The Washington times., 1921-09-25

teAA1L SAAS 4SsSS'
has stolen the idea and has W
h Just dropped in for a little visit
with the folks. and there were so
many Of you fellows and girls who
Tell into the habit of reading about
''Today's Best Films" and the various
and sundry things I used to write
about the theater, had a fancy to
visit with you bit. And Jessie has
Switched both the words and music.
However,
Here's His Idea.
Here's what she didn't write about
It because she didn't have enough
space. Maybe she wouldn't have
done it anyway
The idea was that Victor Herbert
and Tom Moore are doing rather
big thing this week at the Rialto
Theater. That was what Jessie saw
in 1t, and all she had the space to
write about. The stuff she didn't put
in was this:
The people Of Washington are doing
rather a big thing in showing how
much they like to have Victor Her
bert and Tom Moore do what they
think is a big thing!
1t has always been a bit of a hobby
OF mine that the great things in all
the creative arts are as simple as the
other simple facts of nature, and that
1t Is more or less an insult to natural
intelligence to insist that one must go
through a long course OF study to
appreciate the arts.
y The street boys Of Italy and Spain
md France and Hungary and Jugo-
Siavia whistle musical classics and
appreciate their beauty.
r. Why?
= Because they have high school train.
ing or acquired a collegiate degree in
musical appreciation?
Not for a minute!
We Don't Care, He Says.
It is because music is the most
Elemental of all the arts-and the
most fundamental.
1t is because every human being
Be born into the world with an ap-
preciation Of REAL music. And 1t
h because the Anglo-Saxon has for
centuries adopted a rather super
bilious attitude toward anything that
IL not done with the hands and
brings in a direct flow of material
wealth and has tried suppressed the
perfectly natural appreciation of mu.
Eical beauty. TRIED TO SUP
PRESS IT-please mark that phrase!
For appetite for REAL music is as
much an heritage Of nature as the
appetite for food-and can be just
rs easily suppressed!
And then the American section Of
the great Anglo Saxon family took
lts cue from the Pilgrim fathers
whose system was reflected in the
famous lines:
Life Is earnest
Life Is real"
Goes Back to Pilgrims.
h The Pilgrims inherited their ideas
bn the subject from the zealots of
HE Reformation. and they. in turn,
had the same idea about music that
placed the most elemental and fun
3amental Of all arts on trial for its
berry life at the council of Trent.
How many people realize what a
Horrible thing life would have been
u the Volsteaders Of the fifteenth
century had been successful in their
Efforts to have the ban of the church
placed on music! Not on just certain
Forms Of music but ON MUSIC IN
ITS ENTIRETY!
Had they succeeded. the expression
pf anything musically would have
been as much q mortal sin as steal
|1ng another mans wife or murder!
IA bit worse than murder, in fact,
because there is such a thing as
|5tistifiable circumstances in murder
and there would have been none as
ITO music.
But music was saved by showing
|the reverend fathers Of the Council
|Df Trent that there was something
'tnore to the art than the vagrant
Ieirs Of the lewd italian street songs
Which the lazy choir masters Of those
|days adapted into masses. Those
al tNv,nA FOL
Ing Italian songs Of the caliber Of the
modern shake That Shimmy Again"
|knd putting the sacred words Of
The church to them.
~ Transition Was Ludicrous.
So we Americans cams into being
|Eith q tough Job ahead Of US in
BETTING our music straight! One of
|{he Freudian ways in which we beat
Die old solemncollies was to dress up
NJ Bible story and call It an oratoria
er q cantata- Drovcs Of very re
upeotable' people who would have
Zone straight to eternal punishment
lad they attended . performance of
THE Beggaf's Opera" or 'Ohphsus
u Durydice'' maintained their moral
S uilinsiuha e %,., while HI! .. sitting
Don" and the like.
Nothing could have pursuaded them
hat opera simply tried to visualize
IN addition to express the idea mu-
sically-which Is all tho oratorio or
Eantata really did!
( But the craving for music was
there, Just the same, and the oratorio
fed II. Because IL was oratorto and
religious. however. II couldn't posi- (
bly, touch our daily lives. And so we
starved. fisuratively. six days per
week and were only permitted to free !
our appetites on these musical Sun |
days. We had to subsist between |
times on the continental type Of
music that was served US in fairly |
poor street songs or saccharine bal |
lads, or reach back into the dark ages |
for q tune somebody had forgotten
'Was ever a street or drinking song, !
and snatched from oblivion things |
like 1.-THE Last Rose OF Summer" or |
.'Believe Ne With All Those Endear- |
ing Young Charms"- and even 1.-THE |
Star Spangled Banner"