THE CLASSIC PERIOD OF AMERICAN COMPOSITION
Pioneers in American composition: Fry, Emery,
Gottschalk--The Boston group of 'classicists': Paine,
Chadwick, Foote, Parker, etc.--Other exponents of the
'classical': William Mason, Dudley Buck, Arthur Whiting,
and others--The lyricists; Ethelbert Nevin; American song
writers--Composers of church music.
I
American musical composition lends itself to several kinds of
classification, according to the point from which it is viewed.
Historically, or, more properly speaking, chronologically, considered,
the entire output of American composers divides itself rather naturally
into two parts. The first comprises the works of those writers with
whom this chapter deals, and who have adopted the older models of the
classic and romantic schools. In the second group we find those writers
of a later generation who employ post-Wagner idioms. Some of these have
stopped at the Wagner boundaries, while others, naturally the younger
men, have pressed on and are following in the steps of the ultra-modern
German or French composers. In this classification, as in all artistic
comparisons, there can be drawn no sharp line of demarcation. We find
an occasional flash of modernity in a supposedly confirmed classicist,
while, on the other hand, among the more advanced and iconoclastic
of our modern writers we often find a remaining trace of a severer
classicism.
Outside of these two principal groups we see to-day a constantly
increasing number of composers who are making serious attempts to
weld from the several folk-song elements of this continent a truly
national music. It was Antonin Dvořák who first counselled the American
composer to thus employ the methods from which alone could be formed a
distinctive school. Dvořák himself, in setting the example, only proved
how deep-rooted are the traditions and feelings of the racial vein, and
placed our negro themes into a setting unmistakably Slavic. It must be
confessed that a similar result has been obtained by most of our native
composers and the surroundings in which they have set these various
folk-song elements only serve to emphasize the decided and almost
inevitable leanings of these composers toward one or another of the
prevailing European schools.
From an æsthetic standpoint our native art exhibits the varied
manifestations common to the art of all times, traits as varied as
those of human character itself. Broadly speaking, there are always the
large and the small, which in poetic forms we can conveniently label as
epic and lyric. Of the former there is no prodigality of output by any
age or people. There is always much of the spurious epic, and it must
be confessed that America, with its lack of national consciousness and
art discipline or tradition, together with its over-weening ambition,
has already produced its share of this form of insincere art. On the
contrary, the number of genuine lyrical writers which America can boast
is surprisingly large, and those names which stand out conspicuously
in the annals of American art may, almost without exception, be called
lyricists.
[Illustration: Early American Composers: Lowell Mason, William H. Fry,
Louis M. Gottschalk, Stephen Emery.]
The first creative activities in American music were those of the
psalm-tune writers in New England, William Billings, Oliver Holden,
Lowell Mason, and others which have been spoken of in our chapter
on the Beginnings of Musical Culture (pp. 45 ff.). Historically
these early hymns are interesting, and, had not European culture so
completely influenced the later course of American composition, it
is not unlikely that they might have served in some measure as a
contributory vein to our native art. They remain, however, but the
reflection of the colorless puritanism which was their source, a naïve
expression which can hardly be placed in the category of art and hence
as American compositions do not here claim our further notice.
While in the early years of New England there was developing a music
which, in a way, sprang from the people--a music which really expressed
a vital phase of the common life--there were elsewhere springing up
the first growths of a more sophisticated art. This art, borrowed
from European culture, has served as the real foundation of all
that is esoteric in American music to-day, but at the same time its
presence has fostered those influences which constitute the barrier
to a vital national expression. It is significant that these first
appearances of a more ambitious art were in a department where there
could be no nourishment from native roots of tradition, taste, or even
understanding--that of opera.
In spite of these circumstances, so discouraging to the healthy growth
of a natural art-expression, it must be related that the operas of
William H. Fry (born in Philadelphia, 1813; died 1864) were serious in
their aim and in their workmanship showed the hand of a surprisingly
skilled artist and one well versed in the older dramatic formulas. The
claim that Fry has to the title given him by certain writers as 'the
first American composer' is therefore considerable. Fry's training was
entirely European. He was for some time resident in Paris, where, we
are told, he was a friend of Berlioz. Of Fry's several operas 'Leonora'
(produced in 1845) seems to have been the most successful. The book
is after Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame de Paris_, and, while the score
represents merely (as do many more modern American operatic scores) a
strange mingling echo of the several European models of the day, there
are a vitality and a grasp of form which make the achievement in a
measure phenomenal.
Associated with Fry in his musical life was another pioneer of the
opera field, George F. Bristow (born in 1825; died in 1898), whose
scores, however, have less of dramatic freedom than have those of Fry,
being more strongly marked with the influences of German classicism.
Bristow's works include an opera, 'Rip Van Winkle,' an unfinished
opera, 'Columbus,' the oratorios 'Praise to God' and 'Daniel,' five
symphonies, two overtures, string quartets, and many shorter works.
Another name that finds place in the early annals of American music is
that of Stephen Emery (born 1841; died 1891), counted a composer in his
day but now known to us chiefly as one of America's first theoreticians
and the teacher of many whose names are now well known.
Larger is the place filled by the name of Gottschalk. Louis Moreau
Gottschalk may be claimed as an American, having been born at New
Orleans in 1829, but his decidedly Creole origin and French education
seem to remove him from the line of relationship with those Anglo-Saxon
traditions which we are apt to consider as constituting the purely
American.
Gottschalk enjoyed during his life equal fame as pianist and composer.
His claim to the former was probably just; Berlioz himself spoke with
enthusiasm of his playing and of our own artists we have the testimony
of many, such as William Mason, Carl Bergmann, and Richard Hoffman, as
to the genuine enjoyment which they obtained in hearing the concerts of
Gottschalk. But how evanescent has been the fame of his compositions,
existing only in the memory of comparatively few; as entities they
are already silent pages of notes. All that is heard of his music
to-day is an occasional faint tinkle of that surviving strain of
sentimentality which was destined to such continued popularity in the
polite répertoire, 'The Last Hope.' Gottschalk wrote two operas and
several orchestral scores and many songs, but his piano compositions
comprise the bulk of his works. While there are among these
compositions many pages of beauty not unlike that of Chopin, and in the
dance compositions on negro-creole and Spanish themes a certain vigor
and distinction, the majority of them represent the merest vehicles
of virtuosity written to tickle the ears of a public which had been
brought up on the banalities played by the sensational pianists that
visited America in those days. Over-sentimental, and at times vulgar,
as the art of Gottschalk now appears to us, his place in American music
is an important one and we cannot but feel that amid environments
more sustaining to a higher ideal of art such a genuinely musical
temperament as was his would have produced an art less ephemeral.
II
These early apparitions of American musical art are now to us
only matters of history. Whatever influence they may have had on
the conditions of their day, our present day musical life has been
unaffected by them. For the establishment of that which, for lack of
better name, we call the American school of composers we again look
to New England. Through the few composers known as the Boston group
America first assimilated into its musical life the best traditions of
European musical culture and in the labors of these men the American
community was taught in some degree to look seriously upon the native
composer and his achievement.
First in this list is the name of the man who stands as the patriarch
of American music, John Knowles Paine, the first professor of music
at Harvard University and the pioneer in the field of symphonic
composition. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1839, Paine received a
thorough academic training in Germany (1858-1862). While still abroad
he produced several ambitious works and he returned to America with a
fame that eventually secured for him the chair of music at Harvard.
Here he filled an important mission in guiding the steps of many of
the younger composers who studied with him. In the meantime Paine's
academic life by no means stifled his creative impulse and his list of
works shows a steady output up to within a short time before his death
in 1906.
Important among Paine's larger works are the two symphonies, the
first in C minor and the second ('Spring Symphony') in A major, the
oratorio 'St. Peter,' two symphonic poems, 'The Tempest' and 'An
Island Fantasy,' the music to Sophocles' 'Œdipus' for male voices and
orchestra, and an opera, 'Azara.' Besides these there is a considerable
list of chamber music and much in the smaller forms.
Paine's music, while never approaching modernity in the present-day
application of the word, in passing through several periods of
development arrived at a point where the idiom employed could in a
broad sense be termed modern. An anti-Wagnerite in the early days of
his academic austerity, he lived to be drawn into the Wagner vortex
and in some of his later works the Wagner influence asserts itself.
Perhaps the most representative of Paine's works is one which belongs
to an earlier period, the music to _Œdipus Tyrannus_ (1881). In this
work Paine uses a classic-romantic medium far from rich in its color
possibilities, with which, however, he obtains a notable variety of
effect and a glowing warmth of style. In size of conception the summit
of Paine's achievement is to be found in his opera _Azara_ (1901)
composed to a libretto of his own after the old Breton legend 'Aucassin
and Nicolette.' Containing much that is beautiful, and estimable in its
workmanship, the opera fails in dramatic force and has never come to a
stage production. A concert performance of it was given, however, in
1906 by the Cecilia Society of Boston under the direction of B. J. Lang.
The most representative member of the present Boston colony, as well
as one of the most eminent of American composers, is George W. Chadwick
(born 1854). Mr. Chadwick's education also was a German one and on
his return to America after three years' study in Leipzig and Munich
he began to produce works of a scholarly formality. Had the course
of Mr. Chadwick's development been arrested at this point he might
fittingly bear the title of 'academic' which Mr. Rupert Hughes puts on
him.[86] But between the date of these earlier works and Chadwick's
latest works there has been in his art a steady development both in
form and spirit, so that his recent scores, 'Adonis' (1901), 'Euterpe'
(1904), 'Cleopatra' (1906), and 'Aphrodite' (1912), are distinctly
representative of the modern school. These works, while purporting
to be program music, are only qualifiedly so, for Chadwick always
preserves a certain severe formalism which precludes the possibilities
of his capitulation either to the impressionist vagaries of modern
French music or to the polyphonic complexities of the Germans of
to-day. In spite of this tendency to formality, Mr. Chadwick in his
writing has achieved a notable freedom of style, a dramatic force and
a mastery of orchestral color which contribute to give him a certain
place among living orchestral composers. Mr. Chadwick enjoys the
largest hearing of living American composers.
His name has been permanent in the lists of the Boston Symphony, while
he has had frequent hearings in the other orchestras of America and
Europe. Mr. Chadwick is also without question the best equipped and
experienced of our native conductors, having been for many years the
director of the Springfield and Worcester festivals.
Besides his orchestral works, Chadwick has shown himself a versatile
and prolific composer in a great amount of chamber music, a large
number of choral works, a comic opera, many songs, choruses, and piano
compositions. Unlike the lyric genius of MacDowell, his talent does not
find itself so fitted to the smaller forms and he seems often to slight
them with an expression more or less banal in its conventionality. It
must be added, however, that there are exceptions to this and one might
cite the 'Ballad of Trees and the Master' as being one of Chadwick's
best inspirations.
Mr. Arthur Foote has long been acknowledged in Europe as one of the
foremost American composers. In his own country his influence has
been as widely felt as that of any of his countrymen. Not only by
his compositions but by his teaching as well, his name has become
pre-eminent. Graduated from Harvard in 1874, he was granted the degree
of A. M. in music the following year. His teachers in composition
were Stephen A. Emery and Professor John Knowles Paine of Harvard.
Furthermore, he studied the piano and the organ with B. J. Lang of
Boston. All his training was received in this country, and the results
of it may well be a source of pride to his countrymen.
Entering upon his career at a time when the standard of musical
performance in this country was low, he was quick to respond to the
influence of Theodore Thomas, and later Franz Kneisel, and to exert his
efforts in raising the state of performance here toward its present
equality with that of Europe. He was no less quick to study and to
appreciate the great works pouring out upon Europe at that time. He
has always kept in closest touch with the development of all branches
of music down to the present, and has ever been active in bringing new
works before the public.
As a composer he has written in nearly all forms except the opera.
Many of his songs have achieved a world-wide fame, such as the 'Irish
Folk-song,' 'I'm Wearing Awa' to the Land o' the Leal' and the
brilliant Bedouin song for chorus of men's voices. These songs should
not be taken as the complete expression of his genius, but should lead
to the study of his other songs, more than a hundred in all, which
are not less inspired because more difficult. A keen insight into the
possibilities of the voice, a touch of lyric genius, and an unfailing
ingenuity in accompaniments are their distinguishing characteristics.
In the treatment of string instruments Foote has been remarkably
successful. Two trios, two quartets and a very fine piano quintet in
A minor are conspicuous in the list of American music. The quintet
has been and still is distinguished by many performances. Through
the strings he approached the orchestra. A serenade in E for string
orchestra has been frequently heard. Two suites for full orchestra, one
in D minor and one in E, and a symphonic prologue, Francesca da Rimini,
have proved his skill in combining instruments. Very recently he has
written a series of pieces suggested by the Rubaîyat of Omar Khayyâm,
which are far more brilliantly scored and are quite in keeping with the
modern spirit of splendid tone color.
As organist for many years at the First Unitarian Church in Boston he
acquired that intimate familiarity with the possibilities of the organ
which shows in the many pieces he has written for it. But particularly
as a pianist he won a wide fame, and the more than ten series of
pianoforte pieces are written with an appreciation of pianistic effect
which distinguishes them in the main from nearly all other pianoforte
music produced in this country. Nor should the skill he has shown
in editing the pianoforte works of many of the great masters pass
unnoticed.
Of his compositions as a whole it may be said that they are
astonishingly original in an age which has found it all but impossible
to escape imitation. He is, like most of the great composers, largely
self-taught, and yet there is scarcely a trace of mannerisms; nor what
is even more remarkable, of the mannerisms of others. His music is the
pure and perfectly formed expression of a nature at once refined and
imaginative. In these days of startling innovations, the sincerity
of which may not be unhesitatingly trusted, it sounds none the less
spirited because it is unquestionably genuine and relatively simple. It
stands forth as a substantial proof that delicate poetry and clear-cut
workmanship have not yet failed to charm.
Although he has lived at New Haven for the past twenty years,
during which time he has been professor of music at Yale, Horatio
Parker's career is in a large measure identified with Boston and its
circles. Parker was born (1863) at Auburndale, a suburb of Boston,
and his earliest teachers were Stephen Emery and Chadwick. After his
preliminary studies with these men Parker studied with Rheinberger
in Munich. Returning home in 1885, he soon began to attract notice
by the excellence of his compositions and to-day he stands as one of
the commanding figures in American music. His compositions have won a
dignified place for themselves and his conscientious labors at Yale
have created a music department that far excels those of the other
American universities in the practical advantages which it offers to
the serious music student.
The list of Parker's works is long and varied. It contains, besides
his two most famous works (the oratorio _Hora Novissima_ and the opera
'Mona'), several orchestral scores, among others an overture (in E
flat), a symphony, and 'A Northern Ballad.' There are also several
shorter choral works, a few chamber music works, including a string
quartet, a string quintet, and a suite for piano, violin and 'cello,
besides many songs and piano pieces.
The same qualities of Parker's art which contribute to the success of
_Hora Novissima_, the first work to bring him fame, are those which
operate against the success of his latest and largest effort, the
opera 'Mona.' The former offered to the composer the most suitable
field for his scholarly but somewhat ascetic conceptions and by this
same self-contained and poised loftiness of style, together with a
rare skill in handling vocal masses in contrapuntal design, does he
achieve in _Hora Novissima_ a work of genuine strength and a valuable
addition to the list of modern oratorios. The work, written in 1893 for
the Church Choral Society of New York, received its first performance
by that body. Performances by several other choral societies and at
several musical festivals in America rapidly followed, and in 1899
it had the honor of being the first American work to appear upon the
program of the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester, England, at which
performance the composer conducted. Since that time it has assumed its
place among the standard choral works of our day.
Parker's opera, 'Mona,' was awarded the prize offered by the
Metropolitan Opera Company in 1911 in a contest of American composers.
Its score reveals an enormous advance in the composer's mastery of
resource, both as regards dramatic expression and orchestral color.
There are an admirable freedom of line and sustained polyphonic
interest, while the skill with which the orchestral color is
distributed exhibits Parker's strongest feature. In spite of these
merits the almost unanimous opinion of the music critics must be
admitted, in a degree, as just. The opera, upon its production at
the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in 1911-12, was found to be
lacking in a really convincing musical grip, due to the absence of an
underlying emotional warmth and to the essentially unmelodic treatment
of the solo voices. The choruses and mass effects proved the best
features of the opera, again showing that Mr. Parker's first successes
were in a field more suited to his talents than the domain of dramatic
music. Another opera, 'Fairyland,' won another prize of ten thousand
dollars in 1915.
Mrs. H. H. A. Beach stands quite in a class by herself as the only
American woman who has essayed compositions in the larger form. Her
success entitles her to a prominent place among the most serious of
American composers. Her 'Gaelic Symphony' and her sonata for violin and
piano are two long successful works, while recently she has had a most
cordial and flattering reception in Europe for her piano concerto in
which she herself played the solo part. Besides these works Mrs. Beach
has written a _Jubilate_ for chorus with orchestra, and a quantity of
piano music and songs, of which some of the latter have achieved a wide
popularity.
Mrs. Beach at her best writes in a broad and bold vein with a pulsing
rhythmical sense, a natural melodic line, and she exhibits an
extraordinary strength in the sustained and impassioned quality of
her climaxes. On the other side, Mrs. Beach may be accused of having
a harmonic sense rather too persistently conventional and in her less
inspired moments her fault is that which Mr. Hughes[87] has pointed
out, namely, a tendency to over-elaboration.
There are several other composers whose labors are identified with
the musical life of Boston, although in some instances they have not
been continuously resident there. Louis Adolphe Coerne received his
early training at Harvard under Prof. Paine and was later awarded a
doctor's degree in philosophy by the same university for his excellent
book 'The Development of the Modern Orchestra.' Coerne's achievement
in composition has been considerable; he is the author of two operas,
one of which has been successfully performed in Germany. Other works
include a symphonic poem on 'Hiawatha' and a ballet, 'Evadne.'
James C. D. Parker is one of the names associated with the older days
of Boston's musical growth, for Mr. Parker graduated from Harvard in
1848 and his 'Redemption Hymn' was performed by the Handel and Haydn
Society in 1877. He is best known by several melodious songs and by his
church music.
George Whiting and George W. Marston are names which perhaps belong
more properly in the list of church composers, as they were both
closely identified with that field. The former, however, has written
several works of large dimension, notably a cantata, 'The Golden
Legend,' which has been much praised, while Mr. Marston's name is known
outside of church circles by a surprisingly long list of songs, which,
though slight in construction, are not without imaginative qualities.
Although not attaining to such a mastery of the more amplified forms
as does Mrs. Beach, Margaret Ruthven Lang has made several successful
essays in the form of orchestral overtures, which have been played.
Miss Lang's best-known works, however, are her songs, the widespread
popularity of certain ones of which has given her a real and lasting
fame as a song writer.
III
In grouping the foregoing names and labelling them as the 'Boston
group' it must not be understood to imply that the art of these writers
forms a school in the sense of its having a common distinctive idiom or
style. The group marks in some of its members, as has been said before,
an early era of American composition. The fact that Boston became the
birthplace of America's first serious musical art was probably due to
the presence there of the largest and best permanent orchestra, to the
establishment of the first university department of music (at Harvard),
and doubtless also in no small degree to the general intellectual life
of the New England metropolis.
Generally speaking, however, locality plays but a small part in
marking the traits of our native composers. As in all places and at
all times, opportunity to hear and to be heard has drawn the best
talent to the larger centres. The musical life of New York, as well as
that of Chicago, while differing in many essential features from that
of Boston, discloses many similar phases of artistic endeavor as we
compare the contemporaneous musical life of these cities.
Among the names of those who were the pioneers in the musical
culture of New York none is better known than that of William Mason,
the first of America's great pianists, who in his earlier life did
valiant service in America for the cause of Schumann and Brahms and
whose entire life represents one of the highest and most effective of
America's cultural influences. Dr. Mason was a son of Lowell Mason
(q. v.) and was born in 1829. He spent the years from 1849 to 1854
in Europe, where he was one of the intimate circle of pupils which
surrounded Liszt at Weimar.
Dr. Mason's place as a composer is not a large one. His list of works
is represented almost exclusively by piano compositions, of which he
wrote about forty. They are all in the smaller mold, and, while they
are rather stereotyped and conventional in their lines, they have found
a place in the pianistic répertoire as grateful and pleasing pieces of
piano music.
The composer of church music has had a large place in the field of
American composition. The impetus given to this branch of art by the
New England 'psalm-tune teachers' was a strong one and it is but a
natural consequence of their labors that to-day the church commands
the services of so many of our writers. We shall consider the church
composers and their works in subsequent paragraphs of this chapter, but
the name of the Nestor of anthem writers--Dudley Buck--deserves mention
in this place as being one of the first workers in the general musical
service of earlier days in New York. Moreover, while the present
fame of Buck rests largely upon his church music and upon one or two
deservedly popular songs, he must not be overlooked as one of the first
composers in America to essay the larger forms of cantata and oratorio.
Buck was born in Hartford in 1839. He studied at Paris and at Dresden
for two years. Returning to America, he pursued his career first in
his native city, later at Chicago and Boston, finally settling in 1875
at New York, where he passed the remainder of his life. Apart from
the large mass of church music, more largely representative of his
real mission than any other of his compositions, the list of Buck's
works includes a symphonic overture 'Marion,' a comic opera 'Deseret,'
besides a list of something like eighteen cantatas, the most ambitious
of which is 'The Light of Asia.'
Buck's style never achieved a distinctive vein, nor is it ever marked
with a loftiness of conception, but instead there are, in the best of
his pages, a Mendelssohnian fluency of writing and a natural melodic
line which have gained for his works the favor of a large public.
One of the first native composers to receive serious recognition
in Chicago was Silas G. Pratt, a musician who seems to have had a
Wagner-like genius for self-exploitation, but whose brilliant career
must be said to have been incommensurate with the real value of his
works. Pratt was born in 1846 and as early as 1872 gave a concert of
his own works in Chicago. Several years later he produced some of
his larger works at concerts in Germany and England, and in 1885 his
oratorio, 'The Prodigal Son,' and an anniversary overture were given in
London. His opera 'Zenobia' had meanwhile (1882) been given in Chicago.
Besides these works Pratt wrote two symphonies, a symphonic suite, and
several works which are evidently an effort toward a national music,
at least such is the implication of their titles and programs. One
of these represents a battle of the Civil War, another depicts the
incidents of Paul Revere's ride, while a third bears the impressive
title 'The Battle of Manila.'
Another potent activity in the earlier days of Chicago's musical
life was that of Frederic Grant Gleason (born in 1848), who has to
his credit an imposing list of large works, including two operas,
'Montezuma' and _Otho Visconte_, a symphonic poem, 'Edris,' several
cantatas, and many smaller works. Gleason was highly esteemed by
Theodore Thomas, who produced many of his works in the Chicago concerts
of the Thomas Orchestra.
Henry Schoenefeld was one of the first Americans to follow Dvořák's
suggestion in adopting native folk-song as thematic material.
Schoenefeld was born in Milwaukee in 1857 and on his return from Europe
in 1879 took up his residence in Chicago. Not unlike his are the
talents and aims of Maurice Arnold, another of the first to exploit the
negro themes, which he successfully incorporated into a violin sonata
and a series of 'Plantation Dances.' Both will receive more extended
notice in a later chapter.
As against these early efforts at instilling negro flavor into our
national music may be noted one of the first attempts at utilizing
Indian music as a thematic basis. This was done by Frederick R. Burton
in his cantata 'Hiawatha' (1898). Besides this, the most successful
of his works, Burton wrote a cantata, 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,'
and the last years of his life were devoted to writing one of the most
important contributions to the literature of American folk-music, a
book on Indian music entitled 'American Primitive Music,' which was
published in 1909, after Mr. Burton's death.
New York is often accused of being peculiarly non-representative
of typical American life. The accusation is, in a measure, just
and holds good in its application to musical conditions. As the
metropolis, where, without doubt, more music than anywhere else in the
country is heard, New York lacks a local life of its own; there is
no feeling of neighborly companionship among its art workers, and in
consequence there hardly exists that which we could term a New York
'group' of composers in the sense to which the term is applied to
Boston's community of music-makers. New York claims as citizens many
of America's best known composers, but they figure too little in the
musical life of the city and are the objects of too little local pride.
An exception to this, however, is found in the case of Arthur
Whiting, whose concerts bring him often into public view and whose
local reputation as a pianist is undoubtedly far greater than his
recognition as a composer. Deserving of the latter, however--and
that by reason of a very serious and notable achievement in creative
fields--Arthur Whiting must be counted as one of the real ornaments of
America's list of composers. Mr. Whiting's well-known Brahms enthusiasm
and his activities as a producer of Brahms' works bring upon him
the suspicion of being a thorough-going Brahmsite, even in his own
compositions; a suspicion, however, not well founded, for Mr. Whiting
is quite free from the Brahms influence. That he is ofttimes prone to
intellectuality, and too rarely gives himself up to the spontaneous
and expressively beautiful, is perhaps a more just accusation, but the
statement that Mr. Whiting is an artist of deep sincerity, of high
ideals, and of thorough equipment must remain unchallenged.
Mr. Whiting's recent work has been almost exclusively in the smaller
forms. He has, however, in the past written several larger works, the
best known of which is his Fantasie for piano and orchestra. This
work, recently revived at a concert given by the American Academy,
has a rhythmic energy that makes it 'American' in the best sense--a
genuine and spontaneous expression of the national nervously intense
temperament. For the most part, however, the orchestra has seemed to
have but small inspiration to offer to him and his sober formal sense
and his own distinctions of style lead him more naturally to the piano,
the vocal quartet, and to other chamber music combinations as his
medium of expression.
Henry Holden Huss is principally known through his successful handling
of the larger forms and he can point with just pride to the real
success which has been that of his piano concerto in D minor, his
violin concerto, and his sonata for violin and piano. These, as well as
a sonata for violoncello and piano, have all found acceptance with a
number of the best living interpretive musicians, who have given Huss a
very wide hearing.
Mr. Huss acknowledges himself a thorough-going Wagnerite and confesses
to coming largely under the influence of his works, but the bulk of
his writings shows other influences, notably in the strong sense of
the classic cyclical form, which Mr. Huss handles with an excellent
mastery and in which he proves himself an artist of great resource
and equipment. Another favorite form with Huss is the extended aria
with orchestra, and in this form he has written several of his best
works. Among these may be mentioned 'Cleopatra's Death' for soprano,
'Nocturne' for the same voice, 'The Seven Ages of Man' for baritone,
'Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead' for alto, and 'After Sorrow's
Night' for soprano. In the last-named work Mr. Huss has employed
a harmonic scheme which in its modern freedom represents his most
advanced development.
IV
At the head of the list of America's lyricists there stands a name
perhaps more illustrious than any other which she boasts--that of
Ethelbert Nevin. To speak critically of the art of Nevin is a delicate
and a difficult task. Its nature does not invite critical examination
or demand extended analysis. Nevin's music, in its absence of decided
intellectual qualities, presents no striking originalities of style,
but remains throughout the simply spontaneous and unaffected utterance
of a real and deeply musical nature. It possesses, nevertheless,
a strongly individual style (often becoming, we must confess, a
mannerism) and an irresistible charm. Moreover, the wide appeal
which it has made must be sufficient proof of the real vitality that
underlies the seemingly slight psysiognomy of this delicate lyricism.
To the aspiring mind, in the presence of an expression so genuine,
there must come a strong regret that with such poetical tenderness and
grace there should not have been a vein of greater virility to have
sounded a deeper note; one that would have played a more important
part in the upbuilding of our national art. Despite the fact that
the natural flow of Nevin's lyricism beguiled him continually along
the lines of least resistance, his life's record was that of a very
hard-working and conscientious artist.
Nevin was born near Pittsburgh in 1862. He had the advantage of early
musical studies at home and abroad during a European sojourn of his
family and he commenced his professional studies in 1881 under B. J.
Lang and Stephen Emery in Boston. In 1884 he went to Berlin, where he
worked diligently at his piano studies under Karl Klindworth. Returning
home, two years later, he settled at Boston and taught, concertized,
and followed more zealously his increasing inclination for composition.
In 1891, after the publication of some of the songs and piano pieces
which have since become so generally popular, Nevin's fame rapidly
increased and he was able to indulge his taste for the roving life
which he followed during the last ten years of his life, living at
Paris, Berlin, Florence, Algiers, and elsewhere, with intervening
visits to America, where he was heard in concerts of his own works. In
the fall of 1900 Nevin settled at New Haven, where he died suddenly in
February, 1901.
The list of Nevin's works comprises almost exclusively short songs
and piano compositions. Exceptions to this are several choruses, two
pieces for violin and piano, and a posthumously published cantata. That
Nevin had larger ambitions in his later life is shown from certain of
his letters and the sketches of larger works which he left unfinished.
But as the result of his early habits of composition, of the too easy
flow of his melody, and perhaps also of his too early successes he
was kept within the confines of those miniature and delicate forms
which he made his own domain. The characteristics of Nevin's music,
as displayed in these works, are, first, a melodic sense which,
though lacking in variety because of decided mannerisms that control
it, is full of graceful charm and genuine lyrical quality; second, a
harmonic sense ever more limited in its scope but of natural and moving
expressiveness. Into the naïve fabric of this the composer contrived
to instil a flavor which, if not decidedly original, had a strongly
individual feeling.
The first of Nevin's works to reach any popularity was 'A Sketch Book,'
published in 1888. Several of its numbers are still reckoned among the
most popular of Nevin's works. This was followed by several similar
albums of songs and piano pieces until 1891, when, in a book of piano
pieces entitled 'Water Scenes,' he published what was to be a piece of
world-wide popularity, 'Narcissus.' 'A Book of Songs' (1893) contains
the best of Nevin's vocal works. Regarded as a whole, they lack a
uniformity of style and despite Mr. Thompson's assertion[88] that
Nevin felt but slightly the influences of other composers, these songs
show decided traces of the stamp which the study of other writers put
upon his work. Chopin is perhaps the prevailing influence that shows
itself. Some of the songs of this group mark Nevin's nearest approach
to a dramatic style. In parts of number seven of this group, entitled
Nocturne, there is a considerable sweep of fiery strength, and the two
entitled 'Orsola's Song' and 'In the Night' exhibit a virile content
rarely present in Nevin's work. We need not speak of the more popular
songs of Nevin, such as 'The Rosary,' 'Little Boy Blue,' ''Twas April,'
and 'Mighty Lak' a Rose.' Their appeal lies largely in the sentimental
though genuinely tender and deep touch of pathos which they contain.
Nevin's piano works are distinctly Chopinesque.
Suave and elegant figures, grateful to the player, abound in these
works and show the hand of the skillful pianist that Nevin was. Some of
these piano pieces have become quite as popular as have the songs, and
the collections entitled 'In Arcady' and 'A Day in Venice' have been
placed in the household répertoire.
Ethelbert Nevin made no claims for his art. Almost unconscious of the
larger world of a more universal expression, which the past and present
might have offered to him, he created his own limited world and lived
therein. We shall mistake, however, if we judge too slightingly of this
world as the dilettante expression of a mere _précieux_. Something
there is of genius in a man who can speak to so many. Ethelbert Nevin
was an ornament to American music and the fame of his works will
outlive the bulk of our more esoteric art.
* * * * *
It is difficult to find a fitting name to follow that of Nevin.
While we have had writers in the smaller forms who equalled and even
surpassed Nevin in dramatic force, or in subtleties of construction,
the remainder of our purely lyrical writers, it must be said, are
on a considerably lower plane and there is lacking in the work of
most of them the elegance and fastidiousness which bring these small
works within the pale of art. The status of many American songs
is--unfortunately with truth--described in Grove's Dictionary (Vol. IV,
'Song'), where it is said: 'Many other American composers whose songs,
whilst enjoying a great popularity, descend almost to the lowest level
of vocal music.'
[Illustration: Ethelbert Nevin]
_After a photograph from life_
There are, however, a good many men whose works are saved from
this condemnation. Notable among these is Wilson G. Smith (born in
1855), whose songs and piano contributions, while they must perhaps be
designated as salon pieces, possess, nevertheless, a genuine charm.
Many of Smith's piano pieces are an intentional imitation of other
composers, in which field he is particularly happy. Of his songs there
are a number which have been much sung. Rupert Hughes, with a just
critical sense, not always his, points out the excellence of Smith's
song 'If I but Knew,' as especially notable.
Certain of Reginald de Koven's songs rival in popularity the light
operas of that composer (see Chap. XV). After many years of use 'O
Promise Me' still retains its place in the popular affections, as
was demonstrated in the repeated encores demanded for it when it was
interpolated in a recent revival of 'Robin Hood.' De Koven's lyricism,
however, is of the lightest order and his failure to strike a deeper
vein is well attested in the empty pomposity of his setting of
Kipling's 'Recessional.'
A composer to whose songs Henry T. Finck in his 'Songs and Song
Writers' gives a special place is Clayton Johns, of Boston (born 1857),
who was a pupil of Paine and later studied two years at Berlin. Johns'
songs number about one hundred. Mr. Finck finds in them a Franz-like
quality and attributes their popularity to a simplicity without
emptiness. Besides songs, Mr. Johns has written a few choruses and two
pieces for string orchestra.
Frederick Field Bullard is another composer who wisely realized the
natural limitations of his muse and devoted himself almost exclusively
to song writing. His most successful song was his stirring and widely
popular 'Stein Song,' which by its frequent use on all sorts of
occasions has attached to itself somewhat the importance of a national
song. Bullard's larger ambitions found expression in the ballad form,
which he chose for a setting of Tennyson's melodrama 'The Sisters.'
W. H. Neidlinger (born in 1863) was a pupil of Dudley Buck. His
long list of compositions comprises almost exclusively songs. The
instinctive naïveté of Mr. Neidlinger's style has contributed to his
success in a number of children's songs.
Of a larger mold and a more intensive beauty is the lyricism of Marcus
Carroll, a composer Irish born but whose entire musical life has been
spent in, and belongs to, America. Mr. Carroll's works include several
short pieces for orchestra. There is an 'Intermezzo' of melodic and
colorful beauty which was played by Anton Seidl, while a 'Dance of the
Gnomes' and a 'Valse' have been often heard at the 'pop' concerts in
Boston. Besides these there is a 'Romance' for 'cello and orchestra and
some part-songs of which the charming cycle of songs for women's voices
from Stevenson's 'Child's Garden of Verses,' entitled 'A Child's Day,'
have been much sung. Mr. Carroll shows himself in these works to be a
most gifted melodist. His style is sincere, straightforward, at times
conventional, but there are a warmth of feeling and an abundance of
color, grace, and vitality which render his work notably successful.
Another foreign-born composer who must be counted in the list of
Americans is Edward Manning. Mr. Manning was born in Canada, but came
early in life to New York where he studied with MacDowell. The greater
part of Mr. Manning's compositions are songs, although there has lately
come from his pen a trio for strings and piano which must take rank
with the very best of American chamber music. Another larger work of
Manning's is an aria, 'The Tryst,' for soprano and orchestra, which has
been sung by Louise Homer. Manning has the essential and rare equipment
of the real composer, the melodic gift. There is a strong Grieg flavor
in his melodies and often in his harmonic treatment of them, but later
songs show a tendency to a more advanced modernity.
Frank LaForge follows narrowly the path of the German _lied_
composers. With no decided originalities, Mr. LaForge has written many
highly artistic songs which often find place in song recital programs,
especially in those of Mme. Gadski.
The name of Charles B. Hawley is one that for many years has figured
largely on American singers' programs. Mr. Hawley has a true melodic
vein which runs freely through a large number of songs. His harmonic
treatment is, on the other hand, of the most conventional and there
is nothing in his works to court criticism of an intimate order. Mr.
Hawley in these characteristics stands as typical of quite a large
group of American song writers. These composers write fluently,
melodically, gracefully, and occasionally attain to a commanding
lyrical eloquence, but for the greater part their work lacks
distinction and flavor. Always too conventional, sometimes to a point
of banality, it cannot contribute much to the upbuilding of a serious
art in this country. The group thus described contains such writers as
Victor Harris, C. W. Coombs, R. Huntington Woodman, Charles Gilbert
Spross, James H. Rogers, Bruno Huhn, James W. Metcalfe, Ward Stephens,
William G. Hammond, Franklin Riker, Oley Speaks, Jessie Gaynor, and
Edna R. Parks.
V
America's contribution to church music has been large and varied.
As chamber music seems to serve as the practice field for German
composers, so does church music apparently occupy the less aspiring
or intense moments of most of our writers. Composers of all classes
and leanings have offered their share to the constantly increasing
list of anthems and services to be found in the catalogues of our
publishers and there seems to be, moreover, a legion whose entire
efforts are in this field. As a whole this music may be classified like
the music of other departments: a comparatively small percentage of it
is good, much is mediocre, while the vast balance is worthless. The
meritorious section of this work subdivides itself into several kinds
of excellence. We have among our church musicians a certain few who
write the sober and so-called ecclesiastical style which the canons
of the English schools have laid down as being the fitting adjunct of
the church's service, while, again, particularly in America, a large
amount of church music is couched in an idiom somewhat more secular in
tone, in which a more popular melodic treatment lends so-called 'human
interest' to the work. To the more ascetic this form of writing is the
bane of church music. Gounod is perhaps the instigator of this practice
of importing into the church the profane sensuousness of a more worldly
art. Despite a strong note of reactionary protest, he has had many
imitators both in England and America, and the 'operatic' anthem has
become a standard form. Of these two classes of church music, namely,
the essentially sacred and that more secularly tinged, it is the latter
that is abused in American church music. Whereas in England the great
respect for tradition keeps most of her church composers within the
narrow paths of ecclesiastical austerity--where, it must be said, they
often become contrapuntally arid or musty--the American anthem writer
too often sins on the other side and has a strong tendency to become
sentimentally maudlin in accepting as a working rule Voltaire's keen
definition of church music as 'the pursuit of sensuous pleasure in the
duties of a cult established to combat such a pursuit.'
Many of the composers whose works have been the subject of the
foregoing pages have written for the church, and in some cases their
church music represents an important phase of their work. We have
already spoken of Mr. Buck's importance as a church composer; other
earlier composers whose church music was important are G. W. Marston,
who wrote many anthems and sacred songs; W. W. Gilchrist, whose list of
anthems and church cantatas is a long one; C. C. Converse, who, besides
essaying a vast deal of serious music in a larger way, found his best
success in several well-known hymns. Richard Henry Warren, Remington R.
Fairlamb, and Smith N. Penfield are also names that have figured in the
recent decades of ecclesiastical composition.
Horatio Parker, whose works we have already reviewed, is at present
the most representative church composer in America. Parker has devoted
some of his best inspirations to the church and has written many fine
anthems and services, while his stirring hymn-tunes, with their modern
harmonies, mark a real stage of evolution in that restricted field.
Foote and Chadwick have both done much in church music; there is,
however, a neutral quality about their anthems and they possess neither
the distinctive qualities of the purely ecclesiastical style nor that
of the popular anthem. Arthur Whiting has written comparatively little
church music but the few things that he has done are among the best of
all American church music. There is a feeling of great strength and
solidity in Mr. Whiting's vocal writing and his style is always pure.
The other church composers who generally follow the more severe style
are mostly members of America's English colony of organists, true to
the tradition of their training: Will C. Macfarlane, Clement R. Gale,
T. Tertius Noble, are to be named as some of the best known of these
writers.
It is most fortunate that the more popular style of anthem has
one exponent who brings to it not only its essential elements of
popularity, but who is able to add as well those sterling qualities
of intrinsic musical worth which place his anthems in a unique class.
This writer is Harry Rowe Shelley. Shelley was born in 1858. His first
studies were under Dudley Buck and he later studied with Dvořák in
Europe. His list of about fifty anthems are deservedly the most popular
of native works used in American churches to-day, and his sacred songs
are also a most serviceable addition to the church répertoire. It must
be added that, although Mr. Shelley has found his truest mission in
church music, he has had larger ambitions which he has not entirely
failed in fulfilling, and the list of his works includes an opera,
'Leila,' a symphonic poem, 'The Crusaders,' a dramatic overture,
_Francesca da Rimini_, an oratorio, 'The Inheritance Divine,' a suite
for orchestra, a fantasia for piano and orchestra, piano pieces and
songs.
Among those whose work follows lines similar to that of Shelley is P.
J. Schnecker, whose numerous anthems possess somewhat the physiognomy
of Shelley's works, but are without their genuine musical qualities.
John Hyatt Brewer has written church music of considerable distinction
as well as several cantatas both sacred and secular. Brewer was a pupil
of Buck and was born in 1856. Sumner Salter, Gerrit Smith, Louis R.
Dressler, Frank N. Shepherd, Fred Schelling, are other names familiar
to the choir loft. Important among church compositions are the works of
Eduardo Marzo. Mr. Marzo's work is mostly for the Catholic service and,
thus restricted in its use, it has not come to the general notice which
it would otherwise have reached.
In concluding, we add a few names of those who, among the younger men,
are producing church music of a freshness and vigor which promises
well for a renaissance of sacred music that shall happily combine
the dignity of the older schools with the more vital utterance of a
contemporaneous expression. Frank E. Ward, whose secular compositions
find mention in another chapter of this volume, has written many good
anthems and two sacred cantatas. Philip James is the author of some
strikingly good church music, while Mark Andrews, Clifford Demarest,
Caryl Florio, and W. Berwald are well-known and esteemed names to those
who follow the lists of standard church music.
B. L.
FOOTNOTES:
[86] 'Contemporary American Composers,' 1900.
[87] _Op. cit._
[88] Vance Thompson: 'The Life of Ethelbert Nevin,' Boston, 1914.