It is an amazing blindness on the part of parents. It always astonishes me that they don't see the impertinence of the thing. They certainly wouldn't think of asking the company to cease their conversation to hear you speak your piece, or perform a dance. The piano alone is licensed to say to everybody, "cease your conversation, and listen to me; I am about to make a big noise!"
But the fashion has never imposed upon people of sense and real politeness. When the piano has started up without even a notice, I have seen such people flush with indignation.
VICES IN MODERN MUSIC.
It may be mentioned as illustrating still further, the false tendencies in music, that it takes a brave man to ask for a sweet, simple song. I tried it the other night. I asked a Flora McFlimsey to give us "Way down upon the Swanee River." The words, it will be remembered, are singularly pure, sweet and pathetic.
Many of the Italian songs just now so fashionable, are couched in language, listened to by pure-minded people, only because they don't understand it.
When I said, "Please sing 'Way down upon the Swanee River,'" Miss McFlimsey replied, "Excuse me, I never sing that class of music. I haven't sung one of those simple airs, I don't know when." I know, by the way the girls looked at me, that their respect for my musical taste vanished at once and forever. If I had asked her for "Ah, que j'aime les militaire," or "Une Paule sur la mur," insufferable trash, both as to music and words, utterly beneath contempt, she would have eagerly screamed the bald bosh, and the weak ones would have declared it ineffably exquisite.*
ITALIAN OPERA.
If you understand Italian, I need not explain; and if you do not, purchase a libretto, with English translation, of almost any of the operas, and read.
Among those most popular on the American stage, I cannot recall more than two, that I should be willing to have my daughter read. But the music pupil must study every word, often every syllable of a word.
The lascivious suggestion, the sly innuendo, the bold challenge,— they are all exhausted in the language of the opera.