Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-04-28
THE MUSIC WORLD.
Some Timely Hints for the Listen
ing Public to Ponder Over.
THE COMING MUSICAL TREATS,
And Suggestions That Will Enable ALI to
Fully Appreciate Them.
EVENTS AND GOSSIP OF THE WEEK

Managers, singers and players-hundredl
of them, here and elsewhere-have Ions
been working in preparation for the various
important musical events to take place il
Pittsburg during the approaching May, {
month quite unprecedented in our musical
history. The prospective performers hav,
been doing all they can to make ready {
number of the greatest works ever written
some of them yet unheard of here. Whst
are the prospective listeners doing?
They don't have to do anything. They
can, if they wish, go to any or all of thest
rich concerts, enjoy the singing and play.
ing as it comes, go home and forget all
about il, except, perhaps, the names of the
great foreign singers. They have had q
pleasant evening, worth the money they
paid for it, and are content.
That is all well enough, as far as it goes.
But every one of those listeners might have
doubled the pleasure of the moment and
made those concerts permanent additions to
his fund of profitable experience, If he had only
prepared himself for his part of listener as he
required the performers to have prepared
themselves for their parts.
Every person who intends to hear the great
musical works of the coming month viii reap a
rich return from each moment spent before
hand in gaining information about the COM
poser, his life, style, rank and relation TO the
development of the art; about the work itself
in relation to others of the same composer, or
of the same class, subject, form, themes, man
ner of treatment and public history; about the
performers, their past careers and their posi-
tion in the world OF art-lnformatlon, in Short
upon any and all points connected with the
work to be heard. ANY addition to that stock
of information makes corresponding increase
in the listeners personal interest in the per-
formance, puts him in a more receptive atti-
tude and furnishes him with new possibilities
of enjoyment and intelligent appreciation.
II the listeners thus prepare themselves the
extraordinary musical opportunities OF the
coming month will result in benefits to the
community much greater and more abiding
than would be possible otherwise.
s@s
No doubt the greatest work to be heard next
month is Beethoven's Choral Symphony. In
deed. the opinion is widely held that this last
and greatest of the Immortal Nine" is abso-
lutely the greatest musical work ever written.
Hans Won Bulow, for instance, would seem to
be Of this opinion, as he told a reporter the
other day that the reason of his giving the
Ninth symphony twice in succession at one of
his recent concerts at home, was not that it
took the two hearings to appreciate it, but
that he did not deem any other composition
worthy of a place on the same programme
with it.
The frst performance in Pittsburg of this
unapproachable master piece will be an event
of genuine Importance.
1t is the Introduction Of the chorus in the
finale that makes the plainest distinction be-
tween the Ninth Symphony and its predeces-
Sors. Beethoven had already tried the same
plan on a smaller scale in his Choral Fantasia
1t was one of his own daring innovations, for
which there was no precedent; Mendelssohn is
among the very few who have successfully fol-
lowed the example, as in his 'Lobgesang" In
this great finale Beethoven at last found suit
able place for Schiller's lode to Joy" which
he first intended to compose 80 years before,
when lad Of 2, at Bonn, and which had kept
coming up in one shape or another ever since.
The Seventh and Eighth Symphonies had been
composed in 1872 IL years before the ninth was
completed. But even at that time he had the
latter in mind, and had settled on d minor as
its key. The striking theme of the Scherzo ap-
pears in tie sketch books as early as 1915; but
the beginning of serious work on the symphony
movement were sEetched These SeS Sketches con.
time in ISIS, along with those of the gigantic
sonata in B fat Top. 1867; in connection with
these two prodigious works is the scheme for
companion symphony which was to be choral in
both adagio and finale. The symphony was in
terrupted by the composition of the great Mass
il the D. otsts Tss s0 last %sSs RagS sGnatas Sa s9d
Then in November, 1872 receiving
an offer of $3.50 from the Philhar-
monte Society. of London. for a MS symphony
to be delivered the following March, he set to
work upon its composition in earnest He was
so absorbed in the great symphony as to be
careless of all his surroundings, missing his
meals, rushing in and out without his hat, etc.
At length, after much revising he wrote to
London on September s, 1923, that the copyist
had finished the score, though the work of
polishing went on for some months longer, and
1t was not until 1924 latter the work had been
performed at Vienna and dedicated to the King
of Prussia) that the London society received its
MS copy, endorsed in Beethoven's hand,
''geschneben fuer die Philharmonische Gesells-
chaft in London
1t is characteristic of Beethoven that, not
wlthstanding all his sketching, working over
and revising in the process of composition,
when once he had finished nothing could in
duce him to alter note. So SCHNEIDER tells us.
When Sonntag and Ungher protested against
the unsingable passages in the Ninth SYM
phony and besought him to bring them within
the compass of their voices, 'Nein und INNER
neln, " was the dry answer.
The first performance of the work, at the
karntnerthor Theater Vienna May z 1924
was turned into great ovation to the master,
all the greater because Beethoven, fancying
himself sighted for RossiIti's then fashionable
airs, had been on the point of having the SYM
phony and the mass in d first produced in
Berlin-from which intention he had been dis
suaded by largely signed memorial from the
music-ovlng aristocracy of Vienna. SCHNEIDER
gives this picture of the occasion: "The glori-
Gus symphony seemed to act upon the immense
mass Of human beings that thronged the
building in every part like ambrosial nectar
They became intoxicated with delight; and
when the refrain was caught up by the choir
1Seld umschlungen Millionen,' a shout of
soy rent the air, completely drowning
the singers and the instruments. But there
stood the master in the midst absorbed and
sunk within himself. His face turned toward
the orchestra he saw nothing and his entire
deafness prevented his hearing either the
sounds he had created or the roaring tumult
it had inspired. Fraeulein Ungher, the con-
tralto, turned him gently round, and then what
q sight met his astonIshed gaze-a multitude
transported with joy. Almost all were stand
ing, and the greater number melted to tears
now for the first time fully realizing the extent
of Beethoven's calamity"
-
The first of the two operatic concerts an
nounced by Signor G. Gill and his pupils took
place last Friday evening in the presence of a
goodly audience of friends and relatives that
comfortably filed the coy Pittsburg Club
Theater. The programme was as follows,
PART l.
t'Il Trovatore - Act l. Verdi
BassO. Mr.. Joseph II. Reiman ......... ..Ferrando
Baritone. Mr.. +. A. .Ammon-...-... Conte di Luna
Tenor, MIR. q, Gill. Manrico
And
matt CnOrus .....Pupis
Continued Part Of Second Act.
Mezzo soprano. Miss Killing. ng................Azucena
1ehoI, MI Nt O11A. Manr1co
: : Belllni
sopIano-nlss hStugan an..............-....,. Norma
Mel1o SOpIanO-Alss ECKER. .AdalRiSa
PART III.
s1sucia di Lsmmermoor. - act H........ Douizettf
Hasso- Mr.. Jos. II. Reiman.. Bide, the Bent
+. A. Ammon.................He Henry
Jenore-Mr. Thos. S. Henderson. Arthur
Mezzo Soprano-Riss watson. Alice
Soprano-Mlss heane. .s.........; Lucia