My book, "How to Appreciate Music," in the chapter devoted to the pianoforte, contains a paragraph relating to the Pianola and its influence in popularizing music and stimulating musical taste. I confess that before I started that paragraph I was puzzled to know what term to use in designating the instrument I had in mind. "Mechanical piano-player" is a designation which not only does not appeal to me, but, furthermore, fails to do justice to the instrument, which, although mechanical in its working, is far from being mechanical in its effects. The result?—I took a cross cut and arrived straight at the word Pianola as being the name of the most widely known piano-player, and happily derived from the name of the most widely known instrument, the pianoforte or, as it is more popularly termed, the piano. For this reason the term Pianola was used in the paragraph referred to...
Title Page Text List of Plates Claud Lovat Fraser by John Drinkwater Note on the Scene and Costumes Cast of Characters Act I Scene I : Peachum’s House Airs I–XVIII Act II Scene I : A Tavern near Newgate Airs XIX–XXIV Scene II : Newgate Airs XXV–XXXVIII Scene III : The Same Air XXXIX Act III Scene I : Newgate Airs XL–XLII Scene II : A Gaming-House Air XLIII Scene III : Peachum’s Lock Airs XLIV, XLV Scene IV : Newgate Airs XLVI–LVI Scene V : The Condemn’d Hold Airs LVII–LXVII Scene II : Newgate Airs XXV–XXXVIII Scene III : The Same Air XXXIX Act III Scene I : Newgate Airs XL–XLII Scene II : A Gaming-House Air XLIII Scene III : Peachum’s Lock Airs XLIV, XLV Scene IV : Newgate Airs XLVI–LVI Scene V : The Condemn’d Hold Airs LVII–LXVII To J. G. and to G. L. F.,...
In bygone days I was often told that I had two mothers, and, as a matter of fact, I did have two—the mother who gave me life and my maternal great-aunt, Charlotte Masson. The latter came from an old family of lawyers named Gayard and this relationship makes me a descendant of General Delcambre, one of the heroes of the retreat from Russia. His granddaughter married Count Durrieu of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres . My great-aunt was born in the provinces in 1781, but she was adopted by a childless aunt and uncle who made their home in Paris. He was a wealthy lawyer and they lived magnificently. My great-aunt was a precocious child—she walked at nine months—and she became a woman of keen intellect and brilliant attainments. She remembered perfectly the customs of the Ancien Régime , and she enjoyed telling about them, as well as about...
In the first act, which is really a prologue, Hoffmann, a young poet, enters the tavern of Luther to meet his companions, and drinks to drown his sorrows. They think he is in love, but he answers, all that is past, and tells the story of his three loves. A physician’s drawing room. Spalanzani has invited a large company to witness the accomplishments of his daughter, Olympia. She sings to general applause, and Hoffmann falls desperately in love with her. As the guests go to supper, Hoffmann tells her of his passion and thinks he finds a responsive echo in her. There is dancing, and she waltzes him off his feet. A Dr. Coppelius comes in to say he has been swindled by Spalanzani. He slips into Olympia’s room, from which a noise of breaking is heard. Coppelius, out of revenge, has smashed Olympia. She was only an automaton. Hoffmann...
The Church of Rome, though admitting no women to a share in performing its services, has yet made a woman the patron saint of music. The religions of antiquity have paid even more homage to the weaker sex in the matter, as the multitude of musical nymphs and fostering goddesses will show. Of Saint Cecilia herself little is known accurately. The very apocryphal legend states that about the year 230 a noble Roman lady of that name, who had been converted to Christianity, was forced into an unwilling marriage with a certain Valerian, a pagan. She succeeded in converting her husband and his brother, but all were martyred because of their faith. This it is stated, took place under the Prefect Almacus, but history gives no such name. It is unfortunate, also, that the earliest writer mentioning her, Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, speaks of her as having died in Sicily...
F rom the dried sinews stretched across the shell of a dead tortoise to the concert-grand piano of the present day is a far flight. Yet to this primitive source, it is said, may be traced the evolution of the stringed instrument which reached its culmination in the piano. The latter has been aptly called "the household orchestra," and in tracing its origin one must go far back into the annals of the past. If we accept the Bible as history, and it is the greatest of all histories, the stringed instrument is of very ancient date. It is recorded that the ambassadors who came to the court of Saul played upon their nebels , and that David, the sweet singer of Israel, wooed the king from his sadness by singing to his harp. We must go back to the civilization of ancient Egypt, more than five hundred years before...
I am an American musician and have lived in this country since my ninth year. I was born in Breslau, Silesia, on January 30, 1862, and my first memories are connected with war, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. I was four years old and remember being with my mother in a room in our apartment in Breslau, which was filled with flowers and growing plants (mother always had a marvellous gift for maintaining and nursing plants) and various friends coming in to condole with her over the death of my baby brother, Hans, who had died of cholera, which was then raging in Breslau. The second child of my parents, born in 1860, had been christened Richard, after Richard Wagner, who had officiated as godfather at the ceremony. This child lived but a short time, and Wagner had vowed that he would never again stand as godfather for the children...
“A Hundred Pipers”—Scotland becoming Cosmopolitan—The War spirit of the Pipes—Regiments, not Clans—Annual Gatherings—Adaptability of Pipes—Scotch folk from Home—An aged Enthusiast—Highlands an Extraordinary Study—Succession of Chiefs—Saxon introduced—Gaelic printed—Highlands in 1603—The Mac Neills of Barra—Highland hospitality. “Wi’ a Hundred Pipers an’ a’ an’ a’” is a song that catches on with Highland people as well now as in the days when the piper was a power in the land. There is a never ending charm about the pipes, and there is a never ending swing about the song of the hundred pipers, that stirs the blood of the true-born Celt, and makes him applaud vigorously in rhythm with the swing of the chorus. But it is because the song harks back to the time when one good piper was a man to be revered, and a hundred in one place a gathering to be dreaded—if they were all there of one accord—that...
Price 6d. (fr. 0.75) Net. J. & W. CHESTER Ltd. Seuls Dépositaires Copyright, 1921 by J. & W. Chester Ltd. PRINTED IN ENGLAND. Photographie, Robert Regassi, Lausanne IGOR STRAVINSKY I I gor Stravinsky was born at Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, on June 5th (18th), 1882. His father, an operatic singer, who won great favour with the public of the Russian capital at the Maryinsky Theatre, soon discovered remarkable musical gifts in the boy, which he did not neglect to develop, although he wished him to grow up to a legal career. In accordance with this plan, Igor Stravinsky, on having reached adolescence, entered the University of St. Petersburg and devoted himself to the study of jurisprudence, not without periodical and almost irresistible impulsions to abandon it for music. He had thus reached the age of twenty-two, when a meeting with Rimsky-Korsakov, who saw and appreciated the young man's astonishing talent,...
THE works of no composer of equal importance bear so striking a national impress as those of Chopin. It would, however, be an error to attribute this simply and solely to the superior force of the Polish musician's patriotism. The same force of patriotism in an Italian, Frenchman, German, or Englishman would not have produced a similar result. Characteristics such as distinguish Chopin's music presuppose a nation as peculiarly endowed, constituted, situated, and conditioned, as the Polish—a nation with a history as brilliant and dark, as fair and hideous, as romantic and tragic. The peculiarities of the peoples of western Europe have been considerably modified, if not entirely levelled, by centuries of international intercourse; the peoples of the eastern part of the Continent, on the other hand, have, until recent times, kept theirs almost intact, foreign influences penetrating to no depth, affecting indeed no more than the aristocratic few, and...
Macdowell's position to-day in creative musical art remains the same as it was twenty years ago—one of unassailable independence and individualism. Although these two factors, whether assailable or not, must be a feature of any composer who lays claim to greatness, in MacDowell's case they are so marked as to form the strongest bulwark of his natural position among great music makers. His tone poetry is of a quality and power that is not quite like that of any other composer, and in the portraying, or suggesting, as he preferred to call it, of Natural, Historical and Legendary subjects he stands alone. Superbly gifted as a lyrical poet both in the literary and the musical sense, and with a most refined and keen feeling for the dramatic, he spoke with a voice of singular eloquence and power. Probably his greatest achievement was his remarkable, unerring ability to create atmospheres of...
The art of music shows the operation of several moving forces, or motives, which have presented themselves to the composer with sufficient force to inspire the creation of the works we have. The most important of these motives is the Musical Sense itself, since it is to this we owe the creation of the folk-song, with its pleasing symmetries, and the greater part of the vast literature of instrumental music. Aside from the expression of the musical consciousness as such, the composer has been moved at times by the motive of Dramatic Expression. In opera, for example, a great deal of the music has for its object to intensify the feeling of the scene. Accordingly, the composer carefully selects those combinations and sequences of tones which in his opinion best correspond with the dramatic moment they are intended to accompany. And since many of these moments are of extreme intensity,...
The Annals of Music in America during the first hundred years contain very little that would seem to be of any importance to the musicians of today. Nevertheless it is as interesting to note the beginnings of music in this newly settled country as to watch the appearance of the baby's first tooth. The first settlement at Plymouth took place in 1620, and we find that in 1640 the colonists were already busy with the printing press in Cambridge, Mass., and the second book which came from the press was a reprint of an English Psalm book, printed under the title of the Bay Psalm Book. This was not an original work, but its production shows that music was already a living problem, and was even then part of the life of the colonists. Practically nothing more of note happened until the importation of the first pipe organ, in 1700....
The author of The American Flag was born to poverty, but by hard work he obtained a good education, and studied medicine under Dr. Nicholas Romayne, by whom he was greatly beloved. He obtained his degree and shortly afterward, in October, 1816, he was married to Sarah Eckford, who brought him a good deal of wealth. Two years later, his health failing, he visited New Orleans for the winter, hoping for its recovery. He returned to New York in the spring, only to die in the following autumn, September, 1820, at the age of twenty-five. He is buried at Hunt’s Point, in Westchester County, New York, where he spent some of the years of his boyhood. On his monument are these lines, written by his friend, Fitz-Green Halleck,— Drake was a poet from his childhood. The anecdotes preserved of his early youth show the fertility of his imagination. His first...
As the springtide of 1813 was melting into early summer the poet and musician of spring days and summer nights was born at the house of the Red and White Lion on the Brühl in old Leipzig. The precise date was May 22; and owing to many causes the 16th of August came round before, at the church of St. Thomas, the child was christened Wilhelm Richard Wagner. The events and circumstances of the period have furnished the imaginative with many striking portents with regard to the future mighty composer; and, to do the prophets full justice, after the event—long after the event—they have widely opened their mouths and uttered prophecies. Thus the name of the house, describing a beast such as never was on sea or land, distinctly warned a drowsy people that the monstrous dragon of Siegfried was about to take the road leading from Nowhere to Bayreuth....
Primitive men were no doubt impelled to give utterance to their feelings by a desire for awakening sympathetic response in their fellow beings. Vocal manifestation of feeling developed into incipient melody, hence rudimentary scales. Gestures of dancing suggested rhythm. A fusion of both melody and rhythm led to contrast, and contrast implies symmetry of design. To emphasize rhythm combined with euphony, musical instruments were needed. Relics of certain species of these instruments are analogous to subsequent species of civilized nations. Another source whence music can be traced is in the religious rites of the pagans. Ancient history reveals diversified and wide-spread musical activity. The oldest representations of musicians are to be found on Egyptian monuments. Through contact with Oriental nations, Egypt possibly founded her system of intellectual music on extraneous principles. On the other hand, she probably influenced the music of the Hebrews, certainly that of the Greeks. Exemplification of...
Who can doubt that this is an infinite gain to the listener and to art? Again, take an instance selected from a large number of compositions which are purely emotional, with no kind of realistic reference to nature or action, the Revolutionary Etude, by Chopin, Opus 10, No. 12. The emotional elements here expressed are fierce indignation, vain but desperate struggle, wrathful despair. These are easily recognized by the trained esthetic sense. Indeed, the work cannot be properly rendered by one who does not feel them in playing it; and they can be eloquently described in a general way by one possessing a little gift of language and some imagination; but many persons find it hard to grasp abstract emotions without a definite assignable cause for them, and are incalculably aided if told that the study was written as the expression of Chopin’s feelings, and those of every Polish patriot,...
By Clement A. Harris Associate of the Royal College of Organists Edited by Mallinson Randall New York The H. W. Gray Co. Sole Agents for Novello & Co., Ltd. Copyright , 1917 BY THE H. W. GRAY CO. Made in the United States of America The numbers refer to the Paragraph, not the Page. INDEX, Page 53 . How to Write Music Introductory. 1. —It is reasonable to expect that a musician shall be at least an accurate and legible writer as well as a reader of the language of his Art. The immense increase in the amount of music published, and its cheapness, seem rather to have increased than decreased this necessity, for they have vastly multiplied activity in the Art. If they have not intensified the necessity for music-writing, they have increased the number of those by whom the necessity is felt. Intelligent knowledge of Notation is the more necessary...
Darwin's theory that music had its origin “in the sounds made by the half-human progenitors of man during the season of courtship” seems for many reasons to be inadequate and untenable. A much more plausible explanation, it seems to me, is to be found in the theory of Theophrastus, in which the origin of music is attributed to the whole range of human emotion. When an animal utters a cry of joy or pain it expresses its emotions in more or less definite tones; and at some remote period of the earth's history all primeval mankind must have expressed its emotions in much the same manner. When this inarticulate speech developed into the use of certain sounds as symbols for emotions—emotions that otherwise would have been expressed by the natural sounds occasioned by them—then we have the beginnings of speech as distinguished from music, which is still the universal language....
It has always appeared to me a curious thing that the bow, without which the fiddle could have no being, should have received so scant attention, not alone from the community of fiddlers, but also from writers on the subject. I only know of one book in which the subject is adequately handled. Out of every twenty violinists who profess to some knowledge of the various types of Cremonese and other fiddles of repute and value, barely three will be met with who take a similar interest in the bow beyond knowing a good one, or rather one that suits their particular physique, when playing with it. They are all familiar with the names of Dodd and Tourte, but it is seldom that their knowledge extends beyond the names. As for a perception of the characteristics of bows as works of art, which is the standard of the fiddle connoisseur,...