The World of Music News

Everywhere February 1919

MUSIC has become a sovereign necessity in the hospital, as much as the chloroform bottle and the bandage. It has been found to prevent the "circular thinking", which is so pernicious a feature of convalescence from shell shock, head wounds and nervous conditions generally.

THE Oratorio Society of New York has given ninety-two Christmas performances of The Messiah.

THE national hymn of the Jewish Commonwealth of Palestine is said to be the identical melody sung by Miriam to commemorate the crossing of the Red Sea by the children of Israel, and the overwhelming of Pharaoh's armies.

MARYLAND announces a musical memorial service to commemorate the end of the war and the death of those engaged. Over one thousand choir singers will take part, and the authorities are planning to interest the people of the whole State in the celebration. The chief mover in the project is the Oratorio Society of Baltimore, whose conductor is Joseph Pache. The program will include Berlioz' Te Deum, in thanksgiving for the victorious outcome, and Verdi's Requiem, in memoriam of the heroes who died for their country.

A NOVEL experiment has been tried recently in San Francisco. Two great organs, synchronized carefully, were played in duo. The effect was thrilling, and the volume of tone was extraordinary. Over a mile of pipe was used in the building of the two organs.

OSCAR Hammerstein, the impressario, is "coming back". His contract of silence, made with the Metropolitan in 1910, by which he agreed to keep out of grand opera, will expire on January 1, 1920. Hammerstein declares himself well prepared for the coming venture, with new scenery and costume novelties in huge quantities.

ALEXANDER Wallace Rimington, A.R.C., R.B.A., The inventor of the "color organ" (an instrument used in researches into the relation between color and sound) is dead in Gloucester, England, at the age of 64. He was, for some years, the Professor of Art at Queen's College, and while there he carried on extensive investigations into the subject of color and music. His theories were accepted by Scriabin, and adopted in his compositions, notably Prometheus. Mr. Rimington wrote two books, Colour Music and Architecture Seen Through the Painters' Glasses. He was also an artist of note, having studied in London and Paris, and he exhibited at the Paris Salon, the Royal Academy and the International Exhibitions in America and on the Continent.

LOS ANGELES has a new school which teaches the art of playing to motion pictures. It consists of three departments: picture interpretation, "cue-ing" or timing of pictures and orchestration, orchestral pipe organ, piano, harmony and theory.

THE Worshipful Company of Musicians, whose patroness is St. Cecilia, is one of the oldest musical associations in the world, having been founded in the fifteenth century, obtaining their charter from James the First, in 1604, sometime afterward. This charter gives them power to direct music and dancing within three miles of London, and provides for the strict governance of the musical freemen in the matter of making music "under the window or lodging of any nobleman, knight or gentleman", which, it seems, was not allowed, except by the express permission of the guild.

THE Royal March of Italy is to be boomed until it is as well known as the national anthems of other countries. The Italian Government is behind a movement to circulate it amongst those who can use it,  orchestrally or otherwise. Captain Guardabassi, Italian Bureau of Public Information, Hotel Vanderbilt, New York City, will inform anyone upon the subject, and also will give to any musical organization, Italian or otherwise, copies of the Italian national anthem.

MUSIC has taken its secure place as a solid industry since the war began. Appleton's Year Book gives a long tabulated list of expenditures in the various industries, ranging from such practical things as boots and shoes, $590,000,000; woolen goods, $701,000,000; cotton goods, $464,249,813. Compare this expenditure with that for music, $600,000,000, and we find that it holds its own as one of the main industries of the country. About 2,000,000 people in this country are employed in some form of musical activity. The day is long past when music can be dismissed lightly as the filmy web woven by day dreamers. It is one of the practical things of the century, and the men and women who find their living in it are of the same stuff as the business people engaged in other trades and professions.

M. HENRI Fevrier, the French composer, is in this country pending the production of his new opera, Gismonda, in Chicago. Monna Vanna, another opera, had its premiere in Paris, 1909, and was later produced in New York.

THE Society of American Singers is reviving with great success, the light and whimsical operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. They make a delightful contrast in content and manner, to the ponderosity of grand opera, which the latter is often so taxing to people with a sense of humor.

HAVANA is having a season of grand opera, through the initiative of the Bracale Opera Company. The majority of the singers are Spanish or Italian. The repertoire is Pagliacci, Madam Butterfly, The Masked Ball, Gioconda, Mefistofele, Riggoletto, Aida, Linda de Chamounix, Thais and Tosca.

THE Sious City Municipal Symphony Orchestra is to give a series of ten concerts this season, under the direction of Mr. Maggee.

NEW YORK CITY has a Czecho-Slovak Arts Club, which features the performance of their native music sung or played by Czecho-Slovak artists.

AMERICAN Comic Opera, which shall produce light operas, of the Gilbert and Sullivan style, and shall embody also the best features of the French Opera Comique, has been projected.

THE St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is adding to its popular Sunday concerts, a novelty in the shape of Community singing; that is, the participation by the audience in well known ballads and songs, led by the assistant conductor of the orchestra. It has proved a signal success, and will probably be repeated in the near future.

ENGLAND has a Church Music Society, whose object in organization is to restore to church use some of the treasures of sacred compositions which have been forgotten or overlaid with less valuable material. They aim to displace the merely conventional repertoire of choir directors by both new and old music that is more meritorious and less staled by constant use. This society was organized in 1905 in London.

LONDON has a society for communal hymn practice to further ease in congregational singing at church. They have already held a hymn festival. These novel hymn practices are being very well attended, and the hymn festival numbered several thousand people, as audience and singers.

A SUITE Roccoco, by Louis Victor Saar, was one of the features of the Chicago Symphony Society's season this year. The work was splendidly received.

VICTORY Sings have been plentiful since the signing of the armistice. Miss Anne McDonough, Executive Secretary of the Liberty Sing work in Philadelphia and Chairman of the same branch of work for the National Federation of Musical Clubs, has issued a statement indicating how wonderfully music seemed to spring up as a part of the celebration of the armistice and serve as nothing else could.

THE Manuscript Society of Philadelphia offers a prize of $100 for a cantata on the subject of peace, open to all American composers. The cantata must be within the limits of 40 to 20 minutes, for chorus and solo voices with piano score. Full particulars may be secured from S. J. Riegel, secretary, 763 North Twentieth Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

THE red flag of revolution is flying over the erstwhile Kaiser's Royal Opera House in Berlin. And under its august roof, which has long re-echoed to grand opera, there was enacted the most comic of all comedies - an attempt at the democratization of art. For, inspired by the new creed of absolute equality, the chorus, if we may believe the newspapers, came out boldly and insisted upon solo parts - whether they could sing them even indifferently well was apart from the question! They ousted the world traveled soloists and demoted them to the rank and file of the chorus, and there ensued such a vocal babel, such terrific and vociferous protest on the part of those who coveted the solo parts themselves, that by nightfall no one could sing above a whisper. Worse and more of it - everyone wanted to be director of the opera, regardless of his fitness. And since the appointment of a director implied a ruling "class" in that his dicta must be obeyed, every man who aspired to the post was opposed by the rank and file of the company. Finally, out of the confusion, by some unbelievable miracle, Richard Strauss was appointed co-director, with a confrere, who had been former stage manager. Meanwhile, to salve matters to the disappointed, they voted a considerable increase of salary to the entire chorus. It is to be hoped that Her Strauss will be inspired to set this interesting Socialistic episode to music as mirth compelling as that of Till Eulenspiel and His Merry Pranks. It would require extremely humorous music to match the plot content.

SERGE Rachmaninoff was the guest of honor at the concert of the Russian Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, New York City. The initial performance included the Rachmaninoff Symphony in E Minor, with Modest Altschuler as the soloist.

THE Chicago Auditorium has just celebrated its twenty-ninth anniversary as one of the large opera houses of the world, by a performance of Romeo and Juliet, the first opera given on its opening night.

"PAPA HAYDN" has shared in the general and widespread attempts to prove an alibi. A recent monograph harks back to his early antecedents and establishes the fact that, far from being a German, Haydn was a Croatian. The first music his young ears heard was Croatian peasant songs, and of these may be found many distinct traces in his compositions, even after the German influence had colored his music and his long residence in German territory had made him one of Germany's adopted sons.

The Etude February 1919