Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

Music

Music as an element of recreation has been emphasized by women everywhere as a public necessity. The Westchester Club at Mt. Vernon, New York, holds each season a series of high-class educational concerts for the public and these have proved very popular. This Club is composed of nearly 400 women. It built and thoroughly equipped a large auditorium seating 800 people, with smaller halls for recreational uses, greatly needed in that city.

The women and men of Denver have made municipal concerts a striking feature of their city. These concerts are held indoors in winter as well as out-of-doors in summer and are of a very high grade.

San Antonio, Texas, is fast developing into a musical center for the Southwest, owing to the activity of the San Antonio Musical Club of which Mrs. B. F. Nicholson is president, and the Tuesday Musical Club of which Mrs. Eli Hertzberg is president. Besides bringing to San Antonio some of the best artists that appear in New York and Chicago, San Antonio is also treated to a good concert every Saturday morning, free to the public, and given by the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra.

Austin, Texas, is apparently inspired to follow the example of San Antonio. The Matinée Musical Club, of which Mrs. Eugene Haynie is president, the oldest musical club there, and the Austin Musical Festival Association, of which Mrs. Robert G. Crosby is president, are the leaders in this movement. They are working with others for a municipally owned auditorium in Austin as there is no satisfactory place at present where concerts can be given.

The objects of the Music Festival Association are declared to be the improvement of its members and the development of musical taste among the people through the presentation of productions by the greatest artists. The president and members serve the community without stint and with no thought of personal gain. Owing to the relative indifference of the business community thus far they are obliged to assume considerable financial responsibility. This organization is especially interested in the school children, and a chorus which the children were permitted to sing to the accompaniment of the Damrosch orchestra a year or so ago was highly praised by Mr. Damrosch. It is hoped that a similar thing may be done when some leading orchestra shall be secured for concerts next spring. This feature was omitted when during the present month of May the St. Louis Symphony orchestra gave a concert. This organization, with its several soloists, was booked at a date too late to give time for chorus practice. Here it may be remarked that the musical instruction and training in the public schools, given under the supervision of Miss Katherine Murrie, is considered a large factor in the artistic growth of the community.

In Indianapolis, Mrs. Ona Talbot is given credit for having transformed that city into the musical center which it is now. It has been largely owing to her interest that the very best of music has been brought to the well-to-do people, at least, of Indianapolis: the Metropolitan and Boston Grand Opera companies; the Boston, New York and Chicago symphony orchestras; the Russian Ballet; opera singers and instrumentalists.

The Civic Music Association of Chicago, first suggested by Mrs. George B. Carpenter, was recently launched according to plans made by the Woman’s Club of Chicago. “Music within the reach of all” is its slogan. Mrs. Carpenter is president and she has the coöperation of the Chamber of Commerce and prominent women like Ella Flagg Young. Dora Allen, of the Association, states the aims in an article in The Survey:

It is hoped that local committees may be organized at recreation centers to coöperate, that neighborhood choral and orchestral clubs may be formed, that opportunity may be given for lecture recitals, initial appearances of young artists, production of works of resident composers and all distinctly American music, and that annual musical festivals may be held, to bring together the local groups. It is further planned to extend the work from the playgrounds to the halls in public school buildings, twenty-five of which are now open as social centers.

We cannot think but with a great deal of concern and with some humiliation of the effect which America has on some of the best capacities of the foreigners who come to us. They come singing folk-songs, national songs, and snatches from their operas. We drown these beautiful melodies with the tawdry rags and popular songs of the saloon, the dance hall and cheap theater.

That is a dark picture. A bright one was vividly painted to the writer by Mrs. Edward McDowell, who is devoting herself to the interests which aroused her great husband’s greatest enthusiasm: the development and democratization of music in America. The remarkable success of the Peterboro pageant is well-known throughout the country, and yet as Mrs. McDowell pointed out, the people who worked so hard and who so artistically rendered the music and dances and dramatic action were the townsfolk and laborers of a small New England village. With the achievement of this pageant in mind, Mrs. McDowell after a visit to the Chicago playgrounds in the immigrant districts was enthusiastic over what might be done with the coöperation of the Bohemians, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians and Poles and other art-loving nationalities.

In almost all towns and cities there are free public libraries. In a growing number there are institutes in which painting and sculpture are exhibited without charge; and do we not see, here and there, the beginnings of a movement to present good music, either without charge or at a cost so small as to place it within the reach of all?

In this development of the passion for good music through coöperation among the people, we are just beginning to recognize the needs of the negroes who, by poverty or the sharp color line, have been excluded from the proper encouragement of their own talents and tastes. The Music School Settlement for Colored People in New York City is becoming the nucleus of a recreation center for colored people in which the dramatic and musical instincts of the race will be developed in an interesting and creditable way. But it is not alone in the effect it has on the colored people that the Settlement may be said to have demonstrated its usefulness; it has also been the means of interesting an increasing number of white people in the needs and aspirations of the colored. It is only by mutual understanding and sympathy that the negro question can be solved. The Music School Settlement for Colored People is trying in its own way to help in the solution of this grave social problem. The officers of the Settlement include men and women, and women have been generous contributors to the support of its work.