Richard Wagner is often quoted as having said that the human voice is the foundation of all music. In the U. S., the human voice is more than this—it is the foundation of a great and prosperous trade. Behind the famous opera stars and song recitalists (the Rothschilds, the Astorbilts of their profession) there is a vast soviet of vocal students, church sopranos, ballad singers, cabaret songsters, 50,000 professional singers, male and female, and 250,000 assorted aspirants. Until recently the vocal industry was without a trade journal, but a fortnight ago the first issue of Singing, The Voice Magazine (Alfred Human,* Editor) appeared on the newsstands, was eagerly bought and discussed by the practitioners of the trade. Singing, its first readers found, was somewhat patchily made up. It contained an article by W. J. Henderson, critic, who pooh-poohed the popular reverence for opera stars, calling Emilio de Gogorza, concert baritone, "the supreme artist of them all." It was embellished by a page of caricatures of famed musicians, by a blurred "Art Supplement," and by a song entitled "A Memory" and beginning: Somehow I feel that thou art near, Though naught there is around, which the composer, one Rudolph Ganz, dedicated to Marguerite Namara, opera star. Odd corners of the large glazed pages were filled with practical workroom suggestions for young singers, with reviews of concerts and operas, and glib comment on vocal activities by one "Ariel." Yet, despite the fact that the first issue of any magazine is inevitably an awkward one, critics found Singing far less dull than many of the slovenly publications in which ruined musicians try to earn a living by writing about music. Vocal students bought it eagerly. Advertisers were interested.
Lost and Found
Eccentric Ethel Leginska made one of her famed disappearances last week in Evansville, Ind. She was scheduled to play at the Coliseum there before an audience of some 3,000. The evening of the concert came, almost the hour—no Leginska. It was recollected that when she left the train she had said: "I don't want to ride in your old yellow cabs. I can't play the piano tonight. I want my symphony orchestra." When she went to the hall to practice: "I don't like this old barn. I won't play the piano in this old building." Next day a note was discovered addressed to Manager S. E. MacMillen: "Dear Sam, I think I am going crazy. I cannot play tonight. I am so sorry, but I am ill."
Three days later Manager MacMillen found her in Chicago at the soda fountain of the Auditorium Hotel with her 16-year-old son, who at his mother's bidding had run away from his grandparents' home to join her there. She would never play again in public, she said. She would turn her mind to composition.
Friends spoke sorrowingly of her "nervous condition. . . . ' Less charitable observers noted that never, when slated to lead an orchestra, has Conductor Leginska been missing from her dais.
In Manhattan