MUSIC IN THE COUNTRY OF LAKES—FINLAND

Finland, “the land of a thousand lakes,” and of virgin forests and

meadows, has always been a country of great beauty and sadness.

Of all her composers, Jan Sibelius is the greatest (1865). He was

educated as a lawyer but being a violinist, he decided to pursue a

musical career. He is remarkable as a writer of symphonic poems, and

sings with compelling beauty the legends of his country taken from _The

Kalevala_, the epic poem which ranks with the greatest legendary poems

of all times. Besides _The Kalevala_ are the short lyrics or Kanteletar,

sung to the lute of steel strings, which is called _The Kantele_. These

legends and songs are always a source of great joy to the Finns and were

first arranged by Elias Lönnrot in the early part of the 19th century.

The symphonic poems of Sibelius are _Karelia_, _The Swan of Tuonela_ and

_Lemminkäinen_ from _The Kalevala_. He wrote other compositions, of

course, including cantatas and ballads and string quartets and choruses.

His _Finlandia_ is a true picture of the Finnish people and country, and

his _Fourth Symphony_ is one of the 20th century’s monumental works.

It is interesting to note in his Finnish songs a peculiar five-four

rhythm which is haunting and fascinating. He was recognized as a great

musician, for he is the only one of this time who drew a government

pension. In 1914, Sibelius was in America for the Norfolk Festival for

which he had written a special work, a symphonic poem, _Aalottaret_

(Daughter of the Ocean). At the same time Yale University conferred a

degree upon him. He lives far north in Finland away from cities,

surrounded for many months of the year by great snow fields.

Selim Palmgren is a writer of charming piano pieces who, in 1924, was

teacher at the Eastman Conservatory in Rochester, New York.

Other composers in Finland were Bernard Crusell (1775–1838), and

Frederick Pacius (who was born in Hamburg in 1809 and died in

Helsingfors in 1891), the Father of Finnish Music and the author of the

National Hymn _Wartland_ and _Suomis Song_ (Suomi means Finland). He was

a violinist, a follower of Spohr and composed a great many musical

works.

Among others is Armas Järnefelt (1864), an orchestral conductor and

composer living in Stockholm.

SPAIN—THE LAND OF THE FANDANGO

One of the most adventurous and likeable people that we have met in the

history of music is Isaac Albeniz (1860–1909). He was born in Spain and

started his travels when he was a few days old. He ran away from home

when he was nine years old and toured about, making money by playing the

piano. He loved travel and his life as a young man is a series of

runnings-away-and-being-brought-back. He became a very great pianist and

Alphonso XII was so pleased with his playing and so delighted with his

personality, that at fifteen he was granted a pension and being free

from money worry, he realized the dream of his life and went to see

Franz Liszt.

He became a player approaching Von Bülow and Rubinstein in skill.

He kept composing attractive and popular Spanish tunes using the rich,

rhythmic Spanish folk songs in rather new and modern harmony. He finally

decided to give up his life as a popular composer and brilliant pianist,

and settled down to serious composition. The next thirty pieces took him

longer to write than his four hundred popular songs!

In 1893 he went to Paris in a most wonderful period, and met Debussy,

Fauré, Duparc and d’Indy.

His most important composition is _Iberia_, a collection of twelve

Spanish piano pieces. Among his other things are _Serenade_, _Orientale_

and _Aragonaise_, all in Spanish dress.

He was a very rare personality with a rich nature, exuberant, happy and

merry, even until his death.

He was the real center of Spanish music and influenced all who came

after him. He was to Spain what Grieg was to Norway, Chopin to Poland,

Moussorgsky to Russia, and Dvorak to Bohemia or Czecho-Slovakia.

ENRIQUE GRANADOS

Following Albeniz, was another great Spaniard, Enrique Granados

(1867–1916), who was born in Lérida, Spain, and met a tragic death on a

transport in the English Channel during the World War. Unlike Albeniz,

he did not write in a modern vein, but rather in the accustomed

harmonies. He was more Spanish for this reason than Albeniz, less

original and without the great charm of the other master.

The only opera in Spanish that has ever been sung at the Metropolitan

Opera House was his _Goyescas_ in 1916. The principal rôle was sung by

Anna Fitziu. First he wrote this as an opera in 1899. Later he made a

piano version of it, very much like a suite, which was played with great

success by Ernest Schelling. He also wrote symphonic poems among which

was _Dante_ with a vocal part, sung by Sophie Braslau, in 1915, with the

Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

He is one of Spain’s great sons and the rich and sincere national spirit

which he put into his music makes him beloved of his compatriots.

CHAPTER XXX

America Enters

Not long ago we visited the medieval castle of Amboise in Touraine,

France, for the 400th celebration of the birth of the French poet,

Ronsard. (Chapter XI.) A program of madrigals by Jannequin, Costeley,

Lassus and others who had used Ronsard’s poems as texts, was given in

the room where the poet himself had entertained his friends. We were

impressed by the beauty of the old castle and the aged towers and

ramparts. It was here that we realized the meaning of TRADITION!

The peasant children passing under the watch tower in the village below

the castle are reminded daily of a past replete with history and

romance! They know without having been taught that here their poet

Pierre de Ronsard and the Italian painter, Leonardo da Vinci, lived,

worked and died. This watch tower was old when Columbus discovered

America!

The lack of tradition, this unconscious knowing of the past, that Europe

has in abundance is often held up to us in America as a serious loss in

our art life. The question came to us: Is there nothing in our country

to make up for the absence of this historical and romantic background?

As in a motion picture, there passed before our minds the Grand Canyon

of Arizona, the Rocky Mountains, the snow-capped peaks of the Pacific

slope, the Columbia River, the Mississippi and the Hudson, Golden Gate

of California, Niagara Falls, and the Plains, lonesome stretches of sand

and sage-brush vast as the sea! Surely such wondrous beauty should

inspire artists to create great works.

But this is a day of cities, aeroplanes, automobiles, speed and unrest,

when the mind rules instead of the heart! And we must “watch our step”

or we will become the slaves of this Age of Invention instead of being

the masters. All this is reflected in our art life and we must guard our

creative talent if we would rank with European nations in the making of

music.

We already rank with them in performing it, and in organizations, such

as our orchestras, opera houses, chamber music organizations, music

schools, music settlements, music club activities, community singing,

glee clubs, oratorio societies, and amateur orchestras. America needs

music and loves it as never before. Perhaps out of all this music study

and concert-giving in addition to what might be done with the radio and

mechanical instruments, which are now making records of the world’s

finest compositions, there will come a race of real music lovers and

creators. They will study our national traits and will unite them with

the earnest work of American composers of today and yesterday; they will

open their minds to the natural beauties of nature; they will try to

raise the standard of the general public, and they will make music in

America grow. May every American reader take this to heart!

In our chapter on “National Portraits in Folk Music” we told you that we

have no definite traits in our music that could be called national

because this country was settled by people of many different

nationalities and races. All these peoples brought to the “Promised

Land” their customs and traditions, their song and story world. We can

still see traces in the present generation of the early settlers: New

England and the South are Anglo-Saxon; Louisiana and the northern

border, French; California, Spanish; New York and Pennsylvania, Dutch;

Minnesota, Scandinavian; Missouri and Wisconsin, German. Besides, the

Italians, Irish, Russians and Germans have settled in all parts of this

huge “melting pot”!

There is however an _Americanism_ that is hard to define, but is the

result of the intermingling of all nationalities. It is the spirit of

the pioneer that sent our forefathers, foreigners many, across the

plains in the “covered wagon”; the spirit of youth and enthusiasm of a

country still new; the spirit that works out gigantic commercial

problems and miraculous inventions with the same fervor with which an

artist creates; it is the spirit of an inspired sculptor before the

unfinished block of marble. All of which must combine in our music

before we can create a national idiom.

But we must go back and travel with you the rocky road,—“Music in

America.”

PILGRIMS AND PURITANS

The Pilgrims and Puritans who reached our “stern and rock-bound coast”

early in the 17th century did not approve of music, except for the

singing of five hymn tunes! The first book printed in America was the

_Bay Psalm Book_ (1640) at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its heading was:

“The Psalmes in Metre: Faithfully translated for the Use, Edification,

and comfort of the Saints in publick and private, especially in New

England.”

“Spiritual Songs” were not at first included, but later about fifty

English hymn tunes, sung in unison were used. It went into many

editions, found its way to England and Scotland, and was preferred by

many to all others.

Music was forbidden as a trade in New England and a dancing master was

fined for trying to start a class. The early settlers thought “to sing

man’s melody is only a vain show of art” and objected to tunes because

“they are inspired”! So the Puritans were forbidden to invent new tunes.

You can understand that an art could not easily flourish in such stony

ground.

Mr. Oscar G. Sonneck, an authority on the history of American music,

says in his book, _Early Concert-life in America_: “The Puritans, the

Pilgrims, the Irish, the Dutch, the Germans, the Swedes, the Cavaliers

of Maryland and Virginia and the Huguenots of the South may have been

zealots, adventurers, beggars, spendthrifts, fugitives from justice,

convicts, but barbarians they certainly were not.... Possibly, or even

probably, music was at an extremely low ebb, but this would neither

prove that the early settlers were hopelessly unmusical nor that they

lacked interest in the art of ‘sweet conchord.’... What inducements had

a handful of people, spread over so vast an area, struggling for an

existence, surrounded by virgin forests, fighting the Redman, and

quarreling amongst themselves, to offer to musicians? We may rest

assured that even Geoffrey Stafford, ‘lute and fiddle maker’ by trade

and ruffian by instinct, would have preferred more lucrative climes and

gracefully declined the patronage of musical Governor Fletcher had he

not been deported in 1691 to Massachusetts by order of his Majesty King

William, along with a batch of two hundred other Anglo-Saxon convicts.

“There were no musicians by trade, ... and as the early settlers were

not unlike other human beings in having voices, we may take it for

granted that they used them not only in church, but at home, in the

fields, in the taverns, exactly as they would have done in Europe and

for the same kind of music as far as their memory or their supply of

books carried them. That the latter, generally speaking, cannot have

been very large, goes without saying.... Instruments were to be found in

the homes of the wealthy merchants of the North and in the homes of the

still more pleasure seeking planters of the South. Indeed, there can be

little doubt that the nearest approach to a musical atmosphere ... was

to be found in the South rather than in the North. Still, we might call

the period until about 1720 the primitive period in our musical history.

“After 1720 we notice a steadily growing number of musicians who sought

their fortunes in the Colonies, an increasing desire for organs, flutes,

guitars, violins, harpsichords, the establishment of ‘singing-schools,’

an improvement in church music, the signs of a budding music trade from

ruled music paper to sonatas and concertos, the advent of music

engravers, publishers and manufacturers of instruments, the tentative

efforts to give English opera a home in America, the introduction of

public concerts, in short the beginnings of what may properly be termed

the formative period in our musical history, running from 1720 until

about 1800.”

The first organ in America came from London in 1713 for the Episcopal

Church of Boston, but it remained unpacked for seven months, as many

objected to an organ at divine services. The fate of music hung in the

balance with the Puritans but fortunately it won out.

Rev. James Lyon, a graduate of Princeton University, “Patriot, preacher

and psalmodist,” published in 1792 a collection of psalms, anthems and

hymns, called _Urania_, to which he added a few of his own compositions

and a dozen or so pages of instructions for his singing-school in

Philadelphia. Other collections followed.

WILLIAM BILLINGS

William Billings, born in Boston, in 1746, was one of our first

composers. He took his music seriously, was self-taught, and wrote his

first music on leather with chalk, in the tannery where he worked. He

was queer and was laughed at, but he was so sincere in his love of music

that he won friends who encouraged him to publish (in 1770) a new

psalm-book, _The New England Psalm Singer, or American Chorister_. As

singing-schools had been formed to learn how to read and to sing the

church music, the time was ripe for more difficult music than had been

allowed by the Pilgrim Fathers. Billings, although he knew nothing about

it, tried some experiments in counterpoint, and introduced some

“fugue-tunes,” which really were not fugues at all, into his hymns. That

he enjoyed the result may be seen from this quotation: “It has more than

twenty times the power of the old slow tunes, each part straining for

mastery and victory, the audience entertained and delighted, ...

sometimes declaring for one part, and sometimes for another. Now the

solemn bass demands their attention, next the manly tenor; now the lofty

counter, now the volatile treble. Now there; now here again, O ecstatic!

Rush on, you sons of harmony!”

In the preface to his book we find the first American musical

declaration of independence, for he states that Nature and not Knowledge

must inspire thought, and that “it is best for every composer to be his

own carver.” But later he showed a bigness of spirit, for he writes

humbly: “Kind Reader, no doubt you remember that about ten years ago I

published a book ... and truly a most masterly performance I then

thought it to be. How lavish was I of encomiums (praise) on this my

infant production!... I have discovered that many of the pieces were not

worth my printing or your inspection.”

This second book was called _Billings’ Best_ because it became very

popular. Many of his tunes were sung around the camp-fires of the

Revolutionary Army, and even the Continental fifers played one of his

airs. He was a fiery patriot, and when Boston was occupied by the

British, he paraphrased the 137th Psalm, and wrote:

By the rivers of Watertown, we sat down;

Yea, we wept as we remembered Boston!

This was the time when the young Mozart was astonishing the courts of

Europe, and the Colossus Beethoven was born!

For a long time there was prejudice against instrumental music in New

England, so the first concerts gave selections from Handel’s _Messiah_

and Haydn’s _Creation_, which after all were oratorios.

Later William Billings’ singing class in Stoughton, Massachusetts,

founded in 1774 to study and perform psalm tunes and oratorios became

the Stoughton Musical Society in 1786 and was looked upon as the

earliest musical organization in America. It is still in existence. But

Mr. Sonneck discovered that in Charleston, South Carolina, the St.

Cecilia Society was founded twenty-four years earlier.

The next important society founded was the Boston Handel and Haydn. It

is still alive and has had great influence on musical life not only in

its native city but throughout America. After the war of 1812, a musical

jubilee was held in Boston. It was so successful, that a society was

formed from the fifty members of the Park Street Church choir and others

interested in “cultivating and improving a correct taste in the

performance of sacred music.” This was the Handel and Haydn, which has

lived up to its intention. The young society showed American spirit and

asked Beethoven to write a work for it! The Colossus was pleased with

this recognition from over the seas, and in one of his note books had

written “The oratorio for Boston.”

MUSIC IN BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S PHILADELPHIA

Although New England was the cradle of music, Philadelphia was the art

center in the second half of the 18th century, and went ahead of Boston

in culture, because it was not held down by Puritan laws. In 1741

Benjamin Franklin published Dr. Watt’s hymns, and later invented an

instrument called the harmonica,—not the little mouthorgan. Franklin’s

instrument was a set of thirty-five circular glasses arranged on a

central rod, tuned to play three octaves and enclosed in a case that

looked like a spinet. There is one in New York City at the Metropolitan

Museum of Art. Try rubbing the edge of your tumbler with a moist finger

and you will hear the sound this instrument made.

In Goldsmith’s _Vicar of Wakefield_, we read that fashionable ladies

“would talk of nothing but ... pictures, taste, Shakespeare and the

_musical glasses_.” These had been invented by no less a person than

Gluck! He played a concerto on twenty-six drinking glasses, accompanied

with “the whole band,” and claimed he could play anything that could be

performed on a violin or harpsichord! It was after hearing them in

London, that Franklin improved upon them and made his harmonica.

FRANCIS HOPKINSON, “FIRST AMERICAN POET-COMPOSER”

On whom should fall the title of first American composer? William

Billings was born before Francis Hopkinson (1757–1791), but in 1759,

Hopkinson wrote a secular song, _My Days Have Been so Wondrous Free_,

eleven years before Billings’ _New England Psalm Singer_ saw the light

of day. Billings was the product of New England Psalmody, was an uncouth

self-taught son of the people. Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia, was a

college bred man, lawyer, poet, essayist, patriot, composer, harpsichord

player, organist, and inventor.

He was an intimate friend of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson and Joseph

Bonaparte; a member of the Continental Congress, and one of the signers

of the Declaration of Independence.

He wrote in the style of Carey and Dr. Arne in England, and we have

eight songs dedicated to “His Excellency George Washington, Esquire,”

and in the dedication Hopkinson says: “With respect to this work ... I

can only say that it is such as a lover, not a master, of the arts can

furnish.”

_The Beggar’s Opera_ was presented in New York in 1750 and in

Philadelphia in 1759. In 1787, Washington went to a puppet opera in

Philadelphia. In 1801 selections from Handel’s _Messiah_ were given in

the hall of the University of Pennsylvania. We hear of Francis

Hopkinson’s playing on the first organ in Christ Church, Philadelphia,

and as early as 1749, John Beals, a “musick-master from London” comes to

the Quaker city to teach “violin, hautboy, (oboe) flute and dulcimer,”

and advertises as ready to play for balls and entertainments. So we see

Philadelphia growing up rapidly, with opera, oratorio, instrumental

music and music teachers!

Franklin and Washington often commented on the unusually fine music that

they heard in the town of Bethlehem (Pennsylvania). Today the early

appreciation of music is continued in the yearly Bach Festival held in

the Moravian Church under the direction of Frederick Wolle. Musicians

from everywhere attend these remarkable performances at Bethlehem.

Trinity Church in New York had an organ in 1741, although there were

concerts at least ten years earlier. An English schoolmaster, William

Tuckey, was the first to train choir boys for the services about 1756.

EARLY OPERA

We should hardly expect to find French and Italian operas in America

before the 1800s, but way down south in New Orleans in 1791, a troupe

was giving performances of parts of operas and _vaudeville_, and perhaps

an occasional opera of Grétry or Boieldieu. From 1810, the company

performed opera regularly, and until recently, there was French opera in

New Orleans.

Every time an opera company came to New York, _The Beggar’s Opera_ was

played, along with other _Ballad-Operas_. In 1796, there were two operas

by Americans, Benjamin Carr and Pellisier, but all details have been

lost.

Mr. Elson says, “At the beginning of the 19th century Charleston and

Baltimore entered the operatic field, and travelling troupes came into

existence, making short circuits from New York through the three large

cities, but avoiding Boston, which was wholly given over to Handel,

Haydn, and psalms.”

The first time that New York heard _Home, Sweet Home_ was on November

12, 1823, in a melodrama by John Howard Payne, _Clari, the Maid of

Milan_. Payne, an American, wrote the words, and Henry Carey, the

English composer, the music.

The first grand opera that New York heard was Weber’s _Der Freischütz_.

It was probably a very crude performance as they made many changes to

suit public taste, but it was a great success, especially the

melodramatic scenes.

In 1825, Manuel Garcia, a Spanish tenor, came to New York with his

family of singers, including his daughter, who afterwards became the

famous Mme. Malibran. He gave _The Barber of Seville_ and ten other

Italian operas which were a revelation to the new world. They called

Garcia the “Musical Columbus.”

After this, New York was never without some opera venture. One company

followed another, and although the people seemed to enjoy the novelty

for a while, they never gave it whole-souled patronage.

The first opera written (1845) by an American was _Leonora_ by William

H. Fry (1813–1864). It was performed in Philadelphia, and thirteen years

later in New York. It was in the Balfe and Donizetti style. He composed

symphonies and wrote for the New York _Tribune_ on musical subjects, and

did much to make people realize the benefit of music.

In 1855 George Bristow composed the second American opera, _Rip Van

Winkle_. He and Fry started a crusade against the German musicians who

had come over to America after the revolution of 1848, fearing that they

would extinguish the feeble American flame of composing.

ORCHESTRAS

The father of American orchestras was a German oboe player, Gottlieb

Graupner. When Haydn went to London to direct the largest orchestra

formed, up to that time, Graupner played with him. Graupner went to

Boston (1799), and at once formed the first American orchestra. About

the same time in New York, a society called the “Euterpian” was founded;

it gave one concert a year for thirty years! From 1820 to 1857 there was

in Philadelphia, a “Musical Fund Society”; its object was to improve

musical taste and to help needy musicians. It gave the first performance

in America of Beethoven’s _First Symphony_, as well as choral works.

In Boston the last concert of the Philharmonic Orchestra as Graupner’s

band was called, took place in 1824, and another more important

orchestra was formed sixteen years later. Before the Boston Symphony

came, an orchestra was given to the city by the Harvard Musical

Association. It was controlled by a group of people brought up on

Handel, Haydn and Beethoven, who would not permit their idols to be

replaced by such anarchists as Berlioz and Wagner! Many of the young

foreign orchestral players wanted the new works by the “anarchists,” so

they seceded from the Harvard Musical Association and called themselves

the Philharmonic Society. As there were not enough people interested in

classical music to support two orchestras they were soon replaced by the

Boston Symphony Orchestra, which was put on a permanent basis by Colonel

Henry L. Higginson, who founded it and supported it during his lifetime.

Georg Henschel conducted the first concert in 1881, and the Boston

Symphony Orchestra has always been one of the greatest musical

institutions in America. The conductors have been Wilhelm Gericke,

Arthur Nikisch, Max Fiedler, Karl Muck, Henri Rabaud, Pierre Monteux,

and Serge Koussevitzky.

The New York Philharmonic Society, born in 1842, was founded through the

efforts of a violinist, Uriah Hill, its first conductor, and it always

gave works of value. Among its conductors have been: Theodore Thomas,

Dr. Leopold Damrosch, Anton Seidl, Walter Damrosch, Emil Paur, Wassili

Safonoff, Henry Hadley, Gustav Mahler, Theodore Spiering, Josef

Stransky, Willem Mengelberg, Willem van Hoogstraten, Wilhelm

Furtwängler, and Arturo Toscanini, a genius among conductors.

Theodore Thomas (1835–1905), who was born in Germany but came to this

country at the age of ten, was the first great musician to live in

America and to advance the condition and standards. He gave this country

its first taste for the aristocrat of music, chamber music, and with

William Mason, the pianist, presented Schumann and Brahms to America.

They were young radicals, and wanted to make everybody love the music

they loved. Thomas introduced Wagner, too, and can’t you imagine the

discussions the Wizard’s music raised when even Europe was torn in its

opinions of the master innovator? Franz Liszt sent Thomas parts of the

scores which the young conductor tried out even before they had been

played in Europe. He had an orchestra of his own in 1864 that ran a

close race with the Philharmonic Society in New York, and he took it out

on tour, giving other cities the chance to hear orchestral music.

Theodore Thomas was a musical missionary! In 1877 and 1879 he was

conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and in 1890 the Chicago

Orchestra was formed where he remained until his death in 1905.

Frederick Stock followed Thomas, and the Chicago Orchestra has helped to

cultivate music in the Middle West.

THE DAMROSCH FAMILY

In 1871, a German conductor, destined to develop music came to New York

and after a few months, sent for his family. This was Dr. Leopold

Damrosch, who founded the Oratorio Society (1873), and the New York

Symphony Society (1877), which was merged with the Philharmonic in 1928.

The Oratorio Society, for many years directed by Walter Damrosch, is

today conducted by a gifted American, Albert Stoessel.

In the early years feeling ran high between the followers of Theodore

Thomas and Dr. Damrosch, and many stories are told of the rivalry in

playing new European scores. One of Damrosch’s greatest early triumphs

was the performance of Berlioz’s _Damnation of Faust_. He also gave the

first performance of Brahms’ First Symphony.

During this time, Dr. Damrosch’s young son, Walter, was playing second

violin, learning through experience, his father’s profession, and he is

today the conductor of the New York Symphony Society, and a commanding

figure in America.

Dr. Damrosch was also a pioneer in introducing Wagner to us. Two years

after the Metropolitan Opera House was built (1882), Dr. Damrosch was

made director and conductor of German opera. He imported some of the

great Wagnerian singers, Madame Materna, Marianne Brandt, Mme.

Seidl-Kraus, Anton Schott, and others. Wagner opera had come to stay.

After a short illness, Dr. Damrosch died (1885) and his son Walter, then

nineteen years of age, fell heir to the position of conductor of German

opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, and of the Oratorio Society.

Through Walter Damrosch’s efforts, Lilli Lehmann, the foremost Wagnerian

singer, was engaged for the Metropolitan; he also engaged Emil Fischer,

basso, Max Alvary, tenor, Anton Seidl, conductor, and Mme. Lillian

Nordica (Lillian Norton), one of the first Americans at the

Metropolitan.

Walter Damrosch composed the popular American song, _Danny Deever_ on

the poem by Rudyard Kipling. One never can think of this stirring song,

without remembering David Bispham, who sang it into fame. Bispham was

another native, who was for years a member of the Metropolitan Opera

Company, and an oratorio singer. Damrosch is the composer of two grand

operas, _The Scarlet Letter_ on a text from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel,

and _Cyrano de Bergerac_, of Edmond Rostand’s, made into a libretto by

W. J. Henderson. He also wrote incidental music to three Greek Tragedies

_Iphigenia in Aulis_, _Medea_ and _Electra_, first performed in the open

air theatre of the University of California, in Berkeley, by Margaret

Anglin and her company.

Damrosch married the daughter of James G. Blaine in 1890, and soon

after, he started an opera venture which for several years visited the

large cities and brought Wagner into many places where his music had

been merely a hearsay. He has been a pioneer in championing the cause of

modern composers, and many well known European works have had their

first American performances at his New York Symphony concerts.

Dr. Frank Damrosch, older brother of Walter, is an important educator,

the head of the Institute of Musical Art, and was once conductor of the

Oratorio Society, and of the “Musical Art Society” in which were sung

unaccompanied all the lovely motets and madrigals of Palestrina, Lassus,

and many others. Dr. Frank Damrosch also founded the People’s Choral

Union in which working men and women were taught singing and became

members of a chorus of twelve hundred voices which performed the classic

oratorios. He also founded the Young People’s Concerts, which have

brought to young people of New York the finest music the world has

produced. For several years, Mr. Walter Damrosch has had these in

charge, and his talks explaining the works performed are quite as

enjoyable as the music.

THE MASON FAMILY

Another famous family in American music is the Mason family, dating back

to Lowell Mason (1792–1872) who was born at Medfield, Massachusetts. His

principal work was a collection of hymn tunes which he harmonized, and

won him the title of “Father of American Church Music.” He was president

and conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society, and was a born teacher.

He travelled from one society to another in distant cities, training

choruses, giving encouragement and advice. He moved to New York in 1851.

Lowell Mason’s third son, Dr. William Mason (1829–1908), was also a

pioneer. In his long life he saw music grow in America from crude

beginnings and reach a height that seems almost unbelievable, in one

short century. He not only heard but played, piano concertos with

orchestras as fine as those he found in Europe when he went to study

with Moscheles, Hauptmann, Richter, and Franz Liszt. Mason was one of

the young artists permitted to be a friend as well as a pupil of the

kindly Music Master. Dr. Mason and Theodore Thomas were the first to

give chamber music concerts, and thus introduced many masterpieces of

Brahms and Schumann, for as “modernists” they loved to bring new

compositions to the public. Dr. Mason in his whole-hearted love of his

art, and sincerity and geniality is worthy of our deepest respect and

admiration. He composed about fifty piano pieces, and with W. S. B.

Mathews he arranged a piano method that was very popular and successful.

We feel sure that if you search in that old box of music that mother

used to study, you will find a copy. No doubt she played his _Silver

Spring_, _Reverie Poetique_ and _Danse Rustique_.

Daniel Gregory Mason, one of the foremost composers, lecturers and

writers on music, is a nephew of Dr. William Mason. He was born in 1873,

was graduated from Harvard University in 1895. His compositions include

many works in large form, sonatas, a string quartet on Negro themes, a

piano quartet, a symphony, a fugue for piano and orchestra, a Russian

Song Cycle, piano pieces; Mr. Mason has written many valuable books on

musical subjects and on Music Appreciation, and is at present professor

of music at Columbia University.

GOTTSCHALK—THE PICTURESQUE

We have been telling you about the composers in the northern part of the

United States, and those who had come from Germany like the Damrosch

family, but here is one composer and gifted pianist who brought a new

color into American music. Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), born in

New Orleans, was the child of an English father and Creole mother, thus

mixing Spanish, French and English blood. He was an infant prodigy; he

played the piano at four, the organ at six, and at thirteen he went to

Paris to study. He was praised by Chopin, and appeared in concerts with

Hector Berlioz. He charmed everyone who heard him, and was the first

American pianist to receive European honors. The Infanta of Spain made a

cake for him and a celebrated bull-fighter gave him a sword! He toured

Cuba and North and South America, giving more than a thousand concerts.

But the life was too hard on him and he died at the age of forty in Rio

Janeiro, Brazil.

_The Last Hope_, _Ojos Creollos_ (_Creole Eyes_), _Banjo_, _Souvenirs of

Andalusia_ are among the most popular of his ninety compositions for

piano, which showed the strong influence of life in Louisiana, his love

of sunshiny Spain, and his study in France. Here we find rhythms closely

related to ragtime and jazz, as well as the slow fascinating Spanish

dance. Today his works are forgotten, but for many years they were

played throughout the land.

STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER

Stephen Collins Foster (1826–1864), for whom we have claimed the right

to be called a composer of folk songs, was born in Lawrenceville

(Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, on the fiftieth anniversary of our

Declaration of Independence. The understanding he showed of the Negro

came to him because his parents were Southerners. He showed talent for

music when he was very young, and taught himself to play the flageolet

when he was seven years old. He was very self-willed and did not like

discipline, so he taught himself practically all he knew of music. His

first composition, _Tioga Waltz_ for four flutes, was written when he

was a school boy. It was first played in school, with Stephen in the

lead. His first song, _Open thy Lattice, Love_, was published in 1842.

For several years, five boys met at the Foster home, and Stephen taught

them to sing part songs. He composed many pieces for them, among them

_Oh, Susannah_, _Old Uncle Ned_ and _Old Black Joe_.

About 1830, an actor, Thomas Rice, had the idea of dressing up like an

old negro porter in Pittsburgh, from whom he borrowed the clothes, and

singing a song he had heard from a negro stage driver:

Turn about and wheel about, and do jist so,

And ebery time I turn about, I jump Jim Crow.

The song, accompanied by a dance, took the audience by storm, especially

when the porter appeared on the stage, half dressed, and demanded his

clothes, because the whistle of the steamboat had just blown and the old

fellow had to “get back on the job.” So “Daddy” Rice became the father

of “Negro Minstrels,” and travelled all over America and even England,

singing and dancing negro songs. A few years later Stephen Foster sent

his _Oh, Susannah_ to a travelling minstrel troupe, and the song took

“like wild fire.” He decided to write songs as a profession, in spite of

his family who thought he had wasted time “fooling around” with music,

and insisted on his going to work.

While _Oh, Susannah_ is a “rollicking jingle,” _Old Uncle Ned_ is the

“first of the pathetic negro songs that set Foster apart from his

contemporaries and gave him a place in musical history,” says Harold

Vincent Milligan. “In this type of song, universal in the appeal of its

naïve pathos he has never had an equal.”

Another claim he has as a folk song composer, is that he never studied

as most people do who want to be composers. He knew very little about

harmony and less of counterpoint, and his is “music that has come into

existence without the influence of conscious art, as a spontaneous

utterance, filled with characteristic expression of the feelings of a

people.” (H. E. Krehbiel.) Perhaps he was right when he said that he was

afraid that study would rob him of the gift of spontaneous melody that

was his to such a marked degree, because he was not naturally a student

and might never have carried his studies far enough. At any rate we have

every reason to be grateful for the simple direct songs which are dear

to us and as near to our hearts as any folk song of any age or country

whose author has been forgotten!

He was sweet-natured, irresponsible, refined and sensitive, but easily

influenced. His publishers made $10,000 out of his songs, but he made

little and spent much. He married in 1850, but the union was not happy.

During his last years spent in New York, he was poverty-stricken and

miserable, and sold his songs, as soon as they were written, for a few

dollars in order to live. It seems too bad to have to say that much of

his money and his life were squandered thoughtlessly.

Curiously enough, his favorite poet was Edgar Allan Poe, whose life

resembled his own in many sad details. He loved to go up and down in the

Broadway stages, often thinking out his melodies as he rode. This

reminds us of Walt Whitman, who rode up and down Fifth Avenue alongside

his friend Pete Dooley, the driver of the stage coach!

Stephen Foster died in New York in 1864 as the result of an accident in

which he had severed an artery. He was saved from burial in Potter’s

Field, by the arrival of his brothers and his wife, and he was buried in

Pittsburgh beside his parents whom he had immortalized in _The Old Folks

at Home_.

CHAPTER XXXI

America Comes of Age

For many years Boston was a center of musical life.

At the close of the Civil War a school was well under way in New

England, which we might call the classical period of American music.

B. J. LANG

Although Benjamin J. Lang (1837–1909) never published his compositions

and never allowed them to be heard, he had much influence on Boston’s

musical life, having been conductor of the Handel and Haydn and of the

St. Cecilia societies, and the piano teacher of such musicians as Arthur

Foote, William Apthorp, Ethelbert Nevin and Margaret Ruthven Lang, his

daughter.

JOHN KNOWLES PAINE

John Knowles Paine (1839–1906), was the first professor of music at

Harvard. In 1862, he gave his services without pay for a course of

lectures on music, but they were not appreciated. When President Eliot

became head of the University, music was made part of the college

curriculum with Professor Paine at the head of the department. In 1896,

Walter R. Spalding was made assistant and since Professor Paine’s death

has been full professor.

Professor Paine was the first American who wrote an oratorio. _St.

Peter_ was performed in 1873 in Portland, Maine, his birthplace. Next,

he wrote two symphonies, one of which was often played by Theodore

Thomas. Paine’s _Centennial Hymn_ opened the Philadelphia Exhibition,

with more success than the Wagner March, it is said.

Professor Paine was a pioneer in many fields of American composition and

taught American composers to follow in the lines of sincerity and

honesty which he carved out for himself.

DUDLEY BUCK

Dudley Buck (1839–1909), was a noted organist, composer and teacher. He

did not remain in New England (Hartford, Connecticut) where he was born,

but held church positions in Chicago, Cincinnati, Brooklyn, and New

York, and was active in the musical life of these different cities. His

principal works were anthems and hymns, still in use, music for the

organ and valuable text-books, also many popular cantatas.

GEORGE CHADWICK

George Chadwick, one of our most important composers, was born in

Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1854. He studied in Germany with Reinecke,

Jadassohn and Rheinberger, three celebrated teachers who had more to do

with forming the taste of the American composers than any _American_

teacher.

Chadwick comes of a musical family. His musical life began as alto

singer in a Lawrence church choir, where later he blew the bellows of

the organ, but soon was promoted from blowing to playing it. He began

composing while in High School. He was a student at the New England

Conservatory, founded in 1867, but was not allowed to study with the

idea of becoming a professional. When he saw that he would receive no

further help from his father toward music-training, the young musician

of twenty-two went to Michigan for a year. He taught music, conducted a

chorus, gave organ recitals, saving enough to study in Leipsic.

Jadassohn told Louis Elson that Chadwick was the most brilliant student

in his class.

In 1880, Chadwick returned to Boston where he has lived ever since. From

1880 he was first, teacher, then musical director of the New England

Conservatory. Some of his pupils have become leaders in American

music,—Horatio Parker, Arthur Whiting, J. Wallace Goodrich (organist),

Henry K. Hadley and others.

Chadwick has composed more orchestral works than any other American. A

list of them includes three symphonies, a sinfonietta, six overtures,

three symphonic sketches for orchestra, a lyric sacred opera, _Judith_,

music to the morality play _Everywoman_, much chamber music, many choral

works and about fifty songs, of which the best known is perhaps _Allah_.

ARTHUR FOOTE

Arthur Foote (1853) is one of the few prominent composers whose training

bears the label “made in America,” for he never studied abroad. He was

born in Salem, Massachusetts, and worked with Stephen Emery, a prominent

theory teacher. Foote was graduated from Harvard in 1874, where he

studied music in Professor Paine’s department. After organ study with B.

J. Lang, Foote became organist of the First Unitarian Church founded in

1630, which post he filled from 1878 to 1910. This is doubtless the

longest record of an organist in one church in America. Foote has been

one of America’s finest teachers, and has influenced many, not only by

his teaching, but by his broad-minded criticism. His harmony text-book,

written with Walter R. Spalding, is among the most valuable and reliable

in the musical world.

Foote has written scholarly and beautiful chamber and orchestral music

which has placed him in the foremost ranks of American composers, but he

has won the hearts of the entire English-speaking world by two little

songs, _Irish Folk Song_ and _I’m Wearing Awa’_.

HORATIO PARKER

Horatio Parker (1863–1919) inherited his talent from his mother who

played the organ in Newton, Massachusetts, but she had a hard time

interesting her son in music, for he disliked it very much. But at

fourteen he had a change of heart going to the other extreme of having

literally to be dragged away from the instrument. He studied with Emery

and Chadwick, and then went to Germany to work with Rheinberger. He was

organist in several churches and in 1894 was made professor of music at

Yale University where he remained until his death.

In 1894, his best known work was performed in Trinity Church, New York.

It is an oratorio, _Hora Novissima_ (_The Last Hour_), on the old Latin

poem by Bernard de Morlaix, with English translation by Parker’s mother

also the author of the librettos for two other of his oratorios. _Hora

Novissima_, one of America’s most important works, has been performed

many times, not only in America, but it was the first American work

given at the English Worcester Festival. It was so successful that Dr.

Parker received the commission to write for another English festival at

Hereford, and he composed _A Wanderer’s Psalm_. This was followed by

_The Legend of St. Christopher_ which contains some of Parker’s most

scholarly contrapuntal writing for chorus. As another result of

England’s recognition of his music, Cambridge University conferred upon

the American composer the honorary degree of Doctor of Music.

Parker became famous for winning the prize of $10,000 offered by the

Metropolitan Opera Company in 1911 for the best opera by an American.

This was _Mona_, a story of the Druids in Britain, for which Brian

Hooker, the American poet, wrote the libretto. In spite of the work

having won the prize, it had no success with the public, and did not

outlive its first season.

In 1915 Parker and Hooker won another $10,000 prize offered by the

National Federation of Music Clubs, with an opera called _Fairyland_. It

has not seen the light of day since its performances in Los Angeles.

FREDERICK CONVERSE

Frederick Converse (1871), like many other Boston musicians, was

graduated from Harvard (1893), when his _Opus I_, a violin sonata, was

publicly performed. After study with Chadwick, he went to Germany to

Rheinberger, returning in 1898, with his first symphony under his arm.

He is now living in Boston. Converse has written many orchestral and

chamber music works, and has often set Keats, the English poet, or used

his writings as inspiration for his music,—_Festival of Pan_ and

_Endymion’s Narrative_, two symphonic poems, and _La Belle Dame sans

Merci_, a ballad for baritone voice and orchestra.

Converse was the first of the present day Americans to have had an opera

_The Pipe of Desire_ produced by the Metropolitan Opera Company (1910).

TWO COLLEGE PROFESSORS

David Stanley Smith, a native of Toledo, Ohio (1877), belongs to this

New England group, for he was graduated from Yale University and since

1903 has been, first, instructor in the music department and later full

professor. He has composed some excellent chamber music, and several of

his string quartets were played by the famous Kneisel Quartet

(1886–1917) which organization has had a generous share in improving

musical taste in this country.

Edward Burlingame Hill, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1872), is one

of the professors of music at Harvard University. He has composed piano

pieces, songs, and orchestral works, and has written many articles on

music.

MRS. H. H. A. BEACH PREPARES THE PATH FOR AMERICAN WOMEN

One of the most important composers of the New England group, is Mrs. H.

H. A. Beach (1867). She was Amy Marcy Cheney, an astonishing little

child who before her second year sang forty tunes. Louis Elson tells

that at the age of two she was taken to a photographer, and just as he

was about to take the picture, she sang at the top of her voice, _See,

the Conquering Hero Comes!_ She could improvise like the old classic

masters, and could transpose Bach fugues from one key to another, at

fourteen. When sixteen, she made her début as a pianist, and at

seventeen she played piano concertos with the Boston Symphony Orchestra,

also with Theodore Thomas’ orchestra.

Mrs. Beach received her training in America. Her first work in large

form was a mass sung in 1892 by the Handel and Haydn Society. She next

composed a _scena_ and _aria_ for contralto and orchestra, sung with the

New York Symphony Society. It was the first work by a woman and an

American to be given at these concerts, which Walter Damrosch conducted.

The next year, Mrs. Beach was invited to write a work for the opening of

the woman’s building at the Chicago Columbian World’s Exposition. She

has two piano concertos and a symphony (_The Gaelic_) to her credit,

also a violin sonata, a quintet for flute and strings, many piano pieces

and splendid songs among which must be mentioned _The Year’s at the

Spring_, _June_, and _Ah, Love, but a Day_.

Mrs. Beach prepared the way for other American women, not only by

showing that women could write seriously in big forms, but also by her

sympathetic encouragement of talent and sincerity wherever she finds it.

Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867), daughter of B. J. Lang, is also a Boston

composer. _Irish Mother’s Lullaby_ is the best known of her many art

songs, in addition to which she has written an orchestral _Dramatic

Overture_ which Arthur Nikisch played, when he was conductor of the

Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Among our best song writers are many women:—Harriet Ware, Gena

Branscombe, Alice Barnett, Fay Foster, Eleanor Freer, Mana Zucca (who

has written also a piano concerto, and piano pieces), Rhea Silberta,

Ethel Glenn Hier (piano pieces and songs), Fannie Dillon (piano pieces

and violin compositions), Mabel Wood Hill (songs, chamber music and an

arrangement of two preludes and fugues of Bach for string orchestra),

Lilly Strickland, Mabel Daniels, Katherine Ruth Heyman (songs, many of

them in old Greek modes, and a book, _Relation of Ultramodern Music to

the Archaic_), Rosalie Housman (songs, piano pieces and a complete

Hebrew Temple Service), Gertrude Ross, Mary Turner Salter, Florence Parr

Gere and Pearl Curran, writer of several popular successes. And although

she is not a composer of art songs, we must not forget Carrie Jacobs

Bond, whose _End of a Perfect Day_ has sold in the millions, and her

songs for little children have brought joy to many.

ONE OF OUR MOST SCHOLARLY MUSICIANS

Another Boston musician and composer, teacher of piano and composition

is Arthur Whiting (1861), nephew of the organist and composer George

Whiting. He has made a specialty of harpsichord music, and plays

charmingly on the little old instrument. Since 1895, he has lived in New

York City.

CHARLES MARTIN LOEFFLER—FIRST IMPRESSIONIST IN AMERICA

Charles Martin Loeffler is a composer belonging to a different class

from any of the Boston group just mentioned. Loeffler is French by

birth, as he was born in Alsace in 1861, French in his musical training

and in his musical sympathies. For forty-two years he has lived in

Boston, twenty of them at the second desk (next to the concertmaster) of

the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was the first composer to write in

this country, the kind of music that existed at the end of the 19th

century in France,—the music of Fauré, Dukas, Chausson and Debussy. The

seed he planted did not fall on fertile soil, for all his fellow

musicians as well as the orchestral conductors, from whose hands the

public received its music, were Germans and German trained. They knew

their “three B’s,” their Wagner and even the French Berlioz, but

Loeffler brought something different, something disturbing, and was not

easy to place. His music belonged neither to the classical nor to the

romantic school.

Not only in America did this new French music have a fight, but on its

own ground in France was it misunderstood! But you have seen from

Monteverde to Wagner that the path of true innovation never ran smooth!

Loeffler’s work is original, the work of a musician completely master of

the modern orchestra and of modern harmony with its colorful and

expressive effects. Besides this there was a spirit that never before

had come into art. This was given the name of Impressionism, the getting

of effects from objects, painted, or described in literature, without

elaborate details. In music, composers who try to suggest to the hearer

an image existing in their own minds are called Impressionists. This

image may be a thought, an emotion, a definite object, a poem, a

picture, a beautiful tree, the grandeur of Niagara, any one of a

thousand things that await the hand of the Alchemist-Musician to be

transmuted into tone.

All Loeffler’s compositions reflect this impressionism, and he was the

first, but not the last of these poetic tone impressionists in America.

He is foremost a composer of symphonic poems: _La Mort de Tintagiles_

(_The Death of Tintagiles_) after the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, _A

Pagan Poem_ after Virgil, _La Bonne Chanson_ (_The Good Song_) after

Verlaine, _La Vilanelle du Diable_, _The Mystic Hour_ with male chorus,

_Psalm 137_ with female chorus. He also wrote an eight part mixed

chorus, _For One who Fell in Battle_. Other orchestral works include a

suite in four movements for violin and orchestra called _Les Veillées de

l’Ukraine_ (_Evening Tales of the Ukraine_), concerto for ’cello and

orchestra, first played by Alwyn Schroeder with the Boston Symphony

Orchestra, _Divertissement_ for violin and orchestra, and _Spanish

Divertissement_ for saxophone and orchestra. There are also important

works for chamber music: two rhapsodies for clarinet, viola and piano,

an octet for strings and two clarinets, a quintet and a quartet built on

Gregorian modes; and he has written a group of songs for medium voice

and viola obligato with French texts by Verlaine and Beaudelaire, two

impressionist poets.

THE RED MAN ATTRACTS COMPOSERS

The next composer, Henry F. Gilbert, born in Somerville, Massachusetts

(1868), brings us into an interesting field, the study of Negro and

Indian folk music. After working with Edward MacDowell, Gilbert turned

his attention to a thorough investigation of Negro music, resulting in

orchestral works based on Negro themes such as, _American Humoresque_,

_Comedy Overture on Negro Themes_, _American Dances_, _Negro Rhapsody_,

and _The Dance in Place Congo_, a symphonic poem which was mounted as a

ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House (1918).

Gilbert tells that the _Comedy Overture_ was rescued from a wreck that

was to have been a Negro Opera, based on Joel Chandler Harris’ _Uncle

Remus_. What a pity he did not complete it!

The _American Humoresque_ is based on old Negro minstrel tunes like _Zip

Coon_, _Dixie_, and _Old Folks at Home_.

Gilbert was one of the founders of the Wa-Wan Press, established at

Newton Center, Massachusetts, by Arthur Farwell. It was organized (1901)

by composers in the interest of American compositions, and to study and

encourage the use of Indian music. He died in 1928.

Arthur Farwell was born in St. Paul, Minnesota (1872). He attended

college in Boston and studied music with Homer Norris (1860–1920), a

Boston organist and composer, whose cantata _Flight of the Eagle_ was

based on a Walt Whitman poem. Farwell was also a pupil of Humperdinck in

Berlin and Guilmant in Paris. The Indian music research, in which he is

a pioneer, led him into the West to live among the Redskins and to make

phonograph records of hundreds of tunes. He is also interested in

community singing and music for the people. Practically a new field is

his music for Percy MacKaye’s pageants _Caliban_ and _The Evergreen

Tree_.

Carlos Troyer, a very old Californian who died recently, spent his life

collecting Zuni and Mojave-Apache songs, having realized their artistic

value long before any one else. In his youth he was an intimate friend

of Liszt. He travelled, later, through South American jungles, with his

violin and music paper, writing down the tunes he heard, and several

times he would have been burned by the savages, but saved himself by

playing for them.

Harvey Worthington Loomis contributed a piano version of Omaha Indian

melodies to the Wa-Wan Press (1904) called _Lyrics of the Redman_. In

the preface Loomis shows that Indian themes should be used

impressionistically, for he says: “If we would picture the music of the

wigwam and the war-path we must aim by means of the imagination to

create an art work that will project, not by _imitation_ but by

_suggestion_, the impression we have ourselves received in listening to

this weird savage symphony in its pastoral _entourage_ (surroundings)

which, above all, makes the Indian’s music sweet to him.”

Natalie Curtis’ valuable service to Indian and Negro music was cut off

by her tragic death in Paris (1921), from an automobile accident.

Fortunately she left several works in which she gave not only

information on the music of these primitive Americans and also the

_Songs and Tales of the Dark Continent of Africa_, but in them she set

down quite unconsciously the beauty of her character and the sincerity

of her purpose. There are four volumes of Negro Folk Songs, and _The

Indians’ Book_, besides the African book. Recently we heard two

Spanish-Indian melodies, a _Crucifixion Hymn_ and _Blood of Christ_,

that Miss Curtis found in use in religious festivals near Santa Fe, New

Mexico. They are Spanish in character, and are almost unaltered examples

of the songs of the Middle Ages brought down to us by the Indian. These

were arranged by Percy Grainger according to directions left by Miss

Curtis.

Several American operas have been written on Indian legends and it would

be difficult to find more picturesque subjects.

OUR LIGHT OPERA GENIUS

Victor Herbert’s _Natoma_, given by the Chicago Opera Company in 1911,

is an Indian story and one of his two grand operas. Born in Dublin,

Ireland (1854), Herbert was the grandson of the novelist Samuel Lover.

He was educated in Germany, and was a fine ’cellist. He came to the

Metropolitan Opera orchestra as first ’cellist in 1886, and since then

until his death in 1924, he delighted every one with his incomparable

melodies in light operas.

After Patrick Gilmore’s death, Herbert in 1893, became bandmaster of the

22nd Regiment band which had become famous in 1869 and 1872 for two

monster Peace Jubilees held in Boston. We think the 20th century, the

age of gigantic enterprises, but——! for the first Jubilee, Gilmore had a

chorus of 10,000 voices, and a band of 1,000! Not satisfied with this

volume, in the second Jubilee he doubled the number! He also had cannons

fired to increase the drum battery!

From Gilmore’s Band, Herbert became conductor of the Pittsburgh

Symphony, also guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra,

but he had made such a success as composer of light operas, that he

finally devoted all his time to the theater. Among Herbert’s most

popular successes are: _The Serenade_, _The Idol’s Eye_, _Babes in

Toyland_, _Mlle. Modiste_, _Naughty Marietta_, _The Madcap Duchess_,

etc.

Julian Edwards (1855–1910), like Victor Herbert was born a British

subject, in Manchester, England, and was a successful composer of light

opera. He also wrote many sacred cantatas.

SOUSA, THE MARCH KING

Our most famous bandmaster is America’s “March King,” John Philip Sousa

(1856), once leader of the United States Marine Band. Who has not

marched to _Stars and Stripes Forever_, _Washington Post_, or _Liberty

Bell_? Who does not love them, be he “high” or “low brow”? With Sousa

leading, the band has played around the world, and no American composer

is better known abroad. In fact, Sousa’s music was considered as

“typically American” twenty years ago as is jazz today.

ANOTHER INDIAN OPERA

Now for the Redskins again! Charles Wakefield Cadman’s Indian opera

_Shanewis_ was given at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1918. Cadman is

well known for many songs which have become popular, _At Dawning_ and

_The Land of the Sky-blue Water_, a lovely Indian song. Born in

Johnstown, Pennsylvania (1881), Cadman received musical training in

Pittsburgh. For some years he has been living in California.

Another Pennsylvanian, who spent several years among the Indians,

studying their music and using genuine themes for his opera _Poia_ is

Arthur Nevin (1871), younger brother of Ethelbert Nevin. For several

years he was professor of music at the University of Kansas.

A professor at the same college is Charles Sanford Skilton (1868),

writer of many cantatas and orchestral Indian dances.

Thurlow Lieurance (1897), one of the latest recruits to Indian music

lore, is so well known for _By the Waters of Minnetonka_ that we almost

forget other songs and a music drama in which he has used Indian themes

tellingly. One of these is a Navajo blanket song.

The blankets woven by the Navajo women are not only remarkable examples

of primitive art, but tell the stories of the tribe. No two blankets are

the same, and like the music we write, are expressions of the weaver’s

hopes, fears, joys and sorrows.

Homer Grunn (1880) who taught piano in Phoenix, Arizona, profited by the

opportunity to gather Indian tunes, which he has put into songs, a music

drama and orchestral works.

ETHELBERT NEVIN—POET-COMPOSER

Ethelbert Nevin (1862–1901) told his father that he would not mind being

poor all his life if he could just be a musician! And the father, a

music lover himself, allowed his sensitive, dream-loving, poetic son to

study in America and in Europe. Perhaps “Bert’s” mother had something to

do with the decision, for she, too, was sensitive and fine, and so much

of a musician that her grand piano was the first to cross the Allegheny

mountains into Edgeworth, the town near Pittsburgh where the Nevins were

born.

Ethelbert Nevin was a romanticist who found the medium of his expression

in short songs and piano pieces. He had a gift of melody surpassed by

few and he reached the heart as perhaps no other American except Stephen

Foster had done. _Narcissus_ for piano and _The Rosary_ have swept

through this country selling in the millions. _Mighty Lak’ a Rose_,

published after his early death, was a close third. Several others of

his songs may be ranked among the best that America has produced. Nevin

was what Walt Whitman would have called a “Sweet Singer.”

ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRIE CREW COME TO LIFE IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Reginald de Koven (1859–1920) will ever be remembered for his delightful

light opera _Robin Hood_ on which we were brought up. His song, _Oh,

Promise Me_, will probably be sung when he will have been forgotten. De

Koven’s last two works were operas, of which _Canterbury Tales_ after

Chaucer was performed at the Metropolitan Opera House and _Rip Van

Winkle_ from Washington Irving and Percy Mackaye, by the Chicago Opera

Company. One of his best songs is a setting of Kipling’s _Recessional_.

“PILGRIM’S PROGRESS”—AN AMERICAN ORATORIO

One of the most respected American composers is Edgar Stillman Kelley,

born in Sparta, Wisconsin, in 1857, whose American forefathers date back

to 1650. After study in Stuttgart, Kelley went to California, where he

was composer, teacher, critic, lecturer, writer and light opera

conductor. Later he was professor at Yale, dean of composition at the

Cincinnati Conservatory, and since 1910, a fellowship at the Western

College at Oxford, Ohio, gives him the leisure and economic freedom to

compose. His orchestral works include incidental music to _Ben Hur_,

_Aladdin_, Chinese suite, a comic opera, _Puritania_, _Alice in

Wonderland_, two symphonies, _Gulliver_ and _New England_, incidental

music to _Prometheus Bound_, and an oratorio based on Bunyan’s

_Pilgrim’s Progress_. If you do not know Kelley’s delightful song, _The

Lady Picking Mulberries_, allow us to introduce the little Chinawoman to

you. You will meet at the same time an old acquaintance,—Mr. Pentatonic

Scale.

Several of the older school of composers in America, faithful pioneers

whose works are rarely heard now were Silas G. Pratt (1846–1916);

Frederic Grant Gleason (1848–1903), who lived and worked in Chicago from

1877 to the time of his death; William Wallace Gilchrist (1846–1916), a

writer of cantatas and psalms, Episcopal church music, two symphonies,

chamber music and songs, who spent most of his life in Philadelphia;

Homer N. Bartlett (1846–1920), composer of piano pieces; William

Neidlinger (1863–1924), writer of many charming children’s songs.

Frank van der Stucken (1858) who was born in Texas, but lived in Europe

from 1866 until 1884, was the first conductor to give an entire program

of American orchestral works in America and also at the Paris Exposition

of 1889. For years he was conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

and he has composed many large orchestral works. He died abroad in 1929.

Rosseter Gleason Cole (1866), composer of songs, piano pieces, organ

pieces, cantatas and works for orchestra and ’cello, takes his themes

from American and general sources. He is organist in Chicago and has

charge of the music courses of the summer session of Columbia

University. He has held many important posts and taken numerous prizes.

His cantata _The Rock of Liberty_ was sung at the Tercentenary

Celebration, 1920, of the settlement of Plymouth.

Arne Oldberg, born in Youngstown, Ohio (1874) is director of the piano

department of Northwestern University (Michigan) and has many orchestral

works, written symphonies, concertos and overtures, which have had

frequent hearings. He has also composed much chamber music.

There are also Harry Rowe Shelley (1858), writer of much important

church music; James H. Rogers, composer of teaching pieces for the piano

and many fine songs, including a cycle _In Memoriam_, which is a

heartfelt expression of sorrow in beautiful music; Wilson G. Smith,

composer of many piano teaching pieces and musical writer; Louis Coerne,

writer of opera and of works for orchestra; Ernest Kroeger of St. Louis

who also used Indian and Negro themes in works for orchestra and piano;

Carl Busch of Kansas City, composer of orchestral works, cantatas, music

for violin and many songs, in some of which we see the Indian. In

California we meet Wm. J. McCoy and Humphrey J. Stewart who have

composed church music and have written often for the yearly out-door

“High Jinks” of the San Francisco Bohemian Club, in which many important

composers have been invited to assist; Domenico Brescia, a South

American composer living in San Francisco, who wrote interesting chamber

music played at the Berkshire Chamber Music Festivals; and Albert Elkus,

a composer of serious works for orchestra and piano. Smith died in 1929;

Coerne in 1922.

But this is growing into a musical directory! And even neglecting many

who have done much to make music grow in America, we must proceed for we

have important milestones ahead.

For many years New York has been the American center of music. Few of

the people in musical life are native New Yorkers, but have come from

all parts of the States and Europe to this musical Mecca.

MACDOWELL GREATEST AMERICAN POET-COMPOSER

The greatest romanticist and poet-composer of America up to the present

is Edward MacDowell (1861–1908). Some of the romanticism of the early

19th century has become mere imitation of the style which arose as a

protest against the insincere forms of the 18th century. But the true

spirit of romance never dies and never becomes artificial,—such romance

had MacDowell. He was sincere, always a poet, always himself, and in

spite of his Irish-Scotch inheritance, German training and love of Norse

legends, he expressed MacDowell in every note. He lived before the time

when we question “How shall we express America in Music”? In fact he was

much against tagging composers as American, German, French, and so on.

Edward MacDowell, born in New York City, began piano lessons when he was

eight. One of his teachers was the brilliant South American Teresa

Carreño, who later played her pupil’s concerto with many world

orchestras. At 15, he entered the Paris Conservatory where he was fellow

student with Debussy.

While there, MacDowell studied French, and during a lesson amused

himself by drawing a picture of his teacher. When caught, the teacher,

instead of rebuking him, took the sketch to a friend, a master at the

_École des Beaux Arts_, the famous old art school of Paris. The artist

found the sketch so good that he offered to train him without charge but

Edward had made up his mind to be a musician and did not accept the

offer.

In 1879, MacDowell studied composition at Frankfort with Joachim Raff,

one of the composers of the Romantic period. Raff introduced him to

Liszt, who invited MacDowell to play his first piano suite at Zürich

(1882). The composer’s modesty is reflected in these words which

Lawrence Gilman quotes: “I would not have changed a note in one of them

for untold gold, and _inside_ I had the greatest love for them; but the

idea that any one else might take them seriously had never occurred to

me.” This suite was his first published composition.

In 1884, he married Miss Marian Nevins of New York, and theirs was one

of the most beautiful marriages in musical history, although their

meeting was amusing! The young girl had crossed the ocean to continue

her music studies at a time when it was not a common occurrence, and

when she went to Raff for lessons, he sent her to a young countryman of

hers, “an extraordinary piano teacher.” She was indignant to be sent to

a young inexperienced American in that fashion, but she went! The young

inexperienced American did not want to teach an American girl, because

he felt she would not be serious enough to do the kind of work he

demanded, but he accepted her! Later she accepted him!

[Illustration:

_Edward MacDowell._

_America’s Greatest Poet-Composer._

]

[Illustration:

_Charles Griffes._

_American Impressionist._

]

In 1888, he established himself in Boston as pianist and teacher. His

first concert was with the Kneisel Quartet, and in 1889 he successfully

played his concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He made tours

through the States giving recitals and appearing with the orchestras.

Winning immediate recognition, his position as an exceptional composer

grew. In 1896 the Boston Symphony Orchestra presented his first piano

concerto and his orchestral _Indian Suite_ on the same program in New

York. Such an honor had never before been shown an American!

In 1896, he became professor of the new Chair of Music at Columbia

University in New York City. After resigning his post in 1904, his

health broke as the result of an accident, and for several years he was

an invalid. All the care of physicians, devoted friends, his parents,

and his courageous wife, could not restore his memory, and in 1908, he

died in New York and was buried in Peterboro, N. H. A natural boulder

from where he often watched the sunset, marks the spot—fitting for one

who loved Nature as he did.

Shortly before his passing, a group of friends formed a society, the

MacDowell Club of New York, which has for its object the promoting of “a

sympathetic understanding of the correlation of all the arts, and of

contributing to the broadening of their influence, thus carrying forward

the life-purpose of Edward MacDowell.” He wished musicians to know the

value of associating with artists outside of the field of music. Eugene

Heffley, (1862–1925) an intimate friend of MacDowell and first president

of the MacDowell Club did much to make the MacDowell music known and

loved, just as he did for Charles Griffes, Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin and

others who have come with new messages.

Some people have statues erected, others have towns and streets named

for them, but besides the numerous MacDowell Clubs throughout the

States, the most beautiful memorial is the MacDowell Association at

Peterboro. Early in his career, MacDowell found it impossible to work

well in the city, and by happy chance he and his wife discovered a

deserted farm which they bought for the proverbial “song.” Here the

composer spent his summers in the beautiful New Hampshire woods, in the

heart of which he built the little log cabin, which in his words, is

A house of dreams untold

It looks out over the whispering tree-tops

And faces the setting sun.

And in this “house” he told many of his dreams in lovely melody! While

ill, he often expressed the desire to share the inspiration-giving peace

and beauty of his woods with friends, workers in music and the sister

arts. Out of this wish has grown the colony for creative workers, which

has been a haven to hundreds of composers, poets, painters, sculptors,

dramatists, and novelists. The “Log Cabin” is the seed out of which

twenty studios have sprung. The small deserted farm has spread over 500

acres, and Mrs. MacDowell with the aid of faithful friends has made a

dream come true!

MacDowell was a composer for the pianoforte, although he wrote some

lovely songs; a few orchestral works, best known of which is _The Indian

Suite_, in which he employs Indian themes; and several male choruses

written when he conducted the New York Mendelssohn Glee Club. We love

and remember him for his _Woodland Sketches_, _Sea Pieces_, _Fireside

Tales_, _New England Idyls_ (opus 62 and his last work),

virtuoso-studies, and the four sonatas—the _Tragica_, _Eroica_, _Norse_

and _Keltic_.

W. H. Humiston (1869–1924), composer, lecturer, musical critic,

organist, assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and

a pupil of MacDowell, had the most complete collection of Bach and

Wagner in this country and was a great authority on their writings. This

collection now belongs to the MacDowell Association, and is in the

colony library at Peterboro.

HENRY HOLDEN HUSS

Henry Holden Huss (1862), born in Newark, New Jersey, has lived in New

York since his early twenties when he returned from studying with

Rheinberger in Munich. Before his European days he was a pupil of his

father, George J. Huss, a Bavarian who came to America during the 1848

revolution, and was one of the best musical educators in this country.

Huss also studied with O. B. Boise (1845–1912), an American theorist and

teacher. As concert pianist, Huss has played his piano concerto, one of

the best American works, with all the important orchestras. Raoul Pugno,

the much-loved French pianist, and Adele aus der Ohe also played it

abroad and in America.

Huss has always aimed for the highest ideals as teacher, composer and

pianist. A classicist at heart, his works are written on classic

models,—a beautiful violin sonata with poetic slow movement, many

chamber music works, a concerto for violin and orchestra, besides _The

Seven Ages of Man_ for baritone and orchestra, often sung by the late

David Bispham, _Cleopatra’s Death_, for soprano and orchestra, a female

chorus _Ave Maria_, and many fine art songs and piano pieces, the most

beautiful of which is a tone poem _To the Night_, a lovely

impressionistic composition that ranks with the best that America has

produced.

Two other pupils of O. B. Boise, Ernest Hutcheson (1871) an Australian,

and Howard Brockway (1870), a Brooklynite, have done much to make music

grow in America. Hutcheson, who studied also with Max Vogrich in

Australia and Reinecke in Leipsic, has made so enviable a career as

pianist and teacher, that one forgets he has a symphony, a double piano

concerto and several other large works in manuscript. Brockway, who

harmonized _Lonesome Tunes_, folk songs from the Kentucky Mountains

collected by Miss Loraine Wyman, is also the composer of a symphony

played in Boston (1907) by the Symphony Orchestra, a suite,

ballad-scherzo for orchestra, many piano works and songs. Hutcheson,

Brockway and Boise were teachers in the Baltimore Peabody Institute, one

of the important music schools, under direction of Harold Randolph, a

fine musician and pianist.

George F. Boyle (1886) of New South Wales has, since 1910, been

professor at the Peabody Institute. He has composed many piano pieces,

songs and orchestral works.

RUBIN GOLDMARK

Rubin Goldmark (1872), is known as the best toastmaster in the music

world! Born in New York, he was one of Dvorak’s most talented pupils and

inherits his gifts from his noted uncle Carl Goldmark (1830–1915), a

Hungarian composer of the overture _Sakuntala_ and the opera _The Queen

of Sheba_, the symphony _The Rustic Wedding_ and much else. Rubin

Goldmark has written several important tone poems,—_Samson_, _Gettysburg

Requiem_, _Negro Rhapsody_, based on negro themes, and other fine things

for orchestra, chamber music, piano and violin numbers and as a teacher

he has laid the foundations for several American composers among whom

are:—Frederick Jacobi, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. Each score

from Goldmark’s pen is an addition to American music.

HENRY HADLEY

Henry K. Hadley (1871) by right of birth and training belongs to the New

England group of composers, but most of his life was spent in Germany

where he got his orchestral experience, and in different parts of

America where he has conducted orchestras—Seattle, Washington, San

Francisco and New York. Hadley is one of the few Americans who has

conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Hadley has taken many prizes for opera, symphony, cantata and an

orchestral rhapsody. To this he has added numerous other orchestral and

chamber music works and over 100 songs.

ALBERT MILDENBERG’S “MICHAEL ANGELO”

In these days when the cry is for American opera, it seems regrettable

that an opera ready for production should lie idle because of the death

of its composer. Perhaps no work in history has had a more tragic story

than _Michael Angelo_ by Albert Mildenberg (1878–1918). In 1908,

Mildenberg signed a contract in Vienna for the production of the opera.

The following year on the way to Europe, the ship, _Slavonia_, was

wrecked, and although the composer escaped, his entire orchestral score

and parts went to the bottom of the sea. Courageously he rewrote the

work, and sent it to the Metropolitan Opera House in competition for the

$10,000 prize, won by Horatio Parker. Before it had reached the judges,

in some way, still unexplained, the major part of the score disappeared!

Again, Mildenberg set to work with the sketches he had, and made a third

score, but it cost him his life, for though the opera was completed

before his death, he was too ill to carry it further.

In addition to this grand opera, Mildenberg, a pupil of Rafael Joseffy,

wrote many piano pieces. He also composed _The Violet_, _I Love Thee_,

and _Astarte_, songs that had a popular vogue and are still found on

many programs, and romantic comic operas, _The Wood Witch_ and _Love’s

Locksmith_, besides a cantata and many choruses.

Two other operas which had Metropolitan Opera House productions were

_The Temple Dancer_ by John Adam Hugo (1873) and _The Legend_ by Joseph

Carl Breil (1870).

JOHN ALDEN CARPENTER—MODERNIST

John Alden Carpenter (1876), one of America’s foremost composers, was

born in Park Ridge, Illinois, and educated at Harvard where he took the

music course, studying afterwards in England with Edward Elgar, the

English composer. A business man, Carpenter still devotes his time to

composing music that has put him among America’s leading musical lights.

While he might be called a romanticist, his tendencies are

impressionistic, and none understands better than he the charms of rich

and unusual harmonies, the use of modern melodic and orchestral effects,

and the value of humor in music. All these we find in his _Adventures in

a Perambulator_ for orchestra, and his ballet _Krazy Kat_, where jazz

rhythms are used to great advantage. One of the most beautiful works of

its kind, is the ballet after Oscar Wilde’s _The Birthday of the

Infanta_, performed by the Chicago Opera Company, and his first ballet

written for the Metropolitan Opera Company is called _Skyscraper_,

certainly American! Carpenter’s settings of Tagore’s _Gitanjali_ are

among America’s finest songs; he has many others, a concertino for piano

and orchestra and a violin sonata.

AN ALL-AMERICAN SYMPHONY

Eric Delamarter (1880), born in Lansing, Michigan, has written a

_Symphony After Walt Whitman_ in which he has used twenty-year old

street songs from the “Barbary Coast” (San Francisco Bowery), _Lonesome

Tunes_ of Kentucky, and a fox-trot rhythm with newer street songs.

These, Delamarter has woven into a symphony with skill and sincerity.

The material is All-American although neither Negro nor Indian.

Delamarter is a well-known musical critic in Chicago, an organist,

composer of many other works for orchestra, organ, and oratorios,

incidental music for drama, cantatas and songs and since 1917 assistant

conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Noble Kreider and Edward Royce, son of Professor Josiah Royce of Harvard

University, have both written well for the piano. Harold Bauer has

played variations and short pieces by Edward Royce.

ERNEST SCHELLING—PIANIST-COMPOSER

Ernest Schelling (1876), born in Delaware, New Jersey, appeared as

pianist at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, at the age of four! His

musical training abroad included several years with Paderewski. He has

made many concert tours in Europe and America, and for two seasons has

conducted the children’s concerts of the New York Philharmonic Society.

His important orchestral works include a symphonic legend, a suite, two

numbers, _Suite Phantastique_ and _Impressions From An Artist’s Life_,

for piano and orchestra, and his latest work to enjoy wide popularity,

_The Victory Ball_.

JOHN POWELL—VIRGINIAN

All the charm and refinement of the Southern gentleman are reflected in

John Powell’s personality, along with an earnest sincerity and

conviction. He was born in Richmond, Virginia, (1882), is a graduate of

the University of Virginia, and a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky and

Navratil in Vienna. He has made an international reputation as brilliant

pianist and is also one of our most gifted composers. Powell’s works

show classical training in form, with which he combines a rich romantic

feeling and a love for folk music.

He believes that music should draw on the folk element for its strength,

and has proved his theory by using freely the folk music he knows best,

that of the negro. _In the South_, _At the Fair_, piano pieces, show

this early influence and his fund of humor, and in his _Negro Rhapsody_

for piano and orchestra, Powell has painted a picture of the negro in

many moods—sinister and menacing, primitive bordering on barbaric, as

well as humorous, care-free and childlike.

His _Sonata Teutonica_ which first brought him before the public is of

extraordinary strength, length and talent. He has written other sonatas

for piano and for violin, songs, chamber music and orchestral works.

NEGRO SPIRITUALS VERSUS JAZZ

This brings us face to face with one of the most discussed questions of

the day: the influence of Negro music and jazz on serious composition.

The pure Negro music is the Spiritual and _not_ jazz, which may be the

typically American idiom we have been waiting for.

It is not Negro but is developed from the Negro dance rhythm, from a

real folk music; it is the result of Negro music played upon by American

life and influences; through it we may learn to free ourselves

musically, and show the true American spirit of adventure and daring

which until now has been absent in our native compositions. The path has

been travelled from the songs of Stephen Foster, Negro Minstrels, “coon

songs” and “cake walks,” to jazz with its elaborate orchestration unlike

any other existing music, and its complicated rhythms. Jazz rhythm is

contrapuntal rhythm. Europe says that it is our one original and

important contribution to music! This is a strong statement, but as

“imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” their serious 20th

century composers have flattered us by writing jazz, and we have _Piano

Rag_ by Stravinsky, a _Syncopated Sonata_ by Jean Wiener, jazz by Darius

Milhaud, Casella, Honegger, and even Debussy was tempted into writing

_Golliwogg’s Cake Walk_.

In Los Angeles (April, 1925), Walter Henry Rothwell with his

Philharmonic Orchestra played an _American Caprice_ by Henry Schoenefeld

(1857) one of many works in which the composer has used Indian and Negro

themes.

HENRY THACKER BURLEIGH, MOST NOTED COLORED COMPOSER

His arrangement of the Spiritual, _Deep River_, has made Harry

Burleigh’s name known on two continents, and its success has led many

into that field. Burleigh (1866) was one of the foremost among the

Dvorak pupils, and has held the position of leading baritone in St.

George’s Church for many years, as also at the Temple Emanuel on Fifth

Avenue. His name is found on practically every program where Spirituals

are sung.

Of Burleigh’s race is R. Nathaniel Dett (1882), conductor of the Hampton

Singers, also director of the music department of Hampton College. His

name was introduced by Percy Grainger, who played his characteristic

Negro dance called _Juba Dance_ in Europe and America. Dett’s greatest

works are his arrangements of the Spirituals for chorus. Grainger wrote

of him: “There is in his treatment of blended human voices that innate

sonority and vocal naturalness that seem to result only from accumulated

long experience of untrained improvised polyphonic singing, such as that

of Southern Negroes, South Sea Polynesians and Russian peasants. These

things are branches of the very tree of natural communal song.”

David Guion, a young Texan, is well known in this field and also for his

piano setting of _Turkey in the Straw_.

LOUIS GRUENBERG FINDS NEW PATHS

Louis Gruenberg (1884) was born in Russia but came to America at the age

of two. At nineteen he went to Europe and became the pupil of Ferruccio

Busoni, the Italian pianist-composer who spent most of his life in

Berlin and Vienna and also taught for two years at the New England

Conservatory of Music.

Gruenberg had followed conventional lines of composition for some years,

receiving prizes in Berlin and New York (in 1922 he was awarded the

Flagler prize for a symphonic poem _Hill of Dreams_). His works of this

period comprise symphonic poems, a string quartet, a piano concerto, a

symphony, a suite for violin, also a sonata, two operas, songs and piano

pieces.

He began to study America, to ask himself what was the spirit of

Americanism that had not yet found its way into music, and his answer

was not the Negro jazz, but the white man’s jazz expressing the “spirit

of the times.” As a result he changed his way of writing. The

compositions of this period are a violin sonata, a set of piano pieces

called _Polychromatics_, a _Poem_ in sonatina form for ’cello, four

pieces for string quartet, a viola sonata, an orchestral tone-poem, a

group of short piano pieces in jazz rhythms with the amusing name of

_Jazzberries_, three violin pieces in the same style, a group of songs

_Animals and Insects_, texts by Vachel Lindsay, and that same poet’s

_Daniel_ which Gruenberg has set as _Daniel Jazz_ for tenor and chamber

music orchestra, and _Creation_, a Negro sermon by James Weldon Johnson,

a poet, who has just won the Spingarn Prize for the most distinctive

work (1924–1925) of an American of African descent.

TWO JAZZ GENIUSES

Irving Berlin, the genius of the age in writing typical American jazz,

was born in Russia and has had no musical training. He picks out his

irresistible melodies by ear and his aide writes them down to the

delight of the millions in all corners of the earth, from New York to

the Sahara desert, where the phonograph has carried them. The sheiks no

longer sing in ancient pentatonic melody to their lady loves, but turn

on the phonograph which ably plays some of his hundred American songs:

_My Wife Goes to the Country_, _Snooky Ookums_, _Along Came Ruth_, _If

You Don’t Want Me Why Do You Hang Around?_ _Mandy_, _Say it with Music_,

_What’ll I Do_, _All Alone_, and many from the musical revues (Music Box

Revue, especially). His earlier _Alexander’s Rag Time Band_ goes back to

cake walk days and has become a classic of its kind and the model for

popular music following it. He rose from poverty to riches through

giving great delight to the public.

George Gershwin (1898) flashed into the lime-light through his jazz

piano concerto _Rhapsody in Blue_ and his extraordinary playing of it

with Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra. In this piece we find a merging of

classic form with the “voice of the people”! It will be interesting to

watch this young man, not yet thirty, to see the outcome of grafting a

musical education on to his unusual natural gifts. As a result of the

success of his experiment he has been commissioned to write a _New York

Concerto_ for the New York Symphony. He is a Brooklyn boy brought up as

a “song plugger” for a publisher of popular music, playing their songs

in vaudeville acts and in cafés.

CHARLES TOMLINSON GRIFFES

Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884–1920) was a poet-composer whose early

death was a serious loss to America, for every thing he wrote was an

addition to our music. He was impressionistic in style, and we are

grateful for the lovely art songs, _Five Poems of Ancient China and

Japan_, three songs with orchestral accompaniment to poems of Fiona

MacLeod, ten piano pieces and the Sonata which have never been surpassed

in beauty and workmanship by any American, the _Poem_ for flute and

orchestra, the string quartet on Indian themes, and his orchestral

tone-poem, _The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan_. For the stage, Griffes

composed a Japanese mime-play, _Schojo_, a dance drama, _The Kairn of

Korwidwen_ and Walt Whitman’s _Salut au Monde_, a dramatic ballet. The

last two were presented at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where interesting

experiments in music and the drama have been made by the Misses

Lewisohn.

Griffes was a native of Elmira, New York, and his first studies were

made with Miss Mary S. Broughton, who recognized her young pupil’s

unusual talent and took him to Germany for study. His composition work

was done with Humperdinck, and Rüfer, and from 1907 until his death he

taught music at Hackley, a boys’ school in Tarrytown, New York.

Lawrence Gilman, American critic, says of him: “He was a poet with a

sense of comedy.... Griffes had never learned how to pose—he would never

have learned how if he had lived to be as triumphantly old and famous as

Monsieur Saint-Saëns or Herr Bruch or Signor Verdi.... It was only a

short while before his death that the Boston Symphony Orchestra played

for the first time (in Boston) his _Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan_ ... and

the general concert-going public turned aside ... to bestow an approving

hand upon this producer of a sensitive and imaginative tone-poetry who

was by some mysterious accident, an American!... He was a fastidious

craftsman, a scrupulous artist. He was neither smug nor pretentious nor

accommodating. He went his own way,—modestly, quietly, unswervingly ...

having the vision of the few....”

WHITHORNE’S AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS

Emerson Whithorne (1884) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and studied there

and in Europe. After writing some forty songs and compositions in

Oriental and European fashion, he has given us in his _New York Days and

Nights_, a group of piano pieces in which are cleverly pictured Times

Square, Hudson River ferry boats, Trinity Church chimes, etc. His latest

work is a ballet, _Sooner and Later_, written with Miss Irene Lewisohn

for the Neighborhood Playhouse, in which they have combined the

primitive and the very modern in an original and pictureful manner.

ALBERT SPALDING—AMERICA’S VIOLINIST-COMPOSER

When Walter Damrosch took the New York Symphony Orchestra on tour in

Europe, Albert Spalding (1888, Chicago) went along as joint soloist with

John Powell, playing his violin concerto. Besides this, Spalding has

written many small pieces for violin, other orchestral and piano works,

and a string quartet played (1924) by the Flonzaley Quartet. Spalding

ranks with the great violinists of the world.

Three other violinists showing talent as composers are Edwin Grasse

(1884), who in spite of the handicap of blindness, has composed some

charming violin pieces, violin sonatas and string quartets; Samuel

Gardner, who has written orchestral works, chamber music and short

violin pieces; and Cecil Burleigh, short poetic pieces for violin and

for piano and a violin concerto.

AMERICAN MUSIC GUILD

To encourage the composing and appreciation of high class American

composition, ten American composers formed an association, the _American

Music Guild_. The members are Marion Bauer, Chalmers Clifton, Louis

Gruenberg, Sandor Harmati, Charles Haubiel, Frederick Jacobi, A. Walter

Kramer, Harold Morris, Albert Stoessel and Deems Taylor.

Albert Stoessel (1894, St. Louis) is professor of music at New York

University, conductor of the New York Oratorio Society, of the New York

Symphony concerts at Chautauqua, N. Y., of the Worcester Festival and

composer of chamber music and orchestral works.

Deems Taylor (1885, New York) is musical critic of the New York _World_,

and the composer of songs and orchestral works (_Through the Looking

Glass_ Suite) and he has written much choral and incidental music for

plays and motion pictures. One of his most graceful works is the ballet

in _The Beggar on Horseback_. His opera _The King’s Henchman_ was given

at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1927. The book is by Edna St. Vincent

Millay.

A. Walter Kramer (1890, New York) is a critic and writer on musical

subjects, composer of many songs that have made his name familiar,

orchestral works, a _Rhapsody_ for violin and orchestra, pieces for

violin, organ and piano, and a symphonic tone poem on Masefield’s

_Tragedy of Nan_.

Harold Morris (1889, Texas) has never written little pieces, but has

jumped into classical forms which he treats in a most modern way, in

piano sonatas, a violin sonata, a trio, quartet, a concerto for piano

and orchestra, and a tone poem on a Tagore text. He has studied only in

America.

Frederick Jacobi (1891, San Francisco), had his latest work, a symphony,

performed in 1924; he has also written a string quartet on Indian

themes, songs with orchestra, short pieces and orchestral tone poems in

all of which his gift of poetic expression is uppermost.

Chalmers Clifton (1889, Jackson, Miss.), is conductor of an orchestra

which has as object the training of young orchestra players, a much

needed addition to American musical education. He has written some

chamber music and music for a pageant.

Sandor Harmati (1894), Hungarian by birth, founded the Lenox String

Quartet and has composed several string quartets and orchestral works.

He has taken numerous prizes for his compositions and is now conductor

of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra.

Charles Haubiel (1894, Delta, Ohio), has composed works in the classical

form and is teacher of piano and theory.

Marion Bauer (1887) was born in Walla Walla, Washington. She has written

30 songs, 20 piano pieces, two violin sonatas, a string quartet, and a

work for chamber music orchestra, and choruses. She writes and lectures

on music, and is Asst. Professor at New York University.

AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME

A few years ago Edward MacDowell was one of the founders of an Academy

in Rome for American students on the principle of the Roman prize of the

Paris Conservatory. Several of the young prize-winners have profited by

their visit to the ancient city of culture where they are living and

working with funds provided by the Academy. Unfortunately the music

fellowship does not admit women! Among those to enjoy this advantage are

Leo Sowerby (1895, Grand Rapids, Michigan) who has written a piano

concerto and a double piano concerto, also a work called _Synconata_ in

syncopated rhythms which has been played by Paul Whiteman and many other

compositions in large and small forms; Howard Hanson (1896, Wahoo,

Nebraska) who is now director of the Eastman School of Music at

Rochester, New York, and has written a number of orchestral and chamber

music works; and Wintter Watts, the composer of many beautiful art songs

and an orchestral tone poem, _Young Blood_.

LEO ORNSTEIN—THE INDEPENDENT

“What are discords?” was asked of Leo Ornstein (1895, Russia). “I can

not tell,” he answered. “Somewhere there is a law of harmony.... What it

is I can not tell. Only I know that under certain conditions ... I hear

it, I get color impressions.... If some of the tones are gray, somber,

violent is that my fault?... In a word, I am not concerned with form or

with standards of any nature.” This is the young composer’s declaration

of independence, and in his early compositions he has lived up to it!

One of his piano works, _Wildmen’s Dance_, goes back to primitive man

for his inspiration and wild rhythms. He is original and daring as few

Americans have ever been. His last work was a piano concerto played by

him with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. He has written sonatas for

piano, for ’cello and violin, besides many piano pieces, which he plays

well, as he is an exceptional pianist.

Although he has been in America since childhood, his early life in

Russia, in which he suffered the terrors of the pogroms (the massacres

of the Jews), is reflected in his work. His training was under the

direction of Bertha Tapper and Percy Goetschius.

A gifted young modernist whose orchestral and chamber works are often

played by important organizations, is Aaron Copland (1898), pupil of

Rubin Goldmark and Nadia Boulanger, of Paris. He received (1925) the

first Guggenheim Fellowship in Music.

EXPERIMENTALISTS

Henry Eichheim, of Boston, has had many performances of his colorful

Chinese and Japanese impressions. Carl Ruggles is an independent thinker

and composer, experimenting in many combinations of harmonies and

instruments. Two extremists, who have not yet proven the value of their

ideas and whose works must be regarded as experiments are Henry Cowell

of California and George Antheil who lives in Paris. Sometimes, however,

out of the wildest experiment comes something that may make music grow.

SONG WRITERS

There are many composers who are well known not for symphonies and

chamber music but for songs. There are so many that we can list but a

few: Alexander Russell, R. Huntington Woodman, Carl Deis, William Arms

Fischer, Charles Fonteyn Manney, Clayton Johns, Sidney Homer, Charles

Gilbert Spross, Oley Speaks, Louis Campbell-Tipton, Philip James,

William C. Hammond, G. Bainbridge Crist, Marshall Kernochan, Eastwood

Lane, Richard Hammond, Harry Osgood, Charles B. Hawley, Adolph Martin

Foerster, Richard Hageman, Edward Ballantine, Clough Leighter, Victor

Harris, Isidore Luckstone, Percy Lee Atherton, John Beach, Paolo

Gallico, Arthur Bergh, Morris Class, Walter Morse Rummel, Blair

Fairchild, Rudolph Ganz (Swiss-American), Eugen Haile (German-American),

Frank La Forge, Harold Vincent Milligan, Timothy Spelman, Edward

Horsman, Tom Dobson, Oscar G. Sonneck. Mr. Sonneck (1873–1928) was less

known as a musicianly composer, than as a musicologist whose vast

knowledge made him invaluable as the first librarian of the music

division of the Library of Congress in Washington (1902–1915). His books

form an important addition to musical _Americana_. He was editor of the

_Musical Quarterly_, and secretary of the Beethoven Association.

FOREIGNERS WRITING IN AMERICA

Many who are making music grow in America were born in Europe and while

they may not be _American_ composers, they are composers in America, and

most of them have become American citizens.

Ernest Bloch, born in Geneva, Switzerland (1880), has been here since

1916, when the Flonzaley Quartet played his _String Quartet_. Owing to

his Jewish descent his work shows an Oriental strain rather than Swiss

national feeling. Among his important orchestral works are _Jewish

Poems_, _Psalms_, a symphony, _Israel_, _Schelomo_, for ’cello and

orchestra, a prize symphonic rhapsody, _America_, and a _Concerto

Grosso_ for strings. He took the Coolidge prize with his _Viola Suite_,

and has also a violin sonata and a piano quintet. He has taught in New

York, Cleveland and San Francisco. A pupil, Ethel Leginska, the English

pianist and orchestral conductor, has composed an interesting string

quartet, piano pieces and works for orchestra.

Percy Aldridge Grainger, born in Melbourne, Australia (1882), appeared

as a pianist at the age of ten and has never stopped since! His mother

was his first teacher and later he was a pupil of Busoni and intimate

friend of Grieg, whose concerto he played upon his first American

appearance (1915). During the World War he became naturalized and served

in the American army. As composer he is unique, being self-taught, and

although knowing the compositions of all the great masters, he goes to

folk music for his themes and ideas, and has become an authority on

British and Scandinavian folk music, and is collecting music of the

American Indian and the Negro.

Among Grainger’s best known pieces are: _Molly on the Shore_, _Colonial

Song_, _Shepherd’s Hey_, _Irish Tune from County Derry_, _Country

Gardens_ and _Turkey in the Straw_, all folk-melodies around which he

has woven most fascinating harmonies, and has brought back the old songs

in modern dress. In the spring of 1925 he gave two concerts which he

called, with true Grainger originality, “Room Music” instead of chamber

music.

Carl Engel, although born in Paris (1883), and educated in France is an

American citizen and the director of the Music Division of the Library

of Congress in Washington, D. C. Engel has written in addition to essays

in delightful style, a _Tryptich_ (a violin sonata in three movements),

and enchanting songs, marking him a lover of modern harmony.

Two Frenchmen in New York, Carlos Salzedo, one of the world’s leading

harpists, and Edgar Varese are foremost among the innovators, bringing

to the public through their own compositions and the work of the

_International Composers’ Guild_, the latest styles in music. They hand

the public the new works of the most extreme composers before the ink is

dry on the manuscript. Most of these are composed in dissonance or

so-called cacophony (from two Greek words kakos,—bad; phono,—sounds).

Through the efforts of these men, the _League of Composers_, and the

_Pro Musica_ Society (E. Robert Schmitz, founder and president), many

present day compositions are heard in America.

Lazare Saminsky, a Russian, choirmaster at Temple Emanu-El, New York,

has written several symphonies and a chamber opera, _Gagliarda of a

Merry Plague_. He has made a deep study of Hebrew music.

Kurt Schindler, (Berlin, 1882), first conductor of the New York Schola

Cantorum, a chorus, is an authority on Russian, Spanish and Finnish folk

music, of which he has made many collections. He has also written art

songs and choruses.

Leopold Godowsky, born in Russia (1870), one of the greatest living

pianists, has written much for piano and made many arrangements.

Among the world famous violinists, several living in America, Fritz

Kreisler (1875), Mischa Elman (1892) and Efrem Zimbalist (1889), have

added to violin literature, arrangements of piano pieces and songs, as

well as a few original compositions. Kreisler, with Victor Jacobi, wrote

the music for the light opera _Apple Blossoms_.

SOME PATRONS OF MUSIC IN AMERICA

America has been fortunate in its patrons of music who like the

Esterhazys and Lobkowitzs of old have advanced music by founding and

maintaining orchestras, music schools, chamber music, festivals and

prize competitions. Among these are Henry Lee Higginson (1834–1919),

Boston Symphony; Harry Harkness Flagler, New York Symphony; W. A. Clark,

Los Angeles Philharmonic; George Eastman, Rochester Symphony and Eastman

School of Music; Juilliard Musical Foundation, Mrs. Edward Bok, Curtis

Institute of Music in Philadelphia; the Edward J. de Coppet (1855–1916),

the Flonzaley Quartet; Carl Stoeckel, festivals at Norfolk, Connecticut;

Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim and Mr. and Mrs. Murry Guggenheim, summer

concerts by Edwin Franko Goldman’s Concert Band; Mrs. Elizabeth

Shurtleff Coolidge, Berkshire Chamber Music Festivals. Also the American

Society for the Publication of Chamber Music, the National Music League,

the Walter Naumberg prize, the National Federation of Music Clubs, the

League of Composers, the National Bureau for the advancement of Music,

and many music schools and settlements have helped to make music grow.

It is not out of place to include here Arthur P. Schmidt (1846–1921) of

Boston as a patron of music, for by his devotion to American composers

and the faith with which he published their works as early as 1876 has

made music grow. Under this head we must also include Gustav Schirmer

(1829–1893) and Oliver Ditson (1811–1888).

SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS

Besides the orchestras in Boston, New York and Chicago, of which we have

already told you, many new ones have been formed to the advancement of

music in America: Philadelphia, (Leopold Stokowski, conductor); Detroit,

(Ossip Gabrilowitsch); San Francisco, (Alfred Hertz); Cincinnati, (Fritz

Reiner); Los Angeles, (Arthur Rodzinsky); St. Louis, (Guest Conductors);

Cleveland, (Nikolai Sokoloff and Rudolph Ringwall); Rochester, (Eugene

Goossens); Syracuse, (Vladimir Shavitch); Omaha, (Sandor Harmati);

Portland, Oregon, (Willem van Hoogstraten); Minneapolis, (Henri

Verbrugghen); State Symphony Orchestra, New York City, founded by Josef

Stransky, (Emo von Dohnanyi and Alfredo Casella, in the season of

1925–26); and the American Symphony Orchestra composed entirely of

Americans under Howard Barlow, founder and conductor; the Young Men’s

Symphony Orchestra (Paul Henneberg), founded by the late Alfred Lincoln

Seligman with Arnold Volpe, conductor; American Orchestral Society,

(Chalmers Clifton). (See page 514.)

Besides the orchestras mentioned, the symphony orchestras of the motion

picture houses all over the country are doing a very great service by

the excellent music and the fine performances given to millions of

people every day.

Among orchestras which helped to build love of music in this country

were the Russian Symphony Orchestra (Modest Altschuler), the Volpe

Symphony Orchestra (Arnold Volpe), and the People’s Symphony Concerts

(F. X. Arens), all of which are out of existence.

Within the last few years the desire for music in the summer time has

led to many open air concerts and operas. Of these the concerts of the

Philharmonic Orchestra in the Lewisohn Stadium, those in the Hollywood

Bowl (Los Angeles, California), Willow Grove, Pa., the Goldman Concert

Band, playing on the Campus of New York University and in Central Park

are the most widely known.

Ravinia Park which provides one of the most magnificent opera companies

possible to assemble makes a delightful summer night playground for

Chicago people.

We regret that opera has not kept pace with the symphony orchestras in

America. The Metropolitan Opera Company (New York City), the Chicago

Opera Company (Chicago, Illinois), the San Francisco Opera Company (G.

Merola’s new venture), the Philadelphia Civic and the American Opera

Company are in operation (1929). There are many cities holding summer

opera.

There is every reason to be proud of the growth of music in America, and

New York City today is the great musical center of the world.

Since writing this chapter, New York has lost the State Symphony, The

American Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Symphony Society. Walter

Damrosch has turned his orchestral interests to the radio in order to

enlarge the sphere of music education. Due to the merger of the

Philharmonic Symphony, Ernest Schelling conducts the concerts for

children.

CHAPTER XXXII

Twentieth Century Music

There was once an old man who said: “I have lived to see the post-chaise

give way to the locomotive but I _cannot_ and _will not_ accept the

automobile!” What would he have said to the aeroplane? But this old man

was not different from the people today, who seem unable to accept the

new music and take it as a personal affront when they must listen to it.

Like the automobile and the aeroplane, however, it is here, and is a

part of the 20th century!

Nothing that lives stands still; there must be constant change and

growth, or decay sets in. This is as true of music as it is of ourselves

and the things around us. We have watched this process of change in

music from prehistoric man to the 20th century; we have seen certain

periods bursting with new ideas, works and forms; we have seen

individuals tower above their fellows, marking epochs to which their

names have become attached, like the Palestrinian era, the Bach era, and

the Wagner period; and we are living in a moment of new ideas, works and

forms, on which we cannot pass final judgment. Time alone must be the

judge!

There is no point at which a period ends and a new one begins, for they

overlap. We saw harmony grow out of polyphony; we saw the romantic

Beethoven rise out of the classic Beethoven; in the romantic Chopin, we

found the germs of impressionism (for definition, see page 483), and in

Debussy’s impressionism, we see the breaking away from traditions into a

new world of sound.

POLYFORM MUSIC

When we begin our music lessons, we are taught the musical alphabet,—the

major scale, and then, the minor and the chromatic. So accustomed are we

to these scales that we forget there was a time when they did not exist,

and that new ones may be added, for they are not fixed for all time.

There have been, as you know, the no-scale time, the pentatonic scale,

the Greek modes, the Ecclesiastical or Church modes, the diatonic (major

and minor) scale, the chromatic scale and the so-called whole-tone scale

of Debussy. Beethoven and all the writers of the classic period used the

diatonic scales which gave their works a definite tonality, that is, a

home tone to which all the tones try to return. If, for example, you

sing _Yankee Doodle_ and stop before the last note, you feel very

uncomfortable, because you have not sounded the home tone towards which

all the tones are reaching. To the diatonic modes, Chopin and Wagner

added a frequent use of the chromatic scale, which enriched music. In

addition to diatonic and chromatic harmony, along came Debussy with his

melodies in whole steps, and he also went back to the old Greek modes,

using them in new and unexpected ways. Today we have all the past to

draw upon and the composers are quick to take advantage of their rich

inheritance and to add innovations.

In the 20th century the influences have come from Paris and

Vienna,—Debussy and Schoenberg,—and later Stravinsky, the Russian. From

the French has come a style of writing called _polytonality_, and from

Vienna has come _atonality_. Don’t be afraid of these names for they are

easily explained!

[Illustration:

_Courtesy of “Musical America.”_

_Arnold Schoenberg (Austrian)._

]

[Illustration:

_Igor Stravinsky (Russian)._

]

_Composers of Music in Extremely Modern Style._

[Illustration:

_Claude Achille Debussy._

]

[Illustration:

_Courtesy of Roland Manuel._

_Maurice Ravel._

]

_Leaders of the French Impressionistic School._

Having said that _tonality_ is a system in which all tones gravitate to

a central tone (they all come home to roost!) it is not difficult to

understand through the formation of the word _poly_—many, _tonal_—tones,

that it means the use of several keys or tonalities at the same time, a

counterpoint of key against key, or scale against scale, instead of note

against note as it was in the Golden Age of Polyphony. Think of a

_cantus firmus_ in C major, and a counter melody in F♯ minor! (Between

ourselves if _skilfully handled_, it has possibilities!) Ravel, Milhaud

and Honegger know how to do it. Of course in the old system we change

from key to key by means of a musical bridge called _modulation_, but in

polytonality, the bridge is discarded, and the unrelated keys are heard

piled on top of each other in layers.

_Atonality_, the system which Schoenberg and his followers use, is based

on the chromatic scale of twelve half steps, on each one of which,

chords (major and minor) may be built. This gives a more varied tonal

paint-box than the old diatonic modes and the chromatic scale of former

days, for it has now become an independent scale, and is not a part of

the diatonic family.

MULTI-AND POLY-RHYTHMS

Rhythm also reflects this age of unrest, and there have been decided

changes which seem to return to the Middle Ages to the period of

bar-less music writing. Instead of finding a piece written throughout in

¾ metre or ⁴⁄₄, it will be _multi-rhythmic_ or _poly-rhythmic_.

_Multi-rhythmic_ means many shiftings from one rhythm to another;

_poly-rhythmic_ means a counterpoint of different rhythms all played at

the same time. The English composer, Cyril Scott, uses multi-rhythms

(where almost every measure changes its metre), and the French Florent

Schmitt uses poly-rhythms, (for example, triplets against eighth notes

in common time in the right hand, and ⁶⁄₈ metre in the left).

In the 15th and 16th centuries every one wrote motets, masses and

madrigals; in the 17th century every one wrote suites and from this time

on, opera; in the 18th, sonata form; in the 19th, sonatas and short

romantic pieces. In the 20th century, no one form is used more than

another, but all forms are undergoing changes as the composers reach out

for freedom. This is the day of the large orchestra and of the small

chamber music groups; symphonies have been replaced by the shorter

symphonic poem, the tendency being for short forms. The four-hour music

drama has given way to the one-act operas, and the dance drama or ballet

as the Russian Diaghilev introduced it, is a 20th century development.

The orchestral writing has changed greatly from the methods of Berlioz,

Wagner and Strauss, for while they were masters of large mass effects,

the composers of today are treating each instrument individually, in

other words, they are using orchestration, _poly-instrumentally_! In

chamber music, we have the string quartet, but in addition, many

experiments are being made in combining instruments of unrelated

families, like strings, wind, brass and percussion, as we find in

Stravinsky’s chamber music.

It is often said that modern music has no melody, but it would be more

correct to say that it has _new_ melody, resulting from the attempt to

push aside old forms, old harmonies, old rhythms; now we have arrived at

a new era of polyphony, abounding in dissonance, that often is

cacophonous rather than harmonious. We call this period the POLYFORMIC

era.

ANOTHER RENAISSANCE

The men who ushered in this POLYFORMIC era were Claude Debussy in Paris,

Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna, and Alexander Scriabin in Russia. Richard

Strauss, then at his height, is a good example of the overlapping of two

periods, for he represents the classical German school of the 19th

century, and has also pointed the way to the future. Igor Stravinsky,

although younger, is one of the strongest factors in this new

Renaissance which in scope and power reminds us of the rebirth of

learning in the Middle Ages.

Another cause for the breaking away from old forms and conditions was

the World War, which cut off the composers from the usual sources of

musical supply, and forced them to develop their own ideas. This led to

new groups arising in all parts of the world, who, rebelling against

restraint, put wild experiments in the place of time honored customs.

CLAUDE ACHILLE DEBUSSY

Although Claude Achille Debussy (1862–1918) was almost forty when the

20th century came in, only in this century has his work been known and

imitated. He was the direct outcome of a movement in France, after the

Franco-Prussian War to develop French music along the lines started by

Rameau and Couperin. This meant breaking away from the classic models of

Beethoven and the dramatic music of Wagner. He exchanged the romantic

style of Schumann and Chopin for a new impressionistic style.

Claude Debussy was born in St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. He attended

the Paris Conservatory when he was eleven and studied with Marmontel,

Lavignac and Guiraud. In 1884, with a cantata, _L’Enfant Prodigue_, he

won the _Prix de Rome_ which has started the career of so many French

composers! During this, his first period, he wrote many lovely songs to

poems by Verlaine and Baudelaire, the same impressionistic poets who

inspired Charles Martin Loeffler in America; _Suite Bergamasque_, which

includes the lovely _Clair de Lune_ (_Moonlight_); the work which first

brought him fame, _L’Après-midi d’un Faune_ (_Afternoon of a Faun_); the

beautiful string quartet; _Chansons de Bilitis_; _Three Nocturnes for

Orchestra_, and the unique opera _Pelleas and Melisande_, which took him

ten years to write! It was first given in the Paris _Opéra Comique_

(1902).

In this opera, Debussy showed himself an innovator; it was a new kind of

harmony and melody and never before had an opera like it been written.

He gave an exact impression in music of Maeterlinck’s imaginative,

mystic play. This is not a case where music drowns the meaning of the

story but each word is colored and interpreted by the music. Debussy

accomplished what the Camerata, Gluck and Wagner tried to do. By the

time he wrote _Pelleas and Melisande_, his style was established and the

proof of his high attainment is seen in his many imitators.

He worked very slowly and carefully and often destroyed what had taken

him hours to write. Although an innovator, he was a deep student well

grounded in the traditions of the past, a lover of Mozart and of the

18th century French writers, and when he seemingly broke all rules he

gave something new in their place, not in the spirit of experiment but

of sincere conviction.

He was surrounded by painters who like Claude Monet, Pissarro and Sisley

did not paint _actual things_, but rather ideals of things; and by poets

who like Verlaine, Gustave Kahn, Henri de Régnier, Pierre Louys and

Stéphane Mallarmé did not write about _things_ but rather the

_impression_ and _images_ things gave them. He was absorbed and

delighted by this non-photographic kind of art and translated into his

music the veiled, mystic, idealistic, silver glimmering impressions that

others put into paint and into words. This is _Impressionism_ in art.

Musically, Debussy was influenced by Wagner, although he fought against

him, and by some of the French composers in whose day he began to write,

like Chabrier and Chausson. From Moussorgsky and other Russians he

learned much about old modes, color effects and free expression; and

with Erik Satie he talked over many musical problems, no doubt gaining

much from this curious musical caricaturist and humorist. No matter how

extreme and absurd Debussy’s music might have sounded twenty-five years

ago to the people, they must have felt the mystic beauty and rare poetic

charm of his work.

Someone, as a joke, put a Butterick pattern on a playerpiano roll as a

music record, and it sounded so ridiculous that a composer hearing it,

said: “Ah, that must be a Debussy piece!” But, you see this was

twenty-five years ago!

No matter how revolutionary his piano pieces may have sounded, today

they have become almost classics! The combination of poetic imagination,

romanticism and impressionism are seen in the titles: _Reflets dans

l’eau_ (_Reflections in the Water_), _L’Isle joyeuse_ (_Happy Island_),

_La Cathédrale engloutie_ (_The Engulfed Cathedral_), _Jardins sous la

pluie_ (_Gardens in the Rain_).

For his daughter Claude, who died the year after her father, Debussy

wrote six little piano pieces called the _Children’s Corner_. At the

time he was writing them, little Claude used to drag the manuscripts

around like a ragdoll, telling anyone she met, “These are _my_ pieces,

my father is writing them for me.” They were: _Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum_,

_Jimbo’s Lullaby_, _The Doll’s Serenade_, _The Snow Falls_, _The Little

Shepherd_ and _Golliwogg’s Cakewalk_.

Among his later works are: Three symphonic sketches, _La Mer_ (_The

Sea_); the mystery play on a book by d’Annunzio, _Le Martyre de St.

Sebastien_ (_The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian_); a work for two pianos,

_Noir et Blanc_ (_Black and White_); a _Sonata for Violoncello and

Piano_ and twelve _Studies for Piano_.

In his _Minstrels_, _Children’s Corner_ and _General Lavine_ we find

_humor_, a characteristic of 20th century music.

His music was vague and dreamy, and many composers were weakened rather

than strengthened by trying to imitate him, for they had neither his

genius nor his poetry. What he gave us was genuine, what others tried to

copy was affected. His inventions such as the whole-tone scale and the

pastel shades of music were so much a part of him that to use them today

shows a lack of originality. But to those coming after him, who did not

imitate him but worked out their own ways, he was a path-breaker of

great value.

MAURICE RAVEL

Maurice Ravel (1875) has lived in or near Paris most of his life,

although he was born in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées. He was a student at

the Conservatory under Gabriel Fauré and André Gédalge. He did not

receive the _Prix de Rome_, perhaps because in his early works he

already showed tendencies, which must have seemed revolutionary to

musicians who had not yet grown accustomed to the innovations of

Debussy. Ravel developed his ideas at the same time and under the same

influences as Debussy. You will often hear that Ravel imitated Debussy,

but it is less an imitation than a development along the same lines.

Ravel, too, is an impressionist, a poet, a lover of veiled mystic

effects, _suggesting_ images rather than _reproducing_ them. He has a

keen rhythmic sense, perhaps a heritage of his birthplace, so close to

the Spanish border.

None of the 20th century composers understands the orchestra better than

Ravel as may be seen in his ballet _Daphnis and Chloe_, _Rhapsodie

Espagnole_, his delightful _Mother Goose_ and _La Valse_. His short

opera, _L’heure espagnole_ is full of charming music and splendid

workmanship; his quartet written in 1902–3 is one of the finest examples

of 20th century chamber music. For piano he has added a rich

contribution in the _Sonatina_, _Pavane for a Dead Child_, _Valses

nobles et sentimentales_, _Les Miroirs_ (_Looking Glasses_), _Gaspard de

la Nuit_, _Le Tombeau de Couperin_ (_The Tomb of Couperin_), and his

songs are very beautiful, including _Histoires Naturelles_ (_Natural

History_) and the Greek and Hebrew folk songs.

Ravel’s latest work is a revelation of all his abilities, _L’Enfant et

les Sortilèges_ (_The Child’s Sorceries_), a ballet in early form with

modern music. It is a fantasy tale about a little boy, who will not do

his lessons and in a fury injures a squirrel; the chairs, grandfather’s

clock, frogs, fairies, sprites, squirrels, arithmetic dwarfs from the

book he has destroyed, and tea-pots rebel and talk “at him,” until he

binds up the wound of the squirrel. Into this, Ravel puts humor and even

sentiment; he makes some of the chairs dance a minuet, other characters,

a fox trot, and includes many old and new dances. He shows his magic

handling of the orchestra and with extreme cleverness he even has the

chair and the shepherdess sing a song in canon form and at the end all

join in singing a fugue of “heavenly beauty.”

A follower of Ravel is Maurice Delage, who has written some very

interesting songs and an orchestral work in which he is modern enough to

imitate the sounds of an iron foundry!

An enthusiastic follower and friend of Ravel, is Roland Manuel, critic,

writer and composer. He has never written what is called _ultra_ (very)

modern music, but everything he does, songs, chamber music, operetta, or

ballet is marked with good taste, refinement and fine musicianship.

Other Frenchmen who have added to the 20th century style are Paul Dukas

(1865), whose opera based on Maeterlinck’s _Ariane et Barbe Bleue_

(_Ariadne and Blue Beard_) is second only to Debussy’s _Pelleas et

Melisande_; Vincent d’Indy (1851); Déodat de Sévérac (1873–1921), a

writer of charming piano music whose impressionism reflects his love of

Nature; Albert Roussel (1869), a pupil of the Schola Cantorum, whose

Symphony and opera _Padmavati_ show splendid talent; Florent Schmitt

(1870) whose orchestral works and piano quintet are important; André

Caplet (1880–1925), Charles Koechlin (1867), and Erik Satie (1869–1925).

ERIK SATIE—CARTOONIST

Erik Satie is a riddle! Many are the heated discussions he has caused.

His influence has been through what he has said, not what he has done.

He was a caricaturist rather than a great composer, giving amusing

titles to frivolous little pieces that show humor, in which one never

knows whether he was laughing _at_ or _with_ the world. He loved short

disconnected pieces and did much to make the young composer break away

from long symphonic forms. He was a friend of Debussy, godfather to the

_Group of Six_, and later to four “youngsters” who call themselves the

“School of Arcueil” where Satie lived. His name should have been Satyr

for with his pointed ears, eyebrows, and beard, he looked the part!

Among his compositions are the ballets, _Parades_ and _Relache_, and a

dramatic aria with orchestra, _Socrates_.

The School of Arcueil, which has not yet proven its value is composed of

Sauguet, Maxime Jacob, Desormières and Clicquet-Pleyel, who take

pleasure in American jazz effects and have tried amusing experiments.

THE GROUP OF SIX

The World War reacted directly and indirectly upon a group of composers

in France. Daring and brutality are the keynote of almost all the works

of the years from 1914 to the present day. Debussy and Ravel with their

poetic imagery did not express the feelings of the younger men, so they

were pitilessly brushed aside by _Les Jeunes_ (The Young) who overthrew

the accepted forms for their own experiments.

These young composers did not band together like the “Russian Five,” but

a French critic called them “The Six,” and the name stuck! They were not

united by oneness of purpose or by ideal, they just happened to be

friends and their music was often presented on the same programs and

Erik Satie “who had been throughout thirty-five years the instigator of

all audacity, the manager of all impudence” was their confidential

adviser. The six are Germaine Tailleferre who played her piano concerto

in America (1925) and has written two charming ballets; Louis Durey

(1888); Georges Auric (1899), and François Poulenc (1899), both of whom

have written ballets; Darius Milhaud (1892) and Arthur Honegger (1892).

Of these, Milhaud and Honegger are by far the most important. Milhaud

has written ballets, chamber music and orchestral works with great

fluency, often showing fine gifts and flashes of beauty. Born into this

age of storm and stress, Milhaud has written brutally, but he is at

heart a romantic composer and will probably change as we get further

away from the war.

Honegger has had a sensational success with a work in oratorio form, _Le

Roi David_ (_King David_), and with a tone poem, _Pacific—231_, which is

a type of locomotive. Honegger has broken from the Group, and has gone

his own independent way, writing beautiful songs, orchestral and chamber

music, and giving promise of being one of the most important composers

of the period.

There are many other young French composers showing the different

tendencies of the day, some are writing in classic form, some in

romantic, but all are very independent. Some have wiped out the past and

are trying to build anew, not realizing that they are building on sand,

for there can be no skyscraper without a foundation deep enough to carry

it!

ALEXANDER SCRIABIN

Alexander Nicolai Scriabin (1871–1915) was born in Moscow, Russia, and

was sent to a military school; instead of becoming an army officer, he

turned to music, and was a pupil of Safonov, for several years conductor

of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and of Taneiev. His early works

show the influence of Chopin and Arensky, but he soon developed a style

of his own, that has made him one of the important composers of the

beginning of the 20th century. An English writer, Eaglefield Hull,

thinks that “the sonatas of Scriabin are destined in the future to

occupy a niche of their own, together with the forty-eight Preludes of

Bach, the thirty-two Sonatas of Beethoven, and the piano works of

Chopin.” To explain in a few words the innovations of Scriabin would be

impossible, but he broke away from fixed scales and tonality, and opened

new roads to composers following. He used neither polytonality nor

atonality, although his methods border on the latter. He built new

chords, not major and minor as we know them, but in intervals of

fourths. Here is a typical Scriabin chord which he used as we use a

major triad (c-e-g) as the center around which to build a composition:

[Illustration: Chord]

Won’t you be surprised to hear that Scriabin went back to Pythagoras and

his theory of harmonics or overtones to get this chord? He called these

combinations “mystic chords” for he was a student of Theosophy, and

wanted to use music as a means to express occult ideas. With this in

mind, he wrote a tone-poem, _Prometheus_, which, according to Scriabin’s

directions, Modest Altschuler played in New York with a color organ

throwing colors on a screen while the orchestra was playing the music.

Two other of his large works for orchestra _Le Divin Poème_ and _Le

Poème de L’Extase_ show his extraordinary harmonic originality.

Besides the ten sonatas in very free form, he wrote hundreds of shorter

piano pieces, disclosing his deep poetic, mystic nature. Composers have

imitated him, but his music is so tagged with Scriabin’s individuality

that, like the whole-tone scale of Debussy, imitation is easily

detected.

L’ENFANT TERRIBLE OF MODERN MUSIC—STRAVINSKY

Igor Stravinsky (1882) has influenced more young musicians than any

other living composer! He intended to become a lawyer, but instead

studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov, and his early works reflect

his teacher. We never know how meeting someone may change our course in

life, and Stravinsky’s meeting with Serge Diaghilev changed his!

Diaghilev, director of the _Russian Ballet_, recognized a gift in the

young Stravinsky, who was busy writing an opera from a fairy tale of

Hans Christian Andersen, _The Nightingale_. He commissioned him to write

a ballet on a fairy tale, _L’Oiseau de Feu_ (_The Fire Bird_) which was

produced in Paris (1910) and brought Stravinsky instant fame. The next

year this was followed by the delightful _Petrouchka_. His most famous

score _Le Sacre du Printemps_ (_Rites of Spring_) was produced in Paris

in 1913, causing a near-riot, as it was received with hissing and

catcalls by a public unprepared for its brutality, its savage rhythm,

and raucous dissonance.

In this work Stravinsky went back to primitive times when Russia was

pagan, and he explains, “Thus we see Russian peasants dancing in the

springtime, accompanying the rhythms by their gestures and their feet.”

An English critic Edwin Evans, sees behind the pagan rite, “The

marvelous power ... in all Nature to grow, to develop, and to assume new

forms.” (We have watched this happen in music.)

After _Le Sacre du Printemps_, Stravinsky wrote _Les Noces_ a ballet

founded on pagan Russian marriage customs. In this work he has used a

chorus of voices and four pianos in place of an orchestra. He finished

the opera _The Nightingale_ and in 1917 wrote an orchestral poem based

on the themes from the opera.

In the short ballet _L’Histoire du Soldat_ (_Story of the Soldier_),

Stravinsky has used popular music of the fair, circus, music hall, not

folk music, and we find our jazz and tango in it, as also in his _Piano

Rag Music_ and _Ragtime_ for orchestra. His songs composed for the most

part to nonsense verses, are among the cleverest things he has done.

Stravinsky wrote a group of string quartet pieces in which he made the

violins sound like bells. This was not because he tried to imitate bells

but on the strings he uses the harmonics or overtones that are heard in

bells. This is one of the secrets of his unusual harmonies.

OVERTONES

We hear so much about overtones and harmonics that perhaps we can trace

for you the growth of music along the path of Pythagoras’ theory,

showing how we arrived at this era of dissonance.

HARMONIC SERIES

[Illustration: Series]

First men and women singing in unison produced music in octaves, 1 and 2

of the harmonic series. Next came the centuries of _organum_ when the

parts were sung in fifths and fourths, 2, 3, and 4 of the harmonic

series. Then followed the centuries of the major triad (c-e-g), 4, 5,

and 6 of the harmonic series. When the 7th overtone in the harmonic

series appeared, we had the very important dominant 7th chord

(c-e-g-b♭), looked upon as outrageous heresy and dissonance! It was

years, even centuries, before it was admitted as a respectable member of

the family! The 9th harmonic forming the dominant 9th chord (c-e-g-b♭-d)

had the same hard row to hoe, and is one of our modern chords. César

Franck shocked the musicians by opening his famous violin sonata with

this chord! We can trace the whole-tone scale of Debussy to the 7th,

8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th overtones of the series, (b♭-c-d-e-f#).

Scriabin’s “mystic chord” is formed from the 8th, 11th, 7th, 10th, 14th,

and 9th overtones (c-f#–b♭-e-a-d). It is a short step now to

_polytonality_ and _atonality_, to Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Milhaud, and

Honegger.

You have seen the white ray of sunlight enter your window, which upon a

second glimpse divides into all the colors of the rainbow. In other

words, the white light is the _fundamental tone_, which is the _sum_ of

_all the other colors_, much as any _single tone_ is the _sum_ of _its

overtones_, and it is with these overtones that our modern composers are

experimenting. Here we see that modern music is the result of

_evolution_ (slow growth) and not _revolution_!

HEART MUSIC DISAPPEARS

Stravinsky, _l’enfant terrible_ in music, the most daring composer of a

most daring period has thrown over all restraint! His music has no heart

quality, and so strongly is he influencing the younger men, that “heart

music” has gone out of style, a brusque, ugly music taking its place,

because the composers are afraid that to show sentiment would be

weakness! However, the high class music of today is trying to express

humor, activity and vigor, for which reason our jazz appeals to

Europeans. The War made Stravinsky the “man of the hour” in music. He is

the direct opposite of the refined, beauty-worshipping Debussy and

mystic Scriabin. The composers upset by the devastating war, needed

strong food, and they hungrily pounced upon the morsels flung to them by

Stravinsky, the ring-leader.

But withal, “the worm will turn” and already, those with ears to hear,

realize a change in the air, and they foretell a new classic period made

out of this hurly-burly of many forms, touched by the fairy wand,

“Things-that-Live”! And Stravinsky himself has turned.

After Stravinsky had written several ballets for his countryman,

Diaghilev, he turned his attention to chamber music, and wrote works for

small groups of wind instruments and a string quartet, _Concertino_, and

a concerto for piano and wind instruments, in which he tried all sorts

of experiments. He believes in _absolute music_, and has written these

without _program_, making the music express what he has to say. Whether

he has succeeded, must be laid before Judge Time. He is supreme master

of orchestration, and is largely responsible for treating each

instrument as though it were playing a solo, which we described as

poly-instrumentation. We should not have enjoyed Stravinsky as a

neighbor, for he begged, borrowed or bought every kind of instrument and

learned all their tricks by trying them out himself.

We know very little of what is going on in Russia today, but Serge

Prokofiev, one of the younger Russian composers, has left his home and

lives in Paris where his works are often given. He has written piano

concertos, violin concertos, and the best we have heard from his pen is

a chorus with orchestral accompaniment, _Sept, ils sont Sept_ (_Seven,

they are seven_). He has also written ballets and operas.

A fellow-student with Serge Prokofiev in the Petrograd conservatory was

Nicolai Miaskovsky, now living in Moscow where he heads the musical

movement. His principal works are symphonies, one of which was played in

Paris by a countryman, Lazare Saminsky, in June, 1925.

Another young composer whose piano sonatas have come out of Russia is

Samuel Feinberg. They are somewhat in the style of Scriabin.

The two Tcherepnins, father and son, are living in Paris. The son,

Alexander, has written chamber music in 20th century style.

POLAND

In modern Poland, Karol Szymanowski (1883) has written symphonies,

chamber music, songs, piano sonatas and many other piano pieces which

reflect Polish national color and French impressionism (See Page 520).

Lady Dean Paul, who writes under the name of Poldowski, although living

in London, is really a Pole. (Page 439.)

Tadeusz Iarecki, of New York City, recently received a prize in Poland

for writing the best composition by a native composer. This same quartet

took the first Berkshire Chamber Music Prize (1918) and was published in

New York by a society whose object is the publication of American

Chamber Music.

Alexander Tansman (1892) a young Pole has met with unusual success in

Paris, where he writes works for orchestra, chamber music and ballet.

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, MUSICAL ANARCHIST

Arnold Schoenberg, born in Vienna (1874), taught himself until he was

twenty. He then studied with Alexander von Zemlinsky, who later became

his brother-in-law. Zemlinsky once pointed him out saying, “He is in his

early twenties and I have taught him all I know; he brought me an

orchestral work recently for which he had to paste two pieces of score

paper together to write out his score, so large an orchestra had he

employed!” This was his tone poem, _Pelleas and Melisande_, first

performed in 1904. To this early period belong some songs, a song cycle

with orchestra on texts by Jens Peter Jacobsen, _Gurrelieder_, and the

sextet, _Verklärte Nacht_ (_Illumined Night_).

Both Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler were his friends, and through

Mahler’s efforts many of his compositions were performed. His string

quartet was played in America by the Flonzaley Quartet. His Chamber

Symphony, and his second string quartet, with solo voice, performed

(1924) at the Berkshire Chamber Music Festival, belong to this same

period.

So far, all that Schoenberg composed was based more or less on models of

the past, but being naturally an anarchist in music he tried to escape

from doing what others had done. Instead of writing works that took

fifty minutes to play like his string quartet (in one movement), he

wrote five orchestral pieces and piano pieces that were mere suggestions

of compositions, so short were they. He cut out all development of

themes, all old forms, all feeling for tonality, writing in the

twelve-tone scale which we explained as _atonality_; he built his chords

in intervals of fourths instead of thirds, and purposely changed all the

rules of harmony; he distorted all the intervals, using a seventh or

ninth instead of the octave, and making every fourth and fifth a half

step larger or smaller than was customary. His melodies are marked by

large skips and queer intervals, but when one once knows his language,

by its very queerness, it is easily recognized as Schoenberg’s. Although

he has broken away from the slavery of old traditions, he may have

“jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire”!

In _Pierrot Lunaire_, a cycle of twenty-one songs with chamber music

accompaniment, he uses a curious effect for the voice “which must be

neither sung nor spoken.” This same effect he uses in chorus in his

music drama, _Die Glückliche Hand_ (_The Lucky Hand_) for which he also

wrote the libretto. Although this and another music drama _Erwartung_

(_The Awaiting_) were begun in 1909, they were both performed for the

first time in 1924 in Vienna. This long delay was due to the prejudice

against the work of this innovator, who on the one hand has been laughed

at, scorned, and reviled, and on the other praised to the skies by a

small group of disciples and imitators whose works sound very much like

their teacher’s.

Among these pupils are Egon Wellesz (1885) who more than the other

disciples has broken away from the master. He has gone his way in

writing music for the stage and combining the old ideas of ballet and

orchestral music with Greek drama in a modern dance drama. He has also

written interesting chamber and orchestral music. Dr. Wellesz is also an

authority on musical history; he has written many books and articles on

the subject, especially on early opera, Byzantine and Oriental music. He

has written a book on Schoenberg (1921).

Alban Berg (1885), also a Schoenberg pupil, has written unusually fine

chamber music and a new opera, _Wozzek_, fragments of which were played

at a festival in Prague (Czecho-Slovakia) in May, 1925, by the

International Society of Contemporary Music, a movement most valuable in

encouraging and developing modern music. This society holds yearly

meetings in Europe, at which are heard the works of all the young

composers of the world, each country having a branch, which sends its

share of new works to make the festival’s programs.

Others of the Schoenberg group are Anton von Webern (1883), Paul Pisk,

Karl Horovitz (1884–1925), Ernest Krenek, and Ernest Toch (1887).

ERICH KORNGOLD

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1898) startled the musical world, just before

the War, by the astonishing compositions he wrote as a little boy. Among

these were orchestral works and a piano sonata of extraordinary promise.

He was born in Vienna and is the son of a musician and musical critic.

Young Korngold is known in America as the composer of _Die Todte Stadt_

(_The Dead City_) an opera in which the soprano, Maria Jeritza, made her

first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House. In many ways the opera

goes back to the old pre-Wagner form and is full of melody, unusual in a

young 20th century composer! He has written other operas bordering on

the lighter Viennese operetta and has kept away from the Schoenberg

influence.

MODERN GERMAN MUSIC

Richard Strauss was the last of the great classic school of German

composers, which for two hundred years had led the world in music.

Curious as it seems, he has not influenced directly the younger

composers, who turned to Debussy, Busoni, Schoenberg and Stravinsky.

(Page 410.)

BUSONI THE GREAT

Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) although an Italian, had a strong influence

in two fields of German music, that of piano playing and composing. He

lived in Berlin and was one of the brilliant thinkers and musicians of

the period. He left chamber music and orchestral works, also several

operas, one of which, _The Harlequin_, finished just before his untimely

death, combines traditional form with radical ideas. His sonatinas for

piano and a set of studies on American _Indian Themes_ are important. He

made a deep study of all methods, old and new, and gave his pupils the

advantage of this wide experience.

Although the young Germans are not copying the huge symphonic form of

Bruckner and Mahler, these two have gained greatly in popularity and are

serving as models. Hans Pfitzner (1869), opera composer, is one of the

most German of the living composers of the pre-war period; Franz

Schreker (1878), an Austrian, living in Berlin, has taught many of the

younger composers. He writes operas and songs. Schoenberg, although in

Vienna, is felt even in Berlin.

HINDEMITH

Of the young Germans, Paul Hindemith is the most important. He was born

in 1895 and according to Riemann, “is the freshest and most full-blooded

talent among the younger German composers.” He seems to satisfy the two

factions, for he is not too radical for the Old or too old-fashioned for

the New, so as Lawrence Gilman says, “he carries water on both

shoulders.... He seems to be able to write polytonally or atonally if he

chooses, and also to write as the Academics might observe, like a

gentleman. Richard Strauss is reported to have said to him: ‘Why do you

write atonally when you have talent?’”

Today he is viola player in the Amar Quartet, but he has played in

cafés, in the “movies,” dance halls, operetta theatres, and jazz bands!

Although only thirty, he has many chamber music pieces to his credit and

three dramatic works. His success has been tremendous.

A society to further an interest in the new music was founded by Hermann

Scherchen and Eduard Erdmann. Scherchen created a sensation in Berlin

just before the war by conducting Schoenberg’s _Pierrot Lunaire_, and

after having been a prisoner of war in Russia he came back with renewed

purpose of bringing the new music to the public. He has published a few

songs and a string quartet. His right-hand man Erdmann, besides being a

pianist, has written a symphony, the first attempt of a youth without

orchestral experience, which astonished the audience as a combination of

Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, “to which is added a portion of genuine

Erdmann flavor,” says Hugo Leichtentritt.

Another young German is Heinz Tiessen (1887), who is writing besides

piano music in _atonality_, incidental music to a drama by Hauptman, and

songs.

Philipp Jarnach (1892), a pupil of Busoni, Spanish by birth, educated in

Paris, lives in Berlin and writes in the new style. Kurt Weill (1900) is

also a gifted Busoni-ite.

Ernst Toch (1887), Viennese by birth, who lives in Germany has written

string quartets, sonatas, concertos, and a symphony.

Heinrich Kaminsky is accepted in Germany as the composer who is trying

to build a bridge from Bach to modern times. His _Concerto Grosso_ for

double orchestra commands great respect.

HUNGARY—BARTÓK AND KODÁLY

Béla Bartók (1881) and his friend Soltan Kodály (1882) have done much to

bring Hungarian folk music into the modern world, for they are steeped

in folk tunes, which they use with skill and imagination. Bartók has

written a short opera, two ballets, orchestral works, string quartets,

violin sonata, and many piano compositions. His children’s pieces are

delightful, based as they are on Hungarian folk tunes.

We have spoken at length of the gypsy music of the Hungarians brought to

us by Brahms, Liszt and Sarasate (violinist and composer). We also told

you that the Hungarians were Magyars. Adjoran Otvos, in the _League of

Composers Review_ says: “Bartók and Kodály have accomplished a pioneer

work of quite a different nature, an exploration into the folk music of

Hungary which has yielded a collection of historic significance, the

most important and only authentic one made in that country.

“Bartók, poor and supported only by a scholarship, started in 1905, an

investigation of the music of his race. Spending a week with a friend in

the country, he heard a servant, while at work, singing a tune quite

different from the hybrid (mixed breed) gypsy airs which pass for Magyar

music, in Hungary and elsewhere. He contrived to conceal himself and day

after day, while the servant worked, recorded a number of songs whose

primitive character, he at once recognized. With this impetus, he

embarked on a tour which lasted over two years, as long as his money

held out. On his journeys among the peasants he met Kodály, out on a

similar mission of research. Without previous inkling of each other’s

aims, they proceeded together, recording the ancient songs of the

Magyars in the compilation which is famous today.”

ERNEST VON DOHNÁNYI

Ernest von Dohnányi (1877) a noted pianist and composer of Hungary has

spent most of his life in Berlin and has toured Europe and America in

piano recitals. He has written many works for orchestra, chamber music,

piano and opera, all of which show more influence of Brahms than of men

of his own land. He has been engaged as conductor of the State Symphony

Orchestra of New York for the season 1925–26.

A twenty-eight year old pupil of Béla Bartók, Georg Kosa, shows decided

gifts in his first orchestral work, _Six Pieces for Orchestra_.

CZECH SCHOOL

The Czech school founded by Smetana and Dvorak and Zdenko Fibich

(1850–1900) and continued by Vitezslav Novak (1870), Josef Suk (1874),

and Vaclar Stepan (1889), has had a rebirth in the 20th century. Leos

Janacek, although over seventy, is the leading spirit; Rudolf Karel

(1881), a pupil of Dvorak, Bohuslav Martinu, a follower of Stravinsky,

and Ernest Krenek (1902), a pupil of Schreker, and Alois Haba (1893),

pupil of Novak and Schreker are the working forces. (Janacek died in

1928.)

THE QUARTER-TONE MAN

Alois Haba first wrote chamber music, then he tried some interesting

experiments for which he is known as the “quarter-tone man.” We have

heard of quarter-tones among the Hindus and Arabs (Chapter VI) and as

the human ear has become more educated, the possibility of dividing the

scale into quarter-tones is much discussed, and seems to be the next

step in developing music along the line of overtones (see above). Did

you ever realize that as with eyes that are far-sighted or near-sighted,

ears may vary too, in the amount they hear? Most people think that every

one hears alike, but this is not so. Stravinsky was one day sitting with

a friend on the shore of a Swiss Lake near which he lived. The friend

said the water was calm and still, but Stravinsky heard, a definite

musical sound! Many of these musical sounds unheard by our ears he has

shown us in his music. In the same way it is said that Haba has an

extraordinarily keen ear and in trying to express what he hears, he has

written two string quartets in the quarter-tone system. Stringed

instruments are not in _tempered_ scales and lend themselves to any

division of the interval, into third-tones, as Busoni tried, and

quarter-tones as Haba has written. But he has gone further and has made

a piano on which quarter-tones may be played. This may prove to be the

basis of music of the future, or it may be merely one of the numerous

experiments without lasting value.

[Illustration:

_Arthur Honegger._

(_Swiss-French_)

]

[Illustration:

_Darius Milhaud._

(_French_)

]

[Illustration:

_Courtesy of “The Musical Quarterly.”_

_Béla Bartók._

(_Hungarian_)

]

[Illustration:

_Photograph, Victor Georg._

_Louis Gruenberg._

(_American_)

]

_Composers of Today._

[Illustration:

_Courtesy of “The Musical Digest.”_

_G. Francesco Malipiero._

(_Italian_)

]

[Illustration:

_Courtesy of “The Musical Quarterly.”_

_Alfredo Casella._

(_Italian_)

]

[Illustration:

_Photograph, Mendoza Galleries._

_Arnold Bax._

(_English_)

]

[Illustration:

_Photograph, Bertam Pach._

_Eugene Goossens._

(_English_)

]

_Composers of Today._

ITALY AND THE NEW ORDER

For many centuries Italy has been known as producing the opera of the

world. Of late years opera has not been considered the highest form of

musical art, so with the coming of the 20th century, a group of

composers has been working in Italy, trying to get away from the old

opera writing and to develop along the line of orchestral and chamber

music.

Alfredo Casella (1883) is perhaps responsible for this movement for he

lived in Paris for many years and came in contact with Debussy’s music

and the modern movement there. One of his earliest works to attract

attention in America was _War Films_, a series of orchestral pictures

that were very real. He has written piano pieces, chamber music and

orchestral works and one of his latest is a ballet, in which it looks as

though he were leaving his path of dissonance for in this he has used

folk song as a basis for a new and delightful expression.

G. Francesco Malipiero (1882) has written two string quartets, one of

which received the Coolidge Prize of the Berkshire Chamber Music

Festival; in these he has broken away from the large sonata form. He has

also written lovely songs.

Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880) has written two operas on texts by Gabrielle

d’Annunzio called _La Nave_ (_The Ship_) and _Fedra_. His most recent

work, _Fra Ghirardo_ was performed at the Metropolitan in 1929.

Ottorino Respighi (1879) wrote operas in true Italian fashion, but

deserted them for chamber music and orchestral works. _Pines of Rome_

and _Fountains of Rome_, we hear often. His _Violin Concerto in

Gregorian Mode_ was played by Albert Spalding. His latest opera, _La

Campana Sommersa_ (_The Sunken Bell_) was given at the Metropolitan in

1928.

All these men show the traces of the Italian love of melody, with the

influence of French impressionism, and German romanticism.

Two or three of these modern Italians now live in Paris, among them

Santoliquido and Vincenzo Davico, both song writers.

And now _Noah’s Ark_ has been put to music by a young Italian, Vittorio

Rieti with wit and humor, in a work for orchestra, played in May, 1925,

at the Prague Festival.

MANUEL DE FALLA

In Spain, one man who has continued along the lines of Albeniz and

Granados is Manuel de Falla (1876). He studied first with Felipe

Pedrell, the father of the modern Spanish school. In 1907 he went to

Paris where he met Debussy and Dukas. He wrote a ballet _El Amor Brujo_

(_Love, the Magician_). He combines a picturesque Spanish folk style

with a modern way of writing music. One of his most attractive works is

a scenic arrangement from a chapter in _Don Quixote_, Cervantes’

masterpiece, as Spanish as a Spanish fandango. It is a marionette ballet

called _El Retablo de Maese Pedro_ (_Master Pedro’s Puppet Show_). It is

a charming work and you will like it. His writings have simplicity, and

freshness, which can come only from deep study and so perfect a mastery

of art that there is no self-consciousness. He is a true nationalist

delighting in Spanish color; his music has nobility and humanness as

well as charm.

THE NETHERLANDS

Clarence G. Hamilton says in his _Outlines of Music History_ that

Netherland composers are patriotically laboring for a distinctive

school. Few names are known outside of Holland, with the exception of

Alphonse Diepenbroek (1862–1921), Dirk Schaefer (1874), Sem Dresden

(1881), James Zwart (1892), Julius Roentgen (1855), who has collected

many of the Dutch folk songs, and Dopper, conductor and composer for

orchestra.

In Belgium, Jan Blockx (1851–1912) wrote successful operas and chamber

music; Paul Gilson (1865) has written orchestral and chamber music works

which have won him a foremost place among modern Flemish composers; both

César Franck and Guillaume Lekeu were Flemish (Belgian); Joseph Jongen,

while not writing in the very modern style, is well known for his

symphonic poems, chamber music, a ballet _S’Arka_ (produced at the

Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels), songs, piano pieces and organ works.

SWITZERLAND

Jaques Dalcroze (1865) is better known as the inventor of Eurythmics, a

system of music study from the standpoint of rhythm, than as composer,

but he has written many charming songs in folk style. Gustave Doret

(1866), has written several operas, cantatas, oratorios which have been

performed in his native land and in Paris. Hans Huber (1852) has a long

list of compositions in all forms. Ernest Bloch, though born in

Switzerland is living in America and is by far the greatest innovator of

these Swiss writers. Emile Blanchet, is a writer of piano music, rather

more poetic than of the very modern style. Arthur Honegger, the foremost

young composer of France, though born in Havre, is often claimed as a

Swiss composer, because his parents are Swiss. Rudolph Ganz, pianist,

composer and conductor in America was born in Switzerland.

ENGLAND

When we come to Frederick Delius (1863) we meet first with a new feeling

in English music. He has written orchestral pieces (_Brigg Fair_,

concertos, _On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring_), chorals

(_Appalachia_, _The Song of the High Hills_ and others), chamber music

and songs. He was the first Englishman to write in the impressionistic

way. His opera _The Village Romeo and Juliet_ is very modern in form,

and the music interprets the story and is not built like the Italian

operas.

Delius is of Dutch-French-German stock, but was born in England, and has

lived there and in France. He never tried for music posts or prizes but

has remained apart to compose. Though his work often sounds like the

18th century virginal music, he is not conscious of it.

He has, in his chorals, done some of the best work since Beethoven, says

one biographer, and in them are strength, power and beauty, quite

different indeed from the sensuous and sweet smaller works. He is a

careful worker, a great idealist, and a truly great musician.

There are many well-trained musicians like Holbrooke and Hurlstone who

have done much for music in England but this chapter belongs to those

who are carrying on 20th century ideas.

Among them is Vaughan Williams (1872) to whom folk music is as bread to

others. He uses it whenever he can. In his _London Symphony_, his most

famous work, he has caught the spirit of the city and it is a milestone

of the early 20th century. Isn’t it curious that the most important work

written on the poetry of our American Walt Whitman is by an Englishman!

This is the _Sea Symphony_ for orchestra and chorus, an impressive work

by Vaughan Williams. He has also written _Five Mystical Songs_, _Willow

Wood_ (cantata), _On Wenlock Edge_ (six songs), _Norfolk Rhapsodies_,

_In the Fen Country_.

Granville Bantock (1868) is a musical liberator for he was the first to

free English composers from the old style of Mendelssohn and the new

kind of classicism of Brahms, and release them to write as they felt. He

wrote music on the _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ (Persian), _Sappho_,

_Pierrot of the Minute_, _Fifine at the Fair_, _Hebredean_ (Scotch)

_Symphony_, which shows his love of Scotch music, and many other works.

He succeeded Elgar at Birmingham University and has made valuable

studies and collections of Folk Music.

A lover of chamber music, the fantasy and fancy, is Frank Bridge (1879).

He is a thorough musician and has written _The Sea_, the _Dance

Rhapsodies_ for orchestra, symphonic poem _Isabella_ on Keats’ poem of

the same name. _Three Idylls for Strings_ and other works.

Gustave Holst (1874) whose original name was von Holst although he is

not of German descent, was a pupil of Sir Charles V. Stanford and is now

an inspiring teacher and conductor. He has had many posts and has

written many important works: an opera, _The Perfect Fool_, the _Hymn to

Jesus_, one of the finest choral works of the century, _The Planets_, a

very fine orchestral work, military band music, songs and part songs,

some of which are written with violin accompaniment,—a charming idea!

John Ireland (1879), has written a fine piano sonata and a violin

sonata, _Decorations_ (a collection of small pieces), _Chelsea Reach_,

_Ragamuffin_ and _Soho Forenoons_, chamber music and orchestral pieces.