MUSICIANS AND COMPOSERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2934, 8 June 1910, Page 97

MUSICIANS AND COMPOSERS.

£IO,OOO FOR A VIOLIN. —Buying at 6s. Selling at £I6OO. The announcement that the collection of violins which belonged to the late Mr George Haddock, tha famous musician, is to be sold has aroused (says a Home paper) the keenest interest amongst dealers and collectors. The Haddock fiddles are reputed to be the finest private collection in existence, the g>em being the " Emperor Stradivarius," pronounced by Joachim to be the finest violin he had ever seen, and which is stated to be worth £IO,OOO. It is nearly 200 years old, and, notwithstanding its great age, looks as fresh as if it had but yesterday left the hands of Antonio Stradivari, the famed violin maker of Cremona. ; This is a somewhat exceptional value to be placed on a violin, the price of each of the 600 Strads which are known to be in existence ranging from £SOO to £ISOO. Perhaps the only violin, which can be compared with the "Emperor Stradivarius" of the Haddock collection is the one which Paganini left to the city of Genoa, for which as much as £IO,OOO has been offered. The Strad presented to the late Dr Joachim on the occasion of hi* jubilee cost £I2OO, while that presented to Lady Halle by the Duk© of Edinburgh, the late Earl of Dudley, and the late Lord Hardwicke cost £IOOO. —Sarasate's Generosity. — When Sarasate's will was proved two years ago it was found that he had bequeathed £4OOO and a Strad each to the Conservatoires of Paris and Madrid, the money being for the purpose of founding prizes bearing his name. Each of the violins was valued at about £2OOO, one of the instruments having been discovered in a very romantic manner. At one time it was the property of a Genevan blacksmith, to whom it had been given by a traveller who could not pay for the shoeing of his Ihorse. For years it hung on the wall of the blacksmith's house, until after many years another horseman, M. Boissier, who was also a violinist and a collector of violins came along. The blacksmith asked M. Boissier to buy the violin from him at his. own price, or else to find him a purchaser. M. Boissier carried it away, cleaned off the smoke, discovered the Strad mark—and did not defraud the blacksmith. The story reminds on© that the favourite violin of M. Eugene Ysaye—a magnificent Strad, valued at £3OOO, which was stolen from his dressing room three years ago, while in St. Petersburg—is said to have changed hands at one period for 355, being sold at that price by an unknown traveller to a waiter in a railway restaurant in a small Moravian town. —The Street Musician's Strad. — Twice at least £2OOO has been paid by private treaty for Strads, and £I4OO was paid for a'" Betts' Strad," th© title which it gained from the following incident.: —Betts was a music-seller in London some 60 years ago, and one day a stianger entered his shop offering a violin for sale at the low sum of one guinea. The dealer at once jumpied at the bargain, put down his guinea, and secured the instrument. He retained it in his family for a number of y,ears, and, after changing hands several times, it was bought at the figure named by a foreign nobleman. Five years ago £7OO was paid for a Strad which for years was played upon by a strolling musician in the Notting Hill and Marylebone districts of London} while some time ago £I6OO was paid for a fiddle which had previously been knocked down at an auction sale to «. labourer for 6a. Fortunately for him, the labourer lccew something of the value of fiddles, and a few days later sold his ireowire to a

'dealer in curios for £6OO. Ultimately tin latter sold it for £]6oo-truly a record Ijargain, THE EMPIRE IDEAL IN MUSIC. —Dr Charles Harriss on His Plans for 1910 and 1911.--•'•'Canada is my country. How do you tliink I could lie peacefully in my few .square feet of space in the cemetery aft Ottawa when my time com cm if I thought any other flag than the Union Jack would bo'waving above my little mound of earth? As chance has it. 1 am a musician, and it is through music that I must play my little part in helping to make and keep the Empire a living thing." With such words as these Dr Charles Harriss explains in the Canadian Gazette hie untiring pursuit of the Empire ideal in the realm of music. " Someone cabled to Canada, at the time of the British elections that only one profession seemed to be unrepresented in the new Imperial Parliament —the profes-< sion of music; and the inference was tha( music alone failed to count as an Empirci factor. Not count, indeed ! Why, there is no musical man of mark throughout the wide bounds of t'h« Empire who is not taking his part in unifying the Empire through his art. Starting from Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and the most eminentf English composers, Elgar, Stanford, Bridge, Cowen, and the others, you, have the musical conductors of th< societies of London and the provinces, Canada, Australia. New Zealand, South. Africa—you cannot put your finger on orie who is not to-day actively engaged in furthering this movement of musical reciprocity. "The movement originated at the Fraser Institute at Montreal in 1901,.and, thanks to hard work, it has been making its may ever since. In 1903 Sir Alexander Mackenzie came." to Canada, and we had a five-weeks' festival of British music. In 1905 we had a Canadian-British festival •in London, with the aid of the leading English composers. In 1908 we took the best English choir, the Sheffield Choir t*. Canada, to see whether the Canadian people were really with us in our desires. They were. I wanted to see whether I could manage 12 days with them before I undertook a tour round the world wrti« them. I saw that I could. It was a unique success. W*d in 1909 Sir Frederick Bridge followed up the good work by a Canadian musical tour. And now I have myself been to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa paving the way for new Empire enterprises, and everywhere I fane* the most sympathetic desire to co-operate in making music a real bond of unity wherever the Union Jack flies. . Low* Grey, Lord Dudley, Lord Selborne, Mr Deakin, Sir Joseph Ward—they and many others are heartily with us, and we must SUOCGGG. "This year we have the Festival of Empire in London, with its separate South African, New Zealand, and Aus-> tralian concerts. Once a week, in the great central dome of the Crystal Palace, - will be-held an. Empire concert. The chairman of this committee is the Earl of Shaftesbury, and 'the order of the concerts will be somewhat as follows:—Li the firsS week, will be held a concert for which both music and musicians will be drawn from all parts of the Empire, conducted by one of our great English musicians; the next; week the musicians will be drawn from Canada—you know how well Canada will figure on such an occasion; the next week from Australia; the next from New Zealand, and so on, over the six weeks-of the festival, until in the second week in July the festival will end with another concert in which all countries join together._ " Before leaving for South Africa in JulS last I had arranged an Empire Day concert in London somewhat on the lines oi our memorable Empire Day concert of the Colonial' Conference year. This will -be on* central feature of the present year. The Imperial choir will number 5000 voices. The orchestra will include 500 instrumentalists, and there will be a military band of 250 performers. With myself as conductor at this Empire Day concert, the conductors of the various co-operating London societies become associate conductors of the Imperial choir; and after defraying the cost any profit will be given to further in London the cause of Imperial music. My own personal expenses, let me add. will be no charge upon the receipts, for I shall in the future, as in th« past, continue to defray myself such personal disbursements. This thing has throughout to teed on its own roots. I ask no guarantees or anything o£ the kind. All I want the people here and in the dominions to do is to come and hear us and pay for their seats. The effort in London this year will be a united one on the oart of all to let the world know we can,'as members of a leading profession, get' together, and by so doing create an Imperial choir and an Empire concert upon a scale and magnitude such as may aspire to do honour to our King, to our country, to British music, and credit to ourselves. " And then, having given London, the heart of the Empire, of our best in 1910.I shall in 1911 take the Sheffield choir round the Empire—2oo of them,—Dr Henry Coward, the well-known chorus master, goinc with me as joint conductor; and if the Sheffield choir does as much for musio and Emnire in New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa as it did in Canada we shall be happy indeed. "It is a great undertaking, of course, but it is going to be a success, and wi" open the door to many other musical inte changes and developments of high Jmpen -, interest."