Beethoven Association

In Manhattan, the Beethoven Association* gave a concert. Sedate and grave was the music heard, the august, the decorous, the lovely works of the great masters of yesterday-Schubert, Schumann, Haydn. One departure from classicism was made-the rendering of Chausson's Chanson Perpétuelle by Mme. Stanley, supported by a stringed quartet. "Very bad," said Critic Deems Taylor of this departure. But for the works august, sedate, all critics had praise. The chamber music of Haydn was the pièce de résistance. Next to the master, Beethoven, the darling of those who attend the Society's concerts is that same Croatian Kapellmeister, who, when about to compose, donned white tie, stiff shirt, suave black coat and worked by candlelight that the formality so delicately affected in his person might with an equal scrupulousness be reflected in his urbane compositions.

Koussevitzky

On the platform of Carnegie Hall, Manhattan, stood a tall Russian. He had sparkling eyes, thin hands, greying hair, a tailor. He was Serge Koussevitzky, new conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, making his Manhattan début. With uncommon dignity he turned his back on the notable company assembled in that hall, raised his arms. Rank on rank behind him stood, sat, lounged, the many who had come to see whether the Boston Symphony had any chance of regaining the haughty place it held before Dr. Karl Muck went to Fort Oglethorpe under the Espionage act in 1917, whether it were true that this conductor was a "hypnotist," whether he could interpret Debussy, whether he wagged his head. They noted that he had a good back. They noted that every now and then, when he wanted to indicate a sudden pianissimo, he shot his left hand into the air, palm flat, in the way of one who hoists a heavy tray or thrusts a torch aloft. For the rest, his gestures were continent. He led Debussy's Nuages; Honegger's Pacific 231, Scriabin's Poem of Ecstacy. Like a storm of white hail came the clapping. With inexorable courtesy, Koussevitzky bowed and bowed.

Serge Alexandrovitch Koussevitzky

The Beethoven Association of New York was founded by Harold Bauer, pianist. Its members include many famed musical artists. Its purpose, in general, is to stimulate public interest in classical music, in particular to present the works of Beethoven in all forms, especially those least often heard. Large are its box-office receipts. These proceeds it has devoted to such good works as shall abet the fame of Beethoven, paying for the publication of Arthur Wheelock Thayer's Life of Beethoven in its first English version, contributing to the New York Public Library a valuable collection of works relating to the Master, giving a large sum toward the erection of a new Festspielhaus at Salzburg, Germany.

was born in 1874 in Vyshny Volotchk, Russia. He gained admission to the Moscow Conservatory by promising to study the double bass, an instrument much needed at the moment in the conservatory orchestra. Out of the belly of that bull fiddle he brought such music as no Russian, perhaps no other man, had ever brought before. When learning to conduct he grouped chairs about him in the positions players would occupy in actual performance, conducted voiceless symphonies, ghosts responding. He made his first appearance in Berlin, conducted with success in London, Paris, other European capitals. He came to the Boston Symphony to take the place of able Pierre Monteux,

Puccini

As it must to all men, Death came to Giacomo Puccini, famed composer, at Brussels, Belgium, where he had gone for radium treatment for tumor of the throat. Weakened by the treatment, he died of a heart attack. While he lay dying, his opera Madame Butterfly was being presented at the Costanza Theatre, Rome. On the day of his death, his opera La Bohème was presented at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, where, after the third act, Chopin's Funeral March was played by the orchestra. In Italy, Premier Mussolini announced that Puccini's funeral would be paid for by the Italian Government. Puccini had just been appointed to the Senate.

Incomparably the most popular of contemporary composers, Puccini was born at Lucca, Italy, 1858. His father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather had all composed music. He attracted attention when his one-act opera Le Villi was successfully performed at La Scala, Milan. His next work, Edgar, was a failure; but he won note with Manon Lescaut, and international fame with La Bohème.

Tosca and Madame Butterfly followed. The Girl of the Golden West, based on a drama by David Belasco, produced at the Metropolitan with Caruso and Emmy Destinn, did not long survive,* nor did the three short operas Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, given their première at the Metropolitan six years ago. These latter failures could detract little from his fame. Tosca, La Bohème, Madame Butterfly. Manon Lescaut are part of the regular repertoire of every opera

company.

Wherever a fiddle scrapes,

his songs are heard. He left behind him an unfinished opera Turandot.

*In the U. S.

pianissimo passage,

He

he

brought in his strings raggedly; a sinister sibilant flew round the galleries. "Hiss-sss-sss" went the fine senhorinas, "sss-sss-sss" went the fierce senhores. Distraught, unmanned, hearing a crooked death in every venomous sss, that new conductor broke his baton over his knee, fled weeping from the house. From his lowly place among the cellos rose up then a young Italian, scuttled to the dais, raised his bow for silence. He did not look at the score; he knew it by heart. So came to fame Arturo Toscanini, now hailed as Italy's "greatest conductor."

Last week in Manhattan, at the home of Mrs. Vincent Astor, met the Board of Directors of the Philharmonic Society.* Chairman Clarence H. Mackay made announcements. He said that Arturo Toscanini had agreed to conduct the Philharmonic Orchestra in a series of concerts next year. He added that Willem Mengelberg, tiny Dutch giant of the baton, had been reëngaged for three years; that Wilhelm Furtwäengler, German conductor, will shortly appear in a guest engagement.

Toscanini has not been heard in the U. S. since 1920, when he toured the country with his La Scala orchestra, gave a series of concerts which were lavishly heralded, created a sensation with interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Before the War, he conducted for seven years at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, directing with equal aplomb Russian, French, German, Italian opera. He produced Dukas' Ariane et Barbe-Bleu, Moussorgsky's Boris Godounov; revived Gluck's Orfeo and Armide, Weber's Euryanthe.

His feats of memory have become legend. Never has he been seen to use a score. In his head are over 100 operas, in addition to an enormous concert repertoire. When the jealous ask, "Why does he not use a score?" they answer themselves "Bravado." It is not bravado. Toscanini is so nearsighted that he cannot read a note that is more than half a foot under his nose. Long before ever his great night in Rio de Janeiro, he scraped his big fiddle with no white sheets propped up before him. "Where is your music?" asked the conductor one day. "Under the seat of my trousers," replied Toscanini.

The Directors, beside Mr. Mackay, are: Frederic A. Juilliard, Marshall Field. Otto H. Kahn, Charles Triller, Alvin W. Krech, Arthur Judson, Nicholas Murray Butler, Scipione E. H. Guidi, Mrs. Harriman, Thomas L. Leeming. L. E. Manoly, Frank L. Polk, D. Edward Porter, Walter W. Price, Elihu Root, Charles H. Sabin, Nelson S. Spencer, Maurice Van Praag. Mrs. Vincent Astor is the Chairman of the Executive Committee on the Auxiliary Board.

ART

Pennell's Pen

Joseph Pennell, famed painter, etcher, published a gasconade, prefaced with a diatribe-Etchers and Etching. Writing it, gall scored his pen; gloom puckered his mouth. In his foreword, he denounces, derides all others who have written about etching. The curator of prints in the British Museum, he is demolished; "poor old Hamerton" (Hamerton whose works have long been the only authority on etching), he is spurned. He employs many great names, many swaggering pronouns. "Whistler," says Etcher Pennell, "Whistler and I. . . ." "Whistler and me. . . ." Down the list of the world's immortal etchers he runs his pen, here scratching out a name, there setting a black spot, occasionally making the faint check-mark of approval. Of Zorn's later prints he says: "They had become feeble and photographic beyond words," though for the other periods of that surpassing master he has some admiration. The book is illustrated with the prints of many great etchersWhistler, Rembrandt, Pennell, Gova, Duveneck, Turner, Lepère-in exquisite photogravure, illumined with pointed anecdote. He recounts how he talked before a certain print society "to educate it," and how after his tirade a lady "furry and smelly" sailed up to him without glancing at the gallery walls:

“Oh, Mr. Pennell, your exhibition is so beautiful, and it was so sweet of you to come and tell us about it."

"Yes, madame, I can say it is beautiful, because it is by the greatest artist of modern times."

Andrew J. Volstead clapping his hand to the shoulder of Jesus Christ in the manner of one who makes an arrest; William J. Bryan spilling a jar of wine made by holy miracle out of water; William H. Anderson at the doorway in a derby hat. This parable-a raid on the marriage feast of Cana, painted by J. Francois Kaufman and exhibited last year in Manhattan-led to the arrest and conviction of Abraham S. Baylinson, Secretary of the Society of Independent Artists, for "violation of public decency." Last week an Appellate Court reversed the decision, returned to Mr. Baylinson the fine of $100 which he had paid.

CINEMA

The New Pictures

Isn't Life Wonderful? Down the long rank of cinema producers, uniformed in the maddening monotony of platitude and always marking time, one man may now and then be seen to step ahead. David Wark Griffith took his first step forward with The Birth of a Nation when the ranks were straggling and new. Since then he has widened the margin of his advance and stands unchallenged as Commanding Officer. This absolute leader in the film field has made another of his all too rare productions. To Germany he went

to make it; took Germany's postWar hunger as his theme; two peasants are his personalities. Dealing in the oldest properties of drama-love and poverty he has made an extraordinary film.

The tale is all simplicity. Hans and Inga, young and virtually without food or money, marry. They raise potatoes. Raiders seize the crop. They save a little money to buy beef and find the price has abruptly jumped beyond them. Sausage, presented by a rich American, they lose. Hand in hand at the end they are still happy. "Isn't Life Wonderful!" cry they.

Neil Hamilton and Carol Dempster (cf. America) have the parts. So telling are their portraits that the director must be further commended.

As postscript to this tribute must be added the opinion that the film will not be popular. So taken are the masses with tinsel imitations that simple sincerity must necessarily be tasteless.

Sundown. The chief impression afforded by this film is that all the cows in the world were assembled. This bovine convention purports to be the "last great Western herd," driven from the ranges by the squatter settlers, on its way to wider grazing lands in Mexico. In other words, the twilight of the old West. The idea and the purpose were commendable but the endless appearances of thousands of cows simply became monotonous. Woven roughly into the migration was the love story of the head cowboy and a girl whose cabin on the plains was wrecked in a stampede.

The Silent Accuser. Dog films usually succeed. Peter the Great is the canine protagonist of this example. He frees his master, falsely accused of murder, from jail. A remarkably trained actor, he is eminently worth watching.

SCIENCE

Leeds? Turin? Rome?

"National Radio Week" was celebrated by attempts on several successive nights to exchange the programs of U. S. and European Radio Stations, For one hour, the U. S. radiocasters had the ether and the Europeans tried to keep still. For the next hour, the Europeans had the air and the Americans were supposed to do nothing but listen. The experiment was hardest on the Europeans because it was held from 3 to 5 A. M. London time, which in the U. S. are respectable hours of the previous evening. The object of choosing such inconvenient hours for the Europeans was, of course, to have the favorable atmospheric conditions which night affords.

The success of the attempt was partial but not complete. Some people heard and some did not. Some people thought they heard, and did not. Reception was usually fragmentary, although On some now and then quite clear. nights the success was much greater than on others. Frequently amateurs on both sides of the water heard more of the programs and more stations than did radio experts.

Americans believed they heard London, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Paris, Madrid, Turin, Cardiff, Birmingham, Leeds, Rome. Abroad the greatest success seemed to be in picking up station KDKA of Pittsburgh. WJZ (Manhattan), WCAP (Washington, D. C.) and WGY (Schenectady) were among the other U. S. broadcasters.

Forward Marches

While radio fans were tensely listening for voices overseas, the Radio Corporation of America was straining its eyes to see across the Atlantic.

After several days experimenting with a device on which 22 months of labor had been spent, the public was at last permitted to see the results. Photographs were turned into radio impulses, were shot across the sea from Carnarvon (Wales), were picked up in the U. S. and the pictures reproduced.

The device used for the sending was similar to that used last May for transmitting pictures by telephone (TIME, June 2). It consisted of a cylinder in which a photographic negative is placed A beam of light strikes the cylinder which slowly rotates. Passing through the film it activates a photo-electric cell. The cell gives out electrical impulses in proportion to the strength of the light that filters through the film. The gradations of these electrical impulses are very delicate. If put upon the air, static would greatly interfere with them. In stead they are stored until a given amount (two-millionths of an ampere)

accumulates. Then it is discharged as a sharp dot with which static does not interfere. Thus static is eliminated and the device can be worked at all hours of the day and night. When the light portions of the negative appear, these dots follow each other so rapidly that they produce a dash. These impulses of even intensity are picked up and by a reverse process set to work making sketches. The recording device is double-a fountain pen records the sketches; and a photographic device registers the picture anew on a negative. Strangely enough, the pen draws pictures that at the present stage of development give better ideas of the original than the photographic reproduction, although the pen device was added only to give the receiving operator a better idea of how the picture was coming out.

Pictures were sent at the rate of about one every 20 minutes. The first to come was President Coolidge. The next, Secretary Hughes. Next came a Chinese proverb in heavy type: "One picture is worth 10,000 words" (at the present speed of transmission each picture is about the equivalent of 600 words-at 7c. a word, press rate, $42). Pictures of Oxford winning a relay race at Cambridge, of a steamship wreck on the Tweed River, of Queen Mother Alexandra, of Premier Stanley Baldwin, of Owen D. Young, of Ambassador Kellogg, of the Prince of Wales, were also transmitted.

The man principally responsible for the new radiograph is Captain Richard H. Ranger, who devised the means of sending uniform impulses so that static does not annul the transmission.

General J. G. Harbord, President of the Radio Corporation, philosophized: "As we study the forward marches of science and their effect of steadily shrinking the world to what will ultimately become a single, big community of fellow humans, we must admit the growing necessity for the development of a universal language. Until this new process is worked out in its tedious way and accepted by the nations of the world, photoradiograms, which speak the truly universal language of pictures, will go far to bridge the gap that different latitudes and tongues have interposed between the peoples of this sphere on which we live."

Sailless Ship

Anton Flettner's Rotor Ship (TIME, Nov. 17)-or Sailless Ship, as it is more commonly called-has set the scientific world agog. Early reports were entirely misleading. There is no question of capturing the energy of the wind by means of a windmill and transmitting this energy in electrical fashion to an ordinary type of propeller. The invention is at once more simple in mechanism and more recondite in principle. Imagine the Flettner ship broadside to a natural wind, with its huge cylinders rotating in the same direction as the hands of a clock laid flat on deck,

with the top of the clock at the bow. The air of the broadside wind will follow the path of least resistance and move with, and in the same rotational direction as, the surface of the cylinder. When air passes rapidly over any surface, it produces suction over that surface. And this is precisely what happens in the giant revolving cylinders. They are in suction on their forward side and are pulled forward accordingly. The vessel moves with them. This principle was discovered by Heinrich G. Magnus, a German physicist, in 1853. It took more than 70 years to find a genius to apply it.

THE PRESS

At Woodlawn

They could stand it no longer, those business men of Woodlawn, Ill. Last week they assembled in the Woodlawn Business Men's Association and drew up a resolution:

"WHEREAS, Certain newspapers are exploiting crime and criminals to a degree to disgust and discourage the average citizen, and

"WHEREAS, Said newspapers have the habit of publishing the names and addresses of unfortunate women and girls who are the innocent victims of criminals; Therefore, be it

"RESOLVED, That the Woodlawn Business Men's Association in regular meeting... urge a cleansing of the daily press of this mass of crime reports and suggest that the names and addresses of the aforesaid unfortunate women and girls be eliminated. . . . Further be it "RESOLVED, That this Association encourage clean journalism by coöperation with such newspapers as show a disposition to cleanse their pages of these lurid crime stories."

...

Chicago is a city of many suburbs. Chicago depends upon its suburbs as few cities do. Suburbanites are its big buyers in the department stores. Suburbanites support its theatres. Suburbanites buy many bales of its newspapers. There is a big transient population from the surrounding agricultural districts; but without the suburbanites Chicago would be at a loss.

Wherefore the Chicago newspapers, with one exception, had cause for concern in the indignation of the Woodlawn suburbanites." The Chicago Tribune was meant as one of the "certain newspapers." The Chicago Daily News was meant. The Journal (Hearst) was meant. The Herald-Examiner (Hearst) was meant. The only Chicago newspaper of any dimensions that

*Other important Chicago suburbs: Riverside, whilom seat of Society; Hinsdale and Wheaton, communities; gentleman-farmer Oak Park, Rogers Park and Wilmette, middle class" communities, civic-spirited; Evanston, puritanical and efficient; Kenilworth, Winnetka and Glencoe, more countrified and country-clubby; Highland Park, a cross between these and the larger pretensions of Evanston; Lake Forest, "the Newport of the Middle West."

was not meant was The Journal Commerce terse, unemotional, efficie business man's daily, which one Wood lawn Business Man particularized, t gether with the earnest Christian Scr ence Monitor, as being a "clean sheet."

The Dogs

After the U. S. press published the income tax figures (TIME, Nov. 3), the U. S. Department of Justice was on the lookout for a newspaper-dog or tw When the dogs were caught-or rather selected the equivocal tax-publicity law, as set forth in the publicity clause of the Revenue Act of 1924, would be tried on them in test suits. It was a matter of interest to the public which of thousands of available canines, the Government would select.

A fortnight ago, a Federal Grand Jury in Baltimore indicted The Baltimore Post. As dogs go politically nowadays, this was a homeless stray; the Post supported La Follette.

Last week, Federal Grand Juries indicted The Kansas City Journal-Pos and The New York Herald-Tribune Of these, the Journal-Post was choser because, being privately owned and ed ited by one Walter S. Dickey, the surt would determine the rights of an indi vidual under the tax-publicity law. Th Herald-Tribune was chosen because it was the leading Administration orga in the biggest U. S. metropolis and its prosecution would clear the Administration of any charges of partisan discrim ination.

It was noted of the three cases: That the indictments were virtually identica in wording, each citing as the cause fr indictment the publication by the paper of the tax figures of individuals chosen at random from long lists of names pub lished. Thus, the Baltimore Post's al leged offense was in making known the payments of five separate citizens, to wit, the Messrs. Daniel Willard (railroad man), Waldo Newcomer (cap talist), and J. Cookman Boyd, Leon C Coblenz, Frank A. Furst (small taxpayers). None of the individuals had protested their treatment by the papers to the Government.

That the indictments were brought by the Government, not seeking fines and imprisonment, but to come at the meaning of the law. For the newspapers, there was safety in numbers.

That, in outlining their defense (al the defendants declared they would pleat "Not Guilty"), the newspapers fell back upon the First Amendment to the US Constitution, that Amendment which guarantees to the press the right of free speech. Everyone was agreed that the law provided that the tax list should be placed "open to public in spection." The question, as the Herald Tribune framed it, would therefore be "Can Congress say, 'You may talk, bet you may not write?""

That Congressional leaders decide! to await the outcome of the suits be for considering whether or no to alter th publicity clause of the Revenue Act of 1924.

A

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