MUSIC.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8573, 15 March 1906, Page 3

MUSIC.

* NOTES. (By TEMPO.) On January 10 last a notable concert wa6 giyen'in the Theatre dv Chatelet, in Paris, when the Leeds Chorus and the London Symphony Orchestra ap-= peared under the baton of .Sir Charles V T illiers Stanford. The Yorkshire singers opened with the "Marseillaise," sung in French (with a strong Yorkshire aoosnt, it may be assumed), and subsequently astonished the huge audience by their magnificent rendering of Bach's unaccompanied motett, " Sing to the Lord." The President (M. Loubet) and a crowd of musical notabilities were present, and the concert (the. first of ito kind to be given in Paris) was a brilliant success. The second concert, given on Friday, January 12, included two of the. Yorkshire chorus's ckevaux de bataille, the Sanctue from Bach's mass in B minor, and Beethoven's choral symphony. Commercial interests have once more prevailed over artistic sentiments, and Handel's house, No. 25, Brook Street, London^ has been "renovated," and the lower storey turned -into a shop. The tablet recording the fact that Handel lived there has been replaced, but the place is changed beyond recognition. The last volume (which is the second in order) of the " Oxford History of Music," has now appeared, and this monumental work is now complete. It is in si* volumes, including two volumes of the Polyphonio Period, by H. E. Wooldridge; the nuisic of the seventeenth century : by Dr Hubert H. Parry ; the period of Bach and Handel, by J. A. Fuller-Maitland ; the I Viennese Period, by W. H. Hadow ; and the Romantic Period by Edward Dannreuther. - 1 In reference to his now well-known "1812" overture, Tchaikovsky said it was a "very noisy composition," and that as he K wrote it _ without much warmth of enthusiasm, it has no great artistic value." Tchaikovsky was not' a pianist, and, referring to his pianoforte concerto in B flat minor, he writes: — " As I am not a pianist, it was necessary to consult some virtuoso as to what might be ineffective, impracticable, and ungrateful in my teojiniquo." Nicolas Rubinstein, to whom he showed this concerto, said it was " impossible, and needed to be completely revised." " I shall not alter a single note," replied Tchaikovsky. " I shall publish it just as it stands," and he did. (From the " Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, edited from the Russian by Rosa Newmarch, and recently published, by John Lane, London.) Even those musical folk who do not care much for the style of hie nymn tunes will be glad to hear that Mr Ira D. Sankey has partially from his blindness. He i 6 writing a book of stories of the hymns associated with his evangelistic work and the effect that they have had. ' A work on these lines was completed in 1901 ; but the entire manuscript with all the material on wrhich it was founded was burnt one night when there was a fire at the sanatorium where Mr Sankey was sfaying. He has amassed a fresh store of anecdotes about his hymns since then, so the new book should be interesting reading. "Rag time," says a character in a modern American burlesque, "may be all right for society people, but it won't do for the better classes." Mr Felix Moscheles, chairman of the Peace Association, is the son of the Moscheles* with .whom Mendelssohn corresponded, and with whom he used to extemporise— four hands — on the piano. Many men can extemporise ; one often wishes that many men could not. But to play extempore a deux there must be a marvellous science in both men; and the result one would expect to be signally dull music. A lady — herself a musician— is living who heard Mendelssohn and his friend extemporise; it was done at great London parties in tho middle century,/ Mendelssohn's famous cradle-song was written for his godson., the present Felix; and its re* Train, "^Wait but a while, be patient," was a good exhortation' tor the ohairman of the Peace Association. It is scarcely credible, but it is a fact, that a glass can be broken, by the voice. If you strike a thin winegla-ss while you hold it by the stem it will emit a certain note— in most cases a pretty deep one. On. approaching the glass rapidly to your mouth, and shouting into it the same note as loudly as possible, the vibrations of the glass being thereby extended, it will be shivered into fragments. This used to be a favourite experiment of Lablache, the renowned 1 singer^ who would thus break, one after the other, as many glasses as were handed to hi*»-