ROMANTICISTS AND NEO-CLASSICISTS
Influences and conditions of the period--Edward
MacDowell--Edgar Stillman Kelley--Arne Oldberg; Henry
Hadley; F. S. Converse--E. R. Kroeger; Rubin Goldmark;
Brockway; H. N. Bartlett; R. G. Cole--Daniel Gregory
Mason; David Stanley Smith; Edward Burlingame Hill--Philip
G. Clapp; John Beach; Arthur Bergh; Joseph Henius; F. E.
Ward; Carl Busch; Walter Damrosch--The San Francisco Group;
Miscellany--Women Composers.
Between the founders of musical composition in America, who felt
chiefly the influence of that musical world of which Beethoven was
the great central figure, and those who have looked to aboriginal and
other native sources for inspiration on the one hand, or European
ultra-modern tendencies on the other, there exists a large and
important group of American composers whose artistic origin is to be
associated with the so-called 'romantic' school, of which Schumann
is the generally accepted protagonist. Proudly as the dramatic phase
of the romantic movement shone forth at the same time in the genius
of Richard Wagner, it was left with the non-dramatic wing of the
romantic school to establish the ideals which should dominate and
direct the romantic movement which was subsequently to arise in
America. There are a number of reasons why this should have been the
case, as there are also reasons to believe that the full influence of
Wagner's ideas has not yet been felt in America. In the first place,
it was during the epoch of the romantic movement that the German
musician and music teacher first began to look to the new world as a
field for the broad extension of his labors. Every city and town of
America came to have its German music teachers; they were accepted
everywhere as representatives of the highest musical civilization of
the world, and it is, in fact, to this early German musical emigration
that the substantial foundations of our American musical education
are due. As qualifying factors, however, in the influence which he
was to exert upon the future, there were two facts in general which
characterized him: his profession, which was usually that of pianist
and piano teacher, and his anathematization of Wagner. While Beethoven
was his musical god, in his capacity of pianist he also spread the
influence of that side of the romantic movement which perpetuated, and
developed, the tradition of piano music. Thus Schumann and Chopin, and
their contemporaries, came to a measurable fullness of appreciation
in America at a time when Wagner was held to be a mad and dangerous
musical anarchist.
Quite aside from this group of circumstances, it was also true that
nothing could be more remote from the American civilization of the time
than the possibility of any semblance of the realization of Wagner's
ideals. Opera was the most fitful and exotic of institutions, and the
theatre in general, except for such occasional meteoric apparitions
as Edwin Booth, was in a condition of the greatest crudity, as well
as being under the ban of a puritanism which, fortunately, in these
latter days, is beginning somewhat to relax its tenacity. Because
of the unripeness of American life for a creative art of music, the
influence of the early German invasion did not produce many composers.
It had, however, implanted ideals which were to assume the greatest
importance in the future. When the overwhelming Wagnerian flood at
last arrived, in the splendid productions of the music-dramas under
the direction of Seidl and the Damrosches, it found the ideals of
the classical and romantic schools already well implanted; more than
that, it found a rapidly increasing group of young composers who had
arisen under the influence of those ideals. The result was that these
composers, who did not share the prejudices of their Teutonic musical
forbears, drank in with avidity the wonderful new harmonies of Wagner,
and set about incorporating them, not in music-dramas, but in the
sonatas and symphonies arising from the classical tradition, and all
manner of free forms to which the romantic school had given birth.
The Wagnerian harmonies were accepted, but the forms of the earlier
movements were retained, except where the followers of Liszt ventured
forth on scantily charted seas of formal emancipation. Similarly other
new influences began to be felt, and Tschaikowsky, in a new symphonic
emotionalism, and Brahms, in a new flowering of thematic development,
gave encouragement in the retaining of earlier forms. The dual product
of these various influences was, on the one hand, a romanticism which
claimed both harmonic and formal freedom, and a neo-classicism which
welcomed the new harmonic world opened up by Wagner, but inclined to
cling to the forms of the classical epoch.
I
As the first modern American composer to step forth with a highly
characterized poetic individuality, Edward Alexander MacDowell (b.
1861, d. 1908) quickly took, and his work has held, since his untimely
death in 1908, a unique and preëminent place in American music. As
the first great pioneer of the romantic school in America his place
is certainly assured, and, while the perspective thus far gained upon
his work has by no means led to a unanimity of opinion concerning
it, the dignity, charm, and poetic fancy of a great part of it must
assuredly give it an enduring position in the musical world. All
barriers of adverse criticism and opinion fall before creativeness,
to the extent to which it is truly creative, and it is the creative
character of MacDowell's music that insures its persistence. Noteworthy
is it also that it is through his greatest works, such as the second
piano concerto and the Celtic Sonata, that his fame chiefly endures, a
convincing evidence that his highest aspirations did not strike wide of
their mark.
An inquiry into the nature of MacDowell's genius must perforce lead
us to a recognition of his Celtic antecedents and sympathies; for with
all his early German experience and training, with all his substantial
Teutonic technical foundation gained thereby, he was first and last a
Celt in spirit. Over the heavy bog of German harmony and counterpoint
his sensitive fancy danced like restless thistledown, following the
lightest whimsey of the breeze and the most tremulous maneuverings of
shadow-play. In his more powerful tone painting it is the elements,
rather than the passions, that command him. The old nature-worship
which is so ineradicable an element of the psychic constitution of the
Celt, and which leads him to commune with the innumerable and elusive
hosts of the land of faery, never forsook the soul of MacDowell, or
ceased to direct the course of his genius. Impatient of the restraints
of the outer world, and of its weight of poetry-quenching affairs
and transactions, his spirit hurried ever to a communion with the
moods and mysteries of nature, and to that corresponding dream-world
of intensified nature-perceptions within the soul to which these are
the appointed and the alluring gateway. MacDowell's dream-world was
directly conjoined with that of 'Fiona Macleod,' whose subjective
nature-pictures offer a close literary parallel to the tone-pictures of
the composer. These two traversed the same region, which is that of the
psychic perceptions, but the account of it brought back by MacDowell
presents one striking fundamental difference from all accounts rendered
by poetry-making Celts who have remained upon their native soil. In the
American the soul no longer cries out from under an age-long burden
of poverty and oppression; the heartache and the world-weariness have
been sloughed off in the new-world birth. No outcry of the heart
is the music of MacDowell, but an eager self-surrendering to the
interpretation of the facts and moods of nature, the rocking of a
lily-pad on cool waters, the lonely drift of an iridescent iceberg, the
mad sudden impact of a hurrying gust. Often are these interpretations
of an almost uncanny intimacy, so subtle and sensitive is their touch.
In one very important respect the personal analogy between MacDowell
and William Sharp breaks down. The creator of 'Fiona Macleod' gained
the freedom of the psychic world only at the expense of his virility.
The _man_, Sharp, was left behind, when 'Fiona's' turn came, a fact
attested by the writings of the latter at every point. MacDowell found
no need for the splitting up of his personality into its masculine and
feminine elements; he carried his manhood with him into the sphere
of the psychic and brought forth not artistic shadowings merely, but
also, especially in his heroic moments, solid structures. For all his
instinctive abhorrence of the ponderousness often associated with the
expression of the Teutonic spirit, his severe Frankfort training often
served him in good stead; it may, indeed, have been the balance-wheel
of his entire artistic life.
Too much the child of nature's dream-world to sound the depths of
passion, too restless with the joy of nature's kaleidoscopic shift
and play to touch the spiritual heights of peace, well severed from
the material world, but not yet united with the spiritual, MacDowell
hovered in the mid-region of the psychic, happily lost in its shadowy
wonderworld of dissolving forms and elusive beauty. This was at once
the limitation and tragedy, as well as the genius, of MacDowell's life
and art. He remained a wanderer on the borderlands of spirit, never
coming to his spiritual home, and at the end his mind itself wandered
never to return in this life. But he had struck a telling blow for
American musical art, and placed the nation upon a new musical footing.
MacDowell was a nationalist only by virtue of his instinctive
sensitiveness to his environment. As the English critic,
Ashton-Johnson, has pointed out, his autumn scenes spontaneously
portray not the mere brown decay of the European "fall," but the golden
splendor of the American autumn. The Indian and the negro find their
way into his works here and there in delicate touches, because the
tradition of them is in the American air and scarcely to be avoided.
MacDowell's teachers in theory were Savard, at the Paris
Conservatoire, and Joachim Raff, in Frankfurt, and in piano, at these
places respectively, Marmontel and Heyman. An interim was spent with
Ehlert in Wiesbaden. Franz Liszt was MacDowell's friend and helped him
to recognition in Germany. No American composer has been so prominent
as MacDowell as a concert pianist. His sensitive performances of his
own works served to make them broadly known and to establish the
traditions of their interpretation. The composer took up his residence
in America again in 1888, after twelve years of absence, first in
Boston, and later in New York, where, until his unfortunate friction
with the academic authorities, he exerted a wide influence as professor
of music at Columbia University. The malady which alienated him from
his powers in his last years, and which finally brought about his end,
called universal attention to America's musical awakening and prowess
by the same stroke in which it removed the nation's musical leader.
MacDowell attained his chief critical recognition through his two
concertos and four sonatas for piano. The second concerto, in D minor,
with its alternate phases of nobility and charm, stands as a monument
to the composer's highest powers, with regard both to pianistic and
orchestral mediums of expression. The composer's harmonic warmth
and individuality, his freshness of melodic inspiration, his marked
capacity for skillful and colorful orchestration, his eager and highly
pitched temperament, are all manifest throughout the work. Of the four
sonatas, the 'Tragica,' 'Eroica,' 'Norse,' and 'Keltic,' the last has
been universally judged the greatest, and one of his greatest works.
Lawrence Gilman calls it his 'masterpiece.' As their titles indicate,
these works are all programmatic, though not slavishly so, and romantic
in the highest degree. Their material, derived from the rich storehouse
of Gaelic legend, finds the composer on his native spiritual heath,
and in them he speaks with an authority not surpassed, perhaps not
equalled, in the whole range of his work beside.
The 'Indian Suite' (opus 48) has been the most frequently heard of
MacDowell's orchestral works, which have, as a class, been somewhat
overshadowed by the piano compositions. In it the composer has touched
but lightly upon his Indian thematic sources, building from his own
fertile imagination a work of substantial character in five movements,
depicting his conception of various phases of Indian life. The fourth
movement, a dirge, has won great favor through its sheer imaginative
beauty, but the work as a whole has not proved wholly convincing, and
is far less true to the Indian than the sonatas are to the Gaelic
genius. It represents, however, a matured mastery of orchestration and
the formal presentation of ideas. An earlier orchestral suite (opus 42)
is a less notable work, reflecting the influence of Raff, and is seldom
heard. 'The Saracens' and 'The Lovely Alda,' two colorful orchestral
fragments from a once-projected 'Roland' symphony, are not infrequently
heard, and with pleasure, but, while characteristic of the composer's
genius, are scarcely representative of it. An earlier 'Hamlet and
Ophelia' overture has fared rather less well.
In a great number of little piano compositions, grouped under various
titles, MacDowell has left an exquisite and extensive legacy of
works which mirror forth the world of multitudinous fancy which he
delighted to haunt. Not conceived with the view of displaying modern
concert technique, but in a vein of sincere and intimate poetic
expression, these works have been cherished and enjoyed wherever the
piano is played. Reflecting more particularly the earlier phases of
the composer's artistic sympathies are two suites (opera 10 and 14),
'Forest Idyls' (opus 19), 'Six Idyls' (opus 28), 'Four Little Poems'
(opus 32), 'Marionettes' (opus 38), and 'Twelve Studies' (opus 39).
The works in this form by which MacDowell has chiefly endeared himself
to the rank and file of American music-lovers, are 'Woodland Sketches'
(opus 51), containing 'To a Wild Rose' and 'To a Water Lily;' 'Sea
Pieces' (opus 55); 'Fireside Tales' (opus 61), and 'New England Idyls'
(opus 62), the last work of the composer.
By no means the least of MacDowell's contributions to musical
literature, either in quantity or quality, are his songs, of which
there are some ten groups for solo voice, and various part songs,
chiefly for male voices. In the spheres of charm, fancy, and
'atmospheric' intuition these undoubtedly hold a very high place,
though in respect to passion and imaginative vigor the same can
scarcely be said, despite the claims of Henry T. Finck, who places
MacDowell with the highest rank of the world's song-writers. The
highest type of song-writing would seem to demand not so much a
passion for beauty as a passion for passion itself, either physical
or spiritual, and such a quality, while not absent from it, was not
central to the ethereal character of MacDowell's genius.
Lawrence Gilman's 'Edward MacDowell' presents a sympathetic and
illuminating study of the composer and his work.
II
One of the rocks upon which the high character of modern American
music is founded is the art-activity of Edgar Stillman-Kelley (b.
April 14, 1857). While he has not given forth his compositions in
rapid succession or in great quantity, he has, nevertheless, struck
a series of telling blows for the honor and dignity of creative
musical art in America. Especially is this true in view of the fact
that he has formulated, maintained and promulgated definite ideals
of music throughout a period which has been characterized mainly, in
this respect, by confusion and groping, and, too frequently, even by
grovelling. In a post-Wagnerian period in which vacillation, obscurity,
and disorder have reigned throughout a large part of the musical world,
he has steadily advanced the standard of lucidity, order, and faith.
Lofty in imagination, of a high sense of beauty, and at the same time
exceptional in scholarship and breadth of intellectual vision, he
combines qualities which must necessarily single him out as a leader of
importance in the musical movement to which America has given birth.
The same qualities have also fitted him to exercise a beneficent
influence, in certain directions, upon more recent and newly appearing
phases of native musical evolution. It has been Stillman-Kelley's fate
that both his name and his influence have outdistanced the general
knowledge of his works. Two circumstances may be held accountable for
this: the fact that he has given out no quantity of works in small
forms through which his music might become accessible to music-lovers
everywhere through the universal medium of the piano, and the further
fact that it is particularly in just such forms as Stillman-Kelley has
produced that, as a nation, we are slow in giving our own composers a
wide hearing. The American symphony, on American programs, must wait,
first, and perhaps rightfully, upon the classics, and, second, and
often with bitter wrong, upon the sensational European novelties of the
hour.
So independent and individual a thinker is Stillman-Kelley, so _sui
generis_ his work, that it can be explained by no theory of particular
or individual influences, but only by a knowledge of the composer's
broad survey of the modern field, with emphasis, to be sure, upon the
greatest in Germanic tradition. The fundamentals of that tradition
one feels the composer to have grasped, but of the principles thus
deeply assimilated he makes his own use. In short, he follows
principles, and not men, and for this reason the Wagnerian 'passage,'
the Tschaikowskian phrase, which drip so easily from the pen of many
latter-day composers, are never to be encountered in Stillman-Kelley's
music. Into this technique, acquired through close observation and
analysis of the works of the masters, the composer imports his own
spirit; he has his own story to tell and is very certain of the manner
in which he wishes to tell it. The superficial criticism of the day,
which looks for raw and sensational departures from the pre-Debussyian
musical scheme, will find Stillman-Kelley conservative, at moments
even downright Teutonic; but the gulf which separates him, in spirit
and message, from both his precursors and contemporaries, European
and American, must be plain to every observant person. In this rapid
age people are, however, not apt to be closely observant, and it
appears that there will still be a considerable interval before
Stillman-Kelley's true artistic and intellectual stature will be
recognized.
To grasp the nature of the high distinction which must be accorded him,
it must be understood that Stillman-Kelley's formative period was that
very epoch of the Wagnerian cataclysm which blasted the individuality
of composers as the cyclone devastates the forest. So surcharged with
the dominating personality of Wagner was this epoch that it seemed
no composer sympathetic to that personality could breathe the air of
its period and retain his musical individuality. Futile blotches of
misunderstood Wagnerian harmony took the place of compositions. This
was the tide that Stillman-Kelley stemmed, and his position takes on
the aspect of solitary grandeur when it is perceived that he is the
only composer in the contemporary American ranks, receptive to the
changing order, who can be said to have come through wholly unscathed.
While guided primarily by a sense of the beautiful, it was through
sheer force of mentality, and standing alone, that the composer
achieved this feat and preserved for his nation a straight path for the
classical tradition and ideal without relinquishing that freedom of
mind which alone can secure the growth of the individual through the
apprehension and application of contemporary thought.
The thought can almost be ventured that Stillman-Kelley was the
first composer to use the post-Wagnerian harmonic vocabulary without
the result sounding like Wagner. If a heroic instinct for thematic
development in the face of the harmonic orgies of the time contributed
to this achievement, it was secondary to a contribution of even
greater distinction. This more original contribution may be termed the
application of a geometrical poetic sense to the new harmony. Of the
tyrant that enslaved the composers of the time Stillman-Kelley promptly
made himself the master. Out of the new material he generated for
his use _harmonic motives_, symmetrical blocks of harmony, bearing a
particular relation to his thematic material, and, by the application
of these well-defined and well-rounded harmonic motives to his formal
structure, he attained, at a stroke, the employment of the new medium,
the preservation of clarity and order, and thereto a new musical
personality. He did not recede to an archaic classical purism and
offer the familiar excuse of those who found in Wagner the ruination
of pure music. He advanced bravely on to the dangerous ground of the
new territory and made it his own without sacrificing the fundamental
classical character of his ideals and without losing his wits.
Both in spirit and technique Stillman-Kelley's artistic personality
may be seen in microcosmic scope, as it were, in his highly individual
song, 'Israfel' to the poem of Edgar Allan Poe. Here are the serene
beauty, the highly imaginative harmonic tinting, the touch of the
fantastic, the formal amplitude and symmetry, the predominance of
phantasy over passion, which characterize all of the composer's work.
The companion song, 'Eldorado,' on Poe's poem of that name, is equally
typical of the composer's genius, though strongly contrasted with
'Israfel' in subject.
Stillman-Kelley first became known through his intensely
characteristic and 'atmospheric' music for 'Macbeth,' dating from early
days in San Francisco. This he has in later years revised and cast in
the form of an orchestral suite, composing for the play a wholly new
overture of momentous proportions. This is a massive and sombre work,
dealing with the conflict of conscience and evil ambition, its murky
content being relieved only by the introduction of a theme of the joys
of Gaelic royalty, which later on assumes a grim aspect, being stated
in conjunction with the theme of ambition.
The 'Aladdin' suite has perhaps been less infrequently heard than
Stillman-Kelley's other orchestral works. In this work the composer
availed himself of certain Chinese themes, of which he made a
characteristically thorough study while in San Francisco (and which
resulted also in his widely known song 'The Lady Picking Mulberries').
This suite is in the composer's most genial vein and is a _tour de
force_ of piquant orchestration. Its movements depict 'The Wedding
of Aladdin and the Princess,' 'A Serenade in the Royal Pear Garden,'
'Flight of the Genie with the Palace,' and 'The Return and Feast of the
Lanterns.'
Stillman-Kelley's greatest recent offering is his 'New England'
symphony, in B minor, produced by the Litchfield County Choral Union,
at Norfolk, Conn., June 3, 1913. In it the composer has sought to
embody 'something of the experiences, ambitions, and aspirations of
our Puritan ancestors.' It was greeted as a work of large importance,
needing further hearing for its full appreciation. The composer
has completed sketches of a 'Gulliver' symphony and an 'Alice in
Wonderland' suite, the subjects of both of which attest his love of the
fantastic and call attention to his equal devotion to the element of
humor. There is an orchestral score of 'Israfel.'
In chamber music form he has produced a quintet for strings and piano
which has had much success on both sides of the Atlantic, and a less
well-known string quartet in variation form. There are also a few early
songs and piano compositions. Mention should be made of the composer's
very successful and famous music for the dramatic presentation of 'Ben
Hur,' and the exquisite 'Song of Iras' taken from it.
Born in Wisconsin, Mr. Stillman-Kelley has lived successively in
Stuttgart, San Francisco, New York, New Haven (where he occupied the
chair of music at Yale University during a year's absence of Horatio
Parker), and Berlin. He now (1914) holds a 'composer's fellowship'
at Western College, Oxford, Ohio, giving lectures there and at the
Cincinnati conservatory. His chief teacher in theory was Seifriz, in
Stuttgart.
III
Among the most earnest and advanced leaders of American music stands
Arne Oldberg (b. 1874), a musical personality of the highest nobility
and idealism, and a consummate master of his art. Unquestionably as
fully equipped master of thematic development in the cyclic forms
as America has produced, his loftily conceived chamber music and
orchestral works present themselves in a spiritual and technical
serenity, artistic authenticity and completeness, which baffle the
critical beholder. Indeed, it is with the music-makers who wrote
before relentless Beethoven forced the skyey goddess down into the
world-struggle that Oldberg has the closest spiritual kinship. Never
since Mozart has music been more bafflingly 'absolute' than in the bulk
of his works in orchestral and chamber music, and piano forms. The
appearance of these works, so modern from the standpoint of thematic
and formal development in this epoch, seems to call for a revision of
modern musical psychology and philosophy. Much of modern 'pure' music
is too dramatic to endure a comparison in this respect, or else too
philosophical and too deeply involved in the world-problem. To Brahms'
technical system that of Oldberg more nearly corresponds than to any
other.
In this music, at the same time, there is no reversion to the style of
an earlier day; it carries no slogan of 'back to Mozart.' Trained as he
was in the severe school of Joseph Rheinberger, to Oldberg, to be sure,
the modern French school does not exist, but neither, for that matter,
does the traditional shadow of turgidity and heaviness which hangs
about the Teutonic genius even at its most idealistic. Those who think
to perceive a measure of old-fashionedness in his music are looking at
the letter rather than the spirit, which is ever onward and creative,
though in its own way, and without admitting that modern progress lies
only in the adoption of the Gallic idiom. It is the music of spiritual
upliftment and refreshment, waiting its day until sensationalism and
mere color-riot shall have lost their power to appeal.
The two quintets for piano and strings (opera 16 and 24) present a
joyous and upspringing lyricism all but unknown to the music of the
day, together, especially in the latter and more mature work, with
a thematic involution that would be appalling were it not for the
exuberant spontaneity of their inspiration. A string quartet in C minor
(opus 15) is a less complete revelation of the composer's powers. A
woodwind quintet in E flat major (opus 18), on the other hand, is a
miracle of gladness and of grave and haunting loveliness.
A symphony in F (opus 23), twice rewritten but not yet performed,
contains a slow movement that represents the composer at his highest
level of contemplative beauty. The overture 'Paolo and Francesca' (opus
21) marks a departure from his usual absolutism; it is a work of large
dimensions and great warmth of feeling, and made a deep impression
upon the listeners when performed by the Theodore Thomas Orchestra
on January 17-18, 1908. The same orchestra has given performances of
Oldberg's 'Academic Overture,' written for the Northwest University
at Evanston, Ill., a 'Theme and Variations' (opus 19), and a set
of 'Symphonic Variations,' for organ and orchestra (opus 35), the
variation form being one in the possibilities of which Oldberg has
great faith. An almost uniform success has followed these various
performances. A second symphony, in C minor (opus 34) has followed the
first in F, and there is a recent 'Orchestral Rhapsody' (opus 36). An
'Arabesque' for piano (opus 31) shows the composer in a new vein. The
admirable 'Symphonic' concerto for piano and orchestra (opus 17), and
the horn concerto (opus 20), are almost entirely unknown. There are
besides these works a considerable number of piano works, a sonata
(opus 28) of great lyrical charm, a very extraordinary set of 'Thematic
Variations,' a poetic and stirring 'Legend,' a set of three beautiful
and highly interesting 'Miniatures,' and various other works.
Mr. Oldberg was born at Youngstown, Ohio, in 1874. He is of Norse
extraction, being of the third generation on American soil, and holds
the chair of music at the Northwestern University.
* * * * *
Much space would be required in which to give an adequate account of
the creative activities of Henry Hadley (b. 1871), one of the most
spontaneous and prolific of American composers, and one of the best
known, at home and abroad.
By temperament and choice of subject matter Hadley places himself
in the ranks of the romanticists, but his tenacious loyalty to the
symphonic form, among a wide variety of other forms, bespeaks a
neo-classical leaning and is scarcely to be explained by a mere desire
to essay expression in all forms. Moreover, while in orchestral
technique Hadley is a student and, in some sort, a disciple of Richard
Strauss, unlike that composer he inclines, in his orchestral works
other than symphonic, to the overture form rather than the less closely
knit 'tone-poem.' In orchestral realism he follows Strauss but a short
way, eschewing violence and holding a rather unique middle course
between realism and impressionism; something more than impressionist
merely, a _suggestive realist_ he might be termed.
Everywhere in Hadley's music is energy, fancy, the spirit of youth.
It bubbles and glints, running an inexhaustible gamut of varying
tints and ingenious and poetic tonal designs. It is the music of
immense enjoyment of objective life, of actions, sights, emotions.
Too eager and full of action to be deeply reflective, too happy to be
philosophic, it is the part of Hadley's music to quicken the sense of
life and of delight in the teeming visible world about us. Sombre,
pensive, or bleak it may be at times, according to the composer's
expressive need, but it is the tone-poet's fancy that decrees it, never
a confession of _Weltschmerz_ on the composer's part.
The first symphony, 'Youth and Life' (opus 25), is highly
characteristic of the buoyancy, the nervous energy, and the imaginative
fertility of the composer. The second, 'The Four Seasons' (opus 30),
is a delicate balance, within the classical form, of romanticism,
impressionism, and symbolism. It is romanticism that predominates,
however, although such distinct impressions as those of wintry blasts
and falling autumn leaves are happy and noteworthy features of the
work. The languor and sun-warmed luxuriance of mid-summer finds
poignant and beautiful expression. The third symphony, in B minor
(opus 60), seems to be less well known than the others. The fourth
symphony, 'North, East, South, West' (opus 64), was received with
enthusiasm when produced under the direction of the composer at a
meeting of the Litchfield County Choral Union, on June 6, 1911. Hadley
indulges in a little aboriginal Americanism in the 'South' and 'West'
movements, though his only definitely discernible 'nationalism' lies
in his inherent temperamental character. The four symphonies reveal
a constantly progressive growth in modern harmonic vision and in
orchestral mastery. The only American composer to enter the field
of symphonic conducting as a profession, Hadley, in his technical
development, has made the most of his contact with the orchestra.
There are three overtures, 'Hector and Andromache,' the jubilant 'In
Bohemia,' and one of sombre character to Stephen Phillips' 'Herod.' A
tone-poem, 'Salome,' finds him at his nearest to Strauss in ideals,
even if not in style. His most recent orchestral work, produced in
1914, is entitled 'Lucifer.' From earlier days are several 'Ballet
Suites,' an 'Oriental Suite' and a 'Symphonic Fantasie.' The still more
recent 'Culprit Fay,' after Rodman Drake's poem, has won various and
deserved honors. Hadley's one grand opera, 'Safie,' dating from his
incumbency as opera conductor in Mainz, Germany, was produced there
on April 4, 1909, but has not been heard in America. There are songs
in great number and variety, several cantatas, a number of works in
different small forms, and considerable church music.
Hadley is a native of Massachusetts, and comes of a musical family.
Among his teachers are, first, his father, and later Chadwick in Boston
and Mandyczewski in Vienna. He has several times been a prize-winner
with his compositions, the second symphony winning the Paderewski Prize
and one offered by the New England Conservatory, both in 1901, and the
'Culprit Fay' winning the National Federation of Musical Clubs' Prize
in 1909. Mr. Hadley became conductor of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra
in 1909 and the San Francisco Orchestra in 1911, which latter post he
still holds.
* * * * *
One of the sturdiest musical figures in the ranks of American
_arrivés_ is Frederick Shepherd Converse (b. 1871), artistically
of strong romantic leanings, although brought up under the classic
influences of the widely influential course in theory conducted by the
late James K. Paine at Harvard University. A taker of honors here,
as well as at Munich under Rheinberger, where he went after a period
of study with Chadwick in Boston, Converse has realized a degree of
scholarship seldom attained or even aspired to in America. He is
typically representative of what might be called the second generation
of modern American composers, the one following immediately upon that
of Foote, Chadwick, and their colleagues. Like all the active minds
of his generation, he exhibits the tendency to break the shackles of
classical tradition while still preserving reverence for its ideals.
With the exception of one retrospective inspiration, the string quartet
(opus 18), he appears to be done with the sonata form at about the
eighth opus number. Previous to that he had produced a symphony in D
minor (opus 7), a sonata for violin (opus 1), a string quartet, and an
overture. The later string quartet has qualities of admirable lyrical
beauty.
It is in his large romantic outreachings that Converse is best and
most favorably known. Indeed, the composer himself styles his first
orchestral tone-poem, the 'Festival of Pan,' a 'romance.' Subsequent
orchestral works in so-called 'free' form (an absurd term, since every
authentic form gains its strength through conformity to some law, even
if not a familiar one) are 'Endymion's Vision,' a bit too 'free' in
form but of rich and imaginative orchestral color, and, better known
and more highly appraised, 'The Mystic Trumpeter,' after Walt Whitman.
'Night' and 'Day,' two poems for piano and orchestra, and _La Belle
Dame Sans Merci_, ballade for baritone and orchestra, as well as the
orchestral works mentioned, have all been produced by orchestras and
artists of the first prominence and with marked success.
Mr. Converse has made two heroic ventures onto the still unwon but
yielding field of American grand opera. 'The Pipe of Desire,' with text
by George E. Barton, a one-act opera, is in mood a reflection from
the poets of the Celtic twilight. It was given a special production
of three performances in Boston, in 1906, and experienced a brief
revival, in March, 1910, at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York,
and in the following January in Boston. A second opera, in three acts,
'The Sacrifice,' dealing with a romantic Spanish-Californian subject,
is regarded as showing a marked advance in operatic style. It was
produced by the Boston Opera Company in March, 1911, with a measure of
success, but the scope of its bearings has not yet been extended. Mr.
Converse's most recent large work was the composition of the music for
the 'Pageant and Masque of St. Louis,' May 28-31, 1914, a broad and
vigorous piece of writing. In general, his music is of strong fibre,
harmoniously and melodically and warm in color, though his style has
not yet broken wholly away from its academic moorings. For several
years after 1902 he served as instructor and professor in the musical
department of Harvard University.
IV
A very substantial and influential personality in American musical
life is that of Ernest R. Kroeger, who was born in St. Louis, Mo.,
August 10, 1862, and whose activities have ever since been identified
with that city. The list of his published compositions is enormous
and comprises works in many forms. As is the case with most American
composers, his orchestral and chamber music works remain in manuscript,
and consist of three 'symphonic overtures,' 'Sardanapalus,' 'Hiawatha,'
and 'Atala,' the first Oriental in character, the two latter Indian,
overtures on the subjects of 'Thanatopsis' and 'Endymion,' a 'Lalla
Rookh' suite, two string quartets, and, for piano with strings, a trio,
quartet, and quintet.
Despite Kroeger's scholarly handling of the sonata and fugue forms
his tendency is strongly romantic, as is indicated by the subjects
not only of his overtures but of the great number of his piano works,
which touch a whole world of romance from Greek mythology to Indian
and negro folk-lore. Among his more representative piano works are '12
Concert Études' (opus 30), a suite (opus 33), four 'sonnets' (opus
36), Sonata in D flat (opus 40), Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor
(opus 41), 'Mythological Scenes' (opus 46), ten 'American Character
Sketches' (opus 53), and twenty 'Moods' (opus 60). Widely known as a
writer of songs of much poetic charm and appeal, his best works in this
form are the 'Persian Love Song' (from opus 43), the famous 'Bend Low,
O Dusky Night' (from opus 48), Ten Songs (opus 65), and a song cycle,
'Memory' (opus 66). He has written much for the organ, and there is a
sonata for violin and piano (opus 32), also a recent large work for
recitation or action, 'The Masque of Dead Florentines' (opus 75), on
Maurice Hewlett's poem. In style Kroeger leans strongly upon the German
tradition, but is fond of writing in an Oriental vein. He has held many
positions of responsibility, among them being the presidency of the
Music Teachers' National Association, and the important post of Master
of Programs at the St. Louis World's Fair, which service won him an
office in the French Academy. His influence has been far-reaching in
the musical upbuilding of the Middle West.
Leaning somewhat more heavily upon the classic than the romantic
aspects of German tradition, the work of Rubin Goldmark (b. 1872)
makes serious claim to a place of high regard in the field of American
music. While having had the advantages of European study, Goldmark also
reflects a measure of the considerable influence exerted by Dvořák upon
composition in America, having been one of those under the guidance of
the Bohemian composer during his period of teaching in New York. In so
far as this influence is discernible in one of Goldmark's well-defined
musical personality, it is to be sought in the general nature of his
musical ideals, and only very slightly in the specific Americanism
encouraged by Dvořák (1841-1904). A firm emotional texture, gained by
warmth of both harmony and melody, and a virility arising from a marked
rhythmic sense characterize Goldmark's music. His creative impulse is
guided more by emotional sincerity and verity than by the element of
charm, though it is not without moments of tender and limpid beauty.
His trio for piano, violin and 'cello is an exceptionally substantial
opus 1, and his 'Hiawatha' overture won enthusiastic praise from no
less discerning a critic than James Huneker. Among his earlier works
are a sonata for piano and violin, a 'Romanza' for 'cello, and a number
of piano compositions and songs, the latter especially revealing an
imagination of distinctive character. An 'Ode to Colorado' for mixed
voices issues from the composer's occasional residence in Colorado
Springs, as also four 'Prairie Idylls' for piano. From Goldmark's
maturer powers springs the quartet in A major, for piano and strings,
which, in its class, won the Paderewski Prize in 1909, the poetic
merits of the work being revealed in a subsequent performance by the
Kneisel Quartet. The impressive and highly-appraised tone-poem 'Samson'
was produced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March, 1914.
* * * * *
One of the first of the post-Chadwickian generation of American
composers to step into prominence was Howard Brockway (b. 1870), who
received a very thorough training under the American O. B. Boise in
Berlin. He brought back, among other large works, a symphony which
he had composed at the age of twenty-four and which had called much
attention to his gifts and potential career when performed at a concert
of his works in Berlin. Walter Damrosch once said, 'The trouble with
American composers is they write one symphony when they come back from
Europe and then do nothing more.' A significant half-truth is contained
in the remark. The classical musical education requires, tacitly or
otherwise, the symphonic effort. Then come the American environment and
the dampening absence of a market for symphonies by Young (and Old)
America; then the writing of songs in order to find a way to a hearing;
and _then_, if the composer is to belie the Damroschian dictum, a
gradual artistic resurrection harmonious with American institutions,
purposes, and ideals.
Brockway did, in fact, give out a quantity of small works, songs and
piano compositions, on his return to America, all of which, it may
be said, reveal a sensitive and truly poetic musical nature, capable
of lifting itself well up through the dense and earthy atmosphere of
technique into the realm of poetic perception and expression. The
outcome of his return to large forms it is a bit early to predict. The
knowledge of a manuscript quintet for strings and piano, and a piano
concerto, under his highest opus numbers, 36 and 37, adumbrates an
auspicious future for his expression in large forms. Meanwhile a suite
for 'cello and piano (opus 35) has been given out, and an admirable
cantata, 'Sir Olaf,' has been heard. From his earlier portfolio credit
is to be given him for the beautiful violin sonata (opus 9) and the
significant 'Ballade' and 'Sylvan Suite' (op. 11 and 19), both for
orchestra.
* * * * *
An extraordinarily prolific composer is Homer N. Bartlett (1845-1911),
the separation of whose more distinguished works from the mass that he
has written will be effected only by the sifting process of time. From
the _Salonstück_ period of his 'outrageously' popular 'Grand Polka de
Concert' (opus 1), through the ambitious violin concerto (opus 109),
which was entirely rewritten in 1908, and the symphonic poem 'Apollo'
from the same period, to the works bearing the Himalayan opus numbers
215 and 220, a 'Meditation' and an _Air à la Bourrée_ for violin, is a
far cry. In providing a list of his works the composer writes at the
end, 'opus numbers here increase to 231, although I am striving to keep
them down.' This great output shows a steady increase in distinction,
and covers a wide range of tendencies, almost wholly in the direction
of romanticism.
'Khamsin,' which Hughes refers to as a fragment of a cantata, was
rewritten in 1908 as an extended dramatic aria for tenor solo, in
three connected parts. In its earlier form it was heard at a New
York Manuscript Society concert, and is regarded as representative
of the best and most dramatically inspired of Bartlett's work. Two
movements of an ingeniously exotic 'Japanese Suite' for orchestra were
heard at the Central Park orchestral concerts in 1910 and revealed
a good control of orchestral resource. There are also clever piano
compositions on Japanese themes, a Japanese 'Revery' and 'Romance'
(opus 221), and 'Kuma Saka' (opus 218) for four hands. There are also
an opera, 'La Vallière,' written in 1887, an operetta, 'Magic Hours'
(opus 225), and many choruses, songs, piano compositions, including a
prize-winning nocturne ('Kranbach' prize), violin compositions, organ
works, and songs. Bartlett was born in 1846 at Olive, N. Y., and has
been active as a teacher and organist in New York City.
Mr. Rossetter G. Cole is best known as the composer of the melodrama
'King Robert of Sicily' (op. 22), to which David Bispham's stirring
interpretation has brought great popularity. This work contains some
of Mr. Cole's best inspirations; while adhering to idioms that are
conventional, there is an admirable following of the dramatic line and
a real atmospheric descriptiveness. It is harmonically conventional,
at times markedly Wagnerian, and there are some excellent effects
in ecclesiastical harmonies. In an earlier melodrama, 'Hiawatha's
Wooing,' op. 20, Indian themes are utilized, though but slightly. Still
earlier published works are 'The Passing of Summer,' a 'lyrical idyll'
for soli, chorus and orchestra, while still in manuscript there is a
sonata for violin and piano (op. 8), works which placed by the side
of Mr. Cole's later compositions become comparatively unimportant. Of
recent publication a 'Ballade' for cello and orchestra (op. 25) and two
organ pieces, 'Fantasie Symphonique' (op. 28) and 'Rhapsody' (op. 30),
are written for their respective instruments with a well-calculated
effectiveness. One of Mr. Cole's recent compositions is a bit of
descriptive piano writing entitled 'Sunset in the Hills.' This shows
a considerably more advanced harmonic scheme and one much richer in
color, which now fade into the more delicate tints of an idyllic
MacDowell-like mood.
V
Generations of composers succeed each other quickly in America with,
however, but the flimsiest of boundaries, chronological and artistic.
We now come to a group of composers, in general slightly younger than
those already considered, who in the romantic and neo-classical fields
may be regarded as 'runners up,' whose 'arrival' is well under way
and who press hard for the highest rank and honors in their field in
the national and even in the international musical life. No order of
precedence will be attempted in making note of their achievements, as
none has been made hitherto with a few exceptions in favor of seniority
and fame.
One of the staunchest and most uncompromising upholders of a severe
classical ideal is Daniel Gregory Mason (b. 1873). With sureness, if
not over-rapidly, he has developed a mode of expression singularly
lucid, symmetrical and thorough in its formal unfoldment. Thoughtful
in the extreme, modest in the nature and statement of his themes, he
seeks the source of power in completeness and symmetry of outline, in
the bringing of his themes to the fullest and most rounded development,
and in clarity of harmonic structure. Not even the strictest of
classicists, in these days, can wholly escape the influence of the
romantic epoch, and if a sympathy with the ideals of Schumann has in a
measure qualified Mason's musical outlook in the first instance, it has
yielded to a stronger leaning to the artistic creed of Brahms. Some of
the composer's pages bear a marked Brahms-like aspect. These earlier
influences have been broadened and enriched in Mason's later work by a
studious devotion to the music of César Franck and of Vincent d'Indy,
the composer having studied with the latter in 1902 and later. These
latter influences have produced a very evident effect upon his harmonic
scheme, which presents a conservative use and treatment of thoroughly
modern resources, though with a characteristic avoidance of anything
approaching to the harmonic sensationalism of much latter day music. In
all ways, in fact, Mason's music is a protest against the sensational
tendency of the time.
The composer's most ambitious work is a symphony for grand orchestra
(opus 11), in C minor, written in 1913-14. It is in four movements, the
last two connected, without program, and is 'cyclic' in construction.
Another important work is a quartet in A major (opus 7). The sonata for
violin and piano (opus 5), in G minor, which has been widely performed,
is thoroughly representative of the composer's ideals. The first
movement, suave and musical, though not particularly striking in its
themes, is in an extended sonata form, rather highly modernized with
respect to secondary themes and transitional passages, and reveals much
ingenuity in thematic variation and transformation. The warm melody
of the second movement, andante tranquillo, is of memorable beauty.
The last movement is in the nature of a spirited tarantella, with an
admirably contrasted theme of choral-like character, an effect one may
fancy to bear a slight analogy to the _finale_ of Beethoven's Kreutzer
Sonata.
An 'Elegy' (opus 2), in variation form, is wrought with technical
nicety, but leans dubiously upon an ultra-conservative treatment.
'Country Pictures' (opus 9), six pieces for pianoforte, show much
fancy and charm. No. 1, 'Cloud Pageant,' is colorful and pictorially
suggestive, interesting in its thematic inversions, and develops
massively. No. 2, 'Chimney Swallows,' is clever in motion, and
particularly in its insistence on the interval of the 'second.' No. 4,
'The Whippoorwill,' is a charming piece of classical realism, and No.
5, 'The Quiet Hour,' comes as near to ultra-modernism as the composer
ventures. Other works are: 'Five Children's Songs' (opus 1), with texts
from Stevenson; 'Romance' and 'Impromptu' (opus 3), for pianoforte; a
whimsical set of 'Variations on Yankee Doodle in the Styles of Various
Composers'; 'Pastorale' for violin, clarinet and piano (opus 8); and
'Passacaglia' (opus 10), for organ.
Mr. Mason is a native of Boston and a member of a famous family of
musicians, being a grandson of Lowell Mason, and a nephew of Dr.
William Mason. He is a graduate of Harvard, where some of his early
musical studies were pursued under Paine. Since 19 he has held
the associate professorship of music in Columbia University, and
he has done much by lectures and literary work to promote musical
appreciation. His 'From Grieg to Brahms' (1902) and its sequels have
exerted a wide influence.
* * * * *
Emanating from strongly academic influences, David Stanley Smith (b.
1877), who has for a number of years been associated as assistant
professor with the musical department of Yale University, exhibits a
marked romantic tendency of imagination, albeit one exceptionally well
guarded by a devotion to the structural ideals of the classic writers.
The distinguished character of his talent has brought him rapidly to
the front, and none of his more important works have had to wait long
for a hearing. Smith places a strong insistence upon coherence in
thematic development and tonality as the only basis upon which to found
a musical work, and, while partial to high harmonic color and ready to
depart from the text-books in harmonic usage, he is unwilling to allow
color effect to usurp the place of structural continuity. Desirous and
capable as he is of advancing upon the debatable borders of modern
harmonic resource, he does not burn the bridges of conservatism behind
him. His music bespeaks a sensitively poetic nature, sentiment, color
and emotion rising easily through the foundational stratum of a
thorough but not overweighted technique.
His symphony in F minor was performed by the Chicago Orchestra under
Stock in December, 1912, and was well received. It is thoroughly
representative of the composer's blending of modern and classic ideals
and methods. The quartet in E minor (opus 19), departing from earlier
styles chiefly in rhythmic intricacy, has been played by the Kneisels
in many cities. An 'Overture Joyeuse' (opus 11) was conducted by the
composer at one of the Chickering production concerts in 1904; it finds
the composer scarcely emancipated from academic trammels. This and a
much later 'symphonic sketch,' 'Prince Hal,' have both been conducted
by the composer with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. A 'Symphonic
Ballad' (opus 24) has been given with this orchestra, and also at the
concerts of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. 'Pan,' a chorus for
women's voices, on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem, with orchestra
and Pan-pipe obbligato inevitably assigned to the oboe, has been widely
heard, and is a work brimming with color and rhythm. 'The Wind-Swept
Wheat' and 'The Dark' are also for women's chorus with orchestra. A
mixed chorus with orchestra, 'The Fallen Star,' won the Paderewski
Prize in 1909. A trio in G major (opus 16) and an orchestral 'Allegro
Giocoso' have, like all the foregoing works, been publicly performed,
as well as numerous anthems and songs. Smith was born in Ann Arbor,
Mich., and educated at Yale.
* * * * *
A composer of the younger Boston group is Edward Burlingame Hill
(b. in 1872), a music-maker of reflective temperament whose work,
always refined and thoughtfully molded, inclines to tints and moods
of delicate and subtle texture. His musical studies were conducted at
Harvard University, under Professor Paine, but the music of MacDowell,
then a resident of Boston, was the chief influencing factor in his
earlier work. At this time he wrote several piano sonatas, one in F
sharp, one in E after Kipling's 'The Light that Failed,' and a 'Sonata
Patriotica,' the title of the latter being far from an indication of
any nationalistic tendency in his later work. These works have not
been published. Under the same influence he wrote a number of short
piano compositions and songs, among the former a set of 'Four Sketches
after Stephen Crane', (opus 7), containing an engaging satirical
pleasantry on the 'little devils grinning in sin,' and 'Country Idyls'
(opus 10), exquisitely tinted and showing a quality of charm which is
not the most prominent attribute of American music in general. The
titles of some of the above-mentioned works reveal the composer's
discriminating literary tastes, which are further borne out in the
choice of the poems for his songs, among their authors being the names
of Tennyson, Rossetti, Henley, Arthur Symons, Ambrosius, and Dowson.
He has written many part-songs to Elizabethan words. A work of much
more importance than any of the foregoing is 'The Nuns of the Perpetual
Adoration' for chorus and orchestra (opus 15), on the poem by Dowson,
which was performed at a concert of the Modern Music Society of New
York in 1914, under the direction of Benjamin Lambord. It reveals
refined musicianship of a high order and, rather dangerously for the
maintenance of interest, though advantageously for an exhibition of the
psychological penetration of the composer, sustains a peculiar mood of
spiritual aloofness. A pantomime 'Jack Frost in Midsummer' (opus 16),
which has been publicly performed, is one of the best of the later
works of Hill, who is more distinguished in artistic personality than
in the quality of being prolific. Another pantomime is 'Pan and the
Star.' He has in manuscript an overture to 'She Stoops to Conquer,'
and a set of variations for string quartet. Hill was comparatively
early attracted to the modern French school and his later work has
been strongly influenced by it, though not to the point of radical
ultra-modernity. This tendency is exhibited at its most advanced in
the symphonic poem, 'The Parting of Launcelot and Guenevere,' after
the poem by Stephen Phillips. As in 'Pan and the Star,' the composer's
dramatic instinct comes strongly into play, and the work might be as
aptly called a dramatic symphony, since the dramatic aspects of the
poem have appealed most strongly to the composer.
Another representative of the Harvard University influence is Philip
Greeley Clapp, whose tone-poem 'Norge' and a symphony have been
performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the latter in the spring of
1914 under the composer's direction. The former received considerable
commendation, but the latter was not greeted with unmixed cordiality.
Olin Downes, the critic of the _Post_, pronouncing denunciation upon it
in unequivocal fashion, though Philip Hale regarded it with a measure
of favor. Clapp is gifted with ideas and temperament, but is considered
not yet to have issued from the formative stage or to have acquired a
definite and personal style. The forms in which he writes indicate a
strong classical tendency, but his sympathies with respect to thematic
treatment and harmony are modern. Among his works are a quartet for
strings, in C minor, a prelude 'In Summer,' for orchestra, a number of
songs for solo voice, as well as part-songs, and several songs with
orchestral accompaniment.
John Beach has shown evidence of distinguished sensitiveness and
refinement of feeling in a number of songs and piano compositions
which, as in the case of Hill, find the composer going to high literary
sources for inspiration. While not original in a startling sense, there
is a very personal element in Beach's music; without a very abundant
technique he succeeds in his best work in getting himself expressed
and is singularly free from imitation, both in the emotional content
of his music and in his technical presentation of it. He is a true and
original melodist, with a sense of beauty of no mean order which is
quite his own, and at times shows a considerable and subtle harmonic
imagination. 'A Song of the Lilac,' poem by Louise Imogen Guiney, is
an inspired little picture of the perfumed and mystic night wind. 'A
Woman's Last Word,' on Browning's poem beginning 'Let's contend no
more, love,' is very sincere in its emotion, as is also his warmly
autumnal ‘'Twas in a World of Living Leaves,’ on Henley's poem. 'In a
Gondola,' an extended 'dramatic monologue for baritone,' on Browning's
poem, is a complete drama in brief, with some effective and luscious
tone painting. Of the piano compositions one remembers with pleasure 'A
Garden Fancy,' on lines by Rossetti, an 'Intermezzo' with a very poetic
middle section, a 'Monologue' of Schumann-Brahms influence, and the
'New Orleans Miniatures,' reflecting charmingly a series of impressions
gained in that city during the composer's residence there as a teacher.
Beach comes from Gloversville, N. Y., and was for a time instructor in
music at the University of Minnesota.
* * * * *
One of the most brilliant of the younger American group is Arthur
Bergh (b. 1882), the spread of whose fame as the composer of
melodramatic music to Poe's 'Raven' has been almost as rapid as was
that of the erratic poet-genius himself through his achievement of that
immemorially haunting poem. It was first produced by David Bispham,
to whom it is dedicated, in 1909, and has become a universal favorite
with his audiences everywhere. This music offers no startling problems
for the modern theorist, scarcely for the lay musician, in fact, so
simple and clear is it in construction; but it has an inner quality
not easy to describe, a quality of verity, of directness, of immediacy
of expression, seldom attained by composers of the time. Here are no
blotches or wastes of mere color, such as Poe might easily invite; the
work is everywhere thematic. Three themes, of electrical directness
and poignant eloquence (two for the raven and one for the 'lost
Lenore'), suffice the composer for the entire work, with a subsidiary
theme or two, but there is not a spot of tedious or laborious thematic
development in the composition; it is everywhere fresh, crystalline
and crisp. It is music that lives and speaks at every point. A little
tempered programmatic suggestion is employed, at the rapping on the
door, but always with the musical aim above the realistic. The 'Lenore'
theme is of haunting loveliness, and the theme of the 'stately raven'
is a stroke of genius in the simple expression of mystery and dignity.
Everywhere is poetic and idealistic atmosphere, gained always with the
simplest of means. It is to the composer's credit that, with a true
intuition for the relative values in the content of the poem, he has
made, not the gloom of the shadow-haunted chamber, but the dream of the
'lost Lenore,' the dominant note of the work. The composer has made
an admirable orchestral score of the composition, which was produced,
with Bispham as reader, the composer conducting, at a concert of the
'American Music Society' in New York, on April 18, 1909.
The composer has completed another 'melodrama' of a similar order, on
Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin,' also with orchestral score, which,
if anything, surpasses the 'Raven.' He has published about thirty songs
and about an equal number of piano compositions and some for violin.
Of the songs the 'Night Rider,' on a poem by Fullerton Waldo, is the
most important, a high-spirited and poetic work. It is scored for
orchestra. In most of these smaller works Beach has not embodied a very
significant content, but they have ingenuity, charm, and sentiment.
'Plaintive Love' from opus 14 may be mentioned as colorful. He has many
unpublished works, among them a light romantic opera, 'Niorada,' some
excellent piano suites, two overtures, a 'Festival March,' a recent
symphonic choral for orchestra and chorus entitled 'The Unnamed City,'
and many songs. Bergh was the conductor of the orchestra in Central
Park, New York, in the summer of 1914.
* * * * *
Joseph Henius, whose untimely death in 1912 cut short the career of a
musician of high ideals, has left a published violin sonata of high
merit. It was first produced by David and Clara Mannes in New York in
1909 and was enthusiastically received. It is fairly strict sonata
form except for the slow movement. This is a romance of deep poetic
fervor, alternately sombre and exalted, and reveals a lofty melodic
beauty and much warmth of feeling. Henius has aimed at keeping melody
plainly in view, and at the same time to gain perfection of the cyclic
form. He was a pupil of Dvořák and a determined classicist. Among his
manuscripts are a quintet in D major, a quartet in G minor, a comic
opera and various songs.
A composer of classical leanings is Frank Edwin Ward (b. 1872), who
has been connected with Columbia University as organist since 1904, and
as Associate in Music since 1909. His works in the cyclical forms are
a published sonata for violin and piano (opus 9), and, in manuscript,
a quartet for piano and strings (opus 13), a string quartet (opus 22),
and a suite for orchestra (opus 25). Modern in a general way, though
not in the latter-day sense of the term, Ward's music exhibits an
unusual melodic fluency and a harmonic variety and flexibility which
often lend it interest and charm. It is music that is sincere and
well-felt, and wholly devoid of strain. The workmanship is clean-cut
and musicianly, and the form well-rounded and balanced. A rhapsody for
piano and violin or violoncello (opus 10) is effective and spirited
with an _andante appassionato_ movement of much warmth. Of a group
of short piano pieces (opus 5), 'Prelude' shows a distinguished and
refined quality of musical thought, with much modulatory interest, and
a MacDowellish 'By the Sea Shore' is very agreeable music. There are
also a number of songs and organ pieces, two sacred cantatas, 'The
Divine Birth' and 'The Savior of the World,' secular part songs, and
over thirty anthems and services.
Carl Busch (b. 1862), although of foreign birth, has long been classed
among American composers. He has for many years been identified with
the musical life of Kansas City, Mo., where he is conductor of the
symphony orchestra and the Philharmonic Choral Society. He has also
conducted concerts in his native land, Denmark, where he was knighted
by the government in 1912. His early studies were conducted in
Copenhagen, but his work as a composer began only with his residence in
America, now of twenty-five years' duration. Busch's tendency is almost
wholly along romantic lines, and his achievements are of a substantial
character. He is best known for his works for chorus and orchestra,
impressive compositions conceived on broad lines. Among the most
important of these are 'King Olaf,' and 'The Four Winds,' the latter
of Indian character. Others are: 'The American Flag,' 'Paul Revere's
Ride,' 'The League of the Alps,' and 'The Brown Heather.' Busch has an
excellent technical command of orchestral resource, and has produced a
number of large orchestral works, among them a prologue, 'The Passing
of Arthur,' a rhapsody, 'Negro Carnival,' and a testimony to the
persistence of Stephen Foster's fame and influence in string variations
on 'The Old Folks at Home' and 'My Old Kentucky Home.' During the last
ten years Busch has felt strongly the Indian influence and, aside from
'The Four Winds,' has produced an 'Indian Legend' for violin and piano,
two groups of Indian songs, two symphonic poems and several smaller
orchestral works, all of Indian character. From an earlier period are
many songs and choruses and a number of violin pieces.
* * * * *
Also foreign born, and famous chiefly through his long and
distinguished career as a conductor, Walter Damrosch (b. 1862) has made
noteworthy incursions into the field of composition. Wherever David
Bispham has sung, his stirring setting of Kipling's 'Danny Deever'
is a popular favorite. In 1894 he essayed an American grand opera in
'The Scarlet Letter,' produced in Boston and New York under his own
direction, but the work did not hold the stage. Much more favorable
comment was evoked by his second opera, 'Cyrano,' text by W. J.
Henderson, which was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in New
York on February 27, 1913. The critic of the 'New Music Review' wrote
of Mr. Damrosch and this work, 'He has written in a well recognizable
post-Wagnerian style.... His score is commendable for its coloring, its
richness, and for the touch with which he has emphasized and elucidated
passages now emotional, now gay, now picturesque, now tragic. The
music of "Cyrano" is undoubtedly composed with skill, with verve, and
in parts with spontaneity.' In the midst of a busy conductor's life
Mr. Damrosch has unquestionably borne his share of the effort to make
America an opera-producing nation.
Two other Americans coming within the present classification who have
striven in the field of grand opera are Albert Mildenberg and William
Legrand Howland. Mildenberg has written three grand operas, 'Michael
Angelo,' in one act, and two three-act operas, 'Raffaelo' and 'Angelo,'
none of which, however, have yet come to performance. His light operas
have been produced at different times, 'The Wood Witch,' by the
Bostonians; 'The Weather Vane,' by an independent company; and 'The
Princess Delft,' by various American colleges. Howland has also written
three grand operas, 'Nita,' 'Sarrona,' and 'Bébé.' These have been
produced in Italy, 'Sarrona' being the only one to be heard in America,
when given under somewhat trying conditions by an independent company
in New York, February 10, 1910. It is a melodious score, rather lightly
orchestrated, but not without moments of notable effectiveness.
VII
San Francisco, especially as the home of the Bohemian Club, with its
world-famous 'Midsummer High Jinks' or 'Forest Festival,' holds a
record as a city of composers that is little appreciated in the Eastern
part of the United States. Of this group William J. McCoy has probably
made the most significant contribution to musical art. A composer of
high ideals and broad artistic vision, of large emotional capacity
and wide experience, his work reveals him as an artist of no ordinary
stature. Educated in America under William Mason, and in the German
schools under Carl Reinecke and Moritz Hauptmann, he nevertheless
at an early period made himself familiar with the principles of the
French school. His music is characterized by directness of invention,
breadth of resource, and an appealing emotional warmth, and shows
him, as well, as an adept in orchestration. His virile and dramatic
music for 'The Hamadryads,' the 'Midsummer High Jinks' of 1904, text
by Will Irwin, was one of the strongest factors in the elevation of
the Bohemian Club's festival to the high fame which it enjoys. The
themes are all lyrically appealing and of jubilant spontaneity, those
of 'hope' and 'supplication' being particularly felicitous, while the
final processional march shows an almost Wagnerian breadth and rhythmic
swing. The overture was performed in New York, on April 18, 1909, at a
concert of the American Music Society at Carnegie Hall. McCoy's music
for the 'Jinks' of 1910, 'The Cave Man,' text by Charles K. Field,
shows a pronounced advance in the employment of modern resource. One
of its chief features is the 'Song of the Flint,' a work of strong
dramatic power. A grand opera, 'Egypt,' libretto by Charles K. Field,
is the composer's most recently completed work, having been finished
in 1914, and is thought to be his most representative and substantial
achievement. An early symphony was performed in Leipzig in 1872. There
are also an 'Ave Verum' for solo, male chorus and organ, a quintet in
G, and various songs and short instrumental pieces. The composer is
also the author of a theoretical work, 'Cumulative Harmony.' McCoy was
born in Crestline, Ohio, in 1848.
Another veteran 'Jinks' composer of San Francisco is Humphrey J.
Stewart, who has been the 'Musical Sire,' as it is termed, of the
eleventh (1888), thirteenth (1890), fifteenth (1892), seventeenth
(1894), eighteenth (1895), twentieth (1897), twenty-first (1898),
twenty-sixth (1903), and twenty-ninth (1906) 'Midsummer High Jinks.'
Stewart is of English birth, a composer of high musicianship, and is
widely known in the field of church music.
Edward F. Schneider, of San Francisco, has also made a notable
contribution to the music of the Bohemian Club, having been the
composer of the 'Jinks' drama for 1907, the 'Triumph of Bohemia,' text
by George Sterling, which was very cordially received. He is also
the composer of the 'Jinks,' or 'Grove Play,' as this festival is
sometimes called, to be presented in 1915. It is entitled 'Apollo,'
the text being by Frank Pixley. Schneider's tendencies are inclined
toward the classic tradition, though not without rather strong romantic
influence, and find their chief expression in his symphony, 'In Autumn
Time,' which has been produced by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra,
under Henry Hadley's direction. His music is strongly melodic, an
infrequent modern characteristic, warm in emotional quality and of
well-balanced and rounded formal construction, though little touched
by ultra-modernism. Of a number of songs 'The Deep Sea Pearl' may
be singled out for its quality of haunting beauty, and a setting of
Tennyson's 'Eagle' for descriptive power. A 'Romantic Fantasy' and
'Midwinter Idyl,' both for violin and piano, are extremely melodious,
and show a sympathetic management of violin writing.
Another San Francisco composer of notable ability is Wallace Sabin,
who composed the music for the Bohemian Club Grove Play of 1909, 'St.
Patrick at Tara,' the text by H. Morse Stephens. This, one of the
most famous 'Jinks,' won high favor, and the music, if not striking
in originality, was dignified and of firm texture, and carried out
admirably the Celtic musical idiom. A wild Irish revel, in the form
of a jig, was one of its most striking features, and of much solidity
and breadth was the processional chorus at the entrance of the King
of Leinster with his retainers. Sabin has written much music for the
church.
Herman Perlet, another of the San Francisco group, wrote the music
for the Grove Play of 1913, 'The Fall of Ug,' text by Rufus Steele.
The themes show a considerable power of characterization and a lively
and elastic rhythmic sense. Perlet's tone-poem 'Mount Tamalpais,' was
heard, under the composer's direction, in San Francisco in June, 1912,
and called forth warm praise from the critic of the 'Call.' While not
an avowed nationalist or 'aboriginalist,' he has based this work upon a
theme of the Lake County Indians. A 'Symphonic Suite' and a 'Symphonie
Spirituelle' are of more recent date.
Edward G. Stricklen is one of the younger San Franciscans, and is
regarded as a composer of ability and promise. The music for 'The
Green Knight,' text by Porter Garnett, the 'Jinks' of 1911, is his
contribution to the art achievement of the Bohemain Club. It is
music of distinguished imaginative character and much freshness
of inspiration, showing the rich modern harmonic texture which
characterizes the younger school of American composers. Stricklen
is also the composer of the first 'Parthenia,' the annual festival
expressing the passage from girlhood to womanhood, inaugurated by the
women students at the University of California.
Theodore Vogt and Arthur Weiss should be mentioned in connection with
the San Francisco group, the composers of the 'Jinks' of 1905 and 1908,
respectively, 'The Quest of the Gorgon' and 'The Sons of Baldur'; and
also Joseph D. Redding, the composer of the first 'Jinks' known as
a 'Grove Play,' which was entitled 'The Man in the Forest,' and was
produced in 1902. John Harradan Pratt, of San Francisco, has composed,
among other works, a trio for pianoforte and strings, which, if
conservative, shows genuine classical ideals and considerable charm.
Nathaniel Clifford Page (b. 1866), at one time associated with the
San Francisco group, but who later removed to the East, is a composer
of a high order of musicianship. He has an early opera, 'The First
Lieutenant,' produced in San Francisco in 1889, as well as two later
operas, and has written much incidental and entr'acte music for plays.
An orchestral 'Caprice' is an astonishing display of orchestral and
contrapuntal ingenuity, and his part song on lines from the opening of
Keats' 'Endymion' shows a highly refined sense of beauty.
There are many American composers of the younger generation, or,
if somewhat older, too infrequently heard, who have shown a greater
or less degree of creative capacity along the line of the ideals
considered in the present chapter, but of whom it is too early to
predict the nature or possible height of their promised achievements.
Henry Lang, of Philadelphia, took the first prize in the chamber music
class of the prize competition of the National Federation of Musical
Clubs in 1911, with a trio for piano and strings, in E major. Henry
V. Stearnes, with a very melodious trio in D minor, took the second
prize in this class at the same competition. Stanley R. Avery, of
Minneapolis, has written a considerable number of songs showing fancy
and charm, among them 'When Hazel Comes,' 'There's a Sunny Path,'
'The Shepherdess,' an Easter song called 'The Dawn of Life,' 'On a
Balcony,' a graceful song with a warmly emotional climax, and an
'Esquimo Love Song' of curiously chilly atmosphere. He has written also
part songs and church music. Arthur Olaf Anderson, of Chicago, who
has also written many charming songs, is a purist in his art, gaining
exquisite effects with great simplicity and lucidity. Among his songs
are 'May-time,' 'Roses,' _In verschwiegener Nacht_, and 'Mother Mine.'
He is the composer of two pianoforte sonatas, several short suites
and pieces for large and small orchestra, and a number of mixed male
and female choruses. Chester Ide, of Springfield, Ill., is a composer
of delicate poetic fancy who often shows an unusually poignant sense
of beauty. He has written suites for orchestra, vocal works with
orchestra, songs, and piano pieces. The songs 'Lovers of the Wild' and
'Names,' on poems by Stevenson and Coleridge, reveal grace and buoyancy
of inspiration, and a waltz, 'To Margaret,' gains a singular intensity
of dreaminess with the simplest of means. Albert Elkus, of Sacramento,
Cal., has written piano pieces showing individuality. Cecil Burleigh
is a composer of exceptional promise, who devotes himself chiefly
to the violin. His 'Eight Characteristic Pieces' (opus 6) for that
instrument are musicianly, well felt, and fanciful, though not showing
the character revealed in his later work. The 'Rocky Mountain Sketches'
and 'Twelve Short Poems,' also for violin and piano, show a very great
advance in imaginative quality, as does also a set of five 'Indian
Sketches.' A recent violin and piano sonata, entitled 'Ascension,' is
his most ambitious work. Christian Kriens, of Hollandish birth, has
written felicitously in various forms. A number of solos for violin
and 'cello, with piano accompaniment, show him as a fertile melodist.
One of the former, 'Summer Evening,' is a simple mood of considerable
loveliness. A composer of piquant and charming individuality is Charles
Fonteyn Manney (b. 1872), of Boston, who has written many excellent
songs, 'Orpheus with His Lute' being perhaps the best known. Frederick
Fleming Beale, of Seattle, has shown originality and noteworthy poetic
quality as a song writer. J. Homer Grunn, located at Phœnix, Ariz.,
has embodied impressions of the 'land of little rain' in a pianoforte
suite, 'Impressions of the Desert,' and has written a _Marche Héroïque_
for two pianos, 'Concert Studies,' and 'Garden Pieces.'
Edmund Severn (b. 1862, in England) has given himself extensively to
composition for the violin. His concerto for that instrument in D minor
is on broadly melodic lines, is, on the whole, conservative, but makes
occasional excursions into whole-tone scale effects. A suite for violin
and piano, 'From Old New England,' draws upon old tunes and ballads of
that region for its thematic material, though scarcely constituting
the composer a nationalist. Its movements, 'Pastoral Romance,' 'Rustic
Scherzo,' 'Lament,' and 'Kitchen Dance,' are excellent violin writing,
and show humor and a sprightly fancy. There is also a sonata for violin
and piano and a symphonic poem, 'Launcelot and Elaine,' which has been
heard at the Worcester, Mass., festivals.
Certain American composers of distinguished attainments in the sphere
of romantic and neo-classic ideals have preferred to spend their
lives in Europe, with the result that their work is little known at
home. Among these Arthur Bird (b. 1856) is known as the possessor of
a fertile and truly musical imagination and a thorough technique. He
has composed a symphony, suites, and a 'Carnival,' for orchestra; a
ballet, _Rübezahl_; an opera, 'Daphne'; and various works for piano and
organ. His decimet for wind instruments won the Paderewski prize for
chamber music in 1902. Bird is a musician of German training and French
sympathies and calls himself a 'conditional modernist.' He makes his
home in Berlin, where he studied under Haupt, Loeschhorn and Urban.
Earlier in his career he spent two years with Liszt at Weimar. In 1886
Bird was the conductor of the Milwaukee Musical Festival. Another of
the expatriated is Bertram Shapleigh, who has adopted England as his
home. His output is enormous and comprises works in many forms, among
them orchestral works, cantatas, and choruses, and violin and 'cello
solos, though songs constitute by far the greater part of his music.
For orchestra he has a 'Ramayana' suite and four symphonic sketches,
_Gur Amir_.
VIII
The classical tendency, by which is commonly meant the impulse to
compose in the 'cyclic' forms, is seldom manifested by women composers,
for reasons which have been variously explained, or for which
explanation has been attempted. Whatever the true reason may be, it is,
in fact, wholly on the side of romanticism, with the possible exception
of literary tendencies in the choice of poems for songs, that all the
women composers coming within the scope of this chapter are found. One
of the most gifted of these is Mabel Daniels (b. 1878), who has the
distinction of having won both prizes offered for women composers in
the competition of the National Federation of Musical Clubs for 1911,
the first with a song for soprano, 'Villa of Dreams,' poem by Arthur
Symons, and the second with two three-part songs for women's voices
with accompaniment of pianoforte and two violins, 'Eastern Song,'
the author of the text not stated, and 'The Voice of My Beloved,'
the text selected from the 'Song of Solomon.' 'Villa of Dreams' is a
broadly conceived aria, essentially melodious, and harmonically modern
in the general sense of being free in modulatory treatment, without
crossing the border line of ultra-modern chord effects. It is fluent in
inspiration and authentically poetic. Miss Daniels' most significant
work is a poem for baritone and orchestra. 'The Desolate City' (W. S.
Blunt), produced at the Peterborough festival in 1913, and later by the
Chicago orchestra in Syracuse, the composer conducting. 'Love, When I
Sleep,' on original verses which show the composer to have a marked
poetic gift, from three 'Songs of Damascus,' is notable for its melodic
warmth. A 'Fairy Scherzo' for orchestra was conducted by the composer
at the MacDowell Festival at Peterborough, N. H., in August, 1914.
Widely known through her irresistibly lilting 'Boat Song,' Harriet
Ware, through many songs of exquisite character, has taken her place
as one of the most prominent women composers of America. Her work has
assumed a thoroughly modern character, is highly refined in feeling
and often subtle in its expressiveness. Among her songs one of the
best is 'The Call of Râdha,' which contrasts with poignancy the worlds
of sense and spirit. 'The Forgotten Land,' another song which takes
high rank, shows a considerable chromatic harmonic fluency, and paints
an exquisite tone-picture of a far-away world. 'Rose Moral' has much
simple beauty, 'To Lucasta' fine contrasts of mood, and 'My Love is a
Rider' is very bold and poetic. A true ecstasy lives in 'Joy of the
Morning,' and 'The Last Dance' is rich and warm in sentiment throughout.
Few composers of America, of either sex, have surpassed in quality of
spiritual beauty and refinement some of the songs of Gertrude Norman
Smith, who commands regions of inspiration to which only a few rare
souls have access. One studies and regards with keenest admiration such
exquisite and deeply felt inspirations as 'From Afar in the Night,'
with its restful motion; 'The Golden Birch,' so melodically beautiful
and sensitive in harmony; the somewhat Schubertesque but quaintly
charming 'In the Cloister Garden'; the joyously lilting 'In the Vale of
Llangollen,' on Arthur Symons' poem; and the mood-heavy and passionate
song on the same poet's 'Rain on the Down.'
An extraordinary record is that of Eleanor Everest Freer, of Chicago,
who has, in a large number of songs, well-nigh summed up the whole
range of the best in English and American lyrical literature, having
drawn upon upward of sixty of the greatest poets in the language for
her texts. Her opus 22, alone, consists of settings of the entire
fourty-four 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. Her music presents the wide variety of expressiveness which
such a task would of necessity demand, but, despite the interesting
character of much of this music, it may be conceived that a richer
musical texture would have been gained by a higher concentration upon a
lesser output. The music shows French influence and is laudable for its
freedom from the outworn conventions of Germanic tradition.
A melodist of much spontaneity and charm is Celeste Heckscher,
who has written a considerable number of songs and piano pieces of
appealing lyrical quality, as well as an orchestral suite, 'Dances
of the Pyrenees,' which has been very successfully performed at the
concerts of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra and elsewhere. Among
the songs 'Music of Hungary' is characteristic and bold; 'Serenade'
is melodically ingratiating; and 'Pastoral Lullaby,' on a melody from
the orchestral suite, has a haunting melodic outline and charm of
mood. A 'Romance' for 'cello is simple and effective, affording a good
opportunity for developing tonal breadth.
Clara A. Korn, ranked by Rupert Hughes as a composer of 'works of
serious intention and worthy art,' has written a considerable number
of piano pieces in the smaller forms, including a suite, 'Rural
Snapshots,' an album of 'Nine Songs,' and for violin and piano a suite,
'Modern Dances,' and an _Air de Ballet_.
With characteristic Western enterprise Mary Carr Moore, of Seattle,
composed, produced, and conducted a grand opera, 'Narcissa,' text by
Sarah Pratt Carr, in that city in 1912 with pronounced success. The
text is based on a romantic episode of local history. Mrs. Moore is the
composer of many charming songs.
A complete list of American women composers would be of astonishing
length, and beyond the scope of the present work. Helen Hopekirk, of
Boston, should be mentioned, who has contributed to song and pianoforte
literature much of worth, of beauty and charm, not untouched in its
imaginative quality by the composer's Celtic derivation. Fannie Dillon,
of Los Angeles, in a number of piano compositions, shows emotional
and imaginative force, and a geometrical handling of ideas and grasp
of harmonic construction having an almost masculine character. She
has given a musical setting to Browning's 'Saul.' Mary Turner Salter
(b. in 1856) is widely known for songs of much fineness of spirit and
humanity of appeal. Amy Woodford Finden's setting of Lawrence Hope's
'Indian Love Lyrics' have enjoyed a very wide popularity. Lola Carrier
Worrell is the composer of many pleasant songs. A peculiar depth and
authenticity of mood lurks in several songs of not very formidable
technical construction by Katherine Ruth Heyman. Charming songs have
been written by Alicia Van Buren, Virginia Roper, Louise Drake Wright,
Alice Getty, and Caroline Holme Walker.
A. F.