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Music: Illustrated Monthly Review

(New York, 1924)

Prepared by Liesbeth Hoedemaeker
Introduction by Richard Kitson
Online only (2018)

Music. Illustrated Monthly Review was published in New York City as a single extra subscription number dated mid-summer 1924. Two editors were involved in this project, Deems Taylor (1885-1966) an American composer and music critic and promoter of American music, and Gilbert W. Gabriel (1890-1952), a music and drama critic. The issue contains thirty-two pages of text with additional pages of advertisements preceding and following the main materials. A subscription application is located on page 28 but it would appear insufficient interest in this journal prevented further preparation and development of a second issue.

The noted writer, music critic and scholar W. J. Henderson (1855-1937) contributed an extensive overview of the 1923-24 music season in New York City. Richard Washburn Child, former American Ambassador at Rome wrote about the promotion and support of American art and music in Rome. Pitts Sanborn (1879-1941), music critic of The New York Globe, the New York World Telegram and The New Yorker discussed the problems of assembling an ideal cast for Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Deems Taylor gave recollections on jazz bands and barbershop songs and a review of Paul Whiteman's concert "An Experiment in Modern Music" at Aeolian Hall where George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was premiered. The noted American violinist Albert Spalding discusses the disadvantages of phonograph recordings of transcriptions and arrangements of compositions. Mary Ellis Opdijcke (Peltz), a writer at a later date of Verdi’s biography, contributed a review of the anonymous book The Confessions of a Prima Donna. Numerous reproductions of photographs, engravings and drawings are found throughout the issue.

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