MANUAL GARCIA AND HIS PUPILS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3114, 19 June 1917, Page 6

MANUAL GARCIA AND HIS PUPILS

Sir,—ln ! last Saturday's Dominion there was an interesting anecdote re Jlisa Marie Tempest and Manuel Garcia, in, which Mi»s Tempest is spoken 01 as the great macstros last pupil. Possibly Miss 'Tempest was his last pupil at the lioyali Academv of Music, but on his retirement from that institution, at the age of ninety or thereabout, Garcia," as a favour and "to keep his hand in," gave lessons to the children of his old pupils, anil Mr. Stirling Maekinley. ton of the. famous contralto,' Antoinette Stirling, was probably his last pupil. Mr. Maekinley told mo—and i believe he relates it m his .'interesting work, "Garcia and His Times"—that he weub to have his voice tried by the master* but was told to come again in two year 3, as he was not old enough to stand tho. work. Subsequently' he received foin', years' training, and also collected tho material for the book montioued. Cm mio occasion the veteran master—being then close on one hundred years of agesang up a scale of two octaves, conn mencing on A flat, first spaco of the basa etave. His voice was somewhat tremnloua with age, and he laughingly said: "Thafc is very bad, do not imitate it. Jlr< Arthur Oswald-auother of his pupils—, cold me that when judging candidates for scholarships, etc., at the R.A.lt., tho old mou woiild'lm-ii to his collca(,-:ii>s «nn .say, "Zn cats in my Wok garden do ssiug better zau dat."-I aw, etc., GERALD &. TURN'EK, Ji'cildinfi, ' " . -