inousflnierican %* Hupcrt Hughes FAMOUS AMERICAN COMPOSERS EDWARD MACDOWELL VL/Irv^SS ^^^^T^^flyf^^^y^^^fi^ ^r^F^^M^^^7\\r -^ 3 amnuB Am^ririJtt 1 dixw^mn^ i 1 =/? f ing a ^tubg of % iluatr of tljia Olomttrg, anb of 3fta IFuturp. orttlj lui0rapl|i^0 of % llFabUtg QIompoa^rB of % gr^B^nt ut By Rupert Hughes JIuthor of ' ' Love Jiffain of Great Musiclana, ' ' tic 1 M ^^^^^^^^"^^^^ t^ 1 V^^r^ ^^^H % ^ LCPAGECiJCOMPANY BOSTON iS> PUBLISHERS M. 5^:=*CSj5Pr^--^.-S*-^S2'at.O-;S2: 3^ Copyright, igoo By L. C. Page & Company (incorporated) All rights reserved Seventh Impression, August, 1908 Eighth Impression, April, 1910 COLONIAL PRESS EUctrotyptd and Printed by C. H. Simonds A* Co. Boston. U.S.A. FOREWORD. One day there came into Robert Schu- mann'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 enthu- siasms 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 musician- ship, 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 Schu- viii Foreword. mann 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 con- temporary 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 Amer- ican 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 com- Foreword. ix poser 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 seri- ous intentions. When I heard of a com- poser 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 compara- tive 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 en- deavored to digest them. Thousands of Z Foreword. pieces of music, from short songs to operatic and orchestral scores, I studied with all avail- able conscience. The fact that after going through at least a ton of American compo- sitions, 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, awaken- ing 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 imme- diately, 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, exci- sion, 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 Foreword. xi everything except possibly the date of birth. The critical opinions gain their possibly dog- matic 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 prece- dence 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 in- evitable 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, jdi Foreword. 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 com- monplace 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 achieve- ment 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 prd^r. Tli^re were poets less prolific than Foreword. xiii 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, Her- rick, Breton, Allison, Byrd, Dowland, Cam- pion 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 contempo- raries 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 Ameri- can music-makers whose ability I think note- worthy, a list whose length may lead many a wiseacre to pull a longer face. xiv Foreword. Parts of this book have been reprinted from Godeys Magazine, the Century Magazine, and the Criterion, to whose publishers I am in- debted for permission. For the music repro- duced here I have to thank the publishers whose copyrights were loaned for the occa- sion. 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. PA6B Foreword vii A General Survey . II The Innovators 34 The Academics . '45 The Colonists . 267 The Women Composers 423 The Foreign Composers . 442 Postlude . 447 Index . . . a . 449 LIST OF MUSIC PAGB 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 " Herbstgefijhl (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 " CEdIPUS TYRANNUS," BY JOHN K. Paine 158 Spring's Awakening " (fragment), by Dudley Buck 172 5 6 List of Music, rjMM Autograph of Horatio W. Parker . . 1 74 "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. Gil- christ 205 Autograph of G. W. Chadwick . .210 " Folk Song " (No. i), 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 Brock- way . . .303 Autograph of Harry Rowe Shelley . 304 "Spring" (fragment), by Gerrit Smith . 314 "When Love Is Gone," by C. B. Haw- ley 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. Sher- wood 385 Autograph of Wilson G. Smith . . 395 List of Music. 7 PAGB 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 M Phantoms " (fragment), by Mrs. H. H. A. Beach 429 * Ghosts," by Margaret Ruthven Lang . 436 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGB Edward MacDowell . . . Frontispiece Edgar Stillman Kelley . 57 Harvey Worthington Loomis 77 John Philip Sousa 112 John Knowles Paine . 145 Horatio W. Parker . 174 Frank von der Stucken . 1 88 Henry K. Hadley . 241 Charles Crozat Converse 256 Henry Holden Huss . 291 Frederick Field Bullard 351 Homer A. Norris 357 A. J. Goodrich .... 388 Wilson G. Smith . . 395 Mrs. H. H. A. Beach . 426 FAMOUS 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 national- II 12 Contemporary American Composers. ism. This I should like to combat after the sophistric 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 Peru- gino 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 un- earthing of old Greek masterpieces. Steven- son confesses frankly his early efforts to copy the mannerisms of Scott and others. Na- A General Survey. 1 3 tions 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. 14 Contemporary American Composers. 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 Haw- thorne and a Poe and an Emerson and a Whitman. But we have had more hin- drance than help from our heritage of Eng- lish 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. Run- ciman). 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 con- gregational lyricism, and a lofty inspiration for musical treatment (the hymn refers to the fate of unbaptized infants) : A General Survey. 15 * 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 sup- plant 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; loth, it makes the young disorderly." At the time when such puerility was dis- turbing this cradle of freedom and cacophony, Bach and Handel were at work in their con- trapuntal webs, the Scarlattis, Corelli and Tartini and Porpora were alive. Peri, Josquin and Willaert and Lassus were dead, 1 6 Contemporary American Composers. and the church had had its last mass from the most famous citizen of the town of Pales- trina. 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 Ameri- cans 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 Puri- tanism 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 state- A General Survey. ly merit 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, prac- tically 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 turn- ing aside to Paris, and almost none to Italy. The prominent teachers, too, that have come from abroad have been trained in the Ger- man school, whatever their nationality. The growth of a national school has been neces- sarily 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 indiffer- ent, the inertia of all large bodies would explain that. A national, a constructive, and 1 8 Contemporary American Composers. collaborative criticism has been conspicuously absent. The leaders of orchestras have also offered an almost insurmountable obstacle to the pro- duction 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 num- bers, 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 per- formed, 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 four- A General Survey. 19 teen 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 unpatri- otic in preferring endless repetition of dry foreign arias to fresh compositions from home. The little encore song, which generally ap- peared 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 20 Contemporary American Composers. 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 con- certs 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 repre- sented 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 A General Survey. 21 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 expres- sion, 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. 22 Contemporary American Composers. 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 Dv6rak, brought this idea into general prominence, though it had been dis- cussed by American composers, and made use of in compositions of all grades long before he came here. The vital objection, however, to the gen- eral 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 Tyro- lean jodel or Hungarian czardas. The music of the American Indian, often strangely beautiful and impressive, would be A General Survey. 23 as reasonably chosen as that of these im- ported Africs. E. A. MacDowell had, indeed, written a picturesque and impressive Itidian suite, some time before the Dvdrdkian inva- sion. He asserts that the Indian music is preferable to the Ethopian, because its sturdi- ness 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 arbi- trary 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 24 Contemporary American Composers. 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 out- growth 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 ex- pressions } The main thing is the individu- ality 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 com- posers 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 Ameri- A General SufVey. i% can music has given place to too much cor- rectness and too close formation on the old models. This is undoubtedly the result of the long and faithful discipleship under Ger- man 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 pau- city 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 ex- 26 Contemporary American Composers. plained 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 fiower-dramas and bird-trage- dies, 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 A General Survey. 27 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 appre- ciated. 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 prob- lem than the free expression of emotions and aesthetics. " Correct " music has now hardly more liberty than Egyptian sculpture or Byzantine painting once had. Certain disso- nances 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 28 Contemporary American Composers. charts, giving every scheme of color and every juxtaposition of values permissible to a painter. The music of certain Oriental na- tions, 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 Euro- pean 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 liv- ing composer. These Blue Laws of music are constantly assailed surreptitiously and in de- tail ; and yet they are too little attacked as a whole. But music should be a democracy and not an aristocracy, or, still less, a hier- archy. 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. Good- A General Survey. 29 ricli, 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 contempo- rary 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. Good- rich' 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 na- tional might well be turned toward an art that has been too much and too long neg- lected among us. 30 Contemporary American Composers. 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 in- dubitably 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 Euro- pean 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 A General Survey. 3 1 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 com- poser 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 recrudes- cence 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 mfluences that cannot but work for good. 32 Contemporary American Composers. The American painter has won more Euro pean 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 admis- sion 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 coun- tries ; through the fact that a number of European music houses are publishing in- creasing 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 A General Survey. 33 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, 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 unani- mous vote would grant him rank as the greatest of American composers, while not 34 The Innovators. 35 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-forma- tions 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 multitudi- nous possibilities. Through any geometrical point, an infinite number of Hues can be drawn. This is almost the case with any 36 Contemporary American Composers. 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 Mac- Dowell. 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 i8, 1861. He began the study of the piano at an early age. One of his teachers was Mme. Teresa Car- refto, 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 The Innovators. 37 Savard, and the piano under Marmontel. He went to Wiesbaden to study with Ehlert in 1879, ^^d \.\i&n 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 prot^gd 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 composi- tions 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 follow- ing years were spent in successful concert work, till 1884, when MacDowell settled down to teaching and composing in Wies- baden. Four years later he came to Boston, 38 Contemporary American Composers. writing, teaching, and giving occasional con- certs. 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 de- gree, Mus. Doc. Mac Do well 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 Ger- many, 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 con- temporary Glasgow school of painters, that clique so isolated, so daring, and yet so ear- The Innovators. 39 nest 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, lan- guorous odors of the South or the morbidezza of Poland. Some of MacDo well'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 accom- paniments it is noteworthy that he is almost never strictly contramelodic. The songs of opera 1 1 and 1 2 have a 40 Contemporary American Composers. 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 ex- pression, mark all the other songs, particu- larly the " Midsummer Lullaby," with its accompaniment as delicately tinted as sum- mer 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 trivial- ity, that vexes an admirer of the large ability The Innovators. 4 1 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 Mac- Dowell has turned song to the unusual pur- poses of a landscape impressionism of places and moods rather than people. For men's voices there are some deftly composed numbers curiously devoted to lul- laby subjects. The barcarolle for mixed chorus and accompaniment on the piano for four hands obtains a wealth of color, en- hanced 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 descrip- 42 Contemporary American Composers. tive music can go. The skill of each com* poser 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 ; Qose 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 loneli- ness 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 The Innovators. 43 prey beneath ; and there follows a sudden precipitation down the keyboard, fortissis- sinte, 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 pre- ceded 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 radi- ant 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 44 Contemporary American Composers. 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 be- sides accompanying chords. They are meaty, and effective almost to the point of catchi- ness. The "Tale of the Knights" is full of chivalric fire and martial swing, while the " Ballad " is as exquisitely dainty as a peach- The Innovators. 45 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. 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. 46 Contemporary American Composers. CLAIR DE LUNE. UtaMiMI Il|l>IunbllMi^ Lugvido, ricMIe. E. ^ MAC OOVBLL, CK M W 1 liM iiTi;^ 1 ^^ ^^ rT=i ^^m r f r't^ ^^ W w OtJ' J^ 1 ^ /1u,, .fJ^J^^^. . . ^-^r:;^ li^V pr'^pUfe 1 V'J T^ [^ r'*^:! rrrr-'^-' J .^^ '^1 r % j_*^ HN t7M ^^ 1 j t r'Tl ^^ 1 ^f> 1 Oil ^'77^, *K ^iT-a ^- 1 J",l J^ kJJjJ 1 "jdi J 5^ IV- * p" > r^ f "!? ^5 rT r r p r r p ^ ' -j ;* ' ' r 1> ji-^-; ij t-^ Copyright, 1889, Arthnr F. Schmit. The Innovators. 47 \lf ilJ j] ^ 3. }\ P^^ jj j-- ^jjj f i f I* ffff ii ^C > J J J < 1 i^STTI 0J>^ ^ > /" >j fTT J "T>v, 'ir^^ 04Tge . .^ t"^^ Jt^ * -Tf^-tfK- ^^ JTrrr ii-^J |p4 ^i^ ?i W r'BBn T^l r T ^ *fc 48 Contemporary American Composers. 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 liberal- ity that inspired the new impressionism of "Woodland Sketches" (op. 51) and "Sea Pieces" (op. 55), in which he gives a legiti- mate musical presentation of a faintly per- fumed "Wild Rose" or "Water Lily," but goes farther, and paints, with wonderful tone, the moods inspired by reverie upon the un- couth 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 sun- set 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 The Innovators. 49 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 pub- lished 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 50 Contemporary American Composers. 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 nowa- days, even his predecessors. Rudyard Kip- ling has by his individuality so copyrighted one of the oldest verse-forms, the ballad, that even " Chevy Chace " looks like an ad- vance 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 infre- quently in this work. The opening move- The Innovators. 51 ment begins with a sotto voce syncopation that is very presentative of the curious audi- ble 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 Octo- ber," is particularly welcome in our music, which is strangely and sadly lacking in humor. There is fascinating wit through- out this harvest revel. "The Shepherdess' Song" is the fourth movement. It is not pr^cieuse, and it is not banal ; but its sim- plicity of pathos is a whit too simple. The final number, " Forest Spirits," is a brilliant climax. The Suite as a whole is an impor- tant work. It has detail of the most charm- ing art. Best of all, it is staunchly individual. It is MacDowellian. While the modern piano sonata is to me 52 Contemporary American Composers. anathema as a rule, there are none of Mac- Dowell'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 Bee- thoven 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 intro- duction (metronomed in the composer's copy, J-50). The first subject is marked in the same copy, though not in the printed book, J -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 J-138, and it is very short and very wild. Through- The Innovators. 53 out, the grief is the grief of a strong soul ; it never degenerates into whine. Its largo is like the tread of an iEschylean chores^ 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 54 Contemporary American Composers. 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 atmos- phere 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 Innovators. 55 The " Sonata Eroica " (op. 50) bears the leg- end " 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 flib- bertigibbet virtuosity, and its magic of color. The third movement might have been in spired by Tennyson's version of Arthur's fare- well 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 56 Contemporary American Composers. 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 scien- tific exploration after piano color and tender- ness 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 eccen- tricities have not given it out. Brahms is too passionless. Wagner neglected the piano. It remained for a Yankee to find the austere EDGAR STILLMAN KELLEY. The Innovators. 5 7 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 erst- while 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, Julward MacDowell. Edgar Stillman Kelley. While his name is known wherever American music is known in its better as- pects, yet, like many another American, his real art can be discovered only from his manuscripts. In these he shows a very 58 Contemporary American Composers. munificence of enthusiasm, scholarship, in- vention, humor, and originality. 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 shil- ling, 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 musi- cian, who taught him the piano from his eighth year to his seventeenth, when he went The Innovators. 59 to Chicago and studied harmony and coun- terpoint under Clarence Eddy, and the piano under Ledochowski. It is interesting to note that Kelley was diverted into music from painting by hearing " BUnd Tom " play Liszt's transcription of Mendelssohn's " Midsummer Night's Dream " music. I imagine that this idiot-genius had very Httle 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 con- cert polonaise for four hands, and a composi- tion 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 6o Contemporary American Composers. 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 re- markable record for many reasons. A shabby New York production at an ill-chosen theatre failed to give the work an advantageous hear- ing ; 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 Shake- The Innovators. 6 1 speare'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 program- matist, 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." 62 Contemporary American Composers. 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 musi- cal 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 The Innovators. 63 was refused by the man for whom it was writ- ten 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, " Puri- tania," by C. M. S. McLellan, a brilliant satirist, who has since won fortune by his highly successful and frequently artistic bur- lesquery. The work won excellent praise in Boston, where it had one hundred perform- ances. The work musically was not only conscientious, but really graceful and capti- vating. It received the most glowing en- comiums 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. 64 Contemporary American Composers. 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 intertwin- ing of themes and in brilliance of orchestra- tion, it maintains symphonic dignity, while in play of fancy, suggestive programmaticism, and rollicking enthusiasm it is infectious with wit. Gulliver himself is richly charac- terized 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 The Innovators. 65 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 de- vices 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 Celes- 66 Contemporary American Com,posers. tial cacophonists, and made himself adept. He fathomed the, to us, obscure laws of their theory, and for this work made a care- ful 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 re- sult 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 The Innovators. 6^ 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 sub- limated "shivaree" in which oboes quawk, muted trumpets bray, pizzicato strings flut- ter, and mandolins (loved of Berlioz) twitter hilariously. The second movement, "A Serenade in the Royal Pear Garden," begins with a lux- urious 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 68 Contemporary American Composers. 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 tin- kling 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 elabo- rately 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 The Innovators. 69 announced by harp and mandolin. It is an ancient Chinese air for the yong-kim (a dul- cimer-Hke instrument). The second subject is adapted from the serenade theme. With these two smuggled themes everything con- trapuntal (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 popu- lar 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 catchi- ness that it has pervaded even London and Paris. This song is one of a series of six lyrics /o Contemporary American Composers. 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 raptur- ous 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," The Innovators. 71 superb with grace, warm harmony, and May ecstasies ; " Confluentia," whose threads of liquidity are eruditely, yet romantically, inter- tangled to represent the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle ; and " The Headless Horseman," a masterpiece of burlesque weird- ness, 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 " Gulli- ver," "Aladdin," and "Beauty and the Beast." Kelley once wrote music for an adapta- 72 Contemporary American Composers. tion 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 stag- ing 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 The Innovators. 73 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 for- bidden by the doctors of our era), a trimetri- cal 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 irre- sistible brilliance and spontaneity. The weav- ing of Arachne's web is pictured with espe- cial power. Greek traditions have, of course, been used only for occasional impressionisms, and not as manacles. Elaborately colored modem instrumentation and all the estab- lished 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 produc- tion) is a wonderwork of color. Kelley has two unpublished songs that 74 Contemporary American Composers. J-W r 7 > ^ ^-^ ^^ ,T-T- ,r-^ ^- ^ B7 permiggion. FRAGMENT OF " ISRAFKL," BY EDGAR S. KELLEV. The Innovators. n By permiiiioa. 76 Contemporary American Composers. 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 hon- ored abroad as a world-great lyrist. It is, perhaps, praise enough, then, to say that Kel- ley's music flags in no wise behind the divine progress of the words. The lute idea dictates an arpeggiated accompaniment, whose har- monic beauty and courage is beyond descrip- tion and beyond the grasp of the mind at the first hearing. The bravery of the climax fol- lows 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. w Um: ^^^^^H| % ^1 W" 4nr.y m J'M- ^j fw . yiM jM^^^M ' r m '^-^f- ^ L HARVEY WORTHINGTON LOOMIS. \ The Innovators. 77 Harvey Worthington Loomis. <^^/^^-' In the band of pupils that gathered to the standard of the invader, Antonin Dv6rdk, when, in 1892, he came over here from Mace- donia 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 Dvdrdk's composition class at the National Conservatory, by submitting an ex- cellent, but rather uncharacteristic, setting of EichendorfE's " Friihlingsnacht." Loomis evi- dently won Doctor Dv6rdk's confidence, for among the tasks imposed on him was a piano concerto to be built on the lines of so elab- orate a model as Rubinstein's in D minor. 78 Contemporary American Composers. When Loomis' first sketches showed an elab- oration even beyond the complex pattern, Dvorak still advised him to go on. To any one that knows the ways of harmony teach- ers this will mean much. Loomis (who was bom in Brooklyn, Feb- ruary 5, 1865, and is now a resident of New York) pursued studies in harmony and piano in a desultory way until he entered Doctor Dv6rak'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 impor tant of which are "Fairy Hill," a cantatilla for children, published in 1896 (it was writ- ten 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 The Innovators. 79 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 back- grounds. The 27th of April, 1896, a con- cert of his works was given by a number of well-known artists. These musical backgrounds are played in accompaniment to dramatic recitations. Prop- erly managed, the effect is most impressive. F^val's poem, " The Song of the Pear-tree," is a typically handled work. * The poem tells the story of a young French fellow, an or- phan, 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 dan- ger. When he falls, they find on his breast 8o Contemporary American Composers. 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 glissandd) ; 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 mar- tial music, and when the lover comes trudging home, his joy, his sudden knowledge of Per- rine'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 Innovators. 8 1 The background to Longfellow's " San- dalphon " 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 compo- sitions. 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 Will- iam 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 dur- ing a picturesque waltz, the last a song with mandolin effects in the accompaniment. The pantomimes range from grave to gay, most of the librettos in this difficult form being from the clever hand of Edwin Starr $2 Contemporary American Composers. Wi tt bl (t on tt1 JU Copyright, 1896, by Edgar 8. Wemer. A FRAGMENT OF " SANDALPHON," BY H. W. LOOMIS. The Innovators. 83 O m eit*' te'ailf nn ii < <, lurf-KMa(>Ma< 84 Contemporary American Composers. Belknap. "The Traitor Mandolin," "In Old New Amsterdam," "Put to the Test," "Blanc et Noir," "The Enchanted Foun- tain," " Her Revenge," " Love and Witch- craft " are their names. The music is full of wit, a quality Loomis possesses in un- usual degree. The music mimics every- thing from the busy feather-duster of the maid to her eavesdropping. Pouring wine, cHnking glasses, moving a chair, tearing up a letter, and a rollicking wine-song in pan- tomime 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 The Innovators. 85 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 ~1, Fields," contains some happy manifestations of ability, such as "A June Roundelay," , " The Dryad's Grove," and, especially, a hu- ) moresque "Junketing," which is surely des- tined to become a classic. From some of "> his pantomimes Loomis has made excerpts, and remade them with new elaboration for i two pianos, under the name of "Exotics." These are full of variety and of actual nov- elty, now of startling discord, now of revela- tory 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 86 Contemporary American Composers. 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 pubUshed. 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 spon- taneity. These include " L'Amazone," " Pirou- ette," "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 The Innovators. 8/ moments of engaging charm, for instance, "N'Importe Quoi," "From a Conservatory Program," "A Tropical Night," a fascinat- ing "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 usu- 88 Contemporary American Composers. ally congenial to the modern music-maker, Loomis' " Epitaph on a Virgin " must be classed as a success. Indeed, it reaches posi- tive 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 magnifi- cent " 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 em- barrassment 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 The Innovator^. 89 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 "This- tledown," with its brilliantly fleecy accom- paniment, 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, 90 Contemporary American Composers, 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 The Innovators. 91 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 unconven- tional, this sin is unusual enough to approach the estate of a virtue. But his oddity is not mere sensation-mongering. It is his indi- viduality. 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 indefatiga- bly searched out and polished to splendor, so potent in enlarging the color-scale of the 92 Contemporary American Composers. piano ; his patient building up, through long neglect and through long silence, of a monu- mental 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 defini- tion of genius, the capacity for taking infinite pains, is his inspired felicity. His genius is the very essence of felicity. 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 con- science and individuality. Such a composer is Ethelbert Nevin. His published writings have been altogether The Innovatofi. 93 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 //Aa^>^ ^^^^^ the jewels of the world's music-makers, and fashioned for the very brows of the Muse herself. Nevin was born in 1862, at Vineacre, on the banks of the Ohio, a few miles from Pitts- burgh. There he spent the first sixteen years of his life, and received all his schooling, 94 Contemporary American Composers. most of it from his father, Robert P. Nevin, editor and proprietor of a Pittsburgh news- paper, and a contributor to many magazines. It is interesting to note that he also com- posed 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 musi- cally inclined, and, at the age of four, was often taken from his cradle to play for admiring visitors. To make up for the defi- ciency 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 tak- ing him abroad for two years of travel and music study in Dresden under Von Bohme. Later he studied the piano for two years at The Innovators. 95 Boston, under B. J. Lang, and composition under Stephen A, Emery, whose little primer on harmony has been to American music al- most what Webster's spelling-book was to our letters. At the end of two years he went to Pitts- burgh, 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 Klind- worth. 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 stu- dent from a musical standpoint, but to en- large 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 96 Contemporary American Composers. 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 en- joyed 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 cos- mopolitanism 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 Biilow incorporated the best four pupils of his friend, Klindworth, into an artist class, which he drilled person- ally. Nevin was one of the honored four, and appeared at the unicjue public Zt^hSren of The Innovators. 97 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 98 Contemporary American Composers. has a touch that brings tears," and it is in interpretation rather than in bravura that he excels. He plays with that unusual combina- tion of elegance and fervor that so individ- ualizes 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 " Not- turno," which presents the sussurus and the moonlit, amorous company of " Boccacio'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. The Innovators, 99 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 mUes 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 Giomo in Venezia," a book more handsomely published even than the others of his works, which have been among the earliest to throw off the disgrace- ful 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 loo Contemporary American Composers. 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 fer- vor, with interjections of " lo t'amo!" and " Amore " (which has the excellent authority of Beethoven's Sonata, op. 8i, 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 or- chestration, 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 mor- ceaiix. He has never written a sonata, or anything approaching the classical forms, nearer than a gavotte or two. He is very The Innovators. loi 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 particu- larly 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 disso- nance ; in his song " Herbstgefuhl " the dissonance is fearlessly defiant of con- ventions, Kevin'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 enthusi- I02 Contemporary American Composers. A/ A^IV* 9v^ vottl'l rron to an*. Copyright, 1889, by O. Schirmer, Jr. A FllAGMKNT FROM ** HKRBSTGEFOhL.*' The Innovators. 103 astic 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 syncopa- tion, which he wrote at the age of eighteen. I04 Contemporary American Composers. 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 " dis- play 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, " F the Wondrous Month o' May," has such a spring- tide fire and frenzy in the turbulent accom- paniment, and such a fervent reiterance, that it becomes, in my opinion, the best of all the settings of this poem of Heine's, not exclud- ing 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 The Innovators. 105 heart. The setting 01 ** Du bist wie eine Blurae," however, hardly iocs 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 com- plete, 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 " Chil- dren'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 capti- vating " 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 deli- cate patnos. Io6 Contemporary American Composers. 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 " Herbstgefiihl." 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 Schu- bert, Schumann or Franz. In " Herbstge- fiihl " (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 gran- Tlie Innovators. 107 deur 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," io8 Contemporary American Composers, was published. . It contains, among other things of merit, a lullaby, called " Sleep, Little Tulip," with a remarkably artistic and effect- ive pedal-point on two notes (the sub-mediant 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 voluptu- ousness 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 sympa- thetic with French nuance in "Le Vase Bris6," the effective song "Mon Desire," which in profile suggests Saint-Saens' familiar The Innovators. I09 Delilah-song, the striking "Chanson des Lavandi^res " 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 4 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 Day- break," the smooth and unhackneyed treat- ment 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. no Contemporary American Composers. A suite for the piano is " En Passant," published in 1 899 ; 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 depict- ing 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. i), 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 The Innovators. ill 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 emo- tions 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 conscien- 112 Contemporary American Composers. tious, he can say for the musical world some* thing that no one else can say." John Philip Sousa. X ' , g r- ? ] 1' I Ir 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 JOHN PHILIP SOUSA. The Innovators. 113 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 fig- ures, 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 con- templation, 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 1 14 Contemporary American Composers. 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 su- preme 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 raptur- ous 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 mu- sical worth, most of the mechanical, bor- The Innovators. 115 rowed, 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 1^35, his "Liberty Bell" march is said to have brought him ;^3 5,000. 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 "Washing- ton Post." On other important occasions it 1 16 Contemporary American Composers. 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 imi- tations have sprung up after him. The individuality of the Sousa march is this, that, unlike most of the other influential The Innovators. 117 marches, it is not so much a musical exhorta^ tion from without, as a distillation of the es- sences 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 ex- hilaration of the long unisonal stride, the grip on the musket, the pride in the regimen- tals and the regiment, esprit de corps. He expresses the inevitable foppery of the sever- est soldier, the tease and the taunt of the evolutions, the fierce wish that all this ploy- ing and deploying were in the face of an actual enemy, the mania to reek upon a tan- gible 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 ap- proach Sousa's work in the right mood, the ii8 Contemporary American Composers. 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 rejuvena- tion 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 ; ad- mitted 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 abom- inably 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 The Innovators. 119 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 him- self 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 Ger- man, 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 train- ing, that at fifteen. Sousa was teaching har- 1 20 Contemporary American Composers. mony. 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 orches- tra 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 inci- dental 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 work- ing 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. The Innovators. 1 2 1 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 col- lection 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 pub- lished compositions by Sousa, it is not possi- ble to mention many here. Though some of the names are not happily chosen, they call up many episodes of parade gaiety and jaunti- ness, 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. L 122 Contemporary American Composers. 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 ; ip) " And I, too, was born in Arcadia," which is a pastorale with delicious touches of extreme delicacy ; if) " In Darkest Africa," which has a stunning beginning and is a stir- ring grotesque in the negro manner Dv6rak ' advised Americans to cultivate. All three are well arranged for the piano. The second suite is based on "The Last The Innovators. 123 Days of Pompeii." It opens with a drunken revel, "In the House of Burbo and Strato- nice ; " 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 move- ment 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 Destruc- tion," and attains real heights of graphic sug- gestion. 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 124 Contemporary American Composers. rout gives way to the sea-voyage of Glaucus and lone, 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 enthu- siasm 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 mili- tary band begun by the late Patrick S. Gil- more. Sousa* s concert programs devote what The Innovators. 125 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 in- strumentality 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, ^"d scored the usual 126 Contemporary American Composers. failure of a first work. His " Katharine " was never produced, his " Desir6e " 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 1 896 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 opdra comique in its first version. Both of these works scored even larger success in London than at home. In "The Bride Elect," Sousa wrote his own libretto, and while there was the usual stirring march as the pi6ce de resistance, the work as a whole was less clangorous of the cymbal than the operas of many a tamer com- The Innovators. 127 OANSE. BKlto Hoderito f ratioso Uwd by permurion of the John Church Company, owners of the copyright. A PAGE FROM " EL CAPITAN," BY JOHN PHILIP SOUSA. 128 Contemporary American Composers. poser. 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. Long before Dv6rak 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 Dv6rdk 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 Dv6rak's own explorations in darkest Africa. His quartette (op. 96) and his " New World " symphony are The Innovators. 129 about as full of accent and infidelity as Mile. 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 Dvdrak's, both in advance and in retrospect, is Henry Schoenefeld, who wrote a characteristic suite (op. 15) before the Dvordkian invasion, and an overture, " In the Sunny South," afterward. The suite, which has been played frequently abroad, winning the praises of Hanslick, Nicod6, and Rubin- stein, is scored for string orchestra. It opens with an overly reminiscent waltz-tune, and ends conventionally, but it contains a move- ment in negro-tone that gives it importance. In this the strings are abetted by a tambou- rine, 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. 130 Contemporaty American Composers. 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 tri- angle 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 re- plies. 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 The Innovators. 131 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. Schoene- feld'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 an- tiphonal brass and wood. The subjects are taken from it with much thematic skill, and handled artfully, but the hymn, which ap- pears in full force for coda, is as trite as the most of its kith. r 132 Contemporary American Composers. Schoenefeld was bom in Milwaukee, in 1857. His father was a musician, and his teacher for some years. At the age of seven- teen 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 conduct- ing. Thereafter he went to Weimar, where he studied under Edward Lassen. In 1879 h^ 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 Mannerchor. Schoenefeld's " Rural Symphony " was awarded the 1^500 prize offered by the National Conservatory. Dvdrdk was the chairman of the Committee on Award, and gave Schoenefeld hearty compliments. Later works are : " Die drei Indianer," an ode lor The Innovators. 133 male chorus, solo, and orchestra ; a most beautiful " Air " for orchestra (the air being taken by most of the strings, the first vio- lins haunting the G string, while a harp and three flutes carry the burden of the ac- companiment -gracefully) ; a pleasant "Rev- erie " 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 pub- lished, 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 r 134 Contemporary American Composers. the Wood," make considerable appeal to the fancy and imagination, and are highly inter- esting. They show Grieg's influence very plainly, and are quite worth recommending. This cannot be said of his most inelegant " Valse fil^gante," or of his numerous dances, except, perhaps, his "Valse Caprice." He won in July, 1 899, the prize offered to American composers by Henri Marteau, for a sonata for violin and piano. The jury was com- posed of such men as Dubois, Piern6, 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 The Innovators. 135 relied on, though the general atmosphere is that of a nocturne, a trio of dance-like manner breaking in. The final rondo com- bines 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 bom in St. Louis in 1865. His mother was a prominent pianist and gave him his first les- sons 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 composi- tion with Vierling and Urban in Berlin. The latter discouraged him when he attempted to imbue a suite with a negro plantation spirit. 136 Contemporary American Composers. 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 Con- servatory, studying under Wuellner, Neitzel, T and G. Jensen. His first piano sonata was /_ performed there at a public concert. He next went to Breslau, where, under the in- struction of Max Bruch, he wrote his cantata, " The Wild Chase," and gave public perform- ance to other orchestral work. Returning now to St. Louis, he busied himself as solo violinist and teacher, travelling also as a con- ductor of opera companies. When Dv6rak came here Arnold wrote his " Plantation Dances," which were produced in a concert under the auspices of the Bohemian com- poser, Arnold was instructor of harmony at the National Convervatory under Dv6rak. The " Plantation Dances " are Arnold's thirty-third opus, and they have been much played by orchestras ; they are also published c The Innovators. 137 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 con- trast. 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 orchestra- tion throughout displays Arnold's character- istic studiousness in picturesque effect. For piano there is a czardas, and a " Valse ^ 138 Contemporary American Composers. ^l^gante " for eight hands ; it is more Vien- nese 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 Mid- way 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 " Min- strel 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 Marlein," 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 particu- The Innovators. 139 lady beautiful phrase for pre-, inter-, and post-lude. Arnold has also written some ballet music, a tarantelle for string orches- tra, and is at work upon a symphony, and a book, " Some Points in Modem Orchestra- tion." 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 lyri- cism. (In the reprise this subject, which had originally appeared in the dominant major, recurs in the tonic major, the key of the so- nata being E minor.) The second movement is also in the darky spirit, but full of mel- ancholy. For finale the composer has flown to Ireland and written a bully jig full of dash and spirit. N. Clifford Page. 3 The influence of Japanese and^ Chinese art upon our world of decoration has long been 140 Contemporary American Composers. 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 musix; 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 influ- ence is predominating, and it is not surpris- ing 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 The Innovators. 141 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 instruc- tion further than his own reading and inves- tigation. 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 142 Contemporary American Composers. 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 charac- teristic 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 augmen- tation 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 vari- ous 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 * Moon- The Innovators. 143 light 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 meas- ures' length is instrumented with almost every 144 Contemporary American Composers. contrapuntal device known, and with psycho- logical variety that runs through five move- ments, 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." JOHN KNOWLES PAINE. CHAPTER III. THE ACADEMICS. John Knowles Paine. ^^j;^^ There is one thing better than modernity, it is immortality. So while I am a most ardent devotee of modem movements, be- cause they are at worst experiments, and motion is necessary to life, I fail to see why 145 146 Contemporary American Composers. 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 import- ance, 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 Rafif had written a symphony called "Spring" in 1878, just a year before Paine finished his in America. The first movement in both is The Academics. 147 called " Nature's Awakening ; " such an idea is inevitable in any spring composition, from poetry up or down. For a second move- ment 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 legiti- 148 Contemporary American Composers. mate sort, in full accord with Beethoven's canon, " Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei." It has no aim of imitating spring- time noises, but seeks to stimulate by sug- gestion 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 intro- duction 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 lilt- ing up the 'cellos to the violins (which are divided in the naif archaic interval of the tenth, too much ig- nored 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 The Academics. 149 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 fexultance, the dancing second subject appears (in the tonic), over- whelming 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 hobgob- lin 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 Recollec- tion, 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 150 Contemporary American Composers. 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 weari- ness of time as immortally as Fletcher's play, " The Two Noble Kinsmen " (in which Shake- speare'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 bom in Portland, Me., January 9, 1839. He studied music first under a local teacher, Kotzschmar, making his d^but as The Academics. 151 organist at the age of eighteen. A year later he was in Berlin, where for three years he studied the organ, composition, instrumenta- tion, 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 1 876 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 152 Contemporary American Composers. 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 Handel at his worst, is also marked with the erudition and largeness of Handel 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 "Na- tivity." 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 River- side Press, and is to be translated into German. This has not yet been performed. Being, The Academics. 153 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 roman- ticist 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 Ex- position 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 Drum- mond "of Hawthomden." 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 seven- 154 Contemporary American Composers. teenth 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 com- position, and by some called the best work by an American, his setting of the choruses of the "CEdipos Tyrannos " of Sophokles, It was written for the presen- tation 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 Academics. 1 5 5 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 opportu- nities. Mendelssohn also set two Greek tragedies to music, Sophokles' " CEdipos in Kolonos " and his "Antigone." Mendelssohn is re- ported 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 con- 156 Contemporary American Composers. temporary 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 CEdipos, 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 "Eli- jah." Paine's prelude is an immense piece of The Academics. 157 work, in every way larger and more elabo- rate than that to Mendelssohn's " Antigone " (the " CEdipos in Kolonos" begins strongly with only one period of thirteen measures). The opening chorus of Paine's " CEdipos " 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 catchi- ness. 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 " CEdipos in Kolonos," however, the music expresses emotion rather than German emotion, and abounds in splendors of harmony that are strikingly Wagnerian in advance. Paine's second chorus describes the im- aginary pursuit by Fate of the murderer of 158 Contemporary American Composers. i. Jp.^ii^iHm^^). ^o Copyright, 1S95, by Arthur P. Schmidt. POSTLUDE TO " CEDIPUS TYRANNUS," BY J. K. PAINE. The Academics 159 ^ "r^i^i^^Sk ^r~y /O ^m i6o Contemporary American Composers. 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 be- gins to transpire to CEdipos that he himself was the unwitting murderer and the incestu- ous 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 Academics. i6i The sixth chorus shows the effect of CEdipos' divulged guilt and the misery of this fool of Fate. The music is an outburst of sheer genius. It is overpowering, frighten- ing. The postlude is orchestral, with the chorus speaking above the music. Jocasta has hanged herself, CEdipos 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," writ- ten for the Cincinnati May Festival of 1888. Though the poem by Mr. George E. Wood- berry 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 1 62 Contemporary American Composers. 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 nau- seating 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 exqui- site, 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 Handel's threadbare " Messiah." When one considers the largeness of the works to which Paine has devoted himself The Academics. 163 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 Schu- mann, falls into the style of his second Nov- ellette, 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 164 Contemporary American Composers. f" Pieces," which is otherwise full of rare de- lights. 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 Gio- coso," 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, espe- cially " Woodnotes," a charming tone-poem, the deliciously simple "Wayside Flowers," " Under the Lindens," which is a masterpiece of beautiful syncopation, a refreshingly inter- esting bit in the hackneyed " Millstream " form, and a "Village Dance," which has much of that quaint flavor that makes Hel- ler's 6tudes a perennial delight. Besides these, there are a number of motets, organ preludes, string quartettes, con- cert pieces for violin, cello, piano, and the like, all contributing to the furtherance of an august fame. The Academics. 165 Dudley Buck. Music follows the laws of supply and de- mand 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 compro- misers were required, composers who could at the same time please the popular taste and teach it discrimination. Among these invalu- able 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, start- ing 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 1 66 Contemporary American Composers. after the Mayflower landed. Buck was named after Governor Dudley of the Ply- mouth Colony. He was bom at Hartford, March lo, 1839. ^^is father was a prosper- ous 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 Merri- macs 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 sur- render him to music, an almost scandalous The Academics. 167 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 composi- tions 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 1 68 Contemporary American Composers. 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 1 875 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 nu- merous 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 The Academics. 169 is by many authorities accorded the very highest place among American composers. He has also written many organ solos, so- natas, marches, a pastorale, a rondo caprice, and many concert transcriptions, as well as a group of Etudes for pedal phrasing, and sev- eral 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 fore- most place. In 1876 he was honored with a commission to set to music " The Centen- nial 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 orches- tra of two hundred pieces under the direction of Theodore Thomas. In 1874 he made a metrical version of "The Legend of Don 170 Contemporary American Composers. 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 Colum- bus," the libretto for which he has taken from Irving's " Life of Columbus." It con- sists of six night-scenes, " The Chapel of St. George at Palos," "On the Deck of the Santa Maria,'' "The Vesper Hymn," "Mu- tiny," "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 suc- cess. 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," com- The Academics. \*fi posed 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." 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. 172 Contemporary American Composers. 4Xf-- ^^ Mr' - xiri t<;ni, clinr-y afid lroni{, 1 r f J f ; TfeiN An \i-rs - IIh* jny ( Qie ntu;;, Aud fffffff f f f fN r pBJQJr [H i| f f fUfM Copyright, 1898, by G. Schirmer. FRAGMENT FROM " SPRING'S AWAKENING," BY MR. BUCK The Academics. 1 73 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 bal- lad 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 posi- tively Shakespearean in its passionate per- fection. In religious music, however, Mr. Buck has made a niche of its own for his music, which it occupies with grace and dignity. 1/4 Contemporary American Composers. Cjuu Horatio W. Parker. )^tr- lua* WNk * ky vA Copyright, 1886, by Arthur P. Schmidt & Co. The Academics. 231 L<4 (ilk tlw friiM,hlMrriim . IbM, f frrr yt r- T, --i^^z^ -t :^:3 ^ H"- | cp^F ^ i 1 ^ "^ ^ ^Mi i Cop^ght, 1894, by SchUsinger'sche Buch and HaBikhaDdlaiig (Bob. Lienau), FRAGMENT OF A " BALLADE " BY HOWARD BROCKWAY. 304 Contemporary American Composers. cinatingly ; and the Romanza for piano is a notably mature and serious work. Two ballads have made the so romantic name of Harry Rowe Shelley a household word in America. They are the setting of Tom Moore's fiery " Minstrel Boy," and a strange jargon of words called " Love's Sorrow." In both cases the music is in- tense and full of fervor, and quick popularity rarely goes out to more worthy songs. lOWn ' t Jl jl? i ! J ^ 3^fc=^ J'^^ "f ^ V ... ,^^.- k/l-ii''" ^ n -^ \ \ in But Shelley would doubtless prefer to be judged by work to which he has given more of his art and his interest than to the many The Colonists. 305 songs that he has tossed off in the light name of popularity. Shelley's life has been largely devoted to church work. Born in New Haven, Conn., June 8, 1858, and taught music by Gustav J. Stoeckel, he came under the tuition of Dudley Buck for seven years. His twen- tieth year found him an organist at New Haven. Three years later he went to Brooklyn in the same capacity. He was the organist at Plymouth Church for some time before Henry Ward Beecher's death. Since 1887 he has been at the Church of the Pilgrims. He visited Europe in 1887 and studied under Dvdrak when the Bohemian master was here. Shelley's largest works have been an opera, " Leila," still in manuscript, a sym- phonic poem, " The Crusaders," a dramatic overture, "Francesca da Rimini," a sacred oratorio, " The Inheritance Divine," a suite for orchestra, a fantasy for piano and orches- \ 3o6 Contemporary American Composers. tra (written for Rafael Joseffy), a one-act musical extravaganza, a three-act lyric drama, and a virile symphony. The suite is called " Souvenir de Baden-Baden." It is a series of highly elaborated trifles of much gaiety, and includes a lively " Morning Promenade," a dreamy " Siesta," a " Con- versationshaus Ball," and a quaint " Sere- nade Orientale " that shows the influence of Mozart's and Beethoven's marches alia turca. The orchestration of this work I have never heard nor seen. Its arrange- ment for four hands, however, is excellently done, with commendable attention to the interests of the secondo player. The cantata is called ^"The Inheritance Divine," and it is much the best thing Shelley has done. It begins with a long, slow crescendo on the word "Jerusalem," which is very forceful. Shelley responds to an imaginary encore, however, and the word becomes little more than an expletive. The Colonists. 3^7 Page 7 to refer more conveniently than technically is marked by sonorous har- monies of especial nobility. Now begins a new idea worked up with increased richness and growing fervor to a sudden magnificence of climax in the second measure on page 1 1. The final phrase, strengthened by an organ- point on two notes, is fairly thrilling. A tenor solo follows, its introductory recitative containing many fine things, its aria being smoothly melodious. A chorus, of warm harmonies and a remarkably beautiful and unexpected ending, is next ; after which is a sombre, but impressive alto solo. The two successive choruses, the quartette, and the soprano solo catch the composer nod- ding. The bass solo is better ; the final chorus brings us back to the high plane. Page 62 is particularly big of spirit, and from here on the chorus climbs fiery heights. In spite of Berlioz' famous parody on the " Amen " fugues, in the " Damnation of 3o8 Contemporary American Composers. Faust," Shelley has used the word over a score of times in succession to finish his work. But altogether the work is one of maturity of feeling and expression, and it is a notable contribution to American sacred music. In 1898 "Death and Life " was published. It opens with a dramatic chorus sung by the mob before the cross, and it ends daringly with a unisonal descent of the voices that carries even the sopranos down to A natural. In the duet between Christ and Mary, seek- ing where they have laid her Son, the libret- tist has given Christ a versified paraphrase which is questionable both as to taste and grammar. The final chorus, however, has a stir of spring fire that makes the work especially appropriate for Easter services. The cantata "Vexilla Regis" is notable for its martial opening chorus, the bass solo, "Where deep for us the spear was dyed," and its scholarly and effective ending. The Colonists. 309 A lapidary's skill and delight for working in small forms belongs to Gerrit Smith. His " Aquarelles " are a good example of his art in bijouterie. This collection includes eight songs and eight piano sketches. The first, 7 "A Lullaby," begins with the unusual skip of a ninth for the voice. A subdued accen- tuation is got by the syncopation of the bass, and the yearning tenderness of the ending finishes an exquisite song. " Dream- wings " is a graceful fantasy that fittingly presents the delicate sentiment of Coleridge' lyrics. The setting of Heine's " Fir-tree" is entirely worthy to stand high among the numerous settings of this lyric. Smith gets the air of desolation of the bleak home of the fir-tree by a cold scale of harmony, and a bold sim- plicity of accompaniment. The home of the equally lonely palm-tree is strongly con- trasted by a tropical luxuriance of inter- lude and accompaniment. The sixth song is a delightful bit of bril- 3IO Contemporary American Composers. liant music, but it is quite out of keeping with the poem. Thus on the words, " Mar- gery's only three," there is a fierce climax fitting an Oriental declaration of despair. The last of these songs, "Put by the Lute," is possibly Smith's best work. It is superb from beginning to end. It opens with a most unhackneyed series of preludizing arpeggios, whence it breaks into a swinging lyric, strengthened into passion by a vigorous contra-melody in the bass. Throughout, the harmonies are most original, effective, and surprising. Of the eight instrumental pieces in this book, the exquisite and fluent " Impromptu " is the best after the "Cradle Song," which is drowsy with luscious harmony and contains a passage come organo of such noble sonority as to put it a whit out of keeping with a child's lullaby. Smith was born December ii, 1859, at Hagerstown, Md. His first instruction was The Colonists. 311 gained in Geneva, N. Y., from a pupil of Moscheles. He began composition early, and works of his written at the age of four- teen were performed at his boarding-school. He graduated at Hobart College in 1876, whence he went to Stuttgart to study music and architecture. A year later he was in New York studying the organ with Samuel P. Warren. He was appointed organist at St. Paul's, Buffalo, and studied during the summer with Eugene Thayer, and William H. Sherwood. In 1880 he went again to Germany, and studied organ under Haupt, and theory under Rohde, at Berlin. On his return to America he took the organ at St. Peter's, in Albany. Later he came to New York, where he has since remained continu- ously, except for concert tours and journeys abroad. He has played the organ in the most important English and Continental towns, and must be considered one of our most prominent concert organists. He is 312 Contemporary American Composers. both a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Music. As one of the founders, and for many years the president, of the Manu- script Society, he was active in obtaining a hearing for much native music otherwise mute. In addition to a goodly number of Easter carols, Christmas anthems, Te Deums, and such smaller forms of religious music, Smith has written a sacred cantata, "King David." Aside from this work, which in orchestration and in general treatment shows undoubted skill for large effort, Doctor Smith's compo- sition has been altogether along the smaller lines. The five-song'd opus 14 shows well ma- tured lyric power, and an increase in fervor of emotion. Bourdillon's "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes," which can never be too much set to music, receives here a truly superb treatment. The interlude, which also serves for finale, is especially ravishing. The Colonists. 313 "Heart Longings" is one of Mr. Smith's very best successes. It shows a free passion and a dramatic fire unusual for his rather quiet muse. The setting of Bourdillon's fine lyric is indeed so stirring that it deserves a high place among modern songs. " Melody " is a lyric not without feeling, but yet inclu- sive of most of Smith's faults. Thus the prelude, which is a tritely flowing allegro, serves also for interlude as well as postlude, and the air and accompaniment of both stanzas are unvaried, save at the cadence of the latter stanza. The intense poesy of Anna Reeve Aldrich, a poetess cut short at the very budding of unlimited promise, de- served better care than this from a musician. Two of Smith's works were published in Millet's " Half -hours with the Best Com- posers," one of the first substantial recog- nitions of the American music-writer. A " Romance," however, is the best and most elaborate of his piano pieces, and is altogether 314 Contemporary American Composers. Spring. Wsr4s by Alfred T tmiju o u . OERSir SMITH,OI> 13 ;ro4 Bird's soag ndMr