JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER ON . . .

American Composers (1900):

“A good way is not to mention any as distinctively American composers. If MacDowell’s name is found on a programme, treat the composition as music, not as the product of a man born in New York, educated in Paris and Frankfurt. I know the test is a severe one and one that is shirked by many. Hence we hear of patriotic congregations, the foregatherings of Browns, Jones and Robinson. This is wrong: Put your music, if you have faith in it, out into the fierce light that beats about an orchestra, and if it is good it will sound so--if not, then you will make the discovery all the sooner.

“But heard in secret and admiring conclaves, the American composer is bound to become self-conscious, bound to write for the clique and not the crowd; and the man who fears the criticism of the crowd had better eschew composition, for some light occupation such as gardening or politics.”

Edward MacDowell (1894):

“The piano has attracted me this week. I longed for new ideas, and they came. After the (Henry Holden) Huss Concerto, Edward MacDowell’s Virtuoso Studies fell into my hands, and I could say that the gods had given me joy. MacDowell’s music is still caviare to the piano playing public. It is too finely thought out, pitched too often into a region where the air is rarefied and the harmonic thought rugged. The superb ‘Sonata Tragica’ I have placed on the same shelf with Schumann, Brahms and Grieg; these 12 new studies, which Breitkopf and Haertel have published, are of the same superior quality.”

Frederic Chopin (1918):

“Chopin, a young man slight of frame, furiously playing out upon the keyboard his soul, the soul of his nation, the soul of his time, is the most individual composer that has ever set humming the looms of our dreams.”

Olive Fremstad (1908):

“Madame Fremstad has followed (other Isoldes), and at once we forgot the occasional Isoldes, for she is of the lineal artistic blood of (Lili) Lehmann and (Milka) Ternina. She is new; that is, she is different, and to be different, as Stendahl said, is to be original. Fremstad has not the majestic presence, the heroic voice, nor the commanding authority of her glorious predecessors. But she is lovelier, vocally and physically. She is the most alluring Isolde we have seen, and her charm is of the most intimate.”

Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler (1901):

“Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler gave a piano recital week before last in this city. I wrote of her in many columns. There were buckets of ink and forests of pens used. Yet some people who were present when this artist played could only see a slender young woman with black hair, stooped shoulders from severe study--’bible-back,’ said a bicyclist to me; thereat I retorted ‘Yes, but the Old, not the New Testament’--and long thin fingers flying over the keyboard. To all of which I assent. The pianist is dark, slight and her fingers fly. But other and beautiful things happen too; these I overheard and these my witty bicycling friend--who is also bible-back, revised version--did not. But when all the world sees, hears and feels alike, by then the end is nigh; it will be time to listen for Gabriel and his pealing trump.”

Geraldine Farrar (1900):

“Zaza in the role of Geraldine Farrar is a sensation. She rewakened last night, did this disreputable but interesting drab of the old play, and as her latest incarnation occurred on the boards of the Metropolitan Opera House, you may hazard without fear of contradiction that the naughty lady sang. She did. She had taken possession of the physical habitation of Geraldine Farrar; therefore she was reborn with a golden throat. The music and book of the late Ruggiero Leoncavallo, who was his own librettist, were only contributory causes for the apparition of the love-sick French music hall artiste. It was Geraldine Farrar who was the entire show, a new ‘Gerry,’ and it may be admitted without a peradventure of a doubt, a Geraldine who’ll enthrall the town for a long time to come.”