EMMA THURSBY
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.