NO "ACOUSTIC JOYS."

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1874, 7 October 1913, Page 7

NO "ACOUSTIC JOYS."

—>— FUTURIST "FANTASIES" IN MILAN. ( By Telegraph—Press A£sooia.tion— OopyrieM "Times" —Sydney "Sun" Special Cables. Milan, October 5. Tho first concert of Futurist musio, which did not oauso its hearers to experience now acoustic joys, was given hero by an orchestra consisting of three buzisers, two thimderers, three whistl- j era, two rustlers, two gurglers, and a student snorter. The programmo consisted of items entitled "Waking up tho City," "Motor-cars and Aeroplanes ( Meeting," "Dinner on tho Terrace of a, j Casino," and "Skirmish in tho Oaßis. i THE MUSICAL FUTURIST. ] The latest'and perhaps tho most violent expression of the aesthetics of Futurism is j found, in the musical compositions oi Arnold Sclioenberg, of Vienna. At tho Schoenberg- conoert in Berlin in December , Last, post-impressionistic stage settings, it seems, wero used to intensify the bizarre effect. A dark screen, eight feet high 1 and forty feet long, ran across the stage, < hiding orchestra and pianist. In. the 1 centre of this was a niche, and in this i stood the statuesque Erauiein Albertine < Zehme, a singer whose beauty is of a typo 1 said to bo fascinating to post-impres-sionists. Fraulein Zehmo's duty was to ; sigh and snort, scream and shout" her j way through Albert Giraud's "Lieder des . Pierrot Lunaire." The Berlin correspondent of the "Musical Courier" gives , his impression of tho Pierrot Lunaire 6uite as follows:— "Some day it may be pointed out as i of historical interest because representing tho turning point, for the outraged 1 muse surely can-enduro no more of this, i Such noise must drive oven the moonstruck Pierrot back to the, realm of real : music. Albertine Zehme, a weli-known , Berlin actress, dressed in a Pierrot costume, Tecited the 'Threo Times Seven' poems, as the programmo announced, while a musical, or rather unmusical en- . soluble, consisting of a piano, violin, viola, 'cello, piccolo, and olarinet, stationed bo'hind a black screen and invisible to tne audience, discoursed the most. ear-split-ting combinations of tones that ever desecrated the walls of a Berlin musichall. . Schoenberg has thrown overboard all of tho sheet anchors of tho art of music. Melody he escftewa m cverv form; 'tonality he knows not, and such a word as harmony is not in his vocabulary. He purposely and habitually takes false basses and tho screeching of thefiddle, piccolo, and clarinet baffled description." Schoenberg, however, is a real mueioian. His -book on harmony has been widely praised. He has been a professor in the Meisterschule in Vienna as, head of tho theory department, the highest official position in the Austrian Empire for the teaching of music. Ernest Newman, an English champion of Richard Strauss, makes a serious attempt to diagnose the musical futurist. He writes in tho London "Nation":—"The truth is that Schoenberg has visions of possibilities in music for wh}ch neither he nor anyono else haa as yet been able to find tho right idiom. It is unquestionable that_ modem harmony can expand almost indefinitely. The problem is how to keep it still ooherent and logical as it grows more Bubtlo and complex.' When here recently Madame Mary Conly was asked if she had heard any futurist music. She stated that she had heard an orchestra up to something of the kind one afternoon in London, but what it all meant none present' could 1 even venture a guess. It was <vn utterly preposterous concatenation of sounds that hurt the ear and cast Tidicule on tho name of music. Madame Conly stated, laughingly, that there wero not oven bar marks in the musical score from which the instrumentalists played, and each one seemed to be going on a route of his 1 own. The wholo thing was a joke to the audience. -