America's Musical Inheritance - Memories And Reminiscences

Anna Eugenie Schoen Rene

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• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528760652
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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America s Musical Inheritance
MEMORIES AND REMINISCENCES
BY
ANNA EUG NIE SCHOEN-REN
ILLUSTRATED

G. P. PUTNAM S SONS
NEW YORK, 1941
COPYRIGHT, 1941, BY G. P. PUTNAM S SONS
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission .
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Dedicated
To the Memory of
PAULINE GARCIA-VIARDOT
By Her Devoted Pupil and Friend
Pauline Garcia-Viardot
FOREWORD
I F THERE IS ONE lack in our musical life today that justifies our harking back a little ruefully to more or less legendary times, it is the want of dominating personalities in the teaching profession. Great singers, pianists, violinists, cellists and other executants come and go. So do great composers and conductors. This generation has known its fair share of all, including singers, even though this is more obviously a heyday of conductors than it is a golden age of song. But much as we may admire the most successful of contemporary vocalists, we do not associate their prowess, ordinarily, with the names of world-famous teachers, as was the case in the last so-called Golden Age-when the names of Mathilde Marchesi; the Lampertis, father and son; Sangiovanni; Vanuccini; Sbriglia; Manuel Garcia and his sister, Mme. Garcia-Viardot, among others, meant quite as much in the world of singers as those of any of their illustrious pupils. These masters of the voice were sought after by ambitious students from the four quarters of the globe. Their studios were regarded as way stations to fame. They did not escape disparagement. No teacher-and, more particularly, no singing teacher-does. But they were somebodies. They made their personalities felt, whether they taught well or ill.
Today, world personalities among teachers are so few that one turns to the author of these reminiscences as almost a sole exception in the sphere of the voice. There are, of course, many who are able; many who may rightfully be described as well known. But the eminence which Mme. Schoen-Ren has gained and held through many years as the heir and continuer of the teaching of the Garcias is not merely something of the success of her pupils. In it is the impact of a personality at once dominating and endearing, with rock-ribbed honesty as the basis of her entire relation to her chosen profession, and a background of musical life in Europe and America that most of us can only envy. One turns from such chapters as Johannes Brahms As I Knew Him and Garcia at Cricklewood to those on Pioneering in the Middle West and Das Lied, with the thought that the title of this volume is precisely the right one, in that the author is herself a significant symbol of America s Musical Inheritance.
O SCAR T HOMPSON Executive Director, Musical America Music Critic, The New York Sun
AUTHOR S PREFACE
Although I begin these reminiscences with a brief record of my early years, and with a discussion of some historic figures and events which lend significance to them, this personal story is but a prelude. My main purpose in writing this book is to preserve for musicians and music-lovers of the future those facts and developments in the history of music, particularly of singing, which I witnessed in the course of a long full life.
By far the most significant were the years I was privileged to spend with the two Garcias-Pauline Garcia-Viardot and Manuel, her brother: Pauline Viardot whose pupil I was for eighteen precious years and who guided me in my profession also as a teacher; Manuel under whom I pursued special studies in the training of male voices. They were members of that illustrious family of singers and teachers whose fame is a by-word in the world and whose genius rendered service of inestimable value to vocal art from the end of the eighteenth century into the opening decade of the twentieth. They were an integral part of the musical and artistic world of Europe, closely associated with most of the great names making up that world. But few Americans of today know that a Garcia introduced operatic music to the young United States in 1825-that we in this country, too, are indebted to this family for a tradition of culture.
Throughout my own long association with Mme. Garcia-Viardot, she told me many things about her family, besides her instruction on the development of scientific vocal art,-stories of struggle and success-intimate and amusing incidents of family life. I made notes of all these for I recognized I was in possession of material unknown to others and I wanted to document it. I deferred the labor of this work repeatedly, however, despite the urging of those who shared my feeling of its historical value-William J. Henderson, the eminent music critic, and Mme. Marcella Sembrich and Rubin Goldmark, my colleagues at the Juilliard Graduate School of Music. The death of all three of these good friends has given me the sharp realization of a duty unperformed.
I remember once asking my dear Viardot why she had not written, for the benefit of future generations, something about her distinguished career and interesting life. Her answer was, If my life has been worth recording, others might do so. With this beautiful example of modesty before me, I feel diffident about recording my own history. My life, I know, has been important only for the effect it has had upon my profession. However, I realize that my place of birth and the strict disciplinary training of my youth have given me a different character and a different point of view from my American readers-though I have been an American citizen since 1896. It is with the hope that they may understand this difference better that I begin these reminiscences with stories of my early life. Many have thought me, perhaps, too severe- Too frank and outspoken, to quote a European biographical sketch, But, withal, and in humbleness I continue to quote the words, A being relentless and unusually exacting, an artist and a woman who strove for the expression of the best and highest, never demanding as much from others as she did from herself.
As an authorized representative of the Garcia science of vocal art and as one of the last living intimates of the Garcias, 1 truly hope that my readers will take away with them something of interest and value from this record of the Golden Age of Song.
CONTENTS

Foreword by Oscar Thompson

Author s Preface
PART ONE : PERSONAL HISTORY
I:
Early Influences

Childhood in Treves

Queen Emma of Holland

The Royal Academy of Music
II:
Years of Singing

1. My Studies with Garcia-Viardot in Paris

2. My Public Career
III:
Musical Pioneering in the Middle West and the Beginning of My Musical Career in America
IV:
My Stay in Europe from 1909-1918
V:
Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festivals

Richard Wagner and Pauline Garcia-Viardot
PART TWO : THE GARCIAS
VI:
Don Manuel Garcia
VII:
History and Revival of Bel Canto
VIII:
Manuel Garcia

Garcia at Cricklewood
IX:
Maria Malibran (Garcia)
X:
Pauline Garcia-Viardot
PART THREE : FRIENDS AND PROTEGES OF PAULINE GARCIA-VIARDOT

Section Foreword
XI:
Johannes Brahms as I Knew Him

Ivan Turgeniev

Tschaikovsky s Romeo and Juliet

Frederic Chopin

Georges Bizet

Giacomo Meyerbeer
PART FOUR : AFTER GARCIA-VIARDOT-FOLLOWERS OF BEL CANTO
XII:
Ernestine Schumann-Heink

Marcella Sembrich

Lilli Lehmann

Dame Nellie Melba

Enrico Caruso

Arthur Nikisch

Richard Strauss
PART FIVE : MUSICAL MISCELLANY
XIII:
Das Lied
XIV:
Development of Young American Talent
XV:
The Juilliard Graduate School of Music
XVI:
Some Musical Matters of Today
ILLUSTRATIONS
Anna Eug nie Schoen-Ren
Pauline Garcia-Viardot
Joseph Joachim, Director of the Royal Academy of Music, Berlin
Pauline Garcia-Viardot (1821-1910)
Anna Eug nie Schoen-Ren as Siebel in Faust
Anna Eug nie Schoen-Ren in Fidelio, 1888
Anna Eug nie Schoen-Ren conducting in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Manuel Garcia
The Centenary Portrait of Manuel Garcia by John S. Sargent
Facsimile of Certificate Signed by Pauline Garcia-Viardot
Rare Historic Picture: A Matin e at the Villa Garcia
Johannes Brahms
Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Marcella Sembrich
Lilli Lehmann and Anna Eug nie Schoen-Ren , 1902
Ris Stevens in Der Rosenkavalier
Augustus D. Juilliard
Ernest Hutcheson, Juilliard Graduate School of Music, New York
PART ONE
Personal History
Chapter I
EARLY INFLUENCES
I RECEIVED MY FIRST singing lessons at the age of four-odd little lessons-from our household orderly, Matinetti. He was an all-round fine fellow, always ready to help us children out of our troubles. In his room behind the kitchen, my brother Otto and I used to sit on little stools, watching while he cleaned the uniforms, shoes, and other personal equipment of our large household, and listening to his fairy tales and songs. Matinetti was of Italian descent, though a native of Coblenz, and had a great store of both Italian and German folk-songs. Under his instruction, we not only learned many of these by heart, but acted them out dramatically. After the lessons, the doors to the kitchen would be thrown open, and we would give a performance before an almost tearfully admiring domestic staff. All this was carried on with utmos