What renders the performance of this tremendous tot so awe-inspiring is the fact that he is not merely a musical illiterate, who cannot yet read a note of music, but that he has received no education of any kind! Born at Tipperusalem, Oklahoma, on the 15th of March, 1912, he has for parents a clerk in the Eagle Bakery and a Lithuanian laundress. He never touches meat, not even baked eagles, but subsists entirely on peaches and popcorn. He has been compared to Mozart, but the comparison is ridiculous, for Mozart was carefully trained by his father, and at the age of four was a finished executant. But it is quite otherwise with Tiny Titus, who knows no music, and yet by the sole power of his genius comprehends the musical heights unattainable by adults. Mozart, in short, was an explicable miracle, while Tiny Titus is an insoluble Sphinx.
From the innumerable tributes which have been paid to the genius of this unprecedented phenomenon we can only make a brief and inadequate selection. Prince Boris Ukhtomsky writes, "When I listen to this infinitesimal giant of conductors I dream that mankind is dancing on the edge of a precipice. Tiny Titus is—the 32nd of the month." Mme. Jelly Tartakoff, the famous singer, writes: "I have been deeply shaken by Tiny Titus's concert. He is the limit." Of the homages in verse, perhaps the most touching is the beautiful poem by Signor Ocarini, the charm of which we fear is but inadequately rendered in our halting translation:—
Leaving his pop-gun and his ball,
He goes into the concert hall,
No more a baby, and proceeds
To do electrifying deeds.
Wielding a wizard's wondrous skill,
He leads us captive at his will,