualities could hardly parent any but somewhat undisciplined work at first, yet this very license on structural form and present-day conventions signaled uncommon strength. He came at a time when American fiction literature stood for nothing substantial, and threw the force of a personality that had no desire, no capacity, I might say, save for truthful delineation. The influence of such a personality is tremendous. It is the greatest purifying force that can come to any art, for art, like morals, tends ofttimes toward corruptency, and needs must exert over it an influence, purifying and reclaiming. The influence of such a personality is tremendous, did I write? Yes, and now its light is already gone out. Would that we could discern such power before “death brings it to life”! Would that we had said one word of encouragement, expressed just once our belief in him! It might have given peace to mind and soul,—not that peace that begets idle contentment, but that peace which stimulates calm courage to the expression of greater things.

With this in mind does it not behoove us to turn to our own art and see what influences are being exerted on it by the pen? Are there men like Frank Norris, with new light in their souls, unperceived by us; are there men baring the divinity of their natures to unresponsive condition; baring truth to convention and seeing it spurned, even swallowed up? Be it to our remorse if the light of another such life goes out, unacknowledged. Vocal art is influenced by whatever affects the thoughts and feelings of a people, and the most potent of such influences are race, epoch, and surroundings. We cannot justly estimate any vocal art without an acquaintance with national traits of its composers, the general character of the age in which they live and the physical and social conditions by which they are surrounded.

It has been questioned whether we have a national vocal art. Whether we have or not depends almost entirely on the individual’s idea of what constitutes a national vocal art. For myself, I beg to voice the sophistric conclusion of Mr. Rupert Hughes.

Of American music in general (and I appropriate the remark for its relativity to vocal music in particular), he says: “First, we lack a strictly national school; secondly, a strictly national school is not desirable; and thirdly, we must assuredly have a national school.” You will notice that in this last he is careful not to use the word “strictly,” leaving us to infer, that while we have a national school, it is not national in the sense that other so-called “national schools” are national.

Art becomes national, it seems to me, only when it expresses the egotism of the race. There must be a subconscious certitude of being before there is the impulse to voice those sentiments which individualize a nation. This certitude an American does not and cannot feel, for in a sense, we are as yet a non-existent nation. We are not American-Americans, but German-Americans, Franco-Americans, Italo-Americans, etc. We are strangers to each other, and, as such, share not those thoughts and feelings that parent musical art; and this cosmopolitan condition can never be sifted down to one of provincialness. Therefore a national school of musical art, particularly vocal art (for a nation interprets its musical feeling more naturally by voice than by instrument), can never exist in America under the same forces that engender it in Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Hungary, and other nations. Art can only be impelled under such conditions by individuals, who, feeling their individuality, have the courageous wish to project something of it into the future, beyond the narrow circle of their years. Nor is this wish a selfish one, knowing that we are saved by the fulfilment of our natures, and not by the restraint of them. It is inevitable truth to him who would deal seriously with the symbols of art, for it is art itself.

But to return—in America this impulsion must come by individuals rather than by masses, and for this reason we lack that basic element and emotion perpetuating agency, folk-song, but are ahead of our youth in maturity of art growth. By this I do not mean that our composers are out of touch with their period, in the sense that geniuses are said to “write ahead of their time,” but rather do I mean that their work is mature by reason of their catholic capacity for the potent influences of the world, by reason of its practicalness and moralness, by its connection with conscience and its suggestion of purity and beauty and holiness in all things.

This, then, is the unique position of American song writers, and because of its uniqueness it is an arduous task and will require some hardness of heart to select those composers who have ventured their individuality so far as to be acknowledged as the first exponents of the American musical character.

(To be continued.)

The Making of an Artist: A Second Talk with Mark Hambourg

Etude Magazine. June, 1903

Departments:

Interviews ,
Pianists

“HAVE I some more ideas for readers of THE ETUDE?” repeated Mark Hambourg, settling back with his inevitable Russian cigarette. “I might ask in turn is there any time that an artist is likely to have more ideas than when he is en tour? None but the musician knows the sensation of busy loneliness when the day is divided among the excitement of public appearances, and the fatigue of travel, and an ever-present solitude. Besides,” he added with a covert smile, “considering the result of my talk with you for THE ETUDE,¹ is something more than a pleasure. That talk produced a bit of a sensation in England; nearly all the papers quoted from it, some printed it in its entirety, and my idea on the performance of Beethoven gained a new critical attitude for me when I played his works in London last spring. Here in the States and Canada I find THE ETUDE everywhere. But to our theme, and an important phase of it, too, to begin with.”

Making a Repertoire.

“The making of a repertoire is of prime importance with the young pianist. The first thing that enters the mind in the consideration of this matter is that one can no longer go on with merely a dozen pieces. In these days of patent appliances, people can play everything for themselves with the aid of mechanical devices, and the formality of study for those who would be well informed in pianoforte literature, has been, in a way, narrowed down to a matter of rolls and cylinders. At no period in the history of his instrument has it been so necessary for the pianist to include the novel as well as the standard in his repertory. Some things, masterpieces, are always immortal. But to my way of thinking, we are sticking too closely to convention. Every young man and woman should be learning new things; this is the only way that talent will come to light, talent of the creative class that composes, and of the executive that gives it artistic expression. The concert public is very limited.

“Think of the effect upon it, of listening to the same things year after year. From the educational point of view, it is very necessary for pupils to hear these new things. An artist is not only one who gives pleasure, but an educator. He gives years of study to his art as an interpretant, his average of musical education is higher. It is in these respects that his playing differs from that of the teacher. He must analyze and he must study. Beyond these things worked out in exhaustive completeness, his audience, in its appreciation, acts as a vital spark, stirring him to higher effort in performance.”

Listen to Good Playing, and Learn!

“The hearing by pupils of good concert pianists has been urged often and again, but it can never be urged too frequently. By such a course the style is broadened, the taste grows more eclectic, and we gain an idea of the interpretation of things from various points of view. Take the best, and throw the rest away. But my experience has been this: that true appreciation grows only with years and experience. Youth will have its fling and fault finding, but the older we get the more good we find in things. Every good thought is valuable, we can learn from all. The pupil may suggest to his teacher. This suggestion may be in a way hit upon by accident, but it is none the less a valuable suggestion because of that. I remember one instance, when a pupil, studious and attentive, but without especial talent, gave to Leschetizky a fuller idea of the trill in Chopin’s Funeral March, something that he himself had, perhaps, heard millions of times. The main point in such instances is to grasp the information, no matter how it is presented or who presents it to us.”

Listen to Singers.

“Listening to singers is of vital importance to the pianist, for from them we can learn a vast deal in fine points in phrasing, sustaining, color, and finish in the delivery of melody, and in the management of crescendo and diminuendo. Never play ahead pianissimo or fortissimo, but observe the course of the singer or violinist, when he takes a note it vibrates and goes through you. Singers may possess faults, too often characteristic ones, of disregard of time and the breaking off in the middle of a phrase; but I have been listening to them for many years, and have found the opportunity to gain from them something which I did not have. Without these very studies, scales are vibrations without meaning. The pianist must declaim, for music is speech. Dramatic instinct we must possess if we would gain our point.”

Legitimate Playing of Legitimate Music.

“What is legitimate music? is another question often asked. To my way of thinking, all music is legitimate. But there is another question, the legitimate playing of ‘legitimate’ music, that is far more vexing. By ‘legitimate’ playing is too often meant set and dried mathematics. This, a class, and unfortunately a numerous one, adhere to with set and bound idea. To such, this ‘legitimate’ playing means notes and nothing else, and the moment that feeling enters in, standard and tradition are overset. Going along such lines, how is it possible to put passion into the performance of Beethoven and Schumann? It is not. And yet the work of these great masters is instinct and alive with this very passion that ‘legitimists’ would destroy. Read between the lines and not alone on them. Of course, I would object to changing chords or harmonies, but a little more or less pedaling than is indicated, the treatment of a note, etc., these are liberties that may be allowed us. But I would not advise a young pupil to embark on freedom of interpretation, for he might wreck his performance through chaos and incoherency. Knowledge of how far one may go, and the healthful limit of self-restraint, come only through good taste, and the care that is born of experience. Rhythm is pulsation and life, and not enough attention can be paid to it. A great artist plays tempo rubato, but in the end always comes out even.”

Concentration in Thought and Work.

“The student must realize the importance of concentration of thought in study as well as in public performance, if he would gain either advance or appreciation. The moment that thought strays, error creeps in when we are at work; when we are before the public we lose attention in the instant that the mind loses its grasp on the composition in hand. Errors that we acquire are much more difficult to rid ourselves of, as we very well know, than a gain in improvement. But no matter how carefully we may study, unless we carry this same rule with us into the concert-room, we are beset by two dangers—we fail to hold the attention of our hearers, because we do not give a proper degree of it ourselves, and we suffer from the too common, and assuredly terrible malady, called stage-fright. There is no easier way to handicap oneself, and may be, completely, by this latter, than by thinking not of the thing you are doing, but of the people you are doing it before. A certain amount of nervous anxiety prior to appearing is really necessary to the securing of a good performance, but this phase of nervousness and stage-right, which is an unnecessary condition, are widely opposite. To my way of thinking, and speaking from experience, if one thoroughly knows a thing—and none should think of performing anything in public that he has not completely grown into—stage-fright is an entirely unnecessary condition.

“Take an actor of distinction, for instance: the first moment that he is on the stage, particularly before a strange audience, he is not at his best. This uneasiness may betray itself in a dozen ways, for with every individual there is a different phase in its manifestation. But in those moments the purely mechanical side of his art—the result of study until things go of themselves—sustains him. The moment he begins to throw the interest and concentration of his mind into his lines, these signs vanish, and his hold upon his audience begins. It is the same with the pianist. At the outset he may feel a bit uncomfortable, illness or fatigue may aggravate the sensation, but let him fix every faculty and thought upon the composition in hand and keep it there with a vise. Then he will see how quickly he forgets surroundings and how completely the performance absorbs him. This self-command through concentration of mind is not to be learned in a moment, nor is it to be learned in public, where most it is needed, but in study through which it grows to be second nature and as much a part of ourselves as the technical command of our fingers should be.”

Program-Making.

“In making a repertory the pianist must have certain standard pieces, for instance, Beethoven sonatas, Chopin etudes, the Faschingsschwank of Schumann, and other things along that line. But vary the programs in the matter of mood, key, and character. Some of the greatest conductors disregard these important items, and place three things, all symphonies and in the sonata form, and all in one key—D minor, for instance—the one after the other. By the end of the second selection you hear nothing but D; monotony is inevitable.

“In order to secure proper sequence, major and minor must follow each other, something soft must be succeeded by something brilliant; but never place two things of a kind together. By this I do not mean a succession of violent contrasts in the pieces that you play, for that in itself will create incoherence of impression and disturb contrast. But blend the combinations so as to get variety in key, mood, and tempo. Occasionally a strong contrast is all well enough, particularly toward the close of your program when one wishes to arouse fresh interest that will help in the approach to a final climax.

“In the selection of novelties for study, there are Russian, modern German, and some of the Italian compositions to draw upon, but these last are mainly brilliant without contents. There must be mentioned, though, in this connection, Poldini’s studies, for they present a new pianoforte technic and new combinations. You have, as well, certain of your American composers for the pianoforte to choose from. It goes without saying, or, at least, it should go without saying, that every executant musician should recognize the composers of merit of his own nationality, and give them a place in his programs. England has long been my place of residence, and among other British composers, whose work I have brought forward, is the effective Prelude and Fugue by Clarence Lucas, which Leschetizky has pronounced the best modern fugue for the pianoforte.”

The Outlook for Success.

“There comes a time when study is finished up to a certain point, and the question presents itself, ‘Am I going to succeed or not?’ The answer is, ‘Go at it harder and harder.’ Do not get discouraged. Never forget to practice in a way to avoid getting into technical errors; study out those you have, one always has some, and endeavor to correct them. When you are studying, seize every opportunity to play for people, make everybody the ‘dog.’ Let them complain, but don’t you mind.

“The parting word is, never neglect advice. Have an ideal.”

…

1. Published in THE ETUDE, October, 1902.

WILLIAM ARMSTRONG.

Music-Clubs and Their Pitfalls

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Woman's Work In Music

BY EMILIE FRANCES BAUER.

It can hardly be said that the clubs are getting ready for work, for as yet those who give the most active work and thought to the welfare of these organizations are resting up for the coming season. The growth of the musical-club fad, if so beneficial a function may be termed a fad, is nothing short of remarkable. Every city of any size or importance has one or more. Especially in the smaller cities are the benefits manifold, and in such localities as are deprived of orchestras the study of orchestral works by means of two pianos forms an interesting, as also a large, part of the work. If there be such a thing as a city where the musical club does not exist, the musical people should lose no time in organizing one. But it must not be believed that musical clubs are unalloyed benefits to the art which they stand to serve, nor for the communities in which they are created. The subject has doubtless been dwelt upon before, but it cannot be repeated too often that nothing in the world is so entirely good that harm may not come from it if it be wrongly handled, and one thing must not be overlooked; namely, that, if a club does harm, it does infinitely more injury than the best-conducted club can do good. It will readily be seen, therefore, that it behooves women to go into the work with their entire spirit, that each club and each individual may do. everything possible to bring the influence of good music further.

One of the most serious pitfalls in clubdom is prejudice. Whether this be favorable or antagonistic, it matters very little, the harm is the same. For the greater part, clubs are composed of women who are socially charming, attractive, and altogether delightful, but this in no way signifies that they are competent musical censors. Often the determination to foist a totally incompetent person into prominence for social reasons is ruinous to success, for this same sentiment will keep a competent person out. This has no part or parcel in the elevation of music, but is absolutely the same element that makes society the vapid, inane thing that it is. Under this head we may class the adherence to a leader or a set of officers because some members of the club have the influence to keep them there. In the largest cities we have examples of the effect of this partisanship just as well as in the smaller ones, and with just as disastrous results. Cliques are the death-marks to progress, and few persons who pose as workers in the cause of music realize how little thought is given to music, and how much to glorification of self or of the clique. It is true that the social standing of a club as of an individual is much to be desired and carries weight over those who are in every way better, but of lower caste, yet art is art, and if art be the object, the raison d’être of the club, let this be the first, last, and eternal consideration. A musical club is ruinous to the interests of music and musicians when it invites or accepts free services of professional artists. No person or body of persons is justified in taking that which is a man’s living and giving him nothing in return, not even thanks; for where is the club that does not believe that the benefits to the artist is ten times as great to the club? Not that the club should not have this benefit. It should, by all means, but it should pay for it, and then it would be in position to provide what is really instructive and artistic, instead of picking up the first best that is willing to give services, who nine times out of ten does it because he is unsuccessful and thinks this will help him along. If a man be a stranger, it is undoubtedly part of a musical club’s duty to give him a chance and a hearing, but it should be done on a financial basis, as it is degrading to the dignity of a club to be an object of charity, especially if this favor be accepted from one who possibly needs the money and needs it badly.

Another serious mistake in a club is to use incompetent club members to illustrate examples instead of engaging proper interpreters. What is the object of study if the best results cannot be obtained? Take, for instance, a program given to Bach. There will be a well-written instructive paper, and as illustration different members will be asked to prepare a Bach number. Now, Bach is not easy to play, and in most cases he is criminally misinterpreted. What is to be gained by having a half-dozen members hastily throw together some Bach pieces that even those who know them could not recognize? How much better to pay some authoritative Bach player a moderate amount and have Bach mean Bach.

Musical clubs are also detrimental to the cause of music when the members withhold their support from musical attractions other than those in which the club is personally interested, as music needs all the encouragement and support that a city can give it, and one good piano-recital, or evening of chamber- music will be of more actual benefit than a whole season’s club-work which at best exists only to put people into a more receptive condition when opportunities to hear do come along.

* * *

CLUB REPORTS.

Without knowing what every club in America is doing, one might still be safe in believing that nowhere has a musical club been of such direct benefit to its members and to the city as

The Musical Club of Warren, Pa.,

has been. Not only did it fulfil its mission in the field of amusement and entertainment in the very highest degree, but from an educational point of view the work of this club has never been surpassed.

The club undertook to have Madame Julie Rivé- King with them throughout the entire month of May. The work consisted of recitals and class-lessons, critical classes, and intimate informal talks whereby this artist imparted her knowledge to those who assembled eager to gain from so authentic a source. The recitals, four in number, were given to the public. It will readily be seen that, when clubs work with such seriousness of purpose and on such a broad scale, they are most vital to the musical life of the entire country.

The Sherwood Club of Cresco, Iowa.

The above club was organized in Cresco, November 14, 1901, and it is very satisfactory to know that the work of this club is being carried on in a most original and beneficial manner. The method of work during the first year was to alternate the study of Mathews’ “Popular History of Music” with the practice of eight-hand arrangements for two pianos, the sessions occurring weekly. The engagement of William H. Sherwood was one of the very delightful and instructive features of the work. For the coming season several artists will be engaged, among whom is Edward Baxter Perry.

The officers of the Sherwood Club are: Pres., Miss Lauraine Mead; Vice-Pres., Miss Bernice Laidlaw; Sec. and Treas., Miss Bessie Johnson.

There is one suggestion to be made, and to a club working with such sincerity of purpose it cannot be taken amiss. I can never be induced to believe that the alteration of so pronounced a form as a Beethoven sonata can be beneficial. The arrangement of the symphonies for eight hands, two pianos, are perfectly in order; for it is the closest approach possible to an orchestral arrangement; but such an arrangement of a Beethoven sonata is likely to be misleading. There are a great number of fine things written in that way, among them the Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann symphonies, many of the Wagnerian selections, the Saint-Saëns Symphonic Poems, the Weber Overtures, the Liszt Rhapsodies and Symphonic Poems, all of which form admirable matter for study.

The Saturday Club of Sacramento, Cal.

Not only is the Saturday Club of Sacramento conducted on the highest plane artistically, but from personal knowledge I am able to state that its membership enrolls more really artistic musicians than most cities of its size can show.

The Pacific coast is a world by itself, and in this way the musicians in that section become more independent. The assisting artists are drawn from San Francisco for the greater part, and the choice has been admirable, including, as it does, the Minetti Quartet, which is capable of presenting chamber-music in the highest and most artistic form. Among the artists engaged last year was Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, who is happy to state to anyone who discusses the coast and its conditions that a more intelligent audience she has never found in her travels. The Minetti Quartet appeared last season, and is down again for the coming year. One of the most splendid programs that has ever come under my notice is that which was given to Shakespeare. It is herewith presented, being a model of the finest type:

Shakespeare, 1564-1616. Essay, Shakespeare in Music. Illustrations: Sellinger’s Round, Dr. Byrd. Carman’s Whistle. Where gripinge grefes the Hart (Romeo and Juliet), Richard Edwards. Heart’s Ease. Catch (Twelfth Night). Light o’ Love. Violin Solo, Dances from Henry VIII, Edward German. Song, Bid Me Discourse (Venus and Adonis), Sir Henry Bishop. Piano: “Hark, Hark, the Lark!” (Cymbeline), Schubert-Liszt. Illustration: The Pour soul sat pining (Othello), Verdi. Piano Quartet: Overture, “Merry Wives of Windsor,” Nicolai. Song, Under the Greenwood Tree (As You Like It), Carrie Adams. Piano, The Royal Gaelic March (Macbeth), Kelly-Sherwood. Song, Ophelia’s Ballad (Hamlet), Ambroise Thomas. Piano Duet: Overture, “Antony and Cleopatra,” Rubinstein. Songs: She Never Told Her Love (Twelfth Night), Haydn; Sigh no more, Ladies (Much Ado about Nothing), W. H. Pommer; It Was a Lover to his Lass (As You Like It), De Koven; Tell me Where is Fancy Bred? (Merchant of Venice), De Koven. Piano, Wedding March and Dance of the Elves (Midsummer Night’s Dream), Mendelssohn-Liszt. Vocal Quartet, Yon Spotted Snakes (Midsummer Night’s Dream), G. A. Macfarren. Quintet: two violins, flute, ‘cello, and piano, Nocturne (Midsummer Night’s Dream). The program was under direction of Mrs. W. E. Briggs.

For the season of 1902-03 the officers are: Mrs. Albert Elkus, Pres.; Mrs. Louise McC. Gavigan, Sec.; Miss Aurelia M. Waite, Treas. A copy of the Saturday Club’s constitutions and by-laws should be in the hands of every club about to start or desirous of being more successful than it is. The by-laws are more important than one is likely to realize. These by-laws have been draughted with rare skill and insight to the needs of a musical club.

Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie and the Royal Academy of Music, London.

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Interviews

To know any art thoroughly is to grow up in it; in occupying later an executive position the man who has experienced the obstacles incident to the life of the great majority in pursuing that art has a paramount advantage. Both these conditions have been fulfilled by Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie, and to these and to the gift of executive ability of a high degree must be attributed the success of the Royal Academy of Music under his direction, which began in 1888.

Born in Edinburgh, in 1847, he was sent by his father, a violinist of repute under whom he had studied the instrument, to Sondershausen, in Germany, and placed in the house of the Stadt-Musiker Bartel. Three years later he was given a position as second violin in the Ducal orchestra, where he received a thorough schooling in opera, concert, and general theater work. Returning to London in 1862 he became a pupil of Sainton at the Royal Academy, winning, in the same year, the King’s Scholarship. During his period of study in London he played in many of the metropolitan orchestras, and has been, as he expresses it, “through the mill.”

To this experience of being cast so largely upon his own resources may be ascribed the strong interest that he takes in the practical advancement of the young musicians under him, the Royal Academy being represented by present and former students in every orchestra of importance in London, from the Philharmonic down.

At the close of his studies at the academy young Mackenzie went to Edinburgh, where he conducted orchestral concerts over a period of ten years, and assisted in quartet concerts with Joachim, Lady Hallé, and Wilhelmj, and conducted several choral societies. It was on the advice of von Bülow and August Manns, of the Crystal Palace orchestra, that he gave up the strong position that he had made for himself and retired to Florence to devote himself entirely to composition. During his stay there he produced “The Bride,” for the Worcester Festival, “Jason,” for the Bristol Festival, the opera of “Colombo,” for Drury Lane Theater, and “The Rose of Sharon” for the Norwich Festival, and given for the first time in 1888. Again returning to London, he conducted a series of orchestral concerts, during which period he had conferred upon him the degree of Mus. Doc. by St. Andrew’s, the oldest university in Scotland. At the time of Sir George Macfarren’s death Mackenzie was in Italy engaged on an important musical work, and giving no thought to any future connection with the Royal Academy. On learning of the withdrawal for that position of Mr. Walter Macfarren, brother of the former principal, he entered the ranks as a competitor for the post and was elected in 1888. Since that time his energies have been mainly devoted to the welfare of the institution, which he has brought into its present flourishing condition.

At the time that he assumed charge of things it had fallen behind the times; hence the foundation of the Royal College of Music. To-day the academy stands for the progressive in spirit and has regained the immediate patronage of the King, who stands toward it in much the same relation as that sustained by him toward the Royal Academy of Painting. Two names in the teachers’ list of the institution are especially familiar ones, those of Emile Sauret, the violinist, whose hold upon the American public is a strong one, and Signor Alberto Randegger.

During his incumbency Sir Alexander has added materially to the tremendous lot of scholarships which have benefited many of the best men turned out by the academy, receiving at a recent date fifteen endowed by Mrs. Sam Lewis. Sauret, Corder (composition master), Albanesi (pianoforte), Hartwicksen, White, Richards (organ), Wessel, and Blaba (violin) are among the numberless additions made by him to the teachers’ list.

Sir Alexander conducted the Philharmonic concerts from 1893 to 1899, and has placed to his credit a long list of compositions in almost every field of musical writing. The latest of these comprise “Scottish” concerto for the pianoforte, written for Paderewski; the music to “The Little Minister,” “Manfred,” and “Coriolanus,” the two last named for Sir Henry Irving’s productions at the Lyceum; an opera “The Cricket on the Hearth,” founded on Dickens’ story; “Coronation March” for grand orchestra, the dedication of which has been accepted by the King, who had it privately performed at Marlborough House, and an orchestral suite, “London, Day by Day.”

Additional degrees that have been conferred upon him are those of Mus. Doc. by the universites of Cambridge and Edinburgh, and LL.D. by the University of Glasgow. In 1895 he was knighted.

So much briefly for the busy career of the man whose direction has gone to make the Royal Academy what it is today.

But another important phase, that of personality, must be considered in this connection. The man at the head of an institution leaves upon it an impress of himself more or less accentuated according to his degree of forcefulness either in the direction of right or wrong. The two high traits of Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s character that are, perhaps, in this respect most fully evidenced are untiring energy and cheerfulness. There is a Scotch heartiness in his daily associations, and a Scotch keenness of foresight in his executive management. His humor and wit have given him a unique place among his colleagues; but alongside of these and a marked simplicity of manner is a dignity that is always fully sustained.

In speaking for publication in The Etude of the Royal Academy (whose students have numbered Barnby, Sullivan, Goring Thomas, Edward German, and many more of note), and of certain educational features and the position of the British composer today, Sir Alexander Mackenzie said:

Students from all Parts of the World.

“The students are recruited from England, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, the United States, France, and Germany. From South Africa we have a great many, and a good many from Germany. Antonetti, an Italian, and a pupil of the institution, has made a famous position for himself in Germany. I am especially pleased with the way that those pupils from New Zealand and Australia have been taught, sections of the empire in which former students of the academy settled. The academy had conducted local examinations all over the country for years, and after I entered upon my position I went to the Royal College and offered to join with them and put these examinations on a different footing, elevating the standard and extending the privilege to the colonies. We now, together, send two examiners all over the colonies, except India. Instead of remaining on rival lines I considered it best to work in harmony, and it has proved in all respects a good idea.

“All students of the Royal Academy, no matter what branch of music they may select to study, must take up the piano, unless they play so well that I absolve them. But not one in five hundred gets off. After all, that poor piano is a useful instrument. To one who can help himself on the piano all musical literature is open. To-day it is necessary to be an all-around musician, and composition is looked at from another point of view to that from which it was once generally regarded. To-day no singer can make a success without being a musician. A Melba with phenomenal vocal equipment may prove the exception, but for those who may be regarded as the upper middle rank, that thorough musical training is an inevitable necessity.

“We train teachers and governesses. The bulk of the students become professionals. Only a large institution can give the exceptional advantages of orchestra, etc. Perhaps twelve first-class people are reaping the advantages of all these things, and the balance are being trained for what they are fitted. But if we had only to teach geniuses we could do it in a small flat anywhere, but we could have no orchestra. We also train teachers. The best of our pupils when they advance become subprofessors. Their fees are then reduced and they work out a certain amount under their professors. Learning to impart knowledge under supervision, their pupils are in turn examined every term, and we soon find out who is good and who is not.

Opportunities for Professional Work.

“A remarkable fact is this: Persons talk about the musical profession’s being overcrowded, but everyone worth his salt is getting something to do; they all seem to get work. I am rarely successful in inducing pupils to go to the colonies except for their health, and those who have gone have done exceedingly well. Many excellent offers come from the colonies, but, as I said, I find difficulty in getting them to leave; they all seem to find work here. Music is growing. Of course, it is not like the law, in which tens of thousands are made, but there are many in music who earn a modest four or five hundred pounds a year. It strikes me that the musical profession is no worse than any other profession. There are some who have not got the gift of getting on, but that is not the fault of the music.

“Tact and manners are required to get on; more is demanded in this respect than in the past, and there is an enormous difference in the class that now comes to study, in style, manners, and tone. It did not always used to be that way.

“There is a great change in the amateur world. Our school is kept full by the fact that a large number of persons send their children to be educated musically instead of, as in former days, to study privately. They are not intended to be professionals, but desire a thorough musical education and to know what they are getting. This has been the case for the last six or seven years, and accounts for the large numbers enrolled. But the most of them are serious; they subscribe to all rules and regulations and behave as musical students. All to the good of music.

“These existing conditions prevent many from going abroad, a course that is now not followed so much. With the exception of the simple benefit of the language they acquire, there is absolutely no necessity for the music student to leave London. Concerts may be more expensive, but in London you hear everything. In this direction pupils of the academy have a distinct advantage, being given tickets for the Philharmonic and other concerts at a reduced rate and for the opera gratis, besides the enormous number of tickets sent in that we do not care to use.

“As regards to teaching itself, we have no fixed methods as in Paris, where the instrumentalists have all to do the same exercises and the singers the same studies. I leave all to the individual teacher according to his own methods. Of course, at examinations a set of things is given out.

“There is no ranking of teachers; the man who makes the best pupils is the first professor. From being far back my endeavor has been to bring things fully up to time; any. Tuesday you may hear the most modern orchestral music at the Royal Academy in programs that range from Mozart to Tschaikowsky. The plan is to let pupils hear everything. Students’ work is brought out in these concerts if it meets the requirements, and the facilities of choir, solo voices, and orchestra allowed. A large percentage take up composition now, and the number of clever fellows has increased with the facilities. W. H. Bell is one of the latest, and there are a good many of promise.

The Young Composer.

“The composer is worse off than any other branch. If he writes the highest and best, he cannot publish, and he must teach or sing low to get a living. The music now published, however, is much better than was the case in the past, and there has been a great awakening and extraordinary change in the last fifteen years. There is hardly an orchestra in London in which pupils are not playing during their term of study. For such students I make allowances in regard to certain duties; for I have been through the mill myself, having played in nearly every theater here during my student-days, and I know how it is.

“I sometimes wish that the British nation were a little more patriotic. If such performers as Peppercorn and Ellsler were foreign girls they would be carried on the hands. It is the same with singers. You go into society and hear indifferent foreign singers, while superior native singers are pooh-poohed. English singers get little encouragement at home; it is an up-hill fight.

“As to composition, we have quite a remarkable little school in which every man seems to have a nose of his own; you cannot compare any two of us. Take Elgar and Stanford, for instance; there is no comparing them, yet the technic of each is admirable. In that respect we are farther forward than Germany, where one man writes like the other and it is either Wagner or Brahms that shines through. Whether this be due with us to different nationalities, Celts and Anglo-Saxons—and the Celts are in the majority,—no one type predominates, and that with us is most hopeful.

“If we had a national opera it would be a different story. If they say that we have no English opera the reply may be made that we have no field to grow one on. The wonder is that so much has been done. The field of opera that in every other country popularizes good music is sternly denied us. Against these conditions we have been hammering away for a long time.”

William Armstrong.

Questions and Answers.

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Vocalists

The question received relating to accompanying singers was so pertinent to present conditions that I have made an extended allusion to it in the article heading this department.

Ida H.—The Baritone, when singing from a treble score, pitches his voice an octave lower, and this unconsciously; for, as a rule, those who sing songs become accustomed to the use of the treble clef, without realizing that they are using the voice an octave lower than the melody is being played. He uses the same pitch in both treble and bass clefs.

2. For bass and baritone songs send for the classified lists of Presser, Schirmer, Ditson, and Schmidt, specifying the voice.

3. The “Creation” or the “Messiah.”

4. The answer to question No. 2 applies also to lyric soprano.

5. She should extend her range to meet the requirements of the oratorio, the “Elijah” and Gaul’s “Holy City.” She should be able to sing now.

6. By registering with one of the two most reliable agencies.

7. I think most of the New York vocal teachers answer to this requirement.

8. From October to June.

Clara P. H.—I do not think violin-playing can injure the voice. I have heard many violinists sing well, which strengthens me in this view. If I had special solicitude in this regard I should establish the physique in the direction which gave the most promise first.

M. E. B.—Any time after sixteen years for the girl, and for the boy not until his voice had changed and was secure in its new tone.

Mother M. M.—Your letter gives evidence of earnestness, which must yield ideal results. I would mark a course for your girls and make them conform to it, giving in the order named: Behnke, Sieber, Wieck, Marchesi’s twenty, Nava’s “Elements,” and Lütgen’s “Trill,”—Tosti’s are also good to follow Sieber, but they should be used with the Sieber syllables rather than with “ah.” As to aiding you in the matter of repertory, I feel really quite helpless. Even my many hundred regular teaching songs, all of which have found a permanent place in my library because of some special value, sometimes fail me. The best music is best worth teaching, and publishers are going so extensively into collections of late that you can hardly go wrong, if you equip yourself with them. Schirmer’s “Modern Lyrics,” four volumes, and Ditson’s “Modern Classics” are fine examples.

X.—1. Make a close friend of the first six pages of Behnke and Pierce, Volume I, and the chances are they will help you out of the breathiness without contracting the throat.

2. For pianoforte-work send to general “Question and Answer” department of The Etude.

3. Your ideal vocal solo is not hard to find. Ask the publisher of The Etude to send you “on selection” a group of the old Italian songs which formerly belonged to the Martens Brothers’ catalogue, and you will have an embarrassment of riches.

I have seen no compilations at hand of Irish songs, and therefore cannot help you. If the question comes when I am in New York, will make a search for the thing you want.

How the Voice Looks.

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Vocalists

Prof. E. W. Scripture contributes an article entitled “How the Voice Looks” to a recent number of the Century. Professor Scripture is director of the Psychological Laboratory of Yale University, and if his views are accepted there promises to be a revolution in vocal teaching. The illustrations tell some curious stories. Here is one statement from the experimenter:

Not long ago I stated these facts to a well-known clef club, and supported them by the curves of German vowels sung into and traced from a phonograph by Professor Hermann, of Königsberg; by pictures of spoken English vowels obtained in a different way by Professors Nichols and Merritt, of Cornell; by analyses of Finnish vowels by Dr. Pipping, of Helsingfors; by direct observations of the vocal cords made by Dr. Musehold according to a new method, and by the results of other investigations. The statements were received with a dismay mitigated only by incredulity. One member even remarked that such views “would, if true, knock all our theories of vocal instruction into a cocked hat.” There was, in fact, a natural reluctance to giving up the Helmholtz overtone theory of vocal resonance. The abandonment of the incorrect theory of vocal action will probably require modifications in the present methods of vocal instruction, but that is a matter for the musicians to decide. I merely suggest that if the mouth-resonance cannot alter the sound from the cords except by mixture of new tones with it, it is hopeless to attempt to correct faulty cord-action by adjustment of the mouth; the cords must be trained to emit such forms of explosions as will produce the best effects on the ear.

Operatic Voices.

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Vocalists

W. J. Henderson clears up some of the fog of adulation that exists around the present-day opera-singers. He writes in his department of the New York Times: The unthinking worship of the opera-singer has its origin in the supposition that the best singers in the world go upon the operatic stage. The course of reasoning is something like this: These people get about ten times as much for singing as good concert-singers get, and we pay $5 a seat to hear them. Therefore, they must be greater singers than those who sing for $50 or $100, and whom we can hear for a dollar. This is a part of that state which Henry T. Finck felicitously describes as “Jumboism in art.” It is not correct to suppose that the best singers in the world go upon the operatic stage. The largest and most brilliant voices usually go there. The singing of operatic rôles requires certain physical attributes not accorded to all persons possessed of singing voices and artistic natures. For the grand dramatic parts, big, powerful voices and physical structures capable of enduring immense exertion are necessary. Slight men and women with small, sweet voices are not suited to labor of this sort. No matter how well they can sing, the volume of tone required and the long-continued effort of heavy operatic rôles are too much for them.

Why Am I So Stupid?

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Vocalists

This question was asked me some time ago by a pupil who for years had been singing with a very tightly constricted throat, so much so, that the quality was very harsh and poor, and there was very little power. I answered this question, and will give the readers of The Etude a synopsis of my answer, hoping that possibly it may help some student laboring under the same difficulty.

To begin with, let me say that the pupil who asked this question is anything but stupid; in fact, she is more than ordinarily intelligent, bright, witty, and well educated. Her condition is a psychological problem, and, in order to make it clear, I shall have to deal somewhat with the study of psychology.

Subconscious Activities.

A child is born with great possibilities, but with very few abilities. He breathes, his heart beats, his digestive apparatus does its work, and, if irritated, he shows it by a cry. All these actions are done in what the psychologists call a “subconscious way.” The child has no objective intelligence. He does not know that he is. As he grows older, he gradually learns to do different things connected with his ordinary existence. For instance, he has to learn to walk, and his mother or some one else has to take one foot and put it before the other. At first, in order to keep himself from stumbling, he has to devote a great deal of attention to walking as he toddles along. As he grows older, the time comes when he walks or runs without paying any conscious attention to the movements of his feet and legs and he never walks or runs well until these actions have become subconscious. Up to that time he has been doing it more or less objectively. A good illustration of the action of the subconscious mind is when a person, thinking of other matters, has walked beyond his intended destination. His conscious intelligence originally willed that his feet should go there, but, after starting them, began to think of other things and forgot to tell them when to stop.

Now, this applies to everything that we do. Most persons use a pen with the right hand. In learning to write, every child is very awkward. His letters are irregular and crude in appearance, and only by long practice, and not until the motions become automatic, or subconscious, can he write in an easy, comfortable way so that his penmanship will look free and flow smoothly. The handwriting of all children and also of people who write but little has a stiff appearance, showing they have given much attention to the formation of each letter. Such handwriting lacks individuality. As we grow older and write much, all of these motions become subconscious, and we acquire a certain “hand” which is easily recognized by those familiar with our writing. Suppose a person lose his right hand. He can (if he wish) learn to write with his left hand. In his first attempts he will be just as awkward with his left hand as he was at first with his right; but, if he will patiently practice, he can learn to write just as well with his left hand as he did with his right.

Those of my readers who have had occasion to walk across a stage in full view of an audience and have suddenly realized for the first time the fact that they possessed muscles in their limbs of which before they were unconscious, and have felt how those muscles would jerk and twitch and do all sorts of things which before did not seem possible, can appreciate the difference between conscious and subconscious effort. They walked badly because they were conscious that others observed them, and this very consciousness made them give an undue and objective attention to their walking, trying to make it so good that it became very bad. I presume the so-called “actor’s strut” is the result of misdirected energy on the part of the actor who tries to make himself walk naturally. The only way one can overcome anything of this kind is to let the limbs move along by themselves and concentrate the attention on something else, even if it be nothing more than the point of destination.

Practice Produces Subconscious Action.

Now let us return to the subject of singing. All of the above illustrations help to answer the question which my pupil asked. In learning to sing, the pupil must practice in a certain way a sufficient length of time until the muscles connected with tone-production will move by themselves without any conscious attention on the part of the singer. In the particular case to which I refer the person had been very badly taught and for years had used her vocal muscles incorrectly. I asked her to do differently and explained to her certain sensations connected with good tone-production. She accepted the fact theoretically that, in order to produce a pure and free tone, the breath must be entirely controlled in the body so as to leave the different parts of the vocal anatomy perfectly free; but, while she accepted this explanation, she was unable to do what I wished her to do, simply because her subconscious intelligence had been trained in the opposite direction. There is only one hope for a pupil who has been through this experience, and that is an unlimited stock of patience so that, no matter how long it may take to educate this subconscious intelligence to a correct method of singing, he will be willing to do the necessary work through the necessary time. It cannot be hurried. In fact, the more the singer tries to hurry it, the slower will be his progress. He must concentrate his attention on the front of his mouth, trying to talk in an absolutely natural manner there, holding his breath in his body to the best of his ability and at first relaxing all the muscles in the region of the back of the mouth, accompanied with this endeavor for clearness of diction in the front of the mouth. Of course, he cannot sing well until he has practiced this long enough so that all this closeness of attention toward even the correct way of singing is forgotten and he uses his vocal ligaments in this new and correct way in a subconscious manner.

This applies with equal force to the talking voice. When a person for years has sung incorrectly, it often has a correspondingly bad effect upon the talking voice, although to the untrained ear it may not be so quickly and easily noticed. In talking the vowels are not prolonged, and therefore do not acquire the undue prominence that they have in singing; but, in the attempt to make a correction of wrong tone-production in singing, this correction should be extended to a corresponding carefulness as regards the talking voice, and one should be sure that no effort is made either in the throat or the back of the mouth, but that all the attention is concentrated upon the lips, teeth, tip of the tongue, and front of the mouth. To one who has been controlling his talking voice in his throat, the first result of this change will be that he will seem to produce an insipid quality; but, while it may seem insipid to Mm, it need not necessarily sound so to others.

First Great Difficulty.

Perhaps the two greatest difficulties which confront the student who is endeavoring to correct erroneous vocal methods are: First, a tendency to think the pitch in his throat. Second, the association of throat-intensity with the endeavor for intensity of tone-production.

In regard to the tendency of the singer to think the pitch in his throat, let me illustrate my meaning. Blind people, it is said, develop nerve-ganglia at their finger-tips, owing to the acquirement of an exquisite sense of touch, and, in a certain sense, they learn to think at their finger-tips. In the same way, a pianist thinks at his finger-tips as he caresses the keys.

In speaking, there is no thought of a definite pitch, the pitch being what it may happen to be, according to the particular size and shape of the vocal muscles of the person speaking, and also a certain conformation of mouth and throat. This pitch will be varied by the intensity with which he speaks. In the act of singing, the first thing necessary, of course, is to think a definite pitch, and where the singer has been in the habit of thinking the tone in his throat he will at first find it exceedingly difficult to think in his mouth. It may be a disheartening process at first, with a tendency for the tone to waver and split and vary from the key, and just the uncertainty which the singer feels as to what may happen when he attempts to think the pitch in his mouth will have a tendency to send him back to his throat. The only way to overcome this difficulty is to consciously think the pitch in the mouth until the subconscious throat-tendency is gradually eliminated and the thinking of the pitch in the mouth has become subconscious.

Second Great Difficulty.

The second difficulty—namely, the confusing of throat- with tone- intensity—is perhaps even more difficult to overcome.

Our modern music, as a rule, is far in advance of that of olden times in that it demands an emotional content and intensity greatly in excess of former times. Far be it from me to decry anything of this kind. It is certainly a long stride forward in the art of music, but it also adds a stumbling-block in the way of the singer, and especially is this difficulty increased when we attempt to combat wrong methods. In fact, I believe the one reason why there is so much harsh and throaty singing is this very striving for intensity. It is not only those who merely want power at the expense of everything else who get into trouble along this line, but also many singers who have the highest ideals of tone-quality. These singers would invariably criticise in others the very faults which they themselves possess; but, owing to this striving for intensity of tone and to their inability to hear their own voices, they will, if they have any throat-intensity, be sure to confuse the two, and it will be a long and weary struggle before the singer is able to produce intensity in the mouth and yet have a perfectly comfortable throat. His first efforts will cause him to feel that the throat is not only loose, but weak, and he will immediately associate this weakness of throat with weakness of tone. Possibly at first the tone itself may be more or less weak, and yet if he could get away from himself and actually hear the tone he produces he would be much better satisfied than he could expect to be when judging the tone by a throat-sensation.

This perhaps is the greatest difficulty where a singer is attempting to help himself without the aid of a competent teacher—one who knows a pure and free tone and who will constantly insist on that even if at first it is somewhat weak, but who, having the strength of his convictions, absolutely knows that it will become even more intense and powerful ultimately if produced with a free throat. My only object in writing an article of this kind is to encourage those who have more or less impaired their voices either on account of their own erroneous study or bad teaching, to confidently strive for a tone in which there will be not one particle of throat- intensity.

In closing, let me insist that, if the singer will confidently sing with the mouth only, he will gradually gain confidence in his ability to do this, and, by so doing, will develop the greatest power and sonority with the most beautiful tone of which he is both physically and mentally capable.—Horace P. Dibble.

Study in Phrasing. I.

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Vocalists

Because of the intimate relations of poetry and vocal music there is much light to be cast from verses upon tunes, and from tunes upon verses. As soon as we begin to set words in order, into feet, lines, and stanzas, the question of collocation, the place for separation, and the proper place for that separation, becomes of cardinal import. So as soon as we begin to arrange tones into motives, measures, phrases, and sentences the proper way to gather them into close connection or to separate them into more or less widely divided groups must be considered as of prime importance.

When we sing we usually take about four times as much time to utter the words as when we read or recite them. This slowness can never be less than about one-third their spoken time without producing a ludicrous effect. To sing as fast as one utters spoken language is supremely comical. Just think of those inimitable character-songs in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and this will be clear. Now, if the words are thus slowly pronounced when singing, it becomes evident that a long, involved sentence, with many words, complexly arranged, army-wise, in platoons, companies, regiments, and brigades, would soon grow unintelligible. To catch the meaning of a large number of words in a complex relation we must hear them distinctly, but as rapidly as is compatible with absolute distinctness of utterance. Listen to a halting, hesitating, stammering public speaker, and this will be glaringly illustrated. So, then, a set of words to be made to cut through a broidered veil of tones must be short, and set in very simple syntactic relationships.

It is lamentably true that very few poets know enough about the difficulties and principles of singing to prepare their words properly, and it is equally lamentable that few composers are careful enough as to the sentiment and structure of the poems they set to tones. Most of their musical garments are wrinkly ready-mades, and not perfect tailor-made suits. A teacher is quite justified in altering either the tones or the words of a song which is found thus defective. Without adding any more generalities take an instance to make this clear. It is not uncommon to find the definite article “the” set to a note on the accented part, of a measure, particularly when it comes at the beginning of a line. In a song which I have in mind the composer has been so utterly careless as to set these words “the while,” against A-flat, an eighth, on the beat, then fifth-line F, a quarter. Here is the light syllable “the,” the very lightest of all words,—paralleled only by one, the indefinite article “a,”—this “the” is set strongly against the thesis, or ictus, the down-beat of the measure, while the real accent of the word is cast over into a syncopated relation. My custom is to alter the tones in this passage, thus: to prefix a sixteenth A-flat, before the bar for the tiny syllable “the,” then set the word “while” against both the tones, slurring them. This makes the word to come out with a clearness quite delightful. The singer is not put to it to do something abnormal, the word is not distorted until its value in the prosody is lost, and the listener is saved a blurred impression upon the ear, which it is only possible to follow with a free use of guess-work.

Neither poet, with far-fetched words; nor musician, with awkward tone-fingers; nor singer, with slovenly delivery, dares sin against the hearer. All the rights belong to the hearer. Those who cannot minister to edification and to delight have no moral or artistic right to trespass upon the precious time of the listener.—J. S. Van Cleve.

The Technic of Vocal Expression. No. III. Tone-Connection.

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Vocalists

The principal varieties of tone-connection in singing may be classified as follows: Legato, Portamento, Marcato, and Staccato. The term Legato is from the Italian legare, to bind, and indicates a tone-connection where the pitch of one tone begins directly at the close of the previous tone without any break of continuity or the introduction of any intervening pitch whatever. This style of tone-connection is understood when there are no qualifying marks indicating otherwise. In the hands of the consummate artist, however, this rule is subordinate to the taste and judgment of the performer, as will be seen later on.

Marcato.

The term Marcato (literally, marked) is used when the composer wishes to give each tone an individual character which they do not possess when executed in the plain legato. There may be the same continuity of tone as in legato, but a mild accent with a slight diminuendo at the end of each, sometimes expressed thus >, individualizes and emphasizes the tones in a manner different from legato. This method of tone-connection is generally accompanied by a ritardando, or moderately slow tempo. When used rapidly the accent is less marked, and it becomes a little more distinct articulation of the vowel. Under these circumstances the proper designating term is leggiero. The marcato is also sometimes indicated by the combination of dots and slur. In general, it may be said to give character and emphasis to the phrase containing it.

Stentato is a kind of exaggerated marcato, while Martellato (literally, hammered or pounded) is used more especially in the repetition of a single tone when extreme force is desired. It is more congenial to the high notes of the female voice.

Portamento.

The Portamento (portare, to carry) is the most important and difficult means of expression so far as relates to tone-connection. Mr. William Shakespeare told the present writer that it expressed love; but who will have the temerity to thus circumscribe the action of this king of expressive means, whose range covers the whole gamut of human feeling, from the most heartfelt expression of love and tenderness to the terrible wailings of sorrow, rage, and despair? It is safe to say that the standing of an artist is measured to a greater extent by the use of the portamento than by almost any other means of expression. It is, of course, impossible to describe the portamento by means of the written word, but it may be roughly sketched in this wise: As is well known, the keys on the piano are separated by the smallest interval of a half tone. Now, if one will endeavor to subdivide this interval into innumerable smaller intervals, welding them together in such a way that the division line is lost or concealed in the process, either ascending or descending, he will have a tolerably fair conception of the portamento. One essential is that it shall reach its climax, or highest or lowest pitch, ahead of time; that is, that the pitch of the final tone shall be attained more or less before the actual place of the tone in notation. Just what shall be the length of this anticipation of the final tone is, of course, a matter of taste. About one-third the length of the first tone is ordinarily a good division. Following out our rule of expression in dynamics, the portamento from a lower to a higher pitch will be accompanied by a crescendo, from a higher to a lower by a diminuendo. There are many exceptions to this rule, however.

From what has been said it will be seen that the delivery of an artistic portamento demands, above everything else, a perfect breath-control. The throat must be held loose and free to effect the delicate changes of pitch which are necessary, and the laryngeal muscles must continually adapt themselves to the changes of breath-pressure which are necessary. The face must express the feeling desired; in fact, the whole nervous system must be responsive to the idea of the composer. There is no especial sign used to indicate the portamento outside of the word itself, and it is just as well that this is so. The employment of such a delicate as well as forceful means of expression should be left to the taste and judgment of the artist or teacher. To the beginner it should be interdicted altogether; even the artist should never make it without due thought and deliberation. Two consecutive portamentos are in bad taste; one should guard against this, especially in the rendition of closing cadences.

Staccato.

The Staccato is a manner of tone-connection which has fallen more or less into disuse contemporary with the decline of the florid Italian aria. As a means of voice-culture it will always be en vogue—as Shakespeare says, “after a million starts on ah” etc. In singing the staccato one should always use the soft attack, in order to avoid throat-strain, holding the breath gently and easily between tones.—Henry W. Giles.

The Awakening.

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Vocalists

Some awakenings are gradual.

The dream of success has not been a troubled dream, but a season of repose interspersed with moments of self-sacrificing effort. The gifts, however, were so abundant that even such efforts gave a respectable harvest of tone and encouragement, and a future with brilliant prospects was promised. The awakening came when the redemption of the promise seemed to recede as the moment of its fulfilment approached. Such is the oft-repeated experience of those who depend upon gifts for acknowledgment.

The awakening which comes with a start is when the oblivion to what really constituted art standards and requirements has been profound with entire faith in success as the sure reward of consistent effort. Those are sad moments in either case, and moments which need not have been experienced. In the first instance, regret for gifts that were wasted by time misspent; and, in the second, for failing to enter upon the work with but meager acquaintance with its exactions. Awakenings of a disappointing nature should be guarded against. It is better to listen to and enjoy good singing than to inflict upon others singing that isn’t good.

Accompanying Singers.

Etude Magazine. September, 1902

Departments:

Vocalists

It is not easy to give directions for this most rare accomplishment. There are so many sides to it and conditions confronting it that a book could and should be written which would, as far as possible, exhaust the subject. Let us first consider the accompanist, and, because so many more women than men aim to succeed in this field, we will designate her as she.

Qualifications of an Accompanist.

In the first place, she should be a good pianist, which actually covers a catalogue of qualities, such as quick reading, perfect command of all the varieties of touch, musical insight (which is only another name for musicianship), and unfailing technic; and, secondly, she should have a knowledge of the vocalist’s art.

Now, in point of fact, accompanists rarely possess all of these important attributes. If they did, they would hardly look kindly upon accompanying as a profession. It is sad, as it is true, that the ranks of accompanists are filled from the army of inefficient pianists. Thus, one or more of the above-mentioned features are lacking in their equipment, which relegates them to second place, and puts a higher value upon perfect masters of the art. That good accompanists are rare is a notable fact. It is not by any means, however, a hopeless situation; the keyboard field is so rapidly filling and overflowing that the immediate prospect of better accompanists who are fully equipped is encouraging. The modern vocal repertory is vastly demanding upon accompanists. It is quite the thing for composers of the present day to give a quiet theme to the voice and a typical Chopin-Liszt combination for the piano. The odium that was formerly attached to accompanying as a minor consideration is removed, and the honors are more evenly divided between the voice and the instrument.

While the singer loses in the matter of eminent priority, she gains in confidence that she can depend upon able support in her work. The esthetic side of accompanying amounts to more than appears upon the surface. The perfect sympathy between composer and artist must be sustained by the third factor at the keyboard; it seems almost too much to expect that such a trinity can exist in perfection, but it often does, and the results are always delightful. The accompanist should, with the singer, know the text to the point of familiarity with its mission, and the composer’s means of bringing clearly to the mind of the auditor the salient points of that mission. She must even be superior to the singer in judgment as to which background of stress is most favorable to the singer’s volume and use of that volume. She must be familiar with the phrasing and diction peculiar to the singer; for singers differ in this regard even in the narrow limits of strict tradition. She must adjust the amount of support to the natural loudness or softness of the instrument, the size of the room, and the vitality of the singer. The use of the soft pedal would be extremely rare by an accompanist who had her technic well established, but its use is by no means prohibited.

Accompanist’s Office to Support.

The office of the accompanist is to support; she is always subordinate to the singer. If the singer, however, is uncertain, a helpful note may be quickly and unobtrusively interpolated to reassure her; if the singer loses poise or control, the accompaniment may come sufficiently into prominence to admit of a sense of secure support which need be only temporary. Disaster is imminent if a nervous singer, a nervous accompanist, and a pretentious composition form the combination. The most valuable characteristic in an accompanist is self-possession, best expressed to the cult as “nerve.” Many a timid bark has been wrecked when there was but little danger, because of the loss of that valuable quality. After all that is, or can be, said or written, the finesse of accompanying may be summed up in the word “sympathetic.” Let the technic and interpretative preparation be never so perfect, if there is not strong and deep sympathy between the artist and accompanist the work will be wanting in the power to move or sense of completeness.

As for singers, how they differ! Some artists seem to look upon an accompanist as a necessary evil, tolerated while the necessity exists, but utterly worthless when the work is done; they never accord her her share of the praise, but are quick to load her with more than her share of the blame. It has often occurred that, when artists have made the most atrocious blunders, they would turn and scowl at the innocent accompanist, thus attempting to shift the responsibility of their own carelessness on to her shoulders. A prominent singer attempted this daring ruse in New York at a concert not long ago, but the audience was familiar with the number, and would not tolerate the imposition, and retaliated by hissing the singer instead of applauding her. There are others who value the assistance at the piano at its true worth, and there is no more grateful sight to a cultured audience than that of an artist, when responding to enthusiastic recalls, bringing the accompanist to the foot-lights with her, thus publicly acknowledging her indebtedness for the assistance, and allowing her to share the honor of success.

Careful Rehearsal.

The most strenuous rule in regard to accompanying is that there should be infinite pains taken at the rehearsals; every point worth making should be remarked upon and put to the test. One has only to hear Nordica, Schumann-Heinck, and Sembrich in their recitals to realize the attention that has been given to the minutest details in the accompaniments. Another rule which should never be broken is: not to appear at a public performance without a rehearsal. It is better to make no appearance than one where there is an element of uncertainty as to the result. Finally, if you would accompany well, accompany much; play for all the singers within your reach; study their music with them; breathe when they breathe, sigh when they sigh, exult when they exult; in short, do all that they do, the only difference being you do these things with your thoughts and fingers, while they do them with their voices.

Impromptu Opinions of Prominent Musicians.

Etude Magazine. May, 1895

Departments:

Interviews

1. What instrument, in your judgment, produces the most musical music?

2. What new fields has the future in store for musical composition?

3. What is your opinion of the influence exerted upon the community by the German brass band, hand-organ, and other forms of street music?

4. What are your views respecting the qualifications of woman as a composer?

1. The organ; because it approaches most nearly the harmonies of combined voices; it compasses most nearly the harmonies of nature and of other musical instruments.

2. Noble music for children.

3. Beneficent: To the Italian peasant, who sees his native land in the strain from the hurdy-gurdy; to the German emigrant, who idealizes the harsh music into a breath from the Fatherland; to the tired man and woman not too coldly cultivated to recall an incident of some bright morning, long ago, when the hand-organ played the same strain through the streets of the old country home ; to the tired mother and the fretful baby in the hot alley of the city slums, and to the cultivated musician, who, distracted by the discordant sounds, is the more impelled to evolve harmonies for all the world, in sweet accord with those of which he dreams.

4. One has only to attempt to separate Fanny Mendelssohn’s compositions from those of her brother, Felix Bartholdy, under whose name both have been published, to feel that the qualifications of woman, as a composer, may, under similar conditions, equal that of man.

Gertrude Capen.

1. The piano; because of its capacity for expression through percussion.

2. The German and Italian schools represent extremes; between them lies a field which Mendelssohn would have cultivated had he lived longer.

3. Any music is better than none. Some grades of society are benefited by music of this kind.

4. There is no reason on earth why woman cannot do everything that man can do. All she needs to demonstrate her ability is freedom of her own will.

J. B. Sharland.

1. Violin.

2. In America, the patriotic expression of those sentiments which make the nation the home of every kindred and tribe.

3. Good selections are usually played. Influence is for good, however painful at times.

4. When we have more women composers, we can better answer the question. We recall at the moment only Mrs. Beach, who, out of ten thousand students, has achieved success as a composer.

F. H. Allen.

1. The violin.

2. By its expression to the imagination purely through advanced intelligence, whereby it might be comprehended through the eye, as a novel is read.

3. Upon those to whom the German brass band, crank pianos, etc., are music, the influence must be the same as that of more perfect performances upon others.

4. A woman simply needs the same qualities to become a composer of music that a man requires. Any distinction between the sexes on this point seems to me to be absurd. The future, I believe, will prove the truth of this statement.

B. J. Lang.

1. Violin.

2 That depends on who are coming up to be the leaders of to-morrow. If the same kind that have been the real leaders from Bach to Brahms, it seems to me that the development of pure music (as distinguished from music for the theatre, etc.) will keep on in much the same lines, the manner of expression changing almost

imperceptibly from one generation to another, as has heretofore been the case.

3. Not for good, nor very much for bad, excepting for the increase of an unnecessary nervous wear and tear.

4. I can but think that woman is coming in the future more to the front in musical composition; we have here at home some conspicuous cases of this.

Arthur Foote.

1. Well what is the most musical music, anyway? Every instrument has its own peculiar qualities or characteristics, and in its way makes the most musical music. What is the noisiest noise, the greenest green or the bluest blue? Hard to say, you see. It’s largely, or altogether, a matter of individual taste and feeling. Even the trombone does the most musical thing in its way. The human voice is, strictly speaking, not an instrument, but we all know that it is the most perfect vehicle for musical expression. The modern pipe organ, combining as it does the greatest variety of tone color with the largest volume of sound, gives the most music. So much for the mostness. As to the musicalness of the music, that depends—on the music. The orchestra, considered as one instrument, is the ideal, but the organ, with its resources for musical expression, as a single instrument, is king.

2. I believe that the capacity of music for expressing the emotion of love and passion has been developed to the highest degree by Wagner. There is still an immense field in the expression of religious emotion. This side of life, owing to the materialistic currents which have been so dominant, has, since Bach, been very inadequately expressed. A change is sure to come, in fact the dawn of a new light is already visible to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Keep your eye, for instance, on Dvorak—great, simple soul, and constant reader of the Bible that he is—and see what you will see during the next few years. You will then begin to realize somewhat of the new field the future has in store for music.

3. I like them all. They add so much to the picturesqueness of life, and they please the children, which is in itself no small recommendation. Don’t let us get so over-cultivated that we cannot enjoy these things with the children, and thereby add to our health and happiness. So I say, hand-organs and brass bands? Yes, let’s have them; the more, the better!

4. The day is coming when men and women will not be separated as now. Biology tells us that woman is the trunk of the tree; she the permanent factor, man the variant. She is not only the mother of the race, but of the arts as well. Hers has not been the hand to write, carve, etc., but she has stood as the inspiring cause. What, for instance, would Beethoven have been without that wonderful love of his? Take the “Immortal beloved” out of his life, and the Countess Potocka out of the life of Chopin, and imagine, if you can, the difference in result!

John Orth.

1. While the violin is the most expressive of instruments, the complete modern church organ produces the most musical music, and is nearest to the orchestra in its effects as a single instrument.

2. I have not much faith in the future of music. The so-called music of the future is not a logical outcome of the music of the past. There is a great gulf between the two; symmetry of form and thematic development, the very life blood of pure music, have been and are being sacrificed for dubious statement and confusion. The works of the recognized masters of to day destined to live, are those which follow most closely the art of musical composition which culminated in Beethoven. I hold a decidedly pessimistic view of the future of musical composition as a fine art.

3. Many forms of street music are a delight to the multitude while painful to the educated ear. I would not have them banished, but I would have the government of every city withhold a license from any performer or bands of performers who could not pass an examination before a board of musical people chosen to determine upon their quality and tunefulness.

4. Man is essentially more creative than woman, and while we shall, no doubt, continue to have many charming compositions from women, I do not believe a woman composer will ever appear who will take rank with the masters.

George L. Osgood.

The Spire.

Tooting a Horn for Fifty Years

Sing With Your Heart! By Frieda Hempel, Internationally Renowned Prima Donna

New Concepts In Present Day Music

What Do Bands Mean to America?

The Renaissance of the Band

"Sound the Trumpet, Beat the Drums!" (From Handel's "Judas Maccabeus")

A Talk with Alberto Randegger, By William Armstrong

The Influence of Our Composers Upon Vocal Art in America.

The Making of an Artist: A Second Talk with Mark Hambourg

Music-Clubs and Their Pitfalls

Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie and the Royal Academy of Music, London.

Questions and Answers.

How the Voice Looks.

Operatic Voices.

Why Am I So Stupid?

Study in Phrasing. I.

The Technic of Vocal Expression. No. III. Tone-Connection.

The Awakening.

Accompanying Singers.

Impromptu Opinions of Prominent Musicians.

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