Books
al, George N. Shuster, et.
My Thirty Years of Friendships, by Salvatore Cortesi. New York: Harper and Brothers. $3.00. SALVATORE CORTESI, representing the Associated Press in Rome and frequently enough in other parts...
...they looked back to the Greek drama and its glorification of the text (as we now look back to Pergolesi, Scarlatti, Monteverdi, and Palestrina—and Rossini and Bizet and everyone else of any epoch who practised "simple" and direct expression...
...Pius X, humble and saintly, is the subject of several particularly charming pages...
...THESE five novels, picked at random, afford as representative a cross-section of the taste of the ordinary reader and the ability of those who supply his desires as it is possible to discover in such limited material...
...But such a working theory of political action demands one of two things—either a complete faith in the sincerity of the men one works with, or a little winking at the call of the machine...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company...
...It is the eternal quarrel of the intellect and the senses," remarks M. Frunieres...
...It seems oddly contemporary to read what Bismarck said at that time: "America is making a great mistake in keeping to herself so much...
...Memorable are the rapidly etched portraits of D'Annunzio—which give a far clearer perspective of the man than anything similar I know—and of Leoncavallo, author of Pagliacci...
...The ground of their objection to injustice is never so much the principle it outrages as the general upset it causes...
...It follows the "True Story" pattern by having the Bohemians reform and the young man triumph on the last page...
...In parts of this book, the characters actually live, and where this comes to pass only the author can break the spell...
...Kane and Ruby are to be congratulated on the excellent service which they have rendered to Georgetown and to Catholic poetry, RODERICK GILL...
...Its success was immediate...
...During this long period he was devoted to church music, absenting himself from the audacities of his "madrigals" and lyric dramas and, ironically enough, restoring to all its ancient glory polyphony and singing a capella, which had fallen into complete desuetude...
...GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY is late with the publication of an anthology of her poets...
...SALVATORE CORTESI, representing the Associated Press in Rome and frequently enough in other parts of the world, has achieved a continuous triumph in the getting of news...
...The old Jesuit father in charge, despairing of the arrival of the bronze image in time to greet the President of the United States and the large gathering of chief justices, senators and congressmen who were to accompany him, was forced to procure the plaster model from the sculptor, have it thoroughly coated with bronze paint, and placed under the coverings from which on the morrow it was to be formally unveiled...
...Other pages, however, have a more definite historical value...
...But, he reflects, "there is no doubt that there is a fascination about journalism that appeals to some ot the most brilliant of each generation, like exploring unknown countries or shooting big game...
...An amusing episode recurs to mind in connection with Thomas Walsh's (1892) Poem for the Dedication of the John Carroll Monument which stands at the entrance to the university building...
...So strong a lover of peace that he might almost be called the first of the English pacifists, he saw many little wars culminate in one great one that laid his world in ruins...
...Even so, the book is worth going through the first four to reach...
...But American literature of today contains some very good work by men and women not hailed as "artists" by journalistcritics, and Walter Gilkyson's Lost Adventurer is part of it...
...There is a quite unique inspiration in this splendid resolve to go forth to all nations and preach the Saviour: something that is being beautifully accomplished at Maryknoll under the direction of our archbishops and the management of the Very Reverend James Anthony Walsh...
...The women are beautiful and false: they requite bloody knuckles and broken bodies by running off with less worthy gentlemen...
...Barry keeps the reader in doubt by the simple process of withholding the major clues which his Sherlock discovers...
...Adelaide Ristori's contribution to the cause of Italian unity, the muscular prowess of Salvini and the emotional intrepidity of Sarah Bernhardt are set forth with tact and humor...
...Joseph Sebastian Rogers, 1892...
...One fancies that no other available book would be so calculated to make the young news-getter stick to his job, or to fill hopeful classes in journalism...
...They alone, too, can properly appreciate such anecdotes as that concerning Mascagni's composition of the march in honor of Admiral Dewey...
...2.00...
...Young's conviction that men of the South Seas long for two things: pearls and pearl women...
...As an historian, and a very good one, whose work had Iain in the chronicling of enthusiasms that burned themselves out untimely, he had a natural mistrust for the violent solution, and a corresponding respect for deliberate corporate action...
...There is no call to quote the document in extenso...
...This was done in utmost secrecy, but during the night there came on a rainstorm and the tragic state of mind of the good old Jesuit was pictured clearly in his face when the poet of the next morning orated the following lines: "Here where in tardy bronze the noon shall hail him...
...But now through the industry of Messrs...
...The result is a downpour of gossip which never loses the freshness and sparkle of good conversation but also really proves magnificently informative...
...He had never admired impracticable isolation," Mr...
...What more need be said...
...Petersburg, forced the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs to grant the interview with Nicholas II which made the conference possible...
...Read his alternative for coercion in April, 1882...
...A second instalment, which will presumably cover the split in the Liberal party over Home Rule, the long years of opposition and Morley's conduct when, as a cabinet minister responsible for Irish government, he had a chance to put his principles into action, is promised us soon and should make interesting reading...
...Its tenor may be guessed from the fact that it included a "judicial commission [without jury] to try criminal suspects [in plain language, to try separatists in action]" and the quartering of troops on "disturbed districts" at the exi>ense of their inhabitants...
...GEORGE N . SHUSTER...
...Early Life and Letters of John Morley, by F. W. Hirst...
...Two volumes...
...He declares that the newspaperman's life, devoted to tireless labor during all hours, never raises him to economic independence or reliable personal status...
...Black Butterflies tells of a girl's decision between a group of Bohemians (so called) and the town's most respectable young man...
...Rather than in silence shrink From the truth he needs must think...
...A self-educated man, yet profoundly cultivated, Monteverdi (or Monteverde) the first of five children, was baptized Claudio Zuan Antonio in the church of Saints Nazari e Celso in Cremona, 1567...
...In the same way, his account of how he obtained news regarding the death of Leo XIII, the conclave which elected Pius X, and other matters, displays the artful journalist's professional irreverence, but is truly amusing and instructive...
...This will substantiate, if it needed substantiation, the assumption of M. Prunieres that Monteverdi "was at first a pupil of the choir-school of the cathedral [in Cremona...
...It should not be charged, as it so often is, that Monteverdi destroyed the polyphonic system...
...IT IS to the Latin genius that we owe the greatest number of innovations in music, and one of the boldest of these innovators has been made the subject of a biography by the celebrated French musicologist, Henry Prunieres, long editor of one of our few distinguished musical monthlies...
...Finally, that all these discrepancies might not miss a dramatic manifestation, the man whom cartoonists loved to picture wearing Cromwell's boots or Marat's cap of liberty, died with a baronial coronet and robes in his wardrobe...
...Thus, the first opera came into existence in a drawing-room in Florence in 1594, and among those present was Monteverdi's twentythree years' patron, Vincenzo Gonzagna, Duke of Mantua...
...The compromise effected, however, is not a happy one, despite the title...
...And why ? Because it has interests in all corners of the globe...
...They plume themselves upon their pragmatism...
...The field it covers is an ample one: from the days of William Gaston, a student in 1790, Dominick Lynch of 1797, Charles Constantine Pise of 1812, Nicholas T. Dimitry of 1832, and James Ryder Randall of 1852, the poetical stream rolls on through Charles H. A. Esling, 1879...
...He finished his long and prosperous life without a shadow of cynicism or irrationality falling upon his temper...
...His soul has seen a hundred years upon her Nor needs she bronze to fix his memorj' here...
...and one is grateful for the anecdote which relates how Cortesi, having facetiously given the name of the Pope and the king of Italy as references to a surety company, was assured by the somewhat puzzled Holy Father that he would receive a "good character...
...He tried rather to summon up out of the memories of many years those great events and personalities which are both interesting and historically valuable...
...There are men so sustained by their vision of eventual justice that they can exist on it, very much as a man enamored is said by physicists to live on his passion, and who never dream of counting the odds against them or the chances in their favor...
...La Revue Musicale (Paris...
...Remembering that he was a life-long agnostic, his opportuism in the spiritual sphere is even harder to condone...
...But even if it should never eventuate, the profuse quotations from letters and published writings in the present two volumes give us an excellent opportunity to antidpate the judgment that seems likely to pass upon Morley's whole career and character when the perspective of years has done its work and collaborators still living are comprehended under a common mortality...
...The present volume may be termed his annals of victory, being crammed tight with episodes which illustrate the difficulties and delights of journalism...
...The pioneer, the missionary priest...
...Pearl-Hunger sets forth Mr...
...The Early Life and Letters of John Morley will not leave him discredited in the eyes of any fair-minded reader...
...The idealism in action that rings necks with nooses and heads with haloes is foreign to their habits of thought...
...Monteverdi's instincts were from the very beginning for dramatic music, which did not exist until he wrought it from the remnants of the once-glorious abstract music of Palestrina...
...It seems that, with the day of dedication imminent, the foundry was behind hand in delivering the monument...
...He occupied this post for the next thirty years, until his death in 1643 at the age of seventy-five...
...New York: The Century Company...
...Five years later when the conditions had been inherited by a Liberal cabinet, an article in his Fortnightly Review "makes out the best case it can for the action of the British cabinet on the ground that it was necessary to save Egypt by putting down Arabi's insurrection...
...New York: George H, Doran Company...
...But it is never performed...
...No artist [the author quotes M. Andre Suares] has ever been more conscious of his art than Monteverdi...
...A second matter of unusual interest is the chronicle of a visit to Prince Bismarck when that statesman was an old and embittered man...
...The remaining four divide themselves as would be expected: one detective story, one adventure story, and two "studies" of die younger generation's revolt...
...We are at the end of the nineteenth century, and with present means of communication the United States are too near to us and their interests are too closely allied to ours for them to be able to carry out a policy of indifference to our affairs...
...His first published works, belonging to his eighteenth year, are lost...
...2.00...
...it is not until his twentieth year that he manifests genius in his first book of madrigals for five voices...
...John Morley was immersed in politics from his forty-fifth year...
...Of great charm are the reminiscences of musicians, actors and literary folk included in the book...
...2.00...
...New York: The Macmillan Company...
...H. L. S. Monteverdi, by Henry Prunieres...
...Faced with such evidence as this, it is small wonder that even Mr...
...Rome is, of course, ecclesiastical first of all...
...THE archbishops of the United States, gathered together at the Catholic University in 1911, gave to the institution at Maryknoll the corporate name of Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America...
...Father Powers is to be thanked for a clear and comprehensive statement of the lofty achievements and ambitions of Maryknoll...
...Ireland" again and on the authority of Mr...
...The pages devoted to Caruso will, of course, have an especial appeal to American readers, whom Signor Cortesi has courteously borne in mind throughout his narrative...
...Persons with a_ Schopenhauerian regard for the more dangerous sex will like this book...
...He followed Orfeo with Arianna, the poignant Lament of which adorns the majority of soprano programs to this day...
...He has by now mastered technique sufficiently to take liberties with it, and what liberty it was!—attaining to the "splendid barbarity" of the fourth book of madrigals (1603) and the fifth (1605) in which appears the famous introduction of such healthy dissonance as chords of seventh and ninth intervals without preparation...
...but it was a group of Florentine dilettanti, a cultured and critical type of wealthy amateur peculiar to the renaissance, who provided him with the key to the solution...
...Michael Earls, 1897...
...In these madrigals which so shocked Monteverdi's contemporaries may be found the beginnings of the cantata and the opera, as his experiments vnth the madrigal form led to his employing the orchestra and emphasizing the solo voice in dramatic narrations...
...James S. Easby-Smith, 1891...
...Only one of the books makes a bid for serious attention...
...Hirst, whose comment is always honest and always helpful, puts one disability very understandably when he tells us that Lord Morley was "never a crusader...
...The Happy Medium, by Vera Wheatley...
...and Kaying Mission under Father Francis X. Ford...
...2.00...
...What both they and their followers fail to perceive is that a reverence for compromise, qua compromise, is only one superstition the more in a world of superstitions...
...New York: Charles Scribner's Sons...
...Conde B. Pallen, 1880...
...Recent events in China have caused some concern over the missionary priests and nuns of Maryknoll, scattered among their three settlements, at Kongmoon Vicariate under Monsignor James E. Walsh...
...His speculative mind led him to seek solutions to the musical problems his experiments and dimly perceived ideals left on his hands in Plato and the Greek philosophers, the Flemish masters and the French theorists...
...In its way, too, the account of an interview between Pius X and Mr...
...and William J. Lawlor, 1928...
...Yet as early as 1600 he was the main target of a now famous paper, On the Imperfections of Modern Music, by Canon Artusi, which lamented the degeneration of the art of music...
...So, to call M. Prunieres's study fashionable (which it is, since modern composers have been preoccupied with the old forms for the past ten years) is to restore the word to its original state of grace...
...The establishing at Maryknoll of a special community of Teresian Sisters is charmingly described by Father Powers: the coming of the devoted women secretaries, their donning of a religious garb, and their final acceptance of the solemn vows in the seminary chapel, November 21, 1912...
...There is only one Rome, and that is surely why Cortesi's friendships with prelates and pontiffs strike us as the most significant matters dealt with in his book...
...It deserves a wide reading and will get it...
...After the 'nineties, Georgetown seems to have entered a lean period in poetical production, which now happily seem to be giving place to the fat years represented by the classes of the 'twenties...
...George von L. Meyer, then American ambassador to St...
...Charles L. Palms, 1889...
...2.00...
...The Maul's House Mystery, by Charles Barry...
...Morley, the truth must be told, took to the party game with more relish that one would have expected from a scholar who, in one historical treatise after another, had shown himself very wide awake indeed as to the nature of human motives...
...It is not surprising that there should have come from Rome a few years ago a special decree of praist for the work that the able society has accomplished...
...The scenes are laid in America and Spain during the 'eighties...
...Their sensibilities were offended by the vocal confusions emanating from the common cultivation of the contrapuntal polyphonic style of the late sixteenth century...
...Maurice Francis Egan, 1889...
...Some may feel that Signor Cortesi's revelations are a bit imdiplomatic, but after all it can do no harm to be perfectly frank...
...Among these one notes especially the account of the Portsmouth Peace Conference, which makes known both the motives which guided the singularly astute Count Witte in reaching an agreement with Japan, and the determined action by which Mr...
...J. P. Morgan is a delicious bit of reminiscence...
...They are aiming at becoming the most powerful nation in the world...
...WALTER V. ANDERSON...
...If to be a political independent only meant finding fault with men more patient and persevering, then he repudiated it as a theory he would be ashamed to act on...
...Morley was passionately interested...
...Let but the bronze be sturdy as his honor And faith and purpose—'twill outlast the years...
...Here is the story of a Don Quixote and his Sancho Panza— Rann McCloud and his wife, Isabel...
...THOMAS WALSH...
...Unfortunately he does this frequently...
...One regrets that even the best of Homers succumbs to occasional siestas— which explains why Signor Cortesi can repeat the old phrase: "The end justifies the means" with reference to the Jesuits, and why he can uncover a relative lack of intimacy with his patron saints by declaring that Saint Francis Xavier has been placed in charge of writers...
...T. W. Stead, his associate editor on the Pall Mall Gazette, was "the only thing in which Mr...
...so, with the audacity of amateurs, they revived the Greek lyric drama, with the simple but significant expedient of using the chorus as a background to solo singing in declamatory style, with instrumental accompaniment...
...The answer is that there are very, very many of them, and that Morley was one...
...all the older and larger institutions of America have given this attention to their scholastic singers, and from our own Catholic pioneer institution, closely associated with the beginnings of our national Catholic literature, the long silence has been strange and rather unwarranted...
...New York: Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America...
...The year following the death of his Duke, 1613, Monteverdi was appointed Master of Music of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, automatically becoming chapel-master of Saint Mark's, following an illustrious line of predecessors...
...Which is the most powerful country at present ? England...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company...
...10.50...
...He closed his eyes conscious that the citadel was intact and likely to remain intact indefinitely...
...So convinced a democrat that he could perceive the British crown only as "a monarchic pageant in the midst of republican realities" he saw the democratic ideal abolished in two countries and facing a fight for life in his own...
...and Cortesi, wisely refraining from bringing his narrative absolutely up to date, gives intimate glimpses of three Popes and many prelates...
...John J. Clarke, 1927...
...Signor Cortesi himself has been one of these "most brilliant...
...2.00...
...But that disillusionment did not overtake him before the end it is hard to believe...
...These settlements seem to be beyond the immediate fields of the present disturbance, but with the spread of Chinese revolt, the crown of martyrdom may not be altogether remote from some of these noble brows...
...His record is an admirable addition to the lore of newspaperdom, and one sincerely hopes he will carry out his promise to write another book...
...Father Powers gives credit for a prior missionary foundation by the Society of the Divine Word at Techny, in pointing out the national character of the Maryknoll movement as the centre of American missionary activities...
...Hirst tells us...
...The Lost Adventurer, by Walter Gilkyson...
...Liberty has always had its Laodicean champions, whose advocacy is as easy to satisfy as to enlist...
...Monteverdi's last great effort, L'Incoronazione di Poppea, appeared in 1642...
...F. W. Hirst's Early Life and Letters of the historianstateman only take us to the general election of 1885 when his active political career had barely begun...
...4.00...
...Robert J. Collier, 1894...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company...
...and Maurice B. Kirby, 1898...
...The Happy Medium purports to be a story of love and marriage as seen through the eyes of three women...
...The bishop and the builder—here unveil him, The highest in the land to tend his feast...
...LuRTON BLASSINGAME...
...The Moul's House Mystery is the usual Scotland Yard yarn of a disappearance, this time connected with dope smuggling...
...The effort at synthesis, characteristic of the renaissance, first gained musical crystallization in Monteverdi—who perceived even then something of our modern concept, "organic evolution...
...Far be it from me, however, to suggest that Signor Cortesi had any such pedagogical purpose in mind when, after having drained the last of a salutary number of Martini cocktails, he sat down to compose this record of adventure...
...The Georgetown Anthology, edited by A. P. Kane and James S. Ruby, Jr...
...It deals primarily with the efforts of a mother and grandmother to prevent a young girl from ruining her life by a too-hasty marriage...
...Wuchow Mission under Father Bernard F. Meyer...
...When disestablishment of the State Church was in the air, he could recommend it as a sound party issue, not on its merits, but on the grounds of its immediate appeal to the three sections in the church who might be trusted to fight most bitterly between themselves once the measure was passed: "sacramentalists weary of the Erastian bonds of Parliament and the Privy Council...
...It is so amazing a record that we ask ourselves what kind of false conscience induced by party loyalty, could produce it from the pen of a man who already, in his life of Burke and elsewhere, had stigmatizedthe British occupation of Ireland as the last of the "conquests," and who considered that sheer "extermination" of the native Catholic population had, for a time at least, been its object...
...Hirst gives up the fight, and admits a certain "almost Machiavellian" quality in Morley's manoeuvres for power...
...Indeed, the last chapters of the book are rich deposits of musical history, in which the eminent modern Italian composers all appear and have their say...
...So far back as 1876, when a conservative government invested heavily in Suez Canal shares, he foresaw quite clearly that "under certain conditions England will seize Egypt as her share in the partition of the Ottoman empire...
...Philadelphia: Dorrance and Company...
...The Maryknoll Movement, by Reverend George C. Powers...
...Yet his judgments are the result of a reflection so prolonged, a penetration so keen, and a musical scholarship of such quality, that it is depressing to think such illumination of a great master awaits the "humanizing" hands of some taxidermist-biographer...
...POLITICS has been defined as a game which "fills the philosopher with disgust and goads the enthusiast to fury...
...The book deals also with highly important matters, such as the Roosevelt trip to Rome, the fortunes of Archbishop Ireland, and the Taft mission...
...evangelicals exasperated by state connivance with a Romanizing reaction" and "broad churchmen who are beginning to see . . .that the laity in a free church would hold the keys of the treasury...
...The renaissance Italian prince par excellence, the foppish Vincenzo was soon preoccupied with the introduction of the new art into his own court, where, in 1607, the Orfeo of Monteverdi was presented...
...A. P. Kane and James S. Ruby, Jr., we are presented with a volume which will hold its own in comparison with the anthologies of any of the other American colleges...
...I fear that the ardor of M. Prunieres's technical analyses of Monteverdi's works will limit his reading public...
...But they do cast a not altogether creditable light on the "practical" advocates into whose hands great causes oftenest have the illluck to fall...
...These are the men of whom our own Lowell is speaking when he asks us: "Who is there that would not choose Hatred, scoffing and abuse...
...The mother's struggle for a second love is described with some penetration and irony, qualities altogether lacking in the treatment of the daughter...
...Simply this—here is one of the most amusing and colorful volumes of reminiscence offered to a time which is fond of reminiscence...
...This is his masterpiece, and the acknowledged masterpiece of seventeenth-century lyric drama, in which genre it occupies a position with Wagner's Tristan, and Debussy's Pelleas...
...Monteverdi thus became the first great exponent of opera, and rapidly rose to the dominating position in musical Europe...
...to end in James F. Lee, 1927...
...Edward Loughborough Keyes, 189a...
...Messrs...
...Like his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, Monteverdi was not strong enough in counterpoint and polyphony to wring from it such masterpieces as did Palestrina and his contemporaries...
...Black Butterflies, by Elizabeth Jordan...
...Pearl-Hunffer, by Gordan Young...
...Their admirers never fail to contrast them favorably with the enthusiasm that mans barricades and is exhibit A on scaffolds...
...In the sixteenth century, it was taken for granted that the composer was a singer (Palestrina was a singer and a singing-master) just as today we assume that he can play the piano...
...Born into the era when perfectionism held the imagination of the world and when Ruskin, Harrison, the Kingsleys, Stuart Mill and Morris were its prophets, it was his luck to see many of the outworks of privilege go down before assaults in which he played a gallant part, and to share the exaltation of each successive victory...
...i.SO...
...A scholar of the first water, he has also the happy faculty of catching and appraising the first blush of the new creative talents of the day...
...At the end of his bright and meaty volume, the author rather mournfully asks his reader to bear in mind "the reverse side of the medal...
...They might have been of today, or centuries ago, for there will always be idealists who are broken in the fight for what they consider the truth, and sometimes there are women brave enough and foolish enough to love them...
...He was a man of philosophic bent, and no good cause ever failed of his support...
...His book can only inspire cooperation among the friends of the movement and win new friends to its support...
...They are not going to succeed by their present methods...
...They called for simplicity (as we call for it in our day...
Vol. 6 • May 1927 • No. 2
