XXIOLD MUSIC BOOKS
I wonder how many old ladies start to go through an unused hall closet, to make room for an accumulation of pasteboard boxes too good to throw away, and hampers too strong to discard, and in that long-closed closet, which a junk man with push-cart is waiting to help clear out, find a treasure, long since buried under piles of trash, mourned for, and, as in the case of many departed things, at length given up for lost—then forgotten. In just such a dark closet, from beneath a pile of old magazines (what they were kept and stored for goodness knows) and crazy bits of bric-a-brac, that nobody but a junk man (not even Salvation Army men, who are getting to be mighty choosy, by the way) would cart off, I found two bruised music books.
One dated back to 1847, when I was a schoolgirl in New Haven, and played with great éclat “La Fête au Couvent” quadrilles, purchased of Skinner & Co., Chapel Street. Chapel Street stillexists, but Skinner & Co. are buried in the dust of more than sixty years. I cannot play “La Fête au Couvent” or any other fête now, but I can close my eyes and see the lovely young girls in the school music room whirling away to the music of the inspiring cotillion. Alas! Alas! Time has whirled every one of them away and stiffened the nimble fingers that danced so merrily over the keys.
In those far away days that are as yesterday to my dreaming there were “Variations” of every familiar melody. Variations that started with the simple air and branched off into all sorts of fantastic and involved and intricate paths. “Oft in the Stilly Night,” “’Tis Midnight Hour,” “Twilight Dews,” “Low-Back’d Car,” “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s Halls,” “Oh, Cast That Shadow From Thy Brow,” and so on and on, whole pages of “Variations,” now dim with age, but every blessed note brings to me the faces and voices of those long stilled in death. One sweet young girl played “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s Halls” and “’Tis Midnight Hour” so charmingly that my eyes were dimmed when I turned the leaves of the school-day music book, for her fate was saddest of all—an inmate for years of an insane asylum. Another who sang as she played the “Low-Back’d Car” so delightfully (she was half Irish) died suddenly of yellowfever. Still another associated with “Oh, Cast That Shadow From Thy Brow,” played the melody on a guitar, accompanied by her sweet young voice. Alas! She, too, is gone where they play on harps and there are no shadowed brows. So, on and on to the bitter end, and with a sigh I close the first chapter of my musical reminiscences that have lain dormant so many, many years.
The fashion of dedicating bits of music to some well-known person—need not be a musician, either, but a body of some note—has passed away with the one-button glove and the greenbarègeveil of sixty years ago. In the ’50s it was quite common, and my dear music book of that date holds ever so many dedicated polkas and mazourkas. The very front leaf has a picture of a wonderfully crocheted kind of a serpent with a man’s head, rather a shocking thing, “Sea Serpent Polka,” dedicated to Miss Rose Kennedy, by M. Strakosch. Dear Rose used to play it for us. It was not an inspiring bit of music, but her wonderfully deft touch would make melody out of anything that had crochets and quavers in it.
There is, a few pages further, another dedication to the incomparable Rose, “Grande Polka de Concert,” by Wallace. Miss Lou Gross, a most accomplished musician, daughter of the noted surgeon, Dr. Samuel Gross, was honored by Strakosch in the“Kossuth Galop,” a galloping thing, much in the Strakosch style, which predominated in those days. Strakosch believed in a grand “send off” of his innumerable productions. There’s “Carnival de Paris,” dedicated to Mme. Caroline Arpin (I did not know of her) and “Flirtation Polka,” to Mme. Lavillebeuvre, who was a delightful pianist and merited something more inspiring than that “Flirtation.”
Then Wallace dances on the pages with a “Polka” adorned with the name of Mlle. Dumilatre, and Ed Armant dedicates “La Rose Polka” to Miss Augusta Slocomb. I don’t think Armant wrote music; he “got it done,” as the saying is. That was not an unusual feat; a valse was dedicated to Miss Philomène Briant, by George McCausland, and he was ignorant of a note in music—he “got it done.” P. A. Frigerio honored Miss Sara Byrne by the dedication of “La Chasse Polka.” Miss Sara was a decided belle in the ’50s, so a bit of music with her name attached found rapid disposal. Also, a belle of the ’50s was Miss Estelle Tricou. Lehman,chef d’orchestreat the opera house, wrote “Souvenir de Paris” in her honor. Miss Estelle was bright and sparkling and beautiful, so was much in evidence. George W. Christy wrote more than one of his “starry” verses to “E. T.,” and they wereprinted in thePicayune. George was not noted for self-effacement and modesty. His signature always appeared in full to his sentimental effusions.
Lehman dedicated his “Clochettes Polka Mazourka,” a fine, inspiring bit of dance music it was, too, to Mme. Odile Ferrier, and “La Valentine Polka,” another charming, catchy dance piece, to Miss Anaïs Boudousquie. There was Mme. Angélina, a new French importation, whose specialty was the new dances that nobody else could teach. She was immortalized by “L’Esmeralda Nouvelle Danse de Salon.” We pupils had to learn some new steps and flourishes to be able to make successful début, after All Saints’ Day, for it was decreed “L’Esmeralda” was to be most popular. Everybody, even some stout old ladies that did not mean to be relegated to back seats, andpassébeaux who were fast becoming clumsy and awfully hard to dance with, took dancing lessons on the sly of Mme. Angélina, not to mention the young girls, débutantes and such, that went in small installments to her tiny room in Royal Street....
After this seeming digression I turn a leaf in the old music book to dedications to Mme. Boyer, “Mazourka Sentimentale,” by the fertile Strakosch, and here, too, “La Valse Autrichienne” by a new name—E. Johns. Mme. Boyer was thefashionable teacher of music. Both these dedicated pieces we scholars had to learn, and both bits, besides a dozen other bits a thousand times more difficult and intricate, like Gottschalk’s “Bamboula,” for instance, are so spotted with black pencil marks they are a sight! For the madame did not make a suggestion as to technique or expression or anything else in the musical mind that was not emphasized by a pencil mark on the page.
I find that most of this music was published by Mayo, No. 5 Camp Street; by Lyler & Hewitt, 39 Camp Street. Lehman published his own work at 194 St. Anne Street.... I am not half through, but I am weary of looking over these old music books. So many memories cluster about every page—memories of lovely dances with delightful partners. Oh! That grandvalse à cinq temps, the music of which was never printed, and no band but Lehman’s band could play it, and nobody taught the whirling steps but Mme. Angélina. Memories of sweet girls, now old and faded, or, better than that, listening to the “Music of the Spheres.” Memories of painstaking professors whose pencil marks are all that is left to bring forcibly to mind their patient personality. I turn the last leaf, and lo! here is a unique bit of music and information—“The Monterey Waltz,” by Eugene Wythe Dawson, a littleTexas boy, who dedicates it to the little musicians of his own age (eight years) in the sister States! I do not remember anyone who essayed to render the “Monterey Waltz”—I never did—but Eugene Dawson was still playing the piano in Texas during the war, proving possibly our grandfather’s dictum, “A man who plays the piano is mighty little account for anything else.”
We don’t think so now. I would be glad for a musician, male or female, in this house to render for me the sweet musical numbers that once made my young heart bound.