Juilliard Improvement

Seven years ago Augustus D. Juilliard, Manhattan textile manufacturer, died, leaving some $20,000,000 as the largest bequest ever made to music.

Great indeed was the responsibility of the five businessmen made trustees of the Juilliard Musical Foundation; but they turned most of it over to Dr. Eugene Allen Noble, onetime Methodist minister, onetime president of Goucher College and also of Dickenson College, who was made Executive Director.

For four years criticism has been heaped on Dr. Noble by the press, musicians and laymen alike, for showing few results commensurate with the Foundation resources. Hence it has been with satisfaction that these same faultfinders noted the appointment last week of Pianist Ernest Hutcheson as Dean of the Graduate School, of Author John Erskine (himself a musician) as Chairman of the Advisory Board.

Last week Dean Hutcheson offered further encouragement: There will be a string orchestra composed of Juilliard students to be trained by Albert Stoessel, director of music at New York University and conductor of the New York Oratorio Society--an organization which may in time come to play as important a part in the musical life of the community as the orchestra of the Paris Conservatoire; there will be three concerts this winter with soloists chosen by Madame Marcella Sembrich from the best vocal students. Leopold Auer, famed violinist and teacher of such musicians as Jascha Heifetz, and Efrem Zimbalist, will select three of the most able violinists in the Graduate School and train them himself. An appropriation has been made for publishing worthy works by U. S. composers, to be issued as the Juilliard Editions. Rhoda Erskine, (sister of Author Erskine) will give classes in history and literature for students who have had little general education.