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 eo Ornstein 
 
 THE Mi^^N — HIS IDEAS — HIS WORK 
 
 By FREDERICK H . MARTENS 
 
 BREITKOPF & H ARTEL. Inc.. NEW YORK
 
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 LEO ORNSTEIN 
 
 THE MAN— HIS IDEAS 
 HIS WORK 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK H. MARTENS 
 
 BREITKOPF & HARTEL, Inc. 
 NEW YORK
 
 Copyright, 1918, 
 
 By BRBITKOPF & HARTEL, Inc. 
 
 New York.
 
 MUSIC 
 tIBRARY 
 
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 TO HIS FRIEND 
 
 A. Walter Kramer, 
 
 THE FIRST IN THIS COUNTRY TO RECOGNIZE 
 
 LEO ORNSTEIN's MUSICAL MESSAGE, 
 
 AND IN WORD AND DEED A CONSISTENT DEFENDER 
 
 OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY OF MUSICAL EXPRESSION, 
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE DEDICATED 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR.
 
 Leo Okxsteix
 
 Preface 
 
 EO ORNSTEIN to many represents an evil mu- 
 sical genius wandering without the utmost pale 
 of tonal orthodoxy, in a weird No-Man's Land 
 haunted with tortuous sound, with wails of 
 futuristic despair, with cubist shrieks and post-impres- 
 sionistic cries and crashes. He is the great anarch, the 
 iconoclast, the destructive genius who would root out what 
 little remains of the law and the prophets since Scriabin, 
 Stravinsky and Schonberg have trampled them underfoot. 
 His earlier compositions which, with happy fancy and con- 
 siderable skill, exploit the possibilities of the diatonic sys- 
 tem he has since abandoned, are regarded much as would 
 be the Sunday-school certificates of an apostate to Satan- 
 ism, the lisped prayers of one who has forgotten them to 
 celebrate a Devil's mass. His gospel is black heresy, his 
 dispensation a delusion and a snare ! It is thus that the 
 more rigid upholders of tradition, those who scorn taking 
 the pains to master the idiom which serves to express his 
 ideas, see him. 
 
 The attitude of the more formalistic musician and 
 music-lover toward Ornstein's music, however, is largely 
 a matter of aesthetic point of view, and aesthetic points 
 of view are not built upon the rock of infallibiHty, but 
 on the shifting sands of contemporary disquisition. Those 
 who understand Ornstein's tonal language — and their 
 number is increasing — are as enthusiastic in their admi- 
 ration of his accomplishment as his detractors are scorn- 
 ful of its value and significance. 
 
 It is not the mere fact that the writer is a friend of
 
 6 PREFACE 
 
 Ornstein, that he has an acquaintance at first hand with 
 the composer's aims and aspirations, that the latter has 
 played much of his music for him under intimately favor- 
 able conditions which has prompted the following pages, 
 but the conviction that a study of the man, his ideas and 
 his work would be of value in correcting false impressions 
 regarding the composer, his ideals and their practical 
 expression. 
 
 In this connection the writer, in addition to the val- 
 uable information given him by Mr. Ornstein himself, 
 has drawn largely on all material available in the shape 
 of articles, interviews, critiques et al, and has endeav- 
 ored to give credit where credit is due. 
 
 Frederick H. Martens.
 
 THE MAN 
 
 Of course, those that dislike him, the 
 music that he plays, and the stir that 
 he makes in what should be a tranquil, 
 elderly world, will call him insincere. 
 For to he certain of the motives and 
 mental processes of those whom we dis- 
 like has long been one of the exalted 
 prerogatives of our common humanity. 
 
 H. T. Parker. 
 
 ^
 
 THE MAN 
 
 OME account of the life of a creative artist would 
 seem a logical prelude to a consideration of his 
 ideas and their creative development. And par- 
 ticularly so in the case of Leo Ornstein, the 
 circumstances of whose life and the influence of whose 
 surroundings are so vividly reflected in the music he has 
 written. Ornstein has put so much of his own emotional 
 and impressional life and the life of his time into his 
 creative work, that the story of his twenty-two years of 
 existence — he was born in Kremenchug, a town of south- 
 west Russia, December 11, 1895 — explains and in some 
 degree motives his artistic activities, opens up vistas of 
 understanding and appreciation for them, and establishes 
 the connection between his life itself and his life-work 
 up to the present time — for the composer cannot, as yet, 
 be said to have reached the full plenitude of his powers. 
 
 Ornstein's recollections of his childhood are vivid. 
 Kremenchug, an important commercial town of nearly 
 sixty thousand inhabitants, is situated on the Dnieper 
 river in a flat, dreary countryside, and before the war was 
 the centre of the tallow trade with Warsaw. The gov- 
 ernment of Poltava, in which it lies, was included within 
 the pale of settlement first established in 1791, bj'^ which 
 a great Jewish population was held down in a congestion 
 which worked terrible destitution and misery, and reduced 
 them to a condition of abject poverty and despair. 
 
 Though no doubt subconsciously influenced by his 
 environment, the boy led the ordinarily happy life of all 
 children. He speaks with affection of the old wooden
 
 10 Leo Ornstein 
 
 house in which he grew up, built round a court with a 
 well in the centre, and of the daily joy of bathing with 
 the companions of his own age in the Dnieper during the 
 hot days of the short Russian summer. He was not more 
 than three years old when he began to study music, en- 
 couraged and taught by his father, a rabbi, who himself 
 had acquired fame as a synagogal cantor when only 
 eighteen. Unlike some hapless children whose musical 
 talent is developed along the lines laid down by the origi- 
 nators of pate-de-fois-gras, he was not driven to consume 
 ceaseless hours in practice. On the contrary, so eager 
 was he to make progress that he would beat his older 
 brother with his little fists in order to drive him from the 
 piano when he thought the latter had pre-empted it overlong. 
 And when no more than five he not only played on the 
 piano a Russian folk-song which he had heard sung for 
 the first time, but also followed it up with a series of im- 
 provised variations of his own. Although his father was 
 opposed to his studying music as a profession, his brother- 
 in-law, M. Titiev, a violinist, overcame his opposition, 
 and as a result the lad was taught the elements and put 
 through a thorough course of scales and five-finger exer- 
 cises, Kuhlau, Clementi, and the easier compositions of 
 Bach and Handel. 
 
 Josef Hofifman came to Kremenchug in 1903, and young 
 Ornstein played for him, was praised and received a let- 
 ter recommending him to the Petrograd Conservatory. 
 Some time later the boy sought out Vladimir Puchalski 
 (composer of a Little- Russian Fantasy for orchestra, an 
 opera, and an attractive octave study well known to pian- 
 ists), played for him and was accepted as a pupil at the 
 Imperial School of Music at Kiev, of which Puchalski 
 was the director. 
 
 The death of an aunt, however, interfered with his 
 plans of study at Kiev. He was obliged to return to
 
 The Man 11 
 
 Kremenchug and work with local teachers. Gabrilowitch, 
 who gave a concert there in 1903, also heard him play, 
 and gave him a letter to Alexander Siloti, at the Moscow 
 Conservatory. But the boy had not as yet made up his 
 mind definitely where and with whom to study. Merely 
 to gain self-confidence (Ornstein, even yet, is far more 
 diffident than he is supposed to be), he took an entrance 
 examination for the Conservatory of Poltova, and de- 
 camped as soon as he was offered a scholarship. Mean- 
 while his father had reached a decision for him. He was 
 to go to Petrograd (1904). Before he went, he enjoyed 
 his first real contact with native music at an old-fash- 
 ioned provincial wedding, at which a wealthy merchant 
 celebrated the nuptials of his daughter with a week of 
 dancing and festivity. Balalaika orchestras and folk-song 
 choruses were a feature of the affair and woke that inter- 
 est in Russian folk-song which has since been reflected in 
 the composer's earlier Russian Suite for piano, the Russian 
 Impressions for violin and piano and, more recently, in 
 new Russian songs and his choruses. At Petrograd Leo 
 played, not without tremors, for Alexander Glazounov, 
 director of the Conservatory, and was at once accepted 
 as a pupil. At the test he gave an unconscious exhibition 
 of his possession of "perfect pitch." The piano, though 
 not out of tune, had been tuned a half-tone lower than 
 ordinary, and the boy of eight, sensitive to the change, 
 transposed at sight the pieces by Bach and Mozart given 
 him to play. Glazounov was interested, and had him play 
 three-part inventions of Bach blindfold, and tell him the 
 names of the chords. 
 
 But this initial success did not console the lonely and 
 homesick boy when his father left him alone in the metro- 
 politan city, cut off from all who were dear to him and 
 plunged suddenly into a new and strange mode of life. 
 Yet there was much to hold his attention and interest, and
 
 12 Leo Ornstein 
 
 in the course of time he reconciled himself to the change. 
 He practised three hours a day; studied theory and har- 
 mony with Medemi (though Mme. Essipoff had expressed 
 a wish to teach him) ; attended all rehearsals and concerts 
 of the Conservatory orchestra, directed by Glazounov, 
 where he became acquainted with the works of Mous- 
 sorgsky (Zimbalist, the violinist, was a member of the 
 graduating class at the time) ; frequented the opera, the 
 ballet, concerts and recitals, and drank in music generally 
 at every pore. 
 
 An abiding musical influence, which afterward made 
 itself felt largely in his compositions, was the Oriental 
 chant, which he had absorbed as a child in the South. 
 In Petrograd he learned to know the ritual music of the 
 Greek and Armenian Churches, semi-oriental in char- 
 acter, and regularly attended the services in the great 
 Russian cathedrals, so fascinated was he with these ritual 
 chants. His work bears eloquent testimony to the fact 
 that these impressions were of a lasting nature. 
 
 His marked talent soon made him a favorite of those 
 aristocratic salons of Petrograd where music was culti- 
 vated, and he was spoiled and petted to a degree by the 
 music-loving society of the Russian capital. He might 
 easily, in the course of a few years, have become a kind 
 of immature Henselt, persona grata at the Imperial Court 
 and with nobiliary circles, producing elegant and finely 
 chiseled salon music, uniting the Lisztian sonority and 
 Hummelian smoothness of his predecessor, and oblivious 
 of the sterner and truer message of realism and individ- 
 uality that was in him to deliver. Yet the same sinister 
 influences which, subconsciously, perhaps, had shadowed 
 his childhood in Kremenchug were to be emphasized and 
 strengthened by other impressions of terror, and of the 
 undying struggle of the down-trodden for freedom from 
 tyranny, which found a quasi-humorous reflex in a strike
 
 The Man 13 
 
 of the Conservatory pupils. The boy was an eye-witness 
 and very nearly a victim of the Russian revolution of 
 1905. While attending his classes at the Conservatory 
 (at which a general as well as a purely musical course 
 was prescribed) young Ornstein was earning a living by 
 coaching aspiring singers in operatic roles. Thus he came 
 lo know much of the standard repertory — A'ida, Faust, 
 Onegin, Mefistofile, Samson and Delilah, etc. — and a ludi- 
 crous incident in this connection was the appearance one 
 day of a large man of more than thirty-five interrupting 
 his prospective teacher of twelve in a snowball fight in 
 order to take his lessons. This existence of work and 
 study, and of keen absorption of all that literature found 
 to offer an opening mind — since before he was twelve 
 years old the boy had begun to devour Tolstoy, Andreyev, 
 Chekov, as well as Shakespeare, Balzac and other non- 
 Russian classics in translation — was rudely interrupted by 
 the revolutionary cataclysm. 
 
 Day after day, on his way to and from the Conserva- 
 tory, he saw the street fighting that reigned, would rush 
 into the narrow alleys between the houses when the cry 
 of "Cosaki, Cosaki!" rose, and the wild horsemen charged 
 down the avenues, shooting and sabering indiscriminately 
 all who came in their way, whether revolters who had 
 been singing the Internationale, or innocent passersby. 
 He saw the slaughter on the Admiralty Square, and on 
 one occasion, when a Cossack charge went thundering 
 down the street as he was hastening to the Conservatory 
 with his roll of music, was thrust into a dry-goods shop 
 in the nick of time, and had to remain there fourteen hours 
 before it was safe to venture forth. On a precocious 
 child, acutely sensitive and receptive, and with an intel- 
 lectual grasp and emotional development beyond his years, 
 all this could hardly have failed to make a lasting im- 
 pression, one whose motive recurs again and again in his
 
 14 Leo Ornstein 
 
 music. Much in his Suite des Gnomes, for instance, though 
 its programmatic appHcation is to humanity at large 
 rather than to any one of its racial segments, owes its 
 origin to his recollections of this period of his life. 
 
 For, to add to the danger threatening the boy, cast 
 on his own resources in a city in plain revolution, the 
 revolutionary terrorists were countered by the terrorists 
 of reaction who, under the name of "The Union of the 
 Russian People," began a crusade of extermination against 
 the elements supposed to be hostile to the autocratic 
 regime. Their "black hundreds" directed their attacks 
 especially against the Jews and — the boy was of that race! 
 His father and family (themselves implicated in revolu- 
 tionary propaganda, for Ornstein has told the writer of 
 hidden stores of arms and ammunition held in reserve 
 against a possible pogrom in Kremenchug) became alarmed. 
 Leo was taken from Petrograd to Kremenchug and thence, 
 soon after, the entire family fled to this country, arriving 
 here in 1907. 
 
 Once more the boy underwent the experiences of a 
 complete transition. Fresh from his Petrograd expe- 
 riences, he came from the most autocratic of empires to 
 the most liberal of republics. As Rosenfeld says : "Prob- 
 ably the luckiest thing that happened to young Ornstein 
 was the flight of his family from Kremenchug that trans- 
 formed him during the formative period of his life from 
 the pianist infant-prodigy of Petrograd society into the 
 boy of a dense and livid slum." On the lower East Side, 
 in Attorney Street, Leo Ornstein gradually sloughed his 
 Russian skin and became an American boy. He went to 
 school, he practised — for he had no intention of giving up 
 his music— he played with other boys in the block. And 
 he attended the Institute of Musical Art, where he had 
 been given a scholarship, and also the Friends' Seminary. 
 At the Institute he had occasional difficulties. A lad of
 
 The Man 15 
 
 his exceptional maturity of mind and quick intellectual 
 grasp was naturally impatient of year-long harmony and 
 theory courses along the traditional lines; he questioned 
 authority, he kicked against the pricks instead of defer- 
 ring to them. But he graduated in due time and is now, 
 no doubt, more tolerant in retrospect as regards possible 
 differences of opinion he may have had with his teachers 
 in harmony and theory, Dr. Percy Goetschius and R. 
 Huntington Woodman. During this time he was an inde- 
 fatigable worker. He rose at five in the morning, and the 
 old cobbler living beneath him once told him he was the 
 only one in the house to get to work before he did. He 
 toiled at his piano and at composition, and amid the con- 
 strained and depressing conditions of his external exist- 
 ence, the misery, gloom and unhappiness which he saw 
 about him on every side, he found his consolation in work. 
 And here again, as in the case of his revolutionary im- 
 pressions, his emotions were later to be woven into the 
 very texture of his music. When he found his own idiom, 
 when he had mastered the tonal language necessary to 
 express what he felt, "it was the voice of the city prole- 
 tariat, that pierced, raucous and dissonant, but with a 
 primeval starkness that left no suspicion of the sentimen- 
 tally sordid, into European music." 
 
 At the New York Conservatory, Ornstein was the 
 piano pupil of the late Mrs. Bertha Feiring Tapper, her- 
 self a musician of rare gifts and sympathetic insight, and 
 a pupil of Svendsen and Agatha Backer-Grondal. He had 
 already begun to study with another instructor when 
 Mrs. Tapper first heard him play, and remarked that she 
 wished she had a boy of such talent to teach. The teacher 
 who had him in charge did not appreciate Ornstein's pos- 
 sibilities. He told Mrs. Tapper that she was welcome to 
 him, and thus he became her pupil. Of this "guide, 
 philosopher and friend," rather than mere teacher, Ornstein
 
 16 Leo Ornstein 
 
 invariably speaks with reverence and affection. She was 
 unwearied in his training, not alone in a purely musical 
 sense, but in her cultivation of his mind along broader 
 educational lines. The composer acknowledges her as the 
 greatest individual influence in his career. Dr. Tapper 
 was as much interested as was his wife in the boy's devel- 
 opment, and for several successive summers he spent two 
 months with them at Blue Hills, Me., devoting himself 
 principally to technical work. These summer months 
 were the brightest spots of his year. Here, in addition to 
 his technical practise, he worked at Haydn and Mozart 
 sonatas. Bach and Beethoven, and laid a foundation of 
 appreciation for the classics before coming in touch with 
 the works of the modernist composers. Here he would 
 listen to Franz Kneisel and Mrs. Tapper play sonatas, and 
 at Dr. Horatio Parker's cottage heard most of Mono 
 played by the composer from MS. 
 
 In the spring of 1910 Mrs. Tapper took her pupil with 
 her to Europe. This first visit to the Continent was a 
 comparatively brief one. Leo heard Saint-Saens' Samson 
 et Dalila at the Paris Opera, attended various concerts, 
 the playing of the late Raoul Pugno in particular making 
 a deep impression on him, and encountered modern music 
 for the first time in the shape of the Cesar Franck Sonata 
 for violin and piano. A taste of mountain climbing in the 
 Austrian Tyrol, a visit to Vienna, where Leschetiszky 
 played Chopin and Schumann for him, attendance at the 
 Salzburg Festival, where he heard Mozart's Don Giovanni, 
 with Lehmann and Geraldine Farrar, and a stay at Dres- 
 den, where he played symphonies for four hands and in 
 this way became acquainted with those of Brahms, 
 in his opinion "superior to Beethoven's," are its salient 
 points. From Dresden he returned to New York and 
 gave his first public concert in that city at the New Am- 
 sterdam Theatre, March 5, 1911. He had a large audience
 
 The Man 17 
 
 and his renderings of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, 
 Beethoven's Sonata Appassionata, some Chopin numbers 
 and Rubinstein's D Minor Concerto, with accompaniment 
 of orchestra, were well received. Arthur Brisbane, in an 
 editorial in the New York Evening Journal (June 11, 1910) 
 had already spoken prophetically of the extraordinary 
 promise displayed by the pianist in a concert given by the 
 Institute of Musical Art in Mendelssohn Hall a few days 
 before, and paid a deserved tribute of appreciation to his 
 teacher.* He said in part: "We believe that this boy, 
 providentially saved from Russia, brought up in the pov- 
 erty of a great city, will stand with the great musicians 
 of the world, on a par with the greatest interpreters of 
 musical genius and perhaps among the greatest musical 
 creators !" 
 
 His promising first appearance, succeeded by concerts 
 in Philadelphia and elsewhere, was, however, only an inci- 
 dent in a very busy life of study, a kind of foretaste of 
 what the future might bring. Ornstein continued to study 
 with Mrs. Tapper, and after his graduation from the Insti- 
 tute of Musical Art began to work con amore at compo- 
 sition. But in the spring of 1913 he found his true idiom 
 of expression for the first time, the one in which he has 
 since written almost exclusively, with only occasional re- 
 turns to his earlier manner. As he has described it to 
 the writer, this new idiom was the outcome of a sudden 
 mental illumination. Without any previous intimation he 
 found that he had at last discovered ways and means to 
 express his innermost emotions in tone, unfettered by any 
 rule which might do violence to his individual concept. 
 
 * "Years of patient teaching-, ceaseless encouragement and protection 
 Mrs. Tapper has given tliis boy, whose power she was the first to see — 
 long hours, days and months of patient, kind correction and explana- 
 tion— and all for no other reward than the pleasure of seeing the lad, 
 poor and friendless at first, take his right place in the field of accom- 
 plishment."
 
 Mrs. Thomas Tapper
 
 The Man 19 
 
 For weeks he lived in a daze, experimenting with, testing 
 and perfecting the details of his new expressional mode, 
 and, once its principles established in his mind, wrote his 
 entire Dwarf Suite in a single day. When he first played 
 his Wild Men's Dance for Mrs. Tapper she thought he 
 had lost his mental self-control, and it was not until after 
 repeated performances that she recognized the principle un- 
 derlying its music. With all this leaven of new ideas and 
 ideals fermenting within him it seemed that another Euro- 
 pean trip, which would bring him in closer touch with 
 modern thought and endeavor, might be valuable for the 
 development of the youthful pianist and composer. 
 
 Hence, in the summer of 1913, Ornstein once more 
 crossed the ocean in company with Mrs. Tapper and went 
 directly to Paris. It was here that the sudden and over- 
 whelming projection of Notre-Dame on his consciousness 
 had such an effect on the composer that it evoked the two 
 Impressions which bear its name. For three weeks after 
 he had set them down on paper the composer had no 
 chance to play them. It was not until he found himself 
 in Switzerland, whose scenic beauties inspired another set 
 of Quatre Impressions de la Suisse, for four hands, and 
 where he wrote a quartet and a quintet for strings, that 
 he had an opportunity of playing them. From Switzer- 
 land he went to Vienna, where he first realized that, aside 
 from his earlier, more conventional style and his new man- 
 ner, he was in addition the possessor of a third, and began 
 the "Vannin" Waltsers and The Night. In Vienna he 
 heard Der Rosenkavalier, and here Leschetiszky confessed 
 that he could not at first believe the Wild Men's Dance had 
 been seriously "written out" as it stood, and was not a 
 species of musical hoax. In Berlin, which he also visited, 
 Ornstein made the acquaintance of Ferruccio Busoni, 
 whom he admires as "a great intellect in music," and thence 
 went to Norway, practising where he could, composing
 
 20 Leo Ornstein 
 
 on trains, and making his debut in Christiania as a concert 
 pianist with a group of Chopin pieces and the Liszt E Flat 
 Major Concerto. He also, for the first time, played some 
 of his own newer compositions and drew from critics the 
 statements that "it was amazing that Mr. Ornstein should 
 have decided to play a little joke on the public and trans- 
 fer it from the concert hall to the dental parlor," and that 
 he was "a young man temporarily insane." Though those 
 who condemn mountain climbing may regard the fact as 
 a corroboration of the last-mentioned statement, it might 
 be mentioned that while in Norway the composer ascended 
 the Gaudepeggyn, the highest peak in the country. 
 
 From Christiania Ornstein turned to Denmark, and in 
 Copenhagen gave his more than conventionally attractive 
 Russian Suite and Cossack Impressions for piano to the 
 Danish publisher, Wm. Hansen. And thence he went to 
 Paris (Mrs. Tapper had returned to America while he 
 was still in Norway), to meet Harold Bauer. This visit 
 to Paris marked an epoch in Ornstein's career. He was 
 at last to be taken seriously, by competent judges, as a 
 composer with a new and important message to deliver, 
 one which deserved hearing, irrespective of whether he 
 might be acclaimed or condemned. 
 
 As is but natural under these circumstances, Ornstein's 
 experiences in Paris are dear to him. In telling the writer 
 about them, he has dwelt on his interesting musical dis- 
 cussions with Bauer, who, with all the good will in the 
 world, could not "see" his music, but gave him introduc- 
 tions which opened the Paris world of music to him. It 
 was through Bauer that he met Walter Morse Rumniel, 
 who gave him a letter to the famous critic Calvocoressi. 
 
 Ornstein's own account of their first meeting and its 
 results is not without interest: "I went with my letter 
 to Calvocoressi's apartment; he had a suite of rooms 
 some three flights up in the Rue de Caroussell, and a blind
 
 The Man 21 
 
 woman — his mother — opened the door in answer to my 
 ring. I was ushered into his studio, a pleasant room, its 
 walls covered with books and pictures, with a grand piano 
 littered with manuscripts, and a tall dark man, with a 
 slight stoop, rose from his desk to receive me. He had a 
 gentle voice and sympathetic manner and, after reading 
 my letter, asked me in Russian — and it was a great pleas- 
 ure to hear the accents of my mother-tongue again — 
 whether I composed or merely played modern music. I 
 told him that I took the liberty of doing both, and he at 
 once had me sit down at the piano. I played my Wild 
 Men's Dance and the two Impressions for him, and he 
 seemed amazed and unwilling to believe that the former 
 could have originated in New York City. He insisted 
 that I return the next day and play it again for him and 
 for some musicians whom he expected to invite. And 
 thenceforward his kindness and interest were unfailing. 
 He secured various wealthy pupils for me — for I was 
 stranded — to coach in song and opera, and thus I was able 
 to make a living without giving over my composition. 
 Though I was too busy with my lessons and work to meet 
 many people, I made the acquaintance of the Roumanian 
 Princess de Brancovan and the gifted music-lover and 
 musician, Mme. Landsberg — she sang very well — wife of 
 the Brazilian banker of the same name, to each of whom 
 I ascribed one of my Preludes, and for both of whom I 
 played ; as well as the American-born Princess de Polignac, 
 who has taken such an interest in Stravinsky's music, and 
 at whose musicales I also appeared. 
 
 "During February and IMarch of 1914 Calvocoressi 
 gave a series of lecture-recitals, two of them devoted to 
 the Geographie Miisicale de I'Europe, with musical illus- 
 trations drawn entirely from works of modernist com- 
 posers. In the first lecture were represented Richard 
 Strauss songs, piano pieces by Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly,
 
 22 Leo Ornstein 
 
 Vilmos-Geza Zagon, Serge Liapounov, and Cyril Scott's 
 'Jungle Book' pieces, which last I played. At the second 
 lecture-recital I played my own Impressions de la Tamise 
 and Danse Sauvage and piano pieces (Op. 11 and 19), by 
 Arnold Schonberg. Stravinsky's interesting Melodies 
 Japonaises were also sung at this recital." 
 
 While thus occupied in Paris, Ornstein had made the 
 acquaintance of various young Oxfordians, of W. H. 
 Osgood and of Mr. Roger Quilter, the last-named "a 
 quite wonderful personality," to quote his own words, who 
 had heard him play and grown enthusiastic about his music. 
 These new friends insisted on his making a little vaca- 
 tion trip to Oxford, there to meet other musical students 
 and musicians, with whom they were desirous he should 
 come in touch. The experience promised to be an inter- 
 esting one, and Ornstein yielded to the warm solicitations 
 of his well-wishers, and to a desire to know at first hand 
 something of the charm of the 
 
 "City of friends and echoes, ribbons, music and color, 
 Lilac and blossoming chestnut, willows and whispering limes." 
 
 He went and was given a welcome in accord with Ox- 
 ford traditions. Here he met Robert Bridges, the poet ; 
 Balfour Gardiner, the Post-Elgarian composer, whose 
 symphonic compositions include the Shepherd's Fennel 
 Dance, a symphony and the vigorous News from Wyndah, 
 and who has taken a particular interest in calling attention 
 to the best modernist music, and Dr. Ernest Walker, direc- 
 tor of music at Balliol College. The latter was particu- 
 larly interested in young Ornstein. He made him play 
 for him in one of the private rooms at Balliol, and summed 
 up his impressions of this new music in a remark to 
 Gardiner: 'T've heard something strange, strange — some- 
 thing that makes me feel as though all the composite par- 
 ticles of the world were crumbling !" Its intellectual society
 
 The Man 23 
 
 and its delightful vernal surroundings made Oxford a 
 source of true inspiration to the composer, as it has been 
 to many artists before him. He spent a good part of his 
 time wandering in and out of the rooms of the collegians, 
 playing for them and discussing music in general and his 
 own theories in particular. All was charmingly informal, 
 stimulating, suggestive. And at Oxford Ornstein found 
 the incentive to complete his 13th Psalm. Yet, though the 
 days of his Oxford stay were drawing to a close, his Eng- 
 lish friends were not yet content to have him return to Paris. 
 Mr. Roger Quilter, of whose amiable qualities of heart 
 and mind Ornstein speaks with real appreciation, insisted 
 on his coming to London. During an evening at Quilter's 
 home he played for the English composer and his mother 
 on a fine Bechstein and, after dinner, in the course of a 
 discussion with a young painter who happened in, his atten- 
 tion was first called to William Blake. What he heard 
 excited his interest in the highest degree; he read every- 
 thing there was to be had of Blake's, and pored over his 
 designs, notably those for Robert Blair's The Grave and 
 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, as well as the splen- 
 did series illustrating The Book of Job. His instant sym- 
 pathy with the artist-poet's ability to seize "the pictorial 
 element of ideas, simple or sublime, and translate them 
 into the appropriate language of sense," has been reflected 
 in the tremendous sonata for violin and piano. Op. 31, 
 which, together with three songs, as yet unpublished, were 
 its first fruits. Through the kindness of Mr. Quilter, 
 Ornstein made a number of interesting acquaintances while 
 in London, among them Robin Legge, of the Daily Tele- 
 graph, for whom he played at a tea; the great Sargeant, 
 Arthur Shattuck, and Mr. Winthrop L. Rogers, the pub- 
 li5;her, a fine violinist and a music-lover keenly interested 
 in all new developments. And — Ornstein's first London 
 recital was arranged.
 
 24 Leo Ornstein 
 
 It took place on March 37, 1914, at Steinway Hall, 
 and unchained a flood of derisory comment. On January 
 14 of the same year, Arnold Schonberg had himself con- 
 ducted at a Saturday afternoon Symphony Concert a per- 
 formance of his Five Orchestral Pieces, which had already 
 been hissed when heard in the same city in 1912, and on 
 their second hearing had secured a lukewarm success 
 d'estime. It was declared that it was completely impossi- 
 ble to follow him in "his last' and really hideous negations." 
 And Ornstein's Sonata, Op. 35, Wild Men's Dance, Im- 
 pressions of Notre-Dame and of the Thames, Moods, 
 Op. 22; Six Short Pieces, Op. 19, and Prelude, Op. 20, 
 No. 2, were at once declared "equal to the sum of Schon- 
 berg and Scriabin squared" (the fact that he played a 
 group of Schonberg piano pieces at his recital gave point 
 to the assertion), and the former were accused of being 
 "poor futurists" compared to their composer. One re- 
 viewer painted the unhappy situation of the "poor critic," 
 whose ears were "not only assaulted by strange sounds 
 defying any form of classification, but who, robbed of road- 
 maps and sign-posts, was to wander in a new and wholly 
 unfamiliar country without so much as a guide-book to 
 assist him." The four movements of his Sonata "sounded 
 like four separate spasms of a mental anguish too great 
 to be borne." Full tribute, however, was paid his gifts 
 as a pianist (particularly in his playing of Three Chorales 
 by Bach, transcribed by Busoni) ; yet as regards the im- 
 pression made by his own music, it seemed to be the gen- 
 eral opinion of the press that "if the hallmark of greatness 
 is laughter, Mr. Ornstein may be hailed as a genius." The 
 critic of the London Observer went even further. "We 
 have never sufifered from such insufiferable hideousness, 
 expressed in terms of so-called music." Yet even he 
 admitted that "the skill that could devise the cacophonous, 
 unrhythmic, unmusical always, two-penny colored rubbish
 
 The Man 35 
 
 which Leo Ornstein drove with his Nasmyth-hammer 
 action into the heads of a long-suffering audience on Fri- 
 day was stupendous !" 
 
 • There was significance, however, in the statement of 
 the London Daily Telegraph that though nothing in so 
 "advanced" a form had been heard in London before, "yet 
 the audience remained to the end, hypnotized as a rabbit 
 by a snake." It was a genuine tribute to the fact that in 
 this new musical speech, which defied analysis on a first 
 hearing and was intelligible only to the initiate, there 
 dwelt an accent of truth and conviction, which in itself 
 held the attention and precluded any denial of the artist's 
 sincerity. The recital aroused great discussion and musi- 
 cians of standing fell foul of each other in debating the 
 pros and cons of the principles it had revealed. More or 
 less vague and elastic terms, such as futurism, cubism, 
 post-impressionism were generously used, all parties con- 
 cerned, as is usual in aesthetic discussions, proving their 
 cases with great ingenuity to their own satisfaction. But 
 the ice had been broken, Ornstein had secured an audience 
 and a future as a concertizing pianist doubled by a com- 
 poser: one who, while devoting himself generally to the 
 cause of modern music as an interpreting artist, would 
 also be able to bring his own musical message to the atten- 
 tion of the musical world. And, immediately after this 
 first recital, the publication of the Preludes, the Impres- 
 sions de Notre-Dame, the Dwarf Suite, the Impressions de 
 la Tamise, the Wild Men's Dance, Three Burlesques and 
 the String Quartet was arranged. 
 
 The issue of various works was to be of great moment 
 to the young composer. They afforded the serious musi- 
 cian an opportunity of studying his artistic ends and aims, 
 and brought his music to the attention of many who had 
 not heard him play. After his first London recital Orn- 
 stein returned to Paris and thence, in April, he went back
 
 26 Leo Ornstein 
 
 to London to play his second recital there on the 7th of 
 the same month. 
 
 This second recital, like its predecessor, was announced 
 as one of "Futuristic Music," and its program was made 
 up entirely of the composer's own music, including the 
 Dwarf Suite, two sets of Impressions, the Two Shadow 
 Pieces, Op. 17; the Eleven Short Pieces, Op, 29; the 
 Moods, Preludes and Burlesques, Op. 22, 20 and 30, and 
 the Wild Men's Dance. Again "the majority of the au- 
 dience were inclined to treat the recital as a joke," and 
 there were hissings and cat-calls. But there were also 
 more to realize that the new composer was to be reckoned 
 with as a force, that he was saying new things in a 
 new way because impelled by his artistic conscience, that 
 although setting at defiance existing harmonic law, he was 
 giving his auditors music which, to quote The London Mu- 
 sical Standard, had "that germ of realism and humanity 
 which is indicative of genius on the part of its composer." 
 
 The composer himself was not dismayed by the flood 
 of adverse criticism which endeavored to belittle his work. 
 He knew that he was giving sincere expression to his emo- 
 tions in music, and realized that an idiom as novel as his 
 own, more direct than that of Schonberg, and (in spite of 
 analogies) established on altogether different principles, 
 could not find acceptance at a moment's notice. And, 
 singularly free from the vanity of small minds, he had a 
 sense of humor which permitted him to enjoy a clever hit 
 at his own expense. Aside from this, there was the con- 
 sciousness that musicians of real distinction, men in whose 
 technical and aesthetic judgment he could place reliance, 
 took his art-effort seriously, and though, in some cases, 
 their approval was more or less qualified, regarded it as 
 worthy of the respect that any new departure which has 
 a real inner meaning and coherency deserves, though these 
 may not be at once obviously apparent.
 
 The Man 27 
 
 After his second London recital Ornstein returned to 
 America. But before this he had composed his piano 
 quintet and his symphonic poem, The Fog. In the United 
 States, upon his return, he gave a series of recitals in the 
 South and made his way to Blue Hills in June. In Sep- 
 tember it had been his intention to go to Norway to play 
 a series of forty concerts in that country, but the outbreak 
 of the European war led to the cancellation of the tournee; 
 and he continued to work at composition and as a concert 
 pianist until January, 1915. 
 
 It was during January and February of that year that he 
 gave the now celebrated series of recitals at the Bandbox 
 Theatre, New York, in which he braved conventional pro- 
 gram-making by presenting four programs made up entirely 
 of ultra-modern piano music, his own and that of others. 
 Here were presented the results of the time and devotion 
 he had given in Paris and London to absorbing the work 
 of the most notable and noteworthy of its exponents- — 
 he had practically memorized all that Ravel and Debussy 
 had written for the instrument. At the first recital — to 
 quote A. Walter Kramer, "the modernity of the program 
 could have been gauged, when it is recorded that Debussy 
 served as the Haydn of the afternoon"- — there were heard 
 the D Minor Sonata of Eric Korngold, Maurice Ravel's 
 Sonatina, Arnold Schonberg's Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 ; 
 Albehiz's Iberia, Grondahl's Impromptu on a Negro Mo- 
 tive, Cyril Scott's Danse Negre, and the first series of 
 Debussy's Images. In addition the composer played his 
 own Impressions de la Tamise, his Wild Men's Dance, and 
 his Improvisata. 
 
 At the second recital Cesar Franck's Prelude, Chorale 
 and Fugue, Cyril Scott's Impressions of the Jungle, De- 
 bussy's second series of Images, Schonberg's Six Short 
 Pieces, Op. 19, and a tone-poem. Pan, by the Bohemian 
 composer, Vitezlav Novak, according to another critic
 
 28 Leo Ornstein 
 
 "served but as hors d'ociwre and dessert to the main item 
 of the bill, which was Mr. Ornstein's Dwarf Suite." 
 
 This last group of numbers attracted far more atten- 
 tion than any of the other pieces on the program. It was 
 received with due respect, and some who heard the com- 
 poser's music for the first time, while they would not 
 commit themselves to approval, were fair enough to rec- 
 ognize that a single hearing did not justify criticism or 
 condemnation. This recital and those following filled the 
 small playhouse to overflowing. The principal numbers, 
 other than the composer's own, represented in the two 
 remaining recitals were the Vincent d'Indy Sonata, Op. 63, 
 Gabriel Grovlez' three Impressions of London — ah, so 
 different in every respect from those of Ornstein's Im- 
 pressions de la Tamise! — Scriabin's Sonata and his Four 
 Preludes. Most of this music, notably Ravel's Sonatina, 
 and his Gaspard de la Nuit (which was also played), were 
 introduced to a New York audience for the first time. At 
 his second recital Ornstein played his own Preludes, Bur- 
 lesques and Moods, and at the third the Two Shadow 
 Pieces and his Impressions de Notre-Dame. 
 
 The Bandbox Theatre recitals not only afforded a novel 
 and artistically justifiable departure from program rou- 
 tine, they also gave proof of the intellectual and technical 
 maturing of the composer since his European experiences. 
 They firmly established his reputation as an artist who 
 would have to be taken seriously both as a virtuoso and 
 a creator. And they were the prekide to numerous con- 
 cert engagements throughout the country, during which 
 Ornstein gave much attention to Chopin interpretation. 
 The end of the summer which, as usual, he had spent at 
 Blue Hill, brought with it a deep sorrow for the young 
 composer, the illness and death of Mrs. Tapper, whose 
 interest and encouragement had been unfaltering, and who
 
 The Man 29 
 
 died in Boston in September, 1915, with the knowledge 
 that her favorite pupil had justified her fondest hopes. 
 
 The composer's sorrow may have been to some degree 
 mitigated by the realization that he had not been un- 
 faithful to the ideals of self-expression and artistic hon- 
 esty she had inculcated. A tribute of gratitude and homage 
 to her memory was the Chopin-Ravel recital given last 
 March at the Princess Theatre, New York, as a contribu- 
 tion to the Bertha Feiring Tapper Scholarship Fund, es- 
 tablished by pupils and friends of Mrs. Tapper. And 
 his choice of the two composers represented was a deli- 
 cate acknowledgment of the fact that in his teacher, to- 
 gether with a keen appreciation of the artistic ideals of 
 the newer art, was united love and reverence for the beauty 
 of the old. 
 
 It was on December 15, 1915, that Ornstein gave an- 
 other New York recital at the Cort Theatre. Here, in 
 addition to compositions of his own, already played, he 
 presented the two "Vannin" numbers, The VValtzers and 
 At Night, and offset them by Cyril Scott's Sonata, Op. 56; 
 the Ravel Sonatina and his Oiseaux Tristes, Albeniz's 
 Almeria and Erick Korngold's Fairy Pictures. In general 
 critics dwelt on the pianistic charm of his playing, the 
 subtle elaboration of his effects of tone-shading, the per- 
 fection of his pedal technic, the beauty of his touch, his 
 "ability to express design," his dynamic control. Another 
 New York recital at Aeolian Hall (January 23, 1916) was 
 well-nigh the concert sensation of the season. Here he 
 skilfully heightened the effect of his "modernistic shockers" 
 — such things as the Marche Grotesque and Funeral March 
 of the Dzvarfs — to use the phrase of an exasperated audi- 
 tor, by throwing them into high relief with the interposi- 
 tion of pieces by Bach, Schumann, Liszt and Rubinstein, 
 which he played with true romantic feeling and intimacy. 
 
 In February, March and April of the same year the
 
 30 Leo Ornstein 
 
 composer gave a series of four "Informal Recitals" in New 
 York, at the residence of Mrs. Arthur M. Reis, in which 
 he ran the gamut of ultra-modern piano music. At the 
 first the pieces de resistance were Scriabin's Sonata, 
 Op. 23 ; two Preludes and Cesar Franck's Prelude, Chorale 
 et Fugue, besides Preludes and an Etude by the first-named 
 composer ; Tzvo Chorales by Moussorgsky, a, or rather the, 
 Liszt Liebestraum, the Rubinstein Valse Caprice and a 
 whole group of Debussy — Prelude, the First Arabesque, 
 Jardins sous la Pluie and L'Isle Joyeuse. At the second 
 he played the D'Indy Sonata, a Debussy group — Hommage 
 a Rameau, Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut, and 
 Poissons d'Or, the Schonberg pieces, Op. 11; Novak's 
 The Sea, and, by Ravel, the lovely Pavane, and the set of 
 three Miroirs. The third program introduced novelties 
 of his own as a second group' — Mclancholie, Danse Arahc 
 and A la Chinoise, as w^ell as the Dwarf Suite — preceded 
 by Scriabin Preludes, a Pocme and Guirlandes, and a 
 Busoni Sonatina, and followed by Ravel's powerful Gas- 
 pard de la Nuit. The concluding program of the series 
 was devoted to the Novi Pezzi, by Casella; Busoni's 
 Elegien, Cyril Scott's Dance of the Elephants, a group 
 of six titulate Preludes by Debussy, the composer's own 
 Sonata, Op. 25 (written during 1914), Ravel's Valses 
 Nobles et Sentimentales, some Stravinsky piano pieces and 
 his own new composition, The Masqueraders. 
 
 The aim of these unconventional programs was to 
 illustrate the actual process of divergence by which piano- 
 forte composition had moved away from the art- forms 
 of the romantic composers to find its present contempo- 
 rary mode of expression. They were programs of devel- 
 opment intended to establish the relation and inner logic 
 of what to many would seem to represent only radically 
 unmotived departures from the accepted norms. The 
 composer took part in an informal discussion after each
 
 The Man 31 
 
 recital — a possibility, since the attendance at the series 
 was limited to an audience of some fifty professionals and 
 music-lovers. 
 
 The summer of 1916 the composer spent at Deer Isle, 
 Maine, composing, practising and reading proof on vari- 
 ous of his compositions in press at the time. His work 
 as a concert pianist during the winter of 1916 and the 
 spring of 1917 may be said to have placed him well within 
 the rank of contemporary piano virtuosi, and shows be- 
 yond possibility of doubt his perfected mastery of the key- 
 board and his increasing reputation as a shining luminary 
 among the elect of ultra-modern composition. 
 
 The summer of 1917 he is again spending at Deer Isle, 
 Maine, where he finds the absolute quiet he needs for his 
 work and reading. He is an omnivorous reader and de- 
 clares that he is "thoroughly unhappy" unless he gets a 
 certain amount of real reading done in the course of every 
 twenty-four hours — modern literature, modern history, 
 political economy in its latest phases — for Ornstein is not 
 only a modernist in music ! And there we may leave him 
 while we attempt to outline his philosophy of music, the 
 motives and incentives which lead him to think and to 
 write music as he does, the ideas that underlie his whole 
 creative effort and give it the individual note which dis- 
 tinguishes it from that of his contemporaries in the field 
 of ultra-modern composition.
 
 HIS IDEAS 
 Leo Ornstein may be ahead of his 
 time. I am inclined to think that he 
 is ushering in a new epoch; that he is 
 employing his genius toward the attain- 
 ment of a new musical expression — an 
 expression which, perhaps not perma- 
 nent in itself, must play an important 
 role in the development of the music 
 of years to come. . . . His music is 
 color — for that is the basis on which 
 he builds. 
 
 A. Walter Kramer.
 
 mm 
 
 II. 
 
 HIS IDEAS 
 
 HE word "ideas" is a term capable of many defi- 
 nitions. In speaking of the ideas of Leo Orn- 
 stein we are dealing with formative ideas — not 
 mere images or transcripts, but types of ideals. 
 They represent, in music, his conception of what is from 
 his individual standpoint as a creating artist supremely 
 excellent or desirable. And, like all new ideas or ideals 
 which, since the beginning of time, have come into con- 
 flict with other ideas or ideals already established and 
 more or less crystallized as dogma, they have aroused 
 much antagonism and resentment on the one hand, while 
 finding enthusiastic support on the other. 
 
 We have in music a whole vocabulary of words which 
 are employed to summarize, more or less clearly, the 
 departures made during the last fifteen or sixteen years 
 from the theories of the past. We speak of "modernism" 
 and "ultra-modernism," of "realism" (verismo), of "im- 
 pressionism" and "post-impressionism," of "pointillism," 
 of "cubism" and "futurism." Ornstein has, at one time 
 or another, and by one or another critic, been classed as 
 an exponent of nearly every one of these newer trends 
 of musical development. Of all these terms, the expres- 
 sion "futurist" has been, perhaps, most improperly used 
 in connection with the composer. "Futurism," in a more 
 contemporary sense, epitomizes the aims of the Italian 
 and French artists who, rejecting all convention and 
 technic, employ imitative megaphonic instruments to 
 "express the geometric and mechanical splendor of nu- 
 merical sensibility" in sound. And with this recondite
 
 36 Leo Ornstein 
 
 aim Ornstein has nothing in common. As he himself 
 says: "Futurism is not even a name to me. If my music 
 becomes more generally understood at some future time, 
 perhaps, from that point of view it might be called futur- 
 istic music. All that I am attempting to do is to express 
 myself as honestly and convincingly as I can in the 
 present." 
 
 Here w^e have a direct summing up of Ornstein's own 
 ideas and ideals — self-expression, sincere and without con- 
 ditions. In the development of what he regards as his 
 more truly "idiomatic" works, it is true that, like Schon- 
 berg and Satie, he has thrown overboard traditional form 
 and the diatonic centre, concentrating on color and 
 rhythm ; yet harmonic principles underlie all his sonal 
 combinations. It is their application, novel even to 
 the ear accustomed to Scriabine and Ravel which, like 
 everything that is new in the sense of being difficult to 
 establish by analogy with that which has gone before, 
 defers a more general and immediate appreciation of his 
 music. It represents, as Charles L. Buchanan says, "tech- 
 nically speaking, nothing more or less than an acute inten- 
 sification of the harmonic sense of music." All that the 
 composer has written in what may be called his "second 
 manner" (wherein might be included the "Vannin" pieces, 
 digressing, yet akin to it), reflects his fundamental belief 
 that "music must primarily be felt, not analyzed." 
 
 Many of those who are not in sympathy with Ornstein's 
 ideals have denied their validity by decrying the compo- 
 ser's artistic honesty. Frederick Corder* declares that, 
 "finding the production of sheer nonsense both easy and 
 profitable, Schonberg actually had followers in the persons 
 of Bela Bartok and Leo Ornstein, . . . but the produc- 
 tions of Ornstein and Bartok were mere ordure; it was 
 
 • "On the Cult of Wrong Notes," by Frederick Corder. The Musical 
 Quarterly, July, 1915.
 
 His Ideas 37 
 
 impossible for a musical person to tolerate, much less 
 pretend to admire them." To question the sincerity of 
 what we do not understand, or do not wish to understand, 
 may be natural, yet it hardly deserves to be called criti- 
 cism, at least not in a constructive sense. And how may 
 we expect sympathy or even intelligent interest in any 
 newer art development from one who speaks of "the crazy 
 crowd of whom Claude Debussy is the chief" and who, 
 in surveying the progress of music during the nineteenth 
 century, adds : "In England, finally, our dull time, in 
 which Bennett and Macfarren afforded a feeble illumina- 
 tion, was followed by a generation which included Parry, 
 Mackenzie, Stanford, Cowen and myself? One cannot say 
 we flourished, but we were graciously endured for a while ; 
 till Holbrooke, Cyril Scott and a raw band of amateurs" 
 (we presume it included such men as Elgar, Granville, 
 Bantock, Arnold Bax, Balfour Gardiner, John Ireland, 
 Ralph Vaughn Williams, and the like) "found more favor 
 in the eyes of the critics." Mr. Corder was born in 1852. 
 Charles L. Buchanan is a critic of a different type. 
 In a serious study* he speaks of Ornstein as possessing 
 "to a large extent that indefinable clairvoyant quality that 
 is present in all vital art," yet expresses the fear that Orn- 
 stein's music shows tendencies which seem to him to be 
 dangerously in the direction of an exclusive preoccupation 
 with mood at the expense of thought." And he puts the 
 question, "Can a substantial, authentic musical message 
 proclaim itself through a medium essentially suggestive 
 rather than definite?" Perhaps the best answer to this 
 question has, tmconsciously, been given in advance by Paul 
 L. Rosenfeld.** In discussing the movement entitled 
 
 * "Futurist Music," by Cliarlcs L. Buclianan. The Independent, July 
 31, 1916. 
 
 •♦ "Ornstein," by Paul L. Rosenfeld. The New Republic, May 27, 
 1916.
 
 38 Leo Ornstein 
 
 Love, in the piano sonata, Op. 25, Mr. Rosenfeld says: 
 "It tells its tale: it is silent; and while one speculates 
 whether it is music or not, one discovers that he has heard 
 real episodes out of the life of the composer, and perhaps 
 through him, episodes out of the lives of a whole upgrow- 
 ing generation." 
 
 It is true that Ornstein's "ultra-modernist" music is 
 pure emotion in tone, selfial and social, contemplative and 
 aesthetic; it is mood precipitated in sound, according to 
 an instinctive underlying law and theorem which the com- 
 poser himself has not as yet entirely formulated and, per- 
 haps, never will. Whether this music conveys thought more 
 directly through an accepted symbolism of expression, or 
 suggests thought indirectly through sheer emotional evoca- 
 tion, is, after all, negligible so long as its message wins 
 through to those to whom it is addressed. And more and 
 more are coming to understand it. 
 
 Nor is Ornstein a pedant, one who has neatly labeled 
 his "ideas," and aspires to the chieftainship of some neo- 
 musical tribe on the strength of them. He objects to classi- 
 fications and "schools" of musical creative endeavor. Every 
 individual should try to solve the psychic problems of the 
 material himself — to penetrate into every material manifes- 
 tation of life, and know its soul. "Bach and Cesar Franck 
 are to me the two greatest musicians, because they, above all 
 others, lift the veil of the material and disclose its essen- 
 tial soul." Ornstein gives his message for what it is worth 
 to those who care to hear it. This message, in the opin- 
 ion of some, is one altogether fraught with gloom and 
 despair. There has been a cry against Ornstein because 
 of his unmerciful sincerity, because he has not wrapped 
 his emotions in the cloak of convention. Even a com- 
 poser like Bloch has accused Ornstein of "writing music 
 that was too sad and melancholy," missing the whole 
 point at issue, that Ornstein invariably writes as he feels,
 
 His Ideas 39 
 
 and that when he feels deeply he cannot convey his feel- 
 ings in weak and anaemic sentimentalities, draped in all 
 sorts of diatonic reticences, but gives them as they are — 
 in all their pathos and poignancy, naked and unashamed. 
 Nor are all his moods tragic ones, all his tonal landscapes 
 overgrown with the cypress and the yew — there is ample 
 published evidence to the contrary. But when he does 
 write in the tragic vein, it is in accord with his theory 
 that by the expression of deep grief the soul becomes 
 purified and gains the illumination of true beauty. 
 
 As has been mentioned, he found himself, after he 
 had written much music in the major-minor system, em- 
 ploying traditional forms, at a serious loss to express in 
 music those deeper and more intimate emotions and reac- 
 tions within him which clamored for utterance. And then, 
 after unhappy weeks of hopelessness and disorientation, 
 of groping and experiment, it came to him with over- 
 whelming suddenness — that he had discovered the alpha- 
 bet of a new tongue, a tonal language which enabled him 
 to give his inspiration the freest rein in sound expression. 
 The firstling of the new dispensation was the initial chord 
 of what is now The Funeral March of the Dwarves. 
 Then came The Wild Men's Dance and the Dwarf Suite ; 
 and in these compositions, each conceived and carried out 
 at a white heat without interruption, we have all the out- 
 ward and visible signs of the new inward and spiritual 
 grace which the composer had found, and which he per- 
 fected in their successors. The composer's own explana- 
 tion of the extreme radicalism of his music, which differen- 
 tiated from all other, the primary reason for its intensely 
 individual note is interesting. "When I began to compose, 
 I had practically not been influenced by any current music." 
 The only modern compositions which Ornstein had actually 
 seen when he began to write in his second manner were 
 Dubussy's Reflets dans I'eau and a Rhapsody by Max Reger.
 
 Funeral March
 
 His Ideas 41 
 
 The pieces already mentioned (The Wild Men's Dance 
 and the Dwarf Suite) may be taken to illustrate Ornstein's 
 method of composition. Like practically all that he has 
 done, they were written at one sitting, to stand or fall as 
 first set down. Ornstein never composes "at the piano." 
 His whole intricate and complex harmonic and rhythmic 
 scheme is developed in his mind, and often he dare lose 
 no time in setting it down on paper before its outlines 
 grow dim. Many of his compositions are programmatic; 
 yet he often hesitates to give them too definite a title, 
 since "to others my piece may suggest something entirely 
 different from the picture or mood I had in mind when 
 writing it ; and their imaginings may be quite as appro- 
 priate and legitimate as the one I had intended. I am 
 even free to say that I have heard certain interpretations 
 of my compositions by other pianists, which struck me 
 as being more fine and effective than my own conception 
 of the same pieces." And not infrequently the composer 
 destroys what he has written, for he is a severe self-critic 
 and does not think it worth while preserving anything 
 that seems below the standards he has set himself. 
 
 To return to The Wild Men's Dance, A la Chinoise 
 and the Dwarf Suite, which so admirably typify Ornstein's 
 ideas of composition. In them the diatonic system, the 
 tonic and dominant idea of chord relationship is entirely 
 abandoned. A subtle musical intuition seems to prompt 
 their extremely plastic resolutions, which are the reflec- 
 tion of a logic of emotion — if one may so call it — rather 
 than of mathematical design. Here we have the direct 
 antithesis of Schonberg, between whom and Ornstein it 
 is possible to draw some analogies — Ornstein's harmonies 
 are the natural and unalloyed result of his unfettered 
 creative impulse, innocent of any preconceived theory ; 
 Schonberg, on the other hand, works in accord with an 
 abstruse and mysterious musical calculus known only to
 
 42 
 
 Leo Ornstein 
 
 himself. For Ornstein there exist no actual chords or dis- 
 cords. His chord combinations are not the conscious re- 
 Hexion of a definite theoretic basis, but the outcome of 
 the impulse for a richer, fuller tonal coloring, one which 
 extends the possibilities of pure harmony far beyond the 
 limits of the diatonic system. 
 
 And, as the illustrations following will show, his 
 chordal resolutions "are not dictated by mere technical 
 formulcc, but by the purpose of the thought and the inten- 
 sity of the mood they seek to establish." Thus in Triste: 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 » 
 
 i 
 
 W 
 
 tE& 
 
 ^=Y» 
 
 5* 
 
 H 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 REFLECTIVE MOOD 
 
 we have a chord resolved according to the elemental or 
 rather emotional, logic which the mood development dic- 
 tates. In 
 
 TRAGIC MOOD
 
 His Ideas 43 
 
 we have an altogether different resolution of the same 
 chord, again compelled by mood instead of the accepted 
 laws of modulation, "This principle" — that of emotional 
 logic — is, according to Ornstein, "if not my only, at any 
 rate my supreme reason for resolving certain chords into 
 others as I do. The resolution is the outcome of the 
 image, color scheme, design, etc., that I try to project 
 in my composition." 
 
 And the composer is frank in saying of his "second 
 manner" of musical speech : "I honestly find this the most 
 logical and direct idiom through which to express my 
 musical impulse, thought and feeling. I cannot help con- 
 trasting it with one representing a compromise with tra- 
 ditional formulas which often react unfavorably on my 
 spontaneity of inspiration. I find that existing tonal idioms 
 do not allow me the perfect expression of all that I wish 
 to say musically. And I have had to find a language of 
 my own. Yet I feel that, once its underlying basis is 
 understood, this language will be listened to, and my 
 work will be clear to many who do not grasp its meaning 
 now." 
 
 The composer adds : "I have my diatonic and lyric 
 moments, and on occasion I employ the diatonic scale for 
 the simple reason that my own radical medium does not 
 suit the purpose of what I want to say." This does not 
 apply to his earlier works alone, the Serenade, Op. 5, No. 1, 
 and Scherzino, Op. 5, No. 2 ; Russian Suite, Cossack Im- 
 pressions, Six Lyric Pieces, Miniatures and others, which 
 antedate his later manner. There are moods perhaps less 
 intimate in a personal way; there are emotions less com- 
 plex; there are impressions whose simple lucidness does 
 not seem to call for the richer chromaticism and more 
 varied and intricate tonal weave which is Ornstein's very 
 own. The Sonata for violin and piano. Op. 26, makes 
 this clear, as do some of the songs. In this, as in all else
 
 44 Leo Ornstein 
 
 he does, Ornstein is entirely ' honest. He writes in his 
 two manners at will, according to whichever best lends 
 itself to his purposes at the moment. 
 
 Ornstein's genuine gifts have secured, and have con- 
 tinued to secure, acceptance and publicity for anything 
 and everything he chooses to write along "major and 
 minor" lines. Yet, even in a utilitarian way, his faith 
 in himself and his more radical ideals has already been 
 justified by the increasing success of his more intimate 
 and emotionally advanced musical works. He still makes 
 occasional excursions into the diatonic field, but it is only 
 when he feels the direct impulse that he reverts to it, and 
 when this is the case he invariably produces something 
 worth while. 
 
 As he puts it : "There are moments when only a purely 
 diatonic idiom will serve to express my ideas. Nothing 
 irritates me more than to have a composer claim the 
 modernity of his music as a virtue. A statement of the 
 kind is rank heresy, since the sincere composer does not 
 choose a medium — the medium chooses him. He is com- 
 pelled to use it. If I had found it possible to express all 
 that I thought and felt diatonically, I should not have 
 had to resort to the 'radical' idiom which those who do 
 not understand it condemn. Can you imagine The Wild 
 Men's Dance and other things of mine expressed in the 
 tonality of B major?" 
 
 At the same time the composer's "diatonic moments" 
 are not his only lyric ones. He has written much music 
 essentially lyric in his later manner — the Sonata for vio- 
 lin and piano. Op. 26 ; the Arabesques, the Poems of 1^17 
 and the Sonata for 'cello and piano, Op. 45. "It is when 
 I am in search of softer and gentler color effects that I 
 resort to the use of the diatonic scale." 
 
 Nor, even in his own more intimate expressional mode, 
 does he lose his sense of proportion. As he says: "I do
 
 His Ideas 
 
 45 
 
 compromise to the degree that in writing for the piano 
 I realize its limitations, as I realize their limitations when 
 writing for the voice or for the strings. These limitations 
 I accept — for the artist must have a perfect understand- 
 ing of his material — and without due regard for them 
 my music cannot penetrate the listener so that he is able 
 to judge as to the validity of my creative impulse." 
 
 The erroneous impression prevails that, more or less, 
 Ornstein's later piano music is difficult with a difficulty 
 quite beyond the limitations of the instrument. Yet — once 
 understood — as he says : "My piano music is as easy to 
 play and memorize as that of Liszt. My pianoforte Sonata, 
 for example, is no more exacting than Liszt's Don Juan 
 fantasy. The 'note clusters' which I use and whose use 
 has been reprehended, represent a perfectly logical antici- 
 pation of overtones." Ornstein, when he told the writer 
 this, off'ered the following illustration from his Sonata, 
 Op. 31: 
 
 plu. 
 
 to prove that his anticipation of the overtones, by actual 
 playing, enabled him to secure a certain depth of tone 
 and an effect of "clouded sonority" which it was impos-
 
 46 Leo Ornstein 
 
 bible to realize in any other way. "If you were to strip 
 the color elements from one of my chords, you would 
 find its actual structure one of Grecian severity of out- 
 line. But it requires study to distinguish between the 
 fundamental tones and those purely incidental." 
 
 Form may be said to be viewed by Ornstein some- 
 what in the nature of a collection of building laws which 
 he regards only when they serve his conveniience. The 
 camp of the Roman legion was invariably laid out in the 
 same manner, whether in Persia or Pannonia; but the 
 legion of Ornstein's notes must camp as their originator list- 
 eth, and not according to the time-honored laws of mu- 
 sical engineering tactics. Ornstein does not run his 
 inspiration into molds, but allows it to shape its flow as 
 it must and will, and this makes its form entirely sub- 
 ordinate to its own impulse. This is noticeable in many 
 of the shorter compositions, but we may take the sonata 
 form as an example of his whole attitude toward the 
 architecture of music. He does not see in the sonata a 
 preconceived mold or casing into which his inspiration 
 must be wedged. He recognizes a distinct difference 
 between sonata music and all other music — but the dif- 
 ference for him lies purely in content and not in form. 
 Thus the Schumann G Minor Sonata, written in strict 
 sonata form, to Ornstein is not sonata music; while the 
 same composer's F Sharp Minor Sonata, though much 
 freer in style, impresses him at once as true sonata music. 
 In his own Sonata, Op. 31, which is certainly not a sonata 
 in any formal sense of the word, Ornstein uses the title 
 "owing to a certain classical severity of spirit it possesses, 
 which has nothing to do with period, and which distin- 
 guished this kind of music from others." 
 
 Much of the color that lends so rich a glow to Orn- 
 stein's concepts has a Greek or an Asiatic base. The 
 impression made upon him by the music of the Greek and
 
 His Ideas 47 
 
 Armenian Churches and the Hebrew chant has already 
 been mentioned. As he himself says: "There is hardly 
 a composition of mine which fails to offer proof of what 
 a lasting and thorough impression Greek ritual music 
 and the Asiatic chant have made upon me, though I have 
 never exploited traditional 'themes' or 'material.' " 
 
 We have already intimated that Ornstein is by no 
 means narrow in his musical sympathies. His stand is 
 in keeping with his whole theory that the brotherhood of 
 man (at present, alas, so far from being realized!) has 
 an analogy in a corresponding brotherhood of tone: that 
 there is no one tone, no combination of tones, but which 
 is related to all others. It is merely a question of dis- 
 covering their connecting ties. To quote Ornstein once 
 again: "Perhaps these affinities cannot be mathematically 
 demonstrated; this does not mean to say that they do 
 not exist, for there is an inner psychic, emotional rela- 
 tionship which transcends all others in importance." 
 
 What is Ornstein's attitude toward his modernistic 
 brothers-in-arms, whose music he has so widely and gen- 
 erously exploited, and to the great ones of the past? 
 Bach, first of all, Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann, Tschai- 
 kovsky — all find a place in his heart and on his programs. 
 
 But, with the exception of Bach and Chopin, they do not 
 mean to him what Franck, Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Scri- 
 abine, Schonberg, Cyril Scott do. Ornstein has often been 
 spoken of as an imitator of Schonberg; yet The Wild 
 Men's Dance, and others of his more individual compo- 
 sitions, had been written before he had ever seen or heard 
 anything by the Viennese composer. As a matter of fact, 
 despite surface resemblances, the two have little in com- 
 mon. As Ornstein says: "It is but necessary to compare 
 a page of my music with that of Schonberg to see the 
 vast difference between their concept and methods of ex- 
 pression." From Ornstein's standpoint Arnold Schonberg
 
 48 Leo Ornstein 
 
 is a cold, analytical geometrician, who dissects every detail 
 of life and photographs it on music paper. Stravinsky 
 he regards as Schonberg's direct opposite, a vital genius 
 who is in full sympathy with life, and regives it in tone; 
 though Ornstein feels, perhaps, that his music, unlike his 
 own, does not enter as intimately into the commonplaces 
 of existence. Debussy and Chopin he brackets as well- 
 nigh perfect, each in his own manner, since each realizes 
 his own limitations and does not strive to exceed them. 
 In Florent Schmitt he sees a combination of the good 
 and bad qualities of Debussy and Ravel. But, fond as he 
 is of Debussy, with Harold Bauer and Rudolph Ganz 
 Ornstein agrees in regarding Ravel as the greater com- 
 poser. He has lived more intensively and gets at the 
 very core of life, which Debussy sees through the medium 
 of poetic introspection. To Ornstein their beauty differs 
 only in degree. "Ravel's music has the beauty of realism, 
 Debussy's that of poesy. All truth is beautiful to me 
 and both have the beauty of truth, only that Debussy 
 gives us the truth of fancy and Ravel that of actuality." 
 Among the Russians Ornstein admires, in particular, Mous- 
 sorgsky, "the father of modern music," and Scriabine. 
 In the latter Ornstein sees another great artist who created 
 his art out of life, a composer who had reached a point 
 where he had grown so sensitive to sorrow that he was 
 hardly able to make his grief articulate. Albefiiz's music 
 Ornstein likes. The latter's Iberia, which he calls "very 
 vulgar but full of honest realism and a humanity which 
 saves it from being banal," is one of his favorites. Of 
 Cyril Scott, his fellow modernist, he frankly says that, 
 in his opinion, "he has written much poor music and some 
 that is excellent. At a second glance much that he has 
 done is far less original than one might think. His Sonata 
 for piano. Op. 63, is very fine. Scott sent it to me when 
 I was in London — and I did not like it. A year later I
 
 His Ideas 49 
 
 looked it over again in New York and was surprised to 
 discover a number of beautiful pages. It it absolute music 
 of a high type and I have played it both in New York 
 and Boston." 
 
 We have quoted these opinions of Ornstein to give 
 an idea of his catholicity of taste, his genuine interest in 
 what his contemporaries are doing to find their own sal- 
 vation and that of their art in individual development. 
 An article by the composer in a recent issue of The Seven 
 Arts on The Music of the New Russia not alone em- 
 phasizes this attitude of mind, but also throws an inter- 
 esting light on his own philosophy of tone. What he 
 says of Moussorgsky, for instance, might be quite as 
 appositely applied to himself. "The distinctive quality of 
 the new impulse in art has been the need of expression 
 through direct contact with the emotions — a rediscovery 
 and restatement of men's experience. Art has torn itself 
 from the admitted routines and honored idioms; it has 
 come to realize the inadequacy of conceiving modern life 
 according to the old and accepted formulcs!" 
 
 And again: "Music has become too finished, too me- 
 chanically perfect. So little has been left to the imagina- 
 tion of the listener that he is no longer required to create 
 toward the artist. In all epochs of great musical art — 
 the epoch of Bach, the epoch of Cesar Franck, for in- 
 stance — it was realized that the province of art was not 
 to instil a passive pleasure in the listener. Great music 
 must wake in us a creative impulse. Unless it does that, 
 it has failed to fulfil its destiny." 
 
 This question of the listener creating toward the artist 
 is one which has largely preoccupied Ornstein, and is a 
 factor in all his creative work. The music-lover, the 
 auditor, from his standpoint, should not content himself 
 with the passive sensuous enjoyment of a shower-bath of 
 sound. The appeal of Ornstein's. music is made directly
 
 50 Leo Ornstein 
 
 to the imagination of the listener; he strives to intensify 
 and perfect the expression of emotion to such a degree 
 that those who hear it react creatively; that is, are 
 awakened to a definite individual concept and apprecia- 
 tion of its meaning. As the composer himself has already 
 said, he does not expect the listener to feel his music 
 exactly as he himself feels it; even as regards his pieces 
 a programme he understands that there are bound to be 
 as many variants as there are individual listeners. But 
 since his music stands for the actual embodiment in tone 
 of various phases of his own emotional life, he asks of 
 those who hear or study his music to bring to its hearing 
 or playing some of that psychic sympathy which is the 
 common property of all beings who are capable of feel- 
 ing emotion. Only the very poor in spirit will find that 
 this appeal awakens, in some one way or another, no an- 
 swering chord in their own breast; only in those to whom 
 psychic emotion is a mere phrase, who cannot define it 
 by their own experience, will its vibrations rouse no inti- 
 mate overtone. And this, again, is in accord with the 
 composer's dictum: "The less important thing is whether 
 or no beautiful music be written. The vital issue is to 
 write music which is sincere, which has in it the germ of 
 individual emotional vitality; for, after all, emotional 
 comprehension is localized within the individual conscious- 
 ness." And we might close this resume of Ornstein's 
 ideas and ideals in composition with the short Credo, which 
 in a manner epitomizes his philosophy: "It is my aim to 
 express life in music as I perceive it."
 
 HIS WORK 
 For those — and their number grows 
 continually — who have mastered Orn- 
 stein's idiom sufficiently to come to an 
 understanding of the content of his art 
 and the quality of the human experience 
 there transmuted into sound, the form 
 is little short of perfect. . . . An inter- 
 pretation of the facets of life revealed 
 by this new music remains the soundest 
 of approaches to a comprehension of it. 
 Paul L. Rosenfeld. 
 
 «b
 
 III. 
 
 HIS WORK 
 
 Y their works shall ye know them." The scriptu- 
 ral injunction applies to composers as well as 
 to all other workers, and Ornstein's creative out- 
 put represents the practical development of his 
 ideas, the tally of actual accomplishment, without which 
 all theory is but barren speculation. Nearest at hand and 
 logically calling for first consideration are his pianoforte 
 compositions. The piano is the composer's own instru- 
 ment, and in his piano music his ideals and ideas find their 
 most direct and generally available exposition. 
 
 And since, in a degree, his piano compositions are so 
 closely linked with his work as an interpreting artist, their 
 consideration might well be prefaced by some remarks on 
 the composer as a pianist. The adequacy of his techni- 
 cal equipment is not to be questioned. As A. Walter 
 Kramer has summed it up : "Of his pianism nothing need 
 be said but that he plays superbly, in a manner that leaves 
 no doubt as to his position among present-day virtuosi. 
 But he is more than that, he is a personality." Now, a 
 personality, especially on the concert platform, lays him- 
 self open to the suspicion of being a poseur by the least 
 departure from the canons of the conventional. The in- 
 cidentals of his manner of playing, the length of his hair 
 or the cut of his nails, are scrupulously examined as 
 regards their conformity to accepted usage; any depart- 
 ure therefrom is set down as a love for affectation and 
 sensationalism which, more or less, questions the artist's 
 sincerity. 
 
 Those who know Ornstein personally are aware that
 
 54 Li:o Orn STEIN 
 
 there is no suspicion of pose in the unconscious manner- 
 isms which are revealed in his playing in public. To quote 
 Mr. Kramer once more: "They are part of Leo Ornstein, 
 and Leo Ornstein is important enough to be considered 
 seriously even if he does toss his head at the close of a 
 composition." Yet the details of his technical presenta- 
 tion at the keyboard have furnished matter for abundant 
 discussion. 
 
 Leo Ornstein at the piano has often been limned in 
 picturesque phrase. Huneker says: "Yet I do bewail the 
 murderous means of expression with which Leo Ornstein 
 patrolled the piano. He stormed its keys, scooping chunks 
 of slag and spouting scoriae like a vicious volcano." He 
 attests: "I was stunned, especially after glissandi that 
 ripped up the keyboard and fizzed and foamed over the 
 stage" — feeling, no doubt, like another commentator on 
 whom Ornstein's playing had made "the unique impres- 
 sion of a grand piano frothing at the mouth." Yet 
 Huneker does not neglect to pay tribute to the player's 
 "liquid touch," and declares "his tone is rich, massive, 
 his color scheme varied, his phrasing musical, subtle," 
 and insists that "he is that rare thing — an individual pian- 
 ist." Farnsworth Wright states that Ornstein's idea 
 "seems to be to hit the note with that part of the hand 
 which is nearest," to "use the knuckle, the flat of the 
 thumb or the palm of the hand; and take a crack at the 
 notes with the back of the wrist if you want to, but not 
 to strike the keys with the foot, and never, never follow 
 the established rules of technique." He admits at the 
 same time that "it is doubtful whether Ornstein's music 
 can be played according to anapests, dithyrambs and bi- 
 metrical or tri-metrical rules." 
 
 Again, at one of his London concerts a critic spoke of 
 "the appalling noise" Ornstein generated by "a. method 
 (juite new" to him. "It was produced by putting the
 
 His Work 55 
 
 fingers close together, stiffening the hands and striking 
 alternately down on the keyboard perpendicularly in ram- 
 rod fashion as hard as possible, with the loud pedal down. 
 Another startling effect was produced by slapping the 
 upper notes of the ke3'board and hitting out with the left 
 hand at some notes — it did not seem to matter which — 
 in the bass." Even if this somewhat exaggerated descrip- 
 tion were exact in every detail, the fact remains that 
 technique is, in the broader sense, incidental — it is the 
 attainment of the effect desired itself that counts, not the 
 means of attainment. 
 
 And H. T. Parker, writing in the Boston Transcript, 
 allows for the fact "that what some have called and will 
 call tricks of manner seem to others only habit that was 
 once careless and is now settled. Sometimes, for exam- 
 ple, he crouches with bent shoulders over the keyboard 
 until his face seems almost buried in it. Again, when he 
 is using the lowest bass or the highest treble, he turns 
 himself, as it were, into the corner of the instrument 
 where the respective keys lie; and he has a curious idio- 
 syncracy of playing with one foot poised in air before 
 he lets it fall upon a pedal. He also, and visibly, can gather 
 the whole muscular and nervous strength of his tense 
 young body and launch it, as in a flash, upon his music 
 and piano. He does all these things, however, in a mat- 
 ter-of-fact fashion, as though they were as natural to 
 him as the reticent and retiring fashion in which he 
 acknowledges applause." 
 
 We should not forget to register a recipe offered by 
 the Australian Music News of February 1, 1916, for the 
 performance of Ornstein's music, according to that paper's 
 conception of Ornstein's technique : "Always wear boxing- 
 gloves when you set out to play Ornstein's music in pub- 
 lic. They will be of great assistance in the actual per- 
 formance; they will come in very handy afterward —
 
 56 Leo"Ornstein 
 
 when the audience sets out to express its views of what 
 you have been playing." This recipe, by the way, was 
 adopted recently for a humorous musical "take-off" of 
 the pianist presented at a meeting of the New York Bohe- 
 mians, and none enjoyed it more than the young Russian 
 composer-pianist. 
 
 But we will let Ornstein speak for himself with regard 
 to two important phases of his technic : "One of the most 
 interesting statements I have ever heard anent pianoforte 
 playing was Leschetiszky's remark to me that 'Half a 
 pianist's technic lies in the pedals.' It took a long time 
 before I thoroughly understood what he meant. It was 
 while experimenting with the music of Debussy and Ravel 
 that I first realized how impossible it was to give a satis- 
 factory performance with the fingers only. For months 
 I labored until I had devised a system .which established 
 absolute sympathy between pedal-work and finger-work. 
 And then I found that the color possibilities of the instru- 
 ment were practically limitless. By delicate manipulation 
 of the pedals I found I could melt shade into shade in 
 infinite variation of the dynamic tone-palette. But first 
 I had learned to breathe with the music, so to say, to let 
 the pedal pulsate with my own emotional perception. It 
 is not enough to thrust down the pedal with the foot and 
 change with new harmonies. I found that by using half 
 and even a quarter of my pedal I could produce the most 
 delicate tonal tinges. The psychological moment comes 
 when you strike the key, after having prepared your attack 
 by lifting and shutting ofif the damper. It is a very deli- 
 cate process, and months passed before I had secured 
 absolute coordination of finger- and foot-work. Relaxa- 
 tion and manner of attack also have much to do with a 
 varied tone-production ; yet fundamentally I believe that 
 the preparation of the pedal to receive the stroke of the 
 finger is the most important factor.
 
 His Work 37 
 
 "Quite often, in playing my own pieces, I use the palm 
 of the hand. But I use it merely as a matter of conve- 
 nience, since in many cases it would be physically out 
 of the question for me to play the chord in any other 
 way. And often I secure a heightened brilliancy which 
 I may desire. Strange to say, the body of chord sound 
 produced in this manner is less harsh than would be the 
 case if the notes were played with the fingers, for in throw- 
 ing the whole palm of the hand on the keys my invariable 
 tendency is to relax." 
 
 Ornstein's color sense, his marvelous mastery of touch 
 graduation and tonal nuance and shading in playing, his 
 absolute control of pedal possibilities and his successful 
 exploitation of every elusive and colorful keyboard means ; 
 his singing development of what (in his connection) have 
 been termed "the head-tones of the piano," his use of 
 "a. pressure touch in pianissimo," the glow, the plangency 
 of a piano tone whose "long sweep, sustained volume and 
 reverberant climax has become more and more supple in 
 the play of ornament, more even and transparent in runs. 
 more liquid in arpeggi, more crisp in octaves, more spark- 
 ling in the light fioriture of the piano," have been exem- 
 plified not alone in the playing of his own compositions. 
 
 As might be expected, the great modernists are close 
 to his heart. But then, so is all great music. Bach, the 
 universal, Cesar Franck, Debussy, Chopin and Schonberg, 
 Stravinsky and Ravel, in his estimation "the two greatest 
 geniuses of Europe," are represented on his unconven- 
 tional programs together with Albeniz, Cyril Scott, Paul 
 Dukas, Scriabin, Bela-Bartok, MacDowell and any newer 
 work, no matter by whom composed, which Ornstein's 
 inner artistic conviction regards worthy the attention of 
 the general public. Ornstein's Bach and Chopin interpre- 
 tations have been made the subject of more or less criti- 
 cism, and not without some semblance of validity. Yet
 
 58 Leo Ornstein 
 
 it should be remembered that no pianist would be less likely 
 to feel himself bound by traditions and conventions es- 
 tablished by others than Leo Ornstein. An anarch makes 
 his own traditions, and considering the powerful individ- 
 ual trend and direct sincerity of Ornstein's nature, his 
 Bach, even though presented through the medium of Bu- 
 soni's transcript, is not altogether Busoni's Bach, nor is 
 his Chopin the Chopin of de Pachmann. Critical reserva- 
 tions anent Ornstein's playing of Chopin, for instance, 
 may be justified yet, as Parker says: "Even when they 
 depart farthest from tradition, these versions are those 
 of an intensely individualized, susceptible and little curbed 
 youth, who prefers in self-expression to be honest with 
 himself and with his hearers." And "in one's twenties it 
 is better to excel in self-assertion than to hide in tame 
 convention — when before and in no middle distance — is 
 high future as a pianist." 
 
 Ornstein concentrates on establishing what he calls 
 "real balance" in his Chopin playing, and laughs at the 
 accusation once made that he had taken all the measure 
 lines out of Chopin's music. The musical phrase and 
 period are his guides in the interpretation of every com- 
 poser's works and not the halken that divide the measures. 
 
 Ornstein's fame and reputation as a pianoforte inter- 
 preter, in particular of the great modernists in music, has 
 grown independently of his fame as a composer. The 
 "high future" to which Mr. Parker so prophetically alludes 
 has begun to find its realization; the "pale youth whose 
 next recital" the London Daily Mail a few years ago once 
 begged "sufiferers from complete deafness to attend in 
 numbers," because of the "engaging" spectacle presented 
 by "this young man involved in one of his frenzied im- 
 provisations," has become the "twenty-two-year-old anarch, 
 whose classic precision of phrase and richness of touch 
 have placed him as a pianist in the front rank of those
 
 His Work 59 
 
 now before the public." No longer do we meet with 
 such phrases as "brutal assaults" on the piano, "expound 
 — with the accent on the pound" and "Mr. Ornstein's 
 noises" to describe his pianoforte playing of his own 
 compositions. With an increasing measure of understand- 
 ing of his aims and ideals, with a growing conviction of 
 his artistic honesty and sincerity of purpose, and greater 
 familiarity with his pianistic idiom, has come toleration, 
 respect and, finally, admiration for his achievement. 
 
 To A. Walter Kramer belongs the credit of having 
 been the first to signalize Ornstein's musical importance 
 on the occasion of his initial public appearance in this, 
 the land of his adoption. Writing in Musical America 
 (July 8, 1911) of "this youth whose powers, mental and 
 spiritual, have developed far in excess of his years," he 
 dwells on his ability "to play with a force that is compell- 
 ing, with an expression that holds tensely an audience of 
 thousands." Where London critics saw only a "gulf of 
 discord," or heard "the dual efforts on a pianoforte key- 
 board of a peripatetic cat and an infant of insufficient 
 height and strength to hammer the notes with his fists," 
 Mr. Kramer realized that in Ornstein's piano pieces "one 
 is confronted with big, original musical thought, much 
 melodic material and an unusually fine sense of harmony." 
 And with all the eloquence of conviction he describes his 
 playing : "With a touch that sings with surpassing beauty ; 
 such tone as is a revelation to the music-lover, since for 
 it one could readily pardon technical imperfections. But 
 of these there were none !" And again : "He plays as he 
 builds his climaxes, with a crescendo that rises from note 
 to note and measure to measure, until one is fairly up- 
 lifted with the thrill of it. He plays with his whole soul, 
 with everything that is in him, working toward the out- 
 giving of the greatest result that he can imagine, and his
 
 60 Leo Ornstein 
 
 fine mental personality is behind it all, regulating every- 
 thing that he undertakes." 
 
 We need dwell no further on Ornstein the pianist. Is 
 not the tale of his achievement written in the chronicles 
 of the musical magazines and daily press? Leaving the 
 interpreting artist for the subject-matter of his interpre- 
 tations, let us turn to the consideration of his works. And 
 for this consideration, as has been mentioned, his piano- 
 forte compositions offer the most natural point of departure. 
 
 Ornstein's original compositions for the piano cover 
 a wide range of mood and expression, of style and type. 
 Among them are the numbers of his "first manner," in 
 which the lyric element predominates, whose keynote is 
 a certain simplicity of means and which, without pre- 
 tending to the more complex thought content or techni- 
 cal elaboration of his later writing, are all, in a degree, 
 touched with an individuality that makes itself felt. Even 
 his Pigmy Suite, Op. 9, a set of nine easy teaching pieces, 
 bears this out. Among these charming trifles it would 
 be difficult to duplicate such numbers as "March" and 
 "Merry-making" in collections of a similar general type 
 and grade. 
 
 The three numbers of Op. 4, Valse in G Major, Sara- 
 hande and A Paris Street Scene at Night, are well within 
 the range of the amateur of average ability. The first, a 
 pleasing melodic fancy, built up on an organ point, and 
 the second a sonorous and musicianly evocation of an 
 old dance-form, do not call for special comment. The 
 impressionistic study of the Paris boulevards at night, after 
 the arc-lights have been lit, is decidedly effective, a brilliant 
 camera-reflex bit of music of happy pungency, and the 
 very antithesis of Debussy's vocal evocations of the Lux- 
 embourg gardens in his Fetes galantes. It should be men- 
 tioned that these compositions (as well as Three Russian 
 Impressions for violin and piano. Op. 37) owe their pub-
 
 His Work 61 
 
 lication to the interest of that sterUng musician, Mr. Wm. 
 A. Fisher, himself a gifted composer, to whom they were 
 first submitted, and who at once recognized their promise 
 and accepted them for the house he represented. 
 
 The set of Nine Miniahires for piano. Op. 7, are worthy 
 the attention of any pianist. They include a graceful 
 Valse, in which the germ of the "note-cluster" puts in an 
 appearance, and an exceptional Gavotte. Here the com- 
 poser, instead of writing a conventional piece of its type, 
 suggests a sinister and dramatic undercurrent of tragedy 
 in his measures. One might think it a gavotte danced by 
 Marie Antoinette at Versailles, the night before the mob 
 hailed the royal family to Paris, with the guillotine loom- 
 ing up in the future. 
 
 Written at the age of fourteen, when Schumann and 
 Tschaikovsky still influenced his thought, Ornstein's Six 
 Lyric Fancies, Op. 10, without denying their inspirational 
 parentage, are not mere imitations. They share in the 
 generally attractive quality of all the composer's earlier 
 writing for his instrument. Romance triste, Capricietto 
 and In modo Scarlatti in especial are happy examples of 
 their type. With these pieces might be mentioned the 
 composer's Seven Moments Musicales, Op. 8. 
 
 The Russian Suite, Op. 12, which the composer played 
 at recitals in New York (1911) and Christiania (1913), 
 was dedicated to the Norwegian pianist Baker-Grondal, 
 son of the composer Agatha, who also played it at Chris- 
 tiania during the winter of 1913. With the exception of 
 a Schumanesque Berceuse, the numbers of the Suite reflect 
 aspects of Russian peasant life: a Doumka with an under- 
 tone of grief ; an Ecstase — one thinks involuntarily, since 
 it was written before the famous decree, of Arnold Bax's 
 In a Vodka Shop — though its music, at once simpler and 
 more ardently sensuous than that of the English modern- 
 ist's piece, is imbued with quite another spirit ; a Barca-
 
 62 Leo Ornstein 
 
 rolle; a typically Russian, almost Asiatic, Melancolie; a 
 Burlesque, which is in truth a peasant dance, and a Chan- 
 son pathctiqiie (a left-hand melody, with a florid accom- 
 paniment in the right), which in mood, if not in melody, 
 is akin to Tschaikovsky. There is little in this graceful 
 and attractive music to identify the composer with the 
 Notre-Dame Impressions. The same may be said of those 
 happily conceived groups, the Cossack Impressions, Op. 14, 
 and the Suite Ukraine, Op. 17. 
 
 Finally, the Sonatina, Op. 15 (MSS.), "lucid in 
 melody and form," and technically not unduly difficult, 
 is written in G sharp minor. It employs the idiom of 
 the Greek folk-song of Asia Minor, and is frankly lyric 
 in character, with a particularly charming final movement. 
 Indeed, despite touches of French impressionism, it almost 
 seems that, had Mozart been brought up in twentieth cen- 
 tury Athens instead of Salzburg, he might have been its 
 author. 
 
 These pieces may be said to represent the more con- 
 ventional Ornstein — the Ornstein who is gracefully and 
 completely at home in the well-beaten paths of style and 
 harmony sanctioned by tradition. They represent, how- 
 ever, especially from his own point of view, a lesser phase 
 of Ornstein's artistic nature, a gift for pastel, miniature 
 and water color in music on the part of an artist whose 
 more serious work demands richer means and mediums, 
 a more untrammeled freedom in expression and larger 
 canvases for its proper development. 
 
 It is not these compositions already considered which 
 have led Ornstein to be called an "anarch," "the only true- 
 blue, genuine Futurist composer alive," and an "agent for 
 the spread of evil doctrines in musical art." The works 
 which have established his reputation as a composer of 
 individually modernistic ideals and trend are those in 
 which he gives free rein to his inspiration without regard
 
 His Work 63 
 
 for rule and, according to those who do not understand 
 them, without rhyme or reason. 
 
 The best-known and, hence, perhaps, offering the near- 
 est point of departure for an account of what, for want 
 of a better term, have been called his futuristic composi- 
 tions, is his Opus 3, No. 2, the Danse sauvage ("The 
 Wild Men's Dance"). Critical opinion has seized upon 
 it as the most easily accessible of Ornstein's individualis- 
 tic developments of mood in music. Such phrases as, 
 "Like a boy's dream of wild Indians," "the rare roast 
 beef of all Onistein functions,"* "crazy carnival of legs and 
 rum," "more suggestive of a free fight of ferocious energy 
 than a dance," "a picture of primordial beings in all the 
 savage abandonment of the wildest of corybantic revels," 
 record some critical impressions. To one mind it calls up 
 an image of "an imbecile child escaped from an asylum 
 into a room where a piano happened to be, and thump- 
 ing it with all his might." Again, it has been alluded to, 
 perhaps not without an inflection of irony, as "a down- 
 right classic," and "its point, originality and suggestive- 
 ness" have been praised. It is true that its compelling 
 power, its superenergetic rhythms, its electric vitality can- 
 not well be negatived. Yet this "sheer dynamic force," 
 this "rhythmical frenzy," to one able v.^-iter** on subjects 
 musical represent "nothing so much as a child in an un- 
 controllable fit of hysteria," while to another,! when 
 played by Ornstein himself, this "notable piece of delin- 
 eative and characterizing music" gains a "savagery of 
 voice, a clumping rhythm, a reiteration of pounding phrase, 
 a primeval force and fury which make it sound out of 
 the stone age of, by and for — as some will say — the cave 
 men !" 
 
 * H. F. Peyser, an able, eauatlc and honest eritic, nnfortuuately not 
 in sympathy with Ornstein's trend. 
 ** Charles L. Buchanan. 
 t H. T. Parker.
 
 64 Leo Ornstein 
 
 Ornstein himself speaks of his Wild Men's Dance as 
 "a study in concrete rhythms." He says: "What I tried 
 to do was to write a dance so intense in expression that, 
 though physically impossible of execution as a dance, it 
 would call up to the listener on the wings of imagination 
 the limitless strength and abandon of the nature dance 
 in primal times!" 
 
 The listener whose mind is open only to musical 
 thought expressed with positive logical continuity, and in 
 accord with certain accepted rules of presentation, can- 
 not expect to grasp the vital potency of a mood inspira- 
 tion whose logic is perfectly emotional, which carries 
 away with it the spirit attuned to its key-note of abso- 
 lute abandon of sequential arrangement. If the listener 
 does not understand or appreciate the Wild Men's Dance, 
 it is hardly likely that other compositions in Ornstein's 
 second manner will appeal to him. 
 
 Ornstein's Deux Impressions de Notre-Dame, Op. 16, 
 No. 1, are another case in point. The grandiose and phan- 
 tasmagoric character of these two mood pictures is re- 
 flected even in the banal criticism passed at their first 
 London performance "that the sight of the building had, 
 for some cryptic reason, filled the composer with terrors 
 that could not be controlled." And, of course, the pro- 
 grammatic indication of the chimes in the first, Sound of 
 Bells Floating through the Atmosphere, has not escaped 
 observation. "Jangled bells," "a quite clever imitation of 
 cracked bells," however, do not adequately describe in his 
 music "the conflicting yet mellowed resonances which ebb 
 and flow from within and without in vibrant waves" 
 through the vaulted arches of the great Gothic cathedral. 
 And it is the spiritual thought underlying the trilling 
 passages in handfuls of semitones, and the post-Schon- 
 bergian use of major seventh chord progressions that at 
 once forces itself upon the auditor who has familiarized
 
 His Work 
 
 65 
 
 himself with Ornstein's tonal idiom. It was in the sum- 
 mer of 1913 that Ornstein saw Notre-Dame for the first 
 time and there attended mass, and so powerful an impres- 
 sion did this visualization of the ancient Gothic pile make 
 
 Jm/i/u^^-i'tmy d^ rloC^c^^ ^i< 
 
 OC-'TTZC 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 c/i.-rd fp^f. 
 
 I 
 
 Lk*U 
 
 ;Ml 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^f^ 
 
 ^'v 
 
 upon him that, oblivious of all else, he at once hastened 
 to his hotel to set down his impressions on paper. To 
 quote his own words : "I have sought to express the very 
 soul of 'this vast symphony in stone,' as Victor Hugo 
 calls it, to recreate the very spirit of those deep space 
 dimensions reverberating with the passionate prayers, 
 hopes and aspirations of past centuries." And the first 
 Impression, as Paul Rosenfeld so well puts it, conveys a 
 mysterious aloofness, a historied solitude "with its gray.
 
 66 
 
 Leo Ornstein 
 
 mounting masses, its cloistral reverberations of bells, its 
 savage calls of the city to the one standing alone with 
 the monument of a dead age." 
 
 In the second Impression, The Gargoyles, the compo- 
 ser's imagination has reacted with a sinister and terrify- 
 ing eloquence to the compelling stimulus of its subject. 
 In its music he raises from the dead stone the gargoyles 
 — those fantastic evocations of the medieval sculptor's art, 
 whose grotesque form and visage, bestial, rapacious, lewd, 
 demoniac or imbecile in turn, borrow the lineaments of 
 monster, bird and devil to express the revolt of the crea- 
 tive artist and thinker against the tyranny of the medie- 
 val Church and State. In Ornstein's musical vision these 
 malign aberrations of the human spirit, these concrete 
 symbols of intolerance and tyranny leave their lofty 
 
 ^ .71 • .. 1, 
 
 eeries, and descend the winding stairways of the cathe- 
 dral from tower and roof to gather about the high altar. 
 There the spell which has for centuries perpetuated them, 
 enduring memorials of ancient wrongs, is lifted; and they
 
 His Work 67 
 
 take new shape and substance as the hidden obverse, 
 the imphed ideal whose antithesis they had represented. 
 A poet's dream — the gargoyle coming to life for a fleet- 
 ing moment to find a new soul ! — and expressed with a 
 fervor, a chaotic glory and confusion of irresistible reso- 
 nance that compels conviction ! And yet this very Im- 
 pression, when first heard in London, was dismissed with 
 the jeer that it "suggested a battle royal of cats on the 
 tiles !" 
 
 Here, too, should be mentioned the composer's twenty- 
 measure rhapsody The Cathedral, Op. 38, No. 2,* origi- 
 nally written to give a practical illustration of how to 
 perform his music. 
 
 It lias the following program: 
 
 The moon cast its rays upon the cathedral, which 
 stood in its majestic omnipotence, silently waiting. Sharp, 
 black figures crawled over the walls, and long, writhing 
 figures, like green snakes, tore at the hard, square stones, 
 their white teeth bristling. Bells sounded, first loud and 
 harsh, then soft and mournful. The fate of a universe 
 seemed concentrated on their peal. Suddenly all was dark, 
 and a sharp shriek, wild and piercing, came through the 
 black night. Great blocks of stone crashed, falling, into 
 an abyss, into figures. A loud, piercing wail, then all was 
 silence. 
 
 It is, in a way, an echo of the Notre-Dame Impres- 
 sions, akin to them in character, and the composer ex- 
 plicitly states that his program is suggestive, an aid 
 toward capturing the mood of his music, and not a literal 
 commentary on its progress. Quite aside from its avowed 
 purpose to supply a key-piece for those who wish to be- 
 come better acquainted with his idiom, it forms an inter- 
 esting pendant to the two larger "cathedral" mood pictures. 
 The composer has since added to it three other composi- 
 tions (still in MS.) : No. ], The Bells; No. 3, The Monk 
 — is he a Rasputin? — and No. 4, The Midnight Mass, and 
 
 * The Musical Observer, December, 1913.
 
 68 Leo Ornstein 
 
 given the entire set the general title, Four Religious Im- 
 pressions. 
 
 The Impressions de la Tamise, Op. 13, No. 1, in which 
 we hear the bells of Westminster instead of the chimes 
 of Notre-Dame, is a mood of another color. Walking 
 along the Embankment one Sunday night in London, the 
 composer, gazing across the Thames, saw the black mass 
 of spires and chimneys rising on the farther edge of the 
 stream, the twinkling lights on the river itself, while the 
 soft tolling of the minster bells touched the entire scene 
 with a gentle melancholy. And there came to him out 
 of the night a vision of the waters of the river rising in 
 an agitated torrent, sweeping away the bridges, overflow- 
 ing their banks, tearing houses and people into their inky 
 gulf and bearing away the multitudes of the dead upon 
 its bosom till, sated, all was silent save the bells which 
 now pealed out a threnody. Such is the composer's in- 
 terpretation. It is carried out in a scheme of abrupt 
 modulatory and dynamic contrasts, of exploitation of the 
 alpha and omega of the keyboard register. Its music, 
 H. T. Parker says, "seems a succession of strokes rather 
 than an unfolding line." Other interpretations than that 
 given by Ornstein himself have been read into it. Most 
 critics see it as a realistic apotheosis of toil, as a program- 
 matic picture of labor with imaginative sound detail, as 
 "a rhapsody of grinding cranes, churning turbines, bells 
 and factory whistles," of a scene "near the docks, where 
 steamer sirens cry and the noise of cranes disturbs the 
 foggy air, and all is gray and unbeautiful." Yet what- 
 ever concept it calls up, its potent virility, its intensity, 
 evokes a picture of sombre power in the mind of the audi- 
 tor, a picture which is the reflex of its youthful glow and 
 vitality of inspiration. 
 
 The two Pieces a Silhouette (Shadow Pieces), Op. 17; 
 the Three Preludes, Op. 20; the Three Moods (Anger,
 
 His Work 69 
 
 Peace, Joy), Op. 23; the Three Burlesques, Op. 30, and 
 the Eleven Short Piano Pieces, Op. 29, are all, in fact, 
 mood pictures, with or without programmatic suggestion, 
 chips from the same workshop that has produced the 
 more sustained efforts already discussed. The first of 
 the Shadow Pieces, a Dance of Shadows, is a veritable 
 hurricane of counterpoint, one shadow overlapping the 
 other in a mad whirl, yet whose intricate rhythms never 
 lose clarity and whose chords evaporate into extended 
 shadow figurations. The Shadozvs Pursued (No. 2) has 
 a symbolic program. The child, endeavoring to catch his 
 own shadow, typifies man who calmly at first, then with 
 growing passion and intensity, seeks to attain his desires 
 — unsubstantial shadows — and perishes in the vain attempt. 
 The Three Preludes were the first of the composer's com- 
 positions in his "own" idiom lacking a program. They 
 represent an endeavor to create real beauty in abstract 
 sound and rhythm, as absolute music. The first, in par- 
 ticular, seeks to evoke an atmosphere of tragedy within 
 the compass of a few measures, and the third may be 
 called a species of exultant Bacchic dance. Of the Three 
 Moods the composer says: "No man realizes joy until 
 he has experienced rage, sorrow and its resolution, peace. 
 And to understand my joy you must understand my anger 
 as well, for my conception of both is so individual that one 
 cannot be understood without the other." Of the three, 
 Anger stands out as "a finely ugly piece of music of tre- 
 mendous rhythmic interest," to quote A. Walter Kramer; 
 while a critic less open to new impressions hears in it 
 only "noise poured forth in tremendous volume." Leonide 
 Massine, of the Ballet Russe, when he heard the Three 
 Moods, paid ^he composer the compliment of asking him 
 to make an orchestral transcript of them, so that he 
 would be able to present them in the interpretative dance. 
 The Three Burlesques are cynical, bitter, the sorrows of
 
 I 
 
 Anger
 
 His Work 71 
 
 Werther shot with the disillusion of reality. They have 
 been compared in music to Sime's drawings in art. They 
 satirize in turn sentiment, joy and elegance with a harsh 
 and vicious irony. "I do not spare even my own beliefs 
 and emotions," says the composer of them, "and have 
 sacrificed all else to express basic truth in bizarre carica- 
 ture." The Eleven Short Piano Pieces (Scenes of Paris- 
 ian Life), as might be expected, run a changing gamut 
 of interest and appeal, and might be called individual 
 "voices in the wilderness" crying their creator's gospel 
 with varying inflections of intensity, giving brief illumi- 
 native vistas of his language and ideals in a reflex of 
 reactions to the life of Paris during his stay in that city. 
 They are tempestuous and ardently emotional — true mu- 
 sical children of a Sturm und Drang period ! 
 
 The Seven Fantasy Pieces one critic calls "cubist" 
 music and, derisively referring to the well-known painting, 
 "Nude Descending a Staircase," implies that one of them 
 might well be termed "Gentlemen in coat-of-mail falling 
 down the stairway of a Fifth Avenue 'bus." Since they 
 have no individual titles and are intensely modern in char- 
 acter, the gibe may be forgiven if the critic was honest 
 in recording his impression. But too often conscience has 
 no sting for the inventor of a happy phrase ! 
 
 Here, too, might be mentioned the "Vannin" numbers, 
 The Night and The IValtzers. Vannin is Ornstein, yet 
 not Ornstein. The composer, eschewing the theory of 
 double personality, does not claim that Vannin is the Mr. 
 Jekyl of his Dr. Hyde. But he does feel that there is 
 a phase of his creative nature which is distinct and indi- 
 vidual, one with which his normal creative inspiration has 
 nothing in common. Hence unto Vannin is rendered that 
 which is Vannin's and not Ornstein's, an arrangement 
 whose logic is clear. The Night paints a heaven "of brood- 
 ing skies," obscure, sombre, oppressive; The Waltsers
 
 "A LA Chinoise" 
 
 (Street scene in a Chinese town.)
 
 His Work 73 
 
 might be called a somewhat over-accented caricature of 
 the social dance, a twentieth-century Ox-Minuet, in which 
 grosser humans take the place of the oxen. 
 
 A la Chinoise (1911) Op. 39, dedicated to Rudolph 
 Ganz, and played by the Swiss pianist, is probably the 
 most "photographic" composition Ornstein has written. 
 Tremendously difficult and effective, it is a tone picture 
 of the street life of a Chinese city. In a glowing, exotic 
 quasi-cacophony it weaves a brilliant web of sound in 
 which are caught up the tintinnabulations of pagoda bells 
 swaying in the breeze, the head-voice chatter of a Chinese 
 crowd, cries of merchants soliciting purchasers for their 
 wares, above the swelling chant of bonzes in processional, 
 the curses of the beggars thrust aside by the pikemen of 
 some mandarin's escort, the pentatone din of Chinese 
 orchestras, and a thousand and one other flashes of inci- 
 dental sound impinging on murmuring tmdercurrent of 
 alien street noises. 
 
 The Danse arahe (1914), an Arabian Nights' fancy, 
 might be called a companion piece of A la Chinoise. A 
 blind beggar woman of Bagdad or Bassorah, once a 
 caliph's favorite, appeals to the pity of the passerby with 
 her cry for alms. She tells the story of her fall from 
 her former high estate. She recalls the seductive powers 
 of the dance which led the Commander of the Faithful 
 to raise her from the ranks of the almees to the mistress 
 of the hareem and a life of luxurious dalliance and in- 
 trigue. But earth's glories are short. The caliph dies and 
 she is blinded by his successor's order. Again her voice 
 drops to a monotonous drone as she pleads for alms. 
 The music develops the sharp contrasts of pathos and 
 sensuous delight with notable effect, and actually tells the 
 ftory at which the rather colorless title merely hints. 
 
 The Improvisata and the Galop Fantastique are pieces 
 of the same year (1914). In the first the composer em-
 
 74 Leo Oknstein 
 
 ployed his title more or less as a general indication for 
 the designs and colors born of his imagination. It is 
 nature music, a sort of seascape of brutal and aggressive 
 character, yet full of vigor and vitality of movement. 
 The Galop Fantastique is a mad elemental rout. It is a 
 weaving together of the voices of the storm-winds and 
 the roar of oceanic billows and has a tremendous sweep 
 and swing. 
 
 The Masqiieraders, composed about a year and a half 
 ago, is another one of those bizarre ideas to which Orn- 
 stein's peculiar talent lends such vivid life in tone. An 
 earlier impressionist, Francois Couperin, has evoked a 
 set of maskers in his Folies francaises ou les Dominos, a 
 set of variations on a single harmonic theme. In them he 
 introduces Shame in rose, Impetuosity in red, Hope in 
 green. Longing in violet. Perseverance in gray, etc., but 
 they are all frivolous masqueraders, beneath whose dis- 
 guises are gay faces, guileless of all ulterior motive. 
 Ornstein's Masqueraders wear similar masks of many 
 colors, but their masks are an artificial outer cloak to hide 
 the soul reflected in their faces. These veiled prophets 
 of Khorassan, fair and noble to outward seeming, as they 
 are borne along in pleasure's rout, lose their disguise at 
 the midnight hour and stand hideously revealed in all 
 their true baseness and pretence. The composer has con- 
 ceived this picture "from a photographic point of view," 
 and has carried it out with uncompromising realism. 
 
 To return from these shorter numbers to the larger 
 works, we have the Suite des Gnomes (Dwarves' Suite), 
 Op. 11, composed in 1913, with its symbolic program rep- 
 resenting the life of man, for man is a dwarf, a pigmy, 
 helpless in the grip of cosmic forces. (1) Dawn is the 
 gray dawn of the soul's awakening to the realities of life. 
 The tragic undercurrent of meaning in the music denies 
 with fatalistic resignation the possibility of either joy or
 
 His Work 75 
 
 sorrow in a vale of tears. (2) Danse des Gnomes (Dwarf's 
 Dance). Man is obsessed by the futile desire to flee life's 
 ennui in exhilarating rhythmic motion. For a space the 
 dance brings forgetfulness, but soon there comes reac- 
 tion and the familiar vista of eternal sameness. (3) The 
 Funeral March* is, emotionally, perhaps, the most im- 
 portant number of the suite. Its pathos is deep and 
 unfeigned. Written in triple time, it is no conventional 
 mortuary march with a "Song of Hope" to imply that 
 all's well that ends well. It is rather the tonal embodi- 
 ment of uncompromising grief, an Oriental chant with 
 the wail of hired mourners. There is no confident looking 
 forward to a snug immortality; it is stark despair hiding 
 away that which is no more in the ground. We taste 
 the black earth to which all must return, we feel the grit 
 of death beneath our tongue, we hear the sods rattle on 
 the coffin-lid. In the middle there is a great despairing 
 outburst of extended hopelessness and resentment, and 
 at the end the tolling of fatalistic bells. (4) The Sere- 
 naders are such as we might hear before "The Harlot's 
 House" of Oscar Wilde, when "Love passed into the house 
 of lust." Man, abandoning the ideals of perfect love, 
 sings his passion to the courtesan, to a measure in which, 
 like his slain ideals: 
 
 * Beeth Vanboven, writing in the Winnipeg (Canada) Telegram in 1916, 
 offers some iuterpsriiig- ooiiiineuts ou the Funeral March : "'I can imag- 
 ine a .somewhat vulval" mind — seeking for images — being impressed by 
 the opening movement as the wrangling of stokers in Hades, protesting 
 at the prospect of another denizen of earth being thrust upon them. 
 ... It is not out of tune with the sombre, diabolic imagrination of the 
 composer. The frightful grinding in mid-piano . . . suggested the iron 
 inexorability of death . . . death as a colossal, whirring, palpitating 
 machine, a titanic crusher of bones. The cracked chimes at the close had 
 something sinister, awry, diabolic about them . . . attributes one can 
 readily associate with a mocking requiem tolled by lost spirits in the 
 black swirl of the underworld. There was in them a note of fiendish 
 laughter, as of a fallen archangel gloating over the dissipated pomp of 
 earthly existence . . . seared, blackened, defaced in death."
 
 'J'6 Leo Ornstein 
 
 "The dead arc dancing with the dead, 
 The dust is whirling with the dust." 
 
 (5) At Work does not picture the soul-inspiring gladness 
 of congenial toil, but man working from habit, caught 
 up in the dull mechanical round of ceaseless labor with- 
 out any of the compensating joy of achievement to sweeten 
 its monotony. (6) Ad arc he grotesque. Here in the form 
 of a theme with variations, employing cake-walk rhythms 
 to parody the modern social dance, we have the wretched 
 seeker of artificial pleasure, going through the motions 
 of amusement without real hope or interest. The final 
 variation might be termed a collective cry of despair. 
 A program such as this makes clear that the Dwarf Suite 
 was not written to please. It is, above all else, a most 
 poignantly sincere expression of psychic experience and, 
 as A. Walter Kramer has said: "If ever the tragic note 
 has been sounded in modern music it is surely to be found 
 in this work!" 
 
 The Sonata, Op. 25 (1914), is in four movements, 
 entitled, respectively, Tragedy, Love, Mystery, Retrospec- 
 tion. Its first and third movements ofifer an intensely 
 vivid record of personal emotion of the episodic revolt 
 of youth at the bitterness and delusions of actual life, 
 of its vague hopes and aspirations ; and those "other emo- 
 tions, timid and uncertain of themselves, uneasy with the 
 swelling sap of springtide, speak their poetry and their 
 pain in the movement of the same sonata entitled Love." 
 And in the finale. Retrospection, there is summed up all 
 that has gone before. Its sub-title. The Tragedy of a Sotd, 
 the composer has always hesitated to make public and 
 it appears on none of his recital programs. He himself 
 says of it: "I have tried to put into it the restlessness 
 of the artist's soul, the emotions that so often tear at my 
 own." It is alternately passionate, despondent, elated, 
 bitter, joyous and melancholy.
 
 His Work 77 
 
 The Concerto for piano and orchestra. Op. 44, still in 
 MS., is written in C sharp minor, in the usual four move- 
 ments, and is built up on Tschaikovskian lines. It is 
 emphatically Russian in feeling and expression, a brilliant 
 work, full of pianistic difficulties, and the composer will 
 probably be heard in it during the coming season. 
 
 Yet these works by no means complete the tale of 
 Ornstein's piano music. The recently published Serenade 
 and Scherzino, Op. 5,* are graceful, engaging fancies in 
 his earlier manner, which one need not be a modernist to 
 appreciate. The Valley of Tears {Impressions of Nor- 
 way) was inspired by bleak Scandinavian landscapes, and 
 the cruel efforts by which the Norse peasant wrests a 
 bare living from the unwilling soil. His most recent works 
 include: A la Mexicana, three folk-air impressions for 
 the piano ; the Arabesques, Op. 48 ; his Poems of 1917, 
 Op. 68 ; his Suite Belgium; his brilliant Burlesques of 
 Richard Strauss, and two transcripts, one of Dvorak's 
 Humoresque, planned for added sonority and pianistic 
 effect, and not without some interesting touches of the 
 transcriber's own personality in its development; and one 
 of a Schubert Moment Musical, a version in which, as a 
 glance at the excerpt on the page following might tend to 
 prove, the anarch handles his original with piety and regard 
 for its piquant charm. 
 
 A la Mexicana, three engaging playable bits of local 
 color in the style of the Mexican danzon, have all the 
 light grace of their kind, they strike the folk-tune note 
 implied by their title with happy skill and ingratiating 
 rhythm ; and their obvious colorful attractiveness will 
 probably meet with a wider meed of appreciation than will 
 be accorded many of the composer's more serious works. 
 
 * Carl Van Vechten, in his interesting essay on Leo Ornstein ("Music 
 and Bad Manners") stresses the dual musical personality of the composer 
 of the Scherzino and The Wild Men's Dance. The former "was not the 
 Ornstein who, in a dark corner of I'ogliani's, glowed with glee over the 
 possibility of dividing and redividing the existing scale into eighth, six- 
 teenth, and twenty-fourth tones. . . ."
 
 78 
 
 Leo Ornstein 
 
 An interlinear text expressing the spirit of the music 
 emphasizes their racially popular character. 
 
 The Arabesques do credit to their collective title, both 
 ill its decorative and its metaphoric sense. They are a 
 
 / f/'C-r>l.6>71/S^ ///u^tfc^c^i^ 
 
 UK rrr, 
 
 « 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
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 Te 
 
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 series of individual musical designs, rich in color, but (to 
 borrow a geometric term) their note-combinations are 
 curvilinear rather than rectilinear. Unlike the arabesques 
 of Saracenic mural art, however, their involute symmetry 
 is implied rather than apparent. In their way they are 
 among the most interesting things the composer has done, 
 and their fantastic interweaving of musical lines is carried 
 out with a fine sense for effect. Their individual titles 
 give wide latitude to the imagination of the player. 
 
 Some sound an Oriental note: We have L'Isle d' Ele- 
 phantine, (1) calling up visions of Nilotic ruins, and 
 Melopee de Prctres Hindous, (3) which might be a noc- 
 turnal chant rising to the carven roof of some Benares 
 temple. L'Echo Primitif (2) is a vague emotional cry of 
 primal feeling, half rage, half plaining. Eaux Ombragees
 
 His Work - 79 
 
 (4) gives us the feeling of "shadowed waters," of the 
 veiled deeps in forest tarn. In L'Ame des Cloches (5), 
 and the Fresque Pompeienne (6), the first a study in bell- 
 colors, the second a kind of Grecian dance, we have de- 
 lightful bits of contrasted programmatic development. 
 Passion (7), a thrilling bit of inspiration, is akin to L'Echo 
 Primitif. Le Vent qui gemit et rage (9), is another bit 
 of nature-music of finely wrought and expressive quality; 
 while Les Basoches (8) gives us a convincing impression 
 of medieval grofesquerie. The pieces are compelling and, 
 despite occasional difficulties, richly repay study. 
 
 The Poems of ipi/ were written in Montreal. A group 
 of ten pieces, each portrays some phase of the suffering 
 resulting from the world war, and reflects the anguish and 
 resentment of the primal savagery which drives man to 
 shed the blood of his fellows. In each the melodic line 
 is very distinct — and in the accompanying figure recurs a 
 persistent throb, a kind of rhythmic pulse-beat whose 
 relentless insistence emphasizes the grief which is the soul 
 of their inspiration. 
 
 Waldo Frank, Associate Editor of The Seven Arts, 
 has written for the Poems of igij a prose poem of rare 
 beauty, a Prelude which shows that the truth and sincer- 
 ity of their music has made a direct appeal to his imagi- 
 nation. Though we may not quote the Prelude to the 
 Poems of ipi/ in toto, as a deserved tribute to its poetic 
 appositeness and very real inspiration, and though it is 
 hardly right to do violence to its unity by a mere excerpt, 
 we cannot forbear giving its concluding paragraphs — they 
 express the true spirit and inwardness of the music's 
 meaning in a manner which could not be bettered : 
 
 "What did they (men and women) know but each 
 other? What did they have but each other? What could 
 they have and know, save one thing — love? The Mystery 
 of Life was not anguish enough for them — the bonds of
 
 Passion 
 
 (Arabesques)
 
 His Work 81 
 
 Birth and of Death were not helplessness enough for them ; 
 the blind ecstasy of the world that circled them and made 
 them quivering flesh of its despair was not despair enough 
 for them. And the walls of their prison laughed. 
 
 "I stood high upon the agony of the living and looked 
 upon men — upon the pity of men who had love and who 
 cast love away. This year I was a man and looked about 
 me. And I saw my brothers and sisters — they who in all 
 the common blackness of their lot had only love, and who 
 hated each other. And the laughter of our Prison was 
 clear to me. So the years of all my life shall be the years 
 of my sorrow." 
 
 The Suite Belgium is another series of mood pictures, 
 akin to the Poems of ipi/, and springing out of the deep 
 sympathy evoked by the fate of a small people ground 
 between the upper and nether millstones of modern war. 
 
 With the Richard Strauss Burlesques we step from 
 tragedy to comedy. Here we have twelve brilliant essays 
 in musical satire. The individual pieces have no titles, 
 but each is a witty burlesque, playful or sardonic, as the 
 case may be, of the idioms and peculiarities of the great 
 Bavarian's style and mode of expression, with apt and 
 telling reference to his incessant modulatory changes and 
 his zig-zag motives. They are entirely original with the 
 composer, since he has not had recourse to Straussian 
 themes to make his points. Both the Burlesques of Rich- 
 ard Strauss and the A la Chinoise will be heard this sea- 
 son on symphonic programs, in the composer's own orches- 
 tration. 
 
 His piano works, thus far, may be said to represent 
 the best-known expression of Ornstein's creative impulse; 
 yet it would be strange indeed if a composer of such 
 intense creative activity and abounding imaginative vigor 
 had not essayed other mediums of expression. 
 
 He has, in fact, written in all the larger forms, with 
 the exception of opera, and in this field, too, he is now 
 trying out his powers. He has composed symphonic
 
 82 Leo Ornstein 
 
 works, choral music, chamber music, compositions in both 
 the larger and smaller forms for the violin, the 'cello and 
 other solo instruments and songs. 
 
 His two symphonic poems for grand orchestra. The Fog, 
 and his orchestral suite, The Life of Man (the latter after 
 Leonid Andreyeff), have not as yet been heard in public. 
 
 The Fog, a London impression, evokes an elemental 
 surging of the phantasmagoric shapes which rise and over- 
 whelm the sleeping city with their vague and shadowy 
 menace. The Life of Man, an orchestral suite, is a more 
 extended work and comments in its Prelude and five 
 movements the Prologue and corresponding acts of An- 
 dreyeff's drama. Here the nebulous tonal chiaro-oscuro 
 of The Fog is replaced by a more harsh and definite 
 scheme of grays. It tells in tone, as the drama does in 
 dialogue and action, the tale of the whole life of Man, 
 "with its dark beginning and dark end." Its moral is 
 best expressed in Andreyeff's words: "And ye who have 
 come hither for mirth, ye who are doomed to die, look 
 and listen! Lo, the swiftly flowing life of Man will pass 
 before you, with its sorrow and its joys, like a far-ofif, 
 thin reflection!" The theme of the "Being in Gray," who 
 appears in the Prologue of the play, and in each succeed- 
 ing act, is woven into the harmonic development of each 
 movement of the Suite. 
 
 There is gloomy power and compelling contrast, a 
 tragic significance and a working up of dramatic inten- 
 sity that culminates in the close of the last movement, 
 where "in the darkness one can hear the movements of 
 the wild dancers, the shrieking, the laughter and the dis- 
 cordant and desperately loud sounds of the orchestra." 
 Ornstein has tried to put into his music not only the color- 
 scheme and philosophy of the drama, but, as he says: 
 "I have even gone so far as to attempt Andreyefif's sharp-
 
 His Work 83 
 
 angled rhythmic effects, which are an unmistakable factor 
 in the power of the play." 
 
 The piano versions of A la Chinoise and the Burlesques 
 on Richard Strauss, as well as the Funeral March from 
 the Dwarves' Suite, have already been considered. They 
 are to be heard in orchestral guise this season, and Mr. 
 Josef Stransky, whose catholic good taste and absence of 
 all narrow prejudice where "new" music is concerned 
 is well known, will be the first to present A la Chinoise 
 — as a delightful orchestral bonne bouche — and the Funeral 
 March with the New York Philharmonic. Speculation 
 regarding symphonic works as yet unheard is more or 
 less futile. Yet that delicate adjustment of the individual 
 tone-dynamics of the chord which gives so rich a color 
 to the composer's piano music should make itself felt even 
 more convincingly in the varied timbres of the symphonic 
 ensemble. And, to quote W. H. Humiston, an authority, 
 Stransky, "who is keen on detail, yet who never neglects 
 the 'grand idea/ " may be relied upon to see to it that 
 his artists "put their best foot forward" in the Funeral 
 March, and give A la Chinoise its full measure of exotic 
 glow and brilliancy in their interpretation. 
 
 In the field of chamber-music Ornstein has done some 
 of his most important work. We have, using the term 
 in its broader sense, such compositions as the Impressions 
 of Switzerland (Sunrise, The Forest, The Mountains, 
 Sunset), Op. 27, for piano four-hand, quartet and chorus. 
 We have— the composer's only composition in which his 
 two styles may be said to have been blended — his noble 
 setting of the Thirteenth Psalm, Op. 27, in which the 
 a cappella chorus theme, "How long, O Lord, wilt Thou 
 forget me?" is developed and amplified for double mixed 
 chorus, double string orchestra and piano. 
 
 And there are, besides, a Quartet for strings, Op. 28; 
 a piano Quintet, Op. 49 (in press), and a Miniature String
 
 84 Leo Ornstein 
 
 Quartet in his most advanced manner. In the last-named 
 each instrument has been given solo treatment, effective 
 use has been made of contrapuntal devices throughout 
 the four movements, and a peculiarity of the first is the 
 introduction of the theme by the first violin. The work 
 is dedicated to the Flonzaley Quartet. 
 
 Important, too, are his sonatas for violin and piano 
 and for 'cello and piano. In the Sonata for violin and 
 piano. Op. 26, in which, according to the acerb H. F. 
 Peyser, "the violin sings itself on its course with sugared 
 complacency," Mr. Von Kunitz* finds "a rich soul-life 
 unfolding itself through a mysterious, logical web of its 
 own; the strange dream and the winning simplicity of 
 the Andante, singing of distant countries. Eastern sun- 
 sets, Arabian flowers, far away; the petulant mockery 
 of the Scherzo, full of weird, fantastic caprice, with an 
 emphatically ponderous 'trio'-episode ; and the serene dig- 
 nity of the Finale, with its stirring climaxes and its wist- 
 ful coda." 
 
 It is a work not without Debussian inflections, most 
 grateful for the performer (and giving undeniable pleas- 
 ure in the interpretation of an artist like Miss Vera 
 Barstow). Yet it does not compare in importance of 
 thought-content with the famous second Sonata, Op. 31, 
 also for the same instruments, which represents a reac- 
 tion to the influence of the poetry of William Blake, and 
 the enthusiasm for the new musical vistas which the 
 writings of the poet opened up to the composer. This 
 sonata has come in for its full share of derision : "The 
 wall-paper design sonata," "a terrifying looking affair 
 recently printed" were among the comments its appear- 
 ance evoked. Its difficulty is almost prohibitive and the 
 playing of the piano part is limited to the virtuoso. It is 
 thus far, however, perhaps the most sustained develop- 
 
 • Canadian Journal of Music.
 
 His Work 
 
 85 
 
 ment on a large scale of an inspiration which concentrates 
 on the evocation of pure emotion in music and holds all 
 else more or less negligible. Purely in conformity with 
 
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 its title, for it cannot be called a "sonata" in any formal 
 sense, it is divided into four movements. These, to quote 
 A. Walter Kramer, interpret their program, the Prelude 
 to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 
 "as far as we can judge, faithfully enough." And it is 
 unquestionably "program music of wonderful sweep and 
 power, music of demoniac intensity of expression and 
 startlingly vivid dramatic emphasis." As yet uncompleted 
 are the Sonatinas for violin and piano, Op. 60 and Op. 74. 
 For the 'cello the composer has written no less than
 
 86 Leo Ornstei 
 
 N 
 
 four sonatas. What has been said in the preceding sec- 
 tion regarding Ornstein's attitude toward form is applica- 
 ble to them. There is also a Sonatina for 'cello and piano 
 which has not yet come from press. 
 
 As regards his shorter compositions for violin and for 
 'cello they reflect a more lyric and quasi-conventional type 
 rather than his most individualistic mode of expression. 
 The Three Russian Impressions, Op. 37, for violin and 
 piano, Olga, Natascha and Sonja, the first and last in 
 waltz tempo, the second a melody in folk-tone style, are 
 Russian in the Tschaikovskian sense (yet with a flavor 
 that is not Tschaikovsky's), colorful and effective, despite 
 their conventional mold. Barcarolle and Scherzo bear an 
 early opus-number, 3; and Two Miniatures, Op. 9, are 
 transcripts from the set of pianoforte Miniatures already 
 described. Recently published are two transcriptions for 
 violin and piano. Op. 43, one of the melodious June Barca- 
 rolle of Tschaikovsky, one of the Rubinstein Barcarolle 
 in F minor. As in the Schubert and Dvoi'ak piano trans- 
 cripts these apportion a maximum of effect to the solo 
 instrument, while showing artistic versatility in the han- 
 dling of the accompanimental harmonies. They give proof 
 of the appreciation and intelligence with which Ornstein 
 approaches the work of a fellow composer, and his re- 
 spect for intrinsically valid art manifestations which may 
 differ from his own. 
 
 Four Pieces for violin and piano. Op. 55 ; Five Pieces 
 for 'cello and piano. Op. 75, and Andante and Allegro for 
 flute and piano. Op. 57, are still in MS. or in process of 
 gestation. 
 
 Nor has Ornstein neglected the song, that most direct 
 of all vehicles for the presentation of musical thought. 
 
 While still an East Side schoolboy, he had already 
 written some twenty song settings of Robert Burns, whose 
 poetry then obsessed him. His songs, There Was a
 
 His Work 87 
 
 Jolly Miller Once, and the Rudyard Kipling setting, 
 Mother o' Mine, both date from this period. The former 
 has a melody of real lyric spontaneity, its "final tranquillo 
 with its obstinato figure is the piano part worthy of a 
 young master." The composer first sketched it during 
 a syntax lesson in the classroom on a blank page of his 
 grammar, with one eye on his teacher to see that he was 
 not observed. The Kipling setting is sombre, but rich in 
 dramatic feeling, and represents a fine individual concept 
 of a poem often set. 
 
 The three Lieder (2), Op. 33, Wiegenliedchen (Cradle 
 Song), In Goldener Fiille (A Vision of Glory) and Wald- 
 seligkeit (Alone in the Forest), mark an abrupt transition 
 from the manner of their predecessors. The piano accom- 
 paniments are orchestrally conceived, in the Cradle Song 
 in particular, and the voice is handled with an obbligato 
 effect. The same poems had already been set by Richard 
 Strauss; yet they appealed so strongly to Ornstein that 
 he felt impelled to set them in turn. A comparison be- 
 tween the tv/o musical \ersions is somewhat difficult to 
 establish, since their composers do not use the same lan- 
 guage. The Strauss songs are far more lyric in the ac- 
 cepted sense of the word; their harmonic development 
 is subordinated to the movement of the melodic line. 
 Ornstein is more mtense, more preoccupied with revealing 
 the intimate psychos of the poetic idea than with making 
 concessions to ideals of expression which he does not find 
 adequate for his purpose. His melodies are incidental 
 in the working out of his musical concept as a whole. 
 As he himself says: "In the Strauss Cradle Song you 
 have only a pictorial illustration of a woman rocking a 
 cradle. I have tried to go below the surface, to show the 
 fears and hopes for her child that fill the mother's mind." 
 
 Four settings of Blake poems, Op. 18 (1, Spring, 
 2. My Silks in Fine Array. 3, Memory, Hither Come.
 
 88 Leo Ornstein 
 
 4. Mad Song), like the Sonata, Op. 31, do homage to the 
 influence of the Enghsh poet-philosopher. They have 
 never been published, and should prove of interest be- 
 cause the composer, endeavoring to give the poems their 
 most intimate musical expression, has tried not only to 
 reproduce their thought-content, but to "strip his music 
 of all artificiality," and ecjual in tone "Blake's happy fac- 
 ulty of reaching out unfailingly for the essential truth." 
 
 Ornstein has been devoting more attention of late to 
 the song. Among the various songs he has written recently 
 might be instanced Six Russian Songs to texts by Pushkin, 
 Op. 76 ; a Tartar Lament that makes a poignant appeal ; 
 a fervid Arabian Gazal or love song (dedicated to Reinold 
 Werrenrath ) , and an expressive melody. She Stoops in 
 Visions of the Night. And a set of three Russian cho- 
 ruses for mixed voices, just completed, might also be men- 
 tioned here. 
 
 All in all, these works of Leo Ornstein represent a 
 notable harvest of inspiration to have been gathered by 
 one so young. Yet youth, intellectually and emotionally, 
 is sometimes a relative concept — Schubert wrote his 
 Forellen-Quintet at the age of seventeen. We may be as 
 old as our feelings or as young as our thoughts. Mental 
 and emotional development is not invariably a matter of 
 years, and Ornstein is one of those exceptions which go 
 to prove the general rule. In his case youth lends him 
 the fiery energy, the passionate concentration, the intense 
 belief in his aims and ideals which inform the musical 
 maturity of his inspiration with so triumphant an accent 
 of sincerity, so eloquent a feeling of truth. His creative 
 work is the logical outcome of his ideas, the spontaneous 
 fruition of absolute conviction, the irrefutable evidence 
 of his artistic honesty. Whether or not we accept it, to- 
 gether with the doctrines of which it is the outcome, the 
 fact of its existence as the true and legitimate musical
 
 His Work 89 
 
 materialization of definite trends and consistent ideals in 
 composition and expression cannot well be gainsayed. 
 
 Ornstein possesses in a supreme degree what Paul 
 Rosenfeld has called "the ability to transmute into art, 
 by means of a powerful and lurid imagination, the life 
 of his time." In his own way, according to the light 
 that has been given him, the composer turns emotion into 
 music — emotion, "thought in a glow," and the well-spring 
 of all life's activities — and gives it to the world as that 
 tribute to his art which every true artist owes humanity 
 at large. And to revert to the words of the writer already 
 quoted:* "One can only rejoice that he should already 
 have expressed in such original, powerful and permanent 
 form what of life has been revealed to him, and await 
 with confidence the donation his developed breadth and 
 poise is sure of making us." 
 
 • "Ornstein," by Paul Rosenfeld. The New Republic, May 27, 1916.
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT 
 
 of 
 
 COMPOSITIONS BY 
 
 LEO ORNSTEIN 
 
 Published by 
 
 THE BOSTON MUSIC COMPANY 
 
 Boston 
 
 PYGMY SUITE OP. 9. 
 Piano Solo 
 
 NO. 1. SERENADE 
 
 " 2. HUNTING SONG 
 
 " 3. BERCEUSE 
 
 " 4. THE DANCE 
 
 " 5. EVENING PRAYER 
 
 " 6. MARCH 
 
 " 7. BY THE BROOK 
 
 " 8. MERRY-MAKING 
 
 Each, 30c. Complete, Net, 60c. 
 B. M. Co. Edition No. 324
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT 
 
 o/ 
 
 COMPOSITIONS BY 
 
 LEO ORNSTEIN 
 
 Published by BREITKOPF CBi HARTEL, Inc. 
 
 New York 
 
 PIANO SOLO 
 
 Burlesque on Richard Strauss n $ .75 
 
 Arabesques n 1-25 
 
 Serenade, Op. 5, No. I n .50 
 
 Scherzino, Op. 5, No. II n .50 
 
 A la Chinoise n 1.25 
 
 Moments Musical: 
 
 (A concert version of Schubert's "Moments Musical," 
 
 Op. 51, No. I) n .50 
 
 VIOLIN AND PIANO 
 
 Sonata. Op. 26 n 1.50 
 
 Two Russian Barcarolles: 
 
 Tschaikowsky Barcarolle in G minor n .75 
 
 Rubinstein Barcarolle in F minor n .75 
 
 STRING QUARTET 
 
 The Miniature String Quartet n 2.00 
 
 ORCHESTRA 
 
 (In Preparation) 
 A la Chinoise 
 
 Burlesques on Richard Strauss 
 
 LEO ORNSTEIN— The Man, His Ideas, His Work. By 
 
 Frederick H. Martens. Illustrated n 1.00
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT 
 
 of 
 
 COMPOSITIONS BY 
 
 LEO ORNSTEIN 
 
 Published by OLIVER DITSON COMPANY 
 Boston New York 
 
 A PARIS street" SCENE AT NIGHT 
 
 LEO 0KN5TK1H 
 
 PIANO SOLO 
 
 Valse in G major, Op. 4, No. I Grade IV .50 
 
 Sarabande, Op. 4, No. II Grade IV .50 
 
 A Paris Street Scene at Night, Op. 4, No. Ill Grade V .50 
 
 VIOLIN AND PIANO 
 
 THREE RUSSIAN IMPRESSIONS 
 
 No. 1. Olga Grade III .60 
 
 " 2. Natascha Grade III .60 
 
 " 3. Sonja Grade IV .75
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT 
 
 o/ 
 
 COMPOSITIONS BY 
 
 LEO ORNSTEIN 
 
 Published by CARL FISCHER 
 
 Nev^ YorK Boston Chicago 
 
 PIANO SOLO 
 
 POEIMS OF 1917 Cin Preparation) 
 
 NINE MINIATURES 
 
 Xo. 1. Berceuse No. 4. Humoresque No. 7. Gavotte 
 
 2. Mazurka 5. Melancolie 8. Valse 
 
 3. Romance 6. Danse Fantastique 9. Danse Burlesque 
 
 Price, $1.25, n.et 
 
 voice: and piano 
 
 TWO songs- 
 No. 1. Mother o' Mine No. 2. There Was a Jolly Miller Once 
 Price of eacK 60c. 
 
 THRElEl SONGS. Op. 33 
 
 No. 1. Cradle Song No. 2. A Vision of Glory- 
 
 No. 3. Alone in the Forest 
 
 Price of each. 75c. 
 TWO ORIENTAL SONGS 
 
 No. 1. Tartar Lament, Russian Song No. 2. Gazal, Arab Love .Song 
 (In Preparation) 
 
 CHAMBER MUSIC 
 
 SONATA FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO, Op. 31 
 
 Price, $2.00. net 
 SONATA FOR 'CELLO AND PIANO 
 
 (In Preparation)
 
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