Index to Music Published in “The Etude”
This book immediately answered one question which had been in my mind for years: Did “The Etude” ever publish music by Charles Alkan? Alkan’s music interested me greatly through high school and college. My conquests of some of his more extravagant piano exertions consumed many long hours of misdirected energies while at the conservatory, and later in life.
“The Etude” did Alkan no favors with its choice of composition to publish in its pages. In the October, 1922, issue of “The Etude” (page 686) is a short Prelude Melodique by Alkan. I was not familiar with this piece, which bears no opus # or date of composition.
Alas, this vapid little trifle would have done little to spark interest in Alkan. Assuming the editors were fully familiar with Alkan’s oeuvre I would have expected them to choose either the “Barcarolle”, Op. 65, No. 6, or the “Song of the Mad Woman on the Seashore”, Op. 31, No. 8. The Barcarolle is easy enough for moderately advanced students to play, but more importantly it is among Alkan’s most perfect compositions. The “Song of the Mad Woman”, well, I would not necessarily expect the editors at “The Etude” to chose such a weird and mysterious piece as that, but on the other hand if you are going to introduce people to Alkan then I think you might inspire interest by starting with his strangest sounds and working toward more normal forms.
Alkan’s music is characterized by exaltations of banality alternating with quality worksmanship and memorable melodies. The “Song of the Mad Woman” is a tune I find myself whistling at times, while the G-Sharp Minor passage at mm. 105 of the “Quasi-Faust”, in my opinion, rivals Schubert’s most cutting melodies. In the pages of that same composition, however, we find passages of bafflingly laborious emptiness and comical clumsiness.
The Prelude Melodique appears to be the only Alkan composition that appeared in “The Etude”, though Alkan is mentioned several times in the pages of that magazine by the likes of James Huneker, Theodore Leschetizky, and Isidor Philipp, the latter among the most enthusiastic of early Alkanians. Pianists Raymond Lewenthal and Ronald Smith ushered in the Alkan revival (if that’s what you want to call it — it seems strange to call it a “revival” when there was never much of a “vival” to begin with).
Mr. Lewenthal’s performance of the above-mentioned “Barcarolle” is as perfect as the composition itself, conveying a still and shadowy loneliness. To me it is among the most perfect piano recordings ever made. Ronald Smith’s account of the “Le Festin D’Ésope” (on an authentic period piano) is probably my favorite of his recordings, but Mr. Smith’s greater contribution to the world of Alkan was in his scholarship and evangelism for the cause.
In addition to answering the Alkan question I also made quick use of the “Index to Music Published in the Etude Magazine” to answer another intriguing question. An e-mail correspondent who found my “Etude Magazine” site wrote to ask if I had the December, 1929, issue of that magazine, and if so, could I please tell her if a composition by a certain friend of hers appeared in those pages.
I checked my copy of that issue, but found nothing by the composer in question. It seemed that the composer (who is now quite elderly) said that when she was a child she wrote a piano piece which was published in “The Etude” of December, 1929. I was not told this woman’s age but I would guess that she is about 90.
To make a long story short, this turned out to be a bit of a goosechase. The woman’s memory was faded, or perhaps wholly inaccurate. I was happy to help, and her name was one of the first things I looked for when I got this Index, but I found nothing.
I recently had a similar experience with faded, foggy memory. I had a childhood memory, seemingly crystal clear, which said that a single payphone at Grand Central Station in New York held the Guinness Book of Records title for the “World’s Busiest Telephone.” I was even quoted in the New York Times on this vital matter, though evidently their fact checkers either didn’t find the error or didn’t think it merited research. Whatever the case, I recently purchased copies of the Guinness Book of Records from the 1970s to see if I could find that reference. Indeed, I did find reference to the world’s busiest telephone, but sadly for me it was not at Grand Central but at the Greyhound Station in Chicago. Bummer that. I’ll do more hunting, though, to see if Grand Central held the title at one time only to be usurped by the Greyhound station. That is my hope, that is my dream.
