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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 25, 1897)
tt.F-y, " THE COURIER. f ailllHlllll-TTTT a i PQCXWiC JW esogoogxsxwoeioaMooc rv hen yow Mention ix& 2Zetm& i- I: f' K The Passing Show. WILLA CATHER. I eniMH8 Pridtjof Hansen s?ems to have read pretty much everything and to have very decided opinions regarding liter ature, though he advances them mod estly. The respect with which he speaks of the drama is amusing. In his benighted country they still re gard it as a high form of literature. But then there are no Frohmans or theatrical trusts in Norway. He ex pressed himself as heartily disgusted with dramatic affairs in thiscountry, so far as he knew them. Who direct ed his play-going in Xcw York I do not know, but he only went to sec Frank Daniels in "The Idol's Eye," and Maude Adams in "The Little Minister." Strange to say Maudie, the china kitten who is so dear to most masculine hearts, seemed to him "verra foolish." O! course he considers Ibsen the great dramatist of the century, though he says that this verdict is by no means universal in Norway. It seems that the public there is divided; there aie the people of the old school who bitterly protest against Ibsen and the red waist-coated radicals who wear his name on their sleeves. When asked what he considered Ibsen's greatest contributions to literature, he replied at once: "Brand and Peer Gynt. though only my own country men can fully feel the force of the latter.-' He thinks the American idea thatlbsen'sdramas lack dramatic interest, and are coldly intellectual for stage Turposes a mere misapprehen sion, and says that they are the most effective acting plays that have been -written In this generation. When questioned as to what nation it his estimation led the world of let ters he replied: ,;Considcred as a na tion, the French of course. They have always been the teachers of the world in matters of art. Artistic conceptions change with every genera tion, just as Oedipus Rex, which was a noble drama in its day and voiced the feeling of its time would be im possible today. The French are such a sensative, volatile people that they feel there changes first and so arc always half a century ahead of the world. The attitude toward French fiction in England amused me very much. I was asked there if I consid ered Paul Bourget's novels good read inj for the young. They seem there to always associate the nursery and the atelier. That is very amusing. I should no more bring up a child on Bourget than I should bring one up in the atmosphere of a studio. A painter doss not paint for the young, and I cannot see why a novelist's craft should be more restricted than any other. If we followed out the English theory we should all end like China, where literature has become a jumble of moral precepts for school boys. Assuredly literature should be judged ike music and painting, merely by the skill with which the theme is handled and the quality of Individu ality it expresses."' The principal feature of the Pitts burg orchestra concert last week was the rendering of Anton Dvorak's sym phony. "From the New World." I first heard Theodore Thomas" orches tra play the symphony in Lincoln several years ago. You will remember that ills built upon the old negro air of the south. It is a strange fact that the onlv folk-music we have, our illllMIMIimOIMH slaves gave us. When the symphony was first produced it was generally expected that it would echo "Dixie" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,'! and other popular negro melodies of the time. As it did not, many people refused to see anything national in it at all. It was not until I heard the negroes singing down among the Blue Ridge mountains last year that I recognized anything national in the arias which Dvorak employed in the construction of his symphony. But having heard those wordless, minor melodies echoing through the silver silence of the Virginia moonlight, the plaintive air of 1 his symphony, with the long note following the short in the accented part of the measure and monopolizing the greater part of the stress which would ordinarily be long to the short note, is unmistak able. I think, however, that in the first movement, the adagio, the com poser pretty well exhausted his Afri can theme, after that he seems to em ploy it very little. The second movement, the largo, Is placed in an altogether different atmosphere. The mountains of the Blue Ridge, the plantation fields of the Carolinas, the wide bayous of the Mississippi fade away and before you stretch the emnty, hungry plains of the middle west. Limitless prairies, full of the peasantry of all the nations of Europe; Germans, Swedes, Norwe gians, Danes, Huns, Bohemians, Ro manians, Bulgarians, Russians and Poles, and it seems as though from each of those far scattered lights that at night mark the dwellings of these people on the plains, there comes the song of a homesick heart. The prin cipal is sung with exquisite effect by the English horn over a soft accom paniment of the divided strings, full of plaintive yearning. It is this song of homesickness, the exile song cj many nations. The work of M. De vaux, who played the English horn was absolutely faultless. The largo closes with little staccato melody, be gun by the oboe and taken-jip by one instrument after another until it masters the orchestra, as though morning was come, and the times for dreams was over, and the peasant was hurrying to his plow to master a strange soil and make the new world his own. The scherzo and allegro were played in excellent; style and with great dash and spirit. The ending, you remem ber, is particularly striking. It be gins like any other ending, with a sawing and crashing and banging of many instruments, but when this in strumental exclusion has reached its highest pitch, there comes that long, high final note on the wind instru ments that seems to rise out of that vortex of sound like an aspiration, seems to rise clear into the evening sky and tremble there like a star. It is like the flight of the dove over the waste of waters, that last note, there is all the hope of the new world in it. I sometimes arop in to dine at a little German restaurant down near the Carnegie music hall where a dozen or more of the orchestra musicians board. It is rather a wierd little place and the numerous palms give it a sort of roof garden effect and you might fancy yourself in a sort, of half way house on the road to gay Bohemia were it not for the proprietor's tow- SHAW, you indicate the ACME of PIANO PERFECTION. "When other dealers offer you theirs for less money than that for which you can buy the SHAW. Remember that they lo it because they can. Why? Simply because their pianos are poor er in qualit' and cost less, their statements to t ie con trary notwithstanding". ......:... Also remember that we have other GOOD pianos that we can sell you " for less money. The very best values for the price to be had in the 2 J American market I Ve also sell the Celebrated Washburn Mandolins and Guitars. Why 2 not buy a Piano. Guitar or Mandolin for that Xmas present you are " thinking about. And then don't forget that the place to buy anything in the musical " line and buy it right, b at the warerooms of 0 1 ' 1 Ml PIANO GO Western Representatives, 130 So 13th st. 9s3 headed children who dash in occa sionally to coax pennies from the musicians. The chief attraction is not the menu, but the conversation of these jovial orchestra men, who arc of so many different nationalities that they usually compromise by talking English. One will tell how he once bought a wonderful 'cello for a mere hong, and another how he used to play flute accompaniment to a famous solo of Patti's, and another will relate his experience in the great orchestra at Bayreuth, and yet another will tell of old days in Weimar when the serene Liszt used to pass daily through the streets and when Eugene d'Albert married a blonde chorus girl, before he ever met the tempestuous Carreno, or of some story scene that took place between the great Madame Essipoff and Leschetizky in the golden time when they still cared enough for each other to quarrel. Charming gossip of a world so different from ours, where we eat and sleep and make pig iron and are respectable. Occasionally the Reverend Heinrich Baehr, who is preacher to the unre generate out at Homestead, drops, in for a chat with his 'fellows. For the Reverend Baehr did hot always preach at Homestead. Once, in his youth he was haussmeister in Wagner's home Wahnfried at Bayreuth and taught Wagner's son and Frau Cosima Wag ner's children whom she took with her when she ran away from Haus Von Bulow. It seems that Baehr was originally a tutor in the family of one of Wagner's tenants, and one night the Wahnfried tutor ran away taking with him a number of Frau Cosima's jewels and Baehr was called to fill his place. Think of having lived for years under the same roof with Wag ner and now to be, living in Home stead! He has often heard Wagner .drumming out the airs in Parsifal with one hand on the piano, after which the master would laugh and shake his head, remarking; "Well; if I am not such an adept as Liszt, I can at least do better than Berlioz; I at least can play with four fingers, while he can only urjeafingerandathuaib." He often tells how Wagner insisted upon being called "the Master"' by everyone in his household and how he eent people flying hither and thither K300 Will buy a pair ot LADIES' FINE BOXCALF HEAVY CORK SOLE Via KID or FINE KANGAROO SHOES OOO At the tojeaj V ' I J!!eFgotFor -. STOBfcX ,,,- ct enDacvis JU.'- '