MUSIC NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1292, 28 January 1915, Page 37

MUSIC NOTES.

(By

“G” String.)

The London Ph Jharnionic Society is continuing its regular concerts of the 1914-15 season. The performing members are being paid reduced fees on account of the depression in art matters caused by the war, but provided funds are available the deficiency is to be made up as far as possible by the payment of a bonus at the end of the season.

Schilling-Ziemssen, a conductor from the Frankfort Opera, and who fulfilled an engagement at Covent Garden last year, is now serving as a German captain of artillery, and is one of the tens of thousands who have already been presented with the doubtful distinction of the Iron Cross by the Kaiser.

Mr. David Bispham, the American bar.tone, who visited Australia some months ago, and who during most of last year was free-lancing—that is, his engagements were not managed by anyone in particular—is again under the exclusive management of Mr. Frederic Shipman. The energetic Canadian manager has already booked an extensive tour of the United States for the distinguished baritone, and he has likewise projected another Bispham visit to Australia. If the tour comes off it is to be hoped New Zealand will be included in it. Under the heading “Then and Now,” the London “Musical Times,” in a recent issue, publishes a thoughtful paragraph on the past and present attitude of Germans towards Americans. Says the writer: “Taking into consideration the frantic attempts being made by Germany to conciliate public opinion in the United States, and to gloss over the slaughter of inoffensive non-combatants and the wanton destruction of treasures that belonged to the world rather than to

heroic little Belgium alone, it is somewhat amusing to carry one’s thoughts back a few months to the agitation which was started in America against young students of music, especially girls, being allowed to run the risks of great Cities, away from the watchfulness and experience of their proper guardians. That agitation was taken in very ill part in Germany, and especially in Berlin, many of the German newspapers giving vent to the most ill-natured comments on America and American music. We need not reproduce the exact epithets; it is enough to say that they were coarsely vituperative, the Berlin comic paper “Ulk” publishing a savage cartoon, which was typical of the Teutonic contempt for trans-Atlantic musical pretensions. Now the German eagle is screaming as gently as any sucking dove, and nothing is so dear to it as the bird of similar name, but of very different breed, that typifies the great Republic. The contrast is distinctly amusing, but we doubt whether the humour of it -s as apparent to the Germans as it must be to Americans. Humour is no yoke-fellow with blood and iron.”