The World of Music News

July 1921

RICHARD Strauss, foremost of living German composers, will come to America for a three month tour beginning October 1st. During the war so few of his compositions appeared on American programs that the Strauss craze almost vanished. America does not harbor enmity to art, and we trust that the Strauss art works, as art works, will again receive commensurate recognition.

MASCAGNI'S latest opera, Il Piccolo Marat, has had its premiere at the Teatro constanzi, Rome, with the composer conducting, and was received with much enthusiasm - a dozen recalls after each act.

JOHN McCormack's Irish Relief Concert, at the New York Hippodrome, netted over $75,000 for the cause. In the Chicago Auditorium he did even better and had nearly $80,000 to add to the fund.

THAT Caruso will return to the Metropolitan next season is the prediction of Gatti-Casazza.

LOUIS Campbell-Tipton died at his home in Paris, May 1st. Mr. Campbell-Tipton was one of America's successful composers, excelling especially in song writing.

A NEW and Genuine Portrait of Pergolesi, the great Italian composer of the first half of the eighteenth century, has been discovered at Iesi. The master is represented as sitting at his spinet while, by gesture and facial expression he is speaking of the portrait of his master which hangs above the instrument.

A $50,000 PRIZE for the Best Organ Composition by an American born composer is offered by DePauw University School of Music, Greencastle, Indiana. The competition is unusual in that it is for the sole purpose of creating interest in composition for the organ, and the prize winning work remains the property of the composer.

THE Kentucky Music Teachers' Association held its Fifth Annual Convention at Louisville, April 20-22.

MR. James Tubbs, the most famous and one really great among English makers of violin bows, died late in April, in his modest home in Soho (London).

A HYMN to Dante, the music by Madame Renato Brogi to a poem by Guido Pinelli, has been written by order of the Commune of Florence, Italy, to be performed at the Dante Festival.

THE Pennsylvania State Council, National Association of Organists, will hold its first convention in Lancaster, Tuesday, June 7th. Leading Church Theater and Concert Organists of the country will appear in lectures and recitals. One program will be devoted to original compositions of members of the Association.

THE Metropolitan Opera Company of New York will produce as novelties, Lalo's Le Roi D'Ys, Korngold's Die Tote Stadt, Rimsky-Korsakoff's Snegourotchka, Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, and Catalani's Loreley. Among the leading artists will be Mme. Galli-curci, Titta Ruffo, Mme. Marie Jeritza, of the Vienna Opera, and Mmes. Selma Kurz and Angeles Otien, of Buenos Aires Opera.

THE Musician's Political League of Jersey City, New Jersey, had 10,000 persons in attendance at its concert in the Fourth Regiment Armory, on May 3. The affair was a testimonial to the City Administration which was seeking re-election on the 10th, for its hearty support of the cause of music. This league is the first body of musicians organized to demand recognition and support from a political group.

COL. HENRY L. Higginson, founder and so long the financial supporter of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, left an estate of $2,599,564, according to an inventory lately filed. Musical instruments and scores in use by the orchestra are valued at $32,755.

THE Ohio Music Teachers' Association held its thirty-ninth convention at Dayton, April 27 to 29.

VINCENT d'Indy, celebrated French composer, pianist and conductor, will begin a seven week tour of America on December 1, when he will make his bow to us as Guest Conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra. He will appear also as Guest Conductor of the Cincinnati, Boston and Philadelphia Orchestras. A few piano recitals in the principal cities also will be given.

DR. ALBERT A. Stanley, for thirty-three years the Dean of the Musical Department of the University of Michigan, and for twenty-eight years the Conductor of the justly famous Ann Arbor Musical Festival, concluded his labors in these fields with the closing performance of the Festival on May 21. Dr. Stanley, but his virile personality, has made of the Musical Department of the University one of the strongest educational influences of the middle west. The great Ann Arbor Musical Festival is a child of his own imagination and labors and through his initiative has taken its place among the three greatest American festivals of its kind. His lovable personality has endeared him to a wide flung public who will regret his absence from his accustomed place but rejoice in his enjoyment of a well earned rest.

MME. CARELLI (ex-prima donna), assisted by her husband, has become managing director of the famous Teatro Costanzi of Rome.

"TRISTAN and Isolde" (Tristano e Isotta) in Italian, by the Turin Royal Theater Company, has been given two performances to sold out houses at the Theatre Champs Elysees of Paris.

MORE than 1,000,000 people attended the productions of the San Carlo Opera Company on its recent tour of the States.

ROLAND Hayes, a negro tenor of Boston, has sung for the King and Queen of England, at Buckingham Palace. King George presented the singer a diamond pin, the significant means royalty has of paying homage to great musicians. He also observed how different were the songs from what the English were taught to believe were characteristic negro melodies.

ARTHUR P. Schmidt, one of the oldest and most prominent music publishers of America, died at his home in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Mass., May 5th. He paid especial attention to the encouragement of American composers of promise. Many of them owe much of their success to him. His catalog consisted largely of the works of American musicians.

MORITZ Moszkowski, through the fickleness of fortune, is in Paris, in need of both physical and financial relief. Ill for several months, he has had to undergo several operations. The war wiped out practically all his investments and savings. A popular subscription is now being raised in America to aid this master, one of the greatest of living composers for the piano. M. Isidor Phillipp, in a letter to the Editor of The Etude, says, "If everyone who ever enjoyed or played a piece by Moszkowski would only stop for a moment and think how much the world owes to him, I am sure that they would be glad to send in a subscription, now that he is helpless and in actual want." The Etude will be glad to send your lover offering to Moszkowski. Send what you can, be it large or small. Let us show him how American music lovers appreciate men of genius.

A BOMB, placed between the orchestra and state of the Teatro Lirico of Milan, exploded between the acts of Lehar's The Blue Mazurka, killing twenty of the orchestra and occupants of front stalls, and injuring many others. The theater was wrecked and the entire city was shaken.

THE Philadelphia Operatic Society, Wassili Leps, Conductor, gave an unusually successful performance of Il Trovatore on the evening of May 5. Marie Stone Langston won laurels with her interpretation of Azucena, ably seconded by Paula Braendle Kraft as Leonora, royal F. MacLelland as Monrico and Paul Engle as Count di Luna.

$10,000 IN PRIZES is offered by the Chicago Herald and Examiner and public spirited citizens, for an "Official Song" for that city. Compositions entered in the competition must be submitted before June 30.

MANUEL Penelia, the Spanish composer, is in America and will remain to personally conduct the performances of his opera, El Gato Montes next winter.

THE Singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the daily order of business of both Senate and House is the object of a joint resolution introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative Appleby, of New Jersey.

MAX Kalbeck, eminent Viennese critic, and writer on musical subjects, died on May 4th. His Biography of Johannes Brahms, in eight volumes, was his most important work.

OSSIP Gabrilowitsch, Conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and with a world wide reputation as pianist, became a full fledged American citizen on April 11th.

AN Italian Musical Congress will convene in the first part of next November, at Turin, to consider "vital problems of the art, of musical culture and industries and to devise more adequate means for the elevation of Italian musical activities."

THE American Song Composer's Festival will convene for the second time, June 1-3, at Greenwood, Indiana. Mr. Goeffrey O'Hara, the noted song composer, and Mrs. D. A. Campbell, Editor of the Musical Monitor, will be the principal speakers. Grace Porterfield Polk is the moving spirit of the organization.

THE San Carlo Opera Company, Fortune Gallo impresario, will give a Philadelphia season of three weeks of Grand Opera, beginning November 28th. The Metropolitan Opera House, built by the late Oscar Hammerstein, will be used for the productions.

THE Largest Set of Chimes in the world has been ordered, to be placed in the Harkness Memorial Quadrangle of Yale University. There will be ten bells in the set.

"LA VEDETTA Artistica" is a new journal in the musical field, under the patronage of the Italian Musical League. We welcome it to our desk and wish for it every success.

MORE than 200,000 Musical Events including everything in the scale from a pupils' recital to grand opera, were given during the second annual Music Week of New York, which closed on April 24th, according to the estimate of its promoters.

"MUSIC Has Proved Itself Worthy to be classed as a Major Subject, co-ordinate with reading, writing and arithmetic", is the conclusion of the Educational Council of Music Supervisors' National Conference. In consequence they demand "such readjustment of school courses as will make possible the proper and adequate teaching and use of music".

ALBERT Stoessel has been unanimously elected by the board of directors to succeed Walter Damrosch as conductor of the Oratorio Society of New York, an unusual honor for a man of twenty-seven years.

A DEFICIT of $300,000 is the result of the season to the National Symphony Orchestra of New York.

The Etude Magazine July 1921