Harry Adjip seemed like an interesting guy. The son of a North Dakota Cherokee (who was devoured by a black leopard), Mr. Adjip was born in Hawaii and at a young age traveled to Malaysia. Raised as a Mohammedan Mr. Adjip eventually found his way to America where he converted to Presbyterianism and became a composer of symphonic music which incorporated melodies and musical elements from his exotic travels.

Adjip’s tales of Tiger-Men and 25-foot pythons seem a bit far out, but regardless of the veracity of his accounts it seems his music was played by American orchestras in concert halls and on the radio. I don’t know what else to say about the man except that he’s an interesting obscure composer whose works seem mostly to be unpublished.

I learned of Harry Adjip from an article titled “From Jungle to Symphony Hall“, in an old copy of The Etude Music Magazine. I have hundreds of these magazines, and for years I let them molder away on a shelf, always intending to scan and share some of the more interesting content from those pages. I recently got around to actually doing this long-intended project. Investing in an oversized scanner I used OCR software to convert some of the articles to text, and I revived one of my long-dormant domain names (scriabin.com) for use as the web address for this and (in the future) other piano-music content. I had no reason to use scriabin.com as the domain except that Alexander Scriabin was a composer, and thus scriabin.com itself is of musical vintage. I suspect that genuine Scriabin scholars and society members have been annoyed with me over the years for hogging the domain name, but my intentions to use it for piano-related stuff were always genuine. Scriabin is mentioned in The Etude (I’ve seen his name spelled “Scriabine” in those pages) but he is not specifically central to the magazine, nor will The Etude be the only music-related content on scriabin.com.

I also started a gallery of Etude Magazine Covers.

The Etude was a music magazine published by Theodore Presser from 1883 to 1957, spanning those eras of American life in which most houses had a piano and music was central to family life. Or at least that’s the impression one gets from reading the sometimes bellicose histrionics of The Etude‘s editorials and its coverage of the world of music.

The Etude comprised content for pianists, singers, and all instrumentalists, though my interest in the magazine lies in its coverage of pianists, composers, and music history. I started collecting these magazines in college, when 50¢ got me a pile of copies from as early as 1902. I don’t know much about collectibles and antiques and the like but these magazines are old (obviously) and I guess some of them are rare, but they do not appear to be valuable. I have never paid more than a few bucks for a single copy, and I don’t know why anyone would, with the possible exception of the really early ones from the 1880s and 1890s. In general I spend about a dollar per magazine. Still, it should not surprise me to see people attempt to sell individual copies of The Etude for $75 or more. More power to you, I guess, if you can conflate a market that will bear such prices.

The Adjip story interests to me, as do some other Etude finds which connect with my cemetery rambles. The burial site of Louis Moreau Gottschalk is today mostly decimated, its “Angel of Music” statue stolen from the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn some 50 years ago. The text on the marker is barely readable. I have seen the marker many times but never knew what the Angel looked like until I found a picture of it in the February, 1932, issue of The Etude. A few moments of superficial web research (and what other kind of web research is there, anyway?) reveals that the Green-Wood Historic Fund recently started soliciting proposals from sculptors of today to replace and restore the Gottschalk monument. That, my friend, is very cool, as was spotting a rare photo from Green-Wood in the 1930s.

Another connection to my inner taphophile is in a lengthy and entertaining story titled Bandmaster Gilmore, in which summary accounts of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore’s National Peace Jubilee and other monster concerts frame the man as one of the great mensches of American music in the 19th century. I have heard mention of Gilmore’s name in the past but I only became aware of who he was after seeing the marker erected in his honor at his burial site in (where else?) Calvary Cemetery in Queens. The Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore grave, erected in 1992 by the Patrick S. Gilmore Society, bears an image of the composer, calling him the “Father of the American Band” and quoting the New York Times as having dubbed Gilmore “A musician of the people”. (The actual quote from the Times obit seems to be more decisive, declaring Gilmore “the musician of the people” — emphasis added).

And I laughed out loud at a hilarious editorial called Wagner at the Piano, a headline which I naïvely assumed would lead to a story about the seldom-played solo piano music of Richard Wagner, a composer known mostly for his operas. Instead the story railed against the “distortions of Wagner” inflicted on the author’s delicate sensibilities by the deleterious piano arrangements by Franz Liszt, Louis Brassin, and other un-named pianistic villains.

Decrying these piano arrangements of Wagner’s music the author claims “They are worse than caricatures. They are cheap and frippery piano-jingles, employing the themes of Wagner’s music as their foundation. They are utterly bad, and to listen to them is to encourage one of the things that ought not to be allowed.” (emphasis added by me for comedic flourish.)

Earlier in this tirade the author described the carnage:

“Piano-virtuosi ravage the land with fire and the sword of technic, and the people sit upon the housetops and cheer the marauders. Mighty hands wave flaming brands of sixths and octaves and double thirds and hurl crashing bombs of dissonant chords into the midst of the populace, and the people shout encouragement in stentorian tones. It is a time of mad excitement, and no man is willing to pause and think.”

The Etude recounts piano recitals of the early 20th century like they were 1970s rock concerts with pyrotechnic displays and psychedelic light shows.

As amusing as the article is to me, I can not disagree with its substance. Piano transcriptions and arrangements of Wagner and other opera composers have always occupied a nebulous position in the hierarchy of musical art. Some folks collect and consume such music with a compulsive fetishism, while others simply can’t be bothered with what they perceive as frivolous bombasticism. I think I fall into the latter category, and this is different from earlier in my life. I used to think Liszt’s “Don Juan” Fantasy was a triumph of music, technique, and transcendental theater. Today the Don Juan Fantasy sounds like laughable hackwork to me, though that might reflect more on my reaction to the way the thing is played and not the music itself.

So, I am having a great time with this, with these old over-sized magazines and the vast beast of a scanner needed to capture the pages. I’m keeping busy, and I hope you are too.