Wagner, Richard, 13, 19, 76, 121, 122, 133, 157, 172, 180
Waldteufel, 21, 24
Wallace, William Vincent, 154
Wayburn, Ned, 91
Weber, 29
Whistler, 75
White, Stanford, 138
Wilde, Oscar, 92
Wolf, Hugo, 23, 29
Wood, Henry J., 183
Wyns, Charlotte, 128
Xacara, 44, 69
Yradier, Sebastian, 27
Zabalza, 181, 187
Zandonai, 24, 25
Zapateado, 49, 191
Zarabanda, 43
Zarzuela, 14, 18, 62 _et seq._, 71, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 86, 99,
145, 146, 148, 149, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184,
185, 186, 187
Ziegfeld, Florenz, 93
"Zincali, The," 107 _et seq._
_Zorahayda_, 24
Zuloaga, 15, 99, 130, 156
Zurbaran, 33
What the Critics Say About Mr. Van Vechten's Work
What the Critics Say About Mr. Van Vechten's Work
Mr. Van Vechten has written and Alfred A. Knopf has published two other
books which should appeal to those who like "The Music of Spain." The
first of these, "Music and Bad Manners," contains the following seven
essays: Music and Bad Manners, Music for the Movies, Spain and Music,
Shall We Realize Wagner's Ideals? The Bridge Burners, A New Principle
in Music, Leo Ornstein.
"Interpreters and Interpretations" contains the following fourteen
essays: Olive Fremstad, Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden, Feodor
Chaliapine, Mariette Mazarin, Yvette Guilbert, Waslav Nijinsky, The
Problem of Style in the Production of Opera, Notes on the _Armide_
of Gluck, Erik Satie, The Great American Composer, The Importance of
Electrical Picture Concerts, Modern Musical Fiction, and Why Music is
Unpopular.
Here is what Henry Blackman Sell of "The Chicago Daily News" has to say
of Mr. Van Vechten's work:
As one of that annoying clan who don't know anything about music except
that we know what we like, I hereby raise my voice to hymn Mr. Van
Vechten's intelligent pronouncements as a boon, a joy and a liberation.
Henceforth when I peruse the ponderous passages, which so often pass
for erudition in contemporary music criticism, I shall not sorrow with
myself in the mortification of ignorance, as of yore. No, no, I am
free. I have read of music and musicians in articles and essays written
by a man who is accredited in the most trustworthy quarters as being
a fellow well up in the nice points of his delicate trade--and I have
understood.
For two years I have avoided Mr. Van Vechten's annual volume ("Music
After the Great War" was published in 1915 and "Music and Bad Manners"
in 1916) for no more worthy reason than a convinced aversion for books
on music; their tangled sobriety seems such a poor guide to the joys of
the concert, the opera or the performer.
Wholly by chance, fortunate accident, I flipped open his latest,
"Interpreters and Interpretations," and this is what greeted my
astonished gaze:
"... Johanna Gadski, a coughing, raucous name.... Geraldine Farrar,
tomboyish and impertinent, Melrose with French sauce.... Edyth Walker,
a militant suffragette name.... Scalchi--Ugh! Further evidence could
be brought forward to prove that singers succeed in spite of their
names rather than because of them.... Until we reach the name of Mary
Garden.... The subtle fragrance of this name has found its way into
many hearts. Since Nell Gwynne no such scented cognomen, redolent of
cuckoos' boots, London pride, blood red poppies, purple foxgloves,
lemon stocks, and vermilion zinnias, has blown its delightful odour
across our scene.... Delightful and adorable Mary Garden, the fragile
Thais, pathetic Jean ... unforgettable Mélisande...."
Such things written by a critic! Impossible! Why, that is the way one
feels after an exquisite Mary Garden performance. And what have critics
to do with feelings? Yet there it was all set down in print. Oh, well,
I thought, he may be able to capture emotion, but when he gets down to
that critic business he'll be like the rest. Straight to the first page
of the Mary Garden article--here's what I found:
"The influence of Ibsen on our stage has been most subtle. The dramas
of the sly Norwegian are infrequently performed, but almost all of
the plays of the epoch bear his mark. And he has done away with the
actor, for nowadays emotions are considered rude on the stage. Our best
playwrights have striven for an intellectual monotone. So it happens
that for the Henry Irvings, the Sarah Bernhardts and the Edwin Booths
of a younger generation we must turn to the operatic stage, and there
we find them: Maurice Renaud, Olive Fremstad and Mary Garden.
"There is nothing casual about the art of Mary Garden. Her achievements
on the lyric stage are not the result of happy accident. Each detail of
her impersonations, indeed, is a carefully studied and selected effect,
chosen after a review of the possible alternatives. Occasionally,
after trial, Miss Garden even rejects the instinctive. This does
not mean that there is no feeling behind her performances. The deep
burning flame of poetic imagination illuminates and warms into life the
conception wrought in the study chamber. Nothing is left to chance, and
it is seldom and always for some good reason that this artist permits
herself to alter particulars of a characterization during the course of
a representation."
Enough! I began at the beginning and read the book through. Olive
Fremstad, Geraldine Farrar, Yvette Guilbert, Mary Garden, Waslav
Nijinsky.... "Why Music is Unpopular," a delightful and timely slap
at contemporary music criticism; "The Great American Composer" (Van
Vechten's first choice is Irving Berlin); "The Problem of Style in
the Production of Opera" and others, all in the same happy, sensible,
"modern" vein.
Have you bought your opera tickets? Very good, now go, phone or wire to
the nearest book store and get all three of Carl Van Vechten's books.
You'll thank me at the close of every chapter if you really care a
whoop for real music.
MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS
[12mo., 244 pages, $1.60 net.]
"When Carl Van Vechten's first book, 'Music After the Great War,' was
published a year or so ago, I lifted a modest hymn in praise of it,
and at the same time denounced the other music critics of America for
the fewness of their books, and for the intolerable dulness of that
few.... Now comes his second book, 'Music and Bad Manners'--thicker,
bolder, livelier, better. In it, in fact, he definitely establishes a
point of view and reveals a personality, and both have an undoubted
attractiveness. In it he proves, following Huneker, that a man may be
an American and still give all his thought to a civilized and noble
art, and write about it with authority and address, and even find
an audience that is genuinely interested in it ... a bird of very
bright plumage, and, after Huneker, the best now on view in the tonal
aviary."--H. L. Mencken in "The Smart Set."
"Mr. Van Vechten is well known in the musical and literary worlds,
and, while 'clever,' he is just and sound in his critical verdicts. He
inspires students and entertains general readers.... His theory about
the development of music appropriate to and especially for the 'movies'
is unique.... There are many clever suggestions one can cull from a
careful study of the book."--"The Literary Digest."
"'Music and Bad Manners,' by Carl Van Vechten, tells many amusing
stories to show what stupidities and brutalities may be perpetrated by
persons of the so-called 'artistic temperament,' and on the other hand,
what rudeness may be shown by an audience. These stories ... are vastly
entertaining, but the title essay gives a misleading impression of Mr.
Van Vechten's book, of its weight and poise, for it has much serious
discussion and criticism and much historical information of value and
significance. Music readers will skim with a smile the essay on 'Music
and Bad Manners,' but they will read with absorbed attention the other
half dozen essays of the volume. Mr. Van Vechten writes sound and not
too technical English, and has the good taste and good temper to write
without rancour."--"Vogue."
"Carl Van Vechten is one of the relatively few people in America to
write about music neither as a press agent nor as a pedant, but as an
essayist.... 'Music After the Great War' and 'Music and Bad Manners'
are delightful reading whether the reader is a musician or not. 'Music
and Bad Manners' ranges from a pretty thorough, if discursive, outline
of the national music of Spain to the collection of lively anecdotes
forming the essay from which the volume takes its name. The comments,
always shrewd and based on wide experience, betray the rare quality of
clear and independent thought. Moreover, Mr. Van Vechten, by the more
than occasional heterodoxy of his ideas, stimulates a healthy desire
to climb out of deep-worn ruts. The essays, in particular, on present
musical tendencies are none the less illuminating because they are
never ponderous.... The charm of the book is mainly due to the author's
keen enjoyment of the grotesque, illustrated in scores of incisive
phrases, and in a wealth of vivid anecdote."--Henry Adams Bellows in
"The Bellman."
"This very interesting book is in the style of the essays of
Charles Lamb. It breathes a very human spirit and is told in a very
entertaining fashion. It is in the form of a series of essays and from
the opening one regarding bad manners in music and musicians to the
closing article on Leo Ornstein it is spicy and intensely personal
in its style. Really it is one of the most interesting, as well as
thoughtful and yet expository, books I have seen."--"The Music News."
"Of all the books that have been sent to me this past musical year
none is so entertaining as 'Music and Bad Manners,' a little work in a
violent green cover with a vivid blue edge from the house of Knopf. Mr.
Van Vechten is a delightful young iconoclast who writes things about
music that many people think but very few have courage enough to say,
and his exaggerations so often contain trenchant truths, his style is
so easy and merry, his ideas so sprightly, that you, if you are at all
in sympathy with the 'moderns' will have a most agreeable hour if you
devote it to this work."--"The Baltimore Evening Sun."
"'Music and Bad Manners' by Carl Van Vechten is one of the most
readable books dealing with music that has been issued in a long time.
The writer, a decidedly clever one, does not spend his energy on themes
and theories that would prove interesting only to absorbed students
of music but he writes in a delightful style that gives a universal
interest to his themes. It is the kind of book that the average lover
of music will find most invigourating and that will stimulate his love
of music to a further examination of the thesis set forth by Mr. Van
Vechten. It is sound and discriminating in its judgments and it is
unique in its subject matter. There is always an eye for selecting the
things of highest interest.... This is a book that will prove pleasing
to all who read it. Its exhibition of the knowledge of music is not
pedantic, and the author is one of the new forces in music."--"The
Springfield (Mass.) Union."
"From the opening chapter until the final page the book is replete with
interesting matter."--"The Buffalo (N. Y.) Commercial."
"'Music and Bad Manners' by Carl Van Vechten is a series of seven
essays on musical topics that is intensely interesting.... The book
will be of deepest interest to all musicians."--"New York Herald."
"Mr. Van Vechten considers modern tendencies with an open mind. He
is to be no more deceived into disapproval of innovators by their
apparent disregard for tradition than awed by tradition itself (in
this case the Bayreuth tradition) into accepting the present specious
and old-fashioned methods of staging Wagner as the sacred intention of
the master.... Mr. Van Vechten is a well informed specialist, a bold
champion, and an entertaining gossip."--"The New York Evening Sun."
"This volume of musical essays may be cordially commended to
music-lovers who neither bow down to the youngest nor the eldest
composer, but seek to listen honestly according to their powers. The
author is a critic of discernment and sincerity."--"The Providence (R.
I.) Journal."
"This study of music and music makers is as lively as some of the
new tunes that have been given to us recently, but it is not at all
commonplace. It sets a new mark in musical criticism."--"The Portland
(Oregon) Telegram."
"Carl Van Vechten, whose book, 'Music After the Great War,' excited
considerable interest in artistic circles last year and drew upon him
the censure of certain conservatives because he did not agree with them
as to the entertaining value of chamber music, has published a new
volume, that is bound to extend his reputation as an original thinker
and investigator."--"The Evening News" (Newark, N. J.).
INTERPRETERS AND INTERPRETATIONS
[12mo., 368 pages, $2.00.]
"Mr. Van Vechten has a liking for the queer, the new, the perverse,
and the personal. He is as gossipy as Samuel Pepys, Jr. (and is in the
way of being a Pepys in the musical world).... Another distinguishing
characteristic of Mr. Van Vechten is his forehandedness. He has a
perfect genius for being on the side of the street where the car
stops--which for most of us is the other side.... He in short is doing
his best to throw a bomb into that parlour of musicians described
by Charles Lamb, in which they sat all silent and all damned.
He apparently sees no reason why music should not be a cheerful
business."--N. P. D. in "The New York Globe."
"Carl Van Vechten is now in fair alignment with James Huneker and H. L.
Mencken in the field in which both have done their most entertaining
work.... 'Interpreters and Interpretations' is bright, lively, snappy
reading; no part is dull."--Frederick Donaghey in "The Chicago Tribune."
"In these papers some of the questions of the day are spicily and
fearlessly discussed. The last paper is misnamed. It should have been
called 'Why Some Musical Critics are Not Liked by the Author of This
Book.'"--H. T. Finck in "The New York Evening Post."
"Carl Van Vechten is always an intelligent and stimulating critic.
You may not always agree with his point of view, but it is an
original point of view and he always sets you a-thinking. He shakes
up your conventional ideas on art and music in 'Interpreters and
Interpretations,' a vivacious and entertaining book. Nothing better has
come our way since James Huneker's books ceased being events in our
life."--"The Brooklyn Eagle."
"Mr. Van Vechten is always stimulating, because he has a mind which
functions on a vast amount of material, and the ability to express
himself incisively. He praises with discrimination, when he praises;
and when he hits, he hits hard and with a manifest endeavour to be
fair.... Mr. Van Vechten writes live criticism which is more than
most music critics can do; his ideals are the highest; and great art
does not suffer from his pen, but is made more secure of place by his
discriminating praise."--W. K. Kelsey in "The Detroit News-Tribune."
"Carl Van Vechten opens a new field of adventure for the music-lover.
Of the many biographers of musicians none has entered into so close an
intimacy with the singer and dealt with the mental grip of her artistic
conception of character."--"Reedy's Mirror."
"There would be less profound cant and meaningless ceremony about
the art of music if more musical critics wrote with the simplicity
and directness of Carl Van Vechten.... His critical creed is nicely
stated in the essay on 'Why Music is Unpopular.' No musical writer in
America, save James Huneker, comes nearer to this ideal than Mr. Van
Vechten himself. He says divertingly what he has to say; and, agree
with him or not, you feel the mental stimulation which only a keen
ardent intelligence can bring to a subject. Moreover, he is young and
in sympathy with modern tendencies in music. He is not too prudish
to say a good word for ragtime, nor to confess that one hearing a
year of the Beethoven Fifth is enough for him. He is as unaffected in
discovering the æsthetic virtues of a 'movie' concert as in painting
those sympathetic portraits of Mary Garden, Nijinsky, Chaliapine, Erik
Satie and other artists, celebrated or obscure."--"The Philadelphia
Press."
"Mr. Van Vechten has achieved that which, as a rule, appears to be past
accomplishment. That is to say, he has proved himself able to be both
simple and interesting upon a subject which, highly specialized in
itself is held commonly by both artists and critics to the exclusions
of an unknown tongue."--"Washington (D. C.) Evening Star."
"Carl Van Vechten is temperamentally more of an interpretative artist
than an analytical critic whose emotions are subservient to the
reasoning faculties. He is subjective rather than objective in mind and
method and consequently he must differ from the critics who can see and
hear great operas without having their emotions stirred. His gibes at
the professional critic spring therefore from the same sources as the
melodies of a composer."--"The Musical Courier."
"In his new book, 'Interpreters and Interpretations,' Mr. Van Vechten
is off on another joust against the orthodox and the dull, and the
reader who follows him will have an enlivening experience."--"The
Louisville (Ky.) Courier Journal."
"'Interpreters and Interpretations' is Carl Van Vechten's latest volume
of essays on music. Don't reach for your hats. This is going to be
fun. Carl Van Vechten writes essays so delightfully that they seem
like stimulating conversations.... He could write about a cuneiform
syllabary and give it the charm of a sophisticated chat on the Boul
Michigander. He can talk about singers and dancers and artists of all
sorts in a way that makes them all seem like the folks next door....
'Music and Bad Manners' was the most entertaining volume on music that
came to my jaded notice last year. 'Interpreters and Interpretations'
is a fit sequel to it. Neither of the books is a volume for the
musician alone.... A person who had never heard an opera would have a
vicarious joy in _Pelléas et Mélisande_ when Carl Van Vechten tells
how Mary Garden interpreted it.... Perhaps the secret of the charm of
his essays is that they're really very learned in material but not the
least bit in treatment. We all like to know that we're listening to
the word of authority, even when it's sweet music to the ear."--Fanny
Butcher in "The Chicago Tribune."
"Regardless of how much or how little you may know of music and its
interpreters you cannot fail to enjoy the delightful manner in which
Carl Van Vechten tells you of them in his book, 'Interpreters and
Interpretations.'... Without stirring from your easy chair or making
the slightest effort to entertain you may share a pleasant intimacy
with Mary Garden, Olive Fremstad, Geraldine Farrar, Waslav Nijinsky,
and others equally interesting. Carl Van Vechten discourses on the art
of music in a way that even the tired business man can understand and
enjoy."--"The Argonaut" (San Francisco).
"There is nothing pedagogic in Mr. Van Vechten's volume entitled
'Interpreters and Interpretations.' The interpreters who are sketched
with literary facility and genuine interest are Fremstad, Farrar,
Garden, Chaliapine, Mazarin, Guilbert, and Nijinsky.... Much the
better part of his book is that about interpretations. His best
essay is 'The Problem of Style in the Production of Opera,' which
is both practical and ideal and which is, above all, interesting
and suggestive. Next in importance is 'Why Music is Unpopular,' a
refreshing bit of personal temper."--W. J. Henderson in "The New York
Sun."