People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1896 — MUSICAL PRODIGY. [ARTICLE]

MUSICAL PRODIGY.

A Marvelous little Michigan Girl’s Performances. Michigan has a marvelous musical prodigy. She is little Alice McClung, who lives with her parents in the village of Coloma. Although she is only 7 years eld she has astounded musical people not alone with her playing, but with her clever compositions. Little Alice is a bora musioian—in fact, it was less than two months after her birth when she first demonstrated that fact. *At that age she became so excited while a pianist was ploying a Chopin selection that her mother eonld with difficulty hold her in her arms. She is at once a child of nature and of the old masters. She will listen intently to the songs of birds and insects, to the buzzing of telegraph wires, and then imitate them. When but 5 years old she composed her “Sault Ste. Marie March.” She was born in Sault Ste. Marie, where there is a United States fort. The beginning of the march is an imitation of the bugle calls which she heard at this fort each day. The idea that the sole object of every individual is to learn to play on the piano was early fixed in the child’s mind. Her mother was a mflsio teacher, and the baby would enter her studio after the pupils had left and imitate the music she had heard. She soon began to compose, and when a melody was given to her she wonld quickly write a bass to fit it. Her sense of harmony and of tone seems to be absolutely perfect. In very early childhood it was Alioe’s hobby to sit with a volume of Beethoven’s sonatas before her and spend hours playing bits of the music which her little hands could enoompass. Music of an inferior nature has never been given to her. Her taste has been formed entirely by the study of the best composers and of nature’s sounds. Professor Ziegfeld of the Chicago College of Music has tested her powers and pronounces her ear for music perfect. Her “Songs of Merry Birds” is a musical composition of a very high standard. Only twioe has little AJioe been induced to appear in public, both times during last February, first in Coloma and next in Benton Harbor, Mich. Her remarkable executions on the piano of compositions by Reinecke, Chopin, Kunkei, Diabelli and of her own music astonished the audiences. Her tone tests on those occasions were noteworthy. Standing with her back to the piano, she correctly named the keynotes when numbers of the keys were struck.—Boston Journal