Typewriter

Karsavina, impetuous Russian dancer, will open her American season in Baltimore on Oct. 31. She brings with her a novelty that has set London agog. As a bare-kneed flapper, she twirls about to the music of an entirely new instrument, the typewriter. The London Daily Mail registered almost incoherent astonishment, shouting, ballyhooing:

"Richard Strauss is one down! He never thought of the typewriter! Walk up, ladies and gentlemen, and see Karsavina dance to the accompaniment of a typewriter! It is simply the maddest piece of fooling ever seen on any stage. The sight of Karsavina is worth the money—Karsavina as a naughty American flapper, a young sister of Daisy Miller; Karsavina in a sailor's blouse, short, white serge skirt and bare knees. She is a naughty, enterprising American child of the European tradition. Not content with seeing the circus, the terrible infant must needs find her way among the performers. Hence the impossible—Karsavina dancing a cakewalk, Karsavina dancing to American airs on a typewriter."

But why not? Tschaikovsky himself once called for a battery of field artillery.

Insult

"Mephisto," whose famed "musings" appear in Musical America, was irate last week, sensed an insult to all musicians in an item that appeared in a metropolitan daily, demanded that his friends, his co-workers be "given their due." Mused Mephisto:

"Notables in Every Walk of Life See Firpo-Wills Fight,' says a big headline in a daily paper. The subheading continues: 'Royalty, Society, Finance, Politics, Theatre, Pulpit and Plain People Mingle.'

"I protest. Why are musicians excluded from this generalization? Or are they included among the 'plain people'?

"I do not see any musicians mentioned among those present, but that was their affair. If they didn't want to go, there was no particular reason why they should. But what peeves me is that musicians should be ignored in this summary fashion. The headline might have read: 'Notables in Every Walk of Life Except Music See Fight.' Then no one could have complained.

"Musicians ought to stand up for their rights, nominal as well as actual.

"Is there a nobler profession? Are musicians not as good as other people? Do they not contribute as much to the happiness and well-being of their fellows as some of the classes singled out for special prominence in the heading I have quoted? Are they not often the guests of kings and queens?

"Then let them be given their due on all occasions."

Carnegie Undoomed

From F. P. Keppel, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, came an unqualified denial of the rumored imminent demolition (TIME, Sept. 22) of historic Carnegie Hall. This in spite of the undenied fact that the Hall make no money; that its profits are continually eaten up by necessary repairs and alterations.

Patroness