Arizona republican., 1902-12-07
MATTERS MUSICAL.
Gossip of the New Workers and New
 Publications.


 This year New York will have sew enteen weeks of opera. Music lovers in other cities exclaim: 70, how we envy you," Perhaps! Be assured, however, that long before the seventeen weeks are over. one gets mighty tired of it. Were it not for the fact that the opera in New York is really a society affair and that the musical side is of secondary consideration to the vast body of subscribers who make it possi- ble to pay the big salaries demanded by the artists, Mir Grau would long ere this have gone the way of other less fortunate impresarios.
 One of the sprightliest comic operas of its class is ''The Rocking Bird" at the Bijou. New York, in which Miss Mabelle Gilman. who has few equals as singing soubrette. is the star The music is by A. Baldwin Sloane, who is quite gifted as a popular melodist.
 An artist who will be sorely missed this winter is Fraulein Milka Ternina. Since 'Lilli Lehman has virtually retir ed from the stage. Ternina is certainly the greatest of living Wagnerian prima donnas. This winter-so the news comes from Germany to a personal
 
 to study. Bumptious young siuGcrs will take note that Ternina is not yet of the opinion that she knows it all. But to whom do you think she has gone to take lessons? To the great Lilli Leh- mann. In which course she showed her good common sense as well as her freedom from that petty jealousy which is too often found among pro- fessional musicians. Although Ternina says that it will take her a year to get rid of all the faults she acquired while singing in America. it is to be hoped that next season she may be persuaded to return.
 The Schirmers have just issued a new book by Rafael Joseffy which will be hailed with delight by students of the pianoforte. It is his Advanced School of Piano Playing" containing 12s pages of exercises. They are arranged under A heads-five-finger exercises trills. arpeggios, thirds, sixths, octaves chromatic exercises, chords. various styles of touch, skips, embellishments the glissando. interlacing of the hands rhythmical studies. etc. The amount of thought and labor condensed fir these pages is stupendous. and any pi- anist who has mastered these exercises may consider himself a finished virtu- oso.
 The second issue in the Oliver Dit son company's Musicians Library is a collection of Forty Piano Compost. tions by Chopin" edited and with ar introduction by James Huneker. The apprehensions which might have beer felt that the author of the famous es. say on The Greater Chopin" Gin "Mez zotints in Modern Music') would show a one-sided preference for the more es oteric pieces of the poet of the piano forte are dispelled by a glance at tn, table of contents. Apart from some O the scherzos and other works too Ions to be included in an album of this sort the present collection represents tn There are five of the preludes. eigh of the mazurkas, five of the etudes, si, nocturnes, eight valses. two polonaises two impromptus. a ballad. scherzo the berceuse and the funeral march The introduction briefly characterize these different classes of composition and the Huneker remarks: "A sworl classicist Tn his devotion to Bach an Mozart, he is still the prince of the Ro mantics; a severe formalist, though hi forms were not those of fugue or son ata, he nevertheless set beating tn pulse of Europe with his gay valse and sparkling mazurka."