100 Years Ago In The World Of American Classical Music: Musical Reputations

Adaptistration People 200

In addition to providing a window into the classical music community from 100 years ago, the December 1917 edition of The Etude magazine plants some fascinating seeds of irony. Case in point, one of the lead articles by Genry T. Finck is titled “Music Reputations and How They are Achieved” (page 791). A Prominent lawyer once said to me that “a professional man usually spends the first ten years of his life …

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Classical Music Is Dying Because We Aren’t Dumbing It Down Enough

Dunce

Outreach was just as popular of a topic 100 years ago as it is today. Case in point, the October 1917 edition of The Etude magazine which published an article on p.644 by Mrs. Robert M. Rainey titled “How to Interest Unmusical People in Music.” We never learn Mrs. Rainey’s first name because after all, this is 100 years ago when America was still misogynistic AF and women weren’t allowed to …

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Back To The Future

Here’s some more intriguing insight from the October, 1918 edition of The Etude, there’s an article written by Constantine von Sternberg (a student of Franz Liszt) entitled The Music Interest of the American Man of To-Morrow.  89 years ago, Constantine had this to say about the burgeoning American orchestra scene (edited for length) in the introduction paragraphs of the article, Judged by its outward showings, our progress in musical culture is …

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