AMERICAN COMPOSERS: VOCAL FORMS; PIANO AND
ORGAN.—MUSICAL LITERATURE.
=Cantata Composers=.—A number of American composers have turned their
attention to composition in opera and cantata forms. Some of the
composers already mentioned have written works of this character. The
first of American composers to work in the field of the cantata was
=J. C. D. Parker=, born in Boston, in 1828, a graduate of Harvard, and
a teacher with many years of splendid work to his credit. His musical
education was received at Leipzig. In 1854, he located in Boston and
took up a varied career as organist, conductor, and teacher of piano
and harmony, at the New England Conservatory. His large works include
a cantata, “Redemption Hymn,” a secular cantata, “The Blind King,”
and two works in oratorio form “St. John” and “The Life of Man,” the
latter showing him at his strongest. =Dudley Buck=, organist, composer
and teacher, is also one of the veterans of American music. He was
born at Hartford, Conn., in 1839, attended Trinity College several
years, began his musical instruction at sixteen years of age, went
to Germany several years later, giving his attention principally to
the organ and composition. In 1862, he returned to the United States,
worked professionally in Hartford, Chicago, and Boston; in 1874, he
went to New York, later to one of the leading churches of Brooklyn,
which position he retained until 1905. His choral works in large form
are “Don Munio,” “The Voyage of Columbus,” “The Golden Legend,” and the
“Light of Asia,” his largest and most important work, which has been
given in England. He has written many works for church use, much organ
music, songs and concerted vocal music, especially for male voices.
=Opera=.—In opera we note the work of =Paine= (“Azara”); =Chadwick=
(“Judith,” a sacred opera); =Walter Damrosch=, composer and conductor,
born in Germany, in 1862, but a resident of the United States in
childhood, and hence identified with music in this country, who
has written a work of serious character to a libretto founded on
Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter”; =Reginald de Koven=, born at Middletown,
Conn., in 1859, with a list of several successful light operas to his
credit, as well as many songs which have had wide appreciation; =Edgar
Stillman Kelley=, born at Sparta, Wisconsin, in 1857, educated in
Chicago and Germany, a resident of San Francisco for a number of years,
where he brought out several notable works of a popular character for
the stage as well as the orchestra, employing in the latter Chinese
musical idioms with success in a humorous direction. A composer whose
work in light opera has had much success is =Victor Herbert=, born in
Dublin, Ireland. His professional career has been largely spent in this
country, his work as conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
being notable.
=Song Composition=.—In the field of song composition, American
composers have done very good work. The American seems to turn
naturally to song and few of the most prominent of the native composers
have neglected this field, as will have been noticed in previous
paragraphs. Among those who have won high reputation in this line we
note =George L. Osgood=, of Boston, born in 1844, composer, singer and
teacher; =Frank Lynes=, of Boston, born in 1858, who has also written
good concerted vocal music and piano pieces; =Clayton Johns=, born in
Delaware, in 1857, but a resident of Boston during the greater part of
his professional career, with a long list of part-songs and some piano
pieces to his credit; and =Ethelbert Nevin=, born near Pittsburgh, in
1862, educated in the United States and in Europe, whose songs have a
truly poetic character joined to music of a high order; a number of his
piano pieces have also been most favorably received. He died in 1901.
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