The Music of Spain

by Carl Van Vechten

"... 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."