Page:The New Yorker 0004, 1925-03-14.pdf/22

 

Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and the rest of them probably are asking one another, between harp lessons, "which of us will be the next to be glorified in a show based on our life and music?" Franz Schubert is being presented to the provinces as a chuckleheaded baritone in "Blossom Time," and Jacques Offenbach is appearing nightly at the Century Theatre as a musical comedy tenor in "The Love Song." There are rumors of similar masterworks founded on Mozart and Mendelssohn, and Tschaikowsky has been honored by being made the posthumous composer of "Natja."

Schubert, whose compositions were sold for sums that would not have bought a pair of tickets for "Blossom Time," presumably wonders naïvely about his new status, and the little Jewish 'cello virtuoso who wrote 102 operettas doubtless rips off cynical harmonies on his paradisiacal instrument as he views the strange adventures foisted on him in "The Love Song."

What would they say if someone were to present a work concocted from an episode in the life of Richard Strauss, who still lives and collects royalties? What would be their opinion of an opera in which the chief characters were Strauss, his wife, and a conductor made up to look like Josef Stransky, with a score drawn from the music of Strauss? Well, such an opera was presented in Vienna not so long ago. Its name is "Intermezzo," and the librettist and composer is Richard Strauss.

 

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Comes in to hand a novel, "The Virgin Flame," in which a great composer is cheated of recognition by a jazz-mad public. The first article in the musical credo (European as well as American) is that all great musicians starve to death while all musical illiterates become immensely wealthy by writing "Red Hot Mamma." We say it ain't true. Almost any competently put together symphonic can get a reading from orchestral conductors and it's easier to place a good grand opera than it is to sell a good fox-trot.

 

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Another white hope of American grand opera will be disclosed at Carnegie Hall on the evening of March 20, when Charles Wakefield Cadman's "The Garden of Mystery" will have a premiere. The libretto is derived from a tale of Dante and Beatrice. One hopes that this text will be an improvement over the ingenuous collection of futilities which Cadman set in "Shanewis." Most American operas have failed for want of a "book." "Mona," the $10,000 prize fivver of some years back at the Metropolitan, had Brian Hooker as its librettist, but Mr. Hooker proved to be rather too classical with his fable of Druids.

Victor Herbert's "Madeleine" and "Natoma" both had indifferent foundations, and Henry Hadley has not had the best of luck with his dramatists. Puccini had the right notion. His success with "Tosca" and "Madama Butterfly" was half won with the selection of the libretto.

 

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Ernest Newman, guest critic of the Evening Post, packs up his troubles and returns to London. Mr. Newman made a far greater impression on us barbarians than his colleague, H. C. Colles, who functioned on the Times for a semester last year,. He leaves behind him many angry artists and, we hope, some delighted readers. His four-line rejoinder to the President of the Friends of Music was the immediate cause of the edict against the presence of critics at the concerts of that serious body, and this, perhaps, was not the least memorable of Mr. Newman's achievements.

 

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Lyrics from the Pekinese

 

X

"AWAKENED, as Nature provides,
By the punctual robin,
Our President gallantly rides
His mechanical Dobbin.
According to Fame or Report,—
That publicity-mong'ress,—
A patent-adjustable sort
Of mechanical Congress
Would prove the most welcome of gees,"
Said the small Pekinese.

 

XI

"I come with a fardel of song
(What's a Pekinese song worth?)
To add to the tributes that throng
To Miss Paulina Longworth,
With sonnets in various modes
On the gifts she inherits,
I offer a bushel of odes
To her personal merits
With madrigals, ballads and glees,"
Said the small Pekinese.

 

XII

"Tis Spring!-If it isn't quite Spring,
It is Spring pretty nearly;
The crocuses don't do a thing
As their custom is, yearly;
Deep down where the blizzard can't reach
Stays the daffydowndilly;
The wealthy remain at Palm Beach
For the weather is chilly
And noses continue to freeze,"
Said the small Pekinese.

—Arthur Guiterman