New York

The Friends of Music are interesting people. Their program consists of those many fine out-of-the-way compositions that rarely or never get performed anywhere else. Last Sunday afternoon they presented Schubert's Mass in E Flat, the most charming of ecclesiastical music, an excellent example of old Schubert's ingratiating sweetness. Which recalls that a good deal of the world's very loveliest composition is to be found in that superb art form, the Mass.

It is difficult not to grow lyrical in praise of the Friends of Music. Not only is their aim a very pretty one, but it is splendidly carried out by their conductor, Arthur Bodanzky. This musician, who also directs the orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera House, is distinctly a great personality. Tall and gaunt, with the characteristic long face and high forehead of a musician, he is a bundle of nervous energy and fire. He is by temperament a scholar, even an austere scholar, whose greatest devotion is unearthing gems out of the dust and debris of music. As an example: He is giving a year's work to the orchestration for performance of an opera of the old English composer, Purcell, of which only the piano score remains. The scholarship of the task lies in an inductive recreation of Purcell's instrumentation, such as may be determined from a study of the few scraps that remain of orchestra scores of that remote composer's other works. Bodanzky is, at the same time, the gayest and j oiliest of companions, who gives huge laughter to comic tales and sits like a great paladin to watch a game of cards. The metropolis is to have another symphony orchestra. The conductor will be Mr. Stransky. The organization will be on a democratic, coop- erative basis. It is this last phase which arouses the human heart. Certainly democracy is noble, and cooperation the delight of humanitarians. In this new and aspiring venture of idealism and art, the musicians--the actual workers--will divide among themselves the deficit. They will no longer permit the rich and aloof to lose money on orchestras. The fiddlers and trombonists themselves will take over this exalted function as their just and well-earned due. Will they be content to remain wage-slaves at union rates? Not they. They will divide the box office receipts among themselves, and the fact that such a division will make mighty small wages for them will merely in- crease their elation. Beneath this surface of madness, as the critic of The New York Times pointed out last Sunday, there must be certain subtleties of method. Mr. Stransky as conductor seems to give the clue. This musician recently re-signed or was "forced" out of the conductorship of the Philharmonic --both explanations were given. The new movement seems at bottom a process of providing him with an orchestra. Mr. Stransky is a persuasive personality and has a devoted following among the highly placed. There may be angels in this new heaven. And it may be that the musicians of the cooperative enter- prise will practice cooperation by way of dividing among themselves donations from wealthy patrons, which is precisely what the musicians of other orchestras are doing in the process of getting a decent wage to live on. Humperdinck's fairy opera, Haensel and Gretel, was in many respects the feature of the past week at the Lexington Opera House. Probably more children have gained their first acquaintance with the operatic and theatrical stage through this than through any other piece. The audiences at the current performances have consisted largely in young folk averaging about four or five years. The production was welcomed by them with complete and uncritical enthusiasm.

The last concert of the New York Symphony Orchestra's 38th year under Walter Damrosch was one of their best. The program included an early Mozart Symphony, a suite by the American, Edward Burlinghame Hill, and selections from the modern French composers, Duparc and Ravel. Mr. Damrosch did not, as last year, make a speech at the close of the concert.