The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-11-29
BY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.

1.-The good grey poet,
Walt Whitman, while a Personality
rather than a Poet, and whose alleged
poetic product outraged poetic form
and convention, and who is sometimes
unspeakably gross, still did the world
service.
By daring to be natural.
In singing the song of Life.
And singing it through it's entire
repertoire.
But chiefly by emphasizing that All
is significant
The least of All-and the greatest.
This is something that is gradually
permeating the American civic con-
science.
That every element of community
| is equally as important as every other
element.
That we cannot continue to segre-
gate ourselves in churches. social sets
and organizations, as did the old bar
ons in their castles through the me-
dunn of the moat and drawbridge.
That we cannot maroon ourselves
within our environ.
| Nor anchor ourselves within the
walls of personality.
For always you touch some one.
No one can live wholly to himself.
| But the mellowing and enlightening
influence of catholic view Of life
cannot be discounted.
| Nor it's value to citizenship.
To be concrete-it would have been
a good thing if the concert given by
the Richmond Maennerchor in St.
Johns hall Wednesday evening had
been attended by representatives of
every phase of life in the town.
! For this affair was not only enter
| tanning but significant.
Musically significant although there
were other aspects which were far
| from being minor and which were en-
phasized in the news columns of this
paper yesterday.
While the appearance of Mr.. Louis
Shenk, the we'll known concert singer,
in group of German Lieder. gave the
occasion musical eclat the most inter-
esting numbers on the program were
the ensembles.
Here was a group of inconspicuous
citizens not publicly affiliated with the
better known musical interests of the
town who showed astonishing musical
acumen and who followed the direction
of their conductor with precision and
fidelity.
Their crescendos, their interpreta-
ton of the color of the composition,
| = o;r, ~, hit, aiot
of musical light and shade, were, con-
sidering their lack of technical train
ing, extraordinarily good.
But it was the punch" as they say
in the vaudeville theaters, which made
the effects.
That is, it was the vivacity and spir-
it and the good-honest feeling inject
ed into the musical veins of the COM
positions presented which carried
over"
Here are again illustrated the virtues
of the German temperament.
A genius for thoroughness, a huge
capacity for intellectual and artistic di-
gestion, a lack of self-consciousness
and determination to excel
The spectacle was interesting.
Here was a group of our best citi-
zens, although engaged in the less con-
spicuous occupations of the communi-
of the first water with intelligence and
appreciation of the artistic effects to
be achieved.
Making no claim to exalted accom-
plishment.
Merely showing a disposition to
learn.
And by the way of the latter route
achieving.
The program was brief
Opening with the singing of Ger
man patriotic air with two other re-
corded numbers and an encore.
But it gave them an opportunity to
show what they could do and what
their conductor could do with them.
Mr.. Will Duning, Jr., Is to be con-
graduated over his accomplishment
He has taken lot of absolutely virgin
vocal material and nodded it into at
tractive shape.
There are still rough corners to be
rounded, surfaces to be smoothed, con
louIS W De WOI hSu Out, SloNdJlOHS TO
be minimized. depressions to be pro-
jected upward.
But the material is malleable.
And the sculptor understands his
medium
Mr.. Duning. in short, has unsteady
clicked into shape" material which one
less determined and enthused might
have regarded at first as unpromising
And this medium through which the
community can hear German classics,
or the moderns, interpreted in the Ian
guage in which they were written, is of
inestimable value.
All the students in the German de-
partment of the public high school. in
instance. would have been benefited
by an attendance on such-a songfest.
And this is said with full apprecia-
ton of the present accomplishment of
the Maennerchor.
Mr.. Duning is modest in his claims
for this organization.
And the members are equally so.
But the fact of their first public per
Torrance to which the community in
entirety had the entrance is a signifi-
cant one in the musical life of the
town.