MUSIC.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4384, 15 June 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

MUSIC.

NOTES BY G STRING. At the urgent request of the committee of the Wellington Orchestral Society, Mr Robert Parker has agreed to conduct the orchestra at the corning concert. Ho has done this to relieve the society from its present difficulty regarding the conductorship, and at pre. sent his intention is merely to act temporarily. , » Mme. Belle Cole, who is to visit New Zealand shortly, tells an amusing story of musical enterprise and managerial miscalculation on Jubilee Day in London. It appears that the manager of the Queen’s Hall conceived the idea that on illumination night crowds of holiday-makers, weary of the turmoil of the streets, would seek the recreation and calm repose of a thigh-class orchestral concert. He accordingly engaged a first-rat e band of nearly 100 players, and secured a fine quartet of vocalists— Miss Esther Palliser, Mme. Belle Cole, Mr Chandos Lloyd, and Mr Watkia Mills. When the great day arrived, the entrepreneur became nervous. Sure:, ly there would not be room for half the people eager to hear such a fine concert ! Something must bo done. Ho therefore arranged a bioscope, with music, and light refreshments in the smaller Queen’s Hall adjoining. The evening opened, the band was there, the soloists were in their places, and seated amidst a wilderness of empty chairs was —one solitary and fcrlom man! o * * • •

Madame Melba’s goodness to struggling artists from her own country is well known. The latest story is that a young art student from Australia was forced by the exhaustion of his funds to leave Paris and try his hand as an illustrator. His first venture was in Montreal, and from that Canadian city he made his way to New York. Here for a time his art supported him, but after some discouragement, he decided to tell his story to the great prima donna, whom he had seen in his boyhood. She listened, sympathised, and sent him back to the studio in Paris, with the promise that he oonld rely upon her assistance in the pursuit of his studies there for five years.

Immediately before the State concert * in Sydney, each of the three conductors ■ —Mr Alfred Hill (formerly of Wellington), Mr Sydney Moss, and 'Mr J. A. Delaney— was presented with a handsome ivory baton, richly mounted in silver, and suitably engraved, on behalf of the Citizens Royal Reception Committee. This little ceremony was briefly and cordially performed over a glass of wine in the Mayor’s room, in the presence of the committee in question and most of the aldermen. Sir James Graham, the Mayor, made the presentation. ••* ■ *

Th e reason for the alteration of the change of Mdlle. Trobelli’s name to Mdlle. Dolores was, a Melbourne paper explains, brought about by the confusion which arose in the public mind between herself and her distinguished mefthor, the great contralto, who died some few years back. In the Western States of America many celebrated art. ists had been tonring, such as Santley, Foli, Albani, and others of that generation, whose voices had—to put it mildly—lost the first fresh bloom of youth; and when a concert trip by Mdlle. Trebelli was announced, people said they had had enough of old and passe singers—that Trebelli, as all the reference hooks had it, was born in 1838, and that however good she might have been once, her day was (or ought to be) just about over; and they left her severely alone. In Brooklyn, some of the sapient newspaper critics wrote of the lady’s wonderful art in disguising her real age. and commented en th« stranre fact tnat the passage of years had apparently changed the quality of her voice, "Which now sounded more like a soprano than a contralto'. «** * • •

The Duke of Cornwall, during the singing of the “Hallelujah chorus?’ by the Sydney Philharmonic _ Society at the State concert in that city, did not rise, “thus reminding many,” says the “Herald,” of Shakespeare’s dictum that “nice cutoms must curtsey to great kings.” It may be observed that it was a King, George IH., who set the fashion of standing during the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Some official particulars are issued as to the portion of “The Emerald Isle” left incomplete by Sir Arthur Sullivan, which Mr Edward German has been called upon to furnish. Of the vocal music, Sir Arthur, it appears, is responsible for seventeen numbers out of twenty-eight; 'while he had also, according to his custom, sketched out the finale. Th e first fifteen numbers, with the exception of two, are by Sullivan, taking in practically the whole of the first act, hut of this total only two numbers were scored by Sullivan. Mr German, however, is equally celebrated for the finish cfhis orchestration, and he has also been called upon to harmonise almost all the choruses. He has written almost all the music of the second act, and he also has contributed an orchestral introduction. * * • • m

Miss Maud _ MacCaxthy, the young Australian violinist, played at an Irish concert, in the Queen’s Hall, London, with Mr Villiers Stanford recently. The programme consisted of the best Irish music, Miss MacCarthy playing several of Mr Stanford’s Irish compositions accompanied by th© composer.