THE INNOVATORS.
_Edward Alexander MacDowell._
[Illustration: Autograph of Edward MacDowell]
The matter of precedence in creative art is as hopeless of solution as
it is unimportant. And yet it seems appropriate to say, in writing of
E.A. MacDowell, that an almost unanimous vote would grant him rank as
the greatest of American composers, while not a few ballots would
indicate him as the best of living music writers.
But this, to repeat, is not vital, the main thing being that MacDowell
has a distinct and impressive individuality, and uses his profound
scholarship in the pursuit of novelty that is not cheaply sensational,
and is yet novelty. He has, for instance, theories as to the textures
of sounds, and his chord-formations and progressions are quite his
own.
His compositions are superb processions, in which each participant is
got up with the utmost personal splendor. His generalship is great
enough to preserve the unity and the progress of the pageant. With him
no note in the melody is allowed to go neglected, ill-mounted on
common chords in the bass, or cheap-garbed in trite triads. Each tone
is made to suggest something of its multitudinous possibilities.
Through any geometrical point, an infinite number of lines can be
drawn. This is almost the case with any note of a melody. It is the
recognition and the practice of this truth that gives the latter-day
schools of music such a lusciousness and warmth of harmony. No one is
a more earnest student of these effects than MacDowell.
He believes that it is necessary, at this late day, if you would have
a chord "bite," to put a trace of acid in its sweetness. With this
clue in mind, his unusual procedures become more explicable without
losing their charm.
New York is rather the Mecca than the birthplace of artists, but it
can boast the nativity of MacDowell, who improvised his first songs
here December 18, 1861. He began the study of the piano at an early
age. One of his teachers was Mme. Teresa Carreno, to whom he has
dedicated his second concerto for the piano.
In 1876 he went to Paris and entered the Conservatoire, where he
studied theory under Savard, and the piano under Marmontel. He went to
Wiesbaden to study with Ehlert in 1879, and then to Frankfort, where
Carl Heyman taught him piano and Joachim Raff composition. The
influence of Raff is of the utmost importance in MacDowell's music,
and I have been told that the great romancist made a _protege_ of him,
and would lock him in a room for hours till he had worked out the most
appalling musical problems. Through Raff's influence he became first
piano teacher at the Darmstadt Conservatorium in 1881. The next year
Raff introduced him to Liszt, who became so enthusiastic over his
compositions that he got him the honor of playing his first piano
suite before the formidable _Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik Verein_,
which accorded him a warm reception. The following years were spent in
successful concert work, till 1884, when MacDowell settled down to
teaching and composing in Wiesbaden. Four years later he came to
Boston, writing, teaching, and giving occasional concerts. Thence he
returned to New York, where he was called to the professorship of
music at Columbia University. Princeton University has given him that
unmusical degree, Mus. Doc.
MacDowell has met little or none of that critical recalcitrance that
blocked the early success of so many masters. His works succeeded from
the first in winning serious favor; they have been much played in
Germany, in Vienna, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, and Paris, one of them
having been performed three times in a single season at Breslau.
MacDowell's Scotch ancestry is always telling tales on him. The
"Scotch snap" is a constant rhythmic device, the old scale and the old
Scottish cadences seem to be native to his heart. Perhaps one might
find some kinship between MacDowell and the contemporary Glasgow
school of painters, that clique so isolated, so daring, and yet so
earnest and solid. Says James Huneker in a monograph published some
years ago: "His coloring reminds me at times of Grieg, but when I
tracked the resemblance to its lair, I found only Scotch, as Grieg's
grand-folk were Greggs, and from Scotland. It is all Northern music
with something elemental in it, and absolutely free from the heavy,
languorous odors of the South or the morbidezza of Poland."
Some of MacDowell's most direct writing has been in the setting of the
poems of Burns, such as "Deserted" ("Ye banks and braes o' bonnie
Doon," op. 9), "Menie," and "My Jean" (op. 34). These are strongly
marked by that ineffably fine melodic flavor characteristic of
Scottish music, while in the accompaniments they admit a touch of the
composer's own individuality. In his accompaniments it is noteworthy
that he is almost never strictly contramelodic.
The songs of opera 11 and 12 have a decided Teutonism, but he has
found himself by opus 40, a volume of "Six Love Songs," containing
half a dozen flawless gems it is a pity the public should not know
more widely. A later book, "Eight Songs" (op. 47), is also a cluster
of worthies. The lilt and sympathy of "The Robin Sings in the
Apple-tree," and its unobtrusive new harmonies and novel effects, in
strange accord with truth of expression, mark all the other songs,
particularly the "Midsummer Lullaby," with its accompaniment as
delicately tinted as summer clouds. Especially noble is "The Sea,"
which has all the boom and roll of the deep-brooding ocean.
His collections of flower-songs (op. 26) I confess not liking. Though
they are not without a certain exquisiteness, they seem overdainty
and wastefully frail, excepting, possibly, the "Clover" and the
"Blue-bell." It is not at all their brevity, but their triviality,
that vexes an admirer of the large ability that labored over them.
They are dedicated to Emilio Agramonte, one of MacDowell's first
prophets, and one of the earliest and most active agents for the
recognition of the American composer.
In the lyrics in opus 56 and opus 58 MacDowell has turned song to the
unusual purposes of a landscape impressionism of places and moods
rather than people.
For men's voices there are some deftly composed numbers curiously
devoted to lullaby subjects. The barcarolle for mixed chorus and
accompaniment on the piano for four hands obtains a wealth of color,
enhanced by the constant division of the voices.
Studying as he did with Raff, it is but natural that MacDowell should
have been influenced strongly toward the poetic and fantastic and
programmatic elements that mark the "Forest Symphony" and the "Lenore
Overture" of his master.
It is hard to say just how far this descriptive music can go. The
skill of each composer must dictate his own limits. As an example of
successful pieces of this kind, consider MacDowell's "The Eagle." It
is the musical realization of Tennyson's well-known poem:
"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."
Of course the crag and the crooked hands and the azure world must be
granted the composer, but general exaltation and loneliness are
expressed in the severe melody of the opening. The wrinkling and
crawling of the sea far below are splendidly achieved in the soft,
shimmering liquidity of the music. Then there are two abrupt, but
soft, short chords that will represent, to the imaginative, the quick
fixing of the eagle's heart on some prey beneath; and there follows a
sudden precipitation down the keyboard, _fortississimo_, that
represents the thunderous swoop of the eagle with startling effect.
On the other hand, the "Moonshine" seems to be attempting too much.
"Winter" does better, for it has a freezing stream, a mill-wheel, and
a "widow bird." These "four little poems" of opus 32 had been preceded
by six fine "Idylls" based on lyrics of Goethe's. The first, a forest
scene, has a distinct flavor of the woods, the second is all laziness
and drowsiness, and the third is moonlight mystery. The fourth is as
intense in its suppressed spring ecstasy as the radiant poem itself
singing how
"Soft the ripples spill and hurry
To the opulent embankment."
The six short "Poems" (op. 31) based on poems of Heine's are
particularly successful, especially in the excellent opportunity of
the lyric describing the wail of the Scottish woman who plays her harp
on the cliff, and sings above the raging of sea and wind. The third
catches most happily the whimsicality of the poet's reminiscences of
childhood, but hardly, I think, the contrasting depth and wildness of
his complaint that, along with childhood's games, have vanished Faith
and Love and Truth. In the last, however, the cheery majesty that
realizes Heine's likening of Death to a cool night after the sultry
day of Life, is superb.
Then there are some four-hand pieces, two collections, that leave no
excuse for clinging to the hackneyed classics or modern trash. They
are not at all difficult, and the second player has something to
employ his mind besides accompanying chords. They are meaty, and
effective almost to the point of catchiness. The "Tale of the Knights"
is full of chivalric fire and martial swing, while the "Ballad" is as
exquisitely dainty as a peach-blossom. The "Hindoo Maiden" has a deal
of the thoroughly Oriental color and feeling that distinguish the
three solos of "Les Orientales," of which "Clair de Lune" is one of
his most original and graceful writings. The duet, "In Tyrol," has a
wonderful crystal carillon and a quaint shepherd piping a faint
reminiscence of the Wagnerian school of shepherds. This is one of a
series of "Moon Pictures" for four hands, based on Hans Christian
Andersen's lore. Two concertos for piano and orchestra are dazzling
feats of virtuosity; one of them is reviewed at length in A.J.
Goodrich' book, "Musical Analysis." He has written also a book of
artistic moment called "Twelve Virtuoso-Studies," and two books of
actual gymnastics for piano practice.
[Music: CLAIR DE LUNE.
La lune etait sereine et jouait sur les flots.
La fenetre enfin libre est ouverte a la brise;
La sultane regarde, et la mer qui se brise,
La-bas, d'un flot d'argent brode les noir ilots.
(Victor Hugo, "Les Orientales.")
E.A. MACDOWELL, Op. 37, No. 1.
Copyright, 1889, Arthur P. Schmidt.]
But MacDowell did not reach his freedom without a struggle against
academia. His opus 10 is a piano suite published at the age of
twenty-two, and opus 14 is another; both contain such obsolescences as
a presto, fugue, scherzino, and the like. But for all the classic
garb, the hands are the hands of Esau. In one of the pieces there is
even a motto tucked, "All hope leave ye behind who enter here!" Can he
have referred to the limbo of classicism?
It is a far cry from these to the liberality that inspired the new
impressionism of "Woodland Sketches" (op. 51) and "Sea Pieces" (op.
55), in which he gives a legitimate musical presentation of a faintly
perfumed "Wild Rose" or "Water Lily," but goes farther, and paints,
with wonderful tone, the moods inspired by reverie upon the uncouth
dignity and stoic savagery of "An Indian Lodge," the lonely New
England twilight of "A Deserted Farm," and all the changing humors of
the sea, majesty of sunset or star-rise, and even the lucent emerald
of an iceberg. His "From Uncle Remus" is not so successful; indeed,
MacDowell is not sympathetic with negro music, and thinks that if we
are to found a national school on some local manner, we should find
the Indian more congenial than the lazy, sensual slave.
He has carried this belief into action, not only by his scientific
interest in the collection and compilation of the folk-music of our
prairies, but by his artistic use of actual Indian themes in one of
his most important works, his "Indian Suite" for full orchestra, a
work that has been often performed, and always with the effect of a
new and profound sensation, particularly in the case of the deeply
impressive dirge.
A proof of the success of MacDowell as a writer in the large forms is
the fact that practically all of his orchestral works are published
in Germany and here, not only in full score, but in arrangement for
four hands. They include "Hamlet;" "Ophelia" (op. 22); "Launcelot and
Elaine" (op. 26), with its strangely mellow and varied use of horns
for Launcelot, and the entrusting of the plaintive fate of "the lily
maid of Astolat" to the string and wood-wind choirs; "The Saracens"
and "The Lovely Alda" (op. 30), two fragments from the Song of Roland;
and the Suite (op. 42), which has been played at least eight times in
Germany and eleven times here.
The first movement of this last is called "In a Haunted Forest." You
are reminded of Siegfried by the very name of the thing, and the music
enforces the remembrance somewhat, though very slightly.
Everything reminds one of Wagner nowadays,--even his predecessors.
Rudyard Kipling has by his individuality so copyrighted one of the
oldest verse-forms, the ballad, that even "Chevy Chace" looks like an
advance plagiarism. So it is with Wagner. Almost all later music, and
much of the earlier, sounds Wagnerian. But MacDowell has been reminded
of Bayreuth very infrequently in this work. The opening movement
begins with a _sotto voce_ syncopation that is very presentative of
the curious audible silence of a forest. The wilder moments are
superbly instrumented.
The second movement, "Summer Idyl," is delicious, particularly in the
chances it gives the flautist. There is a fragmentary cantilena which
would make the fortune of a comic opera. The third number, "In
October," is particularly welcome in our music, which is strangely and
sadly lacking in humor. There is fascinating wit throughout this
harvest revel. "The Shepherdess' Song" is the fourth movement. It is
not precieuse, and it is not banal; but its simplicity of pathos is a
whit too simple. The final number, "Forest Spirits," is a brilliant
climax. The Suite as a whole is an important work. It has detail of
the most charming art. Best of all, it is staunchly individual. It is
MacDowellian.
While the modern piano sonata is to me anathema as a rule, there are
none of MacDowell's works that I like better than his writings in this
form. They are to me far the best since Beethoven, not excepting even
Chopin's (_pace_ his greatest prophet, Huneker). They seem to me to be
of such stuff as Beethoven would have woven had he known in fact the
modern piano he saw in fancy.
The "Sonata Tragica" (op. 45) begins in G minor, with a bigly
passionate, slow introduction (metronomed in the composer's copy,
[quarter-note]-50). The first subject is marked in the same copy,
though not in the printed book, [half-note]-69, and the appealingly
pathetic second subject is a little slower. The free fantasy is full
of storm and stress, with a fierce pedal-point on the trilled
leading-tone. In the reprise the second subject, which was at first in
the dominant major, is now in the tonic major, though the key of the
sonata is G minor. The allegro is metronomed [quarter-note]-138, and
it is very short and very wild. Throughout, the grief is the grief of
a strong soul; it never degenerates into whine. Its largo is like the
tread of an AEschylean _choros_, its allegro movements are wild with
anguish, and the occasional uplifting into the major only emphasizes
the sombre whole, like the little rifts of clearer harmony in
Beethoven's "Funeral March on the Death of a Hero."
The last movement begins with a ringing _pomposo_, and I cannot
explain its meaning better than by quoting Mrs. MacDowell's words:
"Mr. MacDowell's idea was, so to speak, as follows: He wished to
heighten the darkness of tragedy by making it follow closely on the
heels of triumph. Therefore, he attempted to make the last movement a
steadily progressive triumph, which, at its climax, is utterly broken
and shattered. In doing this he has tried to epitomize the whole work.
While in the other movements he aimed at expressing tragic details,
in the last he has tried to generalize; thinking that the most
poignant tragedy is that of catastrophe in the hour of triumph."
The third sonata (op. 57) is dedicated to Grieg and to the musical
exploitation of an old-time Skald reciting glorious battles, loves,
and deaths in an ancient castle. The atmosphere of mystery and
barbaric grandeur is obtained and sustained by means new to piano
literature and potent in color and vigor. The sonata formula is warped
to the purpose of the poet, but the themes have the classic ideal of
kinship. The battle-power of the work is tremendous. Huneker calls it
"an epic of rainbow and thunder," and Henry T. Finck, who has for many
years devoted a part of his large ardor to MacDowell's cause, says of
the work: "It is MacDowellish,--more MacDowellish than anything he has
yet written. It is the work of a musical thinker. There are harmonies
as novel as those we encounter in Schubert, Chopin, or Grieg, yet with
a stamp of their own."
The "Sonata Eroica" (op. 50) bears the legend "Flos regum Arthurus."
It is also in G minor. The spirit of King Arthur dominates the work
ideally, and justifies not only the ferocious and warlike first
subject with its peculiar and influential rhythm, but the
old-fashioned and unadorned folk-tone of the second subject. In the
working out there is much bustle and much business of trumpets. In the
reprise the folk-song appears in the tonic minor, taken most
unconventionally in the bass under elaborate arpeggiations in the
right hand. The coda, as in the other sonata, is simply a strong
passage of climax. Arthur's supernatural nature doubtless suggested
the second movement, with its elfin airs, its flibbertigibbet
virtuosity, and its magic of color. The third movement might have been
inspired by Tennyson's version of Arthur's farewell to Guinevere, it
is such a rich fabric of grief. The finale seems to me to picture the
Morte d'Arthur, beginning with the fury of a storm along the coast,
and the battle "on the waste sand by the waste sea." Moments of fire
are succeeded by exquisite deeps of quietude, and the death and
apotheosis of Arthur are hinted with daring and complete equivalence
of art with need.
Here is no longer the tinkle and swirl of the elf dances; here is no
more of the tireless search for novelty in movement and color. This is
"a flash of the soul that can." Here is Beethoven _redivivus_. For
half a century we have had so much pioneering and scientific
exploration after piano color and tenderness and fire, that men have
neglected its might and its tragic powers. Where is the piano-piece
since Beethoven that has the depth, the breadth, the height of this
huge solemnity? Chopin's sensuous wailing does not afford it.
Schumann's complex eccentricities have not given it out. Brahms is too
passionless. Wagner neglected the piano. It remained for a Yankee to
find the austere peak again! and that, too, when the sonata was
supposed to be a form as exhausted as the epic poem. But all this is
the praise that one is laughed at for bestowing except on the graves
of genius.
The cautious Ben Jonson, when his erstwhile taproom roisterer, Will
Shakespeare, was dead, defied "insolent Greece or haughty Rome" to
show his superior. With such authority, I feel safe in at least
defying the contemporary schools of insolent Russia or haughty Germany
to send forth a better musicwright than our fellow townsman, Edward
MacDowell.
_Edgar Stillman Kelley._
[Illustration: EDGAR STILLMAN KELLEY.]
While his name is known wherever American music is known in its better
aspects, yet, like many another American, his real art can be
discovered only from his manuscripts. In these he shows a very
munificence of enthusiasm, scholarship, invention, humor, and
originality.
[Illustration: Autograph of Edgar Stillman Kelley]
Kelley is as thorough an American by descent as one could ask for, his
maternal ancestors having settled in this country in 1630, his
paternal progenitors in 1640, A.D. Indeed, one of the ancestors of
his father made the dies for the pine-tree shilling, and a
great-great-grandfather fought in the Revolution.
Kelley began his terrestrial career April 14, 1857, in Wisconsin. His
father was a revenue officer; his mother a skilled musician, who
taught him the piano from his eighth year to his seventeenth, when he
went to Chicago and studied harmony and counterpoint under Clarence
Eddy, and the piano under Ledochowski. It is interesting to note that
Kelley was diverted into music from painting by hearing "Blind Tom"
play Liszt's transcription of Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream"
music. I imagine that this idiot-genius had very little other
influence of this sort in his picturesque career.
After two years in Chicago, Kelley went to Germany, where, in
Stuttgart, he studied the piano with Kruger and Speidel, organ with
Finck, composition and orchestration with Seiffritz. While in Germany,
Kelley wrote a brilliant and highly successful concert polonaise for
four hands, and a composition for strings.
In 1880 he was back in America and settled in San Francisco, with
whose musical life he was long and prominently identified as a
teacher and critic. Here he wrote his first large work, the well-known
melodramatic music to "Macbeth." A local benefactor, John Parrot, paid
the expenses of a public performance, the great success of which
persuaded McKee Rankin, the actor, to make an elaborate production of
both play and music. This ran for three weeks in San Francisco to
crowded houses, which is a remarkable record for many reasons. A
shabby New York production at an ill-chosen theatre failed to give the
work an advantageous hearing; but it has been played by orchestras
several times since, and William H. Sherwood has made transcriptions
of parts of it for piano solo.
The "Macbeth" music is of such solid value that it reaches the dignity
of a flowing commentary. Beyond and above this it is an interpretation,
making vivid and awesome the deep import of the play, till even the
least imaginative auditor must feel its thrill.
Thus the gathering of the witches begins with a slow horror, which is
surely Shakespeare's idea, and not the comic-opera _can-can_ it is
frequently made. As various other elfs and terrors appear, they are
appropriately characterized in the music, which also adds mightily to
the terror of the murder scene. Throughout, the work is that of a
thinker. Like much of Kelley's other music, it is also the work of a
fearless and skilled programmatist, especially in the battle-scenes,
where it suggests the crash of maces and swords, and the blare of
horns, the galloping of horses, and the general din of huge battle.
Leading-motives are much used, too, with good effect and most
ingenious elaboration, notably the _Banquo_ motive. A certain amount
of Gaelic color also adds interest to the work, particularly a
stirring Gaelic march. The orchestration shows both scholarship and
daring.
An interesting subject is suggested by Kelley's experience in hunting
out a good motif for the galloping horses of "Macbeth." He could find
nothing suitably representative of storm-hoofed chargers till his
dreams came to the rescue with a genuinely inspired theme. Several
other exquisite ideas have come to him in his sleep in this way; one
of them is set down in the facsimile reproduced herewith. On one
occasion he even dreamed an original German poem and a fitting musical
setting.
Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, in his book on "Sleep and Its Derangements," is
inclined to scout the possibility of a really valuable inspiration in
sleep. He finds no satisfactory explanation for Tartini's famous
"Devil's Sonata" or Coleridge' proverbial "Kubla Khan." He takes
refuge in saying that at least the result could not be equal to the
dreamer's capabilities when awake; but Kelley's "Macbeth" music was
certainly an improvement on what he could invent out of the land of
Nod.
After composing a comic opera, which was refused by the man for whom
it was written because it was too good, he drifted into journalism,
and wrote reviews and critiques which show a very liberal mind capable
of appreciating things both modern and classic.
Kelley was again persuaded to write a comic opera to the artistic
libretto, "Puritania," by C.M.S. McLellan, a brilliant satirist,
who has since won fortune by his highly successful and frequently
artistic burlesquery. The work won excellent praise in Boston, where
it had one hundred performances. The work musically was not only
conscientious, but really graceful and captivating. It received the
most glowing encomiums from people of musical culture, and largely
enhanced Kelley's musical reputation in its run of something over a
year. On its tour Kelley was also the musical conductor, in which
capacity he has frequently served elsewhere.
Kelley plainly deserves preeminence among American composers for his
devotion to, and skill in, the finer sorts of humorous music. No other
American has written so artfully, so happily, or so ambitiously in
this field. A humorous symphony and a Chinese suite are his largest
works on this order.
The symphony follows the life of "Gulliver in Lilliput." In
development and intertwining of themes and in brilliance of
orchestration, it maintains symphonic dignity, while in play of fancy,
suggestive programmaticism, and rollicking enthusiasm it is infectious
with wit. Gulliver himself is richly characterized with a burly,
blustering English theme. The storm that throws him on the shores of
Lilliput is handled with complete mastery, certain phrases picturing
the toss of the billows, another the great roll of the boat, others
the rattle of the rigging and the panic of the crew; and all wrought
up to a demoniac climax at the wreck. As the stranded Gulliver falls
asleep, the music hints his nodding off graphically. The entrance of
the Lilliputians is perhaps the happiest bit of the whole delicious
work. By adroit devices in instrumentation, their tiny band toots a
minute national hymn of irresistible drollery. The sound of their wee
hammers and the rest of the ludicrous adventures are carried off in
unfailing good humor. The scene finally changes to the rescuing ship.
Here a most hilarious hornpipe is interrupted by the distant call of
Gulliver's aria, and the rescue is consummated delightfully.
In nothing has Kelley showed such wanton scholarship and such
free-reined fancy as in his Chinese suite for orchestra, "Aladdin." It
is certainly one of the most brilliant musical feats of the
generation, and rivals Richard Strauss in orchestral virtuosity.
While in San Francisco, where, as every one knows, there is a
transplanted corner of China, Kelley sat at the feet of certain
Celestial cacophonists, and made himself adept. He fathomed the, to
us, obscure laws of their theory, and for this work made a careful
selection of Chinese musical ideas, and used what little harmony they
approve of with most quaint and suggestive effect upon a splendid
background of his own. The result has not been, as is usual in such
alien mimicries, a mere success of curiosity.
The work had its first accolade of genius in the wild protests of the
music copyists, and in the downright mutiny of orchestral performers.
On the first page of the score is this note: "This should be played
with a bow unscrewed, so that the hairs hang loose--thus the bow never
leaves the string." This direction is evidently meant to secure the
effect of the Chinese violin, in which the string passes between the
hair and the wood of the bow, and is played upon the under side. But
what self-respecting violinist could endure such profanation without
striking a blow for his fanes?
The first movement of the suite is made up of themes actually learned
from Chinese musicians. It represents the "Wedding of Aladdin and the
Princess," a sort of sublimated "shivaree" in which oboes quawk, muted
trumpets bray, pizzicato strings flutter, and mandolins (loved of
Berlioz) twitter hilariously.
The second movement, "A Serenade in the Royal Pear Garden," begins
with a luxurious tone-poem of moonlight and shadow, out of which,
after a preliminary tuning of the Chinese lute (or sam-yin), wails a
lyric caterwaul (alternately in 2-4 and 3-4 tempo) which the Chinese
translate as a love-song. Its amorous grotesque at length subsides
into the majestic night. A part of this altogether fascinating
movement came to Kelley in a dream.
The third chapter is devoted to the "Flight of the Genie with the
Palace," and there is a wonderfully vivid suggestion of his struggle
to wrest loose the foundations of the building. At length he heaves it
slowly in the air, and wings majestically away with it.
It has always seemed to me that the purest stroke of genius in
instrumentation ever evinced was Wagner's conceit of using tinkling
bells to suggest leaping flames. And yet quite comparable with this
seems Kelley's device to indicate the oarage of the genie's mighty
wings as he disappears into the sky: liquid _glissandos_ on the upper
harp-strings, with chromatic runs upon the elaborately divided
violins, at length changed to sustained and most ethereally fluty
harmonics. It is very ravishment.
The last movement, "The Return and Feast of the Lanterns," is on the
sonata formula. After an introduction typifying the opening of the
temple gates (a gong giving the music further locale), the first theme
is announced by harp and mandolin. It is an ancient Chinese air for
the yong-kim (a dulcimer-like instrument). The second subject is
adapted from the serenade theme. With these two smuggled themes
everything contrapuntal (a fugue included) and instrumental is done
that technical bravado could suggest or true art license. The result
is a carnival of technic that compels the layman to wonder and the
scholar to homage.
A transcription for a piano duet has been made of this last movement.
In Chinese-tone also is Kelley's most popular song, "The Lady Picking
Mulberries," which brought him not only the enthusiasm of Americans
but the high commendation of the Chinese themselves. It is written in
the limited Chinese scale, with harmonies of our school; and is a
humoresque of such catchiness that it has pervaded even London and
Paris.
This song is one of a series of six lyrics called "The Phases of
Love," with this motive from the "Anatomy of Melancholy": "I am
resolved, therefore, in this tragi-comedy of love, to act several
parts, some satirically, some comically, some in a mixed tone." The
poems are all by American poets, and the group, opus 6, is an
invaluable addition to our musical literature. The first of the
series, "My Silent Song," is a radiantly beautiful work, with a
wondrous tender air to a rapturous accompaniment. The second is a
setting of Edward Rowland Sill's perfect little poem, "Love's Fillet."
The song is as full of art as it is of feeling and influence. "What
the Man in the Moon Saw" is an engaging satire, "Love and Sleep" is
sombre, and "In a Garden" is pathetic.
Besides two small sketches, a waltz and a gavotte, and his own
arrangements, for two and for four hands, of the Gaelic March in
"Macbeth," Kelley has published only three piano pieces: opus 2, "The
Flower Seekers," superb with grace, warm harmony, and May ecstasies;
"Confluentia," whose threads of liquidity are eruditely, yet
romantically, intertangled to represent the confluence of the Rhine
and the Moselle; and "The Headless Horseman," a masterpiece of
burlesque weirdness, representing the wild pursuit of Ichabod Crane
and the final hurling of the awful head,--a pumpkin, some say. It is
relieved by Ichabod's tender reminiscences of Katrina Van Tassel at
the spinning-wheel, and is dedicated to Joseffy, the pianist, who
lives in the region about Sleepy Hollow.
To supplement his successful, humorously melodramatic setting of "The
Little Old Woman who Went to the Market her Eggs for to Sell," Kelley
is preparing a series of similar pieces called "Tales Retold for
Musical Children." It will include "Gulliver," "Aladdin," and "Beauty
and the Beast."
Kelley once wrote music for an adaptation of "Prometheus Bound," made
by the late George Parsons Lathrop for that ill-starred experiment,
the Theatre of Arts and Letters. The same thoroughness of research
that gave Kelley such a command of Chinese theories equipped him in
what knowledge we have of Greek and the other ancient music. He has
delivered a course of lectures on these subjects, and this learning
was put to good and public use in his share in the staging of the
novel "Ben Hur." His music had a vital part in carrying the play over
the thin ice of sacrilege; it was so reverent and so appealing that
the scrubwomen in the theatre were actually moved to tears during its
rehearsal, and it gave the scene of the miraculous cure of the lepers
a dignity that saved it from either ridicule or reproach.
In the first act there is a suggestion of the slow, soft march of a
caravan across the sand, the eleven-toned Greek and Egyptian scale
being used. In the tent of the Sheik, an old Arabian scale is
employed. In the elaborate ballets and revels in the "Grove of Daphne"
the use of Greek scales, Greek progressions (such as descending
parallel fourths long forbidden by the doctors of our era), a
trimetrical grouping of measures (instead of our customary fourfold
basis), and a suggestion of Hellenic instruments,--all this lore has
not robbed the scene in any sense of an irresistible brilliance and
spontaneity. The weaving of Arachne's web is pictured with especial
power. Greek traditions have, of course, been used only for
occasional impressionisms, and not as manacles. Elaborately colored
modern instrumentation and all the established devices from canon up
are employed. A piano transcription of part of the music is promised.
The "Song of Iras" has been published. It is full of home-sickness,
and the accompaniment (not used in the production) is a wonderwork of
color.
[Music:
Tottering above
In her highest noon
The enamoured moon blushes with love
While to listen
The red levin
With the rapid pleiads even
Which were seven
Pauses in heaven!
Pauses in heaven!
And they say the starry choir
And the other listening things,
That Israfel's fire is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings
Of those unusual strings.
By permission.
FRAGMENT OF "ISRAFEL," BY EDGAR S. KELLEY.]
Kelley has two unpublished songs that show him at his best, both
settings of verse by Poe,--"Eldorado," which vividly develops the
persistence of the knight, and "Israfel." This latter poem, as you
know, concerns the angel "whose heart-strings are a lute." After a
rhapsody upon the cosmic spell of the angel's singing, Poe, with a
brave defiance, flings an implied challenge to him. The verse marks
one of the highest reaches of a genius honored abroad as a world-great
lyrist. It is, perhaps, praise enough, then, to say that Kelley's
music flags in no wise behind the divine progress of the words. The
lute idea dictates an arpeggiated accompaniment, whose harmonic beauty
and courage is beyond description and beyond the grasp of the mind at
the first hearing. The bravery of the climax follows the weird and
opiate harmonies of the middle part with tremendous effect. The song
is, in my fervent belief, a masterwork of absolute genius, one of the
very greatest lyrics in the world's music.
_Harvey Worthington Loomis._
[Illustration: HARVEY WORTHINGTON LOOMIS.]
[Illustration: Autograph of Harvey Worthington Loomis]
In the band of pupils that gathered to the standard of the invader,
Antonin Dvorak, when, in 1892, he came over here from Macedonia to
help us, some of the future's best composers will probably be found.
Of this band was Harvey Worthington Loomis, who won a three years'
scholarship in Doctor Dvorak's composition class at the National
Conservatory, by submitting an excellent, but rather uncharacteristic,
setting of Eichendorff's "Fruehlingsnacht." Loomis evidently won
Doctor Dvorak's confidence, for among the tasks imposed on him was a
piano concerto to be built on the lines of so elaborate a model as
Rubinstein's in D minor. When Loomis' first sketches showed an
elaboration even beyond the complex pattern, Dvorak still advised him
to go on. To any one that knows the ways of harmony teachers this will
mean much.
Loomis (who was born in Brooklyn, February 5, 1865, and is now a
resident of New York) pursued studies in harmony and piano in a
desultory way until he entered Doctor Dvorak's class. For his musical
tastes he was indebted to the artistic atmosphere of his home.
Though Loomis has written something over five hundred compositions,
only a few works have been published, the most important of which are
"Fairy Hill," a cantatilla for children, published in 1896 (it was
written on a commission that fortunately allowed him liberty for not a
little elaboration and individuality), "Sandalphon," and a few songs
and piano pieces.
A field of his art that has won his especial interest is the use of
music as an atmosphere for dramatic expression. Of this sort are a
number of pantomimes, produced with much applause in New York by the
Academy of Dramatic Arts; and several musical backgrounds. The 27th of
April, 1896, a concert of his works was given by a number of
well-known artists.
These musical backgrounds are played in accompaniment to dramatic
recitations. Properly managed, the effect is most impressive. Feval's
poem, "The Song of the Pear-tree," is a typically handled work. The
poem tells the story of a young French fellow, an orphan, who goes to
the wars as substitute for his friend Jean. After rising from rank to
rank by bravery, he returns to his home just as his sweetheart,
Perrine, enters the church to wed Jean. The girl had been his one
ambition, and now in his despair he reenlists and begs to be placed in
the thickest of danger. When he falls, they find on his breast a
withered spray from the pear-tree under which Perrine had first
plighted troth. On these simple lines the music builds up a drama.
From the opening shimmer and rustle of the garden, through the
Gregorian chant that solemnizes the drawing of the lots, and is
interrupted by the youth's start of joy at his own luck (an abrupt
_glissando_); through his sturdy resolve to go to war in his friend's
place, on through many battles to his death, all is on a high plane
that commands sympathy for the emotion, and enforces unbounded
admiration for the art. There is a brief hint of the Marseillaise
woven into the finely varied tapestry of martial music, and when the
lover comes trudging home, his joy, his sudden knowledge of Perrine's
faithlessness, and his overwhelming grief are all built over a long
organ-point of three clangorous bride-bells. The _leit-motif_ idea is
used with suggestive clearness throughout the work.
The background to Longfellow's "Sandalphon" is so fine an arras that
it gives the poet a splendor not usual to his bourgeois lays. The
music runs through so many phases of emotion, and approves itself so
original and exaltedly vivid in each that I put it well to the fore
of American compositions.
Hardly less large is the--Loomis calls it "Musical Symbolism," for
Adelaide Ann Proctor's "The Story of the Faithful Soul." Of the
greatest delicacy imaginable is the music (for piano, violin, and
voice) to William Sharp's "Coming of the Prince." The "Watteau
Pictures" are poems of Verlaine's variously treated: one as a
head-piece to a wayward piano caprice, one to be recited during a
picturesque waltz, the last a song with mandolin effects in the
accompaniment.
[Music:
How, erect, at the outermost gates of the City
Celestial he waits,
With his feet on the ladder of light,
That, crowded with angels unnumbered,
By Jacob was seen as he slumbered
Alone in the desert at night?
The Angels of Wind and of Fire
Chant only one hymn, and expire
With the song's irresistible stress,
Expire in their rapture and wonder,
As harp-strings are broken asunder
By music they throb to express.
But serene in the rapturous throng,
Unmoved by the rush of the song,
With eyes unimpassioned and slow,
Among the dead angels, the deathless
Sandalphon stands listening, breathless,
To sounds that ascend from below,...
Copyright, 1896, by Edgar S. Werner.
A FRAGMENT OF "SANDALPHON," BY H.W. LOOMIS.]
The pantomimes range from grave to gay, most of the librettos in this
difficult form being from the clever hand of Edwin Starr Belknap.
"The Traitor Mandolin," "In Old New Amsterdam," "Put to the Test,"
"Blanc et Noir," "The Enchanted Fountain," "Her Revenge," "Love and
Witchcraft" are their names. The music is full of wit, a quality
Loomis possesses in unusual degree. The music mimics everything from
the busy feather-duster of the maid to her eavesdropping. Pouring
wine, clinking glasses, moving a chair, tearing up a letter, and a
rollicking wine-song in pantomime are all hinted with the drollest and
most graphic programmism imaginable.
Loomis has also written two burlesque operas, "The Maid of Athens" and
"The Burglar's Bride," the libretto of the latter by his brother,
Charles Battell Loomis, the well-known humorist. This latter contains
some skilful parody on old fogyism.
In the Violin Sonata the piano, while granting precedence to the
violin, approaches almost to the dignity of a duet. The finale is
captivating and brilliant, and develops some big climaxes. The work as
a whole is really superb, and ought to be much played. There are,
besides, a "Lyric Finale" to a sonata not yet written, and several
songs for violin, voice, and piano.
A suite for four hands, "In Summer Fields," contains some happy
manifestations of ability, such as "A June Roundelay," "The Dryad's
Grove," and, especially, a humoresque "Junketing," which is surely
destined to become a classic. From some of his pantomimes Loomis has
made excerpts, and remade them with new elaboration for two pianos,
under the name of "Exotics." These are full of variety and of actual
novelty, now of startling discord, now of revelatory beauty. A
so-called "Norland Epic," freely constructed on the sonata formula, is
one of Loomis' most brilliant and personal achievements.
Loomis has an especial aptitude for writing artistic ballet-music, and
for composing in the tone of different nationalities, particularly the
Spanish. His pantomimes contain many irresistible dances, one of them
including a Chinese dance alternating 4-4 with 3-4 time. His
strikingly fleet "Harlequin" has been published.
The gift of adding art to catchiness is a great one. This Loomis
seems to have to an unusual degree, as is evidenced by the dances in
his pantomimes and his series of six pieces "In Ballet Costume," all
of them rich with the finest art along with a Strauss-like
spontaneity. These include "L'Amazone," "Pirouette," "Un Pas Seul,"
"La Coryphee," "The Odalisque," and "The Magyar." One of his largest
works is a concert waltz, "Mi-Careme," for two pianos, with elaborate
and extended introduction and coda.
A series of Genre Pictures contains such lusciousness of felicity as
"At an Italian Festival," and there are a number of musical moments of
engaging charm, for instance, "N'Importe Quoi," "From a Conservatory
Program," "A Tropical Night," a fascinating "Valsette," a nameless
valse, and "Another Scandal," which will prove a gilt-edged
speculation for some tardy publisher. It is brimming with the
delicious horror of excited gossipry. An example of how thoroughly
Loomis is invested with music--how he thinks in it--is his audacious
scherzo, "The Town Crier," printed herewith.
In songs Loomis has been most prolific. He has set twenty-two of
Shakespeare's lyrics to music of the old English school, such as his
uproarious "Let me the cannikin clink," and his dainty "Tell me where
is fancy bred."
"The Lark" is written in the pentatonic scale, with accompaniment for
two flutes and a harp.
In the same vein are various songs of Herrick, a lyrist whose verse
is not usually congenial to the modern music-maker. Loomis' "Epitaph
on a Virgin" must be classed as a success. Indeed, it reaches positive
grandeur at its climax, wherein is woven the grim persistence of a
tolling bell. In the same style is a clever setting of Ben Jonson's
much music'd "To Celia."
In German-tone are his veritably magnificent "Herbstnacht" and his "At
Midnight," two studies after Franz. Heine's "Des Waldes Kapellmeister"
has been made into a most hilarious humoresque.
"Bergerie" is a dozen of Norman Gale's lyrics. "Andalusia" is a
flamboyant duet.
In Scotch songs there is a positive embarrassment of riches, Loomis'
fancies finding especial food and freedom in this school. I find in
these settings far more art and grace than I see even in Schumann's
many Scotch songs, or those of any other of the Germans. "Oh, for Ane
and Twenty" has bagpipe effects. Such flights of ecstasy as "My Wife's
a Winsome Wee Thing," and "Bonnie Wee Thing," are simply tyrannical in
their appeal. Then there is an irresistible "Polly Stewart;" and "My
Peggy's Heart" is fairly ambrosial. These and several others, like
"There Was a Bonnie Lass," could be made into an album of songs that
would delight a whole suite of generations.
A number of his songs are published: they include a "John Anderson, My
Jo," that has no particular right to live; a ballad, "Molly," with a
touch of art tucked into it; the beautiful "Sylvan Slumbers," and the
quaint and fascinating "Dutch Garden."
Aside from an occasional song like "Thistledown," with its brilliantly
fleecy accompaniment, and the setting of Browning's famous "The Year'
at the Spring," for which Loomis has struck out a superb frenzy, and a
group of songs by John Vance Cheney, Loomis has found some of his most
powerful inspirations in the work of our lyrist, Aldrich,--such as
the rich carillon of "Wedded," and his "Discipline," one of the best
of all humorous songs, a gruesome scherzo all about dead monks, in
which the music furnishes out the grim irreverence of the words with
the utmost waggery.
Chief among the lyrics by Cheney are three "Spring Songs," in which
Loomis has caught the zest of spring with such rapture that, once they
are heard, the world seems poor without them in print. Loomis'
literary culture is shown in the sure taste of his selection of lyrics
for his music. He has marked aptitudes, too, in creative literature,
and has an excellent idea of the arts kindred to his own, particularly
architecture.
Like Chopin, Loomis is largely occupied in mixing rich new colors on
the inexhaustible palette of the piano. Like Chopin, he is not
especially called to the orchestra. What the future may hold for him
in this field (by no means so indispensable to classic repute as
certain pedants assume) it is impossible to say. In the meantime he is
giving most of his time to work in larger forms.
If in his restless hunt for novelty, always novelty, he grows too
original, too unconventional, this sin is unusual enough to approach
the estate of a virtue. But his oddity is not mere sensation-mongering.
It is his individuality. He could make the same reply to such
criticism that Schumann made; he thinks in strange rhythms and hunts
curious effects, because his tastes are irrevocably so ordained.
But we ought to show a new genius the same generosity toward flaws
that we extend toward the masters whose fame is won beyond the
patronage of our petty forgiveness. And, all in all, I am impelled to
prophesy to Loomis a place very high among the inspired makers of new
music. His harmonies, so indefatigably searched out and polished to
splendor, so potent in enlarging the color-scale of the piano; his
patient building up, through long neglect and through long silence, of
a monumental group of works and of a distinct individuality, must
prove at some late day a source of lasting pride to his country,
neglectful now in spite of itself. But better than his patience, than
his courage, than his sincerity, better than that insufficient
definition of genius,--the capacity for taking infinite pains,--is his
inspired felicity. His genius is the very essence of felicity.
_Ethelbert Nevin._
[Illustration: ETHELBERT NEVIN.]
It is refreshing to be able to chronicle the achievements of a
composer who has become financially successful without destroying his
claim on the respect of the learned and severe, or sacrificing his own
artistic conscience and individuality. Such a composer is Ethelbert
Nevin.
His published writings have been altogether along the smaller lines of
composition, and he has won an enviable place as a fervent worker in
diamonds. None of his gems are paste, and a few have a perfection, a
solidity, and a fire that fit them for a place in that coronet one
might fancy made up of the richest of the jewels of the world's
music-makers, and fashioned for the very brows of the Muse herself.
[Illustration: Autograph of Ethelbert Nevin]
Nevin was born in 1862, at Vineacre, on the banks of the Ohio, a few
miles from Pittsburgh. There he spent the first sixteen years of his
life, and received all his schooling, most of it from his father,
Robert P. Nevin, editor and proprietor of a Pittsburgh newspaper, and
a contributor to many magazines. It is interesting to note that he
also composed several campaign songs, among them the popular "Our
Nominee," used in the day of James K. Polk's candidacy. The first
grand piano ever taken across the Allegheny Mountains was carted over
for Nevin's mother.
From his earliest infancy Nevin was musically inclined, and, at the
age of four, was often taken from his cradle to play for admiring
visitors. To make up for the deficiency of his little legs, he used to
pile cushions on the pedals so that he might manipulate them from
afar.
Nevin's father provided for his son both vocal and instrumental
instruction, even taking him abroad for two years of travel and music
study in Dresden under Von Boehme. Later he studied the piano for two
years at Boston, under B.J. Lang, and composition under Stephen A.
Emery, whose little primer on harmony has been to American music
almost what Webster's spelling-book was to our letters.
At the end of two years he went to Pittsburgh, where he gave lessons,
and saved money enough to take him to Berlin. There he spent the
years 1884, 1885, and 1886, placing himself in the hands of Karl
Klindworth. Of him Nevin says: "To Herr Klindworth I owe everything
that has come to me in my musical life. He was a devoted teacher, and
his patience was tireless. His endeavor was not only to develop the
student from a musical standpoint, but to enlarge his soul in every
way. To do this, he tried to teach one to appreciate and to feel the
influence of such great minds of literature as Goethe, Schiller, and
Shakespeare. He used to insist that a man does not become a musician
by practising so many hours a day at the piano, but by absorbing an
influence from all the arts and all the interests of life, from
architecture, painting, and even politics."
The effect of such broad training--enjoyed rarely enough by music
students--is very evident in Nevin's compositions. They are never
narrow or provincial. They are the outpourings of a soul that is not
only intense in its activities, but is refined and cultivated in its
expressions. This effect is seen, too, in the poems Nevin chooses to
set to music,--they are almost without exception verses of literary
finish and value. His cosmopolitanism is also remarkable, his songs in
French, German, and Italian having no trace of Yankee accent and a
great fidelity to their several races.
In 1885, Hans von Buelow incorporated the best four pupils of his
friend, Klindworth, into an artist class, which he drilled personally.
Nevin was one of the honored four, and appeared at the unique public
_Zuhoeren_ of that year, devoted exclusively to the works of Brahms,
Liszt, and Raff. Among the forty or fifty studious listeners at these
recitals, Frau Cosima Wagner, the violinist Joachim, and many other
celebrities were frequently present.
Nevin returned to America in 1887, and took up his residence in
Boston, where he taught and played at occasional concerts.
Eighteen hundred and ninety-two found him in Paris, where he taught,
winning more pupils than here. He was especially happy in imparting to
singers the proper _Auffassung_ (grasp, interpretation, finish) of
songs, and coached many American and French artists for the operatic
stage. In 1893 the restless troubadour moved on to Berlin, where he
devoted himself so ardently to composition that his health collapsed,
and he was exiled a year to Algiers. The early months of 1895 he
spent in concert tours through this country. As Klindworth said of
him, "he has a touch that brings tears," and it is in interpretation
rather than in bravura that he excels. He plays with that unusual
combination of elegance and fervor that so individualizes his
composition.
Desirous of finding solitude and atmosphere for composition, he took
up his residence in Florence, where he composed his suite, "May in
Tuscany" (op. 21). The "Arlecchino" of this work has much
sprightliness, and shows the influence of Schumann, who made the
harlequin particularly his own; but there is none of Chopin's
nocturnity in the "Notturno," which presents the sussurus and the
moonlit, amorous company of "Boccaccio's Villa." The suite includes a
"Misericordia" depicting a midnight cortege along the Arno, and
modelled on Chopin's funeral march in structure with its hoarse dirge
and its rich cantilena. The best number of the suite is surely the
"Rusignuolo," an exceedingly fluty bird-song.
From Florence, Nevin went to Venice, where he lived in an old _casa_
on the Grand Canal, opposite the Browning palazzo, and near the house
where Wagner wrote "Tristan und Isolde." One day his man, Guido, took
a day off, and brought to Venice an Italian sweetheart, who had lived
a few miles from the old dream-city and had never visited it. The day
these two spent gondoliering through the waterways, where romance
hides in every nook, is imaginatively narrated in tone in Nevin's
suite, "Un Giorno in Venezia," a book more handsomely published even
than the others of his works, which have been among the earliest to
throw off the disgraceful weeds of type and design formerly worn by
native compositions.
The Venetian suite gains a distinctly Italian color from its
ingenuously sweet harmonies in thirds and sixths, and its frankly
lyric nature, and "The Day in Venice" begins logically with the dawn,
which is ushered in with pink and stealthy harmonies, then "The
Gondoliers" have a morning mood of gaiety that makes a charming
composition. There is a "Canzone Amorosa" of deep fervor, with
interjections of "Io t'amo!" and "Amore" (which has the excellent
authority of Beethoven's Sonata, op. 81, with its "Lebe wohl"). The
suite ends deliciously with a night scene in Venice, beginning with a
choral "Ave Maria," and ending with a campanella of the utmost
delicacy.
After a year in Venice Nevin made Paris his home for a year,
returning to America then, where he has since remained.
Though he has dabbled somewhat in orchestration, he has been wisely
devoting his genius, with an almost Chopin-like singleness of mind, to
songs and piano pieces. His piano works are what would be called
_morceaux_. He has never written a sonata, or anything approaching the
classical forms, nearer than a gavotte or two. He is very modern in
his harmonies, the favorite colors on his palette being the warmer
keys, which are constantly blended enharmonically. He "swims in a sea
of tone," being particularly fond of those suspensions and inversions
in which the intervals of the second clash passionately, strongly
compelling resolution. For all his gracefulness and lyricism, he makes
a sturdy and constant use of dissonance; in his song "Herbstgefuehl"
the dissonance is fearlessly defiant of conventions.
[Music:
... Rose
Loeset lebenssatt.
Sich, das letzte lose,
Bleiche Blumenblatt.
Goldenes entfaerben,
Schleicht sich durch den Hain,
Auch vergeh'n und sterben,
Daeucht mir suess zu sein.
... failing,
From the rose unbound,
Falls, its life exhaling,
Dead upon the ground.
Golden colors flying,
Slant from tree to tree;
Such release and dying,
Sweet would seem to me.
Copyright, 1889, by G. Schirmer, Jr.
A FRAGMENT FROM "HERBSTGEFUeHL."]
Nevin's songs, whose only littleness is in their length, though
treated with notable individuality, are founded in principle on the
_Lieder_ of Schumann and Franz. That is to say, they are written with
a high poetical feeling inspired by the verses they sing, and, while
melodious enough to justify them as lyrics, yet are near enough to
impassioned recitative to do justice to the words on which they are
built. Nevin is also an enthusiastic devotee of the position these
masters, after Schubert, took on the question of the accompaniment.
This is no longer a slavish thumping of a few chords, now and then,
to keep the voice on the key, with outbursts of real expression only
at the interludes; but it is a free instrumental composition with a
meaning of its own and an integral value, truly accompanying, not
merely supporting and serving, the voice. Indeed, one of Nevin's best
songs,--"Lehn deine Wang an meine Wang,"--is actually little more than
a vocal accompaniment to a piano solo. His accompaniments are always
richly colored and generally individualized with a strong
contramelody, a descending chromatic scale in octaves making an
especially frequent appearance. Design, though not classical, is
always present and distinct.
Nevin's first published work was a modest "Serenade," with a neat
touch of syncopation, which he wrote at the age of eighteen. His
"Sketch-Book," a collection of thirteen songs and piano pieces found
an immediate and remarkable sale that has removed the ban formerly
existing over books of native compositions.
The contents of the "Sketch-Book" display unusual versatility. It
opens with a bright gavotte, in which adherence to the classic spirit
compels a certain reminiscence of tone. The second piece, a song, "I'
the Wondrous Month o' May," has such a springtide fire and frenzy in
the turbulent accompaniment, and such a fervent reiterance, that it
becomes, in my opinion, the best of all the settings of this poem of
Heine's, not excluding even Schumann's or that of Franz. The "Love
Song," though a piano solo, is in reality a duet between two lovers.
It is to me finer than Henselt's perfect "Liebeslied," possibly
because the ravishing sweetness of the woman's voice answering the
sombre plea of the man gives it a double claim on the heart. The
setting of "Du bist wie eine Blume," however, hardly does justice
either to Heine's poem, or to Nevin's art. The "Serenade" is an
original bit of work, but the song, "Oh, that We Two were Maying!"
with a voice in the accompaniment making it the duet it should
be,--that song can have no higher praise than this, that it is the
complete, the final musical fulfilment of one of the rarest lyrics in
our language. A striking contrast to the keen white regret of this
song is the setting of a group of "Children's Songs," by Robert Louis
Stevenson. Nevin's child-songs have a peculiar and charming place. He
has not been stingy of either his abundant art or his abundant
humanity in writing them. They include four of Stevenson's, the best
being the captivating "In Winter I get up at Night," and a setting of
Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue," in which a trumpet figure is used
with delicate pathos.
Nevin's third opus included three exquisite songs of a pastoral
nature, Goethe's rollicking "One Spring Morning" having an immense
sale. Opus 5 contained five songs, of which the ecstatic "'Twas April"
reached the largest popularity. Possibly the smallest sale was enjoyed
by "Herbstgefuehl." Many years have not availed to shake my allegiance
to this song, as one of the noblest songs in the world's music. It is
to me, in all soberness, as great as the greatest of the _Lieder_ of
Schubert, Schumann or Franz. In "Herbstgefuehl" (or "Autumn-mood")
Gerok's superb poem bewails the death of the leaves and the failing of
the year, and cries out in sympathy:
"Such release and dying
Sweet would seem to me!"
Deeper passion and wilder despair could not be crowded into so short a
song, and the whole brief tragedy is wrought with a grandeur and
climax positively epic. It is a flash of sheer genius.
Three piano duets make up opus 6; and other charming works, songs,
piano pieces, and violin solos, kept pouring from a pen whose apparent
ease concealed a vast deal of studious labor, until the lucky 13, the
opus-number of a bundle of "Water Scenes," brought Nevin the greatest
popularity of all, thanks largely to "Narcissus," which has been as
much thrummed and whistled as any topical song.
Of the other "Water Scenes," there is a shimmering "Dragon Fly," a
monody, "Ophelia," with a pedal-point of two periods on the tonic, and
a fluent "Barcarolle" with a deal of high-colored virtuosity.
His book "In Arcady" (1892) contains pastoral scenes, notably an
infectious romp that deserves its legend, "They danced as though they
never would grow old." The next year his opus 20, "A Book of Songs,"
was published. It contains, among other things of merit, a lullaby,
called "Sleep, Little Tulip," with a remarkably artistic and effective
pedal-point on two notes (the submediant and the dominant) sustained
through the entire song with a fine fidelity to the words and the
lullaby spirit; a "Nocturne" in which Nevin has revealed an
unsuspected voluptuousness in Mr. Aldrich' little lyric, and has
written a song of irresistible climaxes. The two songs, "Dites-Moi"
and "In der Nacht," each so completely true to the idiom of the
language of its poem, are typical of Nevin's cosmopolitanism, referred
to before. This same unusual ability is seen in his piano pieces as
well as in his songs. He knows the difference between a _chanson_ and
a _Lied_, and in "Rechte Zeit" has written with truth to German
soldierliness as he has been sympathetic with French nuance in "Le
Vase Brise," the effective song "Mon Desire," which in profile
suggests Saint-Saens' familiar Delilah-song, the striking "Chanson des
Lavandieres" and "Rapelle-Toi," one of Nevin's most elaborate works,
in which Alfred De Musset's verse is splendidly set with much
enharmonious color. Very Italian, too, is the "Serenade" with
accompaniment a la mandolin, which is the most fetching number in the
suite "Captive Memories," published in 1899.
Nevin has also put many an English song to music, notably the deeply
sincere "At Twilight," the strenuous lilt "In a Bower," Bourdillon's
beautiful lyric, "Before the Daybreak," the smooth and unhackneyed
treatment of the difficult stanza of "'Twas April," that popular song,
"One Spring Morning," which has not yet had all the charm sung out of
it, and two songs with obbligati for violin and 'cello, "Deep in the
Rose's Glowing Heart" and "Doris," a song with a finely studied
accompaniment and an aroma of Theokritos.
A suite for the piano is "En Passant," published in 1899; it ranges
from a stately old dance, "At Fontainebleau," to "Napoli," a furious
tarantelle with effective _glissandi_; "In Dreamland" is a most
delicious revery with an odd repetition that is not preludatory, but
thematic. The suite ends with the most poetic scene of all, "At Home,"
which makes a tone poem of Richard Hovey's word-picture of a June
night in Washington. The depicting of the Southern moonlight-balm,
with its interlude of a distant and drowsy negro quartette, reminds
one pleasantly of Chopin's Nocturne (op. 37, No. 1), with its
intermezzo of choric monks, though the composition is Nevin's very own
in spirit and treatment.
In addition to the works catalogued, Nevin has written a pantomime for
piano and orchestra to the libretto of that virtuoso in English, Vance
Thompson; it was called "Lady Floriane's Dream," and was given in New
York in 1898. Nevin has also a cantata in making.
It needs no very intimate acquaintance with Nevin's music to see that
it is not based on an adoration for counterpoint as an end. He
believes that true music must come from the emotions--the intelligent
emotions--and that when it cannot appeal to the emotions it has lost
its power. He says: "Above everything we need melody--melody and
rhythm. Rhythm is the great thing. We have it in Nature. The trees
sway, and our steps keep time, and our very souls respond." In
Wagner's "Meistersinger," which he calls "a symphonic poem with
action," Nevin finds his musical creed and his model.
And now, if authority is needed for all this frankly enthusiastic
admiration, let it be found in and echoed from Karl Klindworth, who
said of Nevin: "His talent is _ungeheures_ [one of the strongest
adjectives in the German language]. If he works hard and is
conscientious, he can say for the musical world something that no one
else can say."
_John Philip Sousa._
[Illustration: Autograph of John Philip Sousa]
[Illustration: JOHN PHILIP SOUSA.]
In common with most of those that pretend to love serious music, a
certain person was for long guilty of the pitiful snobbery of rating
march-tunes as the lowest form of the art. But one day he joined a
National Guard regiment, and his first long march was that
heart-breaking dress-parade of about fifteen miles through the wind
and dust of the day Grant's monument was dedicated. Most of the music
played by the band was merely rhythmical embroidery, chiefly in bugle
figures, as helpful as a Clementi sonatina; but now and then there
would break forth a magic elixir of tune that fairly plucked his feet
up for him, put marrow in unwilling bones, and replaced the dreary
doggedness of the heart with a great zest for progress, a stout
martial fire, and a fierce _esprit de corps_; with patriotism indeed.
In almost every case, that march belonged to one John Philip Sousa.
It came upon this wretch then, that, if it is a worthy ambition in a
composer to give voice to passionate love-ditties, or vague
contemplation, or the deep despair of a funeral cortege, it is also a
very great thing to instil courage, and furnish an inspiration that
will send men gladly, proudly, and gloriously through hardships into
battle and death. This last has been the office of the march-tune, and
it is as susceptible of structural logic or embellishments as the
fugue, rondo, or what not. These architectural qualities Sousa's
marches have in high degree, as any one will find that examines their
scores or listens analytically. They have the further merit of
distinct individuality, and the supreme merit of founding a school.
It is only the plain truth to say that Sousa's marches have founded a
school; that he has indeed revolutionized march-music. His career
resembles that of Johann Strauss in many ways. A certain body of old
fogies has always presumed to deride the rapturous waltzes of
Strauss, though they have won enthusiastic praise from even the
esoteric Brahms, and gained from Wagner such words as these: "One
Strauss waltz overshadows, in respect to animation, finesse, and real
musical worth, most of the mechanical, borrowed, factory-made products
of the present time." The same words might be applied to Sousa's
marches with equal justice. They have served also for dance music, and
the two-step, borne into vogue by Sousa's music, has driven the waltz
almost into desuetude.
There is probably no composer in the world with a popularity equal to
that of Sousa. Though he sold his "Washington Post" march outright for
$35, his "Liberty Bell" march is said to have brought him $35,000. It
is found that his music has been sold to eighteen thousand bands in
the United States alone. The amazing thing is to learn that there are
so many bands in the country. Sousa's marches have appeared on
programs in all parts of the civilized world. At the Queen's Jubilee,
when the Queen stepped forward to begin the grand review of the
troops, the combined bands of the household brigade struck up the
"Washington Post." On other important occasions it appeared constantly
as the chief march of the week. General Miles heard the marches played
in Turkey by the military bands in the reviews.
The reason for this overwhelming appeal to the hearts of a planet is
not far to seek. The music is conceived in a spirit of high martial
zest. It is proud and gay and fierce, thrilled and thrilling with
triumph. Like all great music it is made up of simple elements, woven
together by a strong personality. It is not difficult now to write
something that sounds more or less like a Sousa march, any more than
it is difficult to write parodies, serious or otherwise, on Beethoven,
Mozart, or Chopin. The glory of Sousa is that he was the first to
write in this style; that he has made himself a style; that he has so
stirred the musical world that countless imitations have sprung up
after him.
The individuality of the Sousa march is this, that, unlike most of the
other influential marches, it is not so much a musical exhortation
from without, as a distillation of the essences of soldiering from
within. Sousa's marches are not based upon music-room enthusiasms, but
on his own wide experiences of the feelings of men who march together
in the open field.
And so his band music expresses all the nuances of the military
psychology: the exhilaration of the long unisonal stride, the grip on
the musket, the pride in the regimentals and the regiment,--_esprit de
corps_. He expresses the inevitable foppery of the severest soldier,
the tease and the taunt of the evolutions, the fierce wish that all
this ploying and deploying were in the face of an actual enemy, the
mania to reek upon a tangible foe all the joyous energy, the
blood-thirst of the warrior.
These things Sousa embodies in his music as no other music writer ever
has. To approach Sousa's work in the right mood, the music critic must
leave his stuffy concert hall and his sober black; he must flee from
the press, don a uniform, and march. After his legs and spirits have
grown aweary under the metronomic tunes of others, let him note the
surge of blood in his heart and the rejuvenation of all his muscles
when the brasses flare into a barbaric Sousa march. No man that
marches can ever feel anything but gratitude and homage for Sousa.
Of course he is a trickster at times; admitted that he stoops to
conquer at times, yet in his field he is supreme. He is worthy of
serious consideration, because his thematic material is almost always
novel and forceful, and his instrumentation full of contrast and
climax. He is not to be judged by the piano versions of his works,
because they are abominably thin and inadequate, and they are not
_klaviermaessig_. There should be a Liszt or a Taussig to transcribe
him.
When all's said and done, Sousa is the pulse of the nation, and in
war of more inspiration and power to our armies than ten colonels with
ten braw regiments behind them.
Like Strauss', Mr. Sousa's father was a musician who forbade his son
to devote himself to dance music. As Strauss' mother enabled him
secretly to work out his own salvation, so did Sousa's mother help
him. Sousa's father was a political exile from Spain, and earned a
precarious livelihood by playing a trombone in the very band at
Washington which later became his son's stepping-stone to fame. Sousa
was born at Washington in 1859. His mother is German, and Sousa's
music shows the effect of Spanish yeast in sturdy German rye bread.
Sousa's teachers were John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. The latter
Mr. Sousa considers one of the most complete musicians this country
has ever known. He put him through such a thorough theoretical
training, that at fifteen Sousa was teaching harmony. At eight he had
begun to earn his own living as a violin player at a dancing-school,
and at ten he was a public soloist. At sixteen he was the conductor of
an orchestra in a variety theatre. Two years later he was musical
director of a travelling company in Mr. Milton Nobles' well-known
play, "The Phoenix," for which he composed the incidental music.
Among other incidents in a career of growing importance was a position
in the orchestra with which Offenbach toured this country. At the age
of twenty-six, after having played, with face blacked, as a negro
minstrel, after travelling with the late Matt Morgan's Living Picture
Company, and working his way through and above other such experiences
in the struggle for life, Sousa became the leader of the United States
Marine Band. In the twelve years of his leadership he developed this
unimportant organization into one of the best military bands in the
world.
In 1892 his leadership had given him such fame that he withdrew from
the government service to take the leadership of the band carrying his
own name.
A work of enormous industry was his collection and arrangement, by
governmental order, of the national and typical tunes of all nations
into one volume, an invaluable book of reference.
Out of the more than two hundred published compositions by Sousa, it
is not possible to mention many here. Though some of the names are not
happily chosen, they call up many episodes of parade gaiety and
jauntiness, or warlike fire. The "Liberty Bell," "Directorate," "High
School Cadets," "King Cotton," "Manhattan Beach," "'Sound Off!'"
"Washington Post," "Picador," and others, are all stirring works; his
best, I think, is a deeply patriotic march, "The Stars and Stripes
Forever." The second part of this has some brass work of particular
originality and vim.
In manuscript are a few works of larger form: a symphonic poem, "The
Chariot Race," an historical scene, "Sheridan's Ride," and two suites,
"Three Quotations" and "The Last Days of Pompeii."
The "Three Quotations" are:
(_a_) "The King of France, with twenty thousand men,
Marched up a hill and then marched down again,"
which is the motive for a delightful scherzo-march of much humor in
instrumentation;
(_b_) "And I, too, was born in Arcadia,"
which is a pastorale with delicious touches of extreme delicacy;
(_c_) "In Darkest Africa,"
which has a stunning beginning and is a stirring grotesque in the
negro manner Dvorak advised Americans to cultivate. All three are well
arranged for the piano.
The second suite is based on "The Last Days of Pompeii." It opens with
a drunken revel, "In the House of Burbo and Stratonice;" the bulky
brutishness of the gladiators clamoring for wine, a jolly
drinking-song, and a dance by a jingling clown make up a superbly
written number. The second movement is named "Nydia," and represents
the pathetic reveries of the blind girl; it is tender and quiet
throughout.
The third movement is at once daring and masterly. It boldly attacks
"The Destruction," and attains real heights of graphic suggestion. A
long, almost inaudible roll on the drums, with occasional thuds,
heralds the coming of the earthquake; subterranean rumblings, sharp
rushes of tremor, toppling stones, and wild panic are insinuated
vividly, with no cheap attempts at actual imitation. The roaring of
the terrified lion is heard, and, best touch of all, under the fury of
the scene persists the calm chant of the Nazarenes, written in one of
the ancient modes. The rout gives way to the sea-voyage of Glaucus and
Ione, and Nydia's swan-song dies away in the gentle splash of ripples.
The work is altogether one of superb imagination and scholarly
achievement.
Sousa, appealing as he does to an audience chiefly of the popular
sort, makes frequent use of devices shocking to the conventional. But
even in this he is impelled by the enthusiasm of an experimenter and a
developer. Almost every unconventional novelty is hooted at in the
arts. But the sensationalism of to-day is the conservatism of
to-morrow, and the chief difference between a touch of high art and a
trick is that the former succeeds and the latter does not. Both are
likely to have a common origin.
The good thing is that Sousa is actuated by the spirit of progress and
experiment, and has carried on the development of the military band
begun by the late Patrick S. Gilmore. Sousa's concert programs devote
what is in fact the greater part of their space to music by the very
best composers. These, of course, lose something in being translated
over to the military band, but their effect in raising the popular
standard of musical culture cannot but be immense. Through such
instrumentality much of Wagner is as truly popular as any music
played. The active agents of such a result should receive the
heartiest support from every one sincerely interested in turning the
people toward the best things in music. Incidentally, it is well to
admit that while a cheap march-tune is almost as trashy as an
uninspired symphony, a good march-tune is one of the best things in
the best music.
Though chiefly known as a writer of marches, in which he has won glory
enough for the average human ambition, Sousa has also taken a large
place in American comic opera. His first piece, "The Smugglers," was
produced in 1879, and scored the usual failure of a first work. His
"Katherine" was never produced, his "Desiree" was brought out in 1884
by the McCaull Opera Company, and his "Queen of Hearts," a one-act
piece, was given two years later. He forsook opera then for ten years;
but in 1896 De Wolf Hopper produced his "El Capitan" with great
success.
The chief tune of the piece was a march used with Meyerbeerian
effectiveness to bring down the curtain. The stout verve of this "El
Capitan" march gave it a large vogue outside the opera. Hopper next
produced "The Charlatan," a work bordering upon opera comique in its
first version. Both of these works scored even larger success in
London than at home.
[Music: Used by permission of the John Church Company, owners of the
copyright.
A PAGE FROM "EL CAPITAN," BY JOHN PHILIP SOUSA.]
In "The Bride Elect," Sousa wrote his own libretto, and while there
was the usual stirring march as the piece de resistance, the work as a
whole was less clangorous of the cymbal than the operas of many a
tamer composer. In "Chris and the Wonderful Lamp," an extravaganza,
the chief ensemble was worked up from a previous march, "Hands Across
the Sea."
But Sousa can write other things than marches, and his scoring is full
of variety, freedom, and contrapuntal brilliance.
_Henry Schoenefeld._
[Illustration: HENRY SCHOENEFELD.]
Long before Dvorak discovered America, we aboriginals had been trying
to invent a national musical dialect which should identify us as
completely to the foreigner as our nasal intonation and our fondness
for the correct and venerable use of the word "guess." But Dvorak is
to credit for taking the problem off the shelf, and persuading our
composers to think. I cannot coax myself into the enthusiasm some have
felt for Dvorak's own explorations in darkest Africa. His quartette
(op. 96) and his "New World" symphony are about as full of accent and
infidelity as Mlle. Yvette Guilbert's picturesque efforts to sing in
English. But almost anything is better than the phlegm that says, "The
old ways are good enough for all time;" and the Bohemian missionary
must always hold a place in the chronicle of American music.
A disciple of Dvorak's, both in advance and in retrospect, is Henry
Schoenefeld, who wrote a characteristic suite (op. 15) before the
Dvorakian invasion, and an overture, "In the Sunny South," afterward.
The suite, which has been played frequently abroad, winning the
praises of Hanslick, Nicode, and Rubinstein, is scored for string
orchestra. It opens with an overly reminiscent waltz-tune, and ends
conventionally, but it contains a movement in negro-tone that gives it
importance. In this the strings are abetted by a tambourine, a
triangle, and a gong. It is in march-time, and, after a staccato
prelude, begins with a catchy air taken by the second violins, while
the firsts, divided, fill up the chords. A slower theme follows in the
tonic major; it is a jollificational air, dancing from the first
violins with a bright use of harmonics. Two periods of loud chorale
appear with the gong clanging (to hint a church-bell, perhaps). The
first two themes return and end the picture.
The overture (op. 22) has won the high esteem of A.J. Goodrich, and
it seems to me to be one of the most important of native works, not
because of its nigrescence, but because of its spontaneity therein. It
adds to the usual instruments only the piccolo, the English horn, the
tambourine, and triangle and cymbals. The slow introduction gives
forth an original theme in the most approved and most fetching darky
pattern. The strings announce it, and the wood replies. The flutes and
clarinets toss it in a blanket furnished by an interesting passage in
the 'cellos and contrabasses. There is a choral moment from the English
horn, the bassoons, and a clarinet. This solemn thought keeps
recurring parenthetically through the general gaiety. The first
subject clatters in, the second is even more jubilant. In the
development a dance _misterioso_ is used with faithful screaming
repetitions, and the work ends regularly and brilliantly. There is
much syncopation, though nothing that is strictly in "rag-time;"
banjo-figurations are freely and ingeniously employed, and the whole
is a splendid fiction in local color. Schoenefeld's negroes do not
speak Bohemian.
His determined nationalism is responsible for his festival overture,
"The American Flag," based on his own setting of Rodman Drake's
familiar poem. The work opens with the hymn blaring loudly from the
antiphonal brass and wood. The subjects are taken from it with much
thematic skill, and handled artfully, but the hymn, which appears in
full force for coda, is as trite as the most of its kith.
Schoenefeld was born in Milwaukee, in 1857. His father was a musician,
and his teacher for some years. At the age of seventeen Schoenefeld
went to Leipzig, where he spent three years, studying under Reinecke,
Coccius, Papperitz, and Grill. A large choral and orchestral work was
awarded a prize over many competitors, and performed at the Gewandhaus
concerts, the composer conducting. Thereafter he went to Weimar, where
he studied under Edward Lassen.
In 1879 he came back to America, and took up his residence in Chicago,
where he has since lived as a teacher, orchestra leader, and composer.
He has for many years directed the Germania Maennerchor.
Schoenefeld's "Rural Symphony" was awarded the $500 prize offered by
the National Conservatory. Dvorak was the chairman of the Committee on
Award, and gave Schoenefeld hearty compliments. Later works are: "Die
drei Indianer," an ode for male chorus, solo, and orchestra; a most
beautiful "Air" for orchestra (the air being taken by most of the
strings,--the first violins haunting the G string,--while a harp and
three flutes carry the burden of the accompaniment gracefully); a
pleasant "Reverie" for string orchestra, harp, and organ; and two
impromptus for string orchestra, a "Meditation" representing Cordelia
brooding tenderly over the slumbering King Lear,--art ministering very
tenderly to the mood,--and a cleverly woven "Valse Noble."
Only a few of Schoenefeld's works are published, all of them piano
pieces. It is no slur upon his orchestral glory to say that these are
for the most part unimportant, except the excellent "Impromptu" and
"Prelude." Of the eight numbers in "The Festival," for children, only
the "Mazurka" is likely to make even the smallest child think. The
"Kleine Tanz Suite" is better. The six children's pieces of opus 41,
"Mysteries of the Wood," make considerable appeal to the fancy and
imagination, and are highly interesting. They show Grieg's influence
very plainly, and are quite worth recommending. This cannot be said of
his most inelegant "Valse Elegante," or of his numerous dances,
except, perhaps, his "Valse Caprice."
He won in July, 1899, the prize offered to American composers by Henri
Marteau, for a sonata for violin and piano. The jury was composed of
such men as Dubois, Pierne, Diemer, and Pugno. The sonata is _quasi
fantasia_, and begins strongly with an evident intention to make use
of negro-tone. The first subject is so vigorously declared that one is
surprised to find that it is elastic enough to express a sweet pathos
and a deep gloom. It is rather fully developed before the second
subject enters; this, on the other hand, is hardly insinuated in its
relative major before the rather inelaborate elaboration begins. In
the romanza, syncopation and imitation are much relied on, though the
general atmosphere is that of a nocturne, a trio of dance-like manner
breaking in. The final rondo combines a clog with a choral intermezzo.
The work is noteworthy for its deep sincerity and great lyric beauty.
_Maurice Arnold._
The plantation dances of Maurice Arnold have an intrinsic interest
quite aside from their intrinsic value. Arnold, whose full name is
Maurice Arnold-Strothotte, was born in St. Louis in 1865. His mother
was a prominent pianist and gave him his first lessons in music. At
the age of fifteen he went to Cincinnati, studying at the College of
Music for three years. In 1883 he went to Germany to study
counterpoint and composition with Vierling and Urban in Berlin. The
latter discouraged him when he attempted to imbue a suite with a negro
plantation spirit.
Arnold now went upon a tramping tour in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
Some of his compositions show the influence of his journey. He then
entered the Cologne Conservatory, studying under Wuellner, Neitzel,
and G. Jensen. His first piano sonata was performed there at a public
concert. He next went to Breslau, where, under the instruction of Max
Bruch, he wrote his cantata, "The Wild Chase," and gave public
performance to other orchestral work. Returning now to St. Louis, he
busied himself as solo violinist and teacher, travelling also as a
conductor of opera companies. When Dvorak came here Arnold wrote his
"Plantation Dances," which were produced in a concert under the
auspices of the Bohemian composer. Arnold was instructor of harmony at
the National Conservatory under Dvorak.
The "Plantation Dances" are Arnold's thirty-third opus, and they have
been much played by orchestras; they are also published as a piano
duet; the second dance also as a solo. Arnold has not made direct use
of Ethiopian themes, but has sought the African spirit. The first of
the dances is very nigresque; the second hardly at all, though it is a
delicious piece of music; the third dance uses banjo figures and
realizes darky hilarity in fine style; the fourth is a cake walk and
hits off the droll humor of that pompous ceremony fascinatingly.
Arnold's "Dramatic Overture" shows a fire and rush very characteristic
of him and likely to be kept up without sufficient contrast. So also
does his cantata, "The Wild Chase." Arnold has written two comic
operas. I have heard parts of the first and noted moments of much
beauty and humor. The Aragonaise, which opens the third act, is
particularly delightful. The orchestration throughout displays
Arnold's characteristic studiousness in picturesque effect.
For piano there is a czardas, and a "Valse Elegante" for eight hands;
it is more Viennese than Chopinesque. It might indeed be called a
practicable waltz lavishly adorned. The fruits of Arnold's Oriental
journey are seen in his impressionistic "Danse de la Midway
Plaisance;" a very clever reminiscence of a Turkish minstrel; and a
Turkish march, which has been played by many German orchestras. There
is a "Caprice Espagnol," which is delightful, and a "Banjoenne," which
treats banjo music so captivatingly that Arnold may be said to have
invented a new and fertile and musical form. Besides these there are a
fugue for eight hands, a "Minstrel Serenade" for violin and piano, and
six duets for violin and viola.
There are also a few part songs and some solos, among which mention
should be made of "Ein Maerlein," in the old German style, an
exquisitely tender "Barcarolle," and a setting of the poem, "I Think
of Thee in Silent Night," which makes use of a particularly beautiful
phrase for pre-, inter-, and postlude. Arnold has also written some
ballet music, a tarantelle for string orchestra, and is at work upon a
symphony, and a book, "Some Points in Modern Orchestration." His
violin sonata (now in MS.) shows his original talent at its best. In
the first movement, the first subject is a snappy and taking example
of negro-tone, the second has the perfume of moonlit magnolia in its
lyricism. (In the reprise this subject, which had originally appeared
in the dominant major, recurs in the tonic major, the key of the
sonata being E minor.) The second movement is also in the darky
spirit, but full of melancholy. For finale the composer has flown to
Ireland and written a bully jig full of dash and spirit.
_N. Clifford Page._
The influence of Japanese and Chinese art upon our world of decoration
has long been realized. After considering the amount of interest shown
in the Celestial music by American composers, one is tempted to
prophesy a decided influence in this line, and a considerable spread
of Japanese influence in the world of music also. Japanese music has a
decorative effect that is sometimes almost as captivating as in
painting.
The city of San Francisco is the natural gateway for any such impulse,
and not a little of it has already passed the custom house. In this
field Edgar S. Kelley's influence is predominating, and it is not
surprising that he should pass the contagion on to his pupil,
Nathaniel Clifford Page, who was born in San Francisco, October 26,
1866. His ancestors were American for many years prior to the
Revolution. He composed operas at the age of twelve, and has used many
of these immature ideas with advantage in the later years. He began
the serious study of music at the age of sixteen, Kelley being his
principal teacher. His first opera, composed and orchestrated before
he became of age, was entitled "The First Lieutenant." It was produced
in 1889 at the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco, where most of the
critics spoke highly of its instrumental and Oriental color, some of
the scenes being laid in Morocco.
In instrumentation, which is considered Page's forte, he has never
had any instruction further than his own reading and investigation. He
began to conduct in opera and concert early in life, and has had much
experience. He has also been active as a teacher in harmony and
orchestration.
An important phase of Page's writing has been incidental music for
plays, his greatest success having been achieved by the music for the
"Moonlight Blossom," a play based upon Japanese life and produced in
London in 1898. The overture was written entirely on actual Japanese
themes, including the national anthem of Japan. Page was three weeks
writing these twelve measures. He had a Japanese fiddle arranged with
a violin finger-board, but thanks to the highly characteristic
stubbornness of orchestral players, he was compelled to have this
part played by a mandolin. Two Japanese drums, a whistle used by a
Japanese shampooer, and a Japanese guitar were somehow permitted to
add their accent. The national air is used in augmentation later as
the bass for a Japanese song called "K Honen." The fidelity of the
music is proved by the fact that Sir Edwin Arnold's Japanese wife
recognized the various airs and was carried away by the national
anthem.
Although the play was not a success, the music was given a cordial
reception, and brought Page contracts for other work in England,
including a play of Indian life by Mrs. Flora Annie Steel.
Previously to the writing of the "Moonlight Blossom" music, Page had
arranged the incidental music for the same author's play, "The Cat
and the Cherub." Edgar S. Kelley's "Aladdin" music was the source from
which most of the incidental music was drawn; but Page added some
things of his own, among them being one of the most effective and
unexpected devices for producing a sense of horror and dread I have
ever listened to: simply the sounding at long intervals of two gruff
single tones in the extreme low register of the double basses and
bassoons. The grimness of this effect is indescribable.
An unnamed Oriental opera, and an opera called "Villiers," in which
old English color is employed (including a grotesque dance of the
clumsy Ironsides), show the cosmopolitan restlessness of Page's muse.
An appalling scheme of self-amusement is seen in his "Caprice," in
which a theme of eight measures' length is instrumented with almost
every contrapuntal device known, and with psychological variety that
runs through five movements, scherzando, vigoroso, con sentimento,
religioso, and a marcia fantastico. The suite called "Village Fete" is
an experiment in French local color. It contains five scenes: The
Peasants Going to Chapel; The Flower Girls; The Vagabonds; The Tryst;
The Sabot Dance; and the Entrance of the Mayor, which is a pompous
march.
On the occasion of a performance of this, Louis Arthur Russell wrote:
"His orchestra is surely French, and as modern as you please. The
idiom is Berlioz's rather than Wagner's."