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Are Singers Slaves to Their Voices?" is discussed by Nordica, Jessie Bartlett Davis, Lillian Russell, Eames, and Tamagno in a recent newspaper symposium. Nordica believes that the prima donna should always be calm; nervous excitement is very injurious. She believes in a moderate use of wines. A doctor has never been allowed to touch her throat. So much does she enjoy singing, that the few deprivations are of no account compared with the pleasure that music gives to her. Eames begins by saying that she is not a slave to her voice. Her chief rule is never to sing when her voice is not in good condition. She inveighs against "continually fussing with the vocal cords." If one is well physically the voice will be good; "a sick woman has a sick voice." Lillian Russell, on the other hand, says that she is a slave, and can do nothing without stopping to consider her voice. Bartlett Davis believes that the stuffy air of most theatres is her worst enemy. She, too, advises that the throat be left alone; avoid lozenges, washes, etc. To a certain extent, she is a slave to her voice; that is, during the season. Tamagno, also, declares a singer's life to be one of sacrifices, and considers the climate of America not calculated to improve singing. He adds that doctors say they have never seen a throat like his. The roof of the mouth is like a miniature vault, teeth very short, and a broad throat like a bird. Cutting of the tonsils he thinks is often beneficial to the voice, giving it better emission.

The Pillsbury prize-speaking contest was held in Minneapolis at the library building of the State University in March. The prizes were $30, $25, and $15, and were offered by the Hon. J. S. Pillsbury for the best work in the rhetorical department of the University. Nine young men took part.

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The latest sensation in the living picture posing fad in New York is a young woman who poses without even tights, at the Casino. Her body is entirely covered with fine bronze powder, the effect being that of bronze statuary. A light scarf covers one shoulder and passes around the hips. The poser says she feels as much dressed in her bronzing as if she wore tights. Physically, it is a strain, as she has to take a Turkish bath every night to remove the powder. Her figure is one of the most perfect figures that have ever posed. The bronze accentuates the curves of the form.

St. Ansgarius Episcopal Church, Chicago, has a communion service which was presented to it in 1852 by Jenny Lind. It is of silver, handsomely engraved. During Jenny Lind's American tour, the Norwegians and Swedes of Chicago were endeavoring to found a church. The singer was appealed to for help, and she gave generously in money, besides the silver service. In giving the latter, she stipulated that if the Norwegians and Swedes ever separated, the service was to remain with the latter.

**

Mrs. Wm. H. Crane acts as treasurer for her husband's company. She attends to the receipts of each performance, and manages all Mr. Crane's money affairs.

** In a course of three lectures on voice, given by Mrs. Milward Adams, of Chicago, in New York, recently, she said: "Each register of the voice, if properly used, is capable of expressing a different phase of character and a different variety of emotion. The first six tones are those most commonly used, although few voices are sufficiently cultivated to employ more than five, and in America the average is but four. The first or lowest tone expresses power, insistence, force; the second, self-pity and diffidence; the third, sweetness, kindness, what is called the human tone;' the fourth, aspiration; the fifth, brilliancy, self-possession, the great world tone;' the sixth, contentment, peace, happiness. Many American voices employ only the first and second tones, the first predominating. This gives to our national voice those qualities of tiresomeness and harshness for which we are criticised. The fourth and fifth tones are best for common household use, for two reasons: They do not tire the voice and they have the

power of projection. The difference between American and English voices lies mainly in the register used; the English woman using the upper tones and rising cadences which are more musical, while the American voice drops from the centre down, exhausting the vocal cords and producing a strident effect. Many voices are ruined in the public schools. Children are told to 'speak louder' without being taught how to increase the volume of voice. In cultivating the voice, always remember that the keynote must be the real voice."

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Prof. Gordon, of the New Manhattan Athletic Club, New York, does not believe in apparatus for strengthening the muscles. A simple course of free movements will make any young woman sufficiently strong. At the recent war concert given at the Chicago Auditorium by Mr. Frederic W. Root, his venerable father, Dr. George F. Root, seventy-one years of age, sang the great war song written by him, The Battle-Cry of Freedom," in a voice of remarkable resonance and firmness. He sang the verses and the audience joined in the chorus each time.

**

New York music teachers who receive pupils at their boarding-places find it difficult to get board. One hotel will not allow a piano under its roof for any purpose, and even some apartment houses discriminate against pianos used professionally. While at first thought it may seem unjust, those who have suffered from such a cause will recognize the need of some restriction.

** Father Joseph Graf, who is at the head of the Conservatory of Church Music, the principal institution of the kind in this country, is endeavoring to bring about a change in the music used in the Roman Catholic service. He says the standard of church music is lower in America than in any other country in the world. "In Germany, France, and England, church music complies with the laws that govern the writing of religious music. Many of Mozart's, Haydn's and other masses are not in accord with these rules, but they can be easily altered. It is easy to write music according to these laws. In America, cheap operatic airs have taken the place of church music. Choirs demand florid airs. Very few churches now use Gregorian chants in their original form." In adapting English translations to the music written for Latin masses, it is often necessary to repeat the words a great many times. One of von Weber's masses, for instance, requires in the Gloria the repetition of "amen" forty times in order to fill out the music. The same is true of Mozart's and

Haydn's masses when fitted to English words.

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** Among present slang expressions found in Shakespeare, "touched" is numbered. In "Timon of Athens," where a servitor of Timon's has appealed to Sempronius for a loan and been told to try some other of his master's friends, he replies: "My lord, they have all been touched, and found base metal; for they have all denied him."

**New York critics are calling attention to the difference between the action of the German opera singers, whose season has just ended, and the Italian opera singers who came earlier. In the German operas, the singers made everything subservient to the story of the opera, as actors do; but the Italian singers never once forgot the presence of an audience, and sang and acted to them. Says one critic: "A dialogue of serious import is usually carried on thus: The person addressed stands near the footlights, facing the audience, while the speaker stands in the centre of the stage and talks at the central parterre box. Of course, there can be no dramatic illusion. In the benediction of the poniards, Plançon is apparently unaware of the presence of his fellow-Catholics. It is the audience whom he invites to righteous slaughter. The Nobil signori' to whom Scalchi addresses her remarks are in the orchestra stalls; and even Edouard de Reszké sings 'Pif, paf, pouf!' to the boxes. Compare that style of acting with the manner in which Sucher and Alvary carry on their dialogue in the first act of Tristan und Isolde,' and you get an insight into the vast difference between the German and the Italian methods. It would be almost hopeless to expect to induce typical Italian singers to sit on a stone bench twenty feet behind the footlights and sing a whole duet, as Sucher and Alvary do in the second act of 'Tristan,' and that, too, without any rallentando. The day of gladness will come when the beautiful vocal style of the French and the Italian stage is united with the uncompromising adherence to dramatic truth of our German friends."

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** The Beethoven Männerchor is one of the oldest singing-societies in New York, having been founded in 1859 by eight musicloving German-Americans. Only one of the eight is now living. In 1871, a woman's chorus was organized in connection with the Männerchor, and has been successful from that time. The society has taken part in many prominent events, among them being the funeral obsequies of Bayard Taylor. The society owns the building which it occupies and the land on which it stands, taking formal possession of it in 1870.

THAT

HAT week was the most feverish of my existence. I could not, of course, tell how long my ghost-given powers would last. I feared they might leave me in the middle of a performance, and I knew I could not finish as the audience had heard me begin. The prospect of being hooted off the stage was not agreeable, and that of being compelled every night to go through the sensation I have described was almost as bad. I sent for Tommy Ivans, I domesticated him in my room, and I played every night. Sunday, by invitation, I played at mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral Church, and found that on the organ my fingers were controlled even as on the piano.

Monday I signed a contract with Skab for a six months' engagement, he to bear all expenses and to receive half profits. Tommy Ivans, I stipulated, was to be employed in some capacity so as to be with me, and my first concert was fixed for the 12th day of November.

Skab's willingness to risk money on me, and my desire to prevent his losing anything, reconciled me more than anything else to the ordeal I had to undergo; but I suffered tortures in the intervals between the day I signed the contract and the night of the 12th of November.

I will not attempt to describe that night. My success was phenomenal. Encore after encore, wild applause and unbounded enthusiasm greeted the performance, and I woke up the next morning to find myself famous and the possessor of $650 net proceeds of my ghost's handiwork.

Just here I will explain a want the papers complained of, namely, that I gave out no program of my performance and the audience had to guess at what I played. Leaving out of view the fact that the vast majority of audiences do not know any more about what you play with a program than they do without it, I will say that I could not help it. I never knew myself what was going to come until after a bar or so was played, and, to be perfectly honest, I played pieces the names of which I did not and never did

know.

After one or two concerts I mended matters the best I could by stationing Ivans on the stage and telling him the name of the piece after I got well into it. He, thereupon, sang it out in a stentorian voice. If it happened that I myself did not know the name of the piece, I whispered, "A fugue of Tartini's" or "A sonata of Scarlatti's" or "A toccata of Goudimel's," and Ivans roared it out and the audiences were perfectly satisfied. They did not like this method of proclaiming the names of my pieces in Boston, but they had to put up with it.

Now, I am not going to attempt to describe my six months' tour nor my wonderful success. If I mentioned the name under which I played you could yourself write out the history of my engagement. Suffice it to say, that the morning after my first concert in New York, Richard Grant White pronounced me the finest pianist America had ever heard, and I do believe he was right, only he ought to have written "my hands" instead of my name.

I played steadily along, starring, as they call it, through half a dozen States, and by the end of the next May had invested $10,000 in United States bonds and had $10,000 more in the bank. Tommy Ivans was gorgeous on a salary of $100 a week.

At a little city in Massachusetts the first incident of any note occurred, and it was the beginning of the end. About midway in the concert a very excellent performance of one of Spohr's symphonies was encored and I attempted to repeat it. Of course, I failed, and my hands glided into an arrangement which I thought at first was the andante in A flat in Beethoven's symphony. But ere I had played two bars I found I was mistaken and that it was one of my "unknowns.”

What possessed me to do so I cannot tell, but I whispered to Tommy, “Original arrangement: Love's Question," and he shouted it out.

The piece was listened to in the profoundest silence and well did it merit attention. As I say, it commenced like the andante in A flat, then it danced off into a kind of scherzo and then glided into the

most pathetic music I have ever heard. My name was an inspiration. The whole arrangement was one grand question, and the anxious, timid, hopeful, half-despairing way in which the chords groped about in doubt, now feeling their way, now rejoicing at a little light, now beseeching an answer, now putting it off as if afraid of what it might be, has never, to my knowledge, been equalled in music. It said in music what only Shelley could say in words, and so strangely did it affect me that tears trickled down my cheeks as I played.

All of a sudden I was conscious of a human eye piercing me through and through. I looked in the dress circle, and on the front row of seats a dark-eyed, gray-bearded man was contemplating me with a look in which wonder and fear were so blended that I caught something of each. In the midst of the most delicate and tender movement of the piece my hands were violently lifted up at my throat and then dashed down so violently on the keys that I heard the strings of the piano snap, and heard and saw nothing more until I awoke to consciousness in the green-room on Ivans's knee, Skab standing over me wringing his hands and swearing like a trooper.

Finding that I had only been out a moment I insisted on going back, for, to tell the truth, I was in an agony, fearing that my power had left me. Such, however, was not the case. The ghostly hands still exercised their sway and I finished the concert. Once I lifted my eyes to the dress circle, but the man I had seen had left his seat. It appeared to me—it may have been fancy, but it certainly seemed to me that the cold fingers on mine trembled, and that the execution was not as vigorous as usual.

Next morning, about ten, a visitor to see me was announced. I told the bell-boy to usher him into my apartment, and so fully convinced was I of who the visitor was, that my pulse did not beat one whit the faster, and I was cool and collected when the man whose glance had terrified me so the night before came into my room.

After the usual civilities, a kind inquiry after my health and a few compliments on my matchless playing, as he styled it, the stranger, begging my pardon for what might seem an impertinent query, asked me if I had ever taken lessons from or known Rudolph Aronsonheim. I answered promptly and truthfully that not only had I never known him but that I then for the first time heard the name.

"Strange, sir," said my visitor, half musingly, "strange. Your touch, your execution, everything about your playing, even down to your rather peculiar fingering, is

Aronsonheim's in every respect. And stranger still, that beautiful concert piece you played was written by him. I never knew that anyone but myself had even so much as seen the score. I have it with me. It is unfinished and ends in a confused scratching of pencil marks just where you were so unfortunate as to faint last night."

As he spoke he drew several stained pieces of music paper from his pocket and extended his hand holding them toward me.

"You must excuse the dirty appearance of the sheets," said he, in the same musing tone of voice. "The poor fellow cut his throat just before he finished the score, and that is his life-blood on the paper."

"Gracious God!" I exclaimed, starting from my seat and waving back the accursed music. "I tell you I never heard of him before. Where I learned that horrible music I do not know. I said it was original only because I could not locate it. Take it away from me."

"Pardon me," said the stranger, rising, "I fear I have been impertinent," and he started as if to go.

I interrupted him.

Pardon me," I replied, "or rather my vehemence. I shall not, I cannot, permit you to leave without giving me at least some information as to this unfortunate man, whose music I seem unwittingly to have appropriated."

"With pleasure, sir," he replied, "if it can be a pleasure to rehearse even in a few words so melancholy a history."

Seating himself he went on:

"Aronsonheim was born in Bavaria, educated in Munich. Before he was sixteen he was considered one of the finest pianists in Germany. Allured by flattering hopes held out to him by relatives in this country, he came to New York and gave a few concerts. He was very unfortunate in his selections; for he had an insane admiration for early Italian and German masters and would play their compositions. Grand as they are to the true musician, they were caviare to the general.

"Aronsonheim earned applause and admiration from artists, but the public only came to hear him once or twice. Chagrined and heartsick, he came to my native town with letters to me and boarded in my house. In a month's time he was desperately in love with the most beautiful and bewitching girl in our village, the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer there. An honest, openhearted gentleman, he declined to tell his love to the girl until he had the parent's permission, and with a frank manliness that deserved at least recognition he went to her father asking leave to address the daughter,

who he believed was not indifferent to him.

The usual result followed. Cursed as a beggarly Dutchman,' he was ordered out of the house, forbidden to speak to the woman he loved and insulted as a snob only can insult a sensitive soul.

"I met him at the door. His face was so pale it frightened me. He rushed by me into his room, locked himself up there for a day and then came out a broken man.

"He tried for a week to get a single word with his love. He was denied admittance. The letters he wrote were returned unopened. He believed, I know not why, that the young woman loved him and would leap all barriers and fly with him, could he only tell her of his love; but no opportunity was afforded him to see her.

"At last he confided to me his scheme: 'I will give a concert. I know she will come. I will play her Gluck's "Orfeo." I will play her some of Playford's music, and then I will ask her in music to be mine. Ach, Gott! I know she will come.'

Nothing could dissuade him from his scheme. His concert was advertised far and wide for the 22d day of October, two years gone. He sat up from half-past ten the night of the 21st"-I gave a convulsive start as the stranger said this, the reader can guess why -"to daybreak the next morning. Just before breakfast I entered his room and found him, wild-eyed and haggard, writing the score I now hold in my hand.

"He would not come to breakfast nor dinner despite my entreaties. I went up to his room about four in the evening, and just as I put my hand on the door knob I heard him give a despairing cry. I cannot do it. It will not come to me.' I threw the door open, but too late. He had cut his throat from ear to ear, and his life-blood ran out on this score, which I have kept by me ever since, but never heard rendered until you played it last night. May I beg you to accept it ?"

It is unnecessary to go into any further particulars. Suffice it to say that the stranger left me no wiser than he came as to my musical knowledge or the source of my marvelous performance. But the horror that entered into my soul as he told his simple narrative can better be imagined than described. Had I then located my ghostly performer?

I had grown somewhat accustomed to my peculiar possession. Ivans, who alone knew my secret, and I had talked the matter over, and I was beginning under his repeated asseverations to believe that it was really imagination on my part and that my genius took this peculiar shape. But now all the

horror of my first night returned. I recalled with a shudder that it was about half-past ten on a 21st of October night that I first felt those awful hands. It was true he died two years before, but it was on the anniversary of the day he commenced work on this piece of his that he-for I knew now it was he-came and took possession of me. Oh! the horror of it, the horror of it. I knew now why sometimes the touch of those hands felt moist and clammy.

Could I ever go near a piano again? Yes! I felt that I must continue to go on; to let him through my agency accomplish something, I knew not what. And then a great pity surged in my soul for the poor spirit whose body was mouldering into clay, with no loving hand to deck the mound under which it was to become dust.

As the stranger left me he made one request.

"I beg of you, sir, to visit my town (here he gave me the name, which need not be repeated here), and if you do, please play this score."

I made up my mind to comply with this request, and though Skab stormed and swore, and finally made me pay $1,000 forfeit, I carried my point, and on a lovely June day found myself in the village ofbilled for a concert in its neat little music hall.

The stranger visited me at my hotel, but I declined his invitation to return the visit, and with some petulance, I fear, begged to be excused from going to see Aronsonheim's grave, as he urged me to do.

"My dear sir," I said, what in the world is the man to me?"

I gave a little shudder as I said it, but I do not think he noticed it. He left me again repeating his request that I would play the dead man's last composition that night. I promised to do so—“ if I can❞—and I must confess I did not like the curious way in which the gentleman looked at me as I spoke these words.

And now I did a very curious thing, which Skab never understood and never will understand unless he reads this narrative. I sent for him and ordered him to call in our advance agent, and cancel every future engagement. My six months' contract had expired about a month before, but I had gone on with my performances on the same terms. The reader can imagine the scene that followed. I do not care to dwell on it.

I agreed to pay all expenses incurred and to give Skab the entire proceeds of the concert that night, with the understanding that I was to have my old place in the Bijou orchestra. This last he promised with great eagerness, but in the most earnest manner