The World of Music News

Abroad August 1914

THE fiftieth birthday of Richard Strauss was celebrated in Munich with a performance of Salome.

IT is purposed to hive Hugo Wolf's neglected opera, Der Corregidor, at the Vienna Opera House next season.

THE death of Thomas Koschat is a distinct loss to Vienna, where his talent as a composer of songs and make quartets has been much appreciated. His works were also very well known in this country.

AN opera entitled The Dead Town, was found among the papers of Raoul Pugno, whose death was a severe loss to loves of the pianoforte and its art in France. The work is to be produced at the Opera Comique in Paris.

LEAVE to retire has been granted Professor Frederick Neicks, who has held the Reid Chair of Music in the University of Edinburgh since 1891. Professor Neicks went to Scotland fifty years ago, after having had a thorough musical education in Germany.

EDGAR Stillman Kelley, the distinguished American composer, is having a triumphant career in Germany. Hard on the warm reception of his symphony comes the report of an equally successful performance of his string quartet in C major, Op. 25.

AN opera founded on Dicken's Cricket on the Hearth, composed by Sir Alexander MacKenzie, principal of the Royal Academy of Music, London, has been produced in the British metropolis. It was composed in 1900, but it was somewhat overshadowed at the time by Goldmark's much heralded opera on the same subject.

THE Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik of Leipzig tells of the invention of a piano in which the scale is divided into quarter tones instead of half tones. The inventor is Willy Mollendorff. It will be some few years, to say the least, before any serious attention will be paid to writing music for this invention.

THE Fiftieth Congress of the International Society of Music is to be held this year in France. It will be remembered that last year the congress was in England and that many leading Americans were present. We hope the day is not far distant when the International Society will hold a meeting in America, though perhaps this country is a long way off for most of the members of this valuable society.

A FUND was raised in Germany to enable organists in straitened circumstanced to visit Leipzig for the Bach festival. This was a good thing to do; it would also be a good thing for the Germans to pay their organists a living wage so that they do not need funds of this sort.

A NEW organ has been installed in Uhser Hall, Edinburgh, which was opened by Charles Marie Widor, the famous French organist.  Widor was accorded a brilliant welcome in the Scotch capital, and at the concert the hall was filled with three thousand people. There was also a strong body of police present to take action in case any suffragettes made themselves objectionable.

WHILE quiet reigns in the operatic world of New York, London has been having it busiest opera season. Not only has Covent Garden been giving its wonted royal opera, but Sir Joseph Beecham has been giving a season at Drury Lane. Sir Joseph's father, by the way, who is the founder of the celebrated pill and the financier of his son's operatic ventures, has just been made a baronet.

FELIX Weingartner has been appointed director of the Conservatory of Music at Darmstadt, Germany. He intends to make some important changes and to raise the school to a very high standard; for this purpose he has engaged Wilhelm Bachaus to take charge of the piano department, Carl Flesch for the violin department, and Hugo Becker for the 'cello department. We can hardly imagine the finer combination of artist teachers. Darmstadt has fine musical traditions and Americans will be interested to know that MacDowell was at one time head piano instructor at this institution.

AMONG the "birthday honors" awarded by King George of England this year a knighthood was bestowed upon George Henschel, the famous composer - conductor  - singer - teacher. Sir George Henschel is German by birth, and was at one time conductor of the Boston Symphony. Though he was always much appreciated wherever he went, he has been especially popular in Great Britain, where he has held several important musical positions. It is not often that so high a distinction as a knighthood is bestowed upon one of foreign birth, though Sir Charles Halle, Sir August Manns, Sir Jules Benedict, Sir Michael Costa, and Sir Paolo Tosti have been similarly so honored.

COSIMA, widow of Richard Wagner, has played her part regally. This commanding daughter of Franz Liszt has now announced that she and her son, Siegfried, intend to present Bayreuth to the German people. The gift includes the opera house, all the properties and equipments and the library and mementoes of the great Richard, together with a special fund for the upkeep of the Wagnerian festivals. The bequest will not come into force until after her death and that of her son. The gift is a noble one, and no more fitting destiny could befall this dream theater of Wagner's than that it should at last come into the hands of the German people, with whose legends and ideals the great composer's master works are saturated.

THE London County Council seems to have a heart after all. It now permits dancing on four of the open spaces of the city, to which the people flock on "bank holidays", as the English describe their national holidays. Not only is dancing permitted, but a first class band is provided to play appropriate music, an area is roped off for the dancers, and the cost to those who would so enjoy themselves is the price of a program - one penny (two cents). The London County Council seems to have realized that the way to keep people out of mischief is to give them ample provision for rational enjoyment at small cost. It is far less expensive to prevent vice and crime by providing wholesome opportunity for excellent outdoor exercise than by providing goals, reformatories and asylums for use after crimes have been committed and vice already has done its work. Some of our noisy reformers who see harm in every form of amusement in which the public indulges might ponder this idea over a bit.

PROBABLY the most promising of all the younger composers of opera is Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, and the musical world has therefore awaited his latest composition with great interest. The Secret of Suzanne, the Donne Curiose and the Jewels of the Madonna each won him a large following. Now comes L'Amore Medico, which was successfully produced in Dresden in December, and has recently been given its first American performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. It is, as all the world knows, based on Moliere's comedy, L'Amour Medecin, and is written in Wolf-Ferrari's most sparkling vein. The role of Arnolfo demands a basso buffo of the style Rossini and Donizetti loved, and an excellent one was forthcoming in Pini-Corso. The pretty Lisetta, whose strange malady baffled the physicians and only succumbed to treatment when her lover came to her disguised as a doctor and married her under her father's nose, was admirably portrayed by Lucrezia Bori.

HUMPERDINCK, the composer of Hansel and Gretel, is still feeling the effects of the nervous breakdown from which he suffered two years ago, and has been advised to take a sea voyage. In addition to Frau Humperdinck he will be accompanied by his librettist on a trip to Africa. He as, by the way, just completed two new comic operas.

The Etude Magazine August 1914