Project Gutenberg's Contemporary American Composers, by Rupert Hughes
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Title: Contemporary American Composers
Being a Study of the Music of This Country, Its Present
Conditions and Its Future, with Critical Estimates and
Biographies of the Principal Living Composers; and an
Abundance of Portraits, Fac-simile Musical Autographs, and
Compositions
Author: Rupert Hughes
Release Date: December 10, 2007 [EBook #23800]
Language: English
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CONTEMPORARY
AMERICAN COMPOSERS
BEING A STUDY OF THE MUSIC OF THIS
COUNTRY, ITS PRESENT CONDITIONS AND ITS
FUTURE, WITH CRITICAL ESTIMATES AND
BIOGRAPHIES OF THE PRINCIPAL LIVING
COMPOSERS; AND AN ABUNDANCE OF PORTRAITS,
FAC-SIMILE MUSICAL AUTOGRAPHS,
AND COMPOSITIONS
By
Rupert Hughes, M.A.
_ILLUSTRATED_
Boston
L.C. Page and Company
(Incorporated)
1900
_Copyright, 1900_
BY L.C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C.H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U.S.A.
TO
James Huneker
MUSICIAN TO THE TIP OF HIS PEN
FOREWORD.
One day there came into Robert Schumann's ken the work of a young
fellow named Brahms, and the master cried aloud in the wilderness,
"Behold, the new Messiah of music!" Many have refused to accept Brahms
at this rating, and I confess to being one of the unregenerate, but
the spirit that kept Schumann's heart open to the appeal of any
stranger, that led him into instant enthusiasms of which he was
neither afraid nor ashamed, enthusiasms in which the whole world has
generally followed his leading--that spirit it is that proves his true
musicianship, and makes him a place forever among the great critics
of music,--a small, small crowd they are, too.
It is inevitable that a pioneer like Schumann should make many
mistakes, but he escaped the one great fatal mistake of those who are
not open to conviction, nor alert for new beauty and fresh truth, who
are willing to take art to their affections or respect only when it
has lost its bloom and has been duly appraised and ticketed by other
generations or foreign scholars. And yet, even worse than this
languorous inanition is the active policy of those who despise
everything contemporary or native, and substitute sciolism for
catholicity, contempt for analysis.
While the greater part of the world has stayed aloof, the problem of a
national American music has been solving itself. Aside from
occasional attentions evoked by chance performances, it may be said in
general that the growth of our music has been unloved and unheeded by
anybody except a few plodding composers, their wives, and a retainer
or two. The only thing that inclines me to invade the privacy of the
American composer and publish his secrets, is my hearty belief, lo,
these many years! that some of the best music in the world is being
written here at home, and that it only needs the light to win its meed
of praise.
Owing to the scarcity of printed matter relating to native composers,
and the utter incompleteness and bias of what exists, I have based
this book almost altogether on my own research. I studied the
catalogues of all the respectable music publishers, and selected such
composers as seemed to have any serious intentions. When I heard of a
composer whose work, though earnest, had not been able to find a
publisher, I sought him out and read his manuscripts (a hideous task
which might be substituted for the comparative pastime of breaking
rocks, as punishment for misdemeanors). In every case I secured as
many of each composer's works as could be had in print or in
manuscript, and endeavored to digest them. Thousands of pieces of
music, from short songs to operatic and orchestral scores, I studied
with all available conscience. The fact that after going through at
least a ton of American compositions, I am still an enthusiast, is
surely a proof of some virtue in native music.
A portion of the result of this study was published _au courant_ in a
magazine, awakening so much attention that I have at length decided to
yield to constant requests and publish the articles in more accessible
form. The necessity for revising many of the opinions formed hastily
and published immediately, the possibility now of taking the work of
our musicians in some perspective, and the opportunity of bringing my
information up to date, have meant so much revision, excision, and
addition, that this book is really a new work.
The biographical data have been furnished in practically every case by
the composers themselves, and are, therefore, reliable in everything
except possibly the date of birth. The critical opinions gain their
possibly dogmatic tone rather from a desire for brevity than from any
hope--or wish--that they should be swallowed whole. No attempt to set
up a standard of comparative merit or precedence has been made, though
it is inevitable that certain music-makers should interest one more
than certain others even more worthy in the eyes of eminent judges.
It may be that some inspectors of this book will complain of the
omission of names they had expected to find here. Others will feel a
sense of disproportion. To them there is no reply but a pathetic
allusion to the inevitable incompleteness and asymmetry of all things
human.
Many will look with skepticism at the large number of composers I have
thought worthy of inclusion. I can only say that the fact that an
artist has created one work of high merit makes him a good composer in
my opinion, whether or no he has ever written another, and whether or
no he has afterward fallen into the sere and yellow school of trash.
So Gray's fame is perennial,--one poem among many banalities.
Besides, I do not concur in that most commonplace fallacy of
criticism, the belief that not more than one genius is vouchsafed to
any one period of an art, though this opinion can be justified, of
course, by a very exclusive definition of the word genius. To the
average mind, for instance, the whole literary achievement of the
Elizabethan era is condensed into the name of Shakespeare.
Contemporary with him, however, there were, of course, thirty or forty
writers whose best works the scholar would be most unwilling to let
die. There were, for instance, a dozen playwrights, like Jonson,
Fletcher, Ford, Marlowe, and Greene, in whose works can be found
literary and dramatic touches of the very highest order. There were
poets less prolific than Spenser, and yet to be credited with a few
works of the utmost beauty, minor geniuses like Ralegh, Sidney, Lodge,
Shirley, Lyly, Wotton, Wither, John Donne, Bishop Hall, Drayton,
Drummond, Herbert, Carew, Herrick, Breton, Allison, Byrd, Dowland,
Campion--so one might run on without naming one man who had not
written something the world was better for.
All periods of great art activity are similarly marked by a large
number of geniuses whose ability is not disproved, because
overshadowed by the presence of some titanic contemporary. It would be
a mere impertinence to state such an axiom of art as this, were it not
the plain truth that almost all criticism of contemporaries is based
upon an arrant neglect of it; and if it were not for the fact that I
am about to string out a long, long list of American music-makers
whose ability I think noteworthy,--a list whose length may lead many a
wiseacre to pull a longer face.
Parts of this book have been reprinted from _Godey's Magazine_, the
_Century Magazine_, and the _Criterion_, to whose publishers I am
indebted for permission. For the music reproduced here I have to
thank the publishers whose copyrights were loaned for the occasion.
If the book shall only succeed in arousing in some minds an interest
or a curiosity that shall set them to the study of American music (as
I have studied it, with infinite pleasure), then this fine white paper
and this beautiful black ink will not have been wasted.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
FOREWORD vii
A GENERAL SURVEY 11
THE INNOVATORS 34
THE ACADEMICS 145
THE COLONISTS 267
THE WOMEN COMPOSERS 423
THE FOREIGN COMPOSERS 442
POSTLUDE 447
INDEX 449
LIST OF MUSIC.
PAGE
AUTOGRAPH OF EDWARD MACDOWELL 34
"CLAIR DE LUNE," BY EDWARD MACDOWELL 46
AUTOGRAPH OF EDGAR STILLMAN KELLEY 58
"ISRAFEL" (fragment), BY EDGAR STILLMAN KELLEY 74
AUTOGRAPH OF HARVEY WORTHINGTON LOOMIS 77
"SANDALPHON" (fragment), BY H.W. LOOMIS 82
AUTOGRAPH OF ETHELBERT NEVIN 93
"HERBSTGEFÜHL" (fragment), BY ETHELBERT NEVIN 102
AUTOGRAPH OF JOHN PHILIP SOUSA 112
A PAGE FROM "EL CAPITAN," BY JOHN PHILIP SOUSA 127
AUTOGRAPH OF JOHN K. PAINE 145
POSTLUDE TO "OEDIPUS TYRANNUS," BY JOHN K. PAINE 158
"SPRING'S AWAKENING" (fragment), BY DUDLEY BUCK 172
AUTOGRAPH OF HORATIO W. PARKER 174
"NIGHT-PIECE TO JULIA" (fragment), BY HORATIO W. PARKER 180
"DIE STUNDE SEI GESEGNET" (fragment), BY FRANK VAN DER STUCKEN 194
"A LOVE SONG" (fragment), BY W.W. GILCHRIST 205
AUTOGRAPH OF G.W. CHADWICK 210
"FOLK SONG" (NO. 1), BY G.W. CHADWICK 216
AUTOGRAPH OF ARTHUR FOOTE 221
"IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS LASS," BY ARTHUR FOOTE 230
"IDYLLE" (fragment), BY ARTHUR WHITING 287
"BALLADE" (fragment), BY HOWARD BROCKWAY 303
AUTOGRAPH OF HARRY ROWE SHELLEY 304
"SPRING" (fragment), BY GERRIT SMITH 314
"WHEN LOVE IS GONE," BY C.B. HAWLEY 330
"SONG FROM OMAR KHAYYÁM," BY VICTOR HARRIS 339
"HYMN OF PAN" (fragment), FRED FIELD BULLARD 352
"PEACE," BY HOMER A. NORRIS 362
AUTOGRAPH OF G.W. MARSTON 367
EXCERPT FROM AN ORCHESTRAL SCORE, BY F.G. GLEASON 378
"IDYLLE" (fragment), BY WILLIAM H. SHERWOOD 385
AUTOGRAPH OF WILSON G. SMITH 395
"ARABESQUE," BY WILSON G. SMITH 404
FRAGMENT OF THE SCORE OF "SALAMMBÔ," BY JOHANN H. BECK 408
AUTOGRAPH OF JAMES H. ROGERS 412
"BLACK RIDERS" (fragment), BY WILLIAM SCHUYLER 416
"PHANTOMS" (fragment), BY MRS. H.H.A. BEACH 429
"GHOSTS," BY MARGARET RUTHVEN LANG 436
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Edward MacDowell _Frontispiece_
Edgar Stillman Kelley 57
Harvey Worthington Loomis 77
Ethelbert Nevin 92
John Philip Sousa 112
Henry Schoenefeld 128
John Knowles Paine 145
Horatio W. Parker 174
Frank van der Stucken 188
George Whitefield Chadwick 210
Arthur Foote 221
Henry K. Hadley 241
Adolph M. Foerster 248
Charles Crozat Converse 256
Louis Adolphe Coerne 262
Henry Holden Huss 291
Harry Rowe Shelley 304
Frederick Field Bullard 351
Homer A. Norris 357
Frederic Grant Gleason 367
William H. Sherwood 383
A.J. Goodrich 388
Wilson G. Smith 395
Mrs. H.H.A. Beach 426
Margaret Ruthven Lang 432
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN COMPOSERS.
CHAPTER I.
A GENERAL SURVEY.
Coddling is no longer the chief need of the American composer. While
he still wants encouragement in his good tendencies,--much more
encouragement than he gets, too,--he is now strong enough to profit by
the discouragement of his evil tendencies.
In other words, the American composer is ready for criticism.
The first and most vital flaw of which his work will be accused is the
lack of nationalism. This I should like to combat after the sophistic
fashion of Zeno,--showing, first, why we lack that desideratum, a
strictly national school; secondly, that a strictly national school is
not desirable; and thirdly, that we most assuredly have a national
school.
In building a national individuality, as in building a personal
individuality, there is always a period of discipleship under some
older power. When the rudiments and the essentials are once thoroughly
mastered, the shackles of discipleship are thrown off, and personal
expression in an original way begins. This is the story of every
master in every art: The younger Raphael was only Perugino junior.
Beethoven's first sonatas were more completely Haydn's than the word
"gewidmet" would declare. The youthful Canova was swept off his feet
by the unearthing of old Greek masterpieces. Stevenson confesses
frankly his early efforts to copy the mannerisms of Scott and others.
Nations are only clusters of individuals, and subject to the same
rules. Italy borrowed its beginnings from Byzantium; Germany and
France took theirs from Italy; we, ours, from them.
It was inconceivable that America should produce an autocthonous art.
The race is one great mixture of more or less digested foreign
elements; and it is not possible to draw a declaration of artistic, as
of political, independence, and thenceforward be truly free.
Centuries of differentiated environment (in all the senses of the word
environment) are needed to produce a new language or a new art; and it
was inevitable that American music should for long be only a more or
less successful employment of European methods. And there was little
possibility, according to all precedents in art history, that any
striking individuality should rise suddenly to found a school based
upon his own mannerism.
Especially was this improbable, since we are in a large sense of
English lineage. As the co-heirs, with those who remain in the British
Isles, of the magnificent prose and poetry of England, it was possible
for us to produce early in our own history a Hawthorne and a Poe and
an Emerson and a Whitman. But we have had more hindrance than help
from our heritage of English music, in which there has never been a
master of the first rank, Purcell and the rest being, after all,
brilliants of the lesser magnitude (with the permission of that
electric Englishman, Mr. John F. Runciman).
A further hindrance was the creed of the Puritan fathers of our
civilization; they had a granite heart, and a suspicious eye for
music. Here is a cheerful example of congregational lyricism, and a
lofty inspiration for musical treatment (the hymn refers to the fate
of unbaptized infants):
"A crime it is! Therefore in Bliss
You may not hope to dwell;
But unto you I shall allow
The easiest room in Hell."
It was only at the end of the seventeenth century that singing by
note began to supplant the "lining-out" barbarism, and to provoke such
fierce opposition as this:
"First, it is a new way--an unknown tongue; 2d, it is not so
melodious as the old way; 3d, there are so many tunes that
nobody can learn them; 4th, the new way makes a disturbance
in churches, grieves good men, exasperates them, and causes
them to behave disorderly; 5th, it is popish; 6th, it will
introduce instruments; 7th, the names of the notes are
blasphemous; 8th, it is needless, the old way being good
enough; 9th, it requires too much time to learn it; 10th, it
makes the young disorderly."
At the time when such puerility was disturbing this cradle of freedom
and cacophony, Bach and Händel were at work in their contrapuntal
webs, the Scarlattis, Corelli and Tartini and Porpora were alive.
Peri, Josquin and Willaert and Lassus were dead, and the church had
had its last mass from the most famous citizen of the town of
Palestrina. Monteverde was no longer inventing like an Edison; Lulli
had gone to France and died; and Rameau and Couperin were alive.
At this time in the world's art, the Americans were squabbling over
the blasphemy of instruments and of notation! This is not the place to
treat the history of our music. The curious can find enlightenment at
such sources as Mr. Louis C. Elson's "National Music of America." It
must be enough for me to say that the throttling hands of Puritanism
are only now fully loosened. Some of our living composers recall the
parental opposition that met their first inclinations to a musical
career, opposition based upon the disgracefulness, the heathenishness,
of music as a profession.
The youthfulness of our school of music can be emphasized further by a
simple statement that, with the exception of a few names like Lowell
Mason, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Stephen A. Emery (a graceful writer as
well as a theorist), and George F. Bristow, practically every American
composer of even the faintest importance is now living.
The influences that finally made American music are chiefly German.
Almost all of our composers have studied in Germany, or from teachers
trained there; very few of them turning aside to Paris, and almost
none to Italy. The prominent teachers, too, that have come from
abroad have been trained in the German school, whatever their
nationality. The growth of a national school has been necessarily
slow, therefore, for its necessary and complete submission to German
influences.
It has been further delayed by the meagre native encouragement to
effort of the better sort. The populace has been largely
indifferent,--the inertia of all large bodies would explain that. A
national, a constructive, and collaborative criticism has been
conspicuously absent.
The leaders of orchestras have also offered an almost insurmountable
obstacle to the production of any work from an American hand until
very recently. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has been a noble
exception to this rule, and has given about the only opening possible
to the native writer. The Chicago Orchestra, in eight seasons under
Theodore Thomas, devoted, out of a total of 925 numbers, only
eighteen, or something less than two per cent., to native music. Yet
time shows a gradual improvement, and in 1899, out of twenty-seven
orchestral numbers performed, three were by Americans, which makes a
liberal tithe. The Boston Symphony has played the compositions of John
Knowles Paine alone more than eighteen times, and those of George W.
Chadwick the same number, while E.A. MacDowell and Arthur Foote each
appeared on the programs fourteen times. The Kaltenborn Orchestra has
made an active effort at the promulgation of our music, and especial
honor is due to Frank Van der Stucken, himself a composer of marked
abilities; he was among the first to give orchestral production to
American works, and he was, perhaps, the very first to introduce
American orchestral work abroad. Like his offices, in spirit and
effect, have been the invaluable services of our most eminent pianist,
Wm. H. Sherwood, who was for many years the only prominent performer
of American piano compositions.
Public singers also have been most unpatriotic in preferring endless
repetition of dry foreign arias to fresh compositions from home. The
little encore song, which generally appeared anonymously, was the
opening wedge for the American lyrist.
Upon the horizon of this gloom, however, there is a tremor of a
dawning interest in national music. Large vocal societies are giving
an increasing number of native part songs and cantatas; prizes are
being awarded in various places, and composers find some financial
encouragement for appearing in concerts of their own work. Manuscript
societies are organized in many of the larger cities, and these clubs
offer hearing to novelty. There have latterly appeared, from various
publishers, special catalogues vaunting the large number of American
composers represented on their lists.
Another, and a most important sign of the growing influence of music
upon American life, is seen in the place it is gaining in the college
curriculum; new chairs have been established, and prominent composers
called to fill them, or old professorships that held merely nominal
places in the catalogue have been enlarged in scope. In this way music
is reëstablishing itself in something like its ancient glory; for the
Greeks not only grouped all culture under the general term of
"Music," but gave voice and instrument a vital place in education.
Three of our most prominent composers fill the chairs at three of the
most important universities. In all these cases, however, music is an
elective study, while the rudiments of the art should, I am convinced,
be a required study in every college curriculum, and in the common
schools as well.
Assuming then, for the nonce, the birth--we are too new a country to
speak of a Renascence--of a large interest in national music, there is
large disappointment in many quarters, because our American music is
not more American. I have argued above that a race transplanted from
other soils must still retain most of the old modes of expression, or,
varying them, change slowly. But many who excuse us for the present
lack of a natural nationalism, are so eager for such a differentiation
that they would have us borrow what we cannot breed.
The folk-music of the negro slaves is most frequently mentioned as the
right foundation for a strictly American school. A somewhat
misunderstood statement advanced by Dr. Antonin Dvôrák, brought this
idea into general prominence, though it had been discussed by American
composers, and made use of in compositions of all grades long before
he came here.
The vital objection, however, to the general adoption of negro music
as a base for an American school of composition is that it is in no
sense a national expression. It is not even a sectional expression,
for the white Southerners among whose slaves this music grew, as well
as the people of the North, have always looked upon negro music as an
exotic and curious thing. Familiar as it is to us, it is yet as
foreign a music as any Tyrolean jodel or Hungarian czardas.
The music of the American Indian, often strangely beautiful and
impressive, would be as reasonably chosen as that of these imported
Africs. E.A. MacDowell had, indeed, written a picturesque and
impressive Indian suite, some time before the Dvôrákian invasion. He
asserts that the Indian music is preferable to the Ethiopian, because
its sturdiness and force are more congenial with the national mood.
But the true hope for a national spirit in American music surely lies,
not in the arbitrary seizure of some musical dialect, but in the
development of just such a quality as gives us an individuality among
the nations of the world in respect to our character as a people; and
that is a Cosmopolitanism made up of elements from all the world, and
yet, in its unified qualities, unlike any one element. Thus our music
should, and undoubtedly will, be the gathering into the spirit of the
voices of all the nations, and the use of all their expressions in an
assimilated, a personal, a spontaneous manner. This need not, by any
means, be a dry, academic eclecticism. The Yankee, a composite of all
peoples, yet differs from them all, and owns a sturdy individuality.
His music must follow the same fate.
As our governmental theories are the outgrowth of the experiments and
experiences of all previous history, why should not our music, voicing
as it must the passions of a cosmopolitan people, use cosmopolitan
expressions? The main thing is the individuality of each artist. To be
a citizen of the world, provided one is yet spontaneous and sincere
and original, is the best thing. The whole is greater than any of its
parts.
Along just these lines of individualized cosmopolitanism the American
school is working out its identity. Some of our composers have shown
themselves the heirs of European lore by work of true excellence in
the larger classic and romantic forms.
The complaint might be made, indeed, that the empty, incorrect period
of previous American music has given place to too much correctness and
too close formation on the old models. This is undoubtedly the result
of the long and faithful discipleship under German methods, and need
not be made much of in view of the tendency among a few masters toward
original expression. For, after all, even in the heyday of the
greatest art periods, only a handful of artists have ever stood out as
strongly individual; the rest have done good work as faithful
imitators and past masters in technic. It is, then, fortunate that
there is any tendency at all among any of our composers to forsake
academic content with classical forms and text-book development of
ideas.
Two things, however, are matters for very serious disappointment: the
surprising paucity of musical composition displaying the national
sense of humor, and the surprising abundance of purest namby-pamby.
The presence of the latter class might be explained by the absence of
the former, for namby-pamby cannot exist along with a healthy sense
of the ludicrous. There has been a persistent craze among native
song-writers for little flower-dramas and bird-tragedies, which,
aiming at exquisiteness, fall far short of that dangerous goal and
land in flagrant silliness. This weakness, however, will surely
disappear in time, or at least diminish, until it holds no more
prominent place than it does in all the foreign schools, where it
exists to a certain extent.
The scherzo, however, must grow in favor. It is impossible that the
most jocose of races, a nation that has given the world an original
school of humor, should not carry this spirit over into its music. And
yet almost none of the comparatively few scherzos that have been
written here have had any sense of the hilarious jollity that makes
Beethoven's wit side-shaking. They have been rather of the Chopinesque
sort, mere fantasy. To the composers deserving this generalization I
recall only two important exceptions, Edgar S. Kelley and Harvey
Worthington Loomis.
The opportunities before the American composer are enormous, and only
half appreciated. Whereas, in other arts, the text-book claims only to
be a chronicle of what has been done before, in music the text-book is
set up as the very gospel and decalogue of the art. The theorists have
so thoroughly mapped out the legitimate resources of the composer, and
have so prescribed his course in nearly every possible position, that
music is made almost more of a mathematical problem than the free
expression of emotions and æsthetics. "Correct" music has now hardly
more liberty than Egyptian sculpture or Byzantine painting once had.
Certain dissonances are permitted, and certain others, no more
dissonant, forbidden, quite arbitrarily, or on hair-splitting
theories. It is as if one should write down in a book a number of
charts, giving every scheme of color and every juxtaposition of values
permissible to a painter. The music of certain Oriental nations, in
which the religious orders are the art censors, has stuck fast in its
rut because of the observance of rules purely arbitrary. Many of the
conventions of modern European music are no more scientific or
original or consistent; most of them are based upon the principle that
the whim of a great dead composer is worthy to be the law of any
living composer. These Blue Laws of music are constantly assailed
surreptitiously and in detail; and yet they are too little attacked as
a whole. But music should be a democracy and not an aristocracy, or,
still less, a hierarchy.
There is a great opportunity for America to carry its political
principles into this youngest of the arts. It is a gratifying sign
that one of the most prominent theorists of the time, an American
scholar, A.J. Goodrich, is adopting some such attitude toward music.
He carries dogma to the minimum, and accepts success in the individual
instance as sufficient authority for overstepping any general
principle. He refers to a contemporary American composer for authority
and example of some successful unconventionality with the same respect
with which he would quote a European's disregard of convention. His
pioneering is watched with interest abroad as well as here.
Worthy of mention along with Mr. Goodrich' original work is the effort
of Homer A. Norris to instil French ideas of musical theory. As a
counterweight to the German monopoly of our attention, his influence
is to be cordially welcomed.
Now that Americanism is rife in the land, some of the glowing interest
in things national might well be turned toward an art that has been
too much and too long neglected among us.
The time has come to take American music seriously. The day for
boasting is not yet here,--if indeed it ever comes; but the day of
penitent humility is surely past.
A student of the times, Mr. E.S. Martin, shortly before the Spanish
War, commented on the radical change that had come over the spirit of
American self-regard. We were notorious in the earlier half of the
century for boasting, not only of the virtues we indubitably had, but
of qualities that existed solely in our own imagination. We sounded
our barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. A century of almost
unanimous European disapproval, particularly of our artistic estate,
finally converted us from this attitude to one of deprecation almost
abject. Having learned the habit of modesty, it has clung to us even
now, when some of the foremost artists in the world are Americans.
Modesty, is, of course, one of the most beautiful of the virtues, but
excess is possible and dangerous. As Shakespeare's Florio's Montaigne
has it: "We may so seize on vertue, that if we embrace it with an
over-greedy and violent desire, it may become vitious." In the case of
the American composer it is certainly true that we "excessively
demeane ourselves in a good action." If, then, the glory of our late
successes in the field of battle shall bring about a recrudescence of
our old vanity, it will at least have its compensations.
Meanwhile, the American artist, having long ago ceased to credit
himself with all the virtues, has been for years earnestly working out
his own salvation in that spirit of solemn determination which makes
it proverbial for the American to get anything he sets his heart on.
He has submitted himself to a devout study of the Old Masters and the
New; he has made pilgrimage after pilgrimage to the ancient temples of
art, and has brought home influences that cannot but work for good.
The American painter has won more European acceptance than any of our
other artists, though this is partly due to his persistence in
knocking at the doors of the Paris salons, and gaining the universal
prestige of admission there. There is, unfortunately, no such place
to focus the attention of the world on a musician. Yet, through the
success of American musical students among their rivals abroad;
through the concerts they are giving more and more frequently in
foreign countries; through the fact that a number of European music
houses are publishing increasing quantities of American compositions,
he is making his way to foreign esteem almost more rapidly than at
home.
A prominent German critic, indeed, has recently put himself on record
as accepting the founding of an American school of music as a _fait
accompli_. And no student of the times, who will take the trouble to
seek the sources of our art, and observe its actual vitality, need be
ashamed of looking at the present state of music in America with a
substantial pride and a greater hope for the future.
CHAPTER II.
THE INNOVATORS.
_Edward Alexander MacDowell._
[Illustration: Autograph of Edward MacDowell]
The matter of precedence in creative art is as hopeless of solution as
it is unimportant. And yet it seems appropriate to say, in writing of
E.A. MacDowell, that an almost unanimous vote would grant him rank as
the greatest of American composers, while not a few ballots would
indicate him as the best of living music writers.
But this, to repeat, is not vital, the main thing being that MacDowell
has a distinct and impressive individuality, and uses his profound
scholarship in the pursuit of novelty that is not cheaply sensational,
and is yet novelty. He has, for instance, theories as to the textures
of sounds, and his chord-formations and progressions are quite his
own.
His compositions are superb processions, in which each participant is
got up with the utmost personal splendor. His generalship is great
enough to preserve the unity and the progress of the pageant. With him
no note in the melody is allowed to go neglected, ill-mounted on
common chords in the bass, or cheap-garbed in trite triads. Each tone
is made to suggest something of its multitudinous possibilities.
Through any geometrical point, an infinite number of lines can be
drawn. This is almost the case with any note of a melody. It is the
recognition and the practice of this truth that gives the latter-day
schools of music such a lusciousness and warmth of harmony. No one is
a more earnest student of these effects than MacDowell.
He believes that it is necessary, at this late day, if you would have
a chord "bite," to put a trace of acid in its sweetness. With this
clue in mind, his unusual procedures become more explicable without
losing their charm.
New York is rather the Mecca than the birthplace of artists, but it
can boast the nativity of MacDowell, who improvised his first songs
here December 18, 1861. He began the study of the piano at an early
age. One of his teachers was Mme. Teresa Carreño, to whom he has
dedicated his second concerto for the piano.
In 1876 he went to Paris and entered the Conservatoire, where he
studied theory under Savard, and the piano under Marmontel. He went to
Wiesbaden to study with Ehlert in 1879, and then to Frankfort, where
Carl Heyman taught him piano and Joachim Raff composition. The
influence of Raff is of the utmost importance in MacDowell's music,
and I have been told that the great romancist made a _protégé_ of him,
and would lock him in a room for hours till he had worked out the most
appalling musical problems. Through Raff's influence he became first
piano teacher at the Darmstadt Conservatorium in 1881. The next year
Raff introduced him to Liszt, who became so enthusiastic over his
compositions that he got him the honor of playing his first piano
suite before the formidable _Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik Verein_,
which accorded him a warm reception. The following years were spent in
successful concert work, till 1884, when MacDowell settled down to
teaching and composing in Wiesbaden. Four years later he came to
Boston, writing, teaching, and giving occasional concerts. Thence he
returned to New York, where he was called to the professorship of
music at Columbia University. Princeton University has given him that
unmusical degree, Mus. Doc.
MacDowell has met little or none of that critical recalcitrance that
blocked the early success of so many masters. His works succeeded from
the first in winning serious favor; they have been much played in
Germany, in Vienna, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, and Paris, one of them
having been performed three times in a single season at Breslau.
MacDowell's Scotch ancestry is always telling tales on him. The
"Scotch snap" is a constant rhythmic device, the old scale and the old
Scottish cadences seem to be native to his heart. Perhaps one might
find some kinship between MacDowell and the contemporary Glasgow
school of painters, that clique so isolated, so daring, and yet so
earnest and solid. Says James Huneker in a monograph published some
years ago: "His coloring reminds me at times of Grieg, but when I
tracked the resemblance to its lair, I found only Scotch, as Grieg's
grand-folk were Greggs, and from Scotland. It is all Northern music
with something elemental in it, and absolutely free from the heavy,
languorous odors of the South or the morbidezza of Poland."
Some of MacDowell's most direct writing has been in the setting of the
poems of Burns, such as "Deserted" ("Ye banks and braes o' bonnie
Doon," op. 9), "Menie," and "My Jean" (op. 34). These are strongly
marked by that ineffably fine melodic flavor characteristic of
Scottish music, while in the accompaniments they admit a touch of the
composer's own individuality. In his accompaniments it is noteworthy
that he is almost never strictly contramelodic.
The songs of opera 11 and 12 have a decided Teutonism, but he has
found himself by opus 40, a volume of "Six Love Songs," containing
half a dozen flawless gems it is a pity the public should not know
more widely. A later book, "Eight Songs" (op. 47), is also a cluster
of worthies. The lilt and sympathy of "The Robin Sings in the
Apple-tree," and its unobtrusive new harmonies and novel effects, in
strange accord with truth of expression, mark all the other songs,
particularly the "Midsummer Lullaby," with its accompaniment as
delicately tinted as summer clouds. Especially noble is "The Sea,"
which has all the boom and roll of the deep-brooding ocean.
His collections of flower-songs (op. 26) I confess not liking. Though
they are not without a certain exquisiteness, they seem overdainty
and wastefully frail, excepting, possibly, the "Clover" and the
"Blue-bell." It is not at all their brevity, but their triviality,
that vexes an admirer of the large ability that labored over them.
They are dedicated to Emilio Agramonte, one of MacDowell's first
prophets, and one of the earliest and most active agents for the
recognition of the American composer.
In the lyrics in opus 56 and opus 58 MacDowell has turned song to the
unusual purposes of a landscape impressionism of places and moods
rather than people.
For men's voices there are some deftly composed numbers curiously
devoted to lullaby subjects. The barcarolle for mixed chorus and
accompaniment on the piano for four hands obtains a wealth of color,
enhanced by the constant division of the voices.
Studying as he did with Raff, it is but natural that MacDowell should
have been influenced strongly toward the poetic and fantastic and
programmatic elements that mark the "Forest Symphony" and the "Lenore
Overture" of his master.
It is hard to say just how far this descriptive music can go. The
skill of each composer must dictate his own limits. As an example of
successful pieces of this kind, consider MacDowell's "The Eagle." It
is the musical realization of Tennyson's well-known poem:
"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."
Of course the crag and the crooked hands and the azure world must be
granted the composer, but general exaltation and loneliness are
expressed in the severe melody of the opening. The wrinkling and
crawling of the sea far below are splendidly achieved in the soft,
shimmering liquidity of the music. Then there are two abrupt, but
soft, short chords that will represent, to the imaginative, the quick
fixing of the eagle's heart on some prey beneath; and there follows a
sudden precipitation down the keyboard, _fortississimo_, that
represents the thunderous swoop of the eagle with startling effect.
On the other hand, the "Moonshine" seems to be attempting too much.
"Winter" does better, for it has a freezing stream, a mill-wheel, and
a "widow bird." These "four little poems" of opus 32 had been preceded
by six fine "Idylls" based on lyrics of Goethe's. The first, a forest
scene, has a distinct flavor of the woods, the second is all laziness
and drowsiness, and the third is moonlight mystery. The fourth is as
intense in its suppressed spring ecstasy as the radiant poem itself
singing how
"Soft the ripples spill and hurry
To the opulent embankment."
The six short "Poems" (op. 31) based on poems of Heine's are
particularly successful, especially in the excellent opportunity of
the lyric describing the wail of the Scottish woman who plays her harp
on the cliff, and sings above the raging of sea and wind. The third
catches most happily the whimsicality of the poet's reminiscences of
childhood, but hardly, I think, the contrasting depth and wildness of
his complaint that, along with childhood's games, have vanished Faith
and Love and Truth. In the last, however, the cheery majesty that
realizes Heine's likening of Death to a cool night after the sultry
day of Life, is superb.
Then there are some four-hand pieces, two collections, that leave no
excuse for clinging to the hackneyed classics or modern trash. They
are not at all difficult, and the second player has something to
employ his mind besides accompanying chords. They are meaty, and
effective almost to the point of catchiness. The "Tale of the Knights"
is full of chivalric fire and martial swing, while the "Ballad" is as
exquisitely dainty as a peach-blossom. The "Hindoo Maiden" has a deal
of the thoroughly Oriental color and feeling that distinguish the
three solos of "Les Orientales," of which "Clair de Lune" is one of
his most original and graceful writings. The duet, "In Tyrol," has a
wonderful crystal carillon and a quaint shepherd piping a faint
reminiscence of the Wagnerian school of shepherds. This is one of a
series of "Moon Pictures" for four hands, based on Hans Christian
Andersen's lore. Two concertos for piano and orchestra are dazzling
feats of virtuosity; one of them is reviewed at length in A.J.
Goodrich' book, "Musical Analysis." He has written also a book of
artistic moment called "Twelve Virtuoso-Studies," and two books of
actual gymnastics for piano practice.
[Music: CLAIR DE LUNE.
La lune était sereine et jouait sur les flots.
La fenêtre enfin libre est ouverte à la brise;
La sultane regarde, et la mer qui se brise,
Là-bas, d'un flot d'argent brode les noir îlots.
(Victor Hugo, "Les Orientales.")
E.A. MACDOWELL, Op. 37, No. 1.
Copyright, 1889, Arthur P. Schmidt.]
But MacDowell did not reach his freedom without a struggle against
academia. His opus 10 is a piano suite published at the age of
twenty-two, and opus 14 is another; both contain such obsolescences as
a presto, fugue, scherzino, and the like. But for all the classic
garb, the hands are the hands of Esau. In one of the pieces there is
even a motto tucked, "All hope leave ye behind who enter here!" Can he
have referred to the limbo of classicism?
It is a far cry from these to the liberality that inspired the new
impressionism of "Woodland Sketches" (op. 51) and "Sea Pieces" (op.
55), in which he gives a legitimate musical presentation of a faintly
perfumed "Wild Rose" or "Water Lily," but goes farther, and paints,
with wonderful tone, the moods inspired by reverie upon the uncouth
dignity and stoic savagery of "An Indian Lodge," the lonely New
England twilight of "A Deserted Farm," and all the changing humors of
the sea, majesty of sunset or star-rise, and even the lucent emerald
of an iceberg. His "From Uncle Remus" is not so successful; indeed,
MacDowell is not sympathetic with negro music, and thinks that if we
are to found a national school on some local manner, we should find
the Indian more congenial than the lazy, sensual slave.
He has carried this belief into action, not only by his scientific
interest in the collection and compilation of the folk-music of our
prairies, but by his artistic use of actual Indian themes in one of
his most important works, his "Indian Suite" for full orchestra, a
work that has been often performed, and always with the effect of a
new and profound sensation, particularly in the case of the deeply
impressive dirge.
A proof of the success of MacDowell as a writer in the large forms is
the fact that practically all of his orchestral works are published
in Germany and here, not only in full score, but in arrangement for
four hands. They include "Hamlet;" "Ophelia" (op. 22); "Launcelot and
Elaine" (op. 26), with its strangely mellow and varied use of horns
for Launcelot, and the entrusting of the plaintive fate of "the lily
maid of Astolat" to the string and wood-wind choirs; "The Saracens"
and "The Lovely Alda" (op. 30), two fragments from the Song of Roland;
and the Suite (op. 42), which has been played at least eight times in
Germany and eleven times here.
The first movement of this last is called "In a Haunted Forest." You
are reminded of Siegfried by the very name of the thing, and the music
enforces the remembrance somewhat, though very slightly.
Everything reminds one of Wagner nowadays,--even his predecessors.
Rudyard Kipling has by his individuality so copyrighted one of the
oldest verse-forms, the ballad, that even "Chevy Chace" looks like an
advance plagiarism. So it is with Wagner. Almost all later music, and
much of the earlier, sounds Wagnerian. But MacDowell has been reminded
of Bayreuth very infrequently in this work. The opening movement
begins with a _sotto voce_ syncopation that is very presentative of
the curious audible silence of a forest. The wilder moments are
superbly instrumented.
The second movement, "Summer Idyl," is delicious, particularly in the
chances it gives the flautist. There is a fragmentary cantilena which
would make the fortune of a comic opera. The third number, "In
October," is particularly welcome in our music, which is strangely and
sadly lacking in humor. There is fascinating wit throughout this
harvest revel. "The Shepherdess' Song" is the fourth movement. It is
not précieuse, and it is not banal; but its simplicity of pathos is a
whit too simple. The final number, "Forest Spirits," is a brilliant
climax. The Suite as a whole is an important work. It has detail of
the most charming art. Best of all, it is staunchly individual. It is
MacDowellian.
While the modern piano sonata is to me anathema as a rule, there are
none of MacDowell's works that I like better than his writings in this
form. They are to me far the best since Beethoven, not excepting even
Chopin's (_pace_ his greatest prophet, Huneker). They seem to me to be
of such stuff as Beethoven would have woven had he known in fact the
modern piano he saw in fancy.
The "Sonata Tragica" (op. 45) begins in G minor, with a bigly
passionate, slow introduction (metronomed in the composer's copy,
[quarter-note]-50). The first subject is marked in the same copy,
though not in the printed book, [half-note]-69, and the appealingly
pathetic second subject is a little slower. The free fantasy is full
of storm and stress, with a fierce pedal-point on the trilled
leading-tone. In the reprise the second subject, which was at first in
the dominant major, is now in the tonic major, though the key of the
sonata is G minor. The allegro is metronomed [quarter-note]-138, and
it is very short and very wild. Throughout, the grief is the grief of
a strong soul; it never degenerates into whine. Its largo is like the
tread of an Æschylean _choros_, its allegro movements are wild with
anguish, and the occasional uplifting into the major only emphasizes
the sombre whole, like the little rifts of clearer harmony in
Beethoven's "Funeral March on the Death of a Hero."
The last movement begins with a ringing _pomposo_, and I cannot
explain its meaning better than by quoting Mrs. MacDowell's words:
"Mr. MacDowell's idea was, so to speak, as follows: He wished to
heighten the darkness of tragedy by making it follow closely on the
heels of triumph. Therefore, he attempted to make the last movement a
steadily progressive triumph, which, at its climax, is utterly broken
and shattered. In doing this he has tried to epitomize the whole work.
While in the other movements he aimed at expressing tragic details,
in the last he has tried to generalize; thinking that the most
poignant tragedy is that of catastrophe in the hour of triumph."
The third sonata (op. 57) is dedicated to Grieg and to the musical
exploitation of an old-time Skald reciting glorious battles, loves,
and deaths in an ancient castle. The atmosphere of mystery and
barbaric grandeur is obtained and sustained by means new to piano
literature and potent in color and vigor. The sonata formula is warped
to the purpose of the poet, but the themes have the classic ideal of
kinship. The battle-power of the work is tremendous. Huneker calls it
"an epic of rainbow and thunder," and Henry T. Finck, who has for many
years devoted a part of his large ardor to MacDowell's cause, says of
the work: "It is MacDowellish,--more MacDowellish than anything he has
yet written. It is the work of a musical thinker. There are harmonies
as novel as those we encounter in Schubert, Chopin, or Grieg, yet with
a stamp of their own."
The "Sonata Eroica" (op. 50) bears the legend "Flos regum Arthurus."
It is also in G minor. The spirit of King Arthur dominates the work
ideally, and justifies not only the ferocious and warlike first
subject with its peculiar and influential rhythm, but the
old-fashioned and unadorned folk-tone of the second subject. In the
working out there is much bustle and much business of trumpets. In the
reprise the folk-song appears in the tonic minor, taken most
unconventionally in the bass under elaborate arpeggiations in the
right hand. The coda, as in the other sonata, is simply a strong
passage of climax. Arthur's supernatural nature doubtless suggested
the second movement, with its elfin airs, its flibbertigibbet
virtuosity, and its magic of color. The third movement might have been
inspired by Tennyson's version of Arthur's farewell to Guinevere, it
is such a rich fabric of grief. The finale seems to me to picture the
Morte d'Arthur, beginning with the fury of a storm along the coast,
and the battle "on the waste sand by the waste sea." Moments of fire
are succeeded by exquisite deeps of quietude, and the death and
apotheosis of Arthur are hinted with daring and complete equivalence
of art with need.
Here is no longer the tinkle and swirl of the elf dances; here is no
more of the tireless search for novelty in movement and color. This is
"a flash of the soul that can." Here is Beethoven _redivivus_. For
half a century we have had so much pioneering and scientific
exploration after piano color and tenderness and fire, that men have
neglected its might and its tragic powers. Where is the piano-piece
since Beethoven that has the depth, the breadth, the height of this
huge solemnity? Chopin's sensuous wailing does not afford it.
Schumann's complex eccentricities have not given it out. Brahms is too
passionless. Wagner neglected the piano. It remained for a Yankee to
find the austere peak again! and that, too, when the sonata was
supposed to be a form as exhausted as the epic poem. But all this is
the praise that one is laughed at for bestowing except on the graves
of genius.
The cautious Ben Jonson, when his erstwhile taproom roisterer, Will
Shakespeare, was dead, defied "insolent Greece or haughty Rome" to
show his superior. With such authority, I feel safe in at least
defying the contemporary schools of insolent Russia or haughty Germany
to send forth a better musicwright than our fellow townsman, Edward
MacDowell.
_Edgar Stillman Kelley._
[Illustration: EDGAR STILLMAN KELLEY.]
While his name is known wherever American music is known in its better
aspects, yet, like many another American, his real art can be
discovered only from his manuscripts. In these he shows a very
munificence of enthusiasm, scholarship, invention, humor, and
originality.
[Illustration: Autograph of Edgar Stillman Kelley]
Kelley is as thorough an American by descent as one could ask for, his
maternal ancestors having settled in this country in 1630, his
paternal progenitors in 1640, A.D. Indeed, one of the ancestors of
his father made the dies for the pine-tree shilling, and a
great-great-grandfather fought in the Revolution.
Kelley began his terrestrial career April 14, 1857, in Wisconsin. His
father was a revenue officer; his mother a skilled musician, who
taught him the piano from his eighth year to his seventeenth, when he
went to Chicago and studied harmony and counterpoint under Clarence
Eddy, and the piano under Ledochowski. It is interesting to note that
Kelley was diverted into music from painting by hearing "Blind Tom"
play Liszt's transcription of Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream"
music. I imagine that this idiot-genius had very little other
influence of this sort in his picturesque career.
After two years in Chicago, Kelley went to Germany, where, in
Stuttgart, he studied the piano with Kruger and Speidel, organ with
Finck, composition and orchestration with Seiffritz. While in Germany,
Kelley wrote a brilliant and highly successful concert polonaise for
four hands, and a composition for strings.
In 1880 he was back in America and settled in San Francisco, with
whose musical life he was long and prominently identified as a
teacher and critic. Here he wrote his first large work, the well-known
melodramatic music to "Macbeth." A local benefactor, John Parrot, paid
the expenses of a public performance, the great success of which
persuaded McKee Rankin, the actor, to make an elaborate production of
both play and music. This ran for three weeks in San Francisco to
crowded houses, which is a remarkable record for many reasons. A
shabby New York production at an ill-chosen theatre failed to give the
work an advantageous hearing; but it has been played by orchestras
several times since, and William H. Sherwood has made transcriptions
of parts of it for piano solo.
The "Macbeth" music is of such solid value that it reaches the dignity
of a flowing commentary. Beyond and above this it is an interpretation,
making vivid and awesome the deep import of the play, till even the
least imaginative auditor must feel its thrill.
Thus the gathering of the witches begins with a slow horror, which is
surely Shakespeare's idea, and not the comic-opera _can-can_ it is
frequently made. As various other elfs and terrors appear, they are
appropriately characterized in the music, which also adds mightily to
the terror of the murder scene. Throughout, the work is that of a
thinker. Like much of Kelley's other music, it is also the work of a
fearless and skilled programmatist, especially in the battle-scenes,
where it suggests the crash of maces and swords, and the blare of
horns, the galloping of horses, and the general din of huge battle.
Leading-motives are much used, too, with good effect and most
ingenious elaboration, notably the _Banquo_ motive. A certain amount
of Gaelic color also adds interest to the work, particularly a
stirring Gaelic march. The orchestration shows both scholarship and
daring.
An interesting subject is suggested by Kelley's experience in hunting
out a good motif for the galloping horses of "Macbeth." He could find
nothing suitably representative of storm-hoofed chargers till his
dreams came to the rescue with a genuinely inspired theme. Several
other exquisite ideas have come to him in his sleep in this way; one
of them is set down in the facsimile reproduced herewith. On one
occasion he even dreamed an original German poem and a fitting musical
setting.
Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, in his book on "Sleep and Its Derangements," is
inclined to scout the possibility of a really valuable inspiration in
sleep. He finds no satisfactory explanation for Tartini's famous
"Devil's Sonata" or Coleridge' proverbial "Kubla Khan." He takes
refuge in saying that at least the result could not be equal to the
dreamer's capabilities when awake; but Kelley's "Macbeth" music was
certainly an improvement on what he could invent out of the land of
Nod.
After composing a comic opera, which was refused by the man for whom
it was written because it was too good, he drifted into journalism,
and wrote reviews and critiques which show a very liberal mind capable
of appreciating things both modern and classic.
Kelley was again persuaded to write a comic opera to the artistic
libretto, "Puritania," by C.M.S. McLellan, a brilliant satirist,
who has since won fortune by his highly successful and frequently
artistic burlesquery. The work won excellent praise in Boston, where
it had one hundred performances. The work musically was not only
conscientious, but really graceful and captivating. It received the
most glowing encomiums from people of musical culture, and largely
enhanced Kelley's musical reputation in its run of something over a
year. On its tour Kelley was also the musical conductor, in which
capacity he has frequently served elsewhere.
Kelley plainly deserves preëminence among American composers for his
devotion to, and skill in, the finer sorts of humorous music. No other
American has written so artfully, so happily, or so ambitiously in
this field. A humorous symphony and a Chinese suite are his largest
works on this order.
The symphony follows the life of "Gulliver in Lilliput." In
development and intertwining of themes and in brilliance of
orchestration, it maintains symphonic dignity, while in play of fancy,
suggestive programmaticism, and rollicking enthusiasm it is infectious
with wit. Gulliver himself is richly characterized with a burly,
blustering English theme. The storm that throws him on the shores of
Lilliput is handled with complete mastery, certain phrases picturing
the toss of the billows, another the great roll of the boat, others
the rattle of the rigging and the panic of the crew; and all wrought
up to a demoniac climax at the wreck. As the stranded Gulliver falls
asleep, the music hints his nodding off graphically. The entrance of
the Lilliputians is perhaps the happiest bit of the whole delicious
work. By adroit devices in instrumentation, their tiny band toots a
minute national hymn of irresistible drollery. The sound of their wee
hammers and the rest of the ludicrous adventures are carried off in
unfailing good humor. The scene finally changes to the rescuing ship.
Here a most hilarious hornpipe is interrupted by the distant call of
Gulliver's aria, and the rescue is consummated delightfully.
In nothing has Kelley showed such wanton scholarship and such
free-reined fancy as in his Chinese suite for orchestra, "Aladdin." It
is certainly one of the most brilliant musical feats of the
generation, and rivals Richard Strauss in orchestral virtuosity.
While in San Francisco, where, as every one knows, there is a
transplanted corner of China, Kelley sat at the feet of certain
Celestial cacophonists, and made himself adept. He fathomed the, to
us, obscure laws of their theory, and for this work made a careful
selection of Chinese musical ideas, and used what little harmony they
approve of with most quaint and suggestive effect upon a splendid
background of his own. The result has not been, as is usual in such
alien mimicries, a mere success of curiosity.
The work had its first accolade of genius in the wild protests of the
music copyists, and in the downright mutiny of orchestral performers.
On the first page of the score is this note: "This should be played
with a bow unscrewed, so that the hairs hang loose--thus the bow never
leaves the string." This direction is evidently meant to secure the
effect of the Chinese violin, in which the string passes between the
hair and the wood of the bow, and is played upon the under side. But
what self-respecting violinist could endure such profanation without
striking a blow for his fanes?
The first movement of the suite is made up of themes actually learned
from Chinese musicians. It represents the "Wedding of Aladdin and the
Princess," a sort of sublimated "shivaree" in which oboes quawk, muted
trumpets bray, pizzicato strings flutter, and mandolins (loved of
Berlioz) twitter hilariously.
The second movement, "A Serenade in the Royal Pear Garden," begins
with a luxurious tone-poem of moonlight and shadow, out of which,
after a preliminary tuning of the Chinese lute (or sam-yin), wails a
lyric caterwaul (alternately in 2-4 and 3-4 tempo) which the Chinese
translate as a love-song. Its amorous grotesque at length subsides
into the majestic night. A part of this altogether fascinating
movement came to Kelley in a dream.
The third chapter is devoted to the "Flight of the Genie with the
Palace," and there is a wonderfully vivid suggestion of his struggle
to wrest loose the foundations of the building. At length he heaves it
slowly in the air, and wings majestically away with it.
It has always seemed to me that the purest stroke of genius in
instrumentation ever evinced was Wagner's conceit of using tinkling
bells to suggest leaping flames. And yet quite comparable with this
seems Kelley's device to indicate the oarage of the genie's mighty
wings as he disappears into the sky: liquid _glissandos_ on the upper
harp-strings, with chromatic runs upon the elaborately divided
violins, at length changed to sustained and most ethereally fluty
harmonics. It is very ravishment.
The last movement, "The Return and Feast of the Lanterns," is on the
sonata formula. After an introduction typifying the opening of the
temple gates (a gong giving the music further locale), the first theme
is announced by harp and mandolin. It is an ancient Chinese air for
the yong-kim (a dulcimer-like instrument). The second subject is
adapted from the serenade theme. With these two smuggled themes
everything contrapuntal (a fugue included) and instrumental is done
that technical bravado could suggest or true art license. The result
is a carnival of technic that compels the layman to wonder and the
scholar to homage.
A transcription for a piano duet has been made of this last movement.
In Chinese-tone also is Kelley's most popular song, "The Lady Picking
Mulberries," which brought him not only the enthusiasm of Americans
but the high commendation of the Chinese themselves. It is written in
the limited Chinese scale, with harmonies of our school; and is a
humoresque of such catchiness that it has pervaded even London and
Paris.
This song is one of a series of six lyrics called "The Phases of
Love," with this motive from the "Anatomy of Melancholy": "I am
resolved, therefore, in this tragi-comedy of love, to act several
parts, some satirically, some comically, some in a mixed tone." The
poems are all by American poets, and the group, opus 6, is an
invaluable addition to our musical literature. The first of the
series, "My Silent Song," is a radiantly beautiful work, with a
wondrous tender air to a rapturous accompaniment. The second is a
setting of Edward Rowland Sill's perfect little poem, "Love's Fillet."
The song is as full of art as it is of feeling and influence. "What
the Man in the Moon Saw" is an engaging satire, "Love and Sleep" is
sombre, and "In a Garden" is pathetic.
Besides two small sketches, a waltz and a gavotte, and his own
arrangements, for two and for four hands, of the Gaelic March in
"Macbeth," Kelley has published only three piano pieces: opus 2, "The
Flower Seekers," superb with grace, warm harmony, and May ecstasies;
"Confluentia," whose threads of liquidity are eruditely, yet
romantically, intertangled to represent the confluence of the Rhine
and the Moselle; and "The Headless Horseman," a masterpiece of
burlesque weirdness, representing the wild pursuit of Ichabod Crane
and the final hurling of the awful head,--a pumpkin, some say. It is
relieved by Ichabod's tender reminiscences of Katrina Van Tassel at
the spinning-wheel, and is dedicated to Joseffy, the pianist, who
lives in the region about Sleepy Hollow.
To supplement his successful, humorously melodramatic setting of "The
Little Old Woman who Went to the Market her Eggs for to Sell," Kelley
is preparing a series of similar pieces called "Tales Retold for
Musical Children." It will include "Gulliver," "Aladdin," and "Beauty
and the Beast."
Kelley once wrote music for an adaptation of "Prometheus Bound," made
by the late George Parsons Lathrop for that ill-starred experiment,
the Theatre of Arts and Letters. The same thoroughness of research
that gave Kelley such a command of Chinese theories equipped him in
what knowledge we have of Greek and the other ancient music. He has
delivered a course of lectures on these subjects, and this learning
was put to good and public use in his share in the staging of the
novel "Ben Hur." His music had a vital part in carrying the play over
the thin ice of sacrilege; it was so reverent and so appealing that
the scrubwomen in the theatre were actually moved to tears during its
rehearsal, and it gave the scene of the miraculous cure of the lepers
a dignity that saved it from either ridicule or reproach.
In the first act there is a suggestion of the slow, soft march of a
caravan across the sand, the eleven-toned Greek and Egyptian scale
being used. In the tent of the Sheik, an old Arabian scale is
employed. In the elaborate ballets and revels in the "Grove of Daphne"
the use of Greek scales, Greek progressions (such as descending
parallel fourths long forbidden by the doctors of our era), a
trimetrical grouping of measures (instead of our customary fourfold
basis), and a suggestion of Hellenic instruments,--all this lore has
not robbed the scene in any sense of an irresistible brilliance and
spontaneity. The weaving of Arachne's web is pictured with especial
power. Greek traditions have, of course, been used only for
occasional impressionisms, and not as manacles. Elaborately colored
modern instrumentation and all the established devices from canon up
are employed. A piano transcription of part of the music is promised.
The "Song of Iras" has been published. It is full of home-sickness,
and the accompaniment (not used in the production) is a wonderwork of
color.
[Music:
Tottering above
In her highest noon
The enamoured moon blushes with love
While to listen
The red levin
With the rapid pleiads even
Which were seven
Pauses in heaven!
Pauses in heaven!
And they say the starry choir
And the other listening things,
That Israfel's fire is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings
Of those unusual strings.
By permission.
FRAGMENT OF "ISRAFEL," BY EDGAR S. KELLEY.]
Kelley has two unpublished songs that show him at his best, both
settings of verse by Poe,--"Eldorado," which vividly develops the
persistence of the knight, and "Israfel." This latter poem, as you
know, concerns the angel "whose heart-strings are a lute." After a
rhapsody upon the cosmic spell of the angel's singing, Poe, with a
brave defiance, flings an implied challenge to him. The verse marks
one of the highest reaches of a genius honored abroad as a world-great
lyrist. It is, perhaps, praise enough, then, to say that Kelley's
music flags in no wise behind the divine progress of the words. The
lute idea dictates an arpeggiated accompaniment, whose harmonic beauty
and courage is beyond description and beyond the grasp of the mind at
the first hearing. The bravery of the climax follows the weird and
opiate harmonies of the middle part with tremendous effect. The song
is, in my fervent belief, a masterwork of absolute genius, one of the
very greatest lyrics in the world's music.
_Harvey Worthington Loomis._
[Illustration: HARVEY WORTHINGTON LOOMIS.]
[Illustration: Autograph of Harvey Worthington Loomis]
In the band of pupils that gathered to the standard of the invader,
Antonin Dvôrák, when, in 1892, he came over here from Macedonia to
help us, some of the future's best composers will probably be found.
Of this band was Harvey Worthington Loomis, who won a three years'
scholarship in Doctor Dvôrák's composition class at the National
Conservatory, by submitting an excellent, but rather uncharacteristic,
setting of Eichendorff's "Frühlingsnacht." Loomis evidently won
Doctor Dvôrák's confidence, for among the tasks imposed on him was a
piano concerto to be built on the lines of so elaborate a model as
Rubinstein's in D minor. When Loomis' first sketches showed an
elaboration even beyond the complex pattern, Dvôrák still advised him
to go on. To any one that knows the ways of harmony teachers this will
mean much.
Loomis (who was born in Brooklyn, February 5, 1865, and is now a
resident of New York) pursued studies in harmony and piano in a
desultory way until he entered Doctor Dvôrák's class. For his musical
tastes he was indebted to the artistic atmosphere of his home.
Though Loomis has written something over five hundred compositions,
only a few works have been published, the most important of which are
"Fairy Hill," a cantatilla for children, published in 1896 (it was
written on a commission that fortunately allowed him liberty for not a
little elaboration and individuality), "Sandalphon," and a few songs
and piano pieces.
A field of his art that has won his especial interest is the use of
music as an atmosphere for dramatic expression. Of this sort are a
number of pantomimes, produced with much applause in New York by the
Academy of Dramatic Arts; and several musical backgrounds. The 27th of
April, 1896, a concert of his works was given by a number of
well-known artists.
These musical backgrounds are played in accompaniment to dramatic
recitations. Properly managed, the effect is most impressive. Féval's
poem, "The Song of the Pear-tree," is a typically handled work. The
poem tells the story of a young French fellow, an orphan, who goes to
the wars as substitute for his friend Jean. After rising from rank to
rank by bravery, he returns to his home just as his sweetheart,
Perrine, enters the church to wed Jean. The girl had been his one
ambition, and now in his despair he reënlists and begs to be placed in
the thickest of danger. When he falls, they find on his breast a
withered spray from the pear-tree under which Perrine had first
plighted troth. On these simple lines the music builds up a drama.
From the opening shimmer and rustle of the garden, through the
Gregorian chant that solemnizes the drawing of the lots, and is
interrupted by the youth's start of joy at his own luck (an abrupt
_glissando_); through his sturdy resolve to go to war in his friend's
place, on through many battles to his death, all is on a high plane
that commands sympathy for the emotion, and enforces unbounded
admiration for the art. There is a brief hint of the Marseillaise
woven into the finely varied tapestry of martial music, and when the
lover comes trudging home, his joy, his sudden knowledge of Perrine's
faithlessness, and his overwhelming grief are all built over a long
organ-point of three clangorous bride-bells. The _leit-motif_ idea is
used with suggestive clearness throughout the work.
The background to Longfellow's "Sandalphon" is so fine an arras that
it gives the poet a splendor not usual to his bourgeois lays. The
music runs through so many phases of emotion, and approves itself so
original and exaltedly vivid in each that I put it well to the fore
of American compositions.
Hardly less large is the--Loomis calls it "Musical Symbolism," for
Adelaide Ann Proctor's "The Story of the Faithful Soul." Of the
greatest delicacy imaginable is the music (for piano, violin, and
voice) to William Sharp's "Coming of the Prince." The "Watteau
Pictures" are poems of Verlaine's variously treated: one as a
head-piece to a wayward piano caprice, one to be recited during a
picturesque waltz, the last a song with mandolin effects in the
accompaniment.
[Music:
How, erect, at the outermost gates of the City
Celestial he waits,
With his feet on the ladder of light,
That, crowded with angels unnumbered,
By Jacob was seen as he slumbered
Alone in the desert at night?
The Angels of Wind and of Fire
Chant only one hymn, and expire
With the song's irresistible stress,
Expire in their rapture and wonder,
As harp-strings are broken asunder
By music they throb to express.
But serene in the rapturous throng,
Unmoved by the rush of the song,
With eyes unimpassioned and slow,
Among the dead angels, the deathless
Sandalphon stands listening, breathless,
To sounds that ascend from below,...
Copyright, 1896, by Edgar S. Werner.
A FRAGMENT OF "SANDALPHON," BY H.W. LOOMIS.]
The pantomimes range from grave to gay, most of the librettos in this
difficult form being from the clever hand of Edwin Starr Belknap.
"The Traitor Mandolin," "In Old New Amsterdam," "Put to the Test,"
"Blanc et Noir," "The Enchanted Fountain," "Her Revenge," "Love and
Witchcraft" are their names. The music is full of wit, a quality
Loomis possesses in unusual degree. The music mimics everything from
the busy feather-duster of the maid to her eavesdropping. Pouring
wine, clinking glasses, moving a chair, tearing up a letter, and a
rollicking wine-song in pantomime are all hinted with the drollest and
most graphic programmism imaginable.
Loomis has also written two burlesque operas, "The Maid of Athens" and
"The Burglar's Bride," the libretto of the latter by his brother,
Charles Battell Loomis, the well-known humorist. This latter contains
some skilful parody on old fogyism.
In the Violin Sonata the piano, while granting precedence to the
violin, approaches almost to the dignity of a duet. The finale is
captivating and brilliant, and develops some big climaxes. The work as
a whole is really superb, and ought to be much played. There are,
besides, a "Lyric Finale" to a sonata not yet written, and several
songs for violin, voice, and piano.
A suite for four hands, "In Summer Fields," contains some happy
manifestations of ability, such as "A June Roundelay," "The Dryad's
Grove," and, especially, a humoresque "Junketing," which is surely
destined to become a classic. From some of his pantomimes Loomis has
made excerpts, and remade them with new elaboration for two pianos,
under the name of "Exotics." These are full of variety and of actual
novelty, now of startling discord, now of revelatory beauty. A
so-called "Norland Epic," freely constructed on the sonata formula, is
one of Loomis' most brilliant and personal achievements.
Loomis has an especial aptitude for writing artistic ballet-music, and
for composing in the tone of different nationalities, particularly the
Spanish. His pantomimes contain many irresistible dances, one of them
including a Chinese dance alternating 4-4 with 3-4 time. His
strikingly fleet "Harlequin" has been published.
The gift of adding art to catchiness is a great one. This Loomis
seems to have to an unusual degree, as is evidenced by the dances in
his pantomimes and his series of six pieces "In Ballet Costume," all
of them rich with the finest art along with a Strauss-like
spontaneity. These include "L'Amazone," "Pirouette," "Un Pas Seul,"
"La Coryphée," "The Odalisque," and "The Magyar." One of his largest
works is a concert waltz, "Mi-Carême," for two pianos, with elaborate
and extended introduction and coda.
A series of Genre Pictures contains such lusciousness of felicity as
"At an Italian Festival," and there are a number of musical moments of
engaging charm, for instance, "N'Importe Quoi," "From a Conservatory
Program," "A Tropical Night," a fascinating "Valsette," a nameless
valse, and "Another Scandal," which will prove a gilt-edged
speculation for some tardy publisher. It is brimming with the
delicious horror of excited gossipry. An example of how thoroughly
Loomis is invested with music--how he thinks in it--is his audacious
scherzo, "The Town Crier," printed herewith.
In songs Loomis has been most prolific. He has set twenty-two of
Shakespeare's lyrics to music of the old English school, such as his
uproarious "Let me the cannikin clink," and his dainty "Tell me where
is fancy bred."
"The Lark" is written in the pentatonic scale, with accompaniment for
two flutes and a harp.
In the same vein are various songs of Herrick, a lyrist whose verse
is not usually congenial to the modern music-maker. Loomis' "Epitaph
on a Virgin" must be classed as a success. Indeed, it reaches positive
grandeur at its climax, wherein is woven the grim persistence of a
tolling bell. In the same style is a clever setting of Ben Jonson's
much music'd "To Celia."
In German-tone are his veritably magnificent "Herbstnacht" and his "At
Midnight," two studies after Franz. Heine's "Des Waldes Kapellmeister"
has been made into a most hilarious humoresque.
"Bergerie" is a dozen of Norman Gale's lyrics. "Andalusia" is a
flamboyant duet.
In Scotch songs there is a positive embarrassment of riches, Loomis'
fancies finding especial food and freedom in this school. I find in
these settings far more art and grace than I see even in Schumann's
many Scotch songs, or those of any other of the Germans. "Oh, for Ane
and Twenty" has bagpipe effects. Such flights of ecstasy as "My Wife's
a Winsome Wee Thing," and "Bonnie Wee Thing," are simply tyrannical in
their appeal. Then there is an irresistible "Polly Stewart;" and "My
Peggy's Heart" is fairly ambrosial. These and several others, like
"There Was a Bonnie Lass," could be made into an album of songs that
would delight a whole suite of generations.
A number of his songs are published: they include a "John Anderson, My
Jo," that has no particular right to live; a ballad, "Molly," with a
touch of art tucked into it; the beautiful "Sylvan Slumbers," and the
quaint and fascinating "Dutch Garden."
Aside from an occasional song like "Thistledown," with its brilliantly
fleecy accompaniment, and the setting of Browning's famous "The Year'
at the Spring," for which Loomis has struck out a superb frenzy, and a
group of songs by John Vance Cheney, Loomis has found some of his most
powerful inspirations in the work of our lyrist, Aldrich,--such as
the rich carillon of "Wedded," and his "Discipline," one of the best
of all humorous songs, a gruesome scherzo all about dead monks, in
which the music furnishes out the grim irreverence of the words with
the utmost waggery.
Chief among the lyrics by Cheney are three "Spring Songs," in which
Loomis has caught the zest of spring with such rapture that, once they
are heard, the world seems poor without them in print. Loomis'
literary culture is shown in the sure taste of his selection of lyrics
for his music. He has marked aptitudes, too, in creative literature,
and has an excellent idea of the arts kindred to his own, particularly
architecture.
Like Chopin, Loomis is largely occupied in mixing rich new colors on
the inexhaustible palette of the piano. Like Chopin, he is not
especially called to the orchestra. What the future may hold for him
in this field (by no means so indispensable to classic repute as
certain pedants assume) it is impossible to say. In the meantime he is
giving most of his time to work in larger forms.
If in his restless hunt for novelty, always novelty, he grows too
original, too unconventional, this sin is unusual enough to approach
the estate of a virtue. But his oddity is not mere sensation-mongering.
It is his individuality. He could make the same reply to such
criticism that Schumann made; he thinks in strange rhythms and hunts
curious effects, because his tastes are irrevocably so ordained.
But we ought to show a new genius the same generosity toward flaws
that we extend toward the masters whose fame is won beyond the
patronage of our petty forgiveness. And, all in all, I am impelled to
prophesy to Loomis a place very high among the inspired makers of new
music. His harmonies, so indefatigably searched out and polished to
splendor, so potent in enlarging the color-scale of the piano; his
patient building up, through long neglect and through long silence, of
a monumental group of works and of a distinct individuality, must
prove at some late day a source of lasting pride to his country,
neglectful now in spite of itself. But better than his patience, than
his courage, than his sincerity, better than that insufficient
definition of genius,--the capacity for taking infinite pains,--is his
inspired felicity. His genius is the very essence of felicity.
_Ethelbert Nevin._
[Illustration: ETHELBERT NEVIN.]
It is refreshing to be able to chronicle the achievements of a
composer who has become financially successful without destroying his
claim on the respect of the learned and severe, or sacrificing his own
artistic conscience and individuality. Such a composer is Ethelbert
Nevin.
His published writings have been altogether along the smaller lines of
composition, and he has won an enviable place as a fervent worker in
diamonds. None of his gems are paste, and a few have a perfection, a
solidity, and a fire that fit them for a place in that coronet one
might fancy made up of the richest of the jewels of the world's
music-makers, and fashioned for the very brows of the Muse herself.
[Illustration: Autograph of Ethelbert Nevin]
Nevin was born in 1862, at Vineacre, on the banks of the Ohio, a few
miles from Pittsburgh. There he spent the first sixteen years of his
life, and received all his schooling, most of it from his father,
Robert P. Nevin, editor and proprietor of a Pittsburgh newspaper, and
a contributor to many magazines. It is interesting to note that he
also composed several campaign songs, among them the popular "Our
Nominee," used in the day of James K. Polk's candidacy. The first
grand piano ever taken across the Allegheny Mountains was carted over
for Nevin's mother.
From his earliest infancy Nevin was musically inclined, and, at the
age of four, was often taken from his cradle to play for admiring
visitors. To make up for the deficiency of his little legs, he used to
pile cushions on the pedals so that he might manipulate them from
afar.
Nevin's father provided for his son both vocal and instrumental
instruction, even taking him abroad for two years of travel and music
study in Dresden under Von Böhme. Later he studied the piano for two
years at Boston, under B.J. Lang, and composition under Stephen A.
Emery, whose little primer on harmony has been to American music
almost what Webster's spelling-book was to our letters.
At the end of two years he went to Pittsburgh, where he gave lessons,
and saved money enough to take him to Berlin. There he spent the
years 1884, 1885, and 1886, placing himself in the hands of Karl
Klindworth. Of him Nevin says: "To Herr Klindworth I owe everything
that has come to me in my musical life. He was a devoted teacher, and
his patience was tireless. His endeavor was not only to develop the
student from a musical standpoint, but to enlarge his soul in every
way. To do this, he tried to teach one to appreciate and to feel the
influence of such great minds of literature as Goethe, Schiller, and
Shakespeare. He used to insist that a man does not become a musician
by practising so many hours a day at the piano, but by absorbing an
influence from all the arts and all the interests of life, from
architecture, painting, and even politics."
The effect of such broad training--enjoyed rarely enough by music
students--is very evident in Nevin's compositions. They are never
narrow or provincial. They are the outpourings of a soul that is not
only intense in its activities, but is refined and cultivated in its
expressions. This effect is seen, too, in the poems Nevin chooses to
set to music,--they are almost without exception verses of literary
finish and value. His cosmopolitanism is also remarkable, his songs in
French, German, and Italian having no trace of Yankee accent and a
great fidelity to their several races.
In 1885, Hans von Bülow incorporated the best four pupils of his
friend, Klindworth, into an artist class, which he drilled personally.
Nevin was one of the honored four, and appeared at the unique public
_Zuhören_ of that year, devoted exclusively to the works of Brahms,
Liszt, and Raff. Among the forty or fifty studious listeners at these
recitals, Frau Cosima Wagner, the violinist Joachim, and many other
celebrities were frequently present.
Nevin returned to America in 1887, and took up his residence in
Boston, where he taught and played at occasional concerts.
Eighteen hundred and ninety-two found him in Paris, where he taught,
winning more pupils than here. He was especially happy in imparting to
singers the proper _Auffassung_ (grasp, interpretation, finish) of
songs, and coached many American and French artists for the operatic
stage. In 1893 the restless troubadour moved on to Berlin, where he
devoted himself so ardently to composition that his health collapsed,
and he was exiled a year to Algiers. The early months of 1895 he
spent in concert tours through this country. As Klindworth said of
him, "he has a touch that brings tears," and it is in interpretation
rather than in bravura that he excels. He plays with that unusual
combination of elegance and fervor that so individualizes his
composition.
Desirous of finding solitude and atmosphere for composition, he took
up his residence in Florence, where he composed his suite, "May in
Tuscany" (op. 21). The "Arlecchino" of this work has much
sprightliness, and shows the influence of Schumann, who made the
harlequin particularly his own; but there is none of Chopin's
nocturnity in the "Notturno," which presents the sussurus and the
moonlit, amorous company of "Boccaccio's Villa." The suite includes a
"Misericordia" depicting a midnight cortège along the Arno, and
modelled on Chopin's funeral march in structure with its hoarse dirge
and its rich cantilena. The best number of the suite is surely the
"Rusignuolo," an exceedingly fluty bird-song.
From Florence, Nevin went to Venice, where he lived in an old _casa_
on the Grand Canal, opposite the Browning palazzo, and near the house
where Wagner wrote "Tristan und Isolde." One day his man, Guido, took
a day off, and brought to Venice an Italian sweetheart, who had lived
a few miles from the old dream-city and had never visited it. The day
these two spent gondoliering through the waterways, where romance
hides in every nook, is imaginatively narrated in tone in Nevin's
suite, "Un Giorno in Venezia," a book more handsomely published even
than the others of his works, which have been among the earliest to
throw off the disgraceful weeds of type and design formerly worn by
native compositions.
The Venetian suite gains a distinctly Italian color from its
ingenuously sweet harmonies in thirds and sixths, and its frankly
lyric nature, and "The Day in Venice" begins logically with the dawn,
which is ushered in with pink and stealthy harmonies, then "The
Gondoliers" have a morning mood of gaiety that makes a charming
composition. There is a "Canzone Amorosa" of deep fervor, with
interjections of "Io t'amo!" and "Amore" (which has the excellent
authority of Beethoven's Sonata, op. 81, with its "Lebe wohl"). The
suite ends deliciously with a night scene in Venice, beginning with a
choral "Ave Maria," and ending with a campanella of the utmost
delicacy.
After a year in Venice Nevin made Paris his home for a year,
returning to America then, where he has since remained.
Though he has dabbled somewhat in orchestration, he has been wisely
devoting his genius, with an almost Chopin-like singleness of mind, to
songs and piano pieces. His piano works are what would be called
_morceaux_. He has never written a sonata, or anything approaching the
classical forms, nearer than a gavotte or two. He is very modern in
his harmonies, the favorite colors on his palette being the warmer
keys, which are constantly blended enharmonically. He "swims in a sea
of tone," being particularly fond of those suspensions and inversions
in which the intervals of the second clash passionately, strongly
compelling resolution. For all his gracefulness and lyricism, he makes
a sturdy and constant use of dissonance; in his song "Herbstgefühl"
the dissonance is fearlessly defiant of conventions.
[Music:
... Rose
Löset lebenssatt.
Sich, das letzte lose,
Bleiche Blumenblatt.
Goldenes entfärben,
Schleicht sich durch den Hain,
Auch vergeh'n und sterben,
Däucht mir süss zu sein.
... failing,
From the rose unbound,
Falls, its life exhaling,
Dead upon the ground.
Golden colors flying,
Slant from tree to tree;
Such release and dying,
Sweet would seem to me.
Copyright, 1889, by G. Schirmer, Jr.
A FRAGMENT FROM "HERBSTGEFÜHL."]
Nevin's songs, whose only littleness is in their length, though
treated with notable individuality, are founded in principle on the
_Lieder_ of Schumann and Franz. That is to say, they are written with
a high poetical feeling inspired by the verses they sing, and, while
melodious enough to justify them as lyrics, yet are near enough to
impassioned recitative to do justice to the words on which they are
built. Nevin is also an enthusiastic devotee of the position these
masters, after Schubert, took on the question of the accompaniment.
This is no longer a slavish thumping of a few chords, now and then,
to keep the voice on the key, with outbursts of real expression only
at the interludes; but it is a free instrumental composition with a
meaning of its own and an integral value, truly accompanying, not
merely supporting and serving, the voice. Indeed, one of Nevin's best
songs,--"Lehn deine Wang an meine Wang,"--is actually little more than
a vocal accompaniment to a piano solo. His accompaniments are always
richly colored and generally individualized with a strong
contramelody, a descending chromatic scale in octaves making an
especially frequent appearance. Design, though not classical, is
always present and distinct.
Nevin's first published work was a modest "Serenade," with a neat
touch of syncopation, which he wrote at the age of eighteen. His
"Sketch-Book," a collection of thirteen songs and piano pieces found
an immediate and remarkable sale that has removed the ban formerly
existing over books of native compositions.
The contents of the "Sketch-Book" display unusual versatility. It
opens with a bright gavotte, in which adherence to the classic spirit
compels a certain reminiscence of tone. The second piece, a song, "I'
the Wondrous Month o' May," has such a springtide fire and frenzy in
the turbulent accompaniment, and such a fervent reiterance, that it
becomes, in my opinion, the best of all the settings of this poem of
Heine's, not excluding even Schumann's or that of Franz. The "Love
Song," though a piano solo, is in reality a duet between two lovers.
It is to me finer than Henselt's perfect "Liebeslied," possibly
because the ravishing sweetness of the woman's voice answering the
sombre plea of the man gives it a double claim on the heart. The
setting of "Du bist wie eine Blume," however, hardly does justice
either to Heine's poem, or to Nevin's art. The "Serenade" is an
original bit of work, but the song, "Oh, that We Two were Maying!"
with a voice in the accompaniment making it the duet it should
be,--that song can have no higher praise than this, that it is the
complete, the final musical fulfilment of one of the rarest lyrics in
our language. A striking contrast to the keen white regret of this
song is the setting of a group of "Children's Songs," by Robert Louis
Stevenson. Nevin's child-songs have a peculiar and charming place. He
has not been stingy of either his abundant art or his abundant
humanity in writing them. They include four of Stevenson's, the best
being the captivating "In Winter I get up at Night," and a setting of
Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue," in which a trumpet figure is used
with delicate pathos.
Nevin's third opus included three exquisite songs of a pastoral
nature, Goethe's rollicking "One Spring Morning" having an immense
sale. Opus 5 contained five songs, of which the ecstatic "'Twas April"
reached the largest popularity. Possibly the smallest sale was enjoyed
by "Herbstgefühl." Many years have not availed to shake my allegiance
to this song, as one of the noblest songs in the world's music. It is
to me, in all soberness, as great as the greatest of the _Lieder_ of
Schubert, Schumann or Franz. In "Herbstgefühl" (or "Autumn-mood")
Gerok's superb poem bewails the death of the leaves and the failing of
the year, and cries out in sympathy:
"Such release and dying
Sweet would seem to me!"
Deeper passion and wilder despair could not be crowded into so short a
song, and the whole brief tragedy is wrought with a grandeur and
climax positively epic. It is a flash of sheer genius.
Three piano duets make up opus 6; and other charming works, songs,
piano pieces, and violin solos, kept pouring from a pen whose apparent
ease concealed a vast deal of studious labor, until the lucky 13, the
opus-number of a bundle of "Water Scenes," brought Nevin the greatest
popularity of all, thanks largely to "Narcissus," which has been as
much thrummed and whistled as any topical song.
Of the other "Water Scenes," there is a shimmering "Dragon Fly," a
monody, "Ophelia," with a pedal-point of two periods on the tonic, and
a fluent "Barcarolle" with a deal of high-colored virtuosity.
His book "In Arcady" (1892) contains pastoral scenes, notably an
infectious romp that deserves its legend, "They danced as though they
never would grow old." The next year his opus 20, "A Book of Songs,"
was published. It contains, among other things of merit, a lullaby,
called "Sleep, Little Tulip," with a remarkably artistic and effective
pedal-point on two notes (the submediant and the dominant) sustained
through the entire song with a fine fidelity to the words and the
lullaby spirit; a "Nocturne" in which Nevin has revealed an
unsuspected voluptuousness in Mr. Aldrich' little lyric, and has
written a song of irresistible climaxes. The two songs, "Dîtes-Moi"
and "In der Nacht," each so completely true to the idiom of the
language of its poem, are typical of Nevin's cosmopolitanism, referred
to before. This same unusual ability is seen in his piano pieces as
well as in his songs. He knows the difference between a _chanson_ and
a _Lied_, and in "Rechte Zeit" has written with truth to German
soldierliness as he has been sympathetic with French nuance in "Le
Vase Brisé," the effective song "Mon Desire," which in profile
suggests Saint-Saëns' familiar Delilah-song, the striking "Chanson des
Lavandières" and "Rapelle-Toi," one of Nevin's most elaborate works,
in which Alfred De Musset's verse is splendidly set with much
enharmonious color. Very Italian, too, is the "Serenade" with
accompaniment à la mandolin, which is the most fetching number in the
suite "Captive Memories," published in 1899.
Nevin has also put many an English song to music, notably the deeply
sincere "At Twilight," the strenuous lilt "In a Bower," Bourdillon's
beautiful lyric, "Before the Daybreak," the smooth and unhackneyed
treatment of the difficult stanza of "'Twas April," that popular song,
"One Spring Morning," which has not yet had all the charm sung out of
it, and two songs with obbligati for violin and 'cello, "Deep in the
Rose's Glowing Heart" and "Doris," a song with a finely studied
accompaniment and an aroma of Theokritos.
A suite for the piano is "En Passant," published in 1899; it ranges
from a stately old dance, "At Fontainebleau," to "Napoli," a furious
tarantelle with effective _glissandi_; "In Dreamland" is a most
delicious revery with an odd repetition that is not preludatory, but
thematic. The suite ends with the most poetic scene of all, "At Home,"
which makes a tone poem of Richard Hovey's word-picture of a June
night in Washington. The depicting of the Southern moonlight-balm,
with its interlude of a distant and drowsy negro quartette, reminds
one pleasantly of Chopin's Nocturne (op. 37, No. 1), with its
intermezzo of choric monks, though the composition is Nevin's very own
in spirit and treatment.
In addition to the works catalogued, Nevin has written a pantomime for
piano and orchestra to the libretto of that virtuoso in English, Vance
Thompson; it was called "Lady Floriane's Dream," and was given in New
York in 1898. Nevin has also a cantata in making.
It needs no very intimate acquaintance with Nevin's music to see that
it is not based on an adoration for counterpoint as an end. He
believes that true music must come from the emotions--the intelligent
emotions--and that when it cannot appeal to the emotions it has lost
its power. He says: "Above everything we need melody--melody and
rhythm. Rhythm is the great thing. We have it in Nature. The trees
sway, and our steps keep time, and our very souls respond." In
Wagner's "Meistersinger," which he calls "a symphonic poem with
action," Nevin finds his musical creed and his model.
And now, if authority is needed for all this frankly enthusiastic
admiration, let it be found in and echoed from Karl Klindworth, who
said of Nevin: "His talent is _ungeheures_ [one of the strongest
adjectives in the German language]. If he works hard and is
conscientious, he can say for the musical world something that no one
else can say."
_John Philip Sousa._
[Illustration: Autograph of John Philip Sousa]
[Illustration: JOHN PHILIP SOUSA.]
In common with most of those that pretend to love serious music, a
certain person was for long guilty of the pitiful snobbery of rating
march-tunes as the lowest form of the art. But one day he joined a
National Guard regiment, and his first long march was that
heart-breaking dress-parade of about fifteen miles through the wind
and dust of the day Grant's monument was dedicated. Most of the music
played by the band was merely rhythmical embroidery, chiefly in bugle
figures, as helpful as a Clementi sonatina; but now and then there
would break forth a magic elixir of tune that fairly plucked his feet
up for him, put marrow in unwilling bones, and replaced the dreary
doggedness of the heart with a great zest for progress, a stout
martial fire, and a fierce _esprit de corps_; with patriotism indeed.
In almost every case, that march belonged to one John Philip Sousa.
It came upon this wretch then, that, if it is a worthy ambition in a
composer to give voice to passionate love-ditties, or vague
contemplation, or the deep despair of a funeral cortège, it is also a
very great thing to instil courage, and furnish an inspiration that
will send men gladly, proudly, and gloriously through hardships into
battle and death. This last has been the office of the march-tune, and
it is as susceptible of structural logic or embellishments as the
fugue, rondo, or what not. These architectural qualities Sousa's
marches have in high degree, as any one will find that examines their
scores or listens analytically. They have the further merit of
distinct individuality, and the supreme merit of founding a school.
It is only the plain truth to say that Sousa's marches have founded a
school; that he has indeed revolutionized march-music. His career
resembles that of Johann Strauss in many ways. A certain body of old
fogies has always presumed to deride the rapturous waltzes of
Strauss, though they have won enthusiastic praise from even the
esoteric Brahms, and gained from Wagner such words as these: "One
Strauss waltz overshadows, in respect to animation, finesse, and real
musical worth, most of the mechanical, borrowed, factory-made products
of the present time." The same words might be applied to Sousa's
marches with equal justice. They have served also for dance music, and
the two-step, borne into vogue by Sousa's music, has driven the waltz
almost into desuetude.
There is probably no composer in the world with a popularity equal to
that of Sousa. Though he sold his "Washington Post" march outright for
$35, his "Liberty Bell" march is said to have brought him $35,000. It
is found that his music has been sold to eighteen thousand bands in
the United States alone. The amazing thing is to learn that there are
so many bands in the country. Sousa's marches have appeared on
programs in all parts of the civilized world. At the Queen's Jubilee,
when the Queen stepped forward to begin the grand review of the
troops, the combined bands of the household brigade struck up the
"Washington Post." On other important occasions it appeared constantly
as the chief march of the week. General Miles heard the marches played
in Turkey by the military bands in the reviews.
The reason for this overwhelming appeal to the hearts of a planet is
not far to seek. The music is conceived in a spirit of high martial
zest. It is proud and gay and fierce, thrilled and thrilling with
triumph. Like all great music it is made up of simple elements, woven
together by a strong personality. It is not difficult now to write
something that sounds more or less like a Sousa march, any more than
it is difficult to write parodies, serious or otherwise, on Beethoven,
Mozart, or Chopin. The glory of Sousa is that he was the first to
write in this style; that he has made himself a style; that he has so
stirred the musical world that countless imitations have sprung up
after him.
The individuality of the Sousa march is this, that, unlike most of the
other influential marches, it is not so much a musical exhortation
from without, as a distillation of the essences of soldiering from
within. Sousa's marches are not based upon music-room enthusiasms, but
on his own wide experiences of the feelings of men who march together
in the open field.
And so his band music expresses all the nuances of the military
psychology: the exhilaration of the long unisonal stride, the grip on
the musket, the pride in the regimentals and the regiment,--_esprit de
corps_. He expresses the inevitable foppery of the severest soldier,
the tease and the taunt of the evolutions, the fierce wish that all
this ploying and deploying were in the face of an actual enemy, the
mania to reek upon a tangible foe all the joyous energy, the
blood-thirst of the warrior.
These things Sousa embodies in his music as no other music writer ever
has. To approach Sousa's work in the right mood, the music critic must
leave his stuffy concert hall and his sober black; he must flee from
the press, don a uniform, and march. After his legs and spirits have
grown aweary under the metronomic tunes of others, let him note the
surge of blood in his heart and the rejuvenation of all his muscles
when the brasses flare into a barbaric Sousa march. No man that
marches can ever feel anything but gratitude and homage for Sousa.
Of course he is a trickster at times; admitted that he stoops to
conquer at times, yet in his field he is supreme. He is worthy of
serious consideration, because his thematic material is almost always
novel and forceful, and his instrumentation full of contrast and
climax. He is not to be judged by the piano versions of his works,
because they are abominably thin and inadequate, and they are not
_klaviermässig_. There should be a Liszt or a Taussig to transcribe
him.
When all's said and done, Sousa is the pulse of the nation, and in
war of more inspiration and power to our armies than ten colonels with
ten braw regiments behind them.
Like Strauss', Mr. Sousa's father was a musician who forbade his son
to devote himself to dance music. As Strauss' mother enabled him
secretly to work out his own salvation, so did Sousa's mother help
him. Sousa's father was a political exile from Spain, and earned a
precarious livelihood by playing a trombone in the very band at
Washington which later became his son's stepping-stone to fame. Sousa
was born at Washington in 1859. His mother is German, and Sousa's
music shows the effect of Spanish yeast in sturdy German rye bread.
Sousa's teachers were John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. The latter
Mr. Sousa considers one of the most complete musicians this country
has ever known. He put him through such a thorough theoretical
training, that at fifteen Sousa was teaching harmony. At eight he had
begun to earn his own living as a violin player at a dancing-school,
and at ten he was a public soloist. At sixteen he was the conductor of
an orchestra in a variety theatre. Two years later he was musical
director of a travelling company in Mr. Milton Nobles' well-known
play, "The Phoenix," for which he composed the incidental music.
Among other incidents in a career of growing importance was a position
in the orchestra with which Offenbach toured this country. At the age
of twenty-six, after having played, with face blacked, as a negro
minstrel, after travelling with the late Matt Morgan's Living Picture
Company, and working his way through and above other such experiences
in the struggle for life, Sousa became the leader of the United States
Marine Band. In the twelve years of his leadership he developed this
unimportant organization into one of the best military bands in the
world.
In 1892 his leadership had given him such fame that he withdrew from
the government service to take the leadership of the band carrying his
own name.
A work of enormous industry was his collection and arrangement, by
governmental order, of the national and typical tunes of all nations
into one volume, an invaluable book of reference.
Out of the more than two hundred published compositions by Sousa, it
is not possible to mention many here. Though some of the names are not
happily chosen, they call up many episodes of parade gaiety and
jauntiness, or warlike fire. The "Liberty Bell," "Directorate," "High
School Cadets," "King Cotton," "Manhattan Beach," "'Sound Off!'"
"Washington Post," "Picador," and others, are all stirring works; his
best, I think, is a deeply patriotic march, "The Stars and Stripes
Forever." The second part of this has some brass work of particular
originality and vim.
In manuscript are a few works of larger form: a symphonic poem, "The
Chariot Race," an historical scene, "Sheridan's Ride," and two suites,
"Three Quotations" and "The Last Days of Pompeii."
The "Three Quotations" are:
(_a_) "The King of France, with twenty thousand men,
Marched up a hill and then marched down again,"
which is the motive for a delightful scherzo-march of much humor in
instrumentation;
(_b_) "And I, too, was born in Arcadia,"
which is a pastorale with delicious touches of extreme delicacy;
(_c_) "In Darkest Africa,"
which has a stunning beginning and is a stirring grotesque in the
negro manner Dvôrák advised Americans to cultivate. All three are well
arranged for the piano.
The second suite is based on "The Last Days of Pompeii." It opens with
a drunken revel, "In the House of Burbo and Stratonice;" the bulky
brutishness of the gladiators clamoring for wine, a jolly
drinking-song, and a dance by a jingling clown make up a superbly
written number. The second movement is named "Nydia," and represents
the pathetic reveries of the blind girl; it is tender and quiet
throughout.
The third movement is at once daring and masterly. It boldly attacks
"The Destruction," and attains real heights of graphic suggestion. A
long, almost inaudible roll on the drums, with occasional thuds,
heralds the coming of the earthquake; subterranean rumblings, sharp
rushes of tremor, toppling stones, and wild panic are insinuated
vividly, with no cheap attempts at actual imitation. The roaring of
the terrified lion is heard, and, best touch of all, under the fury of
the scene persists the calm chant of the Nazarenes, written in one of
the ancient modes. The rout gives way to the sea-voyage of Glaucus and
Ione, and Nydia's swan-song dies away in the gentle splash of ripples.
The work is altogether one of superb imagination and scholarly
achievement.
Sousa, appealing as he does to an audience chiefly of the popular
sort, makes frequent use of devices shocking to the conventional. But
even in this he is impelled by the enthusiasm of an experimenter and a
developer. Almost every unconventional novelty is hooted at in the
arts. But the sensationalism of to-day is the conservatism of
to-morrow, and the chief difference between a touch of high art and a
trick is that the former succeeds and the latter does not. Both are
likely to have a common origin.
The good thing is that Sousa is actuated by the spirit of progress and
experiment, and has carried on the development of the military band
begun by the late Patrick S. Gilmore. Sousa's concert programs devote
what is in fact the greater part of their space to music by the very
best composers. These, of course, lose something in being translated
over to the military band, but their effect in raising the popular
standard of musical culture cannot but be immense. Through such
instrumentality much of Wagner is as truly popular as any music
played. The active agents of such a result should receive the
heartiest support from every one sincerely interested in turning the
people toward the best things in music. Incidentally, it is well to
admit that while a cheap march-tune is almost as trashy as an
uninspired symphony, a good march-tune is one of the best things in
the best music.
Though chiefly known as a writer of marches, in which he has won glory
enough for the average human ambition, Sousa has also taken a large
place in American comic opera. His first piece, "The Smugglers," was
produced in 1879, and scored the usual failure of a first work. His
"Katherine" was never produced, his "Desirée" was brought out in 1884
by the McCaull Opera Company, and his "Queen of Hearts," a one-act
piece, was given two years later. He forsook opera then for ten years;
but in 1896 De Wolf Hopper produced his "El Capitan" with great
success.
The chief tune of the piece was a march used with Meyerbeerian
effectiveness to bring down the curtain. The stout verve of this "El
Capitan" march gave it a large vogue outside the opera. Hopper next
produced "The Charlatan," a work bordering upon opéra comique in its
first version. Both of these works scored even larger success in
London than at home.
[Music: Used by permission of the John Church Company, owners of the
copyright.
A PAGE FROM "EL CAPITAN," BY JOHN PHILIP SOUSA.]
In "The Bride Elect," Sousa wrote his own libretto, and while there
was the usual stirring march as the pièce de resistance, the work as a
whole was less clangorous of the cymbal than the operas of many a
tamer composer. In "Chris and the Wonderful Lamp," an extravaganza,
the chief ensemble was worked up from a previous march, "Hands Across
the Sea."
But Sousa can write other things than marches, and his scoring is full
of variety, freedom, and contrapuntal brilliance.
_Henry Schoenefeld._
[Illustration: HENRY SCHOENEFELD.]
Long before Dvôrák discovered America, we aboriginals had been trying
to invent a national musical dialect which should identify us as
completely to the foreigner as our nasal intonation and our fondness
for the correct and venerable use of the word "guess." But Dvôrák is
to credit for taking the problem off the shelf, and persuading our
composers to think. I cannot coax myself into the enthusiasm some have
felt for Dvôrák's own explorations in darkest Africa. His quartette
(op. 96) and his "New World" symphony are about as full of accent and
infidelity as Mlle. Yvette Guilbert's picturesque efforts to sing in
English. But almost anything is better than the phlegm that says, "The
old ways are good enough for all time;" and the Bohemian missionary
must always hold a place in the chronicle of American music.
A disciple of Dvôrák's, both in advance and in retrospect, is Henry
Schoenefeld, who wrote a characteristic suite (op. 15) before the
Dvôrákian invasion, and an overture, "In the Sunny South," afterward.
The suite, which has been played frequently abroad, winning the
praises of Hanslick, Nicodé, and Rubinstein, is scored for string
orchestra. It opens with an overly reminiscent waltz-tune, and ends
conventionally, but it contains a movement in negro-tone that gives it
importance. In this the strings are abetted by a tambourine, a
triangle, and a gong. It is in march-time, and, after a staccato
prelude, begins with a catchy air taken by the second violins, while
the firsts, divided, fill up the chords. A slower theme follows in the
tonic major; it is a jollificational air, dancing from the first
violins with a bright use of harmonics. Two periods of loud chorale
appear with the gong clanging (to hint a church-bell, perhaps). The
first two themes return and end the picture.
The overture (op. 22) has won the high esteem of A.J. Goodrich, and
it seems to me to be one of the most important of native works, not
because of its nigrescence, but because of its spontaneity therein. It
adds to the usual instruments only the piccolo, the English horn, the
tambourine, and triangle and cymbals. The slow introduction gives
forth an original theme in the most approved and most fetching darky
pattern. The strings announce it, and the wood replies. The flutes and
clarinets toss it in a blanket furnished by an interesting passage in
the 'cellos and contrabasses. There is a choral moment from the English
horn, the bassoons, and a clarinet. This solemn thought keeps
recurring parenthetically through the general gaiety. The first
subject clatters in, the second is even more jubilant. In the
development a dance _misterioso_ is used with faithful screaming
repetitions, and the work ends regularly and brilliantly. There is
much syncopation, though nothing that is strictly in "rag-time;"
banjo-figurations are freely and ingeniously employed, and the whole
is a splendid fiction in local color. Schoenefeld's negroes do not
speak Bohemian.
His determined nationalism is responsible for his festival overture,
"The American Flag," based on his own setting of Rodman Drake's
familiar poem. The work opens with the hymn blaring loudly from the
antiphonal brass and wood. The subjects are taken from it with much
thematic skill, and handled artfully, but the hymn, which appears in
full force for coda, is as trite as the most of its kith.
Schoenefeld was born in Milwaukee, in 1857. His father was a musician,
and his teacher for some years. At the age of seventeen Schoenefeld
went to Leipzig, where he spent three years, studying under Reinecke,
Coccius, Papperitz, and Grill. A large choral and orchestral work was
awarded a prize over many competitors, and performed at the Gewandhaus
concerts, the composer conducting. Thereafter he went to Weimar, where
he studied under Edward Lassen.
In 1879 he came back to America, and took up his residence in Chicago,
where he has since lived as a teacher, orchestra leader, and composer.
He has for many years directed the Germania Männerchor.
Schoenefeld's "Rural Symphony" was awarded the $500 prize offered by
the National Conservatory. Dvôrák was the chairman of the Committee on
Award, and gave Schoenefeld hearty compliments. Later works are: "Die
drei Indianer," an ode for male chorus, solo, and orchestra; a most
beautiful "Air" for orchestra (the air being taken by most of the
strings,--the first violins haunting the G string,--while a harp and
three flutes carry the burden of the accompaniment gracefully); a
pleasant "Reverie" for string orchestra, harp, and organ; and two
impromptus for string orchestra, a "Meditation" representing Cordelia
brooding tenderly over the slumbering King Lear,--art ministering very
tenderly to the mood,--and a cleverly woven "Valse Noble."
Only a few of Schoenefeld's works are published, all of them piano
pieces. It is no slur upon his orchestral glory to say that these are
for the most part unimportant, except the excellent "Impromptu" and
"Prelude." Of the eight numbers in "The Festival," for children, only
the "Mazurka" is likely to make even the smallest child think. The
"Kleine Tanz Suite" is better. The six children's pieces of opus 41,
"Mysteries of the Wood," make considerable appeal to the fancy and
imagination, and are highly interesting. They show Grieg's influence
very plainly, and are quite worth recommending. This cannot be said of
his most inelegant "Valse Élégante," or of his numerous dances,
except, perhaps, his "Valse Caprice."
He won in July, 1899, the prize offered to American composers by Henri
Marteau, for a sonata for violin and piano. The jury was composed of
such men as Dubois, Pierné, Diemer, and Pugno. The sonata is _quasi
fantasia_, and begins strongly with an evident intention to make use
of negro-tone. The first subject is so vigorously declared that one is
surprised to find that it is elastic enough to express a sweet pathos
and a deep gloom. It is rather fully developed before the second
subject enters; this, on the other hand, is hardly insinuated in its
relative major before the rather inelaborate elaboration begins. In
the romanza, syncopation and imitation are much relied on, though the
general atmosphere is that of a nocturne, a trio of dance-like manner
breaking in. The final rondo combines a clog with a choral intermezzo.
The work is noteworthy for its deep sincerity and great lyric beauty.
_Maurice Arnold._
The plantation dances of Maurice Arnold have an intrinsic interest
quite aside from their intrinsic value. Arnold, whose full name is
Maurice Arnold-Strothotte, was born in St. Louis in 1865. His mother
was a prominent pianist and gave him his first lessons in music. At
the age of fifteen he went to Cincinnati, studying at the College of
Music for three years. In 1883 he went to Germany to study
counterpoint and composition with Vierling and Urban in Berlin. The
latter discouraged him when he attempted to imbue a suite with a negro
plantation spirit.
Arnold now went upon a tramping tour in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
Some of his compositions show the influence of his journey. He then
entered the Cologne Conservatory, studying under Wuellner, Neitzel,
and G. Jensen. His first piano sonata was performed there at a public
concert. He next went to Breslau, where, under the instruction of Max
Bruch, he wrote his cantata, "The Wild Chase," and gave public
performance to other orchestral work. Returning now to St. Louis, he
busied himself as solo violinist and teacher, travelling also as a
conductor of opera companies. When Dvôrák came here Arnold wrote his
"Plantation Dances," which were produced in a concert under the
auspices of the Bohemian composer. Arnold was instructor of harmony at
the National Conservatory under Dvôrák.
The "Plantation Dances" are Arnold's thirty-third opus, and they have
been much played by orchestras; they are also published as a piano
duet; the second dance also as a solo. Arnold has not made direct use
of Ethiopian themes, but has sought the African spirit. The first of
the dances is very nigresque; the second hardly at all, though it is a
delicious piece of music; the third dance uses banjo figures and
realizes darky hilarity in fine style; the fourth is a cake walk and
hits off the droll humor of that pompous ceremony fascinatingly.
Arnold's "Dramatic Overture" shows a fire and rush very characteristic
of him and likely to be kept up without sufficient contrast. So also
does his cantata, "The Wild Chase." Arnold has written two comic
operas. I have heard parts of the first and noted moments of much
beauty and humor. The Aragonaise, which opens the third act, is
particularly delightful. The orchestration throughout displays
Arnold's characteristic studiousness in picturesque effect.
For piano there is a czardas, and a "Valse Élégante" for eight hands;
it is more Viennese than Chopinesque. It might indeed be called a
practicable waltz lavishly adorned. The fruits of Arnold's Oriental
journey are seen in his impressionistic "Danse de la Midway
Plaisance;" a very clever reminiscence of a Turkish minstrel; and a
Turkish march, which has been played by many German orchestras. There
is a "Caprice Espagnol," which is delightful, and a "Banjoënne," which
treats banjo music so captivatingly that Arnold may be said to have
invented a new and fertile and musical form. Besides these there are a
fugue for eight hands, a "Minstrel Serenade" for violin and piano, and
six duets for violin and viola.
There are also a few part songs and some solos, among which mention
should be made of "Ein Märlein," in the old German style, an
exquisitely tender "Barcarolle," and a setting of the poem, "I Think
of Thee in Silent Night," which makes use of a particularly beautiful
phrase for pre-, inter-, and postlude. Arnold has also written some
ballet music, a tarantelle for string orchestra, and is at work upon a
symphony, and a book, "Some Points in Modern Orchestration." His
violin sonata (now in MS.) shows his original talent at its best. In
the first movement, the first subject is a snappy and taking example
of negro-tone, the second has the perfume of moonlit magnolia in its
lyricism. (In the reprise this subject, which had originally appeared
in the dominant major, recurs in the tonic major, the key of the
sonata being E minor.) The second movement is also in the darky
spirit, but full of melancholy. For finale the composer has flown to
Ireland and written a bully jig full of dash and spirit.
_N. Clifford Page._
The influence of Japanese and Chinese art upon our world of decoration
has long been realized. After considering the amount of interest shown
in the Celestial music by American composers, one is tempted to
prophesy a decided influence in this line, and a considerable spread
of Japanese influence in the world of music also. Japanese music has a
decorative effect that is sometimes almost as captivating as in
painting.
The city of San Francisco is the natural gateway for any such impulse,
and not a little of it has already passed the custom house. In this
field Edgar S. Kelley's influence is predominating, and it is not
surprising that he should pass the contagion on to his pupil,
Nathaniel Clifford Page, who was born in San Francisco, October 26,
1866. His ancestors were American for many years prior to the
Revolution. He composed operas at the age of twelve, and has used many
of these immature ideas with advantage in the later years. He began
the serious study of music at the age of sixteen, Kelley being his
principal teacher. His first opera, composed and orchestrated before
he became of age, was entitled "The First Lieutenant." It was produced
in 1889 at the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco, where most of the
critics spoke highly of its instrumental and Oriental color, some of
the scenes being laid in Morocco.
In instrumentation, which is considered Page's forte, he has never
had any instruction further than his own reading and investigation. He
began to conduct in opera and concert early in life, and has had much
experience. He has also been active as a teacher in harmony and
orchestration.
An important phase of Page's writing has been incidental music for
plays, his greatest success having been achieved by the music for the
"Moonlight Blossom," a play based upon Japanese life and produced in
London in 1898. The overture was written entirely on actual Japanese
themes, including the national anthem of Japan. Page was three weeks
writing these twelve measures. He had a Japanese fiddle arranged with
a violin finger-board, but thanks to the highly characteristic
stubbornness of orchestral players, he was compelled to have this
part played by a mandolin. Two Japanese drums, a whistle used by a
Japanese shampooer, and a Japanese guitar were somehow permitted to
add their accent. The national air is used in augmentation later as
the bass for a Japanese song called "K Honen." The fidelity of the
music is proved by the fact that Sir Edwin Arnold's Japanese wife
recognized the various airs and was carried away by the national
anthem.
Although the play was not a success, the music was given a cordial
reception, and brought Page contracts for other work in England,
including a play of Indian life by Mrs. Flora Annie Steel.
Previously to the writing of the "Moonlight Blossom" music, Page had
arranged the incidental music for the same author's play, "The Cat
and the Cherub." Edgar S. Kelley's "Aladdin" music was the source from
which most of the incidental music was drawn; but Page added some
things of his own, among them being one of the most effective and
unexpected devices for producing a sense of horror and dread I have
ever listened to: simply the sounding at long intervals of two gruff
single tones in the extreme low register of the double basses and
bassoons. The grimness of this effect is indescribable.
An unnamed Oriental opera, and an opera called "Villiers," in which
old English color is employed (including a grotesque dance of the
clumsy Ironsides), show the cosmopolitan restlessness of Page's muse.
An appalling scheme of self-amusement is seen in his "Caprice," in
which a theme of eight measures' length is instrumented with almost
every contrapuntal device known, and with psychological variety that
runs through five movements, scherzando, vigoroso, con sentimento,
religioso, and a marcia fantastico. The suite called "Village Fête" is
an experiment in French local color. It contains five scenes: The
Peasants Going to Chapel; The Flower Girls; The Vagabonds; The Tryst;
The Sabot Dance; and the Entrance of the Mayor, which is a pompous
march.
On the occasion of a performance of this, Louis Arthur Russell wrote:
"His orchestra is surely French, and as modern as you please. The
idiom is Berlioz's rather than Wagner's."
CHAPTER III.
THE ACADEMICS.
_John Knowles Paine._
[Illustration: JOHN KNOWLES PAINE.]
[Illustration: Autograph of John K. Paine]
There is one thing better than modernity,--it is immortality. So while
I am a most ardent devotee of modern movements, because they are at
worst experiments, and motion is necessary to life, I fail to see why
it is necessary in picking up something new always to drop something
old, as if one were an awkward, butter-fingered parcel-carrier.
If a composer writes empty stuff in the latest styles, he is one
degree better than the purveyor of trite stuff in the old styles; but
he is nobody before the high thinker who finds himself suited by the
general methods of the classic writers.
The most classic of our composers is their venerable dean, John
Knowles Paine. It is an interesting proof of the youth of our native
school of music, that the principal symphony, "Spring," of our first
composer of importance, was written only twenty-one years ago. Before
Mr. Paine there had never been an American music writer worthy of
serious consideration in the larger forms.
By a mere coincidence Joachim Raff had written a symphony called
"Spring" in 1878, just a year before Paine finished his in America.
The first movement in both is called "Nature's Awakening;" such an
idea is inevitable in any spring composition, from poetry up--or down.
For a second movement Raff has a wild "Walpurgis Night Revel," while
Paine has a scherzo called "May Night Fantasy." Where Raff is uncanny
and fiendish, Paine is cheerful and elfin. The third movement of
Raff's symphony is called "First Blossoms of Spring," and the last is
called "The Joys of Wandering." The latter two movements of Mr.
Paine's symphony are "A Promise of Spring" and "The Glory of Nature."
The beginning of both symphonies is, of course, a slow introduction
representing the torpid gloom of winter, out of which spring aspires
and ascends.
Paine's symphony, though aiming to shape the molten gold of April
fervor in the rigid mold of the symphonic form, has escaped every
appearance of mechanism and restraint. It is program music of the most
legitimate sort, in full accord with Beethoven's canon, "Mehr Ausdruck
der Empfindung als Malerei." It has no aim of imitating springtime
noises, but seeks to stimulate by suggestion the hearer's creative
imagination, and provoke by a musical telepathy the emotions that
swayed the nympholept composer.
The first movement of the symphony has an introduction
containing two motives distinct from the two subjects of the
movement. These motives represent Winter and the Awakening.
The Winter motive may be again divided into a chill and icy
motif and a rushing wind-motif. Through these the timid
Awakening spirit lifts its head like the first trillium of
the year. There is a silence and a stealthy flutter of the
violins as if a cloud of birds were playing courier to the
Spring.
Suddenly, after a little prelude, as if a bluebird were
tuning his throat, we are enveloped in the key of the
symphony (A major) and the Spring runs lilting up the 'cellos
to the violins (which are divided in the naïf archaic
interval of the tenth, too much ignored in our over-colored
harmonies). The second subject is propounded by the oboes
(in the rather unusual related key of the submediant). This
is a lyrical and dancing idea, and it does battle with the
underground resistance of the Winter motives. There is an
elaborate conclusion of fiercest joy. Its ecstasy droops, and
after a little flutter as of little wings, the elaboration
opens with the Spring motive in the minor. In this part,
scholarship revels in its own luxury, the birds quiver about
our heads again, and the reprise begins (in A major of
course) with new exultance, the dancing second subject
appears (in the tonic), overwhelming the failing strength of
the Winter with a cascade of delight. Then the conclusion
rushes in; this I consider one of the most joyous themes ever
inspired.
There is a coda of vanishing bird-wings and throats, a
pizzicato chord on the strings--and Spring has had her
coronation.
"The May Night Fantasy" is a moonlit revel of elves caught by
a musical reporter, a surreptitious "chiel amang 'em takin'
notes." A single hobgoblin bassoon croaks ludicrously away,
the pixies darkle and flirt and dance their hearts out of
them.
The Romance is in rondo form with love-lorn iteration of
themes and intermezzo, and deftest broidery, the whole
ending, after a graceful Recollection, in a bliss of harmony.
The Finale is a halleluiah. It is on the sonata formula,
without introduction (the second subject being not in the
dominant of A major, but in C major, that chaste, frank key
which one of the popes strangely dubbed "lascivious"). The
elaboration is frenetic with strife, but the reprise is a
many-hued rainbow after storm, and the coda in A major
(ending a symphony begun in A minor) is swift with delight.
This symphony has been played much, but not half enough. It should
resist the weariness of time as immortally as Fletcher's play, "The
Two Noble Kinsmen" (in which Shakespeare's hand is glorious), for it
is, to quote that drama, "fresher than May, sweeter than her gold
buttons on the bough, or all th'enamell'd knacks o' the mead or
garden."
John Knowles Paine is a name that has been held in long and high
honor among American composers. He was about the earliest of native
writers to convince foreign musicians that some good could come out of
Nazareth.
He was born in Portland, Me., January 9, 1839. He studied music first
under a local teacher, Kotzschmar, making his début as organist at the
age of eighteen. A year later he was in Berlin, where for three years
he studied the organ, composition, instrumentation, and singing under
Haupt, Wieprecht, and others. He gave several organ concerts in
Germany, and made a tour in 1865-1866. In February, 1867, his "Mass"
was given at the Berlin Singakademie, Paine conducting. Then he came
back to the States, and in 1872 was appointed to an instructorship of
music at Harvard, whence he was promoted in 1876 to a full
professorship, a chair created for him and occupied by him ever since
with distinguished success.
His first symphony was brought out by Theodore Thomas in 1876. This
and his other orchestral works have been frequently performed at
various places in this country and abroad.
His only oratorio, "St. Peter," was first produced at Portland in
1873, and in Boston a year later. It is a work of great power and much
dramatic strength. Upton, in his valuable work, "Standard Oratorios,"
calls it "from the highest standpoint the only oratorio yet produced
in this country."
This oratorio, while containing much of the floridity and repetition
of Händel at his worst, is also marked with the erudition and
largeness of Händel at his best. The aria for St. Peter, "O God, My
God, Forsake Me Not," is especially fine.
A much-played symphonic poem is Paine's "The Tempest," which develops
musically the chief episodes of Shakespeare's play. He has also
written a valuable overture to "As You Like It;" he has set Keats'
"Realm of Fancy" exquisitely, and Milton's "Nativity." And he has
written a grand opera on a mediæval theme to his own libretto. This is
a three-act work called "Azara;" the libretto has been published by
the Riverside Press, and is to be translated into German. This has not
yet been performed. Being, unfortunately, an American grand opera, it
takes very little acuteness of foresight to predict a long wait before
it is ever heard. In it Paine has shown himself more a romanticist
than a classicist, and the work is said to be full of modernity.
Paine wrote the music for Whittier's "Hymn," used to open the
Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, and was fitly chosen to write
the Columbus March and Hymn for the opening ceremonies of the World's
Fair, at Chicago, October 21, 1892. This was given by several thousand
performers under the direction of Theodore Thomas.
A most original and interesting work is the chorus, "Phoebus, Arise."
It seems good to hark back for words to old William Drummond "of
Hawthornden." The exquisite flavor of long-since that marks the poetry
is conserved in the tune. While markedly original, it smacks agreeably
of the music of Harry Lawes, that nightingale of the seventeenth
century, whose fancies are too much neglected nowadays.
Paine's strong point is his climaxes, which are never timid, and are
often positively titanic, thrilling. The climax of this chorus is
notably superb, and the voices hold for two measures after the
orchestra finishes. The power of this effect can be easily imagined.
This work is marked, to an unusual extent, with a sensuousness of
color.
The year eighteen hundred eighty-one saw the first production of what
is generally considered Paine's most important composition, and by
some called the best work by an American,--his setting of the choruses
of the "Oedipus Tyrannos" of Sophokles. It was written for the
presentation by Harvard University, and has been sung, in whole or in
part, very frequently since. This masterpiece of Grecian genius is so
mighty in conception and so mighty in execution that it has not lost
power at all in the long centuries since it first thrilled the Greeks.
To realize its possibilities musically is to give proof enough of the
very highest order of genius,--a genius akin to that of Sophokles. It
may be said that in general Paine has completely fulfilled his
opportunities.
Mendelssohn also set two Greek tragedies to music, Sophokles' "Oedipus
in Kolonos" and his "Antigone." Mendelssohn is reported to have made a
first attempt at writing Grecian music, or what we suppose it to be,
mainly a matter of unison and meagre instrumentation. He was soon
dissuaded from such a step, however, and wisely. The Greek tragedians,
really writers of grand opera, made undoubted use of the best musical
implements and knowledge they had. Creative emotion has its
prosperity in the minds of its audience, not in the accuracy of its
mechanism. To secure the effect on us that the Greek tragedians
produced on contemporary audiences, it is necessary that our music be
a sublimation along the lines we are accustomed to, as theirs was
along lines familiar to them and effective with them. Otherwise,
instead of being moved by the miseries of Oedipus, we should be
chiefly occupied with amusement at the oddity of the music, and soon
bored unendurably by its monotony and thinness.
Mendelssohn decided then to use unison frequently for suggestion's
sake, but not to carry it to a fault. His experiments along these
lines have been of evident advantage to Paine, who has, however, kept
strictly to his own individuality, and produced a work that, at its
highest, reaches a higher plane, in my opinion, than anything in
Mendelssohn's noble tragedies,--and I am not, at that, one of those
that affect to look down upon the achievements of the genius that
built "Elijah."
Paine's prelude is an immense piece of work, in every way larger and
more elaborate than that to Mendelssohn's "Antigone" (the "Oedipus
in Kolonos" begins strongly with only one period of thirteen
measures). The opening chorus of Paine's "Oedipus" is the weakest
thing in the work. The second strophe has a few good moments, but soon
falls back into what is impudent enough to be actually catchy!--and
that, too, of a Lowell Mason, Moody and Sankey catchiness. Curiously
enough, Mendelssohn's "Antigone" begins with a chorus more like a
drinking-song than anything else, and the first solo is pure
_Volkslied_; both of them imbued with a Teutonic flavor that could be
cut with a knife. In Mendelssohn's "Oedipus in Kolonos," however,
the music expresses emotion rather than German emotion, and abounds in
splendors of harmony that are strikingly Wagnerian--in advance.
[Music: Copyright, 1895, by Arthur P. Schmidt.
POSTLUDE TO "OEDIPUS TYRANNUS," BY J.K. PAINE.]
Paine's second chorus describes the imaginary pursuit by Fate of the
murderer of King Laius. It is full of grim fire, and the second
strophe is at first simply terrible with awe. Then it degenerates
somewhat into an arioso, almost Italian. The fourth chorus defends the
oracles from Jocasta's incredulity. It is written almost in march
measure, and is full of robor.
At this point in the tragedy, where it begins to transpire to
Oedipus that he himself was the unwitting murderer and the
incestuous wretch whose exile the oracle demands before dispelling the
plague,--here the divine genius of Sophokles introduces a chorus of
general merriment, somewhat as Shakespeare uses the maundering fool as
a foil to heighten King Lear's fate. No praise can be too high for
Paine's music here. Its choric structure is masterly, its spirit is
running fire. Note, as an instance, the effect at the words "To save
our land thou didst rise as a tower!" where the music itself is
suddenly uplift with most effective suggestion.
The sixth chorus shows the effect of Oedipus' divulged guilt and the
misery of this fool of Fate. The music is an outburst of sheer genius.
It is overpowering, frightening. The postlude is orchestral, with the
chorus speaking above the music. Jocasta has hanged herself, Oedipus
has torn out his own eyes with her brooch. The music is a fitting
reverie on the great play, and after a wild tumult it subsides in a
resigned quietude.
From Greek tragedy to Yankee patriotism is a long cry, yet I think
Paine has not wasted his abilities on his "Song of Promise," written
for the Cincinnati May Festival of 1888. Though the poem by Mr. George
E. Woodberry is the very apotheosis of American brag, it has a
redeeming technic. The music, for soprano solo, mixed chorus, and
orchestra, reaches the very peaks of inspiration. I doubt if any
living composer or many dead masters could grow so epic, as most of
this. In a way it is academic. It shows a little of the influence of
Wagner,--as any decent music should nowadays. But it is not Wagner's
music, and it is not trite academia. There is no finicky tinsel and no
cheap oddity.
Considering the heights at which both words and music aimed, it is
amazing that they did not fall into utter wreck and nauseating bathos.
That they have proved so effective shows the sure-footedness of
genius. It is all good, especially the soprano solo.
This music is exquisite, wondrously exquisite, and it is followed by a
maestoso e solenne movement of unsurpassable majesty. I have never
read anything more purely what music should be for grandeur. And it
praises our ain countree! It might well be taken up by some of our
countless vocal societies to give a much needed respite to Händel's
threadbare "Messiah."
When one considers the largeness of the works to which Paine has
devoted himself chiefly, he can be excused for the meagreness and
comparative unimportance of his smaller works for piano and vocal
solo. The only song of his I care for particularly is "A Bird upon a
Rosy Bough" (op. 40), which is old-fashioned, especially in
accompaniment, yet at times delicious. The song "Early Spring-time" is
most curiously original.
Of piano pieces there are a sprightly "Birthday Impromptu" and a fuga
giocosa, which deals wittily with that theme known generally by the
words "Over the Fence Is Out!" The "Nocturne" begins like Schumann,
falls into the style of his second Novellette, thence to the largo of
Beethoven's Sonata (op. 10, No. 3), thence to Chopinism, wherein it
ends, an interesting assemblage withal!
A long "Romance" for the piano is marked by some excellent incidents
and much passion, but it lacks unity. It is the last work in "An Album
of Pianoforte Pieces," which is otherwise full of rare delights. It is
made up of opera 25, 26, and 39. Opus 25 contains four characteristic
pieces,--a "Dance" full of dance-rapture, a most original "Impromptu,"
and a "Rondo Giocoso," which is just the kind of brilliantly witty
scherzo whose infrequency in American music is so lamentable and so
surprising. Opus 26 includes ten sketches, all good, especially
"Woodnotes," a charming tone-poem, the deliciously simple "Wayside
Flowers," "Under the Lindens," which is a masterpiece of beautiful
syncopation, a refreshingly interesting bit in the hackneyed
"Millstream" form, and a "Village Dance," which has much of that
quaint flavor that makes Heller's études a perennial delight.
Besides these, there are a number of motets, organ preludes, string
quartettes, concert pieces for violin, 'cello, piano, and the like, all
contributing to the furtherance of an august fame.
_Dudley Buck._
Music follows the laws of supply and demand just as the other
necessities of life do. But before a demand could exist for it in its
more austere and unadulterated forms, the general taste for it must be
improved. For this purpose the offices of skilful compromisers were
required, composers who could at the same time please the popular
taste and teach it discrimination. Among these invaluable workers, a
high place belongs, in point both of priority and achievement, to
Dudley Buck. He has been a powerful agent, or reagent, in converting
the stagnant ferment into a live and wholesome ebullition, or as the
old Greek evolutionists would say, starting the first progress in the
primeval ooze of American Philistinism.
A more thoroughly New England ancestry it would be hard to find. The
founder of the family came over from England soon after the
_Mayflower_ landed. Buck was named after Governor Dudley of the
Plymouth Colony. He was born at Hartford, March 10, 1839. His father
was a prosperous shipping merchant, one of whose boats, during the
Civil War, towed the _Monitor_ from New York to Fortress Monroe on the
momentous voyage that destroyed the _Merrimac's_ usefulness.
Buck, though intended for commercial life, borrowed a work on
thorough-bass and a flute and proceeded to try the wings of his muse.
A melodeon supplanted the flute, and when he was sixteen he attained
the glory of a piano, a rare possession in those times. (Would that it
were rarer now!) He took a few lessons and played a church-organ for a
salary,--a small thing, but his own.
After reaching the junior year in Trinity College, he prevailed upon
his parents to surrender him to music, an almost scandalous career in
the New England mind of that day, still unbleached of its Blue Laws.
At the age of nineteen he went to Leipzig and entered the Conservatory
there, studying composition under Hauptmann and E.F. Richter,
orchestration under Rietz, and the piano under Moscheles and Plaidy.
Later he went to Dresden and studied the organ with Schneider.
After three years in Germany, he studied for a year in Paris, and came
home, settling down in Hartford as church-organist and teacher. He
began a series of organ-concert tours lasting fifteen years. He played
in almost every important city and in many small towns, popularizing
the best music by that happy fervor of interpretation which alone is
needed to bring classical compositions home to the public heart. In
1869 he was called to the "mother-church" of Chicago. In the Chicago
fire he lost many valuable manuscripts, including a concert overture
on Drake's exquisite poem, "The Culprit Fay," which must be especially
regretted. He moved his family to Boston, assuming in ten days the
position of organist at St. Paul's; and later he accepted charge of
"the great organ" at Music Hall,--that organ of which Artemus Ward
wrote so deliciously.
In 1875 Theodore Thomas, whose orchestra had performed many of Buck's
compositions, invited him to become his assistant conductor at the
Cincinnati Music Festival and at the last series of concerts at the
Central Park Garden in New York. Buck accepted and made his home in
Brooklyn, where he has since remained as organist of the Holy Trinity
Church, and conductor of the Apollo Club, which he founded and brought
to a high state of efficiency, writing for it many of his numerous
compositions for male voices.
Buck's close association with church work has naturally led him
chiefly into sacred music, and in this class of composition he is by
many authorities accorded the very highest place among American
composers. He has also written many organ solos, sonatas, marches, a
pastorale, a rondo caprice, and many concert transcriptions, as well
as a group of études for pedal phrasing, and several important
treatises on various musical topics. His two "Motett Collections" were
a refreshing relief and inspiration to church choirs thirsty for
religious Protestant music of some depth and warmth.
In the cantata form Buck also holds a foremost place. In 1876 he was
honored with a commission to set to music "The Centennial Meditation
of Columbia," a poem written for the occasion by the Southern poet,
Sidney Lanier. This was performed at the opening of the Philadelphia
Exhibition by a chorus of one thousand voices, an organ, and an
orchestra of two hundred pieces under the direction of Theodore
Thomas. In 1874 he made a metrical version of "The Legend of Don
Munio" from Irving's "Alhambra," and set it to music for a small
orchestra and chorus. Its adaptability to the resources of the vocal
societies of smaller cities has made it one of his most popular works.
Another bit of Washington Irving is found in Buck's cantata, "The
Voyage of Columbus," the libretto for which he has taken from Irving's
"Life of Columbus." It consists of six night-scenes,--"The Chapel of
St. George at Palos," "On the Deck of the _Santa Maria_," "The Vesper
Hymn," "Mutiny," "In Distant Andalusia," and "Land and Thanksgiving."
The opportunities here for Buck's skilful handling of choruses and his
dramatic feeling in solos are obvious, and the work has been
frequently used both in this country and in Germany with much success.
Buck, in fact, made the German libretto as well as the English, and
has written the words for many of his compositions. His largest work
was "The Light of Asia," composed in 1885 and based on Sir Edwin
Arnold's epic. It requires two and one-half hours for performance and
has met the usual success of Buck's music; it was produced in London
with such soloists as Nordica, Lloyd, and Santley. It has been
occasionally given here.
He has found the greater part of his texts in American poetry,
particularly in Lanier, Stedman, and Longfellow, whose "King Olaf's
Christmas" and "Nun of Nidaros" he has set to music, as well as his
"Golden Legend," which won a prize of one thousand dollars at the
Cincinnati Festival in a large competition. His work is analyzed very
fully in A.J. Goodrich' "Musical Analysis."
[Music:
High in the purer air,
High as the heart's desire,
In a passion of longing and fire,
A bird sings sweet and fair;
While a sunbeam, cheery and strong,
Answers the joy of the song,
And Spring, fair Spring is coming!
Copyright, 1893, by G. Schirmer.
FRAGMENT FROM "SPRING'S AWAKENING," BY MR. BUCK.]
Here, as in his symphonic overture to Scott's "Marmion," Buck has
adopted the Wagnerian idea of the _leit-motif_ as a vivid means of
distinguishing musically the various characters and their varying
emotions. His music is not markedly Wagnerian, however, in other
ways, but seems to show, back of his individuality, an assimilation of
the good old school of canon and fugue, with an Italian tendency to
the declamatory and well-rounded melodic period.
It might be wished that in his occasional secular songs Buck had
followed less in the steps of the Italian aria and the English ballad
and adopted more of the newer, nobler spirit of the _Lied_ as Schumann
and Franz represent it, and as many of our younger Americans have done
with thorough success and not a little of exaltation. Note for
instance the inadequacy of the old-style balladry to both its own
opportunity and the otherwise-smothered fire of such a poem as Sidney
Lanier's "Sunset," which is positively Shakespearean in its passionate
perfection.
In religious music, however, Mr. Buck has made a niche of its own for
his music, which it occupies with grace and dignity.
_Horatio W. Parker._
[Illustration: Autograph of Horatio W. Parker]
[Illustration: HORATIO W. PARKER.]
When one considers the enormous space occupied by the hymn-tune in New
England musical activity, it is small wonder that most of its
composers should display hymnal proclivities. Both Buck and Parker
are natives of New England.
Parker was born, September 15, 1863, at Auburndale, Mass. His mother
was his first teacher of music. She was an organist, and gave him a
thorough technical schooling which won the highest commendation later
from Rheinberger, who entrusted to him the first performance of a new
organ concerto. After some study in Boston under Stephen A. Emery,
John Orth, and G.W. Chadwick, Parker went to Munich at the age of
eighteen, where he came under the special favor of Rheinberger, and
where various compositions were performed by the Royal Music School
orchestra. After three years of Europe, he returned to America and
assumed the direction of the music at St. Paul's school. He has held
various posts since, and has been, since 1894, the Battell Professor
of Music at Yale.
His rather imposing list of works includes a symphony (1885), an
operetta, a concert overture (1884), an overture, "Regulus" (1885),
performed in Munich and in London, and an overture, "Count Robert of
Paris" (1890), performed in New York, a ballad for chorus and
orchestra, "King Trojan," presented in Munich in 1885, the
Twenty-third Psalm for female chorus and orchestra (1884), an "Idylle"
(1891); "The Normans," "The Kobolds," and "Harold Harfager," all for
chorus and orchestra, and all dated 1891; an oratorio, three or more
cantatas, and various bits of chamber-music. His opus number has
already reached forty-three, and it is eked out to a very small degree
by such imponderous works as organ and piano solos, hymns, and songs.
In 1893, Parker won the National Conservatory prize for a cantata, and
in 1898 the McCagg prize for an a cappella chorus.
Parker's piano compositions and secular songs are not numerous. They
seem rather the incidental byplays and recreations of a fanry chiefly
turned to sacred music of the larger forms.
Opus 19 consists of "Four Sketches," of which the "Étude Melodieuse"
is as good as is necessary in that overworked style, wherein a thin
melody is set about with a thinner ripple of arpeggios. The "Romanza"
is lyric and delightful, while the "Scherzino" is delicious and crisp
as celery; it is worthy of Schumann, whom it suggests, and many of
whose cool tones and mannerisms it borrows.
The "5 Morceaux Charactéristiques" are on the whole better. The
"Scherzo" is shimmering with playfulness, and, in the Beethoven
fashion, has a tender intermezzo amoroso. This seriousness is enforced
with an ending of a most plaintive nature. The "Caprice" is brilliant
and whimsical, with some odd effects in accent. The "Gavotte" makes
unusual employment of triplets, but lacks the precious yeast of
enthusiasm necessary to a prime gavotte.
This enthusiasm is not lacking however from his "Impromptu," and it
makes his "Elégie" a masterly work, possibly his best in the smaller
lines. This piece is altogether elegiac in spirit, intense in its
sombrest depths, impatient with wild outcries,--like Chopin's "Funeral
March,"--and working up to an immense passion at the end. This
subsides in ravishingly liquid arpeggios,--"melodious tears"?--which
obtain the kindred effect of Chopin's tinkling "Berceuse" in a
slightly different way. This notable work is marred by an interlude in
which the left hand mumbles harshness in the bass, while the right
hand is busy with airy fioriture. It is too close a copy of the finish
of the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata. The
lengthening skips of the left hand are also Beethovenesque trademarks.
Parker is rather old-fashioned in his forms of musical speech. That
is, he has what you might call the narrative style. He follows his
theme as an absorbing plot, engaging enough in itself, without
gorgeous digressions and pendent pictures. His work has something of
the Italian method. A melody or a theme, he seems to think, is only
marred by abstruse harmony, and is endangered by diversions. One might
almost say that a uniform lack of attention to color-possibilities and
a monotonous fidelity to a cool, gray tone characterize him. His
fondness for the plain, cold octave is notable. It is emphasized by
the ill-success of his "Six Lyrics for Piano, without octaves." They
are all of thin value, and the "Novelette" is dangerously
Schumannesque.
The "Three Love Songs" are happy, "Love's Chase" keeping up the arch
raillery and whim of Beddoe's verse. "Orsame's Song" is smooth and
graceful, ending with a well-blurted, abrupt "The devil take her!" The
"Night-piece to Julia" is notable. We have no poet whose lyrics are
harder to set to music than good Robin Herrick's. They have a lilt of
their own that is incompatible with ordinary music. Parker has,
however, been completely successful in this instance. A mysterious,
night-like carillon accompaniment, delicate as harebells, gives sudden
way to a superb support of a powerful outburst at the end of the song.
[Music:
The stars of the night
Will lend thee their light,
Like tapers without number.
Then, Julia let me woo thee,
Thus to come unto me;
And when I shall meet
Thy silvery feet
My soul I'll pour into thee,
My soul I'll pour into thee, into thee.
Copyright, 1886, by Arthur P. Schmidt & Co.
FRAGMENT OF MR. PARKER'S SONG, "NIGHT-PIECE TO JULIA."]
The "Six Songs" show not a little of that modernity and opulent color
I have denied to the most of Mr. Parker's work. "Oh, Ask Me Not" is
nothing less than inspiration, rapturously beautiful, with a rich use
of unexpected intervals. The "Egyptian Serenade" is both novel and
beautiful. The other songs are good; even the comic-operatic flavor of
the "Cavalry Song" is redeemed by its catchy sweep.
Among a large number of works for the pipe-organ, few are so marked by
that purposeless rambling organists are so prone to, as the
"Fantaisie." The "Melody and Intermezzo" of opus 20 makes a sprightly
humoresque. The "Andante Religioso" of opus 17 has really an
allegretto effect, and is much better as a gay pastorale than as a
devotional exercise. It is much more shepherdly than the avowed
"Pastorale" (opus 20), and almost as much so as the "Eclogue,"
delicious with the organ's possibilities for reed and pipe effects.
The "Romanza" is a gem of the first water. A charming quaint effect
is got by the accompaniment of the air, played legato on the swell,
with an echo, staccato, of its own chords on the great. The interlude
is a tender melody, beautifully managed. The two "Concert Pieces" are
marked by a large simplicity in treatment, and have this rare merit,
that they are less gymnastic exercises than expressions of feeling. A
fiery "Triumphal March," a delightful "Canzonetta," and a noble
"Larghetto," of sombre, yet rich and well-modulated, colors, complete
the list of his works for the organ. None of these are registered with
over-elaboration.
To sacred music Parker has made important contributions. Besides a
dignified, yet impassioned, complete "Morning and Evening Service for
the Holy Communion," he has written several single songs and anthems.
It is the masterwork, "Hora Novissima," however, which lifts him above
golden mediocrity. From the three thousand lines of Bernard of Cluny's
poem, "De Contemptu Mundi," famous since the twelfth century, and made
music with the mellowness of its own Latin rhyme, Mrs. Isabella G.
Parker, the composer's mother, has translated 210 lines. The English
is hardly more than a loose paraphrase, as this random parallel
proves:
Pars mea, Rex meus, Most Mighty, most Holy,
In proprio Deus, How great is the glory,
Ipse decore. Thy throne enfolding.
Or this skilful evasion:
Tunc Jacob, Israel, All the long history,
Et Lia, tunc Rachel All the deep mystery
Efficietur. Through ages hidden.
But it is perhaps better for avoiding the Charybdis of literalness.
Those who accuse Rossini's "Stabat Mater" of a fervor more theatric
than religious, will find the same faults in Parker's work, along with
much that is purely ecclesiastical. Though his sorrow is apt to become
petulance, there is much that is as big in spirit as in handling. The
work is frequently Mendelssohnian in treatment. An archaism that might
have been spared, since so little of the poem was retained, is the sad
old Händelian style of repeating the same words indefinitely, to all
neglect of emptiness of meaning and triteness. Thus the words "_Pars
mea, Rex meus_" are repeated by the alto exactly thirteen times!
which, any one will admit, is an unlucky number, especially since the
other voices keep tossing the same unlucky words in a musical
battledore.
The especially good numbers of the work (which was composed in 1892,
and first produced, with almost sensational success, in 1893) are: the
magnificent opening chorus; the solo for the soprano; the large and
fiery finale to Part I.; the superb tenor solo, "Golden Jerusalem,"
which is possibly the most original and thrilling of all the numbers,
is, in every way, well varied, elaborated, and intensified, and
prepares well for the massive and effective double chorus, "Stant Syon
Atria," an imposing structure whose ambition found skill sufficing; an
alto solo of original qualities; and a finale, tremendous, though
somewhat long drawn out. Of this work, so careful a critic as W.J.
Henderson was moved to write:
"His melodic ideas are not only plentiful, but they are
beautiful, ... graceful and sometimes splendidly vigorous....
There is an a cappella chorus which is one of the finest
specimens of pure church polyphony that has been produced in
recent years.... It might have been written by Hobrecht,
Brumel, or even Josquin des Pres. It is impossible to write
higher praise than this.... The orchestration is
extraordinarily ... rich. As a whole ... the composition
... may be set down as one of the finest achievements of the
present day."
And Philip Hale, a most discriminant musical enthusiast, described the
chorus "Pars Mea" as:
"A masterpiece, true music of the church," to which "any
acknowledged master of composition in Europe would gladly
sign his name.... For the a cappella chorus there is nothing
but unbounded praise.... Weighing words as counters, I do not
hesitate to say that I know of no one in the country or in
England who could by nature and by student's sweat have
written those eleven pages.... I have spoken of Mr. Parker's
quasi-operatic tendency. Now he is a modern. He has shown in
this very work his appreciation and his mastery of antique
religious musical art. But as a modern he is compelled to
feel the force of the dramatic in religious music.... But his
most far-reaching, his most exalted and rapt conception of
the bliss beyond compare is expressed in the language of
Palestrina and Bach."
In September, 1899, the work was produced with decisive success in
London, Parker conducting.
Besides this, there are several secular cantatas, particularly "King
Trojan," which contains a singable tune for Trojan with many delicate
nuances in the accompaniment, and a harp-accompanied page's song that
is simply ambrosial. Then there is Arlo Bates' poem, "The Kobolds,"
which Parker has blessed with music as delicate as the laces of
gossamer-spiders.
His latest work is devoted to the legend of St. Christopher, and
displays the same abilities for massive and complex scoring whenever
the opportunity offers. On the other hand, the work discloses Parker's
weaknesses as well, for the libretto drags in certain love episodes
evidently thought desirable for the sake of contrast and yet
manifestly unnecessary to the story. The character of the queen, for
instance, is quite useless, and, in fact, disconcerting. The love
scene between the king and queen reminds one uncomfortably of Tristan
and Isolde, while a descending scale constantly used throughout the
work in the accompaniment incessantly suggests the "Samson and
Delilah" of Saint-Saëns.
In spite of flaws, however,--flaws are to be had everywhere for the
looking,--Parker's work has its fine points. The struggle between the
demons and the singers of the sacred Latin Hymn has made excellent use
of the Tannhäuser effect. The Cathedral scene shows Parker's resources
in the massive use of choruses to be very large. The barcarolling
billows of the river are ravishingly written, and the voice of the
child crying out is effectively introduced. The song the giant
Christopher sings through the storm is particularly superb.
_Frank van der Stucken._
[Illustration: FRANK VAN DER STUCKEN.]
On the bead-roll of those who have had both the ability and the
courage to take a stand for our music, the name of Frank van der
Stucken must stand high. His Americanism is very frail, so far as
birth and breeding count, but he has won his naturalization by his
ardor for native music.
Van der Stucken's life has been full of labors and honors. He was born
at Fredericksburg, Texas, in 1858, of a Belgian father and a German
mother. After the Civil War, in which the father served in the
Confederate army as a captain of the Texan cavalry, the family
returned to Belgium, where, at Antwerp, Van der Stucken studied under
Benoit. Here some of his music was played in the churches, and a
ballet at the Royal Theatre.
In 1878 he began studies in Leipzig, making important acquaintances,
such as Reinecke, Grieg, and Sinding. His first male chorus was sung
there, with great success. Of his fifth opus, consisting of nine
songs, Edvard Grieg wrote an enthusiastic criticism. After travelling
for some time, Van der Stucken was appointed kapellmeister at the
Breslau Stadt-Theatre. This was his début as conductor. Here he
composed his well-known suite on Shakespeare's "Tempest," which has
been performed abroad and here. Here, also, he wrote a "Festzug," an
important work in Wagnerian style, and his passionate "Pagina
d'Amore," which, with the published portions of his lyric drama,
"Vlasda," has been performed by many great orchestras.
In 1883, Van der Stucken met Liszt, at Weimar, and under his auspices
gave a concert of his own compositions, winning the congratulations of
Grieg, Lassen, Liszt, and many other celebrated musicians. A prominent
German critic headed his review of the performance: "A new star on the
musical firmament."
Van der Stucken was now called to the directorship of the famous Arion
Male Chorus in New York, a position which he held for eleven years
with remarkable results. In 1892 he took his chorus on a tour in
Europe and won superlative praises everywhere.
In 1885 and successive years Van der Stucken conducted orchestral
"Novelty Concerts," which have an historical importance as giving the
first hearing to symphonic works by American composers. In Berlin and
in Paris he also gave our musicians the privilege of public
performance. From 1891 to 1894 he devoted himself to reforming the
Northeastern Säengerbund, achieving the enormous task of making five
thousand male voices sing difficult music artistically. Since 1895 Van
der Stucken has been conductor of the newly formed Cincinnati Symphony
Orchestra, as well as dean of the faculty of the College of Music in
that city. The influence of this man, who is certainly one of the most
important musicians of his time, is bringing Cincinnati back to its
old musical prestige.
As a composer, Van der Stucken shows the same originality and power
that characterize him as an organizer. His prelude to the opera
"Vlasda" (op. 9) is one long rapture of passionate sweetness, superbly
instrumented. An arrangement of it has been made for the piano for
four hands by Horatio W. Parker.
Van der Stucken's music to "The Tempest" (op. 8) is published in three
forms. Besides the orchestral score, there is an arrangement for piano
solo, by A. Siloti, of the "Dance of the Gnomes," "Dance of the
Nymphs," and "Dance of the Reapers," the first and third being
especially well transcribed. For four hands, Hans Sitt has arranged
these three dances, as well as a short but rich "Exorcism," some
splendid melodramatic music, and the rattling grotesque, "The
Hound-chase after Caliban." All these pieces are finely imagined and
artistically handled.
For piano solo, there is a group of three Miniatures (op. 7). The
first is an Albumblatt of curious dun colors; the second is a
Capriccietto, a strange whim; the third is a beautiful bit called "May
Blossom."
[Music:
Der Stunde sei geflucht,
wo ich dein Herz gesucht,
wenn in dir diese Liebe
statt milder Freudentriebe
soll tragen herbe Frucht!
Gesegnet ist die Stunde,
sprach sie mit süssem Munde,
mir ist kein Leid geschehn
den Himmel fühl' ich stehn
in meines Herzens Grunde.
That hour with curse be fraught,
In which thy heart I sought,
If I, in love bestowing,
Instead of gladness knowing,
A bitter grief have bought:
"My soul that hour e'er blesses,"
A rosy mouth confesses,
"Thy love is all I crave,
Then heav'n itself I have
Within my heart's recesses."
Copyright, 1892, by Friedrich Luckhardt, Berlin.
By permission of Luckhardt & Belder, New York.
FRAGMENT OF MR. VAN DER STUCKEN'S "DIE STUNDE SEI GESEGNET."]
Of Van der Stucken's songs I have seen two groups, the first a setting
of five love lyrics by Rückert. None of these are over two pages long,
except the last. They are written in the best modern _Lied_ style, and
are quite unhackneyed. It is always the unexpected that happens,
though this unexpected thing almost always proves to be a right thing.
Without any sense of strain or bombast he reaches superb climaxes;
without eccentricity he is individual; and his songs are truly
interpreters of the words they express. Of these five, "Wann die Rosen
aufgeblüht" is a wonderfully fine and fiery work; "Die Stunde sei
gesegnet" has one of the most beautiful endings imaginable; "Mir ist,
nun ich die habe" has a deep significance in much simplicity, and its
ending, by breaking the rule against consecutive octaves, attains, as
rule-breakings have an unpleasant habit of doing, an excellent effect.
"Liebste, nur dich seh'n" is a passionate lyric; and "Wenn die
Vöglein sich gepaart" is florid and trilly, but legitimately so; it
should find much concert use. These songs, indeed, are all more than
melodies; they are expressions.
Of the second group of eight songs for low voice, "O Jugendlust" is
athrill with young ecstasy; "Einsame Thräne" has superb coloring, all
sombre, and a tremendous climax; "Seeligkeit" is big with emotion and
ravishing in harmony, "Ein Schäferlied" is exquisite, "Von schön
Sicilien war mein Traum" begins in the style of Lassen, but ends with
a strength and vigor far beyond that tender melodist. Besides these
groups, there is a rich lyric "Moonlight;" and there are many part
songs.
A work of considerable importance written many years before and
presented by Franz Liszt at Weimar had its first American production
in 1899, at Cincinnati and New York. It is a symphonic prologue to
Heine's tragedy, "William Ratcliff." The different psychological
phases of the tragedy are presented by characteristic motives which
war among themselves. The Scottish locale is indicated vividly, and
the despair of the lovers presented in one place by the distortion and
rending of all the principal motives. A dirge with bells and a final
musing upon, and resignation before, implacable Fate give a dignified
close to a work in which passion is exploited with erudition and
modernity.
_W.W. Gilchrist._
The prize competition has its evils, unquestionably; and, in a place
of settled status, perhaps, they outnumber its benefits. But in
American music it has been of material encouragement to the production
of large works. In the first place, those who do not win have been
stimulated to action, and have at least their effort for their pains.
In the second place, those who manage to win are several hundred
dollars the richer, and may offer the wolf at the door a more
effective bribe than empty-stomached song.
In the city of Philadelphia lives a composer of unusual luck in
prize-winning. That large and ancient town is not noteworthy for its
activity in the manufacture of original music. In fact, some one has
spoken of it as "a town where the greatest reproach to a musician is
residence there." The city's one prominent music-writer is William
Wallace Gilchrist; but he stands among the first of our composers. He
is especially interesting as a purely native product, having never
studied abroad, and yet having won among our composers a foremost
place in the larger forms of composition. He was born in Jersey City,
January 8, 1846; his father was a Canadian, his mother a native of
this country; both were skilled in music, and his home life was full
of it, especially of the old church music. After a youth of the usual
school life he tried various pursuits,--photography, law, business;
but music kept calling him. A good barytone voice led him to join
vocal societies, and at length he made music his profession, after
studying voice, organ, and composition with Dr. H.A. Clarke, of
Philadelphia. He was a successful soloist in oratorio for some years,
but gradually devoted himself to church work and conducting, and to
composition, though none of his music was published till he was
thirty-two, when he took two prizes offered by the Abt Male Singing
Society of Philadelphia.
Shortly after taking the Abt Society prize, he won three offered by
the Mendelssohn Glee Club of New York, and in 1884 he took the $1,000
prize offered by the Cincinnati Festival Association.
This last was gained by his setting of the Forty-sixth Psalm for
soprano solo, chorus, and orchestra. The overture opens with a noble
andante contemplatif, which deserves its epithet, but falls after a
time into rather uninteresting moods, whence it breaks only at the
last period. The opening chorus, "God Is Our Refuge and Strength,"
seems to me to be built on a rather trite and empty subject, which it
plays battledore and shuttlecock with in the brave old pompous and
canonic style, which stands for little beyond science and labor. It is
only fair to say, however, that A.J. Goodrich, in his "Musical
Analysis," praises "the strength and dignity" of this chorus; and
gives a minute analysis of the whole work with liberal thematic
quotation. The psalm, as a whole, though built on old lines, is built
well on those lines, and the solo "God Is in the Midst of Her" is
taken up with especially fine effect by the chorus. "The Heathen
Raged" is a most ingeniously complicated chorus also.
The cantata, "Prayer and Praise," is similarly conventional, and
suffers from the sin of repetition, but contains much that is strong.
Of the three prize male choruses written for the Mendelssohn Glee
Club, the "Ode to the Sun" is the least successful. It is written to
the bombast of Mrs. Hemans, and is fittingly hysterical; occasionally
it fairly shrieks itself out. "In Autumn" is quieter; a sombre work
with a fine outburst at the end. "The Journey of Life" is an andante
misterioso that catches the gloom of Bryant's verse, and offers a good
play for that art of interweaving voices in which Gilchrist is an
adept.
"The Uplifted Gates" is a chorus for mixed voices with solos for
sopranos and altos; it is elaborate, warm, and brilliant. In lighter
tone are the "Spring Song," a trio with cheap words, but bright music
and a rich ending, and "The Sea Fairies," a chorus of delightful
delicacy for women's voices. It has a piano accompaniment for four
hands. In this same difficult medium of women's voices is "The
Fountain," a surpassingly beautiful work, graceful and silvery as a
cascade. It reminds one, not by its manner at all, but by its success,
of that supreme achievement, Wagner's song of the "Rhinemaidens."
The piano accompaniment to Gilchrist's chorus aids the general
picture.
A thoroughly charming work is the setting of Lowell's poem, "The
Rose," for solos and chorus. The dreariness of the lonely poet and the
lonely maid contrasts strongly with the rapture of their meeting. As
the first half of the poem is morose yet melodious, the latter is
bright with ecstasy; the ending is of the deepest tenderness.
By all odds the best of these choruses, however, is "The Legend of the
Bended Bow," a fine war-chant by Mrs. Hemans. Tradition tells that in
ancient Britain the people were summoned to war by messengers who
carried a bended bow; the poem tells of the various patriots
approached. The reaper is bidden to leave his standing corn, the
huntsman to turn from the chase; the chieftain, the prince, mothers,
sisters, sweethearts, and the bards are all approached and counselled
to bravery. After each episode follow the words "And the bow passed
on," but the music has been so well managed that the danger of such a
repetition is turned into grim force. The only prelude is five great
blasts of the horns. A brawny vigor is got by a frequent use of
imitation and unison in the voices. The choric work is marked
throughout with the most intense and epic power, almost savagery; a
magnificent martial zest. The climax is big. It is certainly one of
the best things of its kind ever done over here.
Another work of fine quality throughout is "A Christmas Idyl," for
solos, chorus, and orchestra. A terrible sombreness is achieved in its
former half by a notable simplicity. The latter part is in brighter
tone; the solo, "And Thou, Bethlehem," is especially exultant. In
manuscript is "An Easter Idyl," of large proportions, for solos,
chorus, and orchestra, or organ.
In the single songs the influence of Gilchrist's early training in
hymns is patent. In only a few instances do they follow the latter-day
methods of Schumann and Franz. "A Song of Doubt and a Song of Faith"
is possibly his best vocal solo. It begins with a plaint, that is full
of cynic despair; thence it breaks suddenly into a cheerful andante.
"The Two Villages" is a strong piece of work on the conventional
lines of what might be called the Sunday ballad. "A Dirge for Summer"
has a marked originality, and is of that deep brooding which is
particularly congenial to Gilchrist's muse. The Scotch songs are
charming: "My Heart is Sair" is full of fine feeling, and must be
classed among the very best of the many settings of this lyric of
Burns'.
Most modern in feeling of all Gilchrist's vocal solos is the group of
"Eight Songs." They interpret the text faithfully and the
accompaniment is in accord with the song, but yet possessed of its own
individuality. "A Love Song" is tender and has a well-woven
accompaniment; "The Voice of the Sea" is effective, but hardly attains
the large simplicity of Aldrich' poem; "Autumn" is exquisitely cheery;
"Goldenrod" is ornately graceful, while "The Dear Long Ago" is quaint;
"Lullaby" is of an exquisitely novel rhythm in this overworked form.
[Music: A LOVE SONG.
By Barry Cornwall.
Music by W.W. Gilchrist.
Love me if I live,
Love me if I die.
What to me is life or death,
So that thou, that thou be near.
What to me is life or death,
So that thou be near,
So that thou be near.
Copyright, 1885, by Arthur P. Schmidt & Co.
A FRAGMENT.]
There is much contrast between the lightness of his book, "Songs for
the Children," and his ponderous setting of Kipling's "Recessional."
The treatment of Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Southern Lullaby" is unusual,
and the songs, "My Ladye" and "The Ideal," both in MS., are
noteworthy.
Gilchrist has written a vast amount of religious music, including
several "Te Deums," of which the one in C and that in A flat are the
best, to my thinking. He has written little for the piano except a
series of duets, of which the charming "Mélodie" and the fetching
"Styrienne" are the best.
It is by his orchestral works, however, that he gains the highest
consideration. These include a symphony for full orchestra, which has
been frequently performed with success; a suite for orchestra; a suite
for piano and orchestra; as well as a nonet, a quintet, and a trio,
for strings and wind. None of these have been published, but I have
had the privilege of examining some of the manuscripts.
The spirit and the treatment of these works is strongly classical.
While the orchestration is scholarly and mellow, it is not in the
least Wagnerian, either in manipulation or in lusciousness. The
symphony is not at all programmatic. The Scherzo is of most exuberant
gaiety. Its accentuation is much like that in Beethoven's piano
sonata (op. 14, No. 2). Imitation is liberally used in the scoring,
with a delightfully comic effect as of an altercation. The symphony
ends with a dashing finale that is stormy with cheer. Gilchrist is at
work upon a second symphony of more modernity.
The "Nonet" is in G minor, and begins with an Allegro in which a most
original and severe subject is developed with infinite grace and
an unusually rich color. The Andante is religioso, and is fervent
rather than sombre. The ending is especially beautiful. A sprightly
Scherzo follows. It is most ingeniously contrived, and the effects are
divided with unusual impartiality among the instruments. A curious and
elaborate allegro molto furnishes the finale, and ends the "Nonet"
surprisingly with an abrupt major chord.
The opening Allegro of the "Quintet" begins with a 'cello solo of
scherzesque quality, but as the other voices join in, it takes on a
more passionate tone, whence it works into rapturously beautiful moods
and ends magnificently. The piano part has a strong value, and even
where it merely ornaments the theme carried by the strings, it is
fascinating. The Scherzo is again of the Beethoven order in its
contagious comicality. The piano has the lion's share of it at first,
but toward the last the other instruments leave off embroidery and
take to cracking jokes for themselves. The Andante is a genuinely fine
piece of work. It ranges from melting tenderness to impassioned rage
and a purified nobility. The piano part is highly elaborated, but the
other instruments have a scholarly, a vocal, individuality. I was
shocked to see a cadenza for the piano just before the close, but its
tender brilliance was in thorough accord with the sincerity of the
movement. The "Quintet" ends with a splendid Allegro.
In MS. are three interesting works for the violin, a Rhapsody, a
Perpetual Motion, and a Fantasie.
This last has a piano accompaniment of much ingenuity. The fantasial
nature of the work lies principally in its development, which is
remarkably lyrical, various melodies being built up beautifully on
fractions of the main subjects. There is nothing perfunctory, and the
work is full of art and appeal. Gilchrist is one of our most polished
composers contrapuntally, but has been here in a very lyric mood.
He is the founder and conductor of the Mendelssohn Club of
Philadelphia, an unusually effective organization; one of the founders
of the local Manuscript Club; the conductor of a choral society of two
hundred voices, at Harrisburg, and the director of two church choirs.
_G.W. Chadwick._
[Illustration: Autograph of G.W. Chadwick]
[Illustration: GEORGE WHITEFIELD CHADWICK.]
One of the most sophisticated, and, at the same time, most eclectic of
native music-makers, is George W. Chadwick, to whom the general
consent of authorities would grant a place among the very foremost of
the foremost American composers.
His reputation rests chiefly on his two symphonies, a number of
concert overtures, and many pieces of chamber-music, which are much
praised. Chadwick was born at Lowell, Mass., November 13, 1854. His
parents were American, and it was not till 1877, after studying with
Eugene Thayer in Boston, and teaching music in the college at Olivet,
Mich., that Chadwick studied for two years at Leipzig, under Jadassohn
and Reinecke, and later at Munich for a year under Rheinberger. In
1880 he returned to America and settled in Boston, where he has since
lived, as organist, teacher, and conductor, an important figure in
the town's musical life.
Among his few works for the piano, are "Six Characteristic Pieces"
(op. 7). The "Reminiscence of Chopin" is an interesting and skilful
chain of partial themes and suggestions from Chopin. The "Étude" is a
monotonous study in a somewhat Schumannesque manner, with a graceful
finish. The "Congratulation" is a cheerful bagatelle; the "Irish
Melody" is sturdy, simple, and fetching; but the "Scherzino" is a hard
bit of humor with Beethoven mannerisms lacking all the master's
unction.
The opus ends with an unfortunate composition inexcusably titled
"Please Do!"
There are two bright "Caprices" and three excellent waltzes, of which
the third is the best. It is a dreamy, tender work on a theme by
"B.J.L.," which refers, I presume, to Mr. B.J. Lang.
Chadwick has done a vast amount of part-song writing. His "Lovely
Rosabelle" is for chorus and orchestra, and is marked with many
original effects. His "Reiterlied" is superbly joyful. A setting of
Lewis Carroll's immortal "Jabberwocky" shows much rich humor of the
college glee-club sort. There is an irresistibly humorous episode
where the instrument of destruction goes "snicker snack," and a fine
hilarity at
"'O frabjous day
Callooh, callay,'
He chortled in his joy."
What would part-song writers do if the Vikings had never been
invented? Where would they get their wild choruses for men, with a
prize to the singer that makes the most noise? Chadwick falls into
line with "The Viking's Last Voyage" (1881), for barytone solo, male
chorus, and orchestra, which gives him a very high place among writers
in this form. He has also a robustious "Song of the Viking," and an
excellent Dedication Ode (1884), for solo, chorus, and orchestra, to
the pregnant words of Rev. H.B. Carpenter, besides two cantatas for
mixed voices, "Phoenix Expirans" and "The Pilgrims." In 1889 was
published his "Lovely Rosabelle," a ballad for chorus and orchestra;
it contains some interesting dissonantial work in the storm-passages.
And his comic opera, "Tabasco," must be mentioned, as well as an
enormous mass of sacred music, which, I confess, I had not the
patience to study. The flesh was willing, but the spirit was weak.
Among Chadwick's songs is a volume of Breton melodies harmonized with
extreme simplicity. Others are "Gay Little Dandelion," which is good
enough of its everlasting flower-song sort; "In Bygone Days" and
"Request," which, aside from one or two flecks of art, are trashy; and
two childish namby-pambies, "Adelaide" and "The Mill." "A Bonny Curl"
catches the Scotch-ton faithfully.
Chadwick usually succeeds, however, in catching foreign flavors. His
"Song from the Persian" is one of his best works, and possibly the
very best is his "Sorais' Song," to Rider Haggard's splendid words.
It has an epic power and a wild despair. Up to the flippancy of its
last measures, it is quite inspired, and one of the strongest of
American songs. The "Danza" is captivating and full of novelty. "Green
Grows the Willow" is a burden of charming pathos and quaintness,
though principally a study in theme-management. "Allah," however, is
rather Ethiopian than Mahommedan. His "Bedouin Love Song" has little
Oriental color, but is full of rush and fire, with a superb ending. It
is the best of the countless settings of this song. I wish I could say
the same of his "Thou Art so Like a Flower," but he has missed the
intense repression of Heine.
[Music: _To Mrs. G.H. Stoddard._
TWO FOLK SONGS.
I
G.W. Chadwick
O love and joy are for a day,
Then tears and sorrow after,
O love is for a summer's day,
And then farewell to laughter.
If love and joy are for a day
And then farewell to laughter,
To live with love give me one day
Though tears forever after.
Copyright, 1892, by Arthur P. Schmidt.]
The "Serenade" displays an interesting rhythm; "The Miller's Daughter"
is tender, and "A Warning" is delightfully witty. One regrets,
however, that its best points were previously used in Schumann's
perfect folk-song, "Wenn ich früh in den Garten geh'." Chadwick has
two folk-songs of his own, however, which are superb. "He Loves Me" is
a tender, cradle-song-like bit of delicious color. The "Lullaby" is a
genuinely interesting study in this overworked form. "The Lily" has
the passionate lyricism of Chaminade, and "Sweet Wind that Blows" is a
fine frenzy. The "Nocturne" is dainty and has its one good climax.
"Before the Dawn" has some of Chadwick's best work; it is especially
marked by a daring harmonic--you might say--_impasto_.
His principal works, besides those mentioned, may be catalogued (I am
unable to do more than catalogue most of them, having seen only one of
them, "The Lily Nymph," performed, and having read the score of only
the "Melpomene" overture): Concert overtures, "Rip Van Winkle"
(written in Leipzig, 1879, and played there the same year), "Thalia"
(1883), "Melpomene" (1887), "The Miller's Daughter" (1887), and
"Adonais" (in memory of a friend, 1899); Symphonies, in C (1882), in B
(1885); an Andante for string orchestra (1884), and numerous pieces of
chamber-music. In the case of the cantata, "The Lily Nymph,"
Chadwick's art was quite futilized by the superb inanities of the book
he used. The "Melpomene" is a work of infinitely more specific
gravity. It is one of the most important of American orchestral works.
As his "Thalia" was an "overture to an imaginary comedy," so this, to
an imaginary tragedy. It has been played by the Boston Symphony and
many other orchestras. It has that definiteness of mood with that
indefiniteness of circumstance in which music wins its most dignified
prosperity.
It opens with the solitary voice of the English horn, which
gives a notable pathos (read Berlioz on this despairful
elegist, and remember its haunting wail in the last act of
"Tristan und Isolde"). The woeful plaint of this voice
breathing above a low sinister roll of the tympanum
establishes at once the atmosphere of melancholy. Other
instruments join the wail, which breaks out wildly from the
whole orchestra. Over a waving accompaniment of clarinets,
the other wood-winds strike up a more lyric and hopeful
strain, and a soliloquy from the 'cello ends the slow
introduction, the materials of which are taken from the two
principal subjects of the overture, which is built on the
classic sonata formula. The first subject is announced by the
first violins against the full orchestra; the subsidiary
theme is given to the flutes and oboes; after a powerful
climax, and a beautiful subsidence of the storm in the lower
strings, the second subject appears in the relative major
with honeyed lyricism. The conclusion, which is made rather
elaborate by the latter-day symphonists, is reduced to a
brief modulation by Mr. Chadwick, and almost before one knows
it, he is in the midst of the elaboration. It is hard to say
whether the composer's emotion or his counterpoint is given
freer rein here, for the work is remarkable both for the
display of every technical resource and for the irresistible
tempest of its passion. In the reprise there is a climax that
thrills one even as he tamely reads the score, and must be
overpowering in actual performance: the cheerful consolation
of the second subject provokes a cyclonic outburst of grief;
there is a furious climax of thrilling flutes and violins
over a mad blare of brass, the while the cymbals shiver
beneath the blows of the kettledrum-sticks. An abrupt silence
prepares for a fierce thunderous clamor from the tympani and
the great drum (beaten with the sticks of the side-drum).
This subsides to a single thud of a kettledrum; there is
another eloquent silence; the English horn returns to its
first plaint; but grief has died of very exercise, and the
work ends in a coda that establishes a major harmony and
leaves the hearer with a heart purged white and clean.
The "Melpomene" overture is a work of such inspiration and such
scholarship that it must surely find a long youth in the chronicle of
our music.
_Arthur Foote._
[Illustration: ARTHUR FOOTE.]
[Illustration: Autograph of Arthur Foote]
The nearest approach Americans make to the enthusiastic German
_Männerchor_ is in the college glee clubs. The dignity of their
selections is not always up to that of the Teutonic chorus, but they
develop a salutary fondness for color and shading, exaggerating both a
little perhaps, yet aiming at the right warmth and variety withal.
Even those elaborate paraphrases and circumlocutions of Mother Goose
rhymes, to which they are so prone, show a striving after dramatic
effect and richness of harmony, as well as a keen sense of wit and
humor that are by no means incompatible with real value in music.
Among their other good deeds must be counted the fostering of the
musical ambitions of Arthur Foote, who was for two years the leader of
the Glee Club of Harvard University. Though he has by no means been
content to delve no deeper into music than glee-club depths, I think
the training has been of value, and its peculiar character is patent
in his works. He is especially fond of writing for men's voices, and
is remarkably at home in their management, and he strives rather for
color-masses than for separate individualities in the voices.
Among his larger works for men's voices is an elaborate setting of
Longfellow's poem, "The Skeleton in Armor," which is full of vigor and
generally sturdy in treatment, especially in its descriptions of
Viking war and seafaring. The storm-scenes, as in Mr. Foote's "Wreck
of the Hesperus," seem faintly to suggest Wagnerian _Donner und
Blitzen_, but in general Mr. Foote has resisted the universal tendency
to copy the mannerisms so many take to be the real essence of the
Bayreuthian. A pretty bit of fancy is the use of a spinning-wheel
accompaniment to the love-song, although the spindle is nowhere
suggested by the poem. Indeed, the spinning is treated as a
characteristic motif for the Norseman's bride, somewhat as it is
Senta's motif in "The Flying Dutchman."
The chief fault with the "Skeleton" chorus is that it is always
choric. There are no solos, and the different registers are never used
separately for more than a bar or two, before the whole mass chimes
in. Even the instrumental interludes are short, and the general effect
must be rather undiversified, one of sympathy, too, for the unrested
chorus.
"The Wreck of the Hesperus" is an ambitious work, built on large
lines, but hardly represents Mr. Foote at his best. It is for mixed
voices, and is pitched in a most lugubrious key, being always either
vociferous with panic or dismal with minor woe. A worse trouble yet is
the attempt to make a short poem fit a long composition. The
Procrustean operation strains even Longfellow sadly.
This blemish is lacking in "The Farewell of Hiawatha," which is
written for men's voices. Though it, too, is of a sad tone, its sombre
hues are rich and varied as a tapestry. Its effects, though potent,
seem more sincere and less labored. It is altogether noble.
A larger body of sacred music for mixed voices than many other
Americans can boast, also swells Foote's opus-score. Here he shows the
same facility with the quartette as in his other works. In fact, I
think the effect of glee-club training on his young mind has strongly
influenced his whole life-work. And, by the way, the most talented of
all the great Sebastian Bach's twenty-one children--every one a
musical opus, too--was diverted from the philosopher's career for
which he was intended, and into professional musicianship, by just
such a glee-club training in the universities at Leipzig and
Frankfort.
Almost all of Foote's compositions are written in the close harmony
and limited range of vocal music, and he very rarely sweeps the
keyboard in his piano compositions, or hunts out startling novelties
in strictly pianistic effect. He is not fond of the cloudy regions of
the upper notes, and though he may dart brilliantly skyward now and
then just to show that his wings are good for lighter air, he is soon
back again, drifting along the middle ether.
He has won his high place by faithful adherence to his own sober,
serene ideals, and by his genuine culture and seriousness. He is
thoroughly American by birth and training, though his direct English
descent accounts for his decided leaning toward the better impulses of
the English school of music. He was born at Salem, Mass., March 5,
1853, and though he played the piano a good deal as a boy, and made a
beginning in the study of composition with Emery, he did not study
seriously until he graduated from Harvard in 1874. He then took up the
higher branches of composition under the tuition of John Knowles
Paine, and obtained in 1875 the degree of A.M. in the special
department of music. He also studied the organ and the piano with B.J.
Lang at Boston, and has since made that city his home, teaching and
playing the organ.
His overture, "In the Mountains," has been much played from the
manuscript by orchestras, among them the Boston Symphony. Besides a
considerable amount of highly valuable contributions to American
chamber-music, and two fine piano suites, he has written a great many
piano pieces and songs which deserve even greater popularity than they
have won, because, while not bristling with technical difficulties,
they are yet of permanent worth.
I know of no modern composer who has come nearer to relighting the
fires that beam in the old gavottes and fugues and preludes. His two
gavottes are to me among the best since Bach. They are an example of
what it is to be academic without being only a-rattle with dry bones.
He has written a Nocturne that gets farther from being a mere
imitation of Chopin than almost any night-piece written since the Pole
appropriated that form bodily from John Field and made it his own.
One of his most original pieces is the Capriccio of his D minor Suite,
which is also unusually brilliant in color at times; and he has an
Allegretto that is a scherzo of the good old whole-souled humor.
Foote, in fact, is never sickly in sentiment.
Of his rather numerous songs, the older English poets, like Marlowe,
Sidney, Shakespeare, Suckling, and Herrick, have given him much
inspiration. The song "It Was a Lover and his Lass" is especially
taking. His three songs, "When You Become a Nun, Dear," "The Road to
Kew," and "Ho, Pretty Page!" written by modern poets in a half-archaic
way, display a most delicious fund of subtile and ironic musical
humor. "The Hawthorn Wins the Damask Rose" shows how really fine a
well conducted English ballad can be. Among his sadder songs, the
"Irish Folksong," "I'm Wearing Awa'," and the weird "In a Bower" are
heavy with deepest pathos, while "Sweet Is True Love" is as wildly
intense and as haunting in its woe as the fate of the poor Elaine,
whose despair it sings. This I count one of the most appealing of
modern songs.
[Music: IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS LASS
ARTHUR FOOTE, Op. 10, No. 1.
1. It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey and a ho,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey, and a hey non-i-no!
That o'er the green cornfield did pass,
In the springtime, the springtime,
The only pretty ring-time,
When birds do sing hey ding a ding!
Sweet lovers love the spring.
2. And therefore take the present time,
With a hey and a ho,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey, and a hey non-i-no!
For love is crowned with the prime,
In the springtime, the springtime,
The only pretty ring-time,
When birds do sing hey ding a ding!
Sweet lovers love the Spring. (_Shakespeare._)
Copyright, 1886, by Arthur P. Schmidt & Co.]
His greatest work is undoubtedly his symphonic prologue to Dante's
story of "Francesca da Rimini," for full orchestra. Without being
informed upon the subject, I fancy a certain programmism in the
prologue that is not indicated in the quotation at the beginning of
the work:
"Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria."
The prologue, however, seems to me to contain more than the
psychological content of these lines from the fifth canto of the
"Inferno."
The slow introduction in C minor begins with a long, deep
sigh, followed by a downward passage in the violas and
'cellos that seems to indicate the steps that bring Dante and
Vergil down to the edge of the precipice past which the
cyclone of the damned rolls eternally. There is some
shrieking and shuddering, and ominous thudding of the
tympani (which are tuned to unusual notes), then follows a
short recitative which might represent Dante's query to
Francesca how she came to yield to love. Suddenly out of the
swirling strings the first subject is caught up; it is a
frenzy passionately sung by the first violins, reënforced by
the flutes at the crises. The second subject appears after a
sudden prelude by the brass; it is a very lyric waltz-tune in
the relative major, and doubtless depicts the joy recalled in
sorrow. The conclusion is quite lengthy; it is also in waltz
form, and is first announced by a single flute over the
violins and violas, the first violins keeping to the gloomy
G string. This air is now given to a solo horn, and a fierce
and irresistible dance fervor is worked up. The elaboration
begins with the first subject in F sharp minor, caught up
fiercely from a downward rush. The reprise is not long
delayed, and the second subject appears, contrary to custom,
in the tonic major instead of the tonic minor. The coda is
deliciously tender and beautiful, possibly because, being a
prologue, the work must prepare for a drama that begins
cheerfully; possibly because after all there is comfort in
bliss remembered in sorrow.
Tschaïkowski has written a symphonic poem on the same subject, which
has been also the inspiration of numberless dramas, and is one of the
most pathetic pages in all literature; even the stern old Dante says
that when he heard Francesca tell her story he almost died of pity,
and fell to the ground as one dead.
A Serenade for string orchestra (op. 25) contains a Prelude, a tender
Air, a luscious Intermezzo in the rich key of B major with soli for
violin and 'cello, a Romance with a good climax, and a gallant Gavotte
with special attention to the too much slighted violas.
Opus 36 is a suite for full orchestra. It has been played by the
Boston Symphony, and consists of a brilliant Allegro; an Adagio of
deep sincerity and beautifully varied color, a period wherein the
brass choir, heavily scored, chants alone, and the division of the
theme among the wood-wind over the rushing strings is especially
effective; a very whimsical Andante with frequent changes of tempo,
and soli for the English horn in antiphony with the first oboe; and a
madcap Presto that whisks itself out in the first violins.
Two other published works are a string quartette (op. 4) and a
quintette for piano and strings (op. 36). This begins in A minor with
a well woven and well derived set of themes, and ends in a scherzo in
A major with spinning-song characteristics. Between these two
movements comes an intermezzo of strongly marked Scotch tone. This has
been performed by the Kneisel Quartette.
_S.G. Pratt._
Almost every musician has heard of Christopher Columbus, and holds
him in a certain esteem as a man without whose push the invention of
America would have been long deferred; but few American musicians have
felt under a sufficient debt of gratitude to make his troubles and
triumphs the foundation of an appropriate musical work. Silas G. Pratt
was bold enough to undertake the monumental task; and he expended upon
it large resources of scholarship, research, and enthusiasm. The work
was performed at New York during the Quadricentennial of the discovery
of America.
If Pratt had been born in old Egypt, he would have found his chief
diversion in the building of pyramids, so undismayed is he by the size
of a task. His patriotism is a sharp spur to him, and has enabled him
to write an orchestral composition devoted to Paul Revere's Ride; a
fantasy descriptive of a battle between the Northern and Southern
armies; "The Battle of Manila;" "The Anniversary Overture," in
commemoration of the centennial of American Independence, performed in
Berlin twice, and in London at the Crystal Palace, during Grant's
visit there; and a march called by the curious name of "Homage to
Chicago." Besides these works Pratt has written the "Magdalen's
Lament," his first orchestral composition, suggested by Murillo's
picture; the lyric opera, "Antonio;" a first symphony, of which the
adagio was performed in Berlin, the other movements being produced in
Boston and Chicago; a second symphony, "The Prodigal Son;" a romantic
opera, "Zenobia," produced in Chicago; a lyric opera, "Lucille," which
ran for three weeks in Chicago; a symphonic suite based on the
"Tempest;" a canon for a string quartette; a serenade for string
orchestra; a grotesque suite, "The Brownies," produced in New York
and at Brighton Beach by Anton Seidl. Besides these works of musical
composition, Pratt has delivered various musical lectures, ingeniously
contrived to entertain the great public and at the same time inform
it. He has been active also in the organization of various musical
enterprises, among them the Apollo Club of Chicago.
Pratt was born in Addison, Vermont, August 4, 1846. At the age of
twelve, he was thrown on his own resources, and connected himself with
music publishing houses in Chicago. After various public performances,
he went to Germany in 1868, to study the piano under Bendel and
Kullak, and counterpoint under Kiel. In 1872 he returned to Chicago
and gave a concert of his own works. But the phoenix city had not
entirely preened its wings after the great fire of 1871, and Pratt
found no support for his ambitions. After teaching and giving
concerts, he returned to Germany in 1875, where he attended the
rehearsals of Wagner's Trilogy at Bayreuth, met Liszt here, and gave a
recital of his own compositions at Weimar. His "Anniversary Overture"
was cordially received by the press of both Berlin and London. A third
visit to Europe was made in 1885 for the production of the "Prodigal
Son" at the Crystal Palace, on the occasion of which, Berthold Tours
wrote that both the symphony and the "Anniversary Overture" were
"grandly conceived works, full of striking originality, modern
harmony, flowing melody, and beautiful, as well as imposing effects."
Activity along such lines has left Pratt little time for the smaller
forms of composition; a few have been published, among them the song,
"Dream Vision," in which Schumann's "Träumerei" is used for violin
obbligato; and a few piano pieces, such as "Six Soliloquies," with
poetic text. In these each chord shows careful effort at color, and
the work is chromatic enough to convince one that he has studied his
Bach thoroughly.
Among his massive compositions there are two that seem likely to win,
as they surely deserve, a long life. These are the symphonic suite,
"The Tempest," and the "Prodigal Son." To the latter splendid
achievement, A.J. Goodrich devotes several pages of his "Musical
Analysis," to which I can do no better than to refer the reader. The
"Tempest" is based, of course, on Shakespeare's play, and is described
as follows by the composer:
"It is intended, in the first movement, Adagio, to typify the
sorrow of Prospero, and his soul's protest against the
ingratitude and persecution of his enemies. His willing
attendant Ariel is briefly indicated in the closing measures.
The Pastoral furnishes an atmosphere or stage setting for the
lovers, Miranda and Ferdinand, whose responsive love-song
follows the droning of a shepherd's pipe in the distance.
Prospero's interruption to their passionate assurances of
devotion, and the imposition of the unpleasant task, are
briefly touched upon, and the movement closes with a repeat
of the pastoral, and alternate reiteration of the lover's
song. The Finale, after a short introduction, in most sombre
vein, indicates the flitting about of Ariel and his companion
sprites as they gather for revelry. The presence of the
master is soon made apparent by the recurrence, in a
subdued manner, of Prospero's first theme from the Adagio,
the fantastic tripping of the elves continuing, as though the
controlling spirit were conjuring up the fête for the
amusement of the lovers and himself.
"'Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves;
And ye that on the sand, with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back.'
"The dance then begins, and continues in a fantastic, at
times grotesque and furious manner, the theme of the lovers
being interwoven at times, in an unobtrusive way. At length,
Caliban is heard approaching, singing his drunken song.
"''Ban, 'Ban, Ca-caliban
Has a new master: get a new man.'
"Ariel and his companions flit about, ridiculing, mocking,
and laughing at him; eventually prodding and pinching him
until, shivering, with aching joints, he staggers away. The
revelry then continues, the song of the lovers becoming more
and more prominent until, somewhat broadened out, it asserts
itself triumphantly above all, Ariel and his companions
flitting about, Prospero happy, and Caliban subjugated, all
the chief themes being united to form the climax and close of
the work."
Although Pratt intentionally omitted the English horn and the bass
clarinet, the scoring is remarkable for its color and faery. The work
is highly lyrical in effect, and the woodsiness is beautifully
established. The solemnity of Prospero, the adroitness of the lovers
and the contrasting natures of the volatile Ariel and the sprawling
Caliban, make up a cast of characters in the development of which
music is peculiarly competent. The stertorous monologue of Caliban and
his hobbling dance, and the taunting and pinching torment he is
submitted to, make excellent humor.
_Henry K. Hadley._
[Illustration: HENRY K. HADLEY.]
The word symphony has a terrifying sound, particularly when it is
applied to a modern work; for latter-day music is essentially romantic
in nature, and it is only a very rare composer that has the
inclination or the ability to force the classic form to meet his new
ideas. The result is that such a work usually lacks spontaneity,
conviction. The modern writer does much better with the symphonic
poem.
The number of American symphonies worth listening to, could be counted
on the fingers with several digits to spare. A new finger has been
preëmpted by Henry K. Hadley's symphony called "Youth and Life." The
title is doubly happy. Psychologically it is a study of the intense
emotional life of youth, written by an American youth,--a young man
who, by the way, strangely reminds one, in his appearance, of
Macmonnies' American type, as represented by his ideal statue of
Nathan Hale.
And musically the work is imbued with both youth and life. It has
blood and heart in it. The first movement is a conflict between good
and evil motives struggling like the mediæval angels for the soul of
the hero. The better power wins triumphantly. The second movement,
however, shows doubt and despair, remorse and deep spiritual
depression. The climax of this feeling is a death-knell, which,
smitten softly, gives an indescribably dismal effect, and thrills
without starting. Angelus bells in pedal-point continue through a
period of hope and prayer; but remorse again takes sway. The ability
to obtain this fine solemnity, and follow it with a scherzo of
extraordinary gaiety, proves that a genius is at large among us. The
Scherzo displays a thigh-slapping, song-singing _abandon_ that
typifies youthful frivolity fascinatingly. A fugue is used
incidentally with a burlesque effect that reminds one of Berlioz'
"Amen" parody in the "Damnation of Faust." The Finale exploits motives
of ambition and heroism, with a moment of love. The climax is
vigorous. Without being at all ariose, the symphony is full of melody.
Its melodies are not counterpoint, but expression; and each instrument
or choir of instruments is an individuality.
Hadley is galvanic with energy and optimism, dextrous to a remarkable
degree in the mechanism of composition. His scoring is mature,
fervent, and certain. His symphony is legitimately programmatic and
alive with brains, biceps, and blood,--all three,--the three great B's
of composition.
Hadley was born at Somerville, Mass., in 1871. His father was a
teacher of music and gave him immediate advantages. He studied harmony
with Stephen A. Emery, counterpoint with G.W. Chadwick, and the
violin with Henry Heindl and Charles N. Allen of Boston. Before
attaining his majority, he had completed a dramatic overture, a string
quartette, a trio, and many songs and choruses. In 1894 he went to
Vienna and studied composition with Mandyczewski. Here he composed his
third suite for the orchestra. In 1896 he returned to America and took
charge of the music department of St. Paul's school at Garden City,
L.I. He has had some experience as a conductor and has been very
prolific in composition. His first symphony was produced under the
direction of Anton Seidl, in December, 1897; and at a concert of his
own compositions, again, in January, 1900, Hadley conducted this
symphony, and also two movements from his second symphony, "The
Seasons." These two movements show a mellower technic, perhaps, but
are less vital. He has written three ballet suites with pronounced
success, the work being musical and yet full of the ecstasy of the
dance. His third ballet suite, which is the best, was produced at a
concert of the American Symphony Orchestra, under Sam Franko.
The existence of a festival march, a concert overture, "Hector and
Andromache," two comic operas, and six songs for chorus and orchestra,
besides a number of part songs and piano pieces, and over one hundred
songs, forty of which are published, gives proof of the restless
energy of the man. The high average of scholarship is a proof of his
right to serious acceptance.
A cantata for orchestra, "Lelewala," a legend of Niagara, is published
for piano accompaniment. Now, Niagara is a dangerous subject for the
frail skiffs of rhyme, prose, or music to launch out upon. Barrel
staves may carry one through the whirlpool, but music staves cannot
stand the stress. Of all the comments upon the Falls of Niagara that I
have ever read, or heard of, there has been only one that seemed
anything but ridiculously inappropriate; that one was the tribute of a
young boy who, on standing face to face with the falls, simply
exclaimed, in an awe-smothered whisper, "Well, by gosh!" But it must
be admitted that these words would baffle the music-making
propensities even of the composer of Händel's "Hallelujah Chorus."
That learned composer, George F. Bristow, now dead, made the mistake
of attempting to compass Niagara in a work for chorus and orchestra.
Hadley is not exactly guilty of the same fatal attempt in his
"Lelewala," for the poem is chiefly a story of love and sacrifice; but
Niagara comes in as a programmatic incident, and the author of the
text has fallen lamentably short of his subject in certain instances.
In other moments, he has written with genuine charm, and the music has
much that is worth while.
Among his published songs are to be noted the unusually good setting
of Heine's "Wenn ich in deine Augen seh'" and of his less often heard
"Sapphire sind die Augen dein," and "Der Schmetterling ist in die Rose
verliebt." A deservedly popular work is "I Plucked a Quill from
Cupid's Wing." Among so many morose or school-bound composers, Hadley
is especially important for the fact that he is thrilled with a sane
and jubilant music.
_Adolph M. Foerster._
[Illustration: ADOLPH M. FOERSTER.]
It has been fortunate for American song that it forsook the narrow,
roystering school of English ballad and took for its national model
the _Lied_ of the later German school. It is true that the earlier
English had its poetry-respecting music in the work of such a man as
Henry Lawes, or Purcell, just as it had its composers who far preceded
Bach in the key-roving idea of the "Well-tempered Clavier;" but that
spirit died out of England, and found its latest avatar in such men
as Robert Franz, who confessed that he had his first and fullest
recognition from this country.
A correspondence with Franz was carried on for eighteen years by one
of the solidest of American composers, Adolph M. Foerster, who gives
distinction to the musical life of Pittsburg. He knew Franz
personally, and has written an important appreciation of him for the
magazine _Music_. Foerster was born at Pittsburg in 1854. After three
years of commercial life, he took up music seriously, and spent the
years from 1872 to 1875 at Leipzig,--studying the piano under Coccius
and Wenzel, singing under Grill and Schimon, and theory under E.F.
Richter and Papperitz. Returning to America, he connected himself with
the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Conservatory of Music, then under the direction
of the beneficent inventor of the Virgil Clavier. A year later he
returned to Pittsburg, where he has since remained. For awhile he was
conductor of a symphonic society and a choral union, which are no
longer extant. Since, he has devoted himself to teaching and
composition.
Of Foerster's piano compositions opus 11 is a "Valse Brillante," warm
and melodious. Opus 13 is a "Sonnet," based, after the plan of Liszt,
upon a lyric of Petrarch's, a beautiful translation from his "Gli
occhi di ch'io parlai si caldamente." It is full of passion, and shows
a fine variety in the handling of persistent repetition. Opus 18
couples two sonatinas. The second has the more merit, but both, like
most sonatinas, are too trivial of psychology and too formal even to
be recommended for children's exercises. "Eros" is a fluent melody,
with a scherzesque second part.
Opus 37 contains two concert études, both superb works. The first,
"Exaltation," is very original, though neither the beginning nor the
ending is particularly striking. The music between, however, has a
fervor that justifies the title. This étude is, like those of Chopin,
at the same time a technical study and a mood. The second, a
"Lamentation," begins with a most sonorous downward harmony, with
rushes up from the bass like the lessening onsets of a retreating
tide. Throughout, the harmonies and emotions are remarkably profound
and the climaxes wild. I should call it one of the best modern piano
compositions.
Twelve "Fantasy Pieces" are included in opus 38. They are short
tone-poems. The second, "Sylvan Spirits," is fascinating, and "Pretty
Marie" has an irresistibly gay melody. He has dedicated the six songs
of opus 6 to Robert Franz. These are written in a close unarpeggiated
style chiefly, but they are very interesting in their pregnant
simplicity. In two cases they are even impressive: the well-known
lyric, "Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome," and "Meeresstille." Opus 12 is
a notable group of three songs: "Mists" is superbly harmonious. Opus
25 includes "Ask Thou Not the Heather Gray," a rhapsody of the utmost
ingenuity in melody and accompaniment. It has a catching blissfulness
and a verve that make it one of the best American songs. Opus 28 is a
book called "Among Flowers." The music is in every case good, and
especially satisfactory in its emancipation from the Teutonism of
Foerster's earlier songs. The song "Among the Roses" has a beautiful
poem, which deserves the superb music. It ends hauntingly with an
unresolved major ninth chord on the dominant of the dominant. So the
frenzy of "In Blossom Time" is emotion of a human, rather than a
botanical sort. "The Cradle Song" adapts the Siegfried Idyl, and the
"Old Proverb" is rollicking. The two songs of opus 34 are fitted with
words by Byron. The three songs of opus 44 also make use of this poet,
now so little in vogue with composers. There are three songs in opus
42: a pathetic "Little Wild Rose," and "By the Seaside," which is full
of solemnity. "The Shepherd's Lament" is one of his best lyrics, with
a strange accompaniment containing an inverted pedal-point in octaves.
There are also several part songs.
In larger forms, Mr. Foerster is even more successful. Opus 10 is a
Character-piece for full orchestra, based on Karl Schäfer's poem,
"Thusnelda." It is short but vigorous, and well unified. Opus 15 is a
Fantasie for violin and piano, the piano having really the better of
it. The treatment is very original, and the strong idea well
preserved. Opus 21 is a Quartette for violin, viola, 'cello, and
piano. The first movement begins solemnly, but breaks into an
appassionato. All four instruments have an equal voice in the parley,
and all the outbursts are emotional rather than contrapuntal. A climax
of tremendous power is attained. The second movement omits the piano
for a beautiful adagio. The third is an hilarious allegro, and the
finale is an even gayer presto, with movements of sudden sobriety,
suddenly swept away. Foerster calls this Quartette "far inferior" to a
second one, opus 40. This, however, I have not seen; but I do not
hesitate to call opus 21 a masterly work.
Opus 24 is an "Albumblatt" for 'cello and piano. It is a wonderwork
of feeling and deep richness of harmony, of absolute sincerity and
inspiration. Opus 29 is a Trio for violin, 'cello, and piano. The
three begin in unison, andante, whence the 'cello breaks away,
followed soon by the others, into the joviality of a drinking bout.
There is a military moment, a lyric of more seriousness, and a finish
agitato. The second movement is a larghetto highly embroidered. The
third movement is a vivace with the spirit of a Beethoven presto.
Opus 36 is a suite for violin and piano, beginning with a most
engaging and most skilful Novelette.
In MS. are: an elaborate ballad, "Hero and Leander," which, in spite
of an unworthy postlude and certain "Tristan und Isolde" memories, is
ardent and vivid with passion; "Verzweifelung," which is bitter and
wild with despair; a suite for piano (op. 46) containing a waltz as
ingenious as it is captivating; and a finale called "Homage to
Brahms." This is a remarkably clever piece of writing, which, while it
lacks the Brahmsian trade-mark of thirds in the bass, has much of that
composer's best manner, less in his tricks of speech than in his
tireless development and his substitution of monumental thematicism
for lyric emotion. In MS. is also a prelude to Goethe's "Faust" for
full orchestra. It has very definite leading motives, which include
"Faust's Meditations," "Visions of Margarethe," "Evil" and "Love"
(almost inversions of each other), "Mephistopheles," and the like. The
strife of these elements is managed with great cleverness, ending
beatifically with the motive of Gretchen dying away in the wood-wind.
An orchestral score that has been published is the Dedication March
for Carnegie Hall in Pittsburg. It begins with a long fanfare of horns
heard behind the scenes. Suddenly enters a jubilant theme beginning
with Andrew Carnegie's initials, a worthy tribute to one to whom
American music owes much.
_Charles Crozat Converse._
[Illustration: CHARLES CROZAT CONVERSE.]
Musicians are not, as a class, prone to a various erudition (a
compliment fully returned by the learned in other directions, who are
almost always profoundly ignorant of the actual art of music). One of
the rule-proving exceptions is Charles Crozat Converse, who has delved
into many philosophies. An example of his versatility of interest is
his coining of the word "thon" (a useful substitute for the ubiquitous
awkwardness of "he or she" and "his or her"), which has been adopted
by the Standard Dictionary.
Converse' ancestry is American as far back as 1630. Converse was born
at Warren, Mass., October 7, 1832. After being well grounded in
English and the classics, he went, in 1855, to Germany. Here he
studied law and philosophy, and music at the Conservatorium in
Leipzig. He enjoyed the instruction of Richter, Hauptmann, Plaidy, and
Haupt, and made the acquaintance of Liszt and Spohr. Spohr was
especially interested in, and influential in, his work, and confident
of its success.
Returning to America, he graduated from the Law Department of Albany
University in 1860, with the degree of LL.B. The B has since been
dignified into a D, as a tribute to his unusual accomplishments.
Converse declined the honor of a Doctorship of Music from the
University of Cambridge, offered him by its professor, the well-known
English composer, Sterndale Bennett, in recognition of his mastery of
lore as evinced in a five-voiced double fugue that ends his
Psalm-Cantata on the 126th Psalm.
This scholarly work was performed under the direction of Theodore
Thomas in 1888, at Chicago.
A widely known contribution to religious music is Converse' hymn,
"What a Friend We Have in Jesus," which has been printed, so they say,
in all the tongues of Christendom, and sold to the extent of fifty
millions of copies. This tune occupied a warm place in my
Sunday-schoolboy heart, along with other singable airs of the Moody
and Sankey type, but as I hum it over in memory now, it tastes
sweetish and thin. Its popularity is appalling, musically at least.
Converse has written many other hymn-tunes, which have taken their
place among ecclesiastical soporifics. Besides, he has recently
compiled a collection of the world's best hymns into the "Standard
Hymnal." In this field Converse, though conventional,--and
conventionality may be considered inevitable here,--is mellow of
harmony and sincere in sentiment.
Numberless attempts are made to supply our uncomfortable lack of a
distinctly national air, but few of them have that first requisite, a
fiery catchiness, and most of them have been so bombastic as to pall
even upon palates that can endure Fourth of July glorification.
Recognizing that the trouble with "America" was not at all due to the
noble words written by the man whom "fate tried to conceal by naming
him Smith," Converse has written a new air to this poem.
Unfortunately, however, his method of varying the much-borrowed
original tune is too transparent. He has not discarded the idea at
all, or changed the rhythm or the spirit. He has only taken his tune
upward where "God Save the Queen" moves down, and bent his melody down
where the British soars up. This, I fancy, is the chief reason why his
national hymn has gone over to the great majority, and has been
conspicuously absent from such public occasions as torchlight parades
and ratifications.
Except the work issued under the alias "Karl Redan," or the anagrams,
"C.O. Nevers" and "C.E. Revons," his only secular musics that have
been put into print are his American Overture, published in Paris, and
a book of six songs, published in Germany.
Music is called the universal language, but it has strongly marked
dialects, and sometimes a national flavor untranslatable to foreign
peoples. So with these six songs, not the words alone are German. They
are based on a Teutonic, and they modulate only from Berlin to
Braunschweig and around to Leipzig. While the songs repay study, they
are rather marked by a pianistic meditation than a strictly lyric
emotion. "Aufmunterung zur Freude" is a tame allegretto; "Wehmuth" is
better; "Täuschung" is a short elegy of passion and depth; "Ruhe in
der Geliebten" is best in its middle strain where it is full of rich
feeling and harmony. The ending is cheap. "Der gefangene Sänger" is
only a slight variant at first on the "Adieu" credited to Schubert; it
is thereafter excellent.
Converse has a large body of music in manuscript, none of which I had
the pleasure of examining save a tender sacred lullaby. There are two
symphonies, ten suites, and concert overture, three symphonic poems,
an oratorio, "The Captivity," six string quartettes, and a mass of
psalmodic and other vocal writing.
Of these works three have been produced with marked success: the
"Christmas Overture," at one of the public concerts of the Manuscript
Society, under the direction of Walter Damrosch; the overture "Im
Frühling," at concerts in Brooklyn and New York, under the baton of
Theodore Thomas; and the American overture, "Hail Columbia!" at the
Boston Peace Jubilee under Patrick Gilmore, at the Columbian
Exposition under Thomas, and in New York under Anton Seidl.
This last overture received the distinction of publication at Paris,
by Schott et Cie. It is built on the rousing air of "Hail, Columbia!"
This is suggested in the slow minor introduction; the air itself is
indicated thematically as one of the subjects later appearing in full
swing in a coda. The instrumentation is brilliant and the climax
overwhelming.
Altogether the work is more than adroit musical composition. It is a
prairie-fire of patriotism.
_L.A. Coerne._
[Illustration: LOUIS ADOLPHE COERNE.]
A grand opera by an American on an American subject is an achievement
to look forward to. Though I have not seen this opera, called "A
Woman of Marblehead," it is safe to predict, from a study of its
composer's other works, that it is a thing of merit.
Louis Adolphe Coerne, who wrote the music for this opera, was born in
Newark, N.J., in 1870, and spent the years from six to ten in music
study abroad, at Stuttgart and Paris. Returning to America, he entered
Harvard College and studied harmony and composition under John Knowles
Paine. He studied the violin under Kneisel. In 1890 he went to Munich,
where he studied the organ and composition at the Royal Academy of
Music, under Rheinberger, and the violin under Hieber. He now decided
to give up the career of a violinist for that of composer, conductor,
and organist. In 1893 he returned to Boston and acted as organist. A
year later he went to Buffalo, where for three years he directed the
Liedertafel.
While in Harvard, Coerne had composed and produced a concerto for
violin and 'cello with string orchestra accompaniment, a fantasy for
full orchestra, and a number of anthems which were performed at the
university chapel. While in Munich and Stuttgart he wrote and produced
a string suite, an organ concerto with accompaniment of strings,
horns, and harps, three choral works, and a ballet, "Evadne," on a
subject of his own. His symphonic poem on Longfellow's "Hiawatha" was
also produced there with much success under his personal direction,
and later by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was invited then by
Theodore Thomas to attend the World's Fair at Chicago, to give
recitals on the great organ in Festival Hall.
It has been my misfortune not to have heard or seen hardly any of his
writings except the published "Character Pieces" from the ballet
"Evadne" (op. 155). A "Clown's Dance" in bolero rhythm is delightful.
The "Introduction to Act II." contains many varied ideas and one
passage of peculiar harmonic beauty. A "Valse de Salon" has its good
bits, but is rather overwrought. A "Devil's Dance" introduces some
excellent harmonic effects, but the "Waltz with Chorus and Finale" is
the best number of the opus. It begins in the orchestra with a most
irresistible waltz movement that is just what a waltz should be. A
chorus is then superimposed on this rhapsody, and a climax of superb
richness attained.
For the organ Coerne has written much and well. There is an adaptation
of three pieces from the string quartette (op. 19); a graceful Minuet,
a quaint Aria, and a Fugue. Then there are three Marches, which, like
most marches written by contemplative musicians, are rather thematic
than spirited, and marked by a restless and elaborate preparation for
some great chant that is longed for, but never comes. Besides these,
there are a very pleasant Pastoral, a good Elevation, and a Nocturne.
Coerne's symphonic poem, "Hiawatha," has been arranged for the piano
for four hands, and there is also an arrangement for violin or
violoncello and piano, but I have not seen these. The thing we are all
waiting for is that American grand opera, "A Woman of Marblehead." It
is to be predicted that she will not receive the marble heart.
CHAPTER IV.
THE COLONISTS.
Art does not prosper as hermit. Of course, every great creator has a
certain aloofness of soul, and an inner isolation; but he must at
times submit his work to the comparison of his fellow artists; he must
profit by their discoveries as well as their errors; he must grow
overheated in those passionate musical arguments that never convince
any one out of his former belief, and serve salutarily to raise the
temper, cultivate caloric, and deepen convictions previously held; he
must exchange criticisms and discuss standards with others, else he
will be eternally making discoveries that are stale and unprofitable
to the rest of the world; he will seek to reach men's souls through
channels long dammed up, and his achievements will be marred by naïve
triteness and primitive crudeness.
So, while the artistic tendency may be a universal nervous system,
artists are inclined to ganglionate. The nerve-knots vary in size and
importance, and one chief ganglion may serve as a feeding brain, but
it cannot monopolize the activity. In America, particularly, these
ganglia, or colonies, are an interesting and vital phase of our
development. For a country in which the different federated states
are, many of them, as large as old-world kingdoms, it is manifestly
impossible for any one capital to dominate. Furthermore, the national
spirit is too insubordinate to accept any centre as an oracle.
New York, which has certainly drawn to itself a preponderance of
respectable composers, has yet been unable to gather in many of the
most important, and like the French Academy, must always suffer in
prestige because of its conspicuous absentees. In the second place,
New York is the least serious and most fickle city in the country, and
is regarded with mingled envy and patronage by other cities.
Boston is even more unpopular with the rest of the country. And New
York and other cities have enticed away so many of the leading spirits
of her musical colony, that she cannot claim her once overwhelming
superiority. And yet, Boston has been, and is, the highest American
representative of that much abused term, culture. Of all the arts,
music doubtless gets her highest favor.
The aid Boston has been to American music is vital, and far outweighs
that of any other city. That so magnificent an organization as its
Symphony Orchestra could be so popular, shows the solidity of its
general art appreciations. The orchestra has been remarkably willing,
too, to give the American composer a chance to be heard. Boston has
been not only the promulgator, but in a great measure the tutor, of
American music.
In Boston-town, folk take things seriously and studiously. In New York
they take them fiercely, whimsically. Like most generalizations, this
one has possibly more exceptions than inclusions. But it is
convenient.
It is convenient, too, to group together such of the residents of
these two towns, as I have not discussed elsewhere. The Chicago
coterie makes another busy community; and St. Louis and Cleveland have
their activities of more than intramural worth; Cincinnati, which was
once as musically thriving as its strongly German qualities
necessitated, but which had a swift and strange decline, seems to be
plucking up heart again. For this, the energy of Frank van der Stucken
is largely to credit. Aside from the foreign-born composers there, one
should mention the work of Richard Kieserling, Jr., and Emil Wiegand.
The former went to Europe in 1891 and studied at the Leipzig
Conservatory, under Reinecke, Homeyer, Rust, Schreck and Jadassohn. He
also studied conducting under Sitt. At his graduation, he conducted a
performance of his own composition, "Jeanne d'Arc." He returned to his
native city, Cincinnati, in 1895, where he has since remained,
teaching and conducting. Among his works, besides piano pieces and
songs, are: "A May Song," for women's chorus and piano; six pieces for
violin and piano; "Harold," a ballad for male chorus, barytone solo,
and orchestra; "Were It Not For Love," composed for male chorus;
several sets of male choruses; a motet for mixed chorus a cappella; a
berceuse for string orchestra, an introduction and rondo for violin
and orchestra; and a "Marche Nuptiale," for grand orchestra.
Emil Wiegand was also born in Cincinnati, and had his first tuition on
the violin from his father. His theoretical studies have been received
entirely in Cincinnati. He is a member of the local Symphonic
Orchestra, and has composed an overture for grand orchestra, a string
quartette, and various pieces for the violin, piano, and voice.
In San Francisco there is less important musical composition than
there was in the days when Kelley and Page were active there. The work
of H.B. Pasmore is highly commended by _cognoscenti_, as are also the
works of Frederick Zeck, Jr., who was born in San Francisco, studied
in Germany, and has composed symphonies, a symphonic poem, "Lamia," a
romantic opera, and other works; Samuel Fleischmann, born in
California and educated abroad, a concert pianist, who has written,
among other things, an overture, "Hero and Leander," which was
performed in New York; and P.C. Allen, who studied in Europe, and has
written well.
But the larger cities do not by any means contain all the worthy
composition. In many smaller cities, and in a few villages even, can
be found men of high culture and earnest endeavor.
In Yonkers, New York, is Frederick R. Burton, who has written a
dramatic cantata on Longfellow's "Hiawatha," which has been frequently
performed. In this work use is made of an actual Indian theme, which
was jotted down by H.E. Krehbiel, and is worked up delightfully in
the cantata, an incessant thudding of a drum in an incommensurate
rhythm giving it a decidedly barbaric tone. The cantata contains also
a quaint and touching contralto aria, and a pathetic setting of the
death-song of Minnehaha. Burton is a graduate of Harvard, and a writer
as well as a composer. He organized, in 1896, the Yonkers Choral
Society, of which he is conductor.
At Hartford, Conn., is Nathan H. Allen, who was born in Marion, Mass.,
in 1848. In 1867 he went to Berlin, where he was a pupil of Haupt for
three years. In this country he has been active as an organist and
teacher. Many of his compositions of sacred music have been published,
including a cantata, "The Apotheosis of St. Dorothy."
At Providence, R.I., a prominent figure is Jules Jordan, who was born
at Willimantic, Conn., November 10, 1850, of colonial ancestry. Though
chiefly interested in oratorio singing, in which he has been
prominent, he has written a number of songs, some of which have been
very popular. The best of these are a rapturous "Love's Philosophy," a
delicious "Dutch Lullaby," "An Old Song," and "Stay By and Sing." He
has written some religious songs, part songs, and three works for
soli, chorus, and orchestra, "Windswept Wheat," "A Night Service," and
"Barbara Frietchie;" also "Joel," a dramatic scene for soprano and
orchestra, sung at the Worcester Musical Festival by Mme. Nordica.
This I have not seen, nor his romantic opera, "Rip Van Winkle." In
June, 1895, Brown University conferred on him the degree of Doctor of
Music. Two albums of his songs are published.
A writer of many religious solos and part songs is E.W. Hanscom, who
lives in Auburn, Me. He was born at Durham, in the same State,
December 28, 1848. He has made two extended visits to London, Berlin
and Vienna, for special work under eminent teachers, but has chiefly
studied in Maine. Besides his sacred songs Hanscom has published a
group of six songs, all written intelligently, and an especially good
lyric, "Go, Rose, and in Her Golden Hair," a very richly harmonized
"Lullaby," and two "Christmas Songs," with violin obbligato.
In Delaware, Ohio, at the Ohio Wesleyan University, is a composer,
Willard J. Baltzell, who has found inspiration for many worthy
compositions, but publishers for only two, both of these part songs,
"Dreamland" and "Life is a Flower," of which the latter is very
excellent writing.
Baltzell was for some years a victim of the musical lassitude of
Philadelphia. He had his musical training there. He has written in the
large forms a suite founded on Rossetti's "Love's Nocturne," an
overture, "Three Guardsmen," a "Novelette" for orchestra, a cantata,
"The Mystery of Life," and an unfinished setting of Psalm xvii. with
barytone solo. These are all scored for orchestra, and the manuscript
that I have seen shows notable psychological power. Other works are: a
string quartette, a trio, "Lilith," based on Rossetti's poem, "Eden
Bower," a nonet, and a violin sonata. He has also written for the
piano and organ fugues and other works. These I have not seen; but I
have read many of his songs in manuscript, and they reveal a
remarkable strenuousness, and a fine understanding of the poetry. His
song, "Desire," is full of high-colored flecks of harmony that dance
like the golden motes in a sunbeam. His "Madrigal" has much style and
humor. He has set to music a deal of the verse of Langdon E. Mitchell,
besides a song cycle, "The Journey," which is an interesting
failure,--a failure because it cannot interest any public singer, and
interesting because of its artistic musical landscape suggestion; and
there are the songs, "Fallen Leaf," which is deeply morose, and
"Loss," which has some remarkable details and a strange, but
effective, ambiguous ending. Other songs are a superbly rapturous
setting of E.C. Stedman's "Thou Art Mine," and a series of songs to
the words of Richard Watson Gilder, a poet who is singularly
interesting to composers: "Thistledown" is irresistibly volatile;
"Because the Rose Must Fade" has a nobility of mood; "The Winter
Heart" is a powerful short song, and "Woman's Thought," aside from one
or two dangerous moments, is stirring and intense. Baltzell writes
elaborate accompaniments, for which his skill is sufficient, and he is
not afraid of his effects.
In the far Xanadu of Colorado lives Rubin Goldmark, a nephew of the
famous Carl Goldmark. He was born in New York in 1872. He attended the
public schools and the College of the City of New York. At the age of
seven he began the study of the piano with Alfred M. Livonius, with
whom he went to Vienna at the age of seventeen. There he studied the
piano with Anton Door, and composition with Fuchs, completing in two
years a three years' course in harmony and counterpoint. Returning to
New York, he studied with Rafael Joseffy and with Doctor Dvôrák for
one year. In 1892 he went to Colorado Springs for his health. Having
established a successful College of Music there, he has remained as
its director and as a lecturer on musical topics.
At the age of nineteen he wrote his "Theme and Variations" for
orchestra. They were performed under Mr. Seidl's leadership in 1895
with much success. Their harmonies are singularly clear and sweet, of
the good old school. At the age of twenty Goldmark wrote a trio for
piano, violin, and 'cello. After the first performance of this work at
one of the conservatory concerts, Doctor Dvôrák exclaimed, "There are
now two Goldmarks." The work has also had performance at the concerts
of the Kaltenborn Quartette, and has been published. It begins with a
tentative questioning, from which a serious allegro is led forth. It
is lyrical and sane, though not particularly modern, and certainly not
revolutionary in spirit. The second movement, a romanza, shows more
contrapuntal resource, and is full of a deep yearning and appeal,--an
extremely beautiful movement. The scherzo evinces a taking jocosity
with a serious interval. The piano part is especially humorous. The
finale begins with a touch of Ethiopianism that is perhaps
unconscious. The whole movement is very original and quaint.
Goldmark's music shows a steady development from a conservative
simplicity to a modern elaborateness, a development thoroughly to be
commended if it does not lead into obscurity. This danger seems to
threaten Goldmark's career, judging from his cantata for chorus and
orchestra, the "Pilgrimage to Kevlaar," which, while highly
interesting in places, and distinctly resourceful, is too abstruse and
gloomy to stand much chance of public understanding.
Many of the works that I have had the privilege of examining in MS.
have since been published; there is much originality, much attainment,
and more promise in a number of his songs. His setting of Marlowe's
"Come Live with Me," in spite of a few eccentricities, shows, on the
whole, a great fluency of melody over an elaborately beautiful
accompaniment. His solemn and mysterious "Forest Song" could deserve
the advertisement of being "drawn from the wood." "Die erste Liebe"
shows a contemplative originality in harmony, and ends with a curious
dissonance and resolution. "O'er the Woods' Brow" is very strange and
interesting, though somewhat abstruse. Less so is a song, "An den
Abendsstern;" it has a comparison-forcing name, but is a delightful
song. "Es muss ein Wunderbares sein" is notable for novel effects in
harmonies of crystal with light dissonances to edge the facets. A
sonata for piano and violin and a romanza for 'cello have been
published, and his "Hiawatha" overture has been played by the Boston
Symphony Orchestra. On this occasion the always quoteworthy
mezzotintist, James Huneker, wrote:
"The nephew of a very remarkable composer,--for Carl Goldmark
outranks to-day all the Griegs, Massenets, Mascagnis,
Saint-Saëns, and Dvôráks you can gather,--he needs must fear
the presence in his scores of the avuncular apparition. His
'Hiawatha' overture was played by Mr. Gericke and the Boston
Symphony Orchestra Wednesday of last week. At the first
cantilena on the strings I nearly jumped out of my seat. It
was bewilderingly luscious and Goldmarkian,--a young Goldmark
come to judgment. The family gifts are color and rhythm. This
youth has them, and he also has brains. Original invention is
yet to come, but I have hopes. The overture, which is not
Indian, is full of good things, withal too lengthy in the
free fantasia. There is life, and while there's life there's
rhythm, and a nice variety there is. The allegro has one
stout tune, and the rush and dynamic glow lasts. He lasts,
does Rubin Goldmark, and I could have heard the piece through
twice. The young American composer has not been idle lately."
_The New York Colony._
In every period where art is alive there must be violent faction, and
wherever there is violent faction there is sure to be a _tertium quid_
that endeavors to bridge the quarrel. The Daniel Websters call forth
the Robert Haynes, and the two together evoke the compromisers, the
Henry Clays.
In the struggle between modernity and classicism that always rages
when music is in vitality, one always finds certain ardent spirits who
endeavor to reconcile the conflicting theories of the different
schools, and to materialize the reconciliation in their own work. An
interesting example of this is to be found in the anatomical
construction of one of the best American piano compositions, the
fantasy for piano and orchestra by Arthur Whiting.
The composer has aimed to pay his respects to the classic sonata
formula, and at the same time to warp it to more romantic and modern
usages. The result of his experiment is a form that should interest
every composer. As Whiting phrases it, he has "telescoped" the sonata
form. The slow introduction prepares for the first and second
subjects, which appear, as usual, except that they are somewhat
developed as they appear. Now, in place of the regular development,
the pastoral movement is brought forward. This is followed by the
reprise of the first and second subjects. Then the finale appears. All
of these movements are performed without pause, and the result is so
successful that Whiting is using the same plan for a quintette.
Handwriting experts are fond of referring to the "picture effect" of a
page of writing. It is sometimes startling to see the resemblance in
"picture effect" between the music pages of different composers. The
handsomely abused Perosi, for instance, writes many a page, which, if
held at arm's length, you would swear was one of Palestrina's. Some of
Mr. Whiting's music has a decidedly Brahmsic picture effect. This
feeling is emphasized when one remembers the enthusiasm shown for
Brahms in Whiting's concerts, where the works of the Ursus Minor of
Vienna hold the place of honor. The resemblance is only skin deep,
however, and Whiting's music has a mind of its own.
The fantasy in question (op. 11) is full of individuality and
brilliance. The first subject is announced appassionato by the
strings, the piano joining with arabesquery that follows the general
outlines. After this is somewhat developed, the second subject comes
in whimsically in the relative major. This is written with great
chromatic lusciousness, and is quite liberally developed. It suddenly
disappears into what is ordinarily called the second movement, a
pastoral, in which the piano is answered by the oboe, flute, clarinet,
and finally the horn. This is gradually appassionated until it is
merged into the reprise of the first movement proper. During this
reprise little glints of reminiscence of the pastoral are seen. A coda
of great bravery leads to the last movement, which is marked
"scherzando," but is rather martial in tone. The decidedly noble
composition ends with great brilliancy and strength. It is published
for orchestral score and for two pianos.
Whiting was born in Cambridge, Mass., June 20, 1861. He studied the
piano with William H. Sherwood, and has made a successful career in
concert playing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Kneisel
Quartette, both of which organizations have performed works of his. In
1883 he went to Munich for two years, where he studied counterpoint
and composition with Rheinberger. He is now living in New York as a
concert pianist and teacher.
[Music: Idylle.
Arthur Whiting.
Copyright, 1895, by G. Schirmer.
A FRAGMENT.]
Four works of his for the piano are: "Six Bagatelles," of which the
"Caprice" has a charming infectious coda, while the "Humoreske" is
less simple, and also less amusing. The "Album Leaf" is a pleasing
whimsy, and the "Idylle" is as delicate as fleece. Of the three
"Characteristic Waltzes," the "Valse Sentimentale" is by far the most
interesting. It manages to develop a sort of harmonic haze that is
very romantic.
For the voice, Whiting has written little. Church music interests him
greatly, and he has written various anthems, a morning and evening
service, which keeps largely to the traditional colors of the
Episcopal ecclesiastical manner, yet manages to be fervent without
being theatrical. A trio, a violin sonata, and a piano quintette, a
suite for strings, and a concert overture for orchestra complete the
list of his writings.
On the occasion of a performance of Whiting's "Fantasy," Philip Hale
thus picturesquely summed him up:
"In times past I have been inclined to the opinion that when
Mr. Whiting first pondered the question of a calling he must
have hesitated between chess and music. His music seemed to
me full of openings and gambits and queer things contrived as
in a game. He was the player, and the audience was his
antagonist. Mr. Whiting was generally the easy conqueror. The
audience gave up the contest and admired the skill of the
musician.
"You respected the music of Mr. Whiting, but you did not feel
for it any personal affection. The music lacked humanity. Mr.
Whiting had, and no doubt has, high ideals. Sensuousness in
music seemed to him as something intolerable, something
against public morals, something that should be suppressed
by the selectmen. Perhaps he never went so far as to petition
for an injunction against sex in music; but rigorous
intellectuality was his one aim. He might have written A
Serious Call to Devout and Holy Composition, or A Practical
Treatise upon Musical Perfection, to which is now added, by
the same author, The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage
Entertainment Fully Demonstrated.
"There was almost intolerance in Mr. Whiting's musical
attitude. He himself is a man of wit rather than humor, a man
with a very pretty knack at sarcasm. He is industrious,
fastidious, a severe judge of his own works. As a musician he
was even in his dryest days worthy of sincere respect.
"Now this fantasia is the outward and sure expression of a
change in Mr. Whiting's way of musical thinking, and the
change is decidedly for the better. There is still a display
of pure intellectuality; there is still a solving of
self-imposed problems; but Mr. Whiting's musical enjoyment is
no longer strictly selfish. Here is a fantasia in the true
sense of the term; form is here subservient to fancy. The
first movement, if you wish to observe traditional
terminology, is conspicuous chiefly for the skill, yes,
fancy, with which thematic material of no marked apparent
inherent value is treated. The pastorale is fresh and
suggestive. The ordinary pastorale is a bore. There is the
familiar recipe: take an oboe the size of an egg, stir it
with a flute, add a little piano, throw in a handful of
muted strings, and let the whole gently simmer in a 9-8
stew-pan. But Mr. Whiting has treated his landscape and
animal kingdom with rare discretion. The music gave pleasure;
it soothed by its quiet untortured beauty, its simplicity,
its discretion. And in like manner, without receiving or
desiring to receive any definite, precise impression, the
finale interested because it was not a hackneyed form of
brilliant talk. The finale is something more than clever, to
use a hideous term that I heard applied to it. It is
individual, and this praise may be awarded the whole work.
Remember, too, that although this is a fantasia, there is not
merely a succession of unregulated, uncontrolled, incoherent
sleep-chasings.
"In this work there is a warmer spirit than that which
animated or kept alive Mr. Whiting's former creations. There
is no deep emotion, there is no sensuousness, there is no
glowing color, no 'color of deciduous days.' These might be
incongruous in the present scheme. But there is a more
pronounced vitality, there is a more decided sympathy with
the world and men and women; there is more humanity.
"The piano is here an orchestral instrument, and as such it
was played admirably by Mr. Whiting. His style of playing is
his own, even his tone seems peculiarly his own, with a
crispness that is not metallic, with a quality that deceives
at first in its carrying power. His performance was
singularly clean and elastic, its personality was refreshing.
He played the thoughts of Mr. Whiting in Mr. Whiting's way.
And thus by piece and performance did he win a legitimate
success."
[Illustration: HENRY HOLDEN HUSS.]
Many American composers have had their first tuition from their
mothers; few from their fathers. Mr. Huss is one of the latter few.
The solidity of his musical foundation bespeaks a very correct
beginning. He was born in Newark, N.J., June 21, 1862. His first
teacher in the theory of music was Otis B. Boise, who has been for the
last twenty years a teacher of theory in Berlin, though he was born in
this country. Huss went to Munich in 1883 and remained three years. He
studied counterpoint under Rheinberger, and won public mention for
proficiency. At his second examination his idyl for small orchestra,
"In the Forest," was produced; and at his graduation he performed his
"Rhapsody" in C major for piano and orchestra. A year after his return
to America this work was given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A
year later Van der Stucken gave it at the first of his concerts of
American compositions. The next year Huss' "Ave Maria," for women's
voices, string orchestra, harp, and organ, was given a public hearing.
The next year he gave a concert of his own works, and the same year,
1889, Van der Stucken produced his violin romance and polonaise for
violin and orchestra at the Paris Exposition.
His piano concerto for piano and orchestra he played first with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1894, and has given it on numerous
occasions since.
Other works, most of which have also been published, are: "The
Fountain," for women's voices a cappella; a festival "Sanctus," for
chorus and orchestra; an "Easter Theme," for chorus, organ, and
orchestra; "The Winds," for chorus and orchestra, with soprano and
alto solos; a "Festival March," for organ and orchestra; a concerto
for violin, and orchestra; a trio for piano, violin, and 'cello; a
"Prélude Appassionata," for the piano, dedicated to and played by Miss
Adèle aus der Ohe, to whom the concerto is also dedicated.
This concerto, which is in D major, is a good example of the
completeness of Huss' armory of resources. The first movement has the
martial pomp and hauteur and the Sardanapalian opulence and color that
mark a barbaric triumph. Chopin has been the evident model, and the
result is always pianistic even at its most riotous point. Huss has
ransacked the piano and pillaged almost every imaginable fabric of
high color. The great technical difficulties of the work are entirely
incidental to the desire for splendor. The result is gorgeous and
purple. The andante is hardly less elaborate than the first movement,
but in the finale there is some laying off of the _impedimenta_ of the
pageant, as if the paraders had put aside the magnificence for a
period of more informal festivity. The spirit is that of the scherzo,
and the main theme is the catchiest imaginable, the rhythm curious and
irresistible, and the entire mood saturnalian. In the coda there is a
reminder of the first movement, and the whole thing ends in a blaze of
fireworks.
On the occasion of its first performance in Cincinnati, in 1889,
Robert I. Carter wrote:
"It is preëminently a symphonic work, in which the piano is
used as a voice in the orchestra, and used with consummate
skill. The charm of the work lies in its simplicity. The
pianist will tell you at once that it is essentially
pianistic, a term that is much abused and means little. The
traditional cadenza is there, but it is not allowed to step
out of the frame, and so perfect is the relation to what
precedes and follows, that the average listener might claim
that it does not exist. Without wishing to venture upon any
odious grounds of comparison, I want to state frankly that it
is, to me, emphatically the best American concerto."
Huss is essentially a dramatic and lyric composer, though he seems to
be determined to show himself also a thematic composer of the old
school. In his trio, which I heard played by the Kaltenborn Quartette,
both phases of his activity were seen. There was much odor of the lamp
about the greater part of the trio, which seemed generally lacking
that necessary capillarity of energy which sometimes saturates with
life-sap the most formal and elaborate counterpoint of the
pre-romantic strata. The andante of the trio, however, displayed Huss'
singularly appealing gift of song. It abounded in emotion, and was--to
use the impossible word Keats coined--"yearnful." Huss should write
more of this sort of music. We need its rare spontaneity and truth, as
we do not need the all too frequent mathematics of those who compose,
as Tybalt fought, "by the book."
For the piano there are "Three Bagatelles:" an "Étude Melodique,"
which is rather harmonic than melodic; an "Albumblatt," a graceful
movement woven like a Schumann arabesque; and a "Pastoral," in which
the gracefulness of the music given to the right hand is annulled by
the inexplicable harshness of that given to the left.
For the voice, there is, of course, a setting of "Du bist wie eine
Blume," which, save for the fact that it looks as if the accompaniment
were written first, is a very pure piece of writing. The "Song of the
Syrens" is a strong composition with a big climax, the "Jessamine Bud"
is extremely delicate, and "They that Sow in Tears" has much dignity.
There are two songs from Tennyson, "There is Sweet Music Here" and
"Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead," with orchestral accompaniment.
By all odds the most important, and a genuinely improved composition
is the aria for soprano and orchestra, "The Death of Cleopatra." The
words are taken from Shakespeare's play and make use of the great
lines given to the dying Egypt, "Give me my robe, put on my crown, I
have immortal longings in me," and the rest. The music not only pays
all due reverence to the sacred text, but is inspired by it, and
reaches great heights of fervor and tragedy. From Shakespeare, Huss
drew the afflation for another aria of great interest, a setting for
barytone voice of the "Seven Ages of Man." The problems attending the
putting to music of Shakespeare's text are severe; but the plays are
gold mines of treasure for the properly equipped musician.
A vivid example of the difficulties in the way of American composers'
securing an orchestral hearing is seen in the experience of Howard
Brockway, who had a symphony performed in 1895 by the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra, and has been unable to get a hearing or get
the work performed in America during the five years following, in
spite of the brilliancy of the composition. The scoring of the work is
so mature that one can see its skill by a mere glance at the page from
a distance. When the work was performed in Germany, it was received
with pronounced favor by the Berlin critics, who found in it a
conspicuous absence of all those qualities which the youth of the
composer would have made natural.
Brockway was born in Brooklyn, November 22, 1870, and studied piano
with H.O.C. Kortheuer from 1887 to 1889. He went to Berlin at the
age of twenty and studied the piano with Barth, and composition with
O.B. Boise, the transplanted American. Boise gave Brockway so
thorough a training that he may be counted one of the most fluent and
completely equipped American composers. At the age of twenty-four he
had finished his symphony (op. 12), a ballade for orchestra (op. 11),
and a violin and piano sonata (op. 9), as well as a cavatina for
violin and orchestra. These, with certain piano solos, were given at a
concert of Brockway's own works in February, 1895, at the
Sing-Akademie. His works were accepted as singularly mature, and
promising as well. A few months later, Brockway returned to New York,
where he has since lived as a teacher and performer.
His symphony, which is in D major, is so ebullient with life that its
dashing first subject cannot brook more than a few measures of slow
introduction. The second subject is simpler, but no less joyous. The
thematic work is scholarly and enthusiastic at the same time. The
different movements of the symphony are, however, not thematically
related, save that the coda of the last movement is a reminiscence of
the auxiliary theme of the first movement. The andante, in which the
'cellos are very lyrical, is a tender and musing mood. The presto is
flashing with life and has a trio of rollicking, even whooping,
jubilation. The finale begins gloomily and martially, and it is
succeeded by a period of beauty and grace. This movement, in fact, is
a remarkable combination of the exquisitest beauty and most
unrestrained prowess.
Another orchestral work of great importance in American music is the
"Sylvan Suite" (op. 19), which is also arranged for the piano. In this
work the composer has shown a fine discretion and conservation in the
use of the instruments, making liberal employment of small choirs for
long periods. The work is programmatic in psychology only. It begins
with a "Midsummer Idyl," which embodies the drowsy petulance of hot
noon. The second number is "Will o' the Wisps." In this a three-voiced
fugue for the strings, wood, and one horn has been used with
legitimate effect and most teasing, fleeting whimsicality. The third
movement is a slow waltz, called "The Dance of the Sylphs," a very
catchy air, swaying delicately in the bassoons and 'cello; a short
"Evening Song" is followed by "Midnight." This is a parade that
reminds one strongly of Gottschalk's "Marche de Nuit." The march
movement is followed by an interlude depicting the mystery of night,
as Virgil says, "_tremulo sub lumine_." The composer has endeavored to
indicate the chill gray of dawn by the ending of this movement: a
chord taken by two flutes and the strings shivering _sul ponticello_.
The last movement is "At Daybreak." Out of the gloom of the bassoons
grows a broad and general luminous song followed by an interlude of
the busy hum of life; this is succeeded by the return of the sunrise
theme with a tremendously vivacious accompaniment.
Other works of Brockway's are: a cantata, a set of variations, a
ballade, a nocturne, a Characterstück, a Fantasiestück, a set of four
piano pieces (op. 21), and two piano pieces (op. 25). All of these,
except the cantata, have been published. Two part songs and two songs
with piano accompaniment have also been published; a violin sonata, a
Moment Musicale, and a romanza for violin and orchestra have been
published in Berlin.
These works all show a decided tendency to write brilliant and
difficult music, but the difficulties are legitimate to the effect and
the occasion. The Ballade works up a very powerful climax; the
Scherzino swishes fascinatingly; and the Romanza for piano is a
notably mature and serious work.
[Music: Copyright, 1894, by Schlesinger'sche Buch und Musikhandlung
(Rob. Lienau), Berlin.
FRAGMENT OF A "BALLADE" BY HOWARD BROCKWAY.]
Two ballads have made the so romantic name of Harry Rowe Shelley a
household word in America. They are the setting of Tom Moore's fiery
"Minstrel Boy," and a strange jargon of words called "Love's Sorrow."
In both cases the music is intense and full of fervor, and quick
popularity rarely goes out to more worthy songs.
[Illustration: Autograph of Harry Rowe Shelley]
[Illustration: HARRY ROWE SHELLEY.]
But Shelley would doubtless prefer to be judged by work to which he
has given more of his art and his interest than to the many songs that
he has tossed off in the light name of popularity.
Shelley's life has been largely devoted to church work. Born in New
Haven, Conn., June 8, 1858, and taught music by Gustav J. Stoeckel, he
came under the tuition of Dudley Buck for seven years. His twentieth
year found him an organist at New Haven. Three years later he went to
Brooklyn in the same capacity. He was the organist at Plymouth Church
for some time before Henry Ward Beecher's death. Since 1887 he has
been at the Church of the Pilgrims. He visited Europe in 1887 and
studied under Dvôrák when the Bohemian master was here.
Shelley's largest works have been an opera, "Leila," still in
manuscript, a symphonic poem, "The Crusaders," a dramatic overture,
"Francesca da Rimini," a sacred oratorio, "The Inheritance Divine," a
suite for orchestra, a fantasy for piano and orchestra (written for
Rafael Joseffy), a one-act musical extravaganza, a three-act lyric
drama, and a virile symphony. The suite is called "Souvenir de
Baden-Baden." It is a series of highly elaborated trifles of much
gaiety, and includes a lively "Morning Promenade," a dreamy "Siesta,"
a "Conversationshaus Ball," and a quaint "Serenade Orientale" that
shows the influence of Mozart's and Beethoven's marches alla turca.
The orchestration of this work I have never heard nor seen. Its
arrangement for four hands, however, is excellently done, with
commendable attention to the interests of the _secondo_ player.
The cantata is called "The Inheritance Divine," and it is much the
best thing Shelley has done. It begins with a long, slow crescendo on
the word "Jerusalem," which is very forceful. Shelley responds to an
imaginary encore, however, and the word becomes little more than an
expletive.
Page 7--to refer more conveniently than technically--is marked by
sonorous harmonies of especial nobility. Now begins a new idea worked
up with increased richness and growing fervor to a sudden magnificence
of climax in the second measure on page 11. The final phrase,
strengthened by an organ-point on two notes, is fairly thrilling. A
tenor solo follows, its introductory recitative containing many fine
things, its aria being smoothly melodious. A chorus, of warm harmonies
and a remarkably beautiful and unexpected ending, is next; after which
is a sombre, but impressive alto solo. The two successive choruses,
the quartette, and the soprano solo catch the composer nodding. The
bass solo is better; the final chorus brings us back to the high
plane. Page 62 is particularly big of spirit, and from here on the
chorus climbs fiery heights. In spite of Berlioz' famous parody on the
"Amen" fugues, in the "Damnation of Faust," Shelley has used the word
over a score of times in succession to finish his work. But altogether
the work is one of maturity of feeling and expression, and it is a
notable contribution to American sacred music.
In 1898 "Death and Life" was published. It opens with a dramatic
chorus sung by the mob before the cross, and it ends daringly with a
unisonal descent of the voices that carries even the sopranos down to
A natural. In the duet between Christ and Mary, seeking where they
have laid her Son, the librettist has given Christ a versified
paraphrase which is questionable both as to taste and grammar. The
final chorus, however, has a stir of spring fire that makes the work
especially appropriate for Easter services.
The cantata "Vexilla Regis" is notable for its martial opening chorus,
the bass solo, "Where deep for us the spear was dyed," and its
scholarly and effective ending.
A lapidary's skill and delight for working in small forms belongs to
Gerrit Smith. His "Aquarelles" are a good example of his art in
bijouterie. This collection includes eight songs and eight piano
sketches. The first, "A Lullaby," begins with the unusual skip of a
ninth for the voice. A subdued accentuation is got by the syncopation
of the bass, and the yearning tenderness of the ending finishes an
exquisite song. "Dream-wings" is a graceful fantasy that fittingly
presents the delicate sentiment of Coleridge' lyrics. The setting of
Heine's "Fir-tree" is entirely worthy to stand high among the numerous
settings of this lyric. Smith gets the air of desolation of the bleak
home of the fir-tree by a cold scale of harmony, and a bold simplicity
of accompaniment. The home of the equally lonely palm-tree is strongly
contrasted by a tropical luxuriance of interlude and accompaniment.
The sixth song is a delightful bit of brilliant music, but it is quite
out of keeping with the poem. Thus on the words, "Margery's only
three," there is a fierce climax fitting an Oriental declaration of
despair. The last of these songs, "Put by the Lute," is possibly
Smith's best work. It is superb from beginning to end. It opens with a
most unhackneyed series of preludizing arpeggios, whence it breaks
into a swinging lyric, strengthened into passion by a vigorous
contramelody in the bass. Throughout, the harmonies are most
original, effective, and surprising.
Of the eight instrumental pieces in this book, the exquisite and
fluent "Impromptu" is the best after the "Cradle Song," which is
drowsy with luscious harmony and contains a passage come organo of
such noble sonority as to put it a whit out of keeping with a child's
lullaby.
Smith was born December 11, 1859, at Hagerstown, Md. His first
instruction was gained in Geneva, N.Y., from a pupil of Moscheles. He
began composition early, and works of his written at the age of
fourteen were performed at his boarding-school. He graduated at Hobart
College in 1876, whence he went to Stuttgart to study music and
architecture. A year later he was in New York studying the organ with
Samuel P. Warren. He was appointed organist at St. Paul's, Buffalo,
and studied during the summer with Eugene Thayer, and William H.
Sherwood. In 1880 he went again to Germany, and studied organ under
Haupt, and theory under Rohde, at Berlin. On his return to America he
took the organ at St. Peter's, in Albany. Later he came to New York,
where he has since remained continuously, except for concert tours and
journeys abroad. He has played the organ in the most important English
and Continental towns, and must be considered one of our most
prominent concert organists. He is both a Master of Arts and a Doctor
of Music. As one of the founders, and for many years the president, of
the Manuscript Society, he was active in obtaining a hearing for much
native music otherwise mute.
In addition to a goodly number of Easter carols, Christmas anthems, Te
Deums, and such smaller forms of religious music, Smith has written a
sacred cantata, "King David." Aside from this work, which in
orchestration and in general treatment shows undoubted skill for large
effort, Doctor Smith's composition has been altogether along the
smaller lines.
The five-song'd opus 14 shows well matured lyric power, and an
increase in fervor of emotion. Bourdillon's "The Night Has a Thousand
Eyes," which can never be too much set to music, receives here a truly
superb treatment. The interlude, which also serves for finale, is
especially ravishing. "Heart Longings" is one of Mr. Smith's very best
successes. It shows a free passion and a dramatic fire unusual for his
rather quiet muse. The setting of Bourdillon's fine lyric is indeed so
stirring that it deserves a high place among modern songs. "Melody"
is a lyric not without feeling, but yet inclusive of most of Smith's
faults. Thus the prelude, which is a tritely flowing allegro, serves
also for interlude as well as postlude, and the air and accompaniment
of both stanzas are unvaried, save at the cadence of the latter
stanza. The intense poesy of Anna Reeve Aldrich, a poetess cut short
at the very budding of unlimited promise, deserved better care than
this from a musician. Two of Smith's works were published in Millet's
"Half-hours with the Best Composers,"--one of the first substantial
recognitions of the American music-writer. A "Romance," however, is
the best and most elaborate of his piano pieces, and is altogether an
exquisite fancy. His latest work, a cycle of ten pieces for the piano,
"A Colorado Summer," is most interesting. The pieces are all lyrical
and simple, but they are full of grace and new colors.
[Music: Spring.
Words by Alfred Tennyson.
GERRIT SMITH, OP. 13, NO. 4.
Bird's love and bird's song,
Flying here and there,
Bird's song and bird's love,
And you with gold for hair.
Bird's song and bird's love,
Passing with the weather,
Men's song and men's love,
To love once and forever.
Copyright, 1894, by Arthur P. Schmidt.
A FRAGMENT.]
But Smith's most individual work is his set of songs for children,
which are much compared, and favorably, with Reinecke's work along the
same lines. These are veritable masterpieces of their sort, and they
are mainly grouped into opus 12, called "Twenty-five Song Vignettes."
So well are they written that they are a safe guide, and worthy that
supreme trust, the first formation of a child's taste. Even
dissonances are used, sparingly but bravely enough to give an idea of
the different elements that make music something more than a sweetish
impotence. They are vastly different from the horrible trash children
are usually brought up on, especially in our American schools, to the
almost incurable perversion of their musical tastes. They are also so
full of refinement, and of that humor without which children cannot
long be held, that they are of complete interest also to "grown-ups,"
to whom alone the real artistic value of these songs can entirely
transpire. Worthy of especial mention are the delicious "Stars and
Angels;" the delightful "A Carriage to Ride In;" "Good King Arthur," a
captivating melody, well built on an accompaniment of "God Save the
King;" "Birdie's Burial," an elegy of the most sincere pathos, quite
worthy of a larger cause,--if, indeed, any grief is greater than the
first sorrows of childhood; the surprisingly droll "Barley Romance;"
"The Broom and the Rod," with its programmatic _glissandos_ to give
things a clean sweep; and other delights like the "Rain Song," "The
Tomtit Gray," "Mamma's Birthday," and "Christmas at the Door." To have
given these works their present value and perfection, is to have
accomplished a far greater thing than the writing of a dozen tawdry
symphonies.
One of the most outrageously popular piano pieces ever published in
America was Homer N. Bartlett's "Grande Polka de Concert." It was his
opus 1, written years ago, and he tells me that he recently refused a
lucrative commission to write fantasies on "Nearer My God to Thee" and
"The Old Oaken Bucket"! So now that he has reformed, grown wise and
signed the musical pledge, one must forgive him those wild oats from
which he reaped royalties, and look to the genuine and sincere work he
has latterly done. Let us begin, say, with opus 38, a "Polonaise" that
out-Herods Chopin in bravura, but is full of vigor and well held
together. A "Dance of the Gnomes," for piano, is also arranged for a
sextet, the arrangement being a development, not a bare transcription.
There are two mazurkas (op. 71), the first very original and happy.
"Æolian Murmurings" is a superb study in high color. A "Caprice
Español" is a bravura realization of Spanish frenzy. It has also been
brilliantly orchestrated. Two songs without words make up opus 96:
while "Meditation" shows too evident meditation on Wagner, "A Love
Song" gets quite away from musical bourgeoisery. It is free, spirited,
even daring. It is patently less devoted to theme-development than to
the expression of an emotion. This "Love Song" is one of the very best
of American morceaux, and is altogether commendable.
Opus 107 includes three "characteristic pieces." "The Zephyr" is
dangerously like Chopin's fifteenth Prelude, with a throbbing
organ-point on the same A flat. On this alien foundation, however,
Bartlett has built with rich harmony. The "Harlequin" is graceful and
cheery. It ends with Rubinstein's sign and seal, an arpeggio in
sixths, which is as trite a musical finis as fiction's "They lived
happily ever afterward, surrounded by a large circle of admiring
friends."
Three mazurkas constitute opus 125. They are closely modelled on
Chopin, and naturally lack the first-handedness of these works, in
which, almost alone, the Pole was witty. But Bartlett has made as
original an imitation as possible. The second is particularly
charming.
In manuscript is a Prélude developed interestingly on well-understood
lines. There is a superb "Reverie Poétique." It is that climax of
success, a scholarly inspiration. To the meagre body of American
scherzos, Bartlett's scherzo will be very welcome. It is very festive
and very original. Its richly harmonized interlude shows a complete
emancipation from the overpowering influence of Chopin, and a great
gain in strength as well as individuality.
In his songs Bartlett attains a quality uniformly higher than that of
his piano pieces. "Moonbeams" has many delicacies of harmony.
"Laughing Eyes" is a fitting setting of Mr. "Nym Crinkle" Wheeler's
exquisite lyric. "Come to Me, Dearest," while cheap in general design,
has fine details.
It makes me great dole to have to praise a song about a brooklet; but
the truth is, that Bartlett's "I Hear the Brooklet's Murmur" is
superbly beautiful, wild with regret,--a noble song. It represents the
late German type of _Lied_, as the earlier heavy style is exemplified
in "Good Night, Dear One." Very Teutonic also is the airiness and
grace of "Rosebud."
To that delightful collection of children's songs, "The St. Nicholas
Song Book," Bartlett contributed largely. All of his lyrics are
delicious, and "I Had a Little Pony" should become a nursery classic.
In his "Lord God, Hear My Prayer," Bartlett throws down the gauntlet
to the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria," with results rather disastrous. He
chooses a Cramer étude, and adds to it parts for voice, violin, and
organ. While Gounod seems passionate and unrestrained, Bartlett shows
his caution and his cage at every step. A Cramer étude is among the
most melancholy things of earth anyway. "Jehovah Nissi" is an
excellent sacred march chorus that won a prize, and there is a
cantata, "The Last Chieftain." Bartlett's cantata is without efforts
at Indian color, but is a solid work with much dignity, barbaric
severity, and fire.
Bartlett was born at Olive, N.Y., December 28, 1846. His ancestry
runs far back into New England, his mother being a descendant of John
Rogers, the martyr. Bartlett is said to have "lisped in numbers,"
singing correctly before he could articulate words. The violin was his
first love, and at the age of eight he was playing in public. He took
up the piano and organ also, and in his fourteenth year was a church
organist. He studied the piano with S.B. Mills, Emil Guyon (a pupil
of Thalberg), and Alfred Pease. The organ and composition he studied
with O.F. Jacobsen and Max Braun. With the exception of a musical
pilgrimage in 1887, Bartlett has not come nearer the advantages of
Europe than study here under men who studied there. He has resided for
many years in New York as organist and teacher. As a composer he has
been one of our most prolific music-makers. His work shows a steady
development in value, and the best is doubtless yet to come.
He finds a congenial field in the orchestra. Seidl played his
instrumentation of Chopin's "Military Polonaise" several times. As the
work seemed to need a finale in its larger form, Bartlett took a
liberty whose success was its justification, and added a finish made
up of the three principal themes interwoven. A recent work is his
"Concertstück," for violin and orchestra. It is not pianistic in
instrumentation, and will appeal to violinists. While not marked with
_récherchés_ violin tricks, or violent attempts at bravura, it has
both brilliance and solidity, and is delightfully colored in
orchestration. There are no pauses between the movements, but they are
well varied in their unity.
There is an unfinished oratorio, "Samuel," an incomplete opera,
"Hinotito," and a cantata of which only the tenor solo, "Khamsin," is
done. This is by far the best work Bartlett has written, and displays
unexpected dramatic powers. The variation of the episodes of the
various phases of the awful drought to the climax in "The Plague,"
make up a piece of most impressive strength. The orchestration is
remarkably fine with effect, color, and variety. If the cantata is
finished on this scale, its production will be a national event.
The New England farmer is usually taken as a type of sturdy
Philistinism in artistic matters. It was a most exceptional good
fortune that gave C.B. Hawley a father who added to the dignity of
being a tiller of the soil the refinements of great musical taste and
skill. His house at Brookfield, Conn., contained not only a grand
piano, but a pipe organ as well; and Hawley's mother was blessed with
a beautiful and cultivated voice.
At the age of thirteen (he was born St. Valentine's Day, 1858) Hawley
was a church organist and the conductor of musical affairs in the
Cheshire Military Academy, from which he graduated. He went to New
York at the age of seventeen, studying the voice with George James
Webb, Rivarde, Foederlein, and others, and composition with Dudley
Buck, Joseph Mosenthal, and Rutenber.
His voice brought him the position of soloist at the Calvary Episcopal
Church, at the age of eighteen. Later he became assistant organist at
St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, under George William Warren. For the
last fourteen years he has had charge of the summer music at St. James
Chapel, in Elberon, the chapel attended by Presidents Grant and
Garfield. For seventeen years he has been one of the leading spirits
of the Mendelssohn Glee Club, and for ten years a member of the
Mendelssohn Quartet Club. Most of his part songs were written for the
club and first sung at its concerts. He is also a successful teacher
of the voice, and has been too busy to write a very large volume of
compositions. But those published show the authentic fire.
Notable features of Hawley's compositions are the taking quality of
the melody, its warm sincerity, and the unobtrusive opulence in color
of the accompaniment. This is less like an answering, independent
voice than like a many-hued, velvety tapestry, backgrounding a
beautiful statue. It is only on second thought and closer study that
one sees how well concealed is the careful and laborious polish _ad
unguem_ of every chord. This is the true art of song, where the lyrics
should seem to gush spontaneously forth from a full heart and yet
repay the closer dissection that shows the intellect perfecting the
voice of emotion.
Take, for example, his "Lady Mine," a brilliant rhapsody, full of the
spring, and enriched with a wealth of color in the accompaniment till
the melody is half hidden in a shower of roses. It required courage to
make a setting of "Ah, 'Tis a Dream!" so famous through Lassen's
melody; but Hawley has said it in his own way in an air thrilled with
longing and an accompaniment as full of shifting colors as one of the
native sunsets. I can't forbear one obiter dictum on this poem. It has
never been so translated as to reproduce its neatest bit of fancy. In
the original the poet speaks of meeting in dreams a fair-eyed maiden
who greeted him "auf Deutsch" and kissed him "auf Deutsch," but the
translations all evade the kiss in German.
"The Ring," bounding with the glad frenzy of a betrothed lover, has a
soaring finale, and is better endowed with a well polished
accompaniment than the song, "Because I Love You, Dear," which is not
without its good points in spite of its manifest appeal to a more
popular taste. "My Little Love," "An Echo," "Spring's Awakening," and
"Where Love Doth Build His Nest," are conceived in Hawley's own vein.
The song, "Oh, Haste Thee, Sweet," has some moments of banality, but
more of novelty; the harmonic work being unusual at times, especially
in the rich garb of the words, "It groweth late." In "I Only Can Love
Thee," Hawley has succeeded in conquering the incommensurateness of
Mrs. Browning's sonnet by alternating 6-8 and 9-8 rhythms. His "Were I
a Star," is quite a perfect lyric.
Of his part songs, all are good, some are masterly. Here he colors
with the same lavish but softly blending touch as in his solos. "My
Luve's Like a Red, Red Rose" is altogether delightful, containing as
it does a suggestion of the old formalities and courtly graces of the
music of Lawes, whose songs Milton sonneted. I had always thought that
no musician could do other than paint the lily in attempting to add
music to the music of Tennyson's "Bugle Song," but Hawley has come
dangerously near satisfaction in the elfland faintness and dying
clearness of his voices.
He has written two comic glees, one of which, "They Kissed! I Saw Them
Do It," has put thousands of people into the keenest mirth. It is a
vocal scherzo for men's voices. It begins with a criminally lugubrious
and thin colloquy, in which the bass dolefully informs the others:
"Beneath a shady tree they sat," to which the rest agree; "He held
her hand, she held his hat," which meets with general consent. Now we
are told in stealthy gasps, "I held my breath and lay right flat."
Suddenly out of this thinness bursts a peal of richest harmony: "They
kissed! I saw them do it." It is repeated more lusciously still, and
then the basses and barytones mouth the gossip disapprovingly, and the
poem continues with delicious raillery till it ends abruptly and
archly: "And they thought no one knew it!"
Besides these scherzos, Hawley has written a few religious part songs
of a high order, particularly the noble "Trisagion and Sanctus," with
its "Holy, Holy!" now hushed in reverential awe and now pealing in
exultant worship. But of all his songs, I like best his "When Love is
Gone," fraught with calm intensity, and closing in beauty as
ineffable as a last glimmer of dying day.
To the stencil-plate chivalry of the lyrics of the ubiquitous F.E.
Weatherby and John Oxenford, the song-status of England can blame a
deal of its stagnation. It is not often that these word-wringers have
enticed American composers. One of the few victims is John Hyatt
Brewer, who was born in Brooklyn, in 1856, and has lived there ever
since.
[Music: When Love is gone.
(_Soprano, or Tenor._)
C.B. HAWLEY.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
The heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is gone, when love is gone.
Copyright, 1894, by G. Schirmer.]
Brewer made his début as a six-year-old singer, and sang till his
fourteenth year. A year later he was an organist in Brooklyn, where he
has held various positions in the same capacity ever since,
additionally busying himself as a teacher of voice, piano, organ, and
harmony. His studies in piano and harmony were pursued under Rafael
Navarro. Counterpoint, fugue, and composition he studied under Dudley
Buck.
In 1878 Brewer became the second tenor and accompanist of the Apollo
Club, of which Mr. Buck is the director. He has conducted numerous
vocal societies and an amateur orchestra.
Of his cantatas, "Hesperus" is a work of the greatest promise and
large performance.
For male voices Brewer has written a cantata called "The Birth of
Love." Its fiery ending is uncharacteristic, but the beautiful tenor
solo and an excellent bass song prove his forte to lie in the realm
of tenderness. Brewer's music has little fondness for climaxes, but in
a tender pathos that is not tragedy, but a sort of lotos-eater's
dreaminess and regret, he is congenially placed. Smoothness is one of
his best qualities.
Out of a number of part songs for men, one should mark a vigorous
"Fisher's Song," a "May Song," which has an effective "barber's
chord," and "The Katydid," a witty realization of Oliver Wendell
Holmes' captivating poem. His "Sensible Serenade" has also an
excellent flow of wit. Both these songs should please glee clubs and
their audiences.
For women's voices Brewer has written not a little. The best of these
are "Sea Shine," which is particularly mellow, and "Treachery," a
love-scherzo.
For the violin there are two pieces: one, in the key of D, is a duet
between the violin and the soprano voice of the piano. It is full of
characteristic tenderness, full even of tears. It should find a good
place among those violin ballads of which Raff's Cavatina is the
best-known example. Another violin solo in A is more florid, but is
well managed. The two show a natural aptitude for composition for this
favorite of all instruments.
For full orchestra there is a suite, "The Lady of the Lake," also
arranged, for piano and organ. It is smooth and well-tinted. A sextet
for strings and flute has been played with favor.
Brewer's chief success lies along lines of least resistance, one might
say. His Album of Songs (op. 27) is a case in point. Of the subtle and
inevitable "Du bist wie eine Blume," he makes nothing, and "The
Violet" forces an unfortunate contrast with Mozart's idyl to the same
words. But "Meadow Sweet" is simply iridescent with cheer, a most
unusually sweet song, and "The Heart's Rest" is of equal perfection.
The best-abused composer in America is doubtless Reginald de Koven.
His great popularity has attracted the search-light of minute
criticism to him, and his accomplishments are such as do not well
endure the fierce white light that beats upon the throne. The sin of
over-vivid reminiscence is the one most persistently imputed to him,
and not without cause. While I see no reason to accuse him of
deliberate imitation, I think he is a little too loth to excise from
his music those things of his that prove on consideration to have been
said or sung before him. Instead of crying, "_Pereant qui ante nos
nostra cantaverunt_," he believes in a live-and-let-live policy. But
ah, if De Koven were the only composer whose eraser does not evict all
that his memory installs!
De Koven was born at Middletown, Conn., in 1859, and enjoyed unusual
advantages for musical study abroad. At the age of eleven, he was
taken to Europe, where he lived for twelve years. At Oxford he earned
a degree with honors. His musical instructors include Speidel, Lebert,
and Pruckner, at Stuttgart, Huff the contrapuntist at Frankfort, and
Vannucini, who taught him singing, at Florence. He made also a
special study of light opera under Genée and Von Suppé. He made
Chicago his home in 1882, afterward moving to New York, where he
served as a musical critic on one of the daily papers for many years.
De Koven has been chief purveyor of comic opera to his generation, and
for so ideal a work as "Robin Hood," and such pleasing constructions
as parts of his other operas ("Don Quixote," "The Fencing Master,"
"The Highwayman," for instance), one ought to be grateful, especially
as his music has always a certain elegance and freedom from vulgarity.
Of his ballads, "Oh, Promise Me" has a few opening notes that remind
one of "Musica Proibita," but it was a taking lyric that stuck in the
public heart. His setting of Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue" is a
work of purest pathos and directness. His version of "My Love is Like
a Red, Red Rose" is among the best of its countless settings, and "The
Fool of Pamperlune," the "Indian Love Song," "In June," and a few
others, are excellent ballad-writing.
Victor Harris is one of the few that selected New York for a
birthplace. He was born here April 27, 1869, and attended the College
of the City of New York, class of 1888. For several of his early years
he was well known as a boy-soprano, whence he graduated into what he
calls the "usual career" of organist, pianist, and teacher of the
voice. In 1895 and 1896 he acted as the assistant conductor to Anton
Seidl in the Brighton Beach summer concerts. He learned harmony of
Frederick Schilling.
Harris is most widely known as an accompanist, and is one of the best
in the country. But while the accompaniments he writes to his own
songs are carefully polished and well colored, they lack the show of
independence that one might expect from so unusual a master of their
execution.
Except for an unpublished one-act operetta, "Mlle. Maie et M. de
Sembre," and a few piano pieces, Harris has confined himself to the
writing of short songs. In his twenty-first year two of unequal merits
were published, "The Fountains Mingle with the River" being a taking
melody, but without distinction or originality, while "Sweetheart" has
much more freedom from conventionality and inevitableness.
[Music: To N.N.H.
Song from Omar Khayyám.
VICTOR HARRIS, Op. 16, No. 3.
Oh! threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--
_This_ Life flies,
One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies!
The Flower that once has blown for ever, for ever dies.
Copyright, 1898, by Edward Schuberth & Co.]
A later song, "My Guest," shows an increase in elaboration, but
follows the florid school of Harrison Millard's once so popular
rhapsody, "Waiting." Five songs are grouped into opus 12, and they
reach a much higher finish and a better tendency to make excursions
into other keys. They also show two of Harris' mannerisms, a constant
repetition of verbal phrases and a fondness for writing close,
unbroken chords, in triplets or quartoles. "A Melody" is beautiful;
"Butterflies and Buttercups" is the perfection of grace; "I Know not
if Moonlight or Starlight" is a fine rapture, and "A Disappointment"
is a dire tragedy, all about some young toadstools that thought they
were going to be mushrooms. For postlude two measures from the
cantabile of Chopin's "Funeral March" are used with droll effect.
"Love, Hallo!" is a headlong springtime passion. Two of his latest
songs are "Forever and a Day," with many original touches, and a
"Song from Omar Khayyám," which is made of some of the most cynical of
the tent-maker's quatrains. Harris has given them all their power and
bitterness till the last line, "The flower that once has blown forever
dies," which is written with rare beauty. "A Night-song" is possibly
his best work; it is full of colors, originalities, and lyric
qualities. Opus 13 contains six songs: "Music when Soft Voices Die"
has many uncommon and effective intervals; "The Flower of Oblivion" is
more dramatic than usual, employs discords boldly, and gives the
accompaniment more individuality than before; "A Song of Four
Seasons" is a delicious morsel of gaiety, and "Love within the Lover's
Breast" is a superb song. Harris has written some choric works for men
and women also. They show commendable attention to all the voice
parts.
One of the most prominent figures in American musical history has been
Dr. William Mason. He was born in Boston, January 24, 1829, and was
the son of Lowell Mason, that pioneer in American composition. Dr.
William Mason studied in Boston, and in Germany under Moscheles,
Hauptmann, Richter, and Liszt. His success in concerts abroad and here
gave prestige to his philosophy of technic, and his books on method
have taken the very highest rank.
His pedagogical attainments have overshadowed his composition, but he
has written some excellent music. As he has been an educational force
in classical music, so his compositions show the severe pursuit of
classic forms and ideas. His work is, therefore, rather ingenious than
inspired, and intellectual rather than emotional. Yale made him Doctor
of Music in 1872.
Another composer whose studies in technic have left him only a little
inclination for creation is Albert Ross Parsons, who was born at
Sandusky, O., September 16, 1847. He studied in Buffalo, and in New
York under Ritter. Then he went to Germany, where he had a remarkably
thorough schooling under Moscheles, Reinecke, Richter, Paul, Taussig,
Kullak, and others. Returning to this country, he has busied himself
as organist, teacher, and an editor of musical works. What little
music he has composed shows the fruit of his erudition in its
correctness.
Such men as Doctor Mason and Mr. Parsons, though they add little to
the volume of composition,--a thing for which any one should be
thanked on some considerations,--yet add great dignity to their
profession in this country.
Arthur, a younger brother of Ethelbert Nevin, shows many of the
Nevinian traits of lyric energy and harmonic color in his songs. He
was born at Sewickley, Pa., in 1871. Until he was eighteen he had
neither interest nor knowledge in music. In 1891 he began a four
years' course in Boston, going thence to Berlin, where his masters
were Klindworth and Boise. A book of four graceful "May Sketches" has
been published, "Pierrot's Guitar" being especially ingenious. There
are two published songs, "Were I a Tone" and "In Dreams," both
emotionally rich. In manuscript are a fine song, "Free as the Tossing
Sea," and a well-devised trio.
A successful writer of songs is C. Whitney Coombs. He was born in
Maine, in 1864, and went abroad at the age of fourteen. He studied the
piano with Speidel, and composition with Seiffritz, in Stuttgart, for
five years, and pursued his studies later in Dresden under Draessecke,
Janssen, and John. In 1887 he became organist at the American Church
in that city, returning to America in 1891, since which time he has
been an organist in New York.
In 1891 his publication begins with "My Love," an excellent lilt on
lines from the Arabian. Among his many songs a few should be noted:
the "Song of a Summer Night" is brilliant and poetic, and "Alone" is
marked by some beautiful contramelodic effects; his "Indian Serenade"
is a gracious work.
J. Remington Fairlamb has been a prolific composer. He was born at
Philadelphia, and at fourteen was a church organist. He studied at the
Paris Conservatoire and in Italy; was appointed consul at Zurich by
President Lincoln, and while in Stuttgart was decorated by the King of
Wurtemburg with the "Great Gold Medal of Art and Science" for a Te
Deum for double chorus and orchestra. Of Fairlamb's compositions, some
two hundred have been published, including much sacred music and parts
of two operas. A grand opera, "Leonello," in five acts, and a mass are
in manuscript.
Frank Seymour Hastings has found in music a pleasant avocation from
finance, and written various graceful songs. He has been active, too,
in the effort to secure a proper production of grand opera in English.
Dr. John M. Loretz, of Brooklyn, is a veteran composer, and has passed
his opus 200. He has written much sacred music and several comic
operas.
A prominent figure in New York music, though only an occasional
composer, is Louis Raphael Dressler, one of the six charter members of
the Manuscript Society, and long its treasurer. His father was William
Dressler, one of the leading musicians of the earlier New York, where
Mr. Dressler was born, in 1861. Dressier studied with his father, and
inherited his ability as a professional accompanist and conductor. He
was the first to produce amateur performances of opera in New York.
His songs are marked with sincerity and spontaneity.
Richard Henry Warren has been the organist at St. Bartholomew's since
1886, and the composer of much religious music in which both skill and
feeling are present. Among his more important works are two complete
services, a scene for barytone solo, male chorus, and orchestra,
called "Ticonderoga," and a powerful Christmas anthem. Warren has
written also various operettas, in which he shows a particular grasp
of instrumentation, and an ability to give new turns of expression to
his songs, while keeping them smooth and singable. An unpublished
short song of his, "When the Birds Go North," is a remarkably
beautiful work, showing an aptitude that should be more cultivated.
Warren was born at Albany, September 17, 1859. He is a son and pupil
of George W. Warren, the distinguished organist. He went to Europe in
1880, and again in 1886, for study and observation. He was the
organizer and conductor of the Church Choral Society, which gave
various important religious works their first production in New York,
and, in some cases, their first hearing in America, notably, Dvôrák's
Requiem Mass, Gounod's "Mors et Vita," Liszt's Thirteenth Psalm,
Saint-Saëns' "The Heavens Declare," Villiers Stanford's "God is Our
Hope and Strength," and Mackenzie's "Veni, Creator Spiritus." Horatio
Parker's "Hora Novissima" was composed for this society, and
Chadwick's "Phoenix Expirans" given its first New York performance.
A prominent organist and teacher is Smith N. Penfield, who has also
found time for the composition of numerous scholarly works, notably,
an overture for full orchestra, an orchestral setting of the
eighteenth psalm, a string quartette, and many pieces for the organ,
voice, and piano. His tuition has been remarkably thorough. Born in
Oberlin, Ohio, April 4, 1837, he studied the piano in Germany with
Moscheles, Papperitz, and Reinecke, the organ with Richter,
composition, counterpoint, and fugue with Reinecke and Hauptmann. He
had also a period of study in Paris.
Another organist of distinction is Frank Taft, who is also a conductor
and a composer. His most important work is a "Marche Symphonique,"
which was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was born in
East Bloomfield, New York, and had his education entirely in this
country, studying the organ with Clarence Eddy, and theory with
Frederic Grant Gleason.
A young composer of many graceful songs is Charles Fonteyn Manney, who
was born in Brooklyn in 1872, and studied theory with William Arms
Fisher in New York, and later with J. Wallace Goodrich at Boston. His
most original song is "Orpheus with His Lute," which reproduces the
quaint and fascinating gaucheries of the text with singular charm. He
has also set various songs of Heine's to music, and a short cantata
for Easter, "The Resurrection."
An ability that is strongly individual is that of Arthur Farwell,
whose first teacher in theory was Homer A. Norris, and who later
studied under Humperdinck in Germany. Among his works are an elaborate
ballade for piano and violin, a setting of Shelley's "Indian
Serenade," and four folk-songs to words by Johanna Ambrosius, the
peasant genius of Germany. Among others of his published songs is
"Strow Poppy Buds," a strikingly original composition.
A writer of numerous elegant trifles and of a serious symphony is
Harry Patterson Hopkins, who was born in Baltimore, and graduated at
the Peabody Institute in 1896, receiving the diploma for distinguished
musicianship. The same year he went to Bohemia, and studied with
Dvôrák. He returned to America to assist in the production of one of
his compositions by Anton Seidl.
Very thorough was the foreign training of Carl V. Lachmund, whose
"Japanese Overture" has been produced under the direction of Thomas
and Seidl, in the former case at a concert of that society at which
many important native works have had their only hearing, the Music
Teachers' National Association. Lachmund was born at Booneville, Mo.,
in 1854. At the age of thirteen he began his tuition at Cologne, under
Heller, Jensen, and Seiss; later he went to Berlin to study with the
Scharwenkas, Kiel, and Moskowski. He had also four years of Liszt's
training at Weimar. A trio for harp, violin, and 'cello was played by
the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and a concert prelude for the piano
was much played in concerts in Germany. Before returning to America,
Lachmund was for a time connected with the opera at Cologne.
_The Boston Colony._
To the composer potentially a writer of grand operas, but barred out
by the absolute lack of opening here, the dramatic ballad should offer
an attractive form. Such works as Schubert's "Erl-King" show what can
be done. Henry Holden Huss has made some interesting experiments, and
Fred. Field Bullard has tried the field.
[Illustration: FREDERICK FIELD BULLARD.]
Bullard's setting of Tennyson's almost lurid melodrama in six stanzas,
"The Sisters," has caught the bitter mixture of love and hate, and
avoided claptrap climaxes most impressively.
[Music: HYMN OF PAN.
Words by
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Music by
FRED. FIELD BULLARD,
Op. 17, No. 4.
From the forests and highlands I come, I come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where waves are dumb;
From the forests and highlands,
From the river-girt islands,
I come, I come, I come.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees in the bells of thyme,
The birds in the myrtle bushes,
The....
Copyright, 1894, by Miles & Thompson.
A FRAGMENT.]
"In the Greenwood" (op. 14) is graceful, and "A June Lullaby" has a
charming accompaniment of humming rain. Bullard has set some of
Shelley's lyrics for voice and harp or piano, in opus 17. "From Dreams
of Thee" gets a delicious quaintness of accompaniment, while the "Hymn
of Pan" shows a tremendous savagery and uncouthness, with strange and
stubborn harmonies. Full of the same roborific virility are his
settings to the songs of Richard Hovey's writing, "Here's a Health to
Thee, Roberts," "Barney McGee," and the "Stein Song." These songs have
an exuberance of the roistering spirit, along with a competence of
musicianship that lifts them above any comparison with the average
balladry. Similarly "The Sword of Ferrara," with its hidalgic pride,
and "The Indifferent Mariner," and the drinking-song, "The Best of All
Good Company," are all what Horace Greeley would have called "mighty
interesting." Not long ago I would have wagered my head against a
hand-saw, that no writer of this time could write a canon with
spontaneity. But then I had not seen Bullard's three duets in canon
form. He has chosen his words so happily and expressed them so easily,
and with such arch raillery, that the duets are delicious. Of equal
gaiety is "The Lass of Norwich Town," which, with its violin
obbligato, won a prize in the _Musical Record_ competition of 1899.
Bullard was born at Boston, in 1864. He studied chemistry at first,
but the claims of music on his interest were too great, and in 1888 he
went to Munich, where he studied with Josef Rheinberger. After four
years of European life he returned to Boston, where he has taught
harmony and counterpoint along rather original lines. He is a writer
with ideas and resources that give promise of a large future. His
scholarship has not led him away from individuality. He is especially
likely to give unexpected turns of expression, little bits of
programmism rather incompatible with the ballad form most of his songs
take. The chief fault with his work is the prevailing dun-ness of his
harmonies. They have not felt the impressionistic revolt from the old
bituminous school. But in partial compensation for this bleakness is a
fine ruggedness.
Of his other published songs, "At Daybreak" shows a beautiful fervor
of repression. "On the Way" is redeemed by a particularly stirring
finish. In opus 8, "A Prayer" is begun in D minor and ended in D
major, with a strong effect of sudden exaltation from gloom. "The
Singer" begins also in sombre style with unusual and abrupt
modulations, and ends in a bright major. "The Hermit" is likewise
grim, but is broad and deep. It uses a hint of "Old Hundred" in the
accompaniment.
Opus 11 couples two dramatic ballads. In this form of condensed drama
is a too-little occupied field of composition, and Bullard has written
some part songs, of which "In the Merry Month of May," "Her Scuttle
Hat," and "The Water Song" are worth mentioning. "O Stern Old Land" is
a rather bathetic candidate for the national hymnship. But his "War
Song of Gamelbar," for male voices, is really a masterwork.
Harmonists insist on so much closer compliance with rules for
smoothness in vocal compositions than in instrumental work, that the
usual composer gives himself very little liberty here. Bullard,
however, has found the right occasion for wild dissonances, and has
dared to use them. The effect is one of terrific power. This, his
"Song of Pan" and "The Sisters" give him a place apart from the rest
of native song-writers.
[Illustration: HOMER A. NORRIS.]
With all reverence for German music, it has been too much inclined of
late to domineer the rest of the world, especially America. A useful
counter-influence is that of Homer A. Norris, who has stepped out of
the crowd flying to Munich and neighboring places, and profited by
Parisian harmonic methods.
His book, "Practical Harmony," imparts a, to us, novel method of
disarming the bugaboo of altered chords of many of its notorious
terrors. He also attacks the pedantry of music "so constructed that it
appeals to the eye rather than the ear,--paper-work," a most
praiseworthy assault on what is possibly the heaviest incubus on
inspiration. In a later work on "Counterpoint" he used for chapter
headings Greek vases and other decorative designs, to stimulate the
ideal of counterpoint as a unified complexity of graceful contours.
Norris was born in Wayne, Me., and became an organist at an early
age. His chief interest has been, however, in the theory of music, and
he studied with G.W. Marston, F.W. Hale, and G.W. Chadwick, as well
as Emery. In deciding upon foreign study he was inspired to choose
France instead of Germany. This has given him a distinct place.
After studying in Paris for four years under Dubois, Godard, Guilmant,
and Gigout, he made his home in Boston, where he has since confined
himself to the teaching of composition.
As yet Mr. Norris has composed little, and that little is done on
simple lines, but the simplicity is deep, and the harmonies, without
being bizarre, are wonderfully mellow.
His first song, "Rock-a-bye, Baby," he sold for twelve printed copies,
and it is said to have had a larger sale than any cradle-song ever
published in this country. His song, "Protestations," is tender, and
has a violin obbligato that is really more important than the voice
part. The song, "Parting," is wild with passion, and bases a superb
melody on a fitting harmonic structure. I consider "Twilight" one of
the best American songs. It gets some unusual effects with intervals
of tenths and ninths, and shows a remarkable depth of emotion.
In the larger forms he has done a concert overture, "Zoroaster"
(which, judging from an outline, promises many striking effects), and
a cantata, "Nain," which has the sin of over-repetition of words, but
is otherwise marked with telling pathos and occasional outbursts of
intensely dramatic feeling.
Perhaps his most original work is seen in his book of "Four Songs for
Mezzo-Voice." The first is Kipling's "O Mother Mine," with harshnesses
followed by tenderest musings; the second is a noble song, "Peace,"
with an accompaniment consisting entirely of the slowly descending
scale of C major; a high-colored lilt, "The World and a Day," is
followed by a Maeterlinckian recitative of the most melting pathos.
This book is another substantiation of my belief that America is
writing the best of the songs of to-day.
One of the best-esteemed musicians in Boston, G.E. Whiting has
devoted more of his interest to his career as virtuoso on the organ
than to composition. Not many of such works as he has found time to
write have been printed. These include an organ sonata, a number of
organ pieces, a book of studies for the organ, six songs, and three
cantatas for solos, chorus, and orchestra, "A Tale of the Viking,"
"Dream Pictures," and "A Midnight Cantata."
Whiting was born at Holliston, Mass., September 14, 1842. At the age
of five, he began the study of music with his brother. At the age of
fifteen, he moved to Hartford, Conn., where he succeeded Dudley Buck
as organist of one of the churches. Here he founded the Beethoven
Society. At the age of twenty he went to Boston, and after studying
with Morgan, went to Liverpool, and studied the organ under William
Thomas Best. Later he made a second pilgrimage to Europe, and studied
under Radeck.
For many years he has lived in Boston as a teacher of music and
performer upon the organ. In manuscript are a number of works which I
have not had the privilege of seeing: two masses for chorus,
orchestra, and organ, a concert overture, a concerto, a sonata, a
fantasy and fugue, a fantasy and three études, a suite for 'cello and
piano, and a setting of Longfellow's "Golden Legend," which won two
votes out of five in the thousand dollar musical festival of 1897, the
prize being awarded to Dudley Buck.
[Music: Peace.
EDWARD ROWLAND SILL.
HOMER A. NORRIS.
'Tis not in seeking,
'Tis not in endless striving,
Thy quest is found:
Thy quest is found.
Be still and listen;
Be still and drink the quiet of all around
Not for thy crying,
Not for thy loud beseeching,
Will peace draw near:
Will peace draw near:
Rest with palms folded,
Rest with thine eyelids fallen
Lo! peace is here.
Copyright, 1900, by H.B. Stevens Co. International copyright secured.
Used by permission of H.B. Stevens Co., Boston, owners of the
copyright.]
Of his compositions H.E. Krehbiel in 1892 recorded the opinion that
they "entitled him to a position among the foremost musicians in this
country." He is an uncle of Arthur Whiting.
G.W. Marston's setting of the omnipresent "Du bist wie eine Blume" is
really one of the very best Heine's poem has ever had. Possibly it is
the best of all the American settings. His "There Was an Aged Monarch"
is seriously deserving of the frankest comparison with Grieg's
treatment of the same _Lied_. It is interesting to note the radical
difference of their attitudes toward it. Grieg writes in a folk-tone
that is severe to the point of grimness. He is right because it is
_ein altes Liedchen_, and Heine's handling of it is also kept
outwardly cold. But Marston has rendered the song into music of the
richest harmony and fullest pathos. He is right, also, because he has
interpreted the undercurrent of the story.
Bodenstedt's ubiquitous lyric, "Wenn der Frühling auf die Berge
steigt," which rivals "Du bist wie eine Blume" in the favor of
composers, has gathered Marston also into its net. He gives it a
climax that fairly sweeps one off his feet, though one might wish that
the following and final phrase had not forsaken the rich harmonies of
the climax so completely.
This song is the first of a "Song Album" for sopranos, published in
1890. In this group the accompaniments all receive an attention that
gives them meaning without obtrusiveness. "The Duet" is a delicious
marriage of the song of a girl and the accompanying rapture of a bird.
A captivating little florid figure in the accompaniment of a setting
of "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai" gives the song worth. "On the Water"
is profound with sombreness and big simplicity. "The Boat of My Lover"
is quaintly delightful.
Marston was born in Massachusetts, at the little town of Sandwich, in
1840. He studied there, and later at Portland, Me., with John W.
Tufts, and has made two pilgrimages to Europe for instruction. He
played the organ in his native town at the age of fifteen, and since
finishing his studies has lived at Portland, teaching the piano,
organ, and harmony. From the start his songs caught popularity, and
were much sung in concert.
Marston has written a sacred dramatic cantata, "David," and a large
amount of church music that is very widely used. He has written also a
set of quartettes and trios for women's voices, and quartettes for
men's voices.
Possibly his best-known song has been his "Could Ye Come Back to Me,
Douglas," which Mrs. Craik called the best of all her poem's many
settings.
Only Marston's later piano pieces are really _klaviermässig_. So fine
a work as his "Gavotte in B Minor" has no need to consider the
resources of the modern instrument. It has a color scheme of much
originality, though it is marred by over-repetition. "A Night in
Spain" is a dashing reminiscence, not without Spanish spirit, and an
"Album Leaf" is a divertissement of contagious enthusiasm.
[Illustration: Autograph of G.W. Marston]
Ariel's songs, from "The Tempest," are given a piano interpretation
that reaches a high plane. There is a storm prologue which suggests,
in excellent harmonies, the distant mutter of the storm rather than a
piano-gutting tornado. "Full Fathoms Five Thy Father Lies" is a
reverie of wonderful depth and originality, with a delicious variation
on the good old-fashioned cadence. Thence it works up into an
immensely powerful close. A dance, "Foot it Featly," follows. It is
sprightly, and contains a fetching cadenza.
One of the most prolific writers of American song is Clayton Johns. He
is almost always pleasing and polished. While he is not at all
revolutionary, he has a certain individuality of ease, and lyric
quality without storm or stress of passion. Thus his settings of seven
"Wanderlieder" by Uhland have all the spirit of the road except
ruggedness.
His setting of "Du bist wie eine Blume" is extremely tender and sweet.
Two of Johns' best successes have been settings of Egyptian subjects:
"Were I a Prince Egyptian" and Arlo Bates' fine lyric, "No Lotus
Flower on Ganges Borne." The latter is a superb song of unusual fire,
with a strong effect at the end, the voice ceasing at a deceptive
cadence, while the accompaniment sweeps on to its destiny in the
original key. He has also found a congenial subject in Austin Dobson's
"The Rose and the Gardener." He gets for a moment far from its florid
grace in "I Looked within My Soul," which has an unwonted bigness, and
is a genuine _Lied_.
In later years Johns' songs have been brought out in little albums,
very artistically got up, especially for music (which has been
heinously printed, as a rule, in this country). These albums include
three skilfully written "English Songs," and three "French Songs,"
"Soupir" taking the form of melodic recitative. Opus 19 is a group of
"Wonder Songs," which interpret Oliver Herford's quaint conceits
capitally.
Opus 26 collects nine songs, of which "Princess Pretty Eyes" is
fascinatingly archaic. It is good to see him setting two such remotely
kindred spirits as Herrick and Emily Dickinson. The latter has hardly
been discovered by composers, and the former is too much neglected.
Johns has also written a few part songs and some instrumental works,
which maintain his characteristics. A delightful "Canzone," a happy
"Promenade," and "Mazurka" are to be mentioned, and a number of pieces
for violin and piano, among them a finely built intermezzo, a
berceuse, a romanza that should be highly effective, and a witty
scherzino. He has written for strings a berceuse and a scherzino,
which have been played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and certain
part songs, as well as a chorus for female voices and string
orchestra, have been sung in London.
Johns was born at New Castle, Del., November 24, 1857, of American
parents. Though at first a student of architecture, he gave this up
for music, and studied at Boston under Wm. F. Apthorp, J.K. Paine,
and W.H. Sherwood, after which he went to Berlin, where he studied
under Kiel, Grabau, Raif, and Franz Rummel. In 1884 he made Boston his
home.
If San Francisco had found some way of retaining the composers she has
produced, she would have a very respectable colony. Among the others
who have come east to grow up with music is William Arms Fisher, who
was born in San Francisco, April 27, 1861. The two composers from whom
he derives his name, Joshua Fisher and William Arms, settled in
Massachusetts colony in the seventeenth century. He studied harmony,
organ, and piano with John P. Morgan. After devoting some years to
business, he committed his life to music, and in 1890 came to New
York, where he studied singing. Later he went to London to continue
his vocal studies. Returning to New York, he took up counterpoint and
fugue with Horatio W. Parker, and composition and instrumentation with
Dvôrák. After teaching harmony for several years, he went to Boston,
where he now lives. His work has been almost altogether the
composition of songs. A notable feature of his numerous publications
is their agreeable diversion from the usual practice of composers,
which is to write lyrics of wide range and high pitch. Nearly all his
songs are written for the average voice.
His first opus contains a setting of "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt,"
which I like better than the banal version Tschaïkowski made of the
same words. The third opus contains three songs to Shelley's words.
They show something of the intellectual emotion of the poet. The first
work, "A Widow Bird Sate Mourning," is hardly lyrical; "My Coursers
Are Fed with the Lightning" is a stout piece of writing, but the
inspired highfalutin of the words would be trying upon one who arose
to sing the song before an audience. This, by the way, is a point
rarely considered by the unsuccessful composers, and the words which
the singer is expected to declare to an ordinary audience are
sometimes astounding. The third Shelley setting, "The World's
Wanderer," is more congenial to song.
Opus 5 is entitled "Songs without Tears." These are for a bass voice,
and by all odds the best of his songs. An appropriate setting is
Edmund Clarence Stedman's "Falstaff's Song," a noteworthy lyric of
toss-pot moralization on death. His song of "Joy" is exuberant with
spring gaiety, and some of his best manner is seen in his "Elégie,"
for violin and piano. He has also written a deal of church song.
A venerable and distinguished teacher and composer is James C.D.
Parker, who was born at Boston, in 1828, and graduated from Harvard in
1848. He at first studied law, but was soon turned to music, and
studied for three years in Europe under Richter, Plaidy, Hauptmann,
Moscheles, Rietz, and Becker. He graduated from the conservatory at
Leipzig, and returned to Boston in 1845.
His "Redemption Hymn" is one of his most important works, and was
produced in Boston by the Händel and Haydn Society in 1877. He also
composed other works for orchestra and chorus, and many brilliant
piano compositions.
An interesting method of writing duets is that employed in the
"Children's Festival," by Charles Dennée. The pupil plays in some
places the primo, and in others the secondo, his part being written
very simply, while the part to be played by the teacher is written
with considerable elaboration, so that the general effect is not so
narcotic as usual with duets for children. Dennée has written, among
many works of little specific gravity, a "Suite Moderne" of much
skill, a suite for string orchestra, an overture and sonatas for the
piano and for the violin and piano, as well as various comic operas.
He was born in Oswego, N.Y., September 1, 1863, and studied
composition with Stephen A. Emery.
A composer of a genial gaiety, one who has written a good minuet and
an "Evening Song" that is not morose, is Benjamin Lincoln Whelpley,
who was born at Eastport, Me., October 23, 1863, and studied the piano
at Boston with B.J. Lang, and composition with Sidney Homer and
others. He also studied in Paris for a time in 1890. He has written a
"Dance of the Gnomes," that is characteristic and brilliantly droll,
and a piano piece, called "Under Bright Skies," which has the panoply
and progress of a sunlit cavalcade.
Ernest Osgood Hiler has written some good music for the violin, a
book of songs for children, "Cloud, Field, and Flower," and some
sacred music. He studied in Germany for two years.
_The Chicago Colony._
Most prominent among Chicago's composers is doubtless Frederic Grant
Gleason, who has written in the large forms with distinguished
success. The Thomas Orchestra has performed a number of his works,
which is an excellent praise, because Thomas, who has done so much for
American audiences, has worried himself little about the American
composer. At the World's Fair, which was, in some ways, the artistic
birthday of Chicago, and possibly the most important artistic event in
our national history, some of Gleason's works were performed by
Thomas' organization, among them the _Vorspiel_ to an opera, "Otho
Visconti" (op. 7), for which Gleason wrote both words and music.
[Illustration: FREDERIC GRANT GLEASON.]
This _Vorspiel_, like that to "Lohengrin," is short and delicate. It
begins ravishingly with flutes and clarinets and four violins,
pianissimo, followed by a blare of brass. After this introductory
period the work runs through tenderly contemplative musing to the end,
in which, again, the only strings are the four violins, though here
they are accompanied by the brass and wood-winds and tympani, the
cymbals being gently tapped with drumsticks. The introduction to the
third act of the opera is more lyrical, but not so fine. Another opera
is "Montezuma" (op. 16). Gleason is again his own librettist. Of this
opera I have been privileged to see the complete piano score, and
much of the orchestral.
[Music: Montezuma, Act III, Introduction
Frederic Grant Gleason
EXCERPT FROM AN ORCHESTRAL SCORE BY MR. GLEASON.]
In the first act Guatemozin, who has been exiled by Montezuma, appears
disguised as an ancient minstrel and sings prophetically of the coming
of a god of peace and love to supplant the terrible idol that demands
human sacrifice. This superbly written aria provokes from the
terrified idolaters a chorus of fear and reproach that is strongly
effective. The next act begins with an elaborate aria followed by a
love duet of much beauty. A heavily scored priests' march is one of
the chief numbers, and like most marches written by the unco'
learned, it is a grain of martial melody in a bushel of trumpet
figures and preparation. The Wagnerian _leit-motif_ idea is adopted in
this and other works of his, and the chief objection to his writing is
its too great fidelity to the Wagnerian manner,--notably in the use of
suspensions and passing-notes,--otherwise he is a very powerful
harmonist and an instrumenter of rare sophistication. A soprano aria
with orchestral accompaniment has been taken from the opera and sung
in concert with strong effect.
Another work played at the World's Fair by Thomas, is a "Processional
of the Holy Grail." It is scored elaborately, but is rather brilliant
than large. It complimentarily introduces a hint or two of Wagner's
Grail motif.
The symphonic poem, "Edris," was also performed by the Thomas
Orchestra. It is based upon Marie Corelli's novel, "Ardath," which
gives opportunity for much programmism, but of a mystical highly
colored sort for which music is especially competent. It makes use of
a number of remarkably beautiful motives. One effect much commented
upon was a succession of fifths in the bass, used legitimately enough
to express a dreariness of earth.
This provoked from that conservative of conservatives, the music
copyist, a patronizing annotation, "Quinten!" to which Gleason added
"Gewiss!" A series of augmented triads, smoothly manipulated, was
another curiosity of the score.
Possibly Gleason's happiest work is his exquisite music for that most
exquisite of American poems, "The Culprit Fay." It is described in
detail in Upton's "Standard Cantatas," and liberally quoted from in
Goodrich' "Musical Analysis." While I have seen both the piano and
orchestral scores of this work (op. 15), and have seen much beauty in
them, my space compels me to refer the curious reader to either of
these most recommendable books.
Gleason has had an unusual schooling. He was born in Middletown,
Conn., in 1848. His parents were musical, and when at sixteen he wrote
a small matter of two oratorios without previous instruction, they put
him to study under Dudley Buck. From his tuition he graduated to
Germany, and to such teachers as Moscheles, Richter, Plaidy, Lobe,
Raif, Taussig, and Weitzmann. He studied in England after that, and
returned again to Germany. When he re-appeared in America he remained
a while at Hartford, Conn., whence he went to Chicago in 1876. He has
lived there since, working at teaching and composition, and acting as
musical critic of the Chicago _Tribune_. An unusually gifted body of
critics, dramatic, musical, and literary, has worked upon the Chicago
newspapers, and Gleason has been prominent among them.
Among other important compositions of his are a symphonic cantata,
"The Auditorium Festival Ode," sung at the dedication of the Chicago
Auditorium by a chorus of five hundred; sketches for orchestra, a
piano concerto, organ music, and songs.
As is shown by the two or three vocal works of his that I have seen,
Gleason is less successful as a melodist than as a harmonist. But in
this latter capacity he is gifted indeed, and is peculiarly fitted to
furnish forth with music Ebling's "Lobgesang auf die Harmonie." In his
setting of this poem he has used a soprano and a barytone solo with male
chorus and orchestra. The harmonic structure throughout is superb in all
the various virtues ascribed to harmony. The ending is magnificent.
[Illustration: WILLIAM H. SHERWOOD.]
A work completed December, 1899, for production by the Thomas
Orchestra, is a symphonic poem called "The Song of Life," with this
motto from Swinburne:
"They have the night, who had, like us, the day;
We whom the day binds shall have night as they;
We, from the fetters of the light unbound,
Healed of our wound of living, shall sleep sound."
The first prominent musician to give a certain portion of his program
regularly to the American composer, was William H. Sherwood. This
recognition from so distinguished a performer could not but interest
many who had previously turned a deaf ear to all the musical efforts
of the Eagle. In addition to playing their piano works, he has
transcribed numerous of their orchestral works to the piano, and
played them. In short, he has been so indefatigable a laborer for the
cause of other American composers, that he has found little time to
write his own ideas.
Sherwood will be chiefly remembered as a pianist, but he has written a
certain amount of music of an excellent quality. Opera 1-4 were
published abroad. Opus 5 is a suite, the second number of which is an
"Idylle" that deserves its name. It is as blissfully clear and ringing
as anything could well be, and drips with a Theokritan honey. The
third number of the suite is called "Greetings." It has only one or
two unusual touches. Number 4 bears the suggestive title, "Regrets for
the Pianoforte." It was possibly written after some of his less
promising pupils had finished a lesson. The last number of the suite
is a quaint Novelette.
[Music: IDYLLE.
WM. H. SHERWOOD, OP. 5, NO. 2.
Copyright, 1883, by G. Schirmer.
A FRAGMENT.]
Sherwood's sixth opus is made up of a brace of mazurkas. The former,
in C minor, contains some of his best work. It is original and moody,
and ends strongly. The second, in A major, is still better. It not
only keeps up a high standard throughout, but shows occasional touches
of the most fascinating art.
A scherzo (op. 7) cracks a few good jokes, but is mostly elaboration.
Opus 8 is a fiery romanza appassionata. Opus 9 is a Scherzo-Caprice.
This is probably his best work. It is dedicated to Liszt, and though
extremely brilliant, is full of meaning. It has an interlude of tender
romance. "Coy Maiden" is a graceful thing, but hardly deserves the
punishment of so horrible a name. "A Gypsy Dance" is too long, but it
is of good material. It has an interesting metre, three-quarter time
with the first note dotted. There is a good effect gained by
sustaining certain notes over several measures, though few pianists
get a real sostenuto. An "Allegro Patetico" (op. 12), "Medea" (op.
13), and a set of small pieces (one of them a burlesque called "A
Caudle Lecture," with a garrulous "said she" and a somnolent "said
he") make up his rather short list of compositions.
Sherwood was born at Lyons, New York, of good American stock. His
father was his teacher until the age of seventeen, when he studied
with Heimberger, Pychowski, and Dr. William Mason. He studied in
Europe with Kullak and Deppe, Scotson Clark, Weitzmann, Doppler,
Wuerst, and Richter. He was for a time organist in Stuttgart and later
in Berlin. He was one of those favorite pupils of Liszt, and played in
concerts abroad with remarkable success, winning at the age of
eighteen high critical enthusiasm. He has been more cordially
recognized abroad than here, but is assuredly one of the greatest
living pianists. It is fortunate that his patriotism keeps him at
home, where he is needed in the constant battle against the
indecencies of apathy and Philistinism.
The Yankee spirit of constructive irreverence extends to music, and in
recent years a number of unusually modern-minded theorists have worked
at the very foundations: Dr. Percy Goetschius (born here, and for long
a teacher at Stuttgart); O.B. Boise (born here, and teaching now in
Berlin); Edwin Bruce, the author of a very radical work; Homer A.
Norris; and last, and first, A.J. Goodrich, who has made himself one
of the most advanced of living writers on the theory of music, and has
made so large a contribution to the solidity of our attainments, that
he is recognized among scholars abroad as one of the leading spirits
of his time. His success is the more pleasing since he was not only
born but educated in this country.
[Illustration: A.J. GOODRICH.]
The town of Chilo, Ohio, was Goodrich' birthplace. He was born there
in 1847, of American parentage. His father taught him the rudiments of
music and the piano for one year, after which he became his own
teacher. He has had both a thorough and an independent instructor. The
fact that he has been enabled to follow his own conscience without
danger of being convinced into error by the prestige of some
influential master, is doubtless to be credited with much of the
novelty and courage of his work.
His most important book is undoubtedly his "Analytical Harmony,"
though his "Musical Analysis" and other works are serious and
important. This is not the place to discuss his technicalities, but
one must mention the real bravery it took to discard the old practice
of a figured bass, and to attack many of the theoretical fetiches
without hesitation. Almost all of the old theorists have confessed,
usually in a foot-note to the preface or in modest disclaimer lost
somewhere in the book, that the great masters would occasionally be
found violating certain of their rules. But this did not lead them to
deducing their rules from the great masters. Goodrich, however, has,
in this matter, begun where Marx ended, and has gone further even than
Prout. He has gone to melody as the groundwork of his harmonic system,
and to the practice of great masters, old and new, for the tests of
all his theories. The result is a book which can be unreservedly
commended for self-instruction to the ignorant and to the too learned.
It is to be followed by a book on "Synthetic Counterpoint," of which
Goodrich says, "It is almost totally at variance with the standard
books in counterpoint."
In his "Musical Analysis" he quoted freely from American composers,
and analyzed many important native works. He has carried out this plan
also in his book on "Interpretation," a work aiming to bring more
definiteness into the fields of performance and terminology.
Goodrich' composition is "a thing of the past," he says. In his youth
he wrote a score or more of fugues, two string quartettes, a trio that
was played in New York and Chicago, a sonata, two concert overtures, a
hymn for soprano (in English), invisible chorus (in Latin), and
orchestra, a volume of songs, and numerous piano pieces. He writes:
"In truth, I believed at one time that I was a real composer, but
after listening to Tschaïkowski's Fifth Symphony that illusion was
dispelled. Had not Mrs. Goodrich rescued from the flames a few MSS. I
would have destroyed every note."
Only a piano suite is left, and this leads one to regret that
Tschaïkowski should have served as a deterrent instead of an
inspiration. The suite has an inelaborate prelude, which begins
strongly and ends gracefully, showing unusual handling throughout. A
minuet, taken scherzando, is also most original and happy. There is a
quaint sarabande, and a gavotte written on simple lines, but superbly.
Its musette is simply captivating. All these little pieces indeed show
sterling originality and unusual resources in a small compass.
W.H. Neidlinger's first three songs were kept in his desk for a year
and then kept by a publisher for a year longer, and finally brought
out in 1889. To his great surprise, the "Serenade," which he calls
"just a little bit of commonplace melody," had an immense sale and
created a demand for more of his work. The absolute simplicity of this
exquisite gem is misleading. It is not cheap in its lack of ornament,
but it eminently deserves that high-praising epithet (so pitilessly
abused), "chaste." It has the daintiness and minute completeness of a
Tanagra figurine.
Mr. Neidlinger was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1863, and was compelled
to earn the money for his own education and for his musical studies.
From Dudley Buck and, later, C.C. Muller, of New York, he has had his
only musical instruction. He lived abroad for some time, teaching the
voice in Paris, then returned to live in Chicago. He has written two
operas, one of them having been produced by the Bostonians.
Mr. Neidlinger builds his songs upon one guiding principle, that is,
faithfulness to elocutionary accent and intonation. As he neatly
phrases it, his songs are "colored sketches on a poet's engravings."
The usual simplicity of Mr. Neidlinger's songs does not forbid a
dramatic outburst at the proper time, as in the fine mood, "A Leaf;"
or the sombre depth of "Night," "Nocturne," and "Solitude;" or yet the
sustainedly poignant anguish of "The Pine-tree." Occasionally the
accompaniment is developed with elaborateness, as in the bird-flutings
of "The Robin," and "Memories," an extremely rich work, with its
mellow brook-music and a hint of nightingale complaint in the minor.
"Evening Song," a bit of inspired tenderness, is one of Mr.
Neidlinger's best works. Almost better is "Sunshine," a streak of
brilliant fire quenched with a sudden cloud at the end. Other valuable
works are "Messages," the happy little Scotch song, "Laddie," and
"Dreaming," which is now sombre, now fierce with outbursts of agony,
but always a melody, always ariose.
Mr. Neidlinger has made a special study of music for children, his
book, "Small Songs for Small Children," being much used in
kindergarten work. A book of his, devoted to a synthetic philosophy of
song, is completed for publication; he calls it "Spenser, Darwin,
Tyndall, etc., in sugar-coated pills; geography, electricity, and
hundreds of other things in song."
_The Cleveland Colony._
The city of Cleveland contains a musical colony which is certainly
more important than that of any town of its size. About the tenth of
our cities in population, it is at least fourth, and possibly third,
in productiveness in valuable composition.
[Illustration: WILSON G. SMITH.]
The most widely known of Cleveland composers is Wilson G. Smith. He
has been especially fortunate in hitting the golden mean between
forbidding abstruseness and trivial popularity, and consequently
enjoys the esteem of those learned in music as well as of those merely
happy in it.
[Illustration: Autograph of Wilson G. Smith]
His erudition has persuaded him to a large simplicity; his nature
turns him to a musical optimism that gives many of his works a
Mozartian cheer. Graciousness is his key.
He was born in Elyria, O., and educated in the public schools of
Cleveland, where he graduated. Prevented by delicate health from a
college education, he has nevertheless, by wide reading, broadened
himself into culture, and is an essayist of much skill. His musical
education began in 1876, at Cincinnati, where his teacher, Otto
Singer, encouraged him to make music his profession. In 1880 he was in
Berlin, where he studied for several years under Kiel, Scharwenka,
Moskowski, and Oscar Raif. He then returned to Cleveland, where he
took up the teaching of organ, piano, voice, and composition.
The most important of Smith's earlier works was a series of five
pieces called "Hommage à Edvard Grieg," which brought warmest
commendation from the Scandinavian master. One of the most striking
characteristics of Smith's genius is his ability to catch the exact
spirit of other composers. He has paid "homage" to Schumann, Chopin,
Schubert, and Grieg, and in all he has achieved remarkable success,
for he has done more than copy their little tricks of expression,
oddities of manner, and pet weaknesses. He has caught the
individuality and the spirit of each man.
In his compositions in Grieg-ton Smith has seized the fascinating
looseness of the Griegorian tonality and its whimsicality. The
"Humoresque" is a bit of titanic merriment; the "Mazurka" is most
deftly built and is full of dance-fire; the "Arietta" is highly
original, and the "Capricietto" shows such ingenious management of
triplets, and has altogether such a crisp, brisk flavor, that it
reminds one of Lamb's rhapsody on roast pig, where he exclaims, "I
tasted _crackling_!" The "Romance," superb in gloom and largeness of
treatment, is worthy of the composer of "The Death of Asra." A later
work, "Caprice Norwegienne," is also a strong brew of Scandinavian
essence.
A "Schumannesque" is written closely on the lines of Schumann's
"Arabesque." A later "Hommage à Schumann" is equally faithful to
another style of the master, and dashes forth with characteristic and
un-naïve gaiety and challenging thinness of harmony, occasionally
bursting out into great rare chords, just to show what can be done
when one tries.
The man that could write both this work and the highly faithful
"Hommage à Schubert," and then whirl forth the rich-colored, sensuous
fall and purr of the "Hommage à Chopin," must be granted at least an
unusual command over pianistic materials, and a most unusual acuteness
of observation.
He can write _à la_ Smith, too, and has a vein quite his own, even
though he prefers to build his work on well-established lines, and fit
his palette with colors well tempered and toned by the masters.
In this line is opus 21, a group of four pieces called "Echoes of Ye
Olden Time." The "Pastorale" is rather Smithian than olden, with its
mellow harmony, but the "Minuetto" is the perfection of chivalric
foppery and pompous gaiety. The "Gavotte" suggests the contagious good
humor of Bach, and the "Minuetto Grazioso," the best of the series,
has a touch of the goodly old intervals, tenths and sixths, that taste
like a draught of spring water in the midst of our modern liqueurs.
The musical world in convention assembled has covenanted that certain
harmonies shall be set apart for pasturage. Just why these arbitrary
pastorales should suggest meads and syrinxes, and dancing shepherds,
it would be hard to tell. But this effect they certainly have, and a
good pastorale is a better antidote for the blues and other civic ills
than anything I know, except the actual green and blue of fields and
skies. Among the best of the best pastoral music, I should place
Smith's "Gavotte Pastorale." It is one of the five pieces in his book
of "Romantic Studies" (op. 57).
This same volume contains a "Scherzo alla Tarantella," which is full
of reckless wit. But the _abandon_ is so happy as to seem misplaced in
a tarantella, that dance whose traditional origin is the maniacal
frenzy produced by the bite of the tarantula. An earlier Tarantella
(op. 34) is far truer to the meaning of the dance, and fairly raves
with shrieking fury and shuddering horror. This is better, to me, than
Heller's familiar piece.
The "Second Gavotte" is a noble work, the naïve gaiety of classicism
being enriched with many of the great, pealing chords the modern piano
is so fertile in. I count it as one of the most spontaneous gavottes
of modern times, one that is buoyant with the afflation of the olden
days. It carries a musette of which old Father Bach need not have felt
ashamed,--one of the most ingenious examples of a drone-bass ever
written.
The "Menuet Moderne" is musical champagne. A very neat series of
little variations is sheafed together, and called "Mosaics." Mr. Smith
has written two pieces well styled "Mazurka Poétique;" the later (opus
48) is the more original, but the sweet geniality and rapturously
beautiful ending of opus 38 is purer music. "Les Papillons" is marked
with a strange touch of negro color; it is, as it were, an Ethiopiano
piece. Its best point is its cadenza. Smith has a great fondness for
these brilliant precipitations. They not only give further evidence
of his fondness for older schools, but they also partially explain the
fondness of concert performers for his works. His fervid "Love
Sonnet," his "Polonaise de Concert," full of virility as well as
virtuosity, and his delicious "Mill-wheel Song," and a late
composition, a brilliant "Papillon," rich as a butterfly's wing, are
notable among his numerous works. Possibly his largest achievement is
the three concert-transcriptions for two pianos. He has taken pieces
by Grieg, Raff, and Bachmann, and enlarged, enforced, decorated, and
in every way ennobled them. But to me his most fascinatingly original
work is his "Arabesque," an entirely unhackneyed and memorable
composition.
Smith's experience in teaching has crystallized into several pedagogic
works. His "Scale Playing with particular reference to the
development of the third, fourth, and fifth fingers of each hand;" his
"Eight Measure," "Octave," and "Five Minute" studies, have brought the
most unreserved commendation from the most important of our teachers.
A late and most happy scheme has been the use of a set of variations
for technical and interpretative instruction. For this purpose he
wrote his "Thèmes Arabesques," of which numbers one and eighteen not
only have emotional and artistic interest, but lie in the fingers in a
strangely tickling way.
What might be called a professorial simplicity is seen in many of
Smith's songs. The almost unadorned, strictly essential beauty of his
melodies and accompaniments is neither neglect nor cheapness; it is
restraint to the point of classicism, and romanticism all the intenser
for repression. Take, for example, that perfect song, "If I but
Knew," which would be one of a score of the world's best short songs,
to my thinking. Note the open fifths, horrifying if you thump them
academically, but very brave and straightforward, fitly touched.
There is something of Haydn at his best in this and in the fluty
"Shadow Song," in "The Kiss in the Rain," and "A Sailor's Lassie," for
they are as crystalline and direct as "Papa's" own immortal
"Schäferlied."
[Music: To Mr. Constantin Sternberg.
ARABESQUE.
Wilson G. Smith, Op. 39.
Copyright, 1889, by O. Ditson & Co.]
Smith has gone over to the great majority,--the composers who have set
"Du bist wie eine Blume;" but he has joined those at the top. Two of
Smith's songs have a quality of their own, an appeal that is
bewitching: "Entreaty," a perfect melody, and "The Dimple in Her
Cheek," which is fairly peachy in color and flavor.
A strange place in the world of music is that held by Johann H. Beck,
whom some have not feared to call the greatest of American composers.
Yet none of his music has ever been printed. In this he resembles B.J.
Lang, of Boston, who keeps his work persistently in the dark, even
the sacred oratorio he has written.
All of Beck's works, except eight songs, are built on very large
lines, and though they have enjoyed a not infrequent public
performance, their dimensions would add panic to the usual timidity
of publishers. Believing in the grand orchestra, with its complex
possibilities, as the logical climax of music, Beck has devoted
himself chiefly to it. He feels that the activity of the modern artist
should lie in the line of "amplifying, illustrating, dissecting, and
filling in the outlines left by the great creators of music and the
drama." He foresees that the most complicated scores of to-day will be
Haydnesque in simplicity to the beginning of the next century, and he
is willing to elaborate his best and deepest learning as far as in him
lies, and wait till the popular audience grows up to him, rather than
write down to the level of the present appreciation.
The resolve and the patient isolation of such a devotee is nothing
short of heroic; but I doubt that the truest mission of the artist is
to consider the future too closely. Even the dictionaries and
encyclopædias of one decade, are of small use to the next. The tiny
lyrics of Herrick, though, have no quarrel with time, nor has time any
grudge against the intimate figurines of Tanagra. The burdened
trellises of Richard Strauss may feel the frost long before the
slender ivy of Boccherini's minuet.
[Music: A FRAGMENT OF THE SCORE OF "SALAMMBÔ," BY JOHANN H. BECK.]
Science falls speedily out of date, and philosophy is soon out of
fashion. Art that uses both, is neither. When it makes crutches of
them and leans its whole weight on them, it will fall with them in
the period of their inevitable decay.
Of course, there is evolution here as well as in science. The artist
must hunt out new forms of expressing his world-old emotions, or he
will not impress his hearers, and there is no gainsaying Beck's thesis
that the Chinese puzzle of to-day will be the antique simplicity of a
later epoch. But it must never be forgotten, that art should be
complex only to avoid the greater evils of inadequacy and triteness. A
high simplicity of plan and an ultimate popularity of appeal are
essentials to immortal art.
It is my great misfortune never to have heard one of Beck's works
performed, but, judging from a fragment of a deliciously dreamy
moonlight scene from his unfinished music drama, "Salammbô," which he
kindly sent me, and from the enthusiasm of the severest critics, he
must be granted a most unusual poetic gift, solidity and whimsicality,
and a hardly excelled erudition. His orchestration shows a hand lavish
with color and cunning in novel effects. Several of his works have
been performed with great applause in Germany, where Beck spent many
years in study. He was born at Cleveland, in 1856, and is a graduate
of the Leipzig Conservatorium.
In art, quality is everything; quantity is only a secondary
consideration. It is on account of the quality of his work that James
H. Rogers must be placed among the very best of modern song-writers,
though his published works are not many. When one considers his
tuition, it is small wonder that his music should show the finish of
long mastery. Born in 1857, at Fair Haven, Conn., he took up the study
of the piano at the age of twelve, and at eighteen was in Berlin,
studying there for more than two years with Löschorn, Rohde, Haupt,
and Ehrlich, and then in Paris for two years under Guilmant, Fissot,
and Widor. Since then he has been in Cleveland as organist, concert
pianist, and teacher.
[Illustration: Autograph of James H. Rogers]
His songs are written usually in a characteristic form of dramatic,
yet lyric recitative. His "Album of Five Songs" contains notable
examples of this style, particularly the "Good-Night," "Come to Me in
My Dreams," and the supremely tragic climax of "Jealousy." The song,
"Evening," with its bell-like accompaniment, is more purely lyric,
like the enchanting "At Parting," which was too delicately and
fragrantly perfect to escape the wide popularity it has had. His
"Declaration" is ravishingly exquisite, and offers a strange contrast
to the "Requiescat," which is a dirge of the utmost largeness and
grandeur. His graceful "Fly, White Butterflies," and "In Harbor," and
the dramatic setting of "The Loreley," the jovial "Gather Ye Rosebuds"
of jaunty Rob Herrick, the foppish tragedy of "La Vie est Vaine" (in
which the composer's French prosody is a whit askew), that gallant,
sweet song, "My True Love Hath My Heart," and a gracious setting of
Heine's flower-song, are all noteworthy lyrics. He has set some of
Tolstoï's words to music, the sinister love of "Doubt Not, O Friend,"
and the hurry and glow of "The First Spring Days," making unusually
powerful songs. In the "Look Off, Dear Love," he did not catch up
with Lanier's great lyric, but he handled his material most
effectively in Aldrich' "Song from the Persian," with its Oriental
wail followed by a martial joy. The high verve that marks his work
lifts his "Sing, O Heavens," out of the rut of Christmas anthems.
Of instrumental work, there is only one small book, "Scènes du Bal," a
series of nine pieces with lyric characterization in the spirit, but
not the manner of Schumann's "Carnéval." The most striking numbers are
"Les Bavardes," "Blonde et Brune," and a fire-eating polonaise.
These close the lamentably small number of manifestations of a most
decisive ability.
Another Cleveland composer well spoken of is Charles Sommer.
A young woman of genuine ability, who has been too busy with teaching
and concert pianism to find as much leisure as she deserves for
composition, is Patty Stair, a prominent musical figure in Cleveland.
Her theoretical studies were received entirely at Cleveland, under F.
Bassett. Her published works include a book of "Six Songs," all of
them interesting and artistic, and the "Madrigal" particularly
ingenious; and a comic glee of the most irresistible humor, called "An
Interrupted Serenade;" in manuscript are a most original song,
"Flirtation," a jovial part song for male voices, "Jenny Kissed Me," a
berceuse for violin and piano, a graceful song, "Were I a Brook," a
setting of Thomas Campion's "Petition," and another deeply stirring
religious song for contralto, "O Lamb of God."
_The St. Louis Colony._
The most original and important contribution to American music that
St. Louis has made, is, to my mind, the book of songs written by
William Schuyler. The words were chosen from Stephen Crane's book of
poems, "The Black Riders." The genius of Crane, concomitant with
eccentricity as it was, is one of the most distinctive among American
writers. The book called "The Black Riders" contains a number of
moods that are unique in their suggestiveness and originality. Being
without rime or meter, the lines oppose almost as many difficulties to
a musician as the works of Walt Whitman; and yet, as Alfred Bruneau
has set Zola's prose to music, so some brave American composer will
find inspiration abundant in the works of Walt Whitman and Emily
Dickinson.
[Music: III.
_WILLIAM SCHUYLER._
There was, before me,
Mile upon mile of snow, ice, burning sand.
And yet I could look beyond all this,
To a place of infinite beauty;
And I could see the loveliness of her
Who walked in the shade of the trees.
When I gazed,
All was lost
But this place of beauty and her
When I gazed,
And in my gazing, desired
Then came again
Mile upon mile,
Of snow, ice, burning sand, burning sand.
Words used by permission of Copeland and Day.
Copyright, 1897, by Wm. Schuyler.
FROM WM. SCHUYLER'S "BLACK RIDERS."]
Schuyler was born in St. Louis, May 4, 1855, and music has been his
livelihood. He is largely self-taught, and has composed some fifty
pieces for the piano, a hundred and fifty songs, a few works for
violin, viola, and 'cello, and two short trios.
In his setting of these lines of Crane's, Schuyler has attacked a
difficult problem in an ideal manner. To three of the short poems he
has given a sense of epic vastitude, and to two of them he has given a
tantalizing mysticism. The songs, which have been published privately,
should be reproduced for the wide circulation they deserve.
Another writer of small songs displaying unusual individuality is
George Clifford Vieh, who was born in St. Louis and studied there
under Victor Ehling. In 1889, he went to Vienna for three years,
studying under Bruckner, Robert Fuchs, and Dachs. He graduated with
the silver medal there, and returned to St. Louis, where he has since
lived as a teacher and pianist.
Alfred George Robyn is the most popular composer St. Louis has
developed. He was born in 1860, his father being William Robyn, who
organized the first symphonic orchestra west of Pittsburg. Robyn was a
youthful prodigy as a pianist; and, at the age of ten, he succeeded
his father as organist at St. John's Church, then equipped with the
best choir in the city. It was necessary for the pedals of the organ
to be raised to his feet. At the age of sixteen he became solo pianist
with Emma Abbott's company. As a composer Robyn has written some three
hundred compositions, some of them reaching a tremendous sale. A few
of them have been serious and worth while, notably a piano concerto, a
quintette, four string quartettes, a mass, and several orchestral
suites.
There are not many American composers that have had a fugue published,
or have written fugues that deserve publication. It is the distinction
of Ernest Richard Kroeger that he has written one that deserved, and
secured, publication. This was his 41st opus. It is preceded by a
prelude which, curiously enough, is thoroughly Cuban in spirit and is
a downright Habanera, though not so announced. This fiery composition
is followed by a four-voiced "real" fugue. The subject is genuinely
interesting, though the counter-subject is as perfunctory as most
counter-subjects. The middle-section, the stretto-work, and the
powerful ending, give the fugue the right to exist.
Among other publications are a suite for piano (op. 33), in which a
scherzo has life, and a sonata for violin and piano, in which,
curiously enough, the violin has not one instance of double-stopping,
and the elaborating begins, not with the first subject taken
vigorously, but with the second subject sung out softly. The last
movement is the best, a quaint and lively rondo. A set of twelve
concert études show the influence of Chopin upon a composer who writes
with a strong German accent. The étude called "Castor and Pollux" is a
vigorous number with the chords of the left hand exactly doubled in
the right; another étude, "A Romanze," is noteworthy for the practice
it gives in a point which is too much ignored even by the best
pianists; that is, the distinction between the importance of the tones
of the same chord struck by the same hand. A work of broad
scholarship, which shows the combined influence of Beethoven and
Chopin, who have chiefly affected Kroeger, is his sonata (op. 40). A
dominant pedal-point of fifty-eight measures, in the last movement, is
worth mentioning. In a "Danse Négre" and a "Caprice Négre," he has
evidently gone, for his Ethiopian color, not to the actual negro
music, but to the similar compositions of Gottschalk. Kroeger was born
in St. Louis, August 10, 1862. At the age of five he took up the study
of the piano and violin. His theoretical tuition was all had in this
country. He has written many songs, a piano concerto, sonatas for
piano and viola, and piano and 'cello, two trios, a quintette, and
three string quartettes, as well as a symphony, a suite, and overtures
based on "Endymion," "Thanatopsis," "Sardanapalus" (produced by Anton
Seidl, in New York), "Hiawatha," and "Atala."
CHAPTER V.
THE WOMEN COMPOSERS.
This is not the place to take up cudgels for a contest on the problem
of woman's right to respect in the creative arts. There are some, it
is true, who deny fervently that the feminine half of mankind ever has
or can or ever will do original and important work there. If you press
them too hard they will take refuge up this tree, that all women who
ever have had success have been actually mannish of mind,--a dodge in
question-begging that is one of the most ingenious ever devised; a
piece of masculine logic that puts to shame all historic examples of
womanly fallacy and sophistry. It seems to me that the question is
easily settled on this wise: it is impossible for a rational mind to
deny that the best work done in the arts by women is of better
quality than the average work done by men. This lets the cat's head
out of the bag, and her whole body follows pell-mell.
In a few instances it seems to me that the best things done by women
equal the best things done by men in those lines. The best verses of
Sappho, the best sonnets of Mrs. Browning, the best chapters of George
Eliot, the best animal paintings of Rosa Bonheur, do not seem to me
surpassed by their rivals in masculine work. If anything in verse of
its sort is nobler than Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," it
is still in manuscript. If there is any poet of more complete
individuality than Emily Dickinson, I have not run across his books.
In music I place two or three of Miss Lang's small songs among the
chief of their manner.
All over the world the woman-mind is taking up music. The ban that led
Fanny Mendelssohn to publish her music under her brother's name, has
gone where the puritanic theory of the disgracefulness of the musical
profession now twineth its choking coils. A publisher informs me that
where compositions by women were only one-tenth of his manuscripts a
few years ago, they now form more than two-thirds. From such activity,
much that is worth while is bound to spring. Art knows no sex, and
even what the women write in man-tone is often surprisingly strong,
though it is wrongly aimed. But this effort is like the bombast of a
young people or a juvenile literature; the directness and repose of
fidelity to nature come later. The American woman is in the habit of
getting what she sets her heart on. She has determined to write
music.
With an ardor that was ominous of success, Miss Amy Marcy Cheney,
after a short preliminary course in harmony, resolved to finish her
tuition independently. As an example of the thoroughness that has
given her such unimpeachable knowledge of her subject, may be
mentioned the fact that she made her own translation of Berlioz and
Gavaërt. She was born in New Hampshire, of descent American back to
colonial times. At the age of four she wrote her opus 1. She is a
concert pianist as well as a frequent composer in the largest forms.
She is now Mrs. H.H.A. Beach.
[Illustration: MRS. H.H.A. BEACH.]
Not many living men can point to a composition of more maturity and
more dignity than Mrs. Beach' "Jubilate," for the dedication of the
Woman's Building at the Columbian Exposition. The work is as big as
its name; it is the best possible answer to skeptics of woman's
musical ability. It may be too sustainedly loud, and the infrequent
and short passages piano are rather breathing-spells than contrasting
awe, but frequently this work shows a very magnificence of power and
exaltation. And the ending is simply superb, though I could wish that
some of the terrific dissonances in the accompaniment had been put
into the unisonal voices to widen the effect and strengthen the final
grandeur. But as it is, it rings like a clarion of triumph,--the cry
of a Balboa discovering a new sea of opportunity and emotion.
Another work of force and daring is the mass in E flat (op. 5), for
organ and small orchestra. It is conventionally ecclesiastic as a
rule, and suffers from Mrs. Beach' besetting sin of over-elaboration,
but it proclaims a great ripeness of technic. The "Qui Tollis" is
especially perfect in its sombre depth and richness. The "Credo" works
up the cry of "crucifixus" with a thrilling rage of grief and a
dramatic feeling rare in Mrs. Beach' work. This work was begun at the
age of nineteen and finished three years later. It was given with
notable effect in 1892 by the Händel and Haydn Society of Boston.
Mrs. Beach' "Valse Caprice" has just one motive,--to reach the maximum
of technical trickiness and difficulty. There is such a thing as
hiding one's light under a bushel, and there is such a thing as
emptying a bushel of chaff upon it.
"Fireflies" is a shimmering and flitting caprice of much ingenuity,
but it keeps in the field of dissonance almost interminably, and clear
harmony is not so much the homing-place of its dissonance, as an
infrequent glint through an inadvertent chink. This neat composition
is one of four "Sketches for the Piano," of which "Phantoms" is
delightful with ghostliness. "In Autumn" is a most excellent
tone-poem, and "Dreaming" is a well-varied lyric. As a colorist Mrs.
Beach is most original and studious. Her tireless hunt for new tints
often diverts her indeed from the direct forthright of her meaning,
but the "Danse des Fleurs" is rich in its gorgeousness. The flowing
grace of the "Menuet Italien" makes it an uncharacteristic but
charming work.
[Music: PHANTOMS.
"Toute fragiles fleurs, sitôt mortes que nées."
Victor Hugo.
Mrs. H.H.A. Beach.
Copyright, 1892, by Arthur P. Schmidt.
A FRAGMENT.]
Horace, you know, promises to write so that any one will think him
easy to equal, though much sweat will be shed in the effort. It is the
transparency of her studiousness, and the conspicuous labor in
polishing off effects and mining opportunity to the core, that chiefly
mars the work of Mrs. Beach, in my opinion. One or two of the little
pieces that make up the half-dozen of the "Children's Carnival" are
among her best work, for the very cheery ease of their look.
"Pantalon," "Harlequin," "Columbine," and "Secrets" are infinitely
better art than a dozen valse-caprices.
Both the defects and effects of her qualities haunt Mrs. Beach' songs.
When she is sparing in her erudition she is delightful. Fourteen of
her songs are gathered into a "Cyclus." The first is an "Ariette,"
with an accompaniment imitating the guitar. It is both tender and
graceful. Probably her best song is the setting of W.E. Henley's fine
poem, "Dark is the Night." It is of the "Erl-King" style, but highly
original and tremendously fierce and eerie. The same poet's "Western
Wind" is given a setting contrastingly dainty and serene. "The
Blackbird" is delicious and quite unhackneyed. "A Secret" is bizarre,
and "Empress of the Night" is brilliant. With the exception of a
certain excess of dissonance for a love-song, "Wilt Thou Be My
Dearie?" is perfect with amorous tenderness. "Just for This!" is a
delightful vocal scherzo of complete originality and entire success.
"A Song of Love" is passionate and yet lyric, ornamented but not
fettered. "Across the World" has been one of Mrs. Beach' most popular
songs; it is intense and singable. "My Star" is tender, and the
accompaniment is richly worked out on simple lines. Three Vocal Duets
are well-handled, but the long "Eilende Wolken" has a jerky recitative
of Händelian _naïveté_, to which the aria is a welcome relief. Her
sonata for piano and violin has been played here by Mr. Kneisel, and
in Berlin by Mme. Carreño and Carl Halir.
Besides these, Mrs. Beach has done not a little for the orchestra. Her
"Gaelic Symphony" is her largest work, and it has been often played by
the Boston Symphony, the Thomas, and other orchestras. It is
characterized by all her exuberant scholarship and unwearying energy.
[Illustration: MARGARET RUTHVEN LANG.]
Margaret Ruthven Lang, the daughter of B.J. Lang, is American by birth
and training. She was born in Boston, November 27, 1867. She has
written large works, such as three concert overtures, two of which
have been performed by the Thomas and the Boston Symphony Orchestras,
though none of them are published. Other unpublished works are a
cantata, two arias with orchestral accompaniment, and a rhapsody for
the piano. One rhapsody has been published, that in E minor; in spite
of its good details, it is curiously unsatisfying,--it seems all
prelude, interlude, and postlude, with the actual rhapsody
accidentally overlooked. A "Meditation" is bleak, with a strong, free
use of dissonance.
"The Jumblies" is a setting of Edward Lear's elusive nonsense, as full
of the flavor of subtile humor as its original. It is for male chorus,
with an accompaniment for two pianos, well individualized and erudite.
It is in her solo songs, however, that her best success is reaped.
When I say that Mrs. Beach' work is markedly virile, I do not mean it
as compliment unalloyed; when I find Miss Lang's work supremely
womanly, I would not deny it great strength, any more than I would
deny that quality to the sex of which Joan of Arc and Jael were not
uncharacteristic members.
Such a work as the "Maiden and the Butterfly" is as fragile and rich
as a butterfly's wing. "My Lady Jacqueminot" is exquisitely,
delicately passionate. "Eros" is frail, rare, ecstatic. "Ghosts" is
elfin and dainty as snowflakes. The "Spinning Song" is inexpressibly
sad, and such music as women best understand, and therefore ought to
make best. But womanliness equally marks "The Grief of Love," which is
in every sense big in quality; marks the bitterness of "Oh, What Comes
over the Sea," the wailing Gaelic sweetness of the "Irish Love Song,"
and the fiery passion of "Betrayed," highly dramatic until its rather
trite ending. "Nameless Pain" is superb. Her "Lament" I consider one
of the greatest of songs, and proof positive of woman's high
capabilities for composition. Miss Lang has a harmonic individuality,
too, and finds out new effects that are strange without strain.
[Music: GHOSTS.
Words by Munkittrick.
MARGARET RUTHVEN LANG.
Out in the misty moonlight, the first snow flakes I see,
As they frolic among the leafless boughs of the apple tree.
Faintly they seem to whisper, as round the boughs they wing;
"We are the ghosts of the flowers who died in the early spring,
Who died in the early spring."
Copyright, 1889, by Arthur P. Schmidt & Co.]
"My Turtle Dove," among the "Five Norman Songs," in fearlessness and
harmonic exploration shows two of the strongest of Miss Lang's traits.
Her _récherchés_ harmonies are no pale lunar reflection of masculine
work. Better yet, they have the appearance of spontaneous ease, and
the elaborateness never obtrudes itself upon the coherence of the
work, except in a few such rare cases as "My Native Land," "Christmas
Lullaby," and "Before My Lady's Window." They are singable to a degree
unusual in scholarly compositions. To perfect the result Miss Lang
chooses her poems with taste all too rare among musicians, who seem
usually to rate gush as feeling and gilt as gold. Her "Oriental
Serenade" is an example of weird and original intervals, and "A Spring
Song," by Charlotte Pendleton, a proof of her taste in choosing words.
Her opus 32 is made up of two songs, both full of fire and
originality. Opus 33 is a captivating "Spring Idyl" for the piano, for
which she has also written a "Revery," of which the exquisiteness of
sleep is the theme. The music is delicious, and the ending is a rare
proof of the beautiful possibilities of dissonance.
Personally, I see in Miss Lang's compositions such a depth of
psychology that I place the general quality of her work above that of
any other woman composer. It is devoid of meretriciousness and of any
suspicion of seeking after virility; it is so sincere, so true to the
underlying thought, that it seems to me to have an unusual chance of
interesting attention and stirring emotions increasingly with the
years.
An interesting and genuine individuality will transpire through the
most limited amount of creative art. This has been the case with the
few published works of a writer, whose compositions, though
unpretentious in size and sentiment, yet reveal a graceful fancy, and
a marked contemplation upon the details of the moods.
Irene Baumgras was born at Syracuse, New York, and studied the piano
at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where she took the Springer
gold medal in 1881. She studied in Berlin with Moszkowski and Oscar
Raif. She was married in Berlin, in 1884, to Philip Hale, the
distinguished Boston musical critic.
Her devotion to her art was so great that her health broke down from
overwork, and she was compelled to give up piano playing. Some of her
compositions have been published under the name of "Victor René." Her
15th opus is made up of three "Morceaux de Genre," of which the
"Pantomime" is a most volatile harlequinade, with moods as changeful
as the key; a remarkably interesting composition. Four "Pensées
Poétiques" make up opus 16. They include a blithe "Chansonette" and a
"Valse Impromptu," which, unlike the usual impromptu, has the _ex
tempore_ spirit. Of her songs, "Mystery" is a charming lyric; "Maisie"
is faithful to the ghoulish merriment of the words; and "An Opal
Heart" is striking for interesting dissonances that do not mar the
fluency of the lyric.
Of much refinement are the fluent lyrics of Mrs. Mary Knight Wood.
They show a breadth in little, and a fondness for unexpected harmonies
that do not disturb the coherence of her songs. They possess also a
marked spontaneity. An unexpected effect is gained by the brave E flat
in her "Serenade." Her popular "Ashes of Roses" also has a rich
harmonic structure. Among other songs, one with an effective obbligato
for the violoncello deserves special praise. She has written also for
the violin and piano, and trios for 'cello, violin, and piano.
Other women who have written certain works of serious intention and
worthy art, are Mrs. Clara A. Korn, Laura Sedgwick Collins, the
composer of an ingenious male quartette, "Love is a Sickness," and
many excellent songs, among them, "Be Like That Bird," which is
ideally graceful; Fanny M. Spencer, who has written a collection of
thirty-two original hymn tunes, a good anthem, and a Magnificat and
Nunc Dimittis of real strength; Julie Rivé-King, the author of many
concert pieces; Patty Stair, of Cleveland; Harriet P. Sawyer, Mrs.
Jessie L. Gaynor, Constance Maud, Jenny Prince Black, Charlotte M.
Crane, and Helen Hood.
CHAPTER VI.
THE FOREIGN COMPOSERS.
Ours is so young, and so cosmopolite, a country, that our art shows
the same brevity of lineage as our society. Immigration has played a
large part in the musical life of the United States, as it has in the
make-up of the population; and yet for all the multiplexity of his
ancestry, the American citizen has been assimilated into a distinctive
individuality that has all the traits of his different forbears, and
is yet not closely like any of them. So, American music, taking its
scale and most of its forms from the old country, is yet developing an
integrity that the future will make much of. As with the federation of
the States, so will one great music ascend polyphonically,--_e
pluribus unum_.
In compiling this directory of American composers, it has been
necessary to discuss the works only of the composers who were born in
this country. It is interesting to see how few of these names are
un-American, how few of them are Germanic (though so many of them have
studied in Germany). Comment has often been made upon the Teutonic
nature of the make-up of our orchestras. It is pleasant to find that a
very respectable list of composers can be made up without a
preponderance of German names.
The music life of our country, however, has been so strongly
influenced and enlivened and corrected by the presence of men who were
born abroad that some recognition of their importance should somewhere
be found. Many of them have become naturalized and have brought with
them so much enthusiasm for our institutions that they are actually
more American than many of the Americans; than those, particularly,
who, having had a little study abroad, have gone quite mad upon the
superstition of "atmosphere," and have brought home nothing but
foreign mannerisms and discontent.
Among the foreign born who have made their home in America, I must
mention with respect, and without attempting to suggest order of
precedence, the following names:
C.M. Loeffler, Bruno Oscar Klein, Leopold Godowski, Victor Herbert,
Walter Damrosch, Julius Eichberg, Dr. Hugh A. Clarke, Louis V. Saar,
Asgar Hamerik, Otto Singer, August Hyllested, Xavier Scharwenka,
Rafael Joseffy, Constantin von Sternberg, Adolph Koelling, August
Spanuth, Aimé Lachaume, Max Vogrich, W.C. Seeboeck, Julian Edwards,
Robert Coverley, William Furst, Gustave Kerker, Henry Waller, P.A.
Schnecker, Clement R. Gale, Edmund Severn, Platon Brounoff, Richard
Burmeister, Augusto Rotoli, Emil Liebling, Carl Busch, John Orth,
Ernst Perabo, Ferdinand Dunkley, Mrs. Clara Kathleen Rogers, Miss
Adele Lewing, Mrs. Elisa Mazzucato Young.
It is perhaps quibbling to rule out some of these names from
Americanism, and include certain of those whom I have counted American
because they were born here, in spite of the fact that their whole
tuition and tendency is alien. But the line must be drawn somewhere.
The problem is still more trying in the case of certain composers who,
having been born here, have expatriated themselves, and joined that
small colony of notables whom America has given to Europe as a first
instalment in payment of the numerous loans we have borrowed from the
old country.
For the sake of formally acknowledging this debt, I will not endeavor
to discuss here the careers of George Templeton Strong, Arthur Bird,
or O.B. Boise, all three of whom were born in this country, but have
elected to live in Berlin. Their distinction in that city at least
palely reflects some credit upon the country that gave them birth.
POSTLUDE.
In the ninth century Iceland was the musical center of the world;
students went there from all Europe as to an artistic Mecca. Iceland
has long lost her musical crown. And Welsh music in its turn has
ceased to be the chief on earth. Russia is sending up a strong and
growing harmony marred with much discord. Some visionaries look to her
for the new song. But I do not hesitate to match against the serfs of
the steppes the high-hearted, electric-minded free people of our
prairies; and to prophesy that in the coming century the musical
supremacy and inspiration of the world will rest here overseas, in
America.
THE END.
INDEX.
[Transcriber's Note: Misspellings in the original Index have been
corrected, and the entries have been placed in the proper order.]
Abt Society, 198.
Academy of Dramatic Arts, 79.
Æschylean Chorus, 53.
Agramonte, Emilio, 41.
Aldrich, Anna Reeve, 313.
Aldrich, T.B., 89, 108, 204.
Allen, C.N., 244.
Allen, N.H., 273.
Allen, P.C., 272.
Allison, XIII.
Ambrosius, Johanna, 349.
Americanism in Music, 12, 33, 58.
Apollo Club, 168, 236, 331.
Apthorp, W.F., 370.
Arion Society, 190.
Arnold, Maurice, 135, 139.
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 171.
Aus der Ohe, Adèle, 293.
Bach, J.S., 15, 225, 227, 248, 399, 400.
Baltzell, Willard J., 275.
Bartlett, H.N., 317, 327.
Bassett, F., 415.
Bates, Arlo, 187, 368.
Baumgras, Irene, 439.
Beach, Mrs. H.H.A., 426, 432, 433.
Beck, Johann H., 406, 411.
Beethoven, 12, 52, 56, 100, 116, 148, 163, 178, 208, 306.
Bendel, 237.
"Ben Hur," 72.
Benkert, G.F., 119.
Bennett, Sterndale, 257.
Berlioz, 144, 219, 243, 307, 426.
Bernard of Cluny's, 183.
Best, W.T., 361.
Bird, Arthur, 446.
Black, Jennie Prince, 441.
"Blind Tom," 59.
Boccherini, 407.
Bodenstedt, 364.
Boise, O.B., 292, 299, 388, 446.
Boston Colony, 269, 350, 371.
Boston Symphony Orchestra, 18, 219, 233, 269, 281, 282, 286, 292, 432.
Bourdillon's, 109, 312.
Brahms, 56, 97, 114, 255, 284.
Breton, XIII.
Brewer, J.H., 331, 334.
Bristow, George F., 246.
Brockway, Howard, 298, 304.
Brounoff, Platon, 445.
Browning, E.B., 424.
Browning, Robt., 89, 99.
Bruce, Edwin, 388.
Bruch, Max, 136.
Bruckner, 419.
Bruneau, Alfred, 418.
Buck, Dudley, 165, 173, 174, 305, 324, 331, 361, 381, 392.
Bullard, F.F., 351, 357.
Burmeister, Richard, 445.
Burns, 204.
Burton, F.R., 273.
Busch, Carl, 445.
Byrd, XIII.
Byron, 252.
Canova, 12.
Carew, XIII.
Carnegie, A., 256.
Carpenter, H.B., 213.
Carreño, 36.
Carroll, Lewis, 212.
Carter, R.I., 294.
Chadwick, Geo. W., 18, 175, 210, 220, 244, 347, 358.
Chaminade, 218.
Champion, T., XIII., 415.
Cheney, J.V., 89, 90.
Chicago Colony, 18.
Chicago Orchestra, 18.
Chinese Music, 64, 86, 140, 143.
Chopin, 52, 56, 90, 98, 100, 110, 116, 138, 163, 177, 178, 211, 250,
294, 317, 319, 338, 396, 421.
Cincinnati Colony, 191, 270, 272.
Clarke, H.A., 198, 444.
Clementi, 113.
Cleveland Colony, 394, 415.
Coccius, 132, 249.
Coerne, L.A., 262, 265.
Coleridge, 62, 309.
College Music, 20, 38.
Collins, Laura S., 441.
Columbus, 234.
Converse, C.C., 256, 261.
Coombs, C.W., 343.
Corelli, 15.
Couperin, 16.
Coverley, Robert, 444.
Cramer, 321.
Crane, Charlotte M., 441.
Crane, Stephen, 415, 418.
Dachs, 419.
Damrosch, Walter, 261, 444.
Dante, 229.
De Koven, R., 334.
De Musset, A., 109.
Dennée, Charles, 374.
Dickinson, Emily, 369, 418, 424.
Diemer, 134.
Donne, Jno., XIII.
Dowland, XIII.
Draessecke, 343.
Drake, Rodman, 131, 168.
Drayton, XIII.
Dreams and Music, 62.
Dressler, L.R., 345.
Drummond, XIII., 153.
Dubois, 134, 358.
Dudley, Governor, 166.
Dunbar, P.L., 206.
Dunkley, Ferdinand, 445.
Dvôrák, A., 22, 77, 128, 129, 131, 132, 136, 278, 279, 305, 349, 371.
Eddy, Clarence, 59, 348.
Edison, 16.
Edwards, Julian, 444.
Egyptian Music, 72.
Ehlert, 37.
Ehling, Victor, 419.
Ehrlich, 412.
Eichberg, Julius, 444.
Elson, L.C., 16.
Emerson, 14.
Emery, Stephen A., 17, 95, 175, 244, 358, 375.
English Music, 12, 248, 329.
Esputa, John, 119.
Fairlamb, J.R., 344.
Farwell, A., 348.
Féval, 79.
Field, John, 227.
Finck, Henry T., 54.
Fisher, W.A., 348, 371.
Fissot, 412.
Fletcher, XII., 150.
Florio, 31.
Foerster, A.M., 248, 256.
Folk-music, 22.
Foote, Arthur, 18, 224, 234.
Ford, XIII.
Franz, Robt., 101, 104, 106, 173, 203, 248.
French influence, 29, 36, 357.
Fuchs, Robt., 419.
Furst, Wm., 444.
Gale, Clement R., 445.
Gale, Norman, 88.
Gavaërt, 426.
Gaynor, Mrs. Jessie L., 441.
Genée, 335.
German Influence, etc., 17, 40, 49, 59, 119, 132, 260.
Gerok, 106.
Gilchrist, W.W., 196, 209.
Gilder, R.W., 277.
Gilmore, P.S., 124, 261.
Gleason, F.G., 348, 376, 382.
Godard, 358.
Godowski, L., 444.
Goethe, 43, 95, 255.
Goetschius, Percy, 388.
Goldmark, Carl, 279, 281.
Goldmark, Rubin, 278, 282.
Goodrich, A.J., 28, 130, 171, 199, 380, 388, 391.
Goodrich, J. Wallace, 348.
Gottschalk, Louis Moreau, 17, 301, 422.
Gounod, 321.
Grabau, 371.
Grand Operas, 152, 262.
Gray, XII.
Greek Music, 72, 73, 155.
Greene, XII.
Grieg, 39, 54, 134, 190, 281, 396.
Grill, 132, 249.
Guilbert, Yvette, 129.
Guilmant, 358, 412.
Guyon, 322.
Hadley, H.K., 241, 247.
Haggard, Rider, 214.
Hale, F.W., 358.
Hale, Mrs. Philip, 439.
Hale, Philip, 186, 288, 439.
Halir, Carl, 432.
Hall, Bishop, XIII.
Hamerik, A., 444.
Hammond, Dr. Wm. A., 62.
Händel, 15, 152, 162, 184, 246, 432.
Händel and Haydn Society, 374, 428.
Hanscom, E.W., 275.
Hanslick, 129.
Harris, Victor, 336.
Harvard University, 154, 222.
Hastings, F.S., 344.
Haupt, 151, 257, 311, 412.
Hauptmann, 167, 257, 347.
Hawley, C.B., 32.
Haydn, 403, 407.
Heindl, H., 244.
Heine, 44, 88, 104, 105, 196, 215, 247, 309, 364, 413.
Heller, 164, 350.
Hemans, 202.
Henderson, W.J., 185.
Henley, W.E., 431.
Henselt, 104.
Herbert, XIII.
Herbert, Victor, 444.
Herford, Oliver, 369.
Herrick, XIII., 87, 179, 228, 369, 407, 413.
Heyman, 37.
Hieber, 263.
Hiler, E.O., 375.
Hood, Helen, 441.
Homer, Sidney, 375.
Hopkins, H.P., 349.
Hopper, 126.
Horace, 430.
Hovey, Richard, 110, 351.
Howe, Mrs. J.W., 424.
Humorous Music, 25, 64, 212, 433.
Humperdinck, 348.
Huneker, James, 39, 52, 54, 281.
Huss, H.H., 291, 297, 351.
Hyllested, August, 444.
Iceland, 447.
Indian Music, 22, 48, 49.
Irving, 170.
Jacobsen, O.F., 322.
Jadassohn, 211, 271.
Japanese Music, 139, 142.
Jensen, G., 136, 350.
Joachim, 97.
John, 343.
Johns, Clayton, 368, 370.
Jonson, XII., 57, 88.
Jordan, Jules, 274.
Joseffy, 71, 278, 444.
Kaltenborn, Franz, 19, 279, 295.
Keats, 152, 296.
Kelley, Edgar S., 27, 57, 76, 140, 272.
Kerker, Gustave, 444.
Kiel, 237, 371, 396.
Kieserling, R., Jr., 270.
Kipling, 50, 206, 359.
Klein, B.O., 444.
Klindworth, Karl, 95, 96, 97, 111.
Kneisel, Franz, 263, 286, 432.
Koelling, Adolph, 444.
Korn, Mrs. Clara A., 441.
Kortheuer, H.O.C., 299.
Kotzschmar, 150.
Krehbiel, H.E., 273, 361.
Kroeger, E.R., 420, 422.
Kruger, 59.
Kullak, 342, 387.
Lachaume, Amié, 444.
Lachmund, C.V., 349.
Lang, B.J., 95, 212, 226, 375, 432.
Lang, M.R., 424, 432, 438.
Lanier, S., 169, 171, 173.
Lassen, Edward, 132, 190.
Lassus, 15.
Lawes, Harry, 153, 248, 328.
Leading Motives, 80.
Ledochowski, 59.
Lewing, Adele, 445.
Liebling, Emil, 445.
Liszt, 37, 59, 97, 190, 196, 237, 341, 387.
Lodge, XIII.
Loeffler, C.M., 444.
Longfellow, 81, 223, 224.
Loomis, C.B., 84.
Loomis, H.W., 27, 77, 91.
Loretz, J.M., 344.
Löschorn, 411.
Lowell, 201.
Lulli, 16.
Lyly, XIII.
MacDowell, E.A., 18, 23, 34, 57.
Macmonnies, 242.
Mandyczewski, 244.
Manney, C.F., 348.
Manuscript Societies, 20.
March-tunes, 112.
Marlowe, XII.
Marmontel, 37.
Marston, G.W., 358, 364, 368.
Marteau, Henri, 134.
Martin, E.S., 30.
Marx, A.B., 389.
Mason, Dr. Wm., 340, 341, 387.
Mason, Lowell, 17, 157, 340.
Maud, Constance, 441.
McCagg Prize, 176.
McCaull, 126.
McLellan, C.M.S., 63.
Mendelssohn, 59, 155, 157, 184.
Mendelssohn Club, 209.
Mendelssohn, Fanny, 425.
Mendelssohn Glee Club, 199, 200, 325.
Meyerbeer, 126.
Miles, General, 116.
Millard, H., 337.
Miller, C.C., 392.
Millet, 313.
Mills, S.B., 321.
Milton, 152, 328.
Montaigne, 31.
Monteverde, 16.
Moody and Sankey, 157.
Morgan, John P., 371.
Morgan, Matt., 120.
Moscheles, 167, 311, 347, 381.
Mosenthal, J., 324.
Moskowski, 396, 439.
Mozart, 116, 306, 395.
Namby-pamby, 25.
National Airs, 259.
Negro Music, 22, 23, 48, 122, 128, 131, 137.
Neidlinger, W.H., 391, 394.
Neitzel, 136.
Nevin, Arthur, 342.
Nevin, Ethelbert, 92, 111.
Nevin, R.P., 94.
New York Colony, 269, 282, 350.
Nicodé, 129.
Nobles, M., 120.
Norris, Homer A., 29, 348, 357, 358, 388.
Northeastern Säengerbund, 191.
Offenbach, 120.
Omar, 338.
Orientalism, 45.
Orth, John, 175, 445.
Oxenford, John, 329.
Page, N.C., 139, 143, 272.
Paine, John Knowles, 18, 162, 226, 263, 370.
Palestrina, 16, 284.
Pantomime Music, 79, 110.
Papperitz, 132, 249.
Parker, H.W., 174, 188, 192, 371, 347.
Parker, J.C.D., 373.
Parker, Mrs. E.G., 183.
Parrot, John, 60.
Pasmore, H.B., 272.
Pendleton, C, 345.
Penfield, S.M., 347.
Perabo, Ernst, 445.
Peri, 15.
Perosi, 284.
Perugino, 12.
Philadelphia, 197.
Pierné, 134.
Plaidy, 167, 257, 381.
Poe, 14, 76.
Porpora, 15.
Pratt, S.G., 234, 240, 347.
Proctor, A.A., 81.
Program Music, 41, 44.
Prout, E., 389.
Pugno, 134.
Purcell, 14, 248.
Puritan Influence, 14, 15.
Radeck, 361.
Raff, 37, 41, 97, 147.
Raif, O., 381, 396, 439.
Ralegh, XIII.
Rameau, 16.
Rankin, McKee, 60.
Raphael, 12.
Reinecke, 132, 211, 271, 347.
"René Victor," 439.
Rheinberger, J., 211, 292, 355.
Richter, E.F., 167, 249, 257, 342, 381, 387.
Rietz, 167.
Rivé-King, Julie, 441.
Robyn, A.G., 419.
Robyn, Wm., 419.
Rogers, J.H., 411, 414.
Rogers, Mrs. C.K., 445.
Rohde, 311, 412.
Rossini, 183.
Rotoli, Augusto, 445.
Rubinstein, 77, 129.
Rückert, 193.
Rummel, Franz, 371.
Runciman, John F., 14.
Russell, L.A., 144.
Russian music, 57, 447.
Rutenber, 324.
Saar, L.V., 444.
Saint-Saëns, 108.
San Francisco, 59, 272, 371.
Sappho, 424.
Savard, 37.
Sawyer, H.P., 441.
Scarlattis, 15.
Scharwenka, X., 396, 444.
Schiller, 95.
Schimon, 249.
Schnecker, P.A., 445.
Schoenefeld, 128, 135.
Schubert, 103, 261, 350.
Schumann, VII., 56, 88, 91, 98, 101, 104, 106, 163, 173, 177, 215, 397.
Schuyler, Wm., 415, 419.
Scotch influence, 38, 39, 61, 196.
Scott, 12, 171.
Seeboeck, W.C., 444.
Seidl, A., 236, 245, 261, 279, 322, 349, 422.
Seiffritz, 59, 343.
Seiss, 350.
Severn, E., 445.
Shakespeare,. XII., 31, 57, 60, 87, 95, 150, 152, 173, 228, 239, 297.
Sharp, Wm., 81.
Shelley, 351.
Shelley, H.R., 304, 308.
Sherwood, Wm. H., 19, 60, 286, 311, 370, 383, 387.
Shirley, XIII.
Sidney, XIII., 228.
Siloti, A., 192.
Singer, Otto, 396, 444.
Sitt, H., 192.
Smith, G., 309, 319.
Smith, Wilson G., 395, 406.
Sommer, Charles, 414.
Sonatas, 51, 56, 84.
Sophokles, 154, 161.
Sousa, John P., 112, 128.
Spanish influence, 119.
Spanuth, A., 444.
Speidel, 59, 343.
Spencer, Fanny M., 441.
Spenser, XIII.
Spohr, 257.
Stair, Patty, 414, 441.
Stedman, E.C., 171, 277, 373.
Sternberg, Constantin von, 444.
Stevenson, R.L., 12, 105.
St. Louis Colony, 270, 415, 422.
Stoeckel, G.J., 305.
Strauss, J., 114.
Strauss, R., 407.
Strong, G.T., 445.
Suckling, 228.
Swinburne, 383.
Symphonies, 64, 147, 218, 298.
Taft, F., 347.
Tartini, 15, 62.
Taussig, 342, 381.
Tennyson, 42, 55, 328.
Theokritos, 384.
Theorists, 28, 388.
Thomas, Theodore, 18, 151, 153, 168, 169, 257, 261, 264, 349, 376, 380,
432.
Tschaïkowski, 232, 372, 391.
Tufts, John W., 366.
Upton, Geo. P., 152, 380.
Urban, 135.
Van der Stucken, Frank, 19, 188, 196, 292.
Vergil, 229.
Verlaine, 81.
Vieh, G.C., 419.
Vierling, 135.
Vogrich, Max, 444.
Von Böhme, 94.
Von Bülow, H., 96.
Wagner, 50, 56, 99, 111, 114, 125, 157, 162, 201, 207, 223, 237.
Wagner, Frau Cosima, 97.
Waller, Henry, 444.
Warren, G.W., 324, 346.
Warren, R.H., 345, 347.
Warren, S.P., 311.
Weatherby, F.E., 329.
Weitzmann, 381, 387.
Welsh Music, 447.
Wheeler, A.C., 320.
Whelpley, B.L., 375.
Whiting, 283, 291.
Whiting, G.E., 360.
Whitman, Walt, 14, 418.
Whittier, 153.
Widor, 412.
Wiegand, Emil, 270.
Wieprecht, 151.
Willaert, 15.
Wither, XIII.
Women as Composers, 423, 441.
Wood, Mrs. M.K., 440.
Woodberry, G.E., 161.
Wotton, XIII.
Wuellner, 136.
Yale University, 175.
Young, Mrs. E.M., 445.
Zeck, F., Jr., 272.
Zeno, 12.
Zola, 418.
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