Mr. Huneker and the Melting-Pot Author(S): C. Source: the Musical Times, Vol
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Mr. Huneker and the Melting-Pot Author(s): C. Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 62, No. 938 (Apr. 1, 1921), pp. 254-255 Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/909400 Accessed: 20-01-2016 12:56 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Musical Times Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Musical Times. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 160.36.178.25 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:56:14 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 254 THE MUSICAL TIMES-APRIL I 192I especially on the propaganda side-the side that virgin soil, will put forth, and in this spirit we must always open the scoring. confront our author and the somewhat intimidating The question of 'Music and Industry' is very idiom which he used. much in the air just now. Our columns from time to He sprang from a family mainly Irish, and time contain notices of excellent concerts given by was born at Philadelphia. The implications in this the staffs of business houses. I have just received birthplace favour our inquiry. Had it been Boston news of the Choral Society attached to the Manchester the persistent clear English strain must have factoryof Sir H. W. Trickett,Ltd., where the shoes and dominated; if New Orleans or California, a lingering slippers come from. Thanks to crowded audiences trace of French or Spanish tradition. But and liberal backing by the firm,the Society is able to Philadelphia half-a-century ago already offered a give its patrons opportunities for hearing our best complete mixture in fermentation, the chief of the soloists. At recent concerts the following have many elements being German, Jewish, and Irish. appeared: Miss Agnes Nicholls, Miss Ruth Vincent, What is the new crystallisation? Brought up in that Miss Astra Desmond, Miss Adela Verne, and Dame amalgamating society, a versatile youth, who was a Clara Butt, and Messrs. Herbert Browne, Norman musical critic already at quite a tender age, he helps Allin, Frank Mullings, Bratza, Kennerley Rumford, us with indications that are not to be overlooked Albert Sammons, William Murdoch, &c.-an aston- because they are not the expected ones. ishing list. But after all, in organizations of this kind We gather in fact that the accepted phrase 'The the most important feature is the music the members Melting-Pot' has perhaps been accepted too easily. make for themselves. The Society so far confines There undoubtedly is the pot, and there the rich itself to the smaller choral forms, but these confusion of ingredients, but our author leaves us are of excellent quality, and judging from press without:any sign that the mixture is really melting, reports, the standard of performance is high. The and doubting indeed what possible force will ever choir has lately been heard in Wilbye's 'Sweet bring it 'to the boil.' This very book is typical, due Honey-sucking bees,' Stewart's 'The Cruiskeen proportions kept, of the fierce transatlantic scene. Lawn,' Faning's 'The Miller's Wooing,' Stewart's So was the author's culture. His pages are sprinkled 'The Bells of St. Michael's Tower,' Stanford's with such names as Bergson, Nietzsche, Strindberg, 'The Blue Bird,' Coleridge-Taylor's 'The Viking's Flaubert, d'Annunzio, and Bernard Shaw, and the Song,' &c. effectis too much that of a row of showy flowers It is worth noting that these musical activities are drooping because they are stuck with the bare stalks mentioned in the report of the annual meeting of and not with roots in the soil. His English ? Well, shareholders, the managing director alluding in whatever new engaging dialect may be there in the complimentaryterms to the choir and its conductor making, the air of Philadelphia seems not to favour (Mr. George Firth), and mentioning that the singers literaryEnglish, and this indefatigable writerdeclared had made themselves responsible for the raising of that having 'battled with the English language, the of and ? 750 towards the cost of the firm'sWar Memorial-- charmed tongue Chaucer, Shakespeare, a public playground. Swinburne,' these many years he was' always defeated This is the kind of thing the country needs to-day. in the verbal fray.' His reproach is not the racy It will be a fine thing for both music and industry local term (even though he may sometimes make when the staffsof our big manufacturing houses are such dark assertions as,' No bed-spring-chickenI !'), as keen about their bands and choral societies as but rather an excess of emphasis and ornamentation. they are already about their football and cricket He piles recklessly richness on rarity, but it is all clubs. That this enthusiasm already exists is top-heavy and falls with an abject flatness of effect. proved by the National Brass Band Festival. The musical activity described by the New York But it needs to be developed in a good many fresh chapters makes a somewhat similar impression of centres, especially on the choral side. Afterall, only extravagance without solidity, flowers without soil. a limited number of people can play in a brass All the virtuosos and all the prima donnas cross the band, whereas any number may form a choir. scene, perform a dazzling trick or two, and vanish. Moreover, brass and reed instrumentsare costly to Imagine the most bizarre aspect of London musical buy, house, and convey. A choir has its instruments life on a huge scale, and you have the idea. A touch ready provided, free of charge, carried without of exotic colour has its value, imposed on the back- trouble, and always ready for use. ground of ordinary local life. But in default of a background, a crowd of inharmonious exotics is no compensation. We know well enough here the MR. HUNEKER AND THE MELTING-POT flatness, the dreariness of international opera In these days we in Europe seem more and more companies and cosmopolitan concerto players, when compelled to turn awed eyes towards the Melting- taken in any but the smallest doses. Home fare is Pot on the other side of the Atlantic, and when the best for every day. Yes, but what if every bite and gazing European happens to be a musician his eyes sup has to be imported? often have a special glitter. The interest, should Dvorik's memorable visit to New York, duly you be a Milanese tenor or a Slav violinist, is apt to recorded showed no assimila- ' by Huneker, great be the particularised, What is there for me in the tive properties of the Melting-Pot. The Bohemian pot?' For others it is more philosophical, 'What of in no wise added a string to the American lyre. All general wonder and beneficence is the great pot that happened was that he simply gathered and took brewing ?' And the question is an incentive to turn back to the Muse of his homeland the one indigenous to the pages of such a document as the late James G. blossom visible, namely, negro dance and song. Huneker's reminiscences of half-a-centuryof musical Huneker on Dvorak (called for convenience 'Borax') America.* We yearn to know what sort of flowers is amusing. He escorted the composer round the European art, transplanted and acclimatised to that gaieties of New York. 'After nineteen cocktails' 'Master, don't you think it's time S'Steeplejack.' By James Gibbons Huneker, 2 vols. London: Dvorak was asked, T. Werner Laurie. we ate something?' 'He gazed through the awful This content downloaded from 160.36.178.25 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:56:14 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE MUSICAL TIMES-APRIL I 1921 255 whiskers which met his tumbled hair half-way: THE NETHERSOLE 6 CARMEN' KISS. 'Eat? No, I no eat.' " Olga Nethersolewas the gypsyPaula Tanqueray,and Huneker knew many celebrities. He had occasion a largeaudience held its breathwhen she kissedDon to throw a glass of beer (or at least the beer from a Jose. And how she kissed him! Ye tutelaryvestals of canthariditic who swoon to glass) at Pachmann. He dined at a boarding- osculation,ye deities, Swinburnian in secret and all house table d'h6te next to Helena von Doenniges dithyrambs groves, ye heroine of 'The He Paphian bowersthat resoundwith amorous lays as the (the Tragic Comedians'). moon rises theeall fordullards and was cursed whom he to !--avaunt 'prentice by Strindberg, sought hands at the sacred art of kissingwhen comparedto interview in the middle of the night. And Mr. Nethersole'ssupreme, everlasting, and sonorouslabial Bernard Shaw acknowledged him 'a likeable old assault. All heavenshudders as she, withincomparable ruffian' in a letter here printed (with Mr. Shaw's virtuosity,hovers over the victim'smouth. You hear permission). 'Towards the end of her life she the whirrof her vampirewings ; thenshe pounces on the fortunateman's and a like the sob of looked like a large, heavily upholstered couch'-so lips, sound a could he of a famous whose New Jerseymosquito is heard. The rest is sigh and unreservedly speak singer, silence! name is mentioned. Balzac and Flaubert in letters, Chopin and J.