Viewing page 85 of 131

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[preprinted]]
St. Louis Choral-Symphony Society.
William McMillan, President
Homer Moore, Manager
Alfred Ernst, Conductor
Geo. D. Markham, Vice-President 
Fred. Fischer, Asst Conductor
Otto Bollman, Treasurer
Milton B. Griffith, Secretary

Executive Committee
Isaac A. Hedges     
Mrs. Philip N. Moore
Miss Edith January
Mrs. Chas. Taussig
Mrs. Jas. L. Blair
E.R. Kroeger
Mrs. Mary W. McKittrick
Hugo Koehler

St. Louis,
[[preprinted]]

May 15, 1900.

Miss Alice C. Fletcher,
Peabody Museum,
New Haven.

Dear Miss Fletcher:

Your book on "Indian Stories and Songs" has come to hand.  I wish to thank you for it.  My interest in the subject of Indian music is no less to-day than when I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance in Omaha.  I am looking forward with pleasure to making myself familiar with the melodies which you have reproduced and hope to be able to catch enough of their spirit to use them in some of my own works.

You possibly will remember my opera and especially a scene in the third act based upon Indian themes and I am sure you will be glad to know that I have reason to expect to see it performed by Mr. Savage's Castle Square Opera Company next season.  I am at work on another Opera which I call the "Puritans" in which the Indian spirit enters very considerabl^[[y]] and I am sure that your book will be of great value to me in view of this composition.  Your d^[[i]] scriptions of the scenes which brought into being the Indian melodies and songs are not only interesting but it seems to me necessary to their proper understanding.  The Indian music has a genius of its own and has a language which, while a part of the great universal language, still needs to be learned and understood in its own way and according to its own nature, to be [[underlined]] properly [[underlined]] understood.  I wish to thank you once more for your book and for having remembered ^[[me.]]

I shall never forget the pleasant hours I spent with you learning something of this new field of art.  I hope tha when St. Louis has its Exposition a greater music^al^ congress than that at Omaha may take place and that still more may be done to familiarize our musicians with the storehouse of wealth embraced in Indian music. 

Hoping that you are well, I am,

Yours most sincerely,
[[signature]]  Homer Moore [[signature]]

M-H