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The rare good fortune that attended the American launching of the musical opera "Die Tote Stadt" recalls to the author, perhaps by way of contrast, the anxiety last May of the composer as to whether the Metropolitan would accept it, and, if so, whether it would be a success. Erich Wolfgang Korngold conducted the music of "Die Tote Stadt" at the Opera House in Vienna, Austria, for the work undoubtedly gains upon rehearing, not because it presents any initial difficulties for the understanding but because it allows one to become familiarized without being bored by its repetition.

People who live in New York are so apt to have their conception of general conditions at large biased by those which prevail here that we often lose perspective of a movement. This is especially true of the musical situation in America which, at present, holds a unique place in the annals of their cultural progress. The war which recently ruined half the world enriched us in more ways than one; for it literally dumped the musical wealth of Europe upon our shores, much, it must be added, to our dismay.

The article presents information on pianist Vladimir De Pachmann. The action of his fingers, both from a mechanical and mental standpoint, would have been "colossal" for anyone whose fingers had always been trained that way far the music. But to adapt one's entire repertoire, as De Pachmann has done, to a new fingering and technic, after playing another way for sixty years, is an unparalleled tour de force in virtuosity. In spite of his ripe maturity, his medium of expression has grown more exquisite with his art.

The author says that New York has apparently become the musical clearing house for the U.S. Reputations made in Berlin, Germany, London, England or Paris, France must now, it seems, be indorsed by the American metropolis before the country at large will accept them, a fact that is being more and more stressed by managers. An overcrowded market has forced people to measure an artist by his art rather than by conditions that made his art, with the result that their judgment has been freed from the bias of European opinion, and concert artists, at least, from the handicap of their nationality.

There are times when jazz may be regarded as a virtue. Such as when some patriotic composer, content to sound its rhythmic possibilities rather than its capacity for noise, humanely modifies it from a national nuisance to a national characteristic. These instances, of course, are rare. But when the composer happens to be a John Alden Carpenter, who turns its noisy commentaries into philosophic reflections, and its shuffling rhythms into the exalted intricacies of the ballet, then the very isolation of its position gives it a certain national significance. Thus the first of the Concerts Internationaux da Ia Libre Esthétique, which introduced Mr. Carpenter's Jazz Pantomime, "Krazy Kat," took on somewhat of the nature of an historic occasion.

Italy is in the throes of a musical renaissance. Like the France and the Soviet Union of the last two decades, she too has been touched by that flame of creative intensity, of passionate seeking after musical truths that has been the quickening spirit of modern music. For there is also an unworthy conservative element in Italy, best typified by Arturo Toscanini, orchestral conductor. Toscamni, as the greatest and most popular conductor in Italy, and as director of La Scala, the most important opera house in the country, has it in his power to push any composer far along the path of success.

Of the hundred or more music festivals that have taken place during the last three months, two stand out with peculiar significance and in direct antithesis, the New York festival and the Bach festival at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The festival chorus numbered 1,500, the orchestra numbered 150, and the 71st Regiment Armory seated some five thousand people. The most important feature of the festival was the first New York performance of Edgar Stillman Kelley's. The work is divided into three parts, of which the second, perhaps, with its fascinating "Chorus of Vendors and People," is the most original.

When the Metropolitan Opera Co. announced the production of "Parsifal" in English, some took the attitude that upon the success with which the text could be distinguished depended the future of grand opera in that tongue, others, that it hung upon the effect of the translation itself. None seemed to realize that a production in which most of the singers were foreigners, and the translator himself merely a very able writer of reviews, could, for very obvious reasons, fail to meet either test, and still justify the claim of those who believed they had a right to hear opera at their native opera house in their native tongue. The question of giving grand opera in English is hot new. It has been threshed out many times in words and in deeds.

Early in the season, musician Harold Bauer; in conjunction with a number of his most distinguished colleagues, formed what is known as the Beethoven Association. The object of the Beethowen Association was to give a series of chamber music concerts devoted exclusively to vocal and instrumental compositions by the musician Ludwig van Beethoven, including many that are seldom heard in public. The artists were to give their services gratis, the net proceeds to be donated for a purpose of musical interest to be determined at the close of the season by vote of the members of the society.

The American composer has had no national traditions upon which to fall back, and the only indigenous material upon which he could build has been the folk tunes of two alien races, the African Americans and the Indians. The American composer is never at his best in dramatic declamation. No stronger proof of this can be found than that furnished by the history of American opera during the last decade. It was undoubtedly the lyrical character of the music that brought success to the two new American operas just recently heard here: "Cleopatra's Night," by Henry Hadley, and "Rip Van Winkle," by Reginald de Koven.

Now that the music "Œdipus Rex" has come and gone and with it its composer, Igor Stravinsky, the curtain may be said to have rung upon another decade of modernism. For "Œdipus Rex" is the last flickering end of a once mighty promise. In it Stravinsky has again turned his back upon his heritage, Tartar Russia. And this time the desertion seems final. There is a feeble reminder of race memory in the Chinese use of drums to heighten and foreshadow dramatic action, first as an accompaniment to the chorus and later as a link in the action itself.

When in 1918 one newly made symphonic leader of a newly made orchestra dismissed all modern American music as "pretentious," and another with the remark that "of course" he was "interested" but had no time to examine the scores, one condoned it as natural. There have, of course, been exceptions to the rule. There is Ernest Bloch, who daily proves his ideals and his enthusiasms as well as his genius. According to those quoted by James F. Dunn in a musical magazine called "Singing," only four of the 120 works performed by the New York Philharmonic dining 1926-1927 were American.

The article discusses performing arts. Plain is the way being indicated by the American Opera Company. To take a stale and sentimental Gallicism like French composer Charles Gounod's "Faust" and freshen it to the point of enjoyment is art. To do this in English is even more-it is history. If this offshoot of the now defunct Rochester Opera Company had no more to its credit than the new settings by performer Robert Edmond Jones and the modern staging by Vladimir Rosing, it would have justified its existence as a progressive operatic force. But it has more.

The article discusses music and music performances. It was a happy chance that led the performer Compinsky Trio, the Musical Art, and the performer Marianne Kneisel Quartets to give their respective concerts within the same week and so bring home with cumulative force their collective significance. This significance is youth, which, in this particular instance, is more vital than the greatest virtuosity, although the two quartets in question are not without musical distinction. The Musical Art, for instance, stands out for its rich unanimity of tone, thanks to the princely loan by performer Felix M. Warburg of a marvelous quartet of Strads; while the other four have the advantage of Franz Kneisel's daughter in leadership and name.

In this article, the author focuses on various music performances and their performers and composers of Germany and England in comparison to the American contemporary music. He considers performances of various musicians and their evolutionary changes in these performing arts across the ancient village of Haslemere in England to luxurious Baden-Baden in Germany. The author considers "The Princess and the Pea," by Ernst Toch; "The Abduction of Europa," by Darius Milhaud; "Hin und zurück," by Paul Hindemith; and "Mahogany," by Kurt Weill. The first was a fairy tale, the second a mythological episode, and the last two were nonsensical vaudeville sketches.

There is always a decided advantage in hearing conductor on his native heath, because there he is at home with both his audience and his orchestra and under no special temptation to impress either. Hearing Sir Thomas Beecham in this way was therefore a great piece of luck, for the friendly, easy atmosphere of Albert Hall will undoubtedly be lacking when he stands on trial as a guest conductor of the Philadelphia and Philharmonic Orchestras. The result of this trial will doubtless surprise many, as people have heard more about Sir Thomas's eccentricities than about his qualities as a conductor.

The visit which the Rochester Opera Company has just paid New York for a week under the auspices of the Theater Guild ranks in importance with the success of the opera "The King's Henchman." This company is the offspring of the Eastman School of Music. Its members are students of the school, its stage and musical directors, Vladimir Rosing and Eugene Goossens, members of the faculty. The end of four years of cooperation finds all concerned able to give a composer Giacomo Puccini's opera, "Madame Butterfly," and two of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's operas, "The Marriage of Figaro" and "The Flight from the Seragho," and to give them in such a manner as to charm sophisticated New York.

It is difficult to compress within a brief paragraph Harold Samuel's revelations of Bach in particular and of piano playing in general. Still more so is it to analyze in detail six programs-one a day-containing no repeats and covering some thirty-eight works of Bach, excluding encores. The MacDowell Foundation has fostered some of the best American art of late years. It has done this by maintaining a studio colony in the woods of New Hampshire Peterborough, to be exact-where the artist of proved creative ability can work undisturbed for a nominal sum and where he can escape alike the terror of the noisy summer boarder and the burden of the householder.

The article presents information on music of Pro Arte Quartet of Belgium. The shock deepens as one tries to grasp the fact that not only the Pro Arte Quartet but also the English Singers-the latter the most perfect exponents of Tudor vocal music this country has ever known-made their initial bow to American audiences in a concert hail in the Library of Congress at a Chamber Music Festival given under the auspices of Congress. With American artists and composers all over the country hard pressed by competition brought about through economic conditions in Europe.

A Peculiar feature of the Bach Festival which takes place annually at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is that it always has a new experience to offer. Capping a musical season distinguished by an unusual number and variety of Bach performances, it pointed out works still to be explored. And following on the heels of a plethora of modern music, it authenticated this composer as its greatest inspirational source. On the other hand, it is modem music that has paved the way for Bach. This music has, from first to last, been a revolt against romanticism; and the germs of the revolt are to be found in Bach.

Many who have witnessed the lamentable failure of the Opera Players in their first venture, "The Immortal Hour," have been wondering openly how this work could have had so long a run in London, England. To understand this one must have seen the London production; for one must admit with those thus bewildered that the musical setting of "The Immortal Hour," which the English composer Rutland Boughton has put to Fiona Macleod's play and poems of that name, is of little value. The Opera Players had led one to believe from their announcements that at last were to have one of those small opera houses in which Europe abounds, where opera for small stage would be given artistically, and where young singers with Metropolitan aspirations could find a stepping-stone from the studio to the larger and more important stage.

Reviews the book "My Long Life in Music," by Leopold Auer.

This article focuses on the rebirth of English music in England. The rebirth of a nation into its musical heritage has been overlooked, probably because we have so long denied the existence of that heritage and its early cries have been more or less lost in the tonal unrest that has been sweeping the musical world, because the making of new idioms is usually a more obtrusive process than the making of new music. The exhaustion imposed by the war was too general and too profound for that; and the sustained intensity of those years of conflict left her, as her fellow combatants, bereft of emotional resources.

Two hundred years ago the success in London of "The Beggar's Opera" led its author to follow it up by writing "Polly, A Sequel" in order "to make hay while the sun shone." And two hundred years later, for the same reason and in the same city, "Polly" was again written, with the added interest of being actually produced. For Gay never saw his work on the boards. The success of its predecessor had been his undoing. Musically, it came as a protest against the Italian opera then in vogue, and had a profound influence upon musical life in England and the colonies for many years.

This article focuses on music of American and foreign conductors. The author says that it soon becomes only too apparent that, while Americans have the finest orchestras in the world, they are now about the only nation, which discourages its conductors from sharing in this advantage. The author says that the Americans tried it years ago with regard to their singers, instrumentalists, and teachers, and doubtless could have maintained it to this day had not the war come and exposed its feebleness.

Now that the Chicago Opera Co. has departed, and the Metropolitan is nearing its last lap, retrospection forces one to the conclusion that opera has no terrors to compare with those that are conjured up by its press agents. The Chicago Opera then proceeded to herald its visit with daily accounts of quarrels between its director-general, Mary Garden, and various prominent members of its company. Whether these reports were true, or whether they emanated solely from the fertile imaginations of press agents and reporters, was shrewdly left unsettled. The presentations at the Metropolitan, while distinguished for smoothness of ensemble, choral beauty, and artistic settings, lack vitality. Those at the Manhattan, though more spontaneous, are still ragged. Both companies have splendid material waiting to be marshaled, fused, inspired.

The article presents information about music. To hear musician Edmond Clément within twenty-four hours after musician Elena Gerhardt is to realize that the interpretative art of a musician must be gauged by its imaginative quality rather than by the quality of its medium, by its inevitability rather than by its range. For Clément, through such sticky sentimentalists as Massenet and Hahn, such gatherers of froth and fragments touches depths and heights and shades that Gerhardt through the nobler medium of the German classics seldom if ever attains.

The musical melodrama, that anachronism of eighteenth-century romanticism which has dominated Italy for nearly two hundred years, has at last fallen a victim to its own absurdities. In bitter reaction against the degradation and disrepute into which Italian music has been brought, there has sprung up in Italy a revolt and an ideal, a revolt against that slipshod and irregular relationship between the text and the score in which the voice alone is supreme. The ideal fusion of words and voice and instruments has long been the goal of Italy's two most gifted composers, Ildebrando Pizzetti and G. Francesco Malipiero.

In this article, the author focuses on the Society of American Singers with evaluating some of their recent music performances and records. He first considers the opera "Ruddigore." The Society of American Singers, which began its first season so successfully with opera comique has ended its third lesson equally successfully with comic opera. The transition to William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan, suggestively, cannot be said to have necessitated any lowering of standards, as the works of these two embody the comic spirit of their age and nationality. The author focuses on the artistic blends of various other noted composers such as G.B. Pergolesi, W.A. Mozart, and Jacques Offenbach.

The article focuses on issues related to German music. If the concert programs of the season can be safely trusted, the ban upon German music has at last been lifted. German songs are creeping back in French and English attire, instrumental favorites are coming into greater prominence and the only trace of hysteria being evidenced is that of certain symphonic conductors who are frantically hastening to overload their programs with the old, familiar classics. Music may be used as propaganda, as it was by nearly every country during the late war, but in itself it will always remain above politics.

The article focuses on the book "French Music of Today," by G. Jean-Aubry. It was Claude Debussy who first asked why French musicians should base their musical foundation on the German classics instead of on their own. It is very much this same point of view that Jean-Aubry has taken in his book, "French Music of Today," in which he endeavors to show how Debussy and certain of his contemporaries have "linked the spirit of the France of two hundred years ago with that of the France of today. It is indeed a book calculated to cause a great deal of discussion, for even its two prefaces, written respectively by its translator, Edwin Evans, and by Gabriel Faure, director of the Paris Conservatoire, not only contradict each other, but disagree strongly at times with the author.