Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/441

Prior to this Father Sindelar had conducted his Western tour through northern Illinois, Wisconsin and lowa during the summer of 1925 and the Eastern tour of Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio, during the Christmas holidays of 1925-1926 with a success that was a bewildering revelation. On many occasions during the course of the concert, the audience became so enthusiastic as to call for encores aloud. This success encouraged him to follow his musical victories by invading the very heart of musical Chicago, and in February of 1926 we find him giving a concert at the Great Northern Theatre in Chicago.

After the Eucharistic Congress, he began following another musical idea and the result was that sparkling, vivacious musical comedy, “Collegiate Rivals”, produced last year in Chicago no less than nine times in halls of large seating capacity each time before a packed house and a delighted audience. Indeed many liked “Collegiate Rivals” so well that they went to see it several times. This musical play of Father Sindelar was entirely original; one of his song hits, “Procopius” is now published, and “Peppy Collegians” will be published soon. Each is written in a different vein, and shows Father Sindelar to be a composer of no mean ability.

Aside from being very active musically, Father Sindelar, nevertheless, always labored in various capacities at the institution, so much so that one might say these musical activities were for him “extra-curricular”. He organized congregational singing at St. Procopius College and up to 1921, when he was appointed students’ chaplain, a position he held up to 1925, he was in charge of chant and church music, and always taught several classes on the academy curriculum besides his regular music lessons. At present he is chaplain of Sacred Heart Academy for girls, Lisle Ill., where he also teaches music and where he has organized an orchestra. All this, besides his teaching music and directing the band and orchestra at St. Procopius College, plainly shows his ability to work efficiently and well.

Do you recall the successful musical comedy called “Rose-Marie” and its tuneful “Indian Love Call”? All those who witnessed this lovely spectacle agree that the music was a positive marvel as adapted to the play. Yet, no wonder, for the music was composed by Rudolf Friml, the great Czech-American composer.

Rudolf Friml was born in Prague, Bohemia, December 7, 1884. He studied at the Prague Conservatory under the world famous Antonín Dvořák. As a young man he came to America and settled in Chicago, but later, to succeed better in his life’s ambition, moved to New York City. Then success came and today the excellent quality of any Friml composition has come to be taken for granted.

Friml’s name has become associated with one of the most profound mysteries ever known to the musical world, namely that subtle power of his to compose such a flood of exuberantly tuneful music that portrays every human emotion. We may well compare this wizard of melody to an eminent literary genius, who by sheer goading on of the reader’s imagination, can portray at once the most magnificent picture of culture and refinement, or the bravado of the historic villain. To exemplify this, one need but point to the ecstatic, shimmering beauty of the music in his comic opera, “Firefly”, and the roguish, wine-smelling “Song of the Vagabonds” in his musical comedy, “The Vagabond King”, both of which were produced with immense success.

There is nothing quite like the genius of Friml known to the musical world today. “No one . . . disputes the musical value of the works of Rudolf Friml; and perhaps no one since the time of Handel and Mozart, these lightning-like transcribers of notes to the page, has ever excelled Friml’s speed at composition. He wrote one