cinderella no moreby lionel tertis

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Cinderella No More by Lionel Tertis Review by: Abram Loft Notes, Second Series, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Mar., 1955), pp. 229-230 Published by: Music Library Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/891952 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 06:38 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 06:38:01 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Cinderella No Moreby Lionel Tertis

Cinderella No More by Lionel TertisReview by: Abram LoftNotes, Second Series, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Mar., 1955), pp. 229-230Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/891952 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 06:38

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 06:38:01 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Cinderella No Moreby Lionel Tertis

and publisher of first advertisement in the Wiener Zeitung, first editions for piano and for orchestra with plate num- bers, location of the autograph score (very few apparently extant), new edi. tions (a mere handful, including the eight waltzes edited by Hans Gal for the Denkmfiler der Tonkunst in isterreich, and half a dozen more edited by Sch6n- herr himself), orchestration, and loca- tion in the Gesamtausgabe prepared in piano score by the composer's son. The musical incipit is regularly followed by a brief paragraph of analysis written in program-note style.

At the end of the volume other cata- log apparatus includes: compositions without opus number and fragmentary works, a list of arrangements, a modest discography, an alphabetical index of the works, and a general index. A year- by-year calendar of the activities of Johann Strauss, compiled from newspaper

items and from a diary kept by Johann Thyam, member of the orchestra, reveals the incredible number of concerts pre- pared both for Vienna and for cities of the Continent and England visited on his various journeys.

One misses the section on "literature" common to most full-dress thematic cata- logs. In fact, the documentation through- out is tantalizingly incomplete. There is, for example, no listing of the illustra- tions, nor more than one or two attribu- tions to the artists, and the only clue to their locations is in a general paragraph of acknowledgements. Similarly, the written descriptions of the Viennese scene refer to authors consulted, but rarely to specific works. Such reservations, how- ever, should not be permitted to lessen one's enjoyment of the original features of this excursion through the works of Strauss Vater.

HELEN JoY SLEEPER

Cinderella No More. By Lionel Tertis. [London]: Peter Nevill, [New York: British Book Centre, 1953]. [118 p., ports., illus., diagrs., music, 8vo; 12/6, $2.75]

Lionel Tertis has written a hymn of praise for the "love and tyrant" of his life, the viola. The reader need not be reminded of Tertis' signal service to the instrument, its performance, its reper- toire. His reminiscences are somewhat rambling, filled with the names of the musical great and near-great, the orches- tras and chamber groups, those with whom Tertis has made music. Revealing comments are interlarded, such as this about a Hindemith viola concerto (un- named): "It was not music to me, and I reluctantly refused the offer" [to give the work its premiere]. Formulae are compiled from experience. Thus, the re- cipe for the well-made violinist: natural musicianship, a childhood beginning, time for study, a teacher worth emulat- ing, and exposure to the playing of virtuosi.

Tertis speaks feelingly of the rigors of quartet-playing, "the most difficult branch of music-making." Required are: command of the instrument and fine musicianship on the part of each player; instruments matched for tone quality;

unified musical outlook among the four players; tremendous patience; warmth of feeling in each of the four; and a first violinist capable of a virtuoso solo career yet willing to sacrifice this for the joys of quartet-playing. In one point I hope Tertis is mistaken: "A supremely fine quartet cannot, in the world we live in, exist without a sub- sidy." By and large this is true, but at least one experiment is under way in America today which may be significant for the potential role of the quartet in our musical life: a series of commercially- sponsored quartet concerts made cheaply available to, and enthusiastically at- tended by, the public.

Tertis and men like him have made possible in our time, and especially in the realm of chamber music, performance of an unprecedented intensity and per- ceptiveness. Their passion and zeal for perfection and warmth in performance have set inspiringly high standards for instrumental playing. Violists especially will understand Tertis' fascination with the potential of the instrument. All,

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Page 3: Cinderella No Moreby Lionel Tertis

however, listener and performer alike, have benefited from his work.

Appendices list, under various cate- gories, a number of works for viola, many of them transcriptions or arrange- ments by Tertis himself. Measurements and plans for the "Tertis" viola are

given and will be of interest to both the performer and the viola-maker. In the great tradition of the instrumentalist- composer-performer of old, Tertis has contributed to the improvement of the equipment of music, as well as of its literature. ABRAM LoFT

Die Musik im fruhevangelischen Oesterreich. Von Hans Joachim Moser. Kassel: Johann Philipp Hinnenthal-Verlag, 1954. [105, [2] p., music, 8vo; paper, DM 9.-]

In this book Moser has made a com- prehensive study of a neglected field, well buttressed with musical examples. If at times it reads more like a catalog than a history, Moser compensates by relating many incidents that bring the past startlingly to life. The book is con- cerned with the history of Protestantism -its general as well as musical history- in all the German-speaking sections of the Holy Roman Empire, from Northern Bohemia to Transylvania. This is a tale that begins with the singing of Lutheran hymns by the miners of Schwatz and Hallein in 1520, and continues with the rapid growth of Protestantism, together with increasing freedom to preach and teach, toward the end of the century, until the full fury of the Counter Refor- mation forced pastors and schoolmasters, cantors and organists to flee into German exile-from Styria and Carinthia about 1600 and from Upper and Lower Austria some 25 years later. In Bohemia the crushing defeat of the "Winter King," Friedrich V, in 1620, precipitated the holocaust. In Hungary the very strong Protestant churches were able to hold out for another generation, and in some communities, notably Odenburg, they never did yield.

Protestants and their descendants who remained in Austria had to worship in secret, for no church was open to them. Of these, the Salzburgers never did see the day of liberation, for in 1731/32 came the Great Expulsion, when 20,000 men, women, and children were driven out of the country by Archbishop Firmian. In other parts of Austria great tribulation still lay in store for the Protestants under the harsh rule of Maria Theresa (the Schikaneder-Mozart "Q u e e n o f t h e

Night"), until her son, Joseph II, signed the decree of toleration in 1781. But complete equality had to wait until 1861, under Franz Josef.

Before the period of exile, Austrian Protestants had made worthy contribu- tions to the motet, the cantata, the pas- sion; but many of them attained the fruition of their labors only on foreign soil. Here are a few names, both fa- miliar and unfamiliar: Paul Peurl, An- dreas Rauch, Erasmus Widmann, Hans Heroldt, Leonhard Lechner, Isaac Porch, Samuel Bockshorn, Georg Christof Stratt- ner, Daniel Speer. During the exile Austria was largely cut off from German vocal music, secular as well as sacred. Emperor Franz Josef's decree of tolera- tion came at just the right moment for the Vienna classicists to revivify them- selves by a study of the works of Bach and Handel, and Moser mentions espe- cially Mozart's indebtedness to Bach. He quotes with approval also the asser- tion of Richard Wagner with regard to Beethoven, that "as Haydn was the teacher of the youth, so the great Se- bastian Bach directed the vastly enlarged artistic life of the man."

Moser is no mere disinterested spec- tator of the stirring events which he de- picts. Trudging along with the Salzburg exiles on their way to East Prussia, he too pauses in Leipzig to listen to Bach's Kreuzstab Cantata, and then marches on singing Schaitberger's "Wanderer's Sonng." He too celebrates in 1817 the Tercentenary of the Reformation, to the sound of trumpets and drums. He takes a meet pride when Thomas Stoltzer makes the first polyphonic settings of Luther's psalms at the request of Queen Maria of Hungary. A century and a half

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