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CONTEMPORARY
AMERICAN COMPOSERS
BEING A STUDY OF THE MUSIC OF THIS
COUNTRY, ITS PRESENT CONDITIONS AND ITS
FUTURE, WITH CRITICAL ESTIMATES AND
BIOGRAPHIES OF THE PRINCIPAL LIVING
COMPOSERS; AND AN ABUNDANCE OF PORTRAITS,
FAC-SIMILE MUSICAL AUTOGRAPHS,
AND COMPOSITIONS
By
Rupert Hughes, M.A.
_ILLUSTRATED_
Boston
L.C. Page and Company
(Incorporated)
1900
_Copyright, 1900_
BY L.C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C.H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U.S.A.
TO
James Huneker
MUSICIAN TO THE TIP OF HIS PEN
FOREWORD.
One day there came into Robert Schumann's ken the work of a young
fellow named Brahms, and the master cried aloud in the wilderness,
"Behold, the new Messiah of music!" Many have refused to accept Brahms
at this rating, and I confess to being one of the unregenerate, but
the spirit that kept Schumann's heart open to the appeal of any
stranger, that led him into instant enthusiasms of which he was
neither afraid nor ashamed, enthusiasms in which the whole world has
generally followed his leading--that spirit it is that proves his true
musicianship, and makes him a place forever among the great critics
of music,--a small, small crowd they are, too.
It is inevitable that a pioneer like Schumann should make many
mistakes, but he escaped the one great fatal mistake of those who are
not open to conviction, nor alert for new beauty and fresh truth, who
are willing to take art to their affections or respect only when it
has lost its bloom and has been duly appraised and ticketed by other
generations or foreign scholars. And yet, even worse than this
languorous inanition is the active policy of those who despise
everything contemporary or native, and substitute sciolism for
catholicity, contempt for analysis.
While the greater part of the world has stayed aloof, the problem of a
national American music has been solving itself. Aside from
occasional attentions evoked by chance performances, it may be said in
general that the growth of our music has been unloved and unheeded by
anybody except a few plodding composers, their wives, and a retainer
or two. The only thing that inclines me to invade the privacy of the
American composer and publish his secrets, is my hearty belief, lo,
these many years! that some of the best music in the world is being
written here at home, and that it only needs the light to win its meed
of praise.
Owing to the scarcity of printed matter relating to native composers,
and the utter incompleteness and bias of what exists, I have based
this book almost altogether on my own research. I studied the
catalogues of all the respectable music publishers, and selected such
composers as seemed to have any serious intentions. When I heard of a
composer whose work, though earnest, had not been able to find a
publisher, I sought him out and read his manuscripts (a hideous task
which might be substituted for the comparative pastime of breaking
rocks, as punishment for misdemeanors). In every case I secured as
many of each composer's works as could be had in print or in
manuscript, and endeavored to digest them. Thousands of pieces of
music, from short songs to operatic and orchestral scores, I studied
with all available conscience. The fact that after going through at
least a ton of American compositions, I am still an enthusiast, is
surely a proof of some virtue in native music.
A portion of the result of this study was published _au courant_ in a
magazine, awakening so much attention that I have at length decided to
yield to constant requests and publish the articles in more accessible
form. The necessity for revising many of the opinions formed hastily
and published immediately, the possibility now of taking the work of
our musicians in some perspective, and the opportunity of bringing my
information up to date, have meant so much revision, excision, and
addition, that this book is really a new work.
The biographical data have been furnished in practically every case by
the composers themselves, and are, therefore, reliable in everything
except possibly the date of birth. The critical opinions gain their
possibly dogmatic tone rather from a desire for brevity than from any
hope--or wish--that they should be swallowed whole. No attempt to set
up a standard of comparative merit or precedence has been made, though
it is inevitable that certain music-makers should interest one more
than certain others even more worthy in the eyes of eminent judges.
It may be that some inspectors of this book will complain of the
omission of names they had expected to find here. Others will feel a
sense of disproportion. To them there is no reply but a pathetic
allusion to the inevitable incompleteness and asymmetry of all things
human.
Many will look with skepticism at the large number of composers I have
thought worthy of inclusion. I can only say that the fact that an
artist has created one work of high merit makes him a good composer in
my opinion, whether or no he has ever written another, and whether or
no he has afterward fallen into the sere and yellow school of trash.
So Gray's fame is perennial,--one poem among many banalities.
Besides, I do not concur in that most commonplace fallacy of
criticism, the belief that not more than one genius is vouchsafed to
any one period of an art, though this opinion can be justified, of
course, by a very exclusive definition of the word genius. To the
average mind, for instance, the whole literary achievement of the
Elizabethan era is condensed into the name of Shakespeare.
Contemporary with him, however, there were, of course, thirty or forty
writers whose best works the scholar would be most unwilling to let
die. There were, for instance, a dozen playwrights, like Jonson,
Fletcher, Ford, Marlowe, and Greene, in whose works can be found
literary and dramatic touches of the very highest order. There were
poets less prolific than Spenser, and yet to be credited with a few
works of the utmost beauty, minor geniuses like Ralegh, Sidney, Lodge,
Shirley, Lyly, Wotton, Wither, John Donne, Bishop Hall, Drayton,
Drummond, Herbert, Carew, Herrick, Breton, Allison, Byrd, Dowland,
Campion--so one might run on without naming one man who had not
written something the world was better for.
All periods of great art activity are similarly marked by a large
number of geniuses whose ability is not disproved, because
overshadowed by the presence of some titanic contemporary. It would be
a mere impertinence to state such an axiom of art as this, were it not
the plain truth that almost all criticism of contemporaries is based
upon an arrant neglect of it; and if it were not for the fact that I
am about to string out a long, long list of American music-makers
whose ability I think noteworthy,--a list whose length may lead many a
wiseacre to pull a longer face.
Parts of this book have been reprinted from _Godey's Magazine_, the
_Century Magazine_, and the _Criterion_, to whose publishers I am
indebted for permission. For the music reproduced here I have to
thank the publishers whose copyrights were loaned for the occasion.
If the book shall only succeed in arousing in some minds an interest
or a curiosity that shall set them to the study of American music (as
I have studied it, with infinite pleasure), then this fine white paper
and this beautiful black ink will not have been wasted.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
FOREWORD vii
A GENERAL SURVEY 11
THE INNOVATORS 34
THE ACADEMICS 145
THE COLONISTS 267
THE WOMEN COMPOSERS 423
THE FOREIGN COMPOSERS 442
POSTLUDE 447
INDEX 449
LIST OF MUSIC.
PAGE
AUTOGRAPH OF EDWARD MACDOWELL 34
"CLAIR DE LUNE," BY EDWARD MACDOWELL 46
AUTOGRAPH OF EDGAR STILLMAN KELLEY 58
"ISRAFEL" (fragment), BY EDGAR STILLMAN KELLEY 74
AUTOGRAPH OF HARVEY WORTHINGTON LOOMIS 77
"SANDALPHON" (fragment), BY H.W. LOOMIS 82
AUTOGRAPH OF ETHELBERT NEVIN 93
"HERBSTGEFUeHL" (fragment), BY ETHELBERT NEVIN 102
AUTOGRAPH OF JOHN PHILIP SOUSA 112
A PAGE FROM "EL CAPITAN," BY JOHN PHILIP SOUSA 127
AUTOGRAPH OF JOHN K. PAINE 145
POSTLUDE TO "OEDIPUS TYRANNUS," BY JOHN K. PAINE 158
"SPRING'S AWAKENING" (fragment), BY DUDLEY BUCK 172
AUTOGRAPH OF HORATIO W. PARKER 174
"NIGHT-PIECE TO JULIA" (fragment), BY HORATIO W. PARKER 180
"DIE STUNDE SEI GESEGNET" (fragment), BY FRANK VAN DER STUCKEN 194
"A LOVE SONG" (fragment), BY W.W. GILCHRIST 205
AUTOGRAPH OF G.W. CHADWICK 210
"FOLK SONG" (NO. 1), BY G.W. CHADWICK 216
AUTOGRAPH OF ARTHUR FOOTE 221
"IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS LASS," BY ARTHUR FOOTE 230
"IDYLLE" (fragment), BY ARTHUR WHITING 287
"BALLADE" (fragment), BY HOWARD BROCKWAY 303
AUTOGRAPH OF HARRY ROWE SHELLEY 304
"SPRING" (fragment), BY GERRIT SMITH 314
"WHEN LOVE IS GONE," BY C.B. HAWLEY 330
"SONG FROM OMAR KHAYYAM," BY VICTOR HARRIS 339
"HYMN OF PAN" (fragment), FRED FIELD BULLARD 352
"PEACE," BY HOMER A. NORRIS 362
AUTOGRAPH OF G.W. MARSTON 367
EXCERPT FROM AN ORCHESTRAL SCORE, BY F.G. GLEASON 378
"IDYLLE" (fragment), BY WILLIAM H. SHERWOOD 385
AUTOGRAPH OF WILSON G. SMITH 395
"ARABESQUE," BY WILSON G. SMITH 404
FRAGMENT OF THE SCORE OF "SALAMMBO," BY JOHANN H. BECK 408
AUTOGRAPH OF JAMES H. ROGERS 412
"BLACK RIDERS" (fragment), BY WILLIAM SCHUYLER 416
"PHANTOMS" (fragment), BY MRS. H.H.A. BEACH 429
"GHOSTS," BY MARGARET RUTHVEN LANG 436
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Edward MacDowell _Frontispiece_
Edgar Stillman Kelley 57
Harvey Worthington Loomis 77
Ethelbert Nevin 92
John Philip Sousa 112
Henry Schoenefeld 128
John Knowles Paine 145
Horatio W. Parker 174
Frank van der Stucken 188
George Whitefield Chadwick 210
Arthur Foote 221
Henry K. Hadley 241
Adolph M. Foerster 248
Charles Crozat Converse 256
Louis Adolphe Coerne 262
Henry Holden Huss 291
Harry Rowe Shelley 304
Frederick Field Bullard 351
Homer A. Norris 357
Frederic Grant Gleason 367
William H. Sherwood 383
A.J. Goodrich 388
Wilson G. Smith 395
Mrs. H.H.A. Beach 426
Margaret Ruthven Lang 432
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN COMPOSERS.
CHAPTER I.
A GENERAL SURVEY.
Coddling is no longer the chief need of the American composer. While
he still wants encouragement in his good tendencies,--much more
encouragement than he gets, too,--he is now strong enough to profit by
the discouragement of his evil tendencies.
In other words, the American composer is ready for criticism.
The first and most vital flaw of which his work will be accused is the
lack of nationalism. This I should like to combat after the sophistic
fashion of Zeno,--showing, first, why we lack that desideratum, a
strictly national school; secondly, that a strictly national school is
not desirable; and thirdly, that we most assuredly have a national
school.
In building a national individuality, as in building a personal
individuality, there is always a period of discipleship under some
older power. When the rudiments and the essentials are once thoroughly
mastered, the shackles of discipleship are thrown off, and personal
expression in an original way begins. This is the story of every
master in every art: The younger Raphael was only Perugino junior.
Beethoven's first sonatas were more completely Haydn's than the word
"gewidmet" would declare. The youthful Canova was swept off his feet
by the unearthing of old Greek masterpieces. Stevenson confesses
frankly his early efforts to copy the mannerisms of Scott and others.
Nations are only clusters of individuals, and subject to the same
rules. Italy borrowed its beginnings from Byzantium; Germany and
France took theirs from Italy; we, ours, from them.
It was inconceivable that America should produce an autocthonous art.
The race is one great mixture of more or less digested foreign
elements; and it is not possible to draw a declaration of artistic, as
of political, independence, and thenceforward be truly free.
Centuries of differentiated environment (in all the senses of the word
environment) are needed to produce a new language or a new art; and it
was inevitable that American music should for long be only a more or
less successful employment of European methods. And there was little
possibility, according to all precedents in art history, that any
striking individuality should rise suddenly to found a school based
upon his own mannerism.
Especially was this improbable, since we are in a large sense of
English lineage. As the co-heirs, with those who remain in the British
Isles, of the magnificent prose and poetry of England, it was possible
for us to produce early in our own history a Hawthorne and a Poe and
an Emerson and a Whitman. But we have had more hindrance than help
from our heritage of English music, in which there has never been a
master of the first rank, Purcell and the rest being, after all,
brilliants of the lesser magnitude (with the permission of that
electric Englishman, Mr. John F. Runciman).
A further hindrance was the creed of the Puritan fathers of our
civilization; they had a granite heart, and a suspicious eye for
music. Here is a cheerful example of congregational lyricism, and a
lofty inspiration for musical treatment (the hymn refers to the fate
of unbaptized infants):
"A crime it is! Therefore in Bliss
You may not hope to dwell;
But unto you I shall allow
The easiest room in Hell."
It was only at the end of the seventeenth century that singing by
note began to supplant the "lining-out" barbarism, and to provoke such
fierce opposition as this:
"First, it is a new way--an unknown tongue; 2d, it is not so
melodious as the old way; 3d, there are so many tunes that
nobody can learn them; 4th, the new way makes a disturbance
in churches, grieves good men, exasperates them, and causes
them to behave disorderly; 5th, it is popish; 6th, it will
introduce instruments; 7th, the names of the notes are
blasphemous; 8th, it is needless, the old way being good
enough; 9th, it requires too much time to learn it; 10th, it
makes the young disorderly."
At the time when such puerility was disturbing this cradle of freedom
and cacophony, Bach and Haendel were at work in their contrapuntal
webs, the Scarlattis, Corelli and Tartini and Porpora were alive.
Peri, Josquin and Willaert and Lassus were dead, and the church had
had its last mass from the most famous citizen of the town of
Palestrina. Monteverde was no longer inventing like an Edison; Lulli
had gone to France and died; and Rameau and Couperin were alive.
At this time in the world's art, the Americans were squabbling over
the blasphemy of instruments and of notation! This is not the place to
treat the history of our music. The curious can find enlightenment at
such sources as Mr. Louis C. Elson's "National Music of America." It
must be enough for me to say that the throttling hands of Puritanism
are only now fully loosened. Some of our living composers recall the
parental opposition that met their first inclinations to a musical
career, opposition based upon the disgracefulness, the heathenishness,
of music as a profession.
The youthfulness of our school of music can be emphasized further by a
simple statement that, with the exception of a few names like Lowell
Mason, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Stephen A. Emery (a graceful writer as
well as a theorist), and George F. Bristow, practically every American
composer of even the faintest importance is now living.
The influences that finally made American music are chiefly German.
Almost all of our composers have studied in Germany, or from teachers
trained there; very few of them turning aside to Paris, and almost
none to Italy. The prominent teachers, too, that have come from
abroad have been trained in the German school, whatever their
nationality. The growth of a national school has been necessarily
slow, therefore, for its necessary and complete submission to German
influences.
It has been further delayed by the meagre native encouragement to
effort of the better sort. The populace has been largely
indifferent,--the inertia of all large bodies would explain that. A
national, a constructive, and collaborative criticism has been
conspicuously absent.
The leaders of orchestras have also offered an almost insurmountable
obstacle to the production of any work from an American hand until
very recently. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has been a noble
exception to this rule, and has given about the only opening possible
to the native writer. The Chicago Orchestra, in eight seasons under
Theodore Thomas, devoted, out of a total of 925 numbers, only
eighteen, or something less than two per cent., to native music. Yet
time shows a gradual improvement, and in 1899, out of twenty-seven
orchestral numbers performed, three were by Americans, which makes a
liberal tithe. The Boston Symphony has played the compositions of John
Knowles Paine alone more than eighteen times, and those of George W.
Chadwick the same number, while E.A. MacDowell and Arthur Foote each
appeared on the programs fourteen times. The Kaltenborn Orchestra has
made an active effort at the promulgation of our music, and especial
honor is due to Frank Van der Stucken, himself a composer of marked
abilities; he was among the first to give orchestral production to
American works, and he was, perhaps, the very first to introduce
American orchestral work abroad. Like his offices, in spirit and
effect, have been the invaluable services of our most eminent pianist,
Wm. H. Sherwood, who was for many years the only prominent performer
of American piano compositions.
Public singers also have been most unpatriotic in preferring endless
repetition of dry foreign arias to fresh compositions from home. The
little encore song, which generally appeared anonymously, was the
opening wedge for the American lyrist.
Upon the horizon of this gloom, however, there is a tremor of a
dawning interest in national music. Large vocal societies are giving
an increasing number of native part songs and cantatas; prizes are
being awarded in various places, and composers find some financial
encouragement for appearing in concerts of their own work. Manuscript
societies are organized in many of the larger cities, and these clubs
offer hearing to novelty. There have latterly appeared, from various
publishers, special catalogues vaunting the large number of American
composers represented on their lists.
Another, and a most important sign of the growing influence of music
upon American life, is seen in the place it is gaining in the college
curriculum; new chairs have been established, and prominent composers
called to fill them, or old professorships that held merely nominal
places in the catalogue have been enlarged in scope. In this way music
is reestablishing itself in something like its ancient glory; for the
Greeks not only grouped all culture under the general term of
"Music," but gave voice and instrument a vital place in education.
Three of our most prominent composers fill the chairs at three of the
most important universities. In all these cases, however, music is an
elective study, while the rudiments of the art should, I am convinced,
be a required study in every college curriculum, and in the common
schools as well.
Assuming then, for the nonce, the birth--we are too new a country to
speak of a Renascence--of a large interest in national music, there is
large disappointment in many quarters, because our American music is
not more American. I have argued above that a race transplanted from
other soils must still retain most of the old modes of expression, or,
varying them, change slowly. But many who excuse us for the present
lack of a natural nationalism, are so eager for such a differentiation
that they would have us borrow what we cannot breed.
The folk-music of the negro slaves is most frequently mentioned as the
right foundation for a strictly American school. A somewhat
misunderstood statement advanced by Dr. Antonin Dvorak, brought this
idea into general prominence, though it had been discussed by American
composers, and made use of in compositions of all grades long before
he came here.
The vital objection, however, to the general adoption of negro music
as a base for an American school of composition is that it is in no
sense a national expression. It is not even a sectional expression,
for the white Southerners among whose slaves this music grew, as well
as the people of the North, have always looked upon negro music as an
exotic and curious thing. Familiar as it is to us, it is yet as
foreign a music as any Tyrolean jodel or Hungarian czardas.
The music of the American Indian, often strangely beautiful and
impressive, would be as reasonably chosen as that of these imported
Africs. E.A. MacDowell had, indeed, written a picturesque and
impressive Indian suite, some time before the Dvorakian invasion. He
asserts that the Indian music is preferable to the Ethiopian, because
its sturdiness and force are more congenial with the national mood.
But the true hope for a national spirit in American music surely lies,
not in the arbitrary seizure of some musical dialect, but in the
development of just such a quality as gives us an individuality among
the nations of the world in respect to our character as a people; and
that is a Cosmopolitanism made up of elements from all the world, and
yet, in its unified qualities, unlike any one element. Thus our music
should, and undoubtedly will, be the gathering into the spirit of the
voices of all the nations, and the use of all their expressions in an
assimilated, a personal, a spontaneous manner. This need not, by any
means, be a dry, academic eclecticism. The Yankee, a composite of all
peoples, yet differs from them all, and owns a sturdy individuality.
His music must follow the same fate.
As our governmental theories are the outgrowth of the experiments and
experiences of all previous history, why should not our music, voicing
as it must the passions of a cosmopolitan people, use cosmopolitan
expressions? The main thing is the individuality of each artist. To be
a citizen of the world, provided one is yet spontaneous and sincere
and original, is the best thing. The whole is greater than any of its
parts.
Along just these lines of individualized cosmopolitanism the American
school is working out its identity. Some of our composers have shown
themselves the heirs of European lore by work of true excellence in
the larger classic and romantic forms.
The complaint might be made, indeed, that the empty, incorrect period
of previous American music has given place to too much correctness and
too close formation on the old models. This is undoubtedly the result
of the long and faithful discipleship under German methods, and need
not be made much of in view of the tendency among a few masters toward
original expression. For, after all, even in the heyday of the
greatest art periods, only a handful of artists have ever stood out as
strongly individual; the rest have done good work as faithful
imitators and past masters in technic. It is, then, fortunate that
there is any tendency at all among any of our composers to forsake
academic content with classical forms and text-book development of
ideas.
Two things, however, are matters for very serious disappointment: the
surprising paucity of musical composition displaying the national
sense of humor, and the surprising abundance of purest namby-pamby.
The presence of the latter class might be explained by the absence of
the former, for namby-pamby cannot exist along with a healthy sense
of the ludicrous. There has been a persistent craze among native
song-writers for little flower-dramas and bird-tragedies, which,
aiming at exquisiteness, fall far short of that dangerous goal and
land in flagrant silliness. This weakness, however, will surely
disappear in time, or at least diminish, until it holds no more
prominent place than it does in all the foreign schools, where it
exists to a certain extent.
The scherzo, however, must grow in favor. It is impossible that the
most jocose of races, a nation that has given the world an original
school of humor, should not carry this spirit over into its music. And
yet almost none of the comparatively few scherzos that have been
written here have had any sense of the hilarious jollity that makes
Beethoven's wit side-shaking. They have been rather of the Chopinesque
sort, mere fantasy. To the composers deserving this generalization I
recall only two important exceptions, Edgar S. Kelley and Harvey
Worthington Loomis.
The opportunities before the American composer are enormous, and only
half appreciated. Whereas, in other arts, the text-book claims only to
be a chronicle of what has been done before, in music the text-book is
set up as the very gospel and decalogue of the art. The theorists have
so thoroughly mapped out the legitimate resources of the composer, and
have so prescribed his course in nearly every possible position, that
music is made almost more of a mathematical problem than the free
expression of emotions and aesthetics. "Correct" music has now hardly
more liberty than Egyptian sculpture or Byzantine painting once had.
Certain dissonances are permitted, and certain others, no more
dissonant, forbidden, quite arbitrarily, or on hair-splitting
theories. It is as if one should write down in a book a number of
charts, giving every scheme of color and every juxtaposition of values
permissible to a painter. The music of certain Oriental nations, in
which the religious orders are the art censors, has stuck fast in its
rut because of the observance of rules purely arbitrary. Many of the
conventions of modern European music are no more scientific or
original or consistent; most of them are based upon the principle that
the whim of a great dead composer is worthy to be the law of any
living composer. These Blue Laws of music are constantly assailed
surreptitiously and in detail; and yet they are too little attacked as
a whole. But music should be a democracy and not an aristocracy, or,
still less, a hierarchy.
There is a great opportunity for America to carry its political
principles into this youngest of the arts. It is a gratifying sign
that one of the most prominent theorists of the time, an American
scholar, A.J. Goodrich, is adopting some such attitude toward music.
He carries dogma to the minimum, and accepts success in the individual
instance as sufficient authority for overstepping any general
principle. He refers to a contemporary American composer for authority
and example of some successful unconventionality with the same respect
with which he would quote a European's disregard of convention. His
pioneering is watched with interest abroad as well as here.
Worthy of mention along with Mr. Goodrich' original work is the effort
of Homer A. Norris to instil French ideas of musical theory. As a
counterweight to the German monopoly of our attention, his influence
is to be cordially welcomed.
Now that Americanism is rife in the land, some of the glowing interest
in things national might well be turned toward an art that has been
too much and too long neglected among us.
The time has come to take American music seriously. The day for
boasting is not yet here,--if indeed it ever comes; but the day of
penitent humility is surely past.
A student of the times, Mr. E.S. Martin, shortly before the Spanish
War, commented on the radical change that had come over the spirit of
American self-regard. We were notorious in the earlier half of the
century for boasting, not only of the virtues we indubitably had, but
of qualities that existed solely in our own imagination. We sounded
our barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. A century of almost
unanimous European disapproval, particularly of our artistic estate,
finally converted us from this attitude to one of deprecation almost
abject. Having learned the habit of modesty, it has clung to us even
now, when some of the foremost artists in the world are Americans.
Modesty, is, of course, one of the most beautiful of the virtues, but
excess is possible and dangerous. As Shakespeare's Florio's Montaigne
has it: "We may so seize on vertue, that if we embrace it with an
over-greedy and violent desire, it may become vitious." In the case of
the American composer it is certainly true that we "excessively
demeane ourselves in a good action." If, then, the glory of our late
successes in the field of battle shall bring about a recrudescence of
our old vanity, it will at least have its compensations.
Meanwhile, the American artist, having long ago ceased to credit
himself with all the virtues, has been for years earnestly working out
his own salvation in that spirit of solemn determination which makes
it proverbial for the American to get anything he sets his heart on.
He has submitted himself to a devout study of the Old Masters and the
New; he has made pilgrimage after pilgrimage to the ancient temples of
art, and has brought home influences that cannot but work for good.
The American painter has won more European acceptance than any of our
other artists, though this is partly due to his persistence in
knocking at the doors of the Paris salons, and gaining the universal
prestige of admission there. There is, unfortunately, no such place
to focus the attention of the world on a musician. Yet, through the
success of American musical students among their rivals abroad;
through the concerts they are giving more and more frequently in
foreign countries; through the fact that a number of European music
houses are publishing increasing quantities of American compositions,
he is making his way to foreign esteem almost more rapidly than at
home.
A prominent German critic, indeed, has recently put himself on record
as accepting the founding of an American school of music as a _fait
accompli_. And no student of the times, who will take the trouble to
seek the sources of our art, and observe its actual vitality, need be
ashamed of looking at the present state of music in America with a
substantial pride and a greater hope for the future.