Diplomatic Notes

When the Flonzaley Quartet broke up after 25 years (TIME, March 11, 1929), many saw in its demise the death of most of what was left of Chamber Music in the U. S. Others emphatically declared that the Flonzaley mantle had fallen on the Musical Art Quartet. Last week this group bobbed up in the nation's diplomatic news.

Despatches announced that on Aug. 1 the Musical Art Quartet will sail, for Italy where they will play for the pleasure of U. S. Ambassador to Italy John Work Garrett and his wife, Alice Warder Garrett, famed for her parties in Rome, her love for & interest in the Cause of Art, her espousals of many a worthy "movement" (TIME, Aug. 12). At present summering in Baltimore the Garretts will return soon to Rome and ambassadorial duties. But first they will go to Capri where the Quartet's concerts are to be given; where a friend, Dr. Axle Munthe, has loaned them his house. There at Garrett receptions, teas, soirees, the Quartet will play Debussy, Bach, Schumann, Franck, Brahms, Beethoven, for whomever Mrs. Garrett bids attend. Later they will play in Naples, then return to Manhattan in time for a November concert, the first of their next season's series at Town Hall.

No "find" of the Garretts is this group though they have been playing engagements in the modernistic little-theatre at Evergreen, the Garretts' Baltimore home, for three summers. They were well established, widely praised before the Garretts first engaged them. In Petrograd Sascha Jacobsen, leader and first violinist, at the age of eight had already attracted much noteworthy attention with his remarkable playing and was preparing zealously for a coveted position in the violin class of great and far-famed Violinist Leopold Auer.

The Revolution intervened. Young Sascha journeyed to the U. S., joined the class of Franz Kneisel* under whom he developed slowly, unspectacularly, with no show of temperament. In 1915, he made his debut, was acclaimed.

Jacobsen's three comrades--Marie Roemaet-Rosanoff, violoncello; Paul Bernard, second violin; Louis Kaufman, viola--are of U. S. birth. Critics agree that each is a virtuoso in his own right. The Quartet's origin was as casual as its playing has been brilliant. The four friends, students in the Institute of Musical Art at Manhattan, had long been wont to meet of an afternoon or evening and beguile the hours with music for their own entertainment. Often they played at the home of Efrem Zimbalist and his wife Alma Gluck, or for Jascha Heifetz. Sometimes, with one of these three the quartet would become temporarily a quintet. Admirers prevailed on them to give a series of recitals. They did so and found themselves famed. Such great virtuosos and maestros as Zimbalist, Heifetz, Arturo Toscanini verbally crowned the young artists with laurel, forecast shining future:. Singer Gluck created a fund to aid them, received contributions from Manhattan's music-loving Warburgs, Kahns, Guggenheimers, Lewisohns. Thus blessed they went forth as the Musical Art Quartet, and for four seasons have passed from fame to fame. The Garrett tour will be their first trip abroad as a unit.

Other U. S. musicians, wondering if other U. S. Ambassadors might follow the lead of the Garretts and play Lord & Lady Bountiful to Music, pondered the possibilities about as follows:

P: Some hope was seen in Ambassador Dawes at London. He is a musician of sorts himself: performs occasionally on the flute, has written a Melody in a Major which Violinist Fritz Kreisler rendered in a public concert at London last May and which thereupon became a best-seller throughout Britain. But Ambassador Dawes is always first & foremost a 100% "Amurrican." Just as Benjamin Franklin wore a coonskin cap in Paris and the late Alexander Pollock Moore gave stock-market tips and slapped backs in Madrid, so Ambassador Dawes strives to do that which is expected of him by the English. He might welcome U. S. college jazz bands to the court of St. James's (as Moore did to Madrid), but scarcely a chamber quartet.

P: Hugh Simons Gibson at Brussels? Un likely. Of all U. S. Ambassadors in Europe he is practically the only one dependent on his ambassadorial income.

P: Frederic Moseley Sackett Jr. at Berlin? Improbable. He is more addicted to industrialism than to art, to gas & oil than music. Coming from Kentucky, he might, however, patronize Negro spirituals in Berlin.

P: At Paris, the beauteous wife of Walter Evans Edge (New Jersey, advertising), is an inspiration to the art of painters but her musical nature is best expressed on a ballroom floor.

P: At Madrid is Irwin Boyle Laughlin collector and connoisseur of paintings. But one cannot expect a steelman (Jones & Laughlin, Pittsburgh) to patronize all the arts.

P: At Warsaw was seen the best chance -- John North Willys & wife. He is a retired auto tycoon (Willys-Overland), many times a millionaire, a buyer of fine tapes tries. Their socialite daughter married a much-moneyed South American and wai presented to British royalty. They are culturally ambitious. In Warsaw, home of Paderewski, perhaps the grandeur that is the Garretts' at Rome could be duplicated.

Canny Chaliapin

Opera-lovers in Argentina's outlands last week tuned in by radio on the program broadcast from famed Colon Opera House at Buenos Aires, prepared to thrill to the voice of the booming Russian basso, Feodor Ivanovitch Chaliapin. Especially eager were they, for Chaliapin had declared that after he fulfills Argentine and Chile engagements he will return to the U. S., sing a few times, then retire.

The Colon stage was set for Moussorgsky's Boris Godounov. For the role of the Infanticide Boris, Chaliapin was making up, robing in his dressing room. Wires and microphones were in readiness to flash the deep magic of Chaliapin's singing throughout the land. Time for the opening curtain neared. Suddenly, without warning, Chaliapin declared that if a single note of his were broadcast under no circumstances would he set foot on stage.

That night Argentinean radio listeners heard a Boris Godounov with no Boris, for whenever Chaliapin sang, their loudspeakers were mute. Next day critics and persons who had witnessed the performance acclaimed Chaliapin. But the Argentine press, outside of its music columns, flayed Chaliapin as a haughty flouter.

* Great as the Flonzaleys, great as the Musical Art Quartet may sometime become, was the Kneisel Quartet which flourished from 1886 to 1917.

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