W

HEN a child is born in the hamlets and villages along the banks of the "Blue Danube," a violin and a silver spoon are held up before its eyes as soon as it is safe in the cradle. If it reaches for the silver spoon, it is declared to be destined to become a merchant or a thief; if it grabs for the violin, it is sure to develop into a musician. History does not definitely state that the child born to Herr Kapellmeister Johann Strauss at Vienna on October 25, 1825, reached for the violin; yet it is safe to assume that it did so with both tiny hands. This infant was destined to become one of the most famous musicians in the world, to be called the "waltz king" and to bewitch millions with his lilting rhythms.

From the first Herr Kapellmeister Strauss vowed that Johann, Jr., or "Schani," was not to become a fiddler, a "Bratlgeiger," as he derisively called his colleagues. He must become a business man; but Schani could scarcely escape the fate that time proved awaited him. Did he not share his very bedroom with the violin, the drum, the flute, the harp, and the viola? Was he not rocked to sleep to the strains of the waltzes and polkas, lancers and quadrilles, which his father turned out by the hundred, instructing his orchestra in the proper way to play them practically beside the infant's crib?

So it is not surprising that Schani began composing almost as soon as he could talk and before he knew one note from another. His mother took down his first waltz when he was six. It had its première on his fifteenth birthday, under the title "Erster Gedanke" ("First

By ERICH POSSELT

Thought"), and proved to have considerable merit.

With the greatest reluctance, the elder Strauss allowed his boys to take piano lessons; but he would not hear of their learning the violin. learning the violin. Schani, however, coaxed his father's first violinist to teach him in secret. He also studied musical theory in secret from Joseph Drechsler, organist of St. Stephen's Cathedral, and a schoolmate instructed him on the organ

behind closed doors. To pay his teachers Schani gave lessons on the piano to two children.

Conditions in the Strauss home gradually changed for the worse. The Kapellmeister became enamored of a strange woman. In 1844 Frau Strauss withdrew, accompanied by Schani, who felt ready to unfold his musical wings. All Vienna was stirred with curiosity when an advertisement appeared in the "Wiener Zeitung,"announcing that Johann, Jr., would make his début as the conductor of his own orchestra on October 15 of the same year at Dommayer's Casino, in the suburb of Hietzing. Some called the boy impudent for competing with his famous father; others praised him for his enterprise. By a strange prank of fate, the same page which carried his announcement also carried one of his father's.

After hearing the opening bars of his first waltz, "Die Gunstwerber," the crowd began to realize that the concert was no ordinary one. When his "Sinngedicht" had to be repeated eighteen times, it was evident to all that a new star had arisen on the musical horizon before which many others were to pale. The elder Strauss, discovering that his crown as waltz king was endangered, began turning out waltzes and polkas at a furious pace; but every dance that his son wrote seemed to weigh as much as a dozen of his in popular esteem. Finally, he gave up the struggle and offered Schani a partnership. When this was declined, he went abroad in an effort to win foreign laurels, returning to die in 1849.

Year by year the sons greatness spread, encircling the globe. Out of the

music of the "Blue Danube" aloneStrauss wrote the melody one night on a pair of detachable cuffs, and then threw them with the wash for Frau Strauss to rescue his publisher made a fortune. For ten years he gave annual concerts in Petrograd; he was a frequent visitor to Paris, London, Berlin, and the other capitals of Europe. In 1876 he came to America and conducted at a mammoth concert held in Boston in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. His compositions are numbered by the hundreds, and he could not recognize them all himself when he heard them played. Of his numerous operettas, "Fledermaus" is the most famous. What is it that makes his music enduring? The answer seems to be that his very soul was music and that to use the words of a Viennese poet-"he threw his inmost heart into the world."

Johann Strauss is Vienna. There is something in the Viennese air, in the winds that sweep down from the heights. of the Kahlenberg and the Kobenzl, that makes one gay and care-free. Small wonder that the composer, artistically the quintessence of this spirit, was carefree and childlike in his love of fun. Occasionally the sentimentality that is also part of the Viennese character got the upper hand. Once he studied painting for six months, so that he would have something to fall back upon "when the spring of my melodies is exhausted," as he put it. But, as a rule, he was smiling; his hat sat at a rakish angle on his locks; he was ready for witty repartee. He loved his "Tarock," a Viennese card game; he loved his "Heurigen," the young wine grown near Vienna; loved his "Gemuetlichkeit" and his "Suesse Maedel."

His good looks, his prominence as an artist, and his temperament predestined him, not only to be a great lover, but also greatly beloved. Reserl, a sweetheart of his boyhood days, is the first the Viennese recall. Time and again he evaded marriage with her. During one of his concert seasons at Petrograd he became the piano teacher of a pretty Russian girl, who fell in love with him. Her father insisted that he marry her. He called upon the Austrian Embassy for help. From the very steps of the altar he was summoned to the Embassy building, arrested, and kept in confinement until he could be smuggled across the border.

But Russia was to get even. On another Petrograd concert trip he fell in love with a Russian girl, a member of the nobility, who had for months been send

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ing him flowers under the name of "La Inconnu" ("the Unknown"). This time Strauss was the one who thought of marriage, but the girl's parents laughed at him. Later, when word reached him in Vienna that they had forced her to become engaged to a man of their choice, Strauss in desperation threw himself at the feet of Henrietta Treffz, an opera singer of mature years, and married her in spite of his mother's protests. The marriage was not a happy one. Henrietta died in 1878.

So liebesbeduerftig had Strauss become that he soon rushed into another marriage; this time with a very much younger and highly sophisticated girl, also an opera singer, from Cologne. After a few weeks she ran away with a theater director; but the composer's heart was only fractured, not broken. He met a widow, Adèle Strauss, and changed both his religion and his citizenship in order to marry her. Under the Austrian law and the rules of the Roman Catholic Church, he could not have remarried in the lifetime of his run-away

bride, whom he had divorced. This marriage brought him the bliss he had long sought.

On June 3, 1899, a concert in honor of the elder Strauss was in progress at the Volksgarten, Vienna. Gayly, the sweet old-fashioned tunes danced through the hall, when suddenly the conductor dropped his baton in the middle of a dainty minuet. A pause, and he turned and announced that Johann Strauss, the younger, had breathed his last. While women sobbed and men furtively wiped the tears from their cheeks, the band struck up the "Blue Danube"-softly, ever so softly-a fitting requiem for the greatest of them all, Johann Strauss, the waltz king.

We who treasure the memory of the beloved vagabond and musician see him before the mind's eye as he stands in this very Volksgarten, hewn out of bronze and marble, fiddle pressed under his chin, his bow raised as if ready to strike a haunting tune, a smile on his handsome face, every inch a true king, every inch a great lover, an artist, and-a Viennese.

S it within the compass of a book reviewer to discuss new methods of printing to make reading easier? Or for an art critic to pass on newly discovered pigments that will undoubtedly influence the technique of painting? Well, we can drop the attempt at analogy for surely nobody will accuse us of base commercial motives if we turn aside long enough from phonograph records themselves to mention a new type of talking-machine, put on the market this month, which is sure to affect phonograph records greatly in the future. It is a product of the Victor TalkingMachine Company, and is called the Orthophonic Victrola. "Orthophonic," as you can guess, means "true in sound." The new machine is designed to eliminate the distortion of sound found in the old instruments and to do away with foreign vibrations and "phonograph noises."

Its origin in the radio and long-distance telephone and its constructionwith a six-foot horn doubled and redoubled inside an ordinary sized cabinet -are too complicated to mention here. But its results are amazing. It has a greatly increased volume of tone. symphony orchestra no longer sounds puny. And for the first time the phonograph gives us a full, solid bass. Until

now phonograph recordings have been like houses built on stilts; the firm foundations of a bass have been lacking. Machines simply would not reproduce tones below a certain pitch, and the result was a feeling of emptiness.

Of course the Orthophonic Victrola is not perfection. not perfection. The piano tone, though improved, is still faulty. The noise of the sound box, under the stress of too great a volume of sound, is still to be heard. But nevertheless it is a miraculous improvement. A new Brunswick machine is forthcoming also, but we were unable to hear it or secure any information about it.

Phonograph Records

SEPTET, for Harp, String Quartet, Flute, and Clarinet (Ravel). Played by Miss G. Mason, harp: Messrs. Woodhouse, Dinsey, Tomlinson, and James, string quartet; Robert Murcia, flute; H. P. Draper, clarinet; conducted by the composer. In four parts, on two records. Columbia.

Ravishing in its beauty, this septet of Ravel has all the perfection of some gem of poetry, such as the "Ode to a Grecian Urn." It is very characteristic of Ravel in its delicate effects and its sharp, stimulating dissonances. There is a haunting richness in its tone color. Plucked-string effects alternate with the soft velvet tone of muted violins accompanied by the

rippling harp as background. This recording should be in every household.

TRIO IN A MINOR, OPUS 114 (Brahms). Played by W. H. Squire, 'cello; H. P. Draper, clarinet; Sir Hamilton Harty, piano. In six parts, on three records. Columbia.

Brahms is here recorded in one of his more forbidding moments. The trio is a masterful piece of work-finely and carefully wrought-yet not as light and spontaneous as Brahms so often can be. But the piece is far from falling into mediocrity. It wears better after several hearings. And, in spite of the intellectual character of the music, there is a romantic quality in the combination of instruments selected by Brahms which gives it added beauty.

QUINTET IN A MAJOR-FORELLEN QUINTET (Schubert). Played by James Levey, violin: H. Waldo-Warner, viola; C. Warwick Evans, 'cello; Claud Hobday, double bass; Ethel Hobday, piano. In nine parts, on five records. Columbia.

Schubert's quintet was based on an earlier song of his, "Die Forelle." It is rapid in movement, gracious, and continuous in its flow of melody. And, though long-drawn-out and not always inspiring, it is completely tuneful. We enjoyed particularly one theme in the last movement harmonized with the richness of a colored quartette.

LE

BOURGEOIS

GENTILHOMME-SUITE (Strauss). Played by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty. In six parts, on three records. Columbia.

The delicate treatment of the orchestra in this incidental music to Molière's comedy does not tally with the popular conception of Strauss, writer of overpowering tone poems. Light, cheerful tunes are the order of the day. The minuet after Lully is superb. The slim little orchestra plays it almost as a harpsichord would, with true devotion to the spirit of the eighteenth century.

VARIATIONS IN C MINOR (Beethoven). Played by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Victor.

Masculine music, showing the variety as well as the breadth of Beethoven's style. From the treatment of these variations, Beethoven evidently thought in terms of the orchestra even when writing for the piano. Rachmaninoff plays them with vigor and a sense of the dramatic. MARCHE SLAVE (Tchaikovsky). Played by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Victor.

Having as its background the pulsating rhythm of the double basses, Tchaikovsky's march forges onward with majesty and power. It is not heavy, however. Massive, and tinged with Russian gloom, it is true; but it flows on in a "listenable" way with hearty rhythms and dramatic effects. This is a good piece for "showing off" the new orthophonic reproduction of the double basses. Perhaps it is shown off a little too well,

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intensity of a fugue. The fugue itself runs with incessant pace up to a close with a wonderful breath-taking climax.

An equally interesting Bach recording is Busoni's piano transcription of Bach's violin "Chaconne," reviewed last month. in its arrangement for viola. It is a happy transcription. Here is Bach unfettered by the limitations of a fourstringed instrument. The piano gives it a power it could not attain otherwise.

SONATA IN C-SHARP MINOR, "MOONLIGHT" (Beethoven). Played by Ignace J. Paderewski. Duo-Art.

The calm and beautiful dignity of the first movement, the breathless lightness of the second, and the agitated power in the onrushing "presto"-all are wonderfully interpreted by Paderewski in his performance of the famous "Moonlight" Sonata. It is an unusually worthy recording.

SPOON RIVER, AMERICAN FOLK DANCE (Arranged by Grainger). Played by Stuart Ross. Ampico.

Although just a "light" piece of composition, this Grainger setting can stand

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By the Way

HE autographed original of the following literary gem is posted on the door of a cabin located near Isabel Glacier, Colorado, at an altitude of ten thousand feet.

NOTIS.

Trespaser will be persekuted to the full extent of two mungrel dogs which aint never ben overly soshibil to strangers & one dubbel barl shotgun which aint loaded with no sofy pillers dam if I aint tire of this helraisin on my property.

(Signed) EDDIE ANDERSEN. Percy: "Just think, those ruins are 2,000 years old."

Bill: "Aw gwan, it's only 1925 now." From the "Fishing Gazette:" "Well, dad, I just ran up to say 'hallo!'"

"Too late, son. Your mother just ran up to say 'good-by' and got all the change."

A schoolboy, asked to tell the story of Daniel and the lions, did so in this fashion:

"Well, Daniel and the King got along pretty well till one day the King he got sore about something, and had his men chuck Daniel into a den of lions. After a day or two, the King he went 'round to see how Daniel was gettin' on, and he stood up on the edge and shouted down:

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"Is that so?' says the King. 'Well, Daniel, all I can say is that yer must have brought 'em in with yer!"'"

From "Punch:"

Scotch Golfer-"Ae ye guid at findin' ba's?"

Caddie "Ay!"

Golfer "Then find me one noo, and we'll start."

A riddle. The answer is to be found in the Bible:

We twain raised our lofty heads

O'er prophet, priest, and king. Around us thronged the worshipers Who hymns of praise did sing. Yet naught we saw of festal rite. We heard no sacred song, Though vast the throng, above, below, With shouts both loud and long. They saw their foe, who saw them not, While we, who saw not him, Helped him to overwhelm his foes And bring destruction grim.