Although conditions have changed very greatly since I was last regularly
engaged in making concert tours, the change has been rather one of
advantage to young singers than one to their disadvantage. The enormous
advance in musical taste can only be expressed by the word "startling."
For while we have apparently a vast amount of worthless music being
continually inoculated into our unsuspecting public, we have,
nevertheless, a corresponding cultivation of the love for good music
which contributes much to the support of the concert singer of the
present day.
The old time lyceum has almost disappeared, but the high-class song
recital has taken its place and recitals that would have been barely
possible years ago are now frequently given with greatest financial and
artistic success. Schumann, Franz, Strauss, Grieg and MacDowell have
conquered the field formerly held by the vapid and meaningless
compositions of brainless composers who wrote solely to amuse or to
appeal to morbid sentimentality.
The conditions of travel, also, have been greatly improved. It is now
possible to go about in railroad cars and stop at hotels, and at the
same time experience very little inconvenience and discomfort. This
makes the career of the concert artist a far more desirable one than in
former years. Uninviting hotels, frigid cars, poorly prepared meals and
the lack of privacy were scarcely the best things to stimulate a high
degree of musical inspiration.