Familiar! That is precisely the point. Theodore Thomas once said that “popular music was familiar music,” and that is the unassailable truth. A Beethoven symphony may be as popular as “The Rosary” when enough people have become as familiar with it, and yet it may be a classic of the classics.
Parenthetically it might be said at this point that for those who do not sing or play, the Victrola is by far the quickest and simplest medium through which to “pick up” the new music.
To illustrate by a concrete example, “So Long, Letty” or “Tipperary” will keep a family full to the brim with bright, pleasant, joyful emotions for quite some little time. It may be days or weeks. It might even be months, but Clement’s record of the Berceuse from Jocelyn, Elman’s record of the Schubert Ave Maria, or any one of a thousand we might mention, will smooth the wrinkles from your brow, the troubled furrows from your mind, ten years from today as surely as they will now.
When the music of all the world is at your disposal it is almost impossible to refrain from bathing heart and soul and body in it, but remember that to become saturated with anything is to lose the fine edge of enjoyment. With too frequent use the most valuable remedy may lose its healing virtues. Definite, measurable, physical effects may be produced by music, and the gist of the matter is that one should become familiar enough with music to understand and enjoy it, but never familiar enough to induce the loss of its effect. Hear it when you need to hear it, and it will continue to be a thing of joy not for days or weeks, but all through the years.
GALLI-CURCI
Personal taste varies more perhaps in music than in any other art, but in a general way it follows much the same broad channels, and in any case the Victor Record Catalogue, since it actually does contain almost all the music of the world by the world’s greatest exponents of musical art, is a treasure house of untold satisfaction and gives the widest possible scope for personal selection.
The Victrola is not one instrument, but all of them. It is a voice, a violin, a trombone or a symphony orchestra, according to your will, and in making a selection of records full advantage should be taken of this most extraordinary privilege.
Making up a Victrola program for the entertainment of friends calls for just the same variety and emotional balance as the professional musician strives to introduce into his own programs, but in this, you as your own concert manager, enjoy a degree of latitude wholly beyond the reach of any single artist and any manager, for every branch of music, every type of music and every medium of musical expression may be brought into play by the simple expedient of having a sufficiently large and sufficiently varied collection of records.
In giving operatic programs or in playing operatic records for your own satisfaction the Victrola Book of the Opera will be an added source of pleasure and satisfaction, for it affords a clear, concise understanding of all the well-known operas, both as to music, plot and dramatic action.