No Strike

The strike that threatened to replace the orchestra of every musical show in Chicago with an electric piano (TIME, Aug. 25) and to spread throughout the music centres of the East (TIME, Sept. 1) has been checked at its source. The players' salaries are to be increased from 7 1/2% to 10%.-- The agreement will be in force for one year, after which another squabble will be in good order. Mean- while, Chicago musicians are the highest paid in the world. Weekly they collect a minimum of $72.10, a maximum of $92.50.

Carnegie Doomed

Manhattan's musical landmarks, famed for generations, are rapidly passing. Aeolian Hall will be turned into a "5 & 10" (TIME, Aug. 25), the Metropolitan Opera House, even, is threatened with replacement by something beautiful and modern (TiME, Aug. 25). And now Carnegie Hall, for 34 years easily the most distinguished setting for concerts in Manhattan, is to be sold, razed to the ground. This according to reports current in the world of real estate. In its place an office building, or an apartment house, of the zone-law, or neo-Babylonian type, will rear its tiers of terraces.

The Carnegie Foundation has looked over its accounts. The result has been painful. The old Hall makes no money. In fact, it causes a total loss of some $15,000 every year. And so it must go. A history of Carnegie Hall would be a history of modern music. Tchaikovsky conducted his own works there in 1891. Since that time, every composer of any importance has had his compositions performed at Carnegie, and many distinguished moderns have appeared on the bare wooden platform in person. It has also been used as a synagogue and as the scene of stormy political meetings.

Voluptuous Modernity

Aldous Huxley, nephew of the great Darwinian, smart, fashionable, blase, ice-cold, most devilishly clever of all the devilishly clever young litterateurs who make the waterside, of Chelsea inundate all London with lavender and mauve intellectual meanderings, has written down his opinion of the popular music of today. The essay has been published--in Vanity Fair. It defends the thesis that the evolution of popular music has run parallel, on a lower plane, with the evolution of serious music. Beethoven, ultimately and indirectly, is responsible for all the lan- guishing waltz tunes, all the dramatic jazzings, all the negroid music of the contemporary theatre and dance hall.

"The difference 'between Ach, du lieber Augustin," he explains, "and any waltz tune composed from the middle of the 19th Century onwards is the dif ference between a piece of music al most devoid of any emotion and a piece of music deeply saturated with sentiment, languor and voluptuousness. The susceptible maiden who, when she hears Ach, du lieber Augustin, feels no emotion beyond one of general cheerfulness and high spirits, is fairly made to palpitate by the luscious strains of the modern waltz ; her soul is carried swooning along undulating oceans of molasses ; she can hardly breathe for the overpowering odors of opopanax and ambergris. . . . "And what has happened to the waltz has happened to all popular music. It was once innocent, now provocative; once pellucid, now richly clotted; once elegant, now it delights in being barbarous. ... It is the difference be tween life in the Garden of Eden and life in the 'artistic' quarter of Gomorrah. . . . "The people who compose popular tunes are not musicians enough .to be able to invent new forms of expression. All they do is adapt the discoveries of great men to the vulgar taste. . . . Beethoven is responsible, because it was he who first devised really effective mu- sical methods for the direct expression of passion and emotions. Beethoven's passion and emotions happened to be noble. But, unhappily, he made it pos sible for people of infinitely inferior mind and character to express in music their less exalted passions and more vul- gar emotions. . . . He made possible such masterpieces of popular art as You Made Me Love You and That Old Black Mammy of Mine. The corrup- tion of the best too often becomes the worst; 'lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.'"

On Time

An astounding, prodigious reform is to be inaugurated this winter. Concerts in Manhattan are to begin on time--or nearly on time. This is advocated by the National Music Managers' Association, which discussed the subject in its preliminary conference. Records showed that in the season 1922-23, out of 151 concerts, only four started on time. Nine began from two to five minutes late, 27 from five to ten, 31 from ten to fifteen, 38 exactly at fifteen, 32 from fifteen to twenty, and 10 at more than twenty. The record was a delay at the start of 45 minutes. Mr. George Engles, President of the Association, delivered himself of the following remarks: "We will, each of us, promise to begin concerts on time--as far as it is possible. ... I do not believe that we will ever train the public to be at a concert on the minute, but we may be able to persuade them to be a little earlier than they habitually are. At the opera, at the theatre, people come late and do not miss much . . . But an artist, particularly a big artist, does not want to begin a concert with an empty house. ... If the audience misses the beginning, the balance is lost. "More important than all this, however, is the question of the critics. ... A great many artists, we must admit, give concerts not for the public, but for the critics, to get notices. Critics, with one or two exceptions, never get to concerts on time. Your house is fairly full. Your audience is there. You look around. There is not a critic in the place. You cannot go on with the concert. "Next season, however, we are going to try to begin on scheduled time. We may be able to train part of the audience. We may even be able to train some of the critics. But there are a few artists who have genuine artistic temperament, and those you can never count on. Mr. Paderewski is one of them. He is always in the hall from half an hour to an hour before the concert, and yet he never begins on time. There Is always some interruption. Something goes wrong backstage. He is upset and must calm his nerves before he can go on, or visitors come to shake his hand before the concert. You lock all the doors, but they get in,"

--The musicians demanded that their salaries be increased 10%.