Ethelbert Woodbridge Nevin was born in Edgeworth, Pennsylvania, on
November 25, 1862. A precocious child in music, he wrote his first piano
piece when he was eleven. A year later he wrote and had published a song
that became exceedingly popular, “Good Night, Good Night Beloved.” After
studying music with private teachers, he went to Berlin in 1884,
studying for two years with Hans von Buelow and Karl Klindworth. He
returned to the United States in 1886. Soon after that he made his
formal American concert debut as pianist with a program on which he
included some of his own compositions. By 1890 he decided to give up his
career as a virtuoso and to concentrate on being a composer. In 1891 he
completed _Water Scenes_, a suite for the piano in which will be found
one of the most popular piano pieces by an American, “Narcissus.” In
1892 and again 1895 Nevin traveled extensively through Europe and
Morocco. In 1897 he settled in New York City where he wrote one of the
best-selling art songs by an American, “The Rosary.” In 1900 Nevin went
to live in New Haven. During the last year of his life he was a victim
of depressions which he tried to alleviate through excessive drinking.
He died of an apoplectic stroke in New Haven, Connecticut, on February
17, 1901.
“Mighty Lak a Rose” and “The Rosary” are Nevin’s two most famous art
songs; they are also among the most popular art songs written in
America. “Mighty Lak a Rose” was one of Nevin’s last compositions,
written during the closing months of his life. He never lived to see the
song published and become popular. The song is a setting of a poem by
Frank L. Stanton, and is described by John Trasker Howard (Nevin’s
biographer) as “probably the simplest of all his songs ... [with] a
freshness and whimsical tenderness that make its appeal direct and
forceful.”
“The Rosary,” words by R. C. Rogers, was an even greater success. From
1898 to 1928 it sold over two and a half million copies of sheet music.
When Nevin had finished writing this song in 1898, he invited the singer
Francis Rogers to dinner, after which he handed him a scribbled piece of
music paper. “Here is a song I just composed,” he told Rogers. “I want
you to sing it at your concert next week.” Rogers deciphered the notes
as best he could while Nevin played the accompaniment from memory. The
little audience listening to this first informal presentation of “The
Rosary” was enthusiastic, but one of its members insisted it would be
impossible for Rogers to memorize the song in time for the concert the
following week. The guest bet Nevin a champagne supper for all present
that the song would not be on Rogers’ program. He lost the bet. The
following week, on February 15, 1898, Rogers introduced the song at the
Madison Square Concert Hall.
The _Water Scenes_, suite for piano, op. 13 is remembered principally
because one of its movements is “Narcissus,” often considered one of the
most popular compositions ever written in this country. Nevin himself
provided information about the origin of “Narcissus.” “I remembered
vaguely that there was once a Grecian lad who had something to do with
the water and who was called Narcissus. I rummaged about my old
mythology and read the story over again. The theme, or rather both
themes, came as I read. I went directly to my desk and wrote out the
whole composition. Afterwards, I rewrote it and revised it a little. The
next morning I sent it to my publishers. Until the proofs came back to
me I never tried it on the piano. I left almost immediately for Europe
and was surprised when a publisher wrote to me of the astonishing sale
of the piece.” During Nevin’s lifetime, the piece sold over 125,000
copies of sheet music, and was heard throughout America both in its
original piano version (a favorite repertory number of piano students
and budding piano virtuosos) and in transcriptions. It went on to circle
the globe. As Vance Thompson wrote: “It was thrummed and whistled half
around the world. It was played in Cairo as in New York and Paris; it
was played by orchestras, on church organs, and on the mouth harps of
Klondike miners; it became a mode, almost a mania.”
The other movements of _Water Scenes_ are: “Barcarolle,” “Dragon Fly,”
“Water Nymph,” “At Twilight,” and “Ophelia.” Each is a sensitive piece
of tone painting, as lyrical and as unashamedly sentimental as the
beloved “Narcissus.”