PREFACE
TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
——
MISS FAY'S little book has been so popular in her own country as to have gone through half a dozen editions, and even in German, into which it was translated soon after its first appearance, it has had much success. It is strange that it has not been already published in England, where music excites so much attention, and where works on musical subjects are beginning to form a distinct branch of literature. This is the more remarkable because it is thoroughly readable and amusing, which books on music too rarely are. The freshness and truth of the letters is not to be denied. We may laugh at the writer's enthusiasm, at the readiness with which she changes her methods and gives up all that she has already learnt at the call of each fresh teacher, at the certainty with which every new artist is announced as quite the best she ever heard, and at the glowing and confident predictions—not, alas, apparently always realised. But no one can laugh at her indomitable determination, and the artistic earnestness with which she makes the most of each of her opportunities, or the brightness and ease with which all is described (in choice American), and each successive person placed before us in his habit as he lives. Such a gift is indeed a rare and precious one. Will Miss Fay never oblige us with an equally charming and faithful account of music and life in the States? Hitherto musical America has been almost an unknown land to us, described by the few who have attempted it in the most opposite terms. Their singers we already know well, and in this respect America is perhaps destined to be the Italy of the future, if only the artists will consent to learn slowly enough. But on the subject of American players and American orchestras, and the taste of the American amateurs, a great deal of curiosity is felt, and we commend the subject to the serious attention of one so thoroughly able to do it justice.
GEORGE GROVE.
PREFACE
TO THE GERMAN EDITION.
——
Die vorliegenden Briefe einer Amerikanerin in die Heimath, die im Original bereits in zweiter Auflage erschienen sind, werden, so hoffen wir, auch dem deutschen Leser nicht minderes Vergnügen, nicht geringere Anregung als dem amerikanischen gewähren, da sie in unmittelbarer Frische niedergeschrieben, ein lebendiges Bild von den Beziehungen der Verfasserin zu den hervorragendsten musikalischen Persönlichkeiten, wie Liszt, v. Bülow, Tausig, Joachim u. s. w. bieten.
Wir geben das Buch in wortgetreuer Uebersetzung und haben es nur um diejenigen Briefe gekürzt, die in Deutschland Allzubekanntes behandeln. Hingegen glaubten wir die Stellen dem Leser nicht vorenthalten zu dürfen, welche zwar nicht musikalischen Inhalts sind, uns aber zeigen, wie manche unserer deutschen Zu-oder Mißstände von Amerikanern beurtheilt werden.
Robert Oppenheim, Publisher.