Contemporary American Composers
by Rupert Hughes · English · Gutenberg #23800 · 412,597 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Contemporary American Composers
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
"HERBSTGEFUeHL" (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 KHAYYAM," 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 "SALAMMBO," 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 Haendel 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 reestablishing 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 Dvorak, 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 Dvorakian 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 aesthetics. "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 Carreno, 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 _protege_ 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 etait sereine et jouait sur les flots.
La fenetre enfin libre est ouverte a la brise;
La sultane regarde, et la mer qui se brise,
La-bas, d'un flot d'argent brode les noir ilots.
(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 precieuse, 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 AEschylean _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 preeminence 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 Dvorak, 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 Dvorak's composition class at the National
Conservatory, by submitting an excellent, but rather uncharacteristic,
setting of Eichendorff's "Fruehlingsnacht." Loomis evidently won
Doctor Dvorak'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, Dvorak 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 Dvorak'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. Feval'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 reenlists 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 Coryphee," "The Odalisque," and "The Magyar." One of his largest
works is a concert waltz, "Mi-Careme," 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 Boehme. 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 Buelow 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
_Zuhoeren_ 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 cortege 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 "Herbstgefuehl"
the dissonance is fearlessly defiant of conventions.
[Music:
... Rose
Loeset lebenssatt.
Sich, das letzte lose,
Bleiche Blumenblatt.
Goldenes entfaerben,
Schleicht sich durch den Hain,
Auch vergeh'n und sterben,
Daeucht mir suess 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 "HERBSTGEFUeHL."]
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 "Herbstgefuehl." 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 "Herbstgefuehl" (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, "Dites-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 Brise," the effective song "Mon Desire," which in profile
suggests Saint-Saens' familiar Delilah-song, the striking "Chanson des
Lavandieres" 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 a 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 cortege, 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
_klaviermaessig_. 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 Dvorak 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 "Desiree" 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 opera 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 piece 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 Dvorak 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 Dvorak 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 Dvorak'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 Dvorak's, both in advance and in retrospect, is Henry
Schoenefeld, who wrote a characteristic suite (op. 15) before the
Dvorakian invasion, and an overture, "In the Sunny South," afterward.
The suite, which has been played frequently abroad, winning the
praises of Hanslick, Nicode, 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 Maennerchor.
Schoenefeld's "Rural Symphony" was awarded the $500 prize offered by
the National Conservatory. Dvorak 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 Elegante," 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, Pierne, 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 Dvorak 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 Dvorak.
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 Elegante" 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 "Banjoenne," 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 Maerlein," 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 Fete" 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 naif 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 debut 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 Haendel at his worst, is also marked with the erudition and
largeness of Haendel 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 mediaeval 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 Haendel'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 etudes 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 etudes 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 "Etude 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 Characteristiques" 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 "Elegie" 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 Haendelian 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-Saens.
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 Tannhaeuser 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 debut 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 Saeengerbund, 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 suessem Munde,
mir ist kein Leid geschehn
den Himmel fuehl' 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 Rueckert. 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
aufgeblueht" 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
Voeglein 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 Thraene" has superb coloring, all
sombre, and a tremendous climax; "Seeligkeit" is big with emotion and
ravishing in harmony, "Ein Schaeferlied" is exquisite, "Von schoen
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 "Melodie" 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 "Etude" 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 frueh 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
_Maennerchor_ 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
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