Typewriter

Karsavina, impetuous Russian dancer, will open her American season in Baltimore on Oct. 31. She brings with her a novelty that has set London agog. As a bare-kneed flapper, she twirls about to the music of an entirely new instrument, the typewriter. The London Daily Mail registered almost incoherent astonishment, shouting, ballyhooing:

"Richard Strauss is one down! He never thought of the typewriter! Walk up, ladies and gentlemen, and see Karsavina dance to the accompaniment of a typewriter! It is simply the maddest piece of fooling ever seen on any stage. The sight of Karsavina is worth the money--Karsavina as a naughty American flapper, a young sister of Daisy Miller; Karsavina in a sailor's blouse, short, white serge skirt and bare knees. She is a naughty, enterprising American child of the European tradition. Not content with seeing the circus, the terrible infant must needs find her way among the performers. Hence the impossible--Karsavina dancing a cakewalk, Karsavina dancing to American airs on a typewriter."

But why not? Tschaikovsky himself once called for a battery of field artillery.

Insult

"Mephisto," whose famed "musings" appear in Musical America, was irate last week, sensed an insult to all musicians in an item that appeared in a metropolitan daily, demanded that his friends, his co-workers be "given their due." Mused Mephisto:

"Notables in Every Walk of Life See Firpo-Wills Fight,' says a big headline in a daily paper. The subheading continues: 'Royalty, Society, Finance, Politics, Theatre, Pulpit and Plain People Mingle.'

"I protest. Why are musicians excluded from this generalization? Or are they included among the 'plain people'?

"I do not see any musicians mentioned among those present, but that was their affair. If they didn't want to go, there was no particular reason why they should. But what peeves me is that musicians should be ignored in this summary fashion. The headline might have read: 'Notables in Every Walk of Life Except Music See Fight.' Then no one could have complained.

"Musicians ought to stand up for their rights, nominal as well as actual.

"Is there a nobler profession? Are musicians not as good as other people? Do they not contribute as much to the happiness and well-being of their fellows as some of the classes singled out for special prominence in the heading I have quoted? Are they not often the guests of kings and queens?

"Then let them be given their due on all occasions."

Carnegie Undoomed

From F. P. Keppel, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, came an unqualified denial of the rumored imminent demolition (TIME, Sept. 22) of historic Carnegie Hall. This in spite of the undenied fact that the Hall make no money; that its profits are continually eaten up by necessary repairs and alterations.

Patroness

Seven years ago, Mrs. Frederick Shurtleff Coolidge*; determined to indulge to the limit her craving for ideal music. She went about the matter with the lusty vigor that only an enthusiastic amateur can maintain for long.

She asked herself some questions:

"What is the purest music?"

"Chamber music," was the reply. She acted on it. She organized and maintained out of her own pocketbook a private trio of her own, the Elshuco Trio, and later a string quartet, the Festival Quartet of South Mountain (TIME, Oct. 8). Next, she asked:

"Where can such music be heard to best advantage?"

Obviously not in a great metropolitan concert hall; that would be too formal for the delicate tonal flowers of Mozart and Schonberg. Also not in a private drawing room or salon; that would be too informal, too pink-tea-like.

Mrs. Coolidge, therefore, had built a special Temple of Chamber Music on the slopes of South Mountain in the Berkshires, near Pittsfield, Mass. It accommodates an audience of 500--just the right number. But --

"How about this audience--isn't the usual audience a deadly thing?"

This final question was a poser, and, in her reaction to it, Mrs. Coolidge displayed something bordering on genius. Having carefully picked just the right music, performers and locale, she proceeded to pick her audience, and just as carefully. Seats at the Berkshire Festivals cannot be bought; they must be earned. To earn a ticket, you must be the right sort of person; you must be a Person of Taste. It will help matters a little, perhaps, if you have attained eminence in some pursuit other than the musical or artistic, but if you have not at any time demonstrated your possession of this one supreme requirement, the possession of a golden, diamond studded dinner service will not avail to win you an invitation to the Coolidge Temple.

The result of this momentous decision, possible only to a Patron to whom the very expression "box-office receipts" is in the last degree repugnant, was that every gentle note released from a trembling string at South Mountain falls into each and every one of a thousand ears particularly born and especially trained to appreciate its most delicate nuance.

This is the seventh year that the Chosen have assembled reverentially at Pittsfield to partake of perfect musical fare, served up in perfect dishes. There were three days of perfection.

First Day: The Festival Quartet (William Kroll, first violin; Karl Kraeuter, second violin; Hugo Kortschak, viola; Willem Willeke, 'cello) played Mozart's Quartet in F, originally written for the King of Prussia, and followed it with Vincent D'Indy's Quartet in E, an incredible, intricate thing based on a theme of only four notes. Finally there was the Bohemian Josef Suk's Piano Quintet, with Signer Aurelio Giorni distinguishing himself by his beautiful restraint at the piano.

Second Day: The entire morning program was dedicated to Bach. Harold Samuel, an English Bach specialist, who only recently left enthusiastic Londoners weeping for more after six Bach concerts, officiated at the piano. Georges Enesco did the violin parts, including a long and difficult unaccompanied Sonata, and a Scotch singer, Fraser Gange, sang two complicated arias--the first tender and elevated, the last turgid and wild, to match the fearful text, Gleichwie die wilden Meeres wellen.

The afternoon was "All-American"-- and pretty poor. Two saccharine Sonatas, by John Alden Carpenter and Leo Sowerby (Prix de Rome incumbent) were followed by a Quintet by Samuel Gardner, entitled To a Soldier, which unblushingly sounded Oriental wails right out of Rimsky-Korsakoff.

Third Day: The feature of the final day was a Prize Composition. For Mrs. Coolidge also awards prizes-- formerly annually, now biennially (so the composers can have time to write something really worth while). This year it was won by Wallingford Riegger, a newcomer. His composition was a setting of Keats's famous tragic ballad La Belle Dame Sans Merci for a unique combination of instruments. He demands two sopranos, contralto and tenor voices, a violin, viola, 'cello, double bass, oboe (interchanged with English horn) and French horn. Mr. Riegger, a graduate of the New York Institute of Musical Art, conducted it himself; and Mr. Charles Stratton sang the sorrowful knight's part with the necessary forlorn feeling.

There was also Schonberg's "flighty and gossamer" Quartet with voices; and finally, by way of ice cream soda to finish the feast in lighter vein, Beethoven's settings of "Scotch" and "Irish" songs, including Sally in Our Alley.

*Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge is a daughter of the late O. S. A. Sprague, wealthy Chicago wholesale grocer (Sprague, Warner & Co.), sister of A. A. Sprague, 1924 Democratic candidate for U. S. Senator from Illinois, widow of Dr. Frederick Shurtleff Coolidge. Recently, she built and endowed, at Yale University, a building used for concerts and lectures--Sprague Memorial Hall--in memory of her son, Frederick S. Coolidge Jr., who was killed early in the War.

Though a New Englander, Mrs. Coolidge's husband was not closely related to the U. S. President.