McNairy County independent. (Selmer, McNairy County, Tenn.) 1902-1969, 1916-06-16

tne King OF all p0etS, etc. lnefe are
many standards of greatness. Popu-
larity alone is not the final test, al
though permanency of favor may be.
The melody of the song; There is a
happy land, far, far away" is three
thousand years old. Many of the
smaller compositions of Bach Gas his
melody for the G string), Mozart,
Haydn and others, are still in high
favor. will have to say, here, what
| think is the sweetest music. There
is much of it that | admire, but there
is one, of course, finer than all the
rest. That is the Sextette from
Lucia di Lammermoor. by the Italian
composer, Donizetti. can never
hear this without a delicious shiver,
and without wishing | might hear it
by the hour. No words can describe
it. Next, perhaps, is Tits Serenade,
a piece of Austrian music. When my
father first heard this, on Victrola
machine, he could hardly restrain his
tears. for, he said. he had not con-
ceived that there could be such beau
tiful sounds on this earth. Another
Serenade, that of Moszkowski IAN
other Austrian), and My Hero from
the Chocolate Soldier, are high in my
favor; also, the Troubadour Nocturne
and Funeral March OF Chopin, Ave
Maria by Bach-Gounod, The ballet
music of Faust by Gounod. Kamen-
moi Ostrow (The Stony Island, in Rus
siam by Anton Rubinstein, presents a
series of pictures almost as plain to
the ear as landscapes are to the eye;
a marvellous production that can
never get enough of.
There is a world Of music in the
compositions of Giuseppe Verdi. In
his II Trovatore alone, there is enouf b
of beauty and richness to make the
fame of any composer. Just think of
the wonderful Tower Song and
Miserere (Ah, have sighed to rest
me), the duet about going home to
the mountains, the great Anvil Cho-
rus. and whole string Of other
things. A great composer was Verdi.
There are no such writer's now living.
Mendelssohn wrote his exquisite
Rondo Capriccioso at the age of fif-
teen; Mozart composed orchestral
pieces at nine. Schubert, author of
the immortal Serenade. wrote more
than 600 songs; Rossini, whose music
is simply glorious Qisten to his Stabat
Mater, and especially to Cujus Ami
nam and InfamatusD quit writing at
81 years Of age and lived 80 years
longer, making glutton Of himself.
All of these great men, with all their
priceless gifts to man, never earned
in all their lives as much as has been
made by the miserable tone-tinker,
Irving Berlin, Of this city, author of
"Everybody's Doin' 1t" In Ny Harem," !"
and other denominations. His re-
ceipts from the aforementioned piece
of rot were over $4,000, and
any rag-time jingle he may choose to
put on the market will bring him from
s25, 900 to SIS. 1000. There is no de-
nying a certain ingenuity about this
carpenter Of trashy songs, yet he
cannot write music himself, nor even
play, except with one hand; he in
vents the music, and then gets some
accomplice to do the rest. He is not
yet forty, but his income is far above
that Of the president Of the United
States. He is a Russian Jew by birth,
and knows how to keep his money.
but it is sickening to see how such
stuff as this can take hold Of our
people, There is no other country in
the world where he could put such a
thing over" as they say here.
Why is music beautiful; why are
some tones more pleasing than others?
This is a deep question. started to
solve it by analyzing some of those
s ,ngs, such as The Last Rose of Sum-
mer, Annie Laurie, Kathleen Mavour-
neen, La Paloma, Juanita, Home,
Sweet Home, and other melodies
which have been sung aronnd the
globe, and never grow old. l then
discovered that there is a keynote in
all these pieces, a note which is used
much more than any other sound.
That is the the third note; the key Of
E in the scale of C-natural. Practi-
cally no melody of any fame fails to
show a preponderance of this sound.