1917 - Music

Music

Opera: English soprano Florence Easton, 35, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/7 in the 1890 Mascagni opera Cavalleria Rusticana. She will be a Met regular until February 1936.

Basso Edouard de Reszke dies at Garnek, Poland, May 25 at age 63.

Ballet: Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur 4/12 at Rome's Teatro Constanza, with Leonide Massine, music by the 18th century composer Domenico Scarlatti, book by French playwright Jean Cocteau, 27, choreography by Massine; Parade 5/18 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, with music by French composer Erik Satie (Alfred Leslie), 51, choreography by Massine, scenery by Pablo Picasso (the first cubist ballet), program notes by French man of letters Guillaume Apollinaire, now 37, who coins the term surrealism to denote so-called anti-establishment art (see art [Dada], 1916; Nonfiction [Breton], 1924); Oak Park, Ill.-born ballerina Doris Humphrey, 21, makes her debut with the Denishawn Company founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn.

First performances: Trois Poèmes Juifs by Ernest Bloch 3/23 at Boston's Symphony Hall; Israel Symphony by Bloch 5/3 at New York's Carnegie Hall; Schelomo (Solomon) Hebrew Rhapsody for Violoncello and Orchestra by Bloch 5/13 at New York's Carnegie Hall.

Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, 30, loses his right arm at the Russian front, apparently ending a promising career that was interrupted by the war. But in the postwar years Wittgenstein will commission and perform works for the left hand by composers such as Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith, and Benjamin Britten.

Stage musicals: Have a Heart 1/11 at New York's Liberty Theater, with Louise Dresser, Thurston Hall, book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, music by Jerome Kern, 76 perfs.; Love o' Mike 1/15 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Peggy Wood, Clifton Webb, book by Thomas Sydney, music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Harry B. Smith, 192 perfs.; The Maid of the Mountains 2/10 at Daly's Theatre, London, with José Collins, 28 (daughter of Lottie) as Teresa, Thorpe Bates, book by Frederick Lonsdale, music by London-born composer Harold Fraser-Simson, 44, and James W. (William) Tate, 41, lyrics by Harry Graham, 42, F. (Frank) Clifford Harris, 41, and Valentine (Archibald Thomas Pechey, 40), songs that include "Love Will Find a Way" and "A Paradise for Two," 1,352 perfs.; Oh, Boy! 2/20 at New York's Princess Theater, with Marion Davies, Edna May Oliver, music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, songs that include "Till the Clouds Roll By," 463 perfs.; The Passing Show 4/26 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with De Wolf Hopper, music chiefly by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics chiefly by Harold Atteridge, songs that include "Goodbye Broadway, Hello France" by Billy Baskette, lyrics by C. Francis Reisner and Benny Davis, 24, 196 perfs.; The Ziegfeld Follies 6/12 at New York's New Amsterdam Theater, with Lower East Side-born blackface comedian Eddie Cantor (originally Edward Israel Iskowitz), 25, and Oklahoma-born humorist-actor William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers, 34 (who have been discovered by Follies lyricist Gene Buck), W. C. Fields, Fanny Brice, Kansas City-born ingénue Dorothy Dickson, 23, music by Raymond Hubbell and Dave Stamper with a patriotic finale by Victor Herbert, 111 perfs.; Maytime 8/17 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Peggy Wood, Charles Purcell, Karl Stall, music by Sigmund Romberg, book and lyrics by Rida Johnson Young, songs that include "Will You Remember (Sweetheart)," 492 perfs.; Cheer Up 8/23 at New York's Hippodrome, with book by R. H. Burnside, music by Raymond Hubbell, lyrics by John L. Golden, 456 perfs.; The Boy 9/4 at London's Adelphi Theater, with Lily Elsie, book from Arthur Wing Pinero's farce The Magistrate, music by Lionel Monckton and Howard Talbot, lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenback, 801 perfs.; Leave It to Jane 9/28 at New York's Longacre Theater, with music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Guy Bolton based on George Ade's 1904 play The College Widow, 167 perfs.; Jack O'Lantern 10/16 at New York's Globe Theater, with Fred Stone, book by Anne Caldwell and R. H. Burnside, music by Ivan Caryll, 265 perfs.; Over the Top (revue) 11/28 at New York's 44th Street Roof Theater, with comedian Joe Laurie, Omaha-born dancer Fred Astaire (originally Frederick Austerlitz), 18, and his sister Adele, Norfolk, Va.-born ingénue Mary Eaton, 16, music by Sigmund Romberg and others, 78 perfs.; Going Up 12/25 at New York's Liberty Theater, with Frank Craven, Glasgow-born actor Donald Meek, 39, Minneapolis-born actress Edith Day, 21, music by Louis A. Hirsch, book and lyrics by Otto Harbach based on James Montgomery's 1910 play The Aviator, 351 perfs.

The U.S. Supreme Court upholds composer Victor Herbert in a suit against Shanley's Café at New York for having used music from his operetta Sweethearts April 1, 1915, without permission. Shanley's has argued that since it did not charge its patrons anything extra for the music it was not using it "for profit" and was therefore not violating Herbert's copyright, but Justice Holmes writes in his majority opinion, "If rights are infringed only by a performance where money is taken at the door, they are very improperly protected. The performances . . . are part of a total for which the public pays." The January 22 decision supports ASCAP, which Herbert helped start 3 years ago and which issues licenses to hotels, restaurants, dance halls, cabarets, motion picture theaters, and other establishments to play music controlled by ASCAP members.

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band opens in January at Reisenweber's beer garden on New York's Eighth Avenue near Columbus Circle; another New Orleans jazz group has appeared in the city earlier, but this one uses showmanship and publicity to attract wide attention. "The Darktown Strutters' Ball" by Shelton Brooks, recorded for Columbia Records at New York in January, is by some accounts the first jazz record and has sales of 1 million copies by year's end, but other jazz historians will give the honor of being first to D. J. "Nick" LaRocca's Original Dixieland Jazz Band, which records a one-step and "Livery Stable Blue" February 26 at New York's Victor Studio; released March 5, it has sales of 250,000 copies at 75¢ each, outselling any record ever made by Enrico Caruso or John Philip Sousa. "Tiger Rag" is published as a one-step with music by D. J. LaRocca of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, lyrics by LaRocca's clarinetist Lawrence (James) Shields, 24.

New Orleans jazz pioneer Joseph "King" Oliver, 32, moves to Chicago and Ferdinand J. La Menthe "Jelly Roll" Morton, 31, to California following the U.S. Navy's shutdown of Storyville brothels. A cornetist in Kid Ory's band, Oliver is succeeded by his student Louis (Daniel) Armstrong, 16, who in 1922 will join Oliver's Creole Jazz Band at Chicago. Pianist-composer-singer-dancer Morton will claim to have invented jazz and stomps as a sporting house entertainer, cuts a fine figure in flashy clothes, has a diamond implanted in a front tooth, and will tour with his seven-man Red Hot Peppers, moving to Chicago in 1922.

Comedienne Cicely Courtneidge appears at the Victoria Palace Music Hall, competing with stars such as Marie Lloyd (see 1885), Florrie Ford, Vesta Tilley (male impersonator Matilda Alice Powles, now 53), and Gertie Miller. Now 34, Courtneidge has married comedian Jack Hulbert.

Composer Paul A. Rubens dies at London February 5 at age 41; Broadway musical star Dave Montgomery at Chicago November 20 on the eve of his 47th birthday.

Popular songs: "Over There" by George M. Cohan, who writes it for the American Expeditionary Force embarking for the war in Europe; "You're in the Army Now" by Isham Jones, lyrics by Tell Taylor and Ole Olssen; "Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here" by Theodore Morse, who has adapted a melody by the late Arthur S. Sullivan from Act II of the 1879 Gilbert & Sullivan opera The Pirates of Penzance, lyrics by D. A. Esrom (Morse); "Back Home in Indiana" by James F. Hanley, lyrics by Ballard MacDonald; "Smiles" by Lee S. Roberts, lyrics by O. Will Callahan; "For Me and My Gal" by George W. Meyer, 33, lyrics by Edgar Leslie, 32, and E. Ray Goetz, 31; "They Go Wild, Simply Wild, Over Me" by Fred Fisher, lyrics by Joe McCarthy; "Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh" by Abe Olman, 29, lyrics by Edward Rose, 42; "The Bells of St. Mary's" by Australian-born London composer A. Emmet Adams, 27, lyrics by actor-playwright Douglas Furber, 31.

Ragtime composer Scott Joplin dies at New York April 1 at age 49. He has lived in the city since the summer of 1907, and although many of of his songs have been published, and some put on mechanical piano rolls, not one has been recorded.