MUSICAL CHRONICLE
STRAWINSKY a success in New York! But it was yesterday only that the Concertino was hissed, whole families uniting in the sport; and day before yesterday only that a Philharmonic audience sat mute motionless aghast during a parade of little Fireworks, or passed from diaphragm to diaphragm spasms of painful equilibration. Nevertheless there appears to exist a power not ourselves, thank heavens, which makes for motion, and therefore Renard was wildly summoned back again by the audience of the International Composers' Guild the evening of December second, not more than a half dozen people seeking the year 1910 through the exits. Earlier in the evening, the ecstatic Herzgewaechse of Schoenberg had been recalled, too; all the world was in a good humour which things by Delage, Lourie, and Hindemith had not been powerful to dampen. But the song with its strange accompaniment on harp, celesta, and harmonium had not been recalled by a house as unanimous. While the applause was becoming insistful, and Mesdames Leoni and Miller, Messrs Mattfeld and Salzedo were remaining ominously on the stage, hisses and protests ventured up, and several people turned about to where some of the applause came from and said loudly "Not again! Not again!" And there might have been motives other than aesthetic curiosity and delight beneath the demandful clapping. People must have known the newspaper critics a-squirm to a man upon the seat-leather underneath them. Also, the sudden unprepared high f pianpianissimo had been shock, and people were curious to know whether i1t had been intentional and whether it would come again from Miss Leoni's head. But after Renard, nothing other than a state of approaching satisfaction made the applause. The joy was universal, and sustained. The full Vanderbilt Theatre wanted the burlesque over again for the reason that in Strawinsky it had suddenly come upon the showman of genius who had given it just the delight it wanted, and wished to hold on tightly to its new-found friend.
To be sure, Renard is not the greatest Strawinsky. It is not a large form. The rhythmic curves are short. And the instrumental
