2007-09-17
Baltimore, MD—The business meeting of the Mencken Society began at 10:20 on Saturday morning (09-17) and was quickly and efficiently conducted by President Martin. The item of interest to a general audience was the announced increase in dues from $25 to $30 annually. The dues have been static for perhaps a decade. In that time, the price of postage, as well as the cost of everything else, has increased considerably.
The speakers, Dr Sharon Hamilton and Mr David Donovan, each gave excellent talks.
Dr Hamilton described how H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and their Smart Set magazine were at the ‘heart of American literature’ of the 1920s yet they and their magazine have been erased from literary history. Mencken and Nathan both provided an outlet for and championed such authors as Joseph Conrad, Eugene O’Neill, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Smart Set was also a great influence on many other writers, such as Edmund Wilson, Sherwood Anderson and Ben Hecht. Yet, standard reference works on New York City have no mention of Mencken, Nathan and the Smart Set.
Mr David Donovan spoke on ‘H. L.Mencken as Musician and Music Critic’. He displayed some of the treasures in the Enoch Pratt Libray’s Mencken Archives. The Library has fifty-four boxes of music from the Saturday Night Club.
From 1934 to its disbandment in 1950, Louis Cheslock kept a diary devoted to the Saturday Night Club. Many of the music programs are recorded tere and Mr Donovan displayed a number of them. Mr Mencken’s favorite piece of music was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, the “Eroica.”
What of the ‘Mencken Opera’? Tim Smith, the Baltimore Sun’s music critic wrote “The Artist, a short, slight opera with a 1912 text by H.L. Mencken and music (based on Beethoven) written decades later by Louis Cheslock, was unearthed by the Maryland Historical Society and given what is believed to be its first real performance Saturday [2007-09-15] afternoon. Probably its last performance, too.” (Sun (Baltimore), 2007-09-17). The Artist is amusing but it could have remained buried without any great loss to the world of opera (or any other world).
Those who still regret not seeing the excellent performance by the Peabody Opera Theatre, directed by Roger Brunyate, will not have to live a lifetime of regret. A video recording of the performance will be made available for $20. Details will be posted here as we get them.