The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-08-17

tertainingly of the many charming ar
 tists she has met there, the new depar- | lures in musical affairs. and dozens of
 other things quite pleasing
 Especially of the six-tone Scriabine
 scale and the 12-'etter scale on six line
 staff with a new clef and no accidentals
 which Busoni approves does she write
 most attractively.
 1 or color music, played on chromola
 tan artistic achievement of uncertain
 vogue) it is interesting to know that it's
 first appearance in the United States was
 in New York's Carnegie hall for Scria- bines Poem of Fire, Phomenheus'
 Scriabine being the first composer to util-
 ze chromatic color score with an or | chestration
 | Through Mir. Joseph Hobrooke, Eng lands great artist. Mrs. Rivers may have
 her splendid play, "Jezebel." produced
 which is interesting news to her many l friends here
 | Among other things Mrs. Rivers writes: :: i Having been born under the planet uranius, of course the unexpected hap pens to me, Instead of studying drama
 at Columbia again, as I planned my plans
 were all changed and here I am, having been here since the day after left Bir-
 mingham. l. had only been here a short
 time when one morning chanced to hear | in the cottage newt to my hotel heavenly beautiful ass-barntone singing Il
 Brahms song. Singing with such blend of technic and insight, such baptism of majesty and tenderness, that I just went | NJ ha of tha ! andah and listened Couldn't help It. | While I was wondering who was singing like that Gealizing that it was a great | professional and speculating much, run l ming over in mind who of the baritone world could sing like that) a lady came out | on the porch and looked me over. I was | trespassing and knew it, but I smiled at her, and motioned toward the music and i whispered, Pm harmless! just music
 mad and she asked me up on the piazzi and told me that Robert Maitland, Eng | land greatest ieder and oratorio singer was stopping there for the summer She
 herself was a darling. A lovely, lovely | gentle woman of New Jersey, whose dainty cottage on the ocean front wil ] finger long in my memory. It was the be- ginning of set of friendships that have
 made my summer delightful and that Will probably exercise a wide influence on my after life. For MT. Maitland and his de-
 liciously charming English wife have be- come my firm friends-and through them l have had an offer for "Jezebel' that
 must tell you about. We four-the lady | of the cottage and the Matlands and the lady from Alabama" as they call me, spend from II, 130 or daily studying.
 That is, we are thrashing out what we
 think of the new school of music, the queer ."artistic insanity stuff that
 matches the culist, futurst and impress | simistic schools of art. Of course, MT.
 Maitland has artistic friends who add their
 quota to the interest and to the art, and | that little white bay widowed room fac | ing the sea-hears morning by morning 1 concerts priceless. bunch of them re | composers (we've had to bar war and politics from conversation, for they are 1 of all nationalties. You see, Europe is barred as a summer resort and the woods | are full of celebrities, and every lady Is | here from the Brazilian amba ssador to l the last "follies dancer, and the morn l ing air is blue with discussions of domi- nant ninths and their resolutions, elisions. i corporations, etc., of the new 12-letter l scales; of the six-tone Debussy scale, and | the six-tone Scriabine scale and their
 especial chordal contributions of such sky | scrapers as only Debussy and Scriabine | could concoct
 Sometimes we are alone, sometimes our | little music hall is crowded And the
 asthmatic (ocean-damped piano has l felt the touch of Busoni's sl<illful digits | even. But. best of all. love to sit facing | the sea when only the Maitlands are | there, and watch the great, restless main send it's tumutuous jade green pillows in
 seething. yeasty, foam-crested, to lip at | the sands with perpetual ceaseless moan ] ing and to hear MT. Maitlands unspeak-
 able voice behind me, singing, singing l Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, | Strauss, Hugo Wolf, Wagner, Ravel,
 Strauss. Wolff, Farai, Schubert, Purcell | everybody! He Is working over his win
 ter repertoire (his wife accompanied. and | I am permitted to listen. He has taken
 a great fancy to my "Jezebel," which I | gave him to read and wired Josef Hol-
 brooke that he'd found a book (they
 so call libretto). for his next opera. I 1 didn't know who Josef Holbrooke" was
 or rather isl Do you? Well, he's the
 man (English) whose Children of Don I Hammerstein gave two years ago in Lon | don and whom Lord Howard de Walden 1 finances. He's in America now. Pavlowa | is to dance a three-act opera of his at l the Century (Max Rabinoff producing)
 and to him l was peremptorily bundled l Oast week at the Knickerbocker) with | "Jezebel' tand my broker). He wants to come to Alabama and with it my broker
 Is negotiating with Schrmer for pub | fishing and the Metropolitan for produc- l ton It's too astounding for belief. | Uranus" I know, will butt in and
 upset calculations-see if 1t don't; though | the astroogist we had in 10 circle | one morning says in one and a half years I will be financed in dramatic produc- | ton by the richest Englshman in the
 world. That must be Lord Howard de l Walden, MT. Holbrooke's friend! Really | our interview was the most screamingly funny thing you ever heard of MT. Malt
 land made me go. He wired MT. Hol- | brooke I wired my friend, Miss Arch bald, of '"rhe Theatre Magazine" and we met at in the evening at the Knick- erbocker hotel. I barely had time to skin by the Forty-second street library and look MT. Holbrooke up in the London | Musical Times''-get list of his pro- duced works, and see his pictures and read that he was the Stormy Petrel oi English Art" and hurry to our tryst. looked out for a virile stormy petrer- a la Kipling. saw instead a sick man and a curiosity on the face of this
 earth! He was (after the fashion of the great and unapproachable) to give us |
 minutes. but 1t heightened into three