on Page 4 (his photograph faces this page). Almost in the first line
the author rewards our attention: "To him may be applied the simplest
and grandest eulogy Shakespeare ever pronounced: 'He was a man.'" We
are also informed that he was born of a cultured family, that his
inherited nobility of character has been carefully fostered by a
thorough education, and told that one finds in him the unusual
combination of genius wedded to sound common sense and practical
business capacity. His family moved to Colorado, Texas, while he was
still a lad and here his musical talent began to display itself. "The
inventive faculties of the small boy, and the innate harmony of the
musician, combined to improvise a crude instrument which emitted the
notes of the scale. Successful at drawing forth a concord of sweet
sounds, he continued to experiment upon everything which would emit
musical vibrations. (Even the pigs, I take it, did not escape.) He
consequently discovered the laws of vibrating chords before he had
mastered the intricacies of the multiplication table. Yet strange as
it may seem, his musical education was neglected. A four months'
course in piano instruction was interrupted and then resumed for two
months more. Upon this meagre foundation rested his subsequent
phenomenal progress." I pause to point out to the astonished and
breathless reader that even Mozart and Schubert, infant prodigies that
they were, received more training than this.
I continue to quote: "At the age of thirteen he joined The Colorado
(Texas) Cornet Band as a charter member. The youngest member of the
band, he soon outstripped his comrades by virtue of his superior
natural ability. His position was that of second tenor. Wearying of
the monotony of playing, he determined to venture on solo work. The
boy felt the impetus of restless power and the following incident
illustrates his remarkable originality. Taking the piano score of a
favourite melody he transposed it within the compass of the second
tenor. This feat evoked admiring applause because of his extreme youth
and untrained abilities. The band-master remarked that elderly and
experienced heads could hardly have accomplished this.
"From boyhood to manhood he has remained with the Colorado (Texas)
band as one of its most efficient members, composing in his leisure
moments, marches, ragtimes, waltzes, song and dance schottisches, etc.
Of his many meritorious compositions only one has so far been given to
the public:--_The West Texas Fair March_, composed for and dedicated
to the management of the West Texas Fair and Round-up. This
institution holds its annual meetings at Abilene, Texas. There the
march was played for the first time at their October, 1899, meet with
great success, and again at their September, 1900, meet by the
Stockman band of Colorado, Texas, which has furnished music for the
West Texas Fair during their 1899 and 1900 meetings. Mr. Mullin's
position in the Stockman band is that of euphonium soloist. He is a
proficient performer upon all band instruments from cornet to tuba,
including slide trombone, his favourites being the baritone and the
trombone.
"He plays many stringed instruments, as well as the piano and organ.
He is the proud possessor of a genuine Stradivarius violin--a family
heirloom--which he naturally prizes beyond the intrinsic value. The
feat of playing on several instruments at once presents no difficulty
to him.
"This briefly sketches Mr. Mullin's life, character and ability as a
musician. His accompanying photograph reveals his superb physique.
Personally he possesses charming, agreeable manners and Chesterfieldan
courteousness, which vastly contributes to his popularity. Sincere
devotion to his art has been rewarded by that elevating nobility of
soul, which alone can penetrate the blue expanse of space and revel in
the music of the spheres."
What more is there to say? I can only assure the reader that Mullin
stands unique among all musicians, creative and interpretative, in
being able to play the organ, many stringed instruments, and all the
instruments in a brass band (several of them simultaneously; it would
be interesting to know which and how) after studying the piano for six
months. I sincerely hope that the mistake he made in withholding all
his compositions, save one, from the public, has been rectified.
Helen Kelsey Fox, like so many of our talented men and women, has a
European strain in her blood. She is a lineal descendant on her
mother's side of a French nobleman and a German princess. Nevertheless
she continues to reside in Vermilion, Ohio. She is of a "decided
poetic nature and lives in an atmosphere of her own. She dwells in a
world of thought peopled by the creations of an active and lyric
mentality." She is so imbued with the poetic spark that, as she
expresses it, she "speaks in rhyme half the time."
John Z. Macdonald, strictly speaking, is not an American composer. He
was born in Scotland and came to America in 1881 at the age of 21, but
as he is one of the very few composers since Nero to enter public
political life he well deserves a place in this collection. In 1890 he
was elected city clerk of Brazil, Indiana, a position which he held
for seven years. In 1898 he was elected treasurer of Clay County,
Indiana. This county is democratic "by between five and six hundred"
but Mr. Macdonald was elected on the republican ticket by a majority
of 133. He was the only republican elected. Among the best known of
Mr. Macdonald's compositions is his famous "expansion" song, in which
he predicted the fate of Aguinaldo. He has autograph letters, praising
this song, from the late President McKinley, Col. Roosevelt, General
Harrison, Admiral Schley, John Philip Sousa and other "eminent
gentlemen."
Edward Dyer, born in Washington, was the son of a marble cutter who
"helped to erect the U. S. Treasury, Patent Office, and Capitol.... In
the majority of his compositions there is a tinge of sadness which
appeals to his auditors.... Mr. Dyer never descends to coarseness or
vulgarity in his productions; he writes pure, clean words, something
that can be sung in the home, school and on the stage to refined
respectable people."
We learn much of the study years of Mrs. Lucy L. Taggart: "From
earliest childhood she received valuable musical instruction from her
father (Mr. Longsdon) who, coming from England in 1835, purchased the
first piano that came to Chicago, an elegant hand-carved instrument
that is still treasured in the old home." Later "she studied under
Prof. C. E. Brown, of Owego, N. Y., Prof. Heimburger, of San Francisco
and Herr Chas. Goffrie. Mrs. Taggart was also for five years a pupil
of Senor Arevalo, the famous guitar soloist of Los Angeles.... Mrs.
Taggart has in preparation (1902) _Methought He Touched the Strings_,
an idyl for piano in memory of the late Senor M. S. Arevalo."
David Weidley, born in Philadelphia, is the composer of the following
songs, _Old Spooney Spooppalay_, _Jennie Ree_, _Autumn Leaves_,
_Hannah Glue_, and _Uncle Reuben and Aunt Lucinda_. "He has done much
to create and elevate a taste for music in the community where he
resides and where he is known as 'Dave.' Even the little children call
him 'Dave' as freely and innocently as those who have known him for
years, and there can be no greater compliment for any man than that he
is known and loved by the children. Mr. Weidley is by profession a
sheet metal worker. He is a P. G. of the I. O. O. F., and a P. C. in
the Knights of Pythias. He is not identified with any church, but
loves and serves his fellow-men."
In the biography of Delmer G. Palmer we are assured that "Versatility
is a trait with which musical composers are not excessively burdened.
There are few performers who can include _The Moonlight Sonata_ and
Schubert's _Serenade_ with selections from _The Merry-go-round_, and
do justice to the expression of each, much less would such
adaptability be looked for among composers. As most rules have
exceptions, in this there is one who stands in a class occupied by no
one else, Mr. Delmer G. Palmer, the 'Green Mountain Composer,' who at
present resides in Kansas City.
"As recently as 1899 Mr. Palmer wrote a song in the popular 'ragtime,'
_My Sweetheart is a Midnight Coon_ and almost in the same breath also
wrote the heavy sacred solo, _Christ in Gethsemane_. The first is of
the usual light order characteristic of this class of music. The
latter is as far removed to the contrary as is comedy from tragedy.
The 'coon' song entered the bubbling effervescing cauldron of what is
termed 'ragtime' music among the multitudinous others, and soon was
seen peeping through at the surface among the lightest and most
catchy.... The sacred solo found its level among the heavier in its
class, and if the term may be here applied, it was also a hit."
S. Duncan Baker, born August 25, 1855, still lives (1902) in the old
family residence at Natchez, Miss. "In this house is located the den
where he has spent many hours with his collection of banjos and
pictures and in writing for and playing on the instrument which he
adopted as a favourite during its dark days (about 1871)." We are told
that he composed an "artistic banjo solo," entitled, _Memories of
Farland_. "Had this production or its companion piece, _Thoughts of
the Cadenza_, been written by an old master for some other instrument
and later have been adapted by a modern composer to the banjo, either
or both of them would have been pronounced classic, barring some
slight defects in form."
I cannot stop to quote from the delightful accounts offered us of the
lives and works of Albert Matson, George D. Tufts, D. O. Loy, Lavinia
Pascoe Oblad, and forty or fifty other American singers, but it seems
to me that I have done enough, Mencken, to prove to you that the great
book on American music has been written. Without one single mention of
the names of Horatio Parker, George W. Chadwick, Frederick Converse,
or Henry Hadley, by a transference of the emphasis to the place where
it belongs, the author of this undying book has answered your prayer.
_December 11, 1917._
Old Days and New
Old Days and New
Some toothless old sentimentalist or other periodically sets up a
melancholy howl for "the good old days of comic opera," whatever or
whenever they were. Perhaps none of us, once past forty, is guiltless
in this respect. Nothing, not even the smell of an apple-blossom from
the old homestead, the sight of a daguerreotype of a miss one kissed
at the age of ten, or a taste of a piece of the kind of pie that
"mother used to make" so arouses the sensibility of a man of middle
age as the memory of some musical show which he saw in his budding
manhood. That is why revivals of these venerable institutions are
frequently projected and, some of them, very successfully
accomplished. When a manager revives an old drama he must appeal to
the interest of his audience; it may not be the identical interest
which held the original spectators of the piece spell-bound, but, none
the less, it must be an interest. When a manager revives an old
musical comedy he appeals directly to sentiment.
Of course, the exact date of the good old days is a variable quantity.
I have known a vain regretter to turn no further back than to the
nights of _The Merry Widow_, _The Waltz Dream_, _The Chocolate
Soldier_, _The Girl in the Train_, and _The Dollar Princess_, in other
words to the Viennese renaissance; another, in using the phrase, is
subconsciously conjuring up pictures of _La Belle Helene_, _Orphee aux
Enfers_, or _La Fille de Madame Angot_, good fodder for memory to feed
on here; a third will instinctively revert to the Johann Strauss
operetta period, the era of _The Queen's Lace Handkerchief_ and _Die
Fledermaus_; a fourth cries, "Give us Gilbert and Sullivan!" A fifth,
when his ideas are chased to their lair, will rhapsodize endlessly
over the charms of the London Gaiety when _The Geisha_, _The Country
Girl_, and _The Circus Girl_ were in favour; a sixth, it seems, finds
his pleasure in Americana, _Robin Hood_, _Wang_, _The Babes in
Toyland_, and _El Capitan_; a seventh becomes maudlin to the most
utter degree when you mention _Les Cloches de Corneville_, or _La
Mascotte_, products of a decadent stage in the history of French
opera-bouffe. Not long ago I heard a man speak of the cadet operas in
Boston (did a man named Barnet write them?) as the last of the great
musical pieces; and every one of you who reads this essay will have a
brother, or a son, or a friend who went to see _Sybil_ forty-three
times and _The Girl from Utah_ seventy-six. Twenty years from now, as
he sits before the open fire, the mere mention of _They Wouldn't
Believe Me_ will cause the tears to course down his cheeks as he pats
the pate of his infant son or daughter and weepingly describes the
never-to-be-forgotten fascination of Julia Sanderson, the (in the then
days) unattainable agility of Donald Brian.
In no other form of theatrical entertainment is the appeal to softness
so direct. The man who attends a performance of a musical farce goes
in a good mood, usually with a couple of friends, or possibly with
_the_ girl. If he has dined well and his digestion is in working order
and he is young enough, the spell of the lights and the music is
irresistible to his receptive and impressionable nature. There are
those young men, of course, who are constant attendants because of the
altogether too wonderful hair of the third girl from the right in the
front row. Others succumb to the dental perfection of the prima donna
or to the shapely legs of the soubrette. All of us, I am almost proud
to admit, at some time or other, are subject to the contagion. I well
remember the year in which I considered myself as a possible suitor
for the hand of Della Fox. Photographs and posters of this deity
adorned my walls. I was an assiduous collector of newspaper clippings
referring to her profoundly interesting activities, although my
sophistication had not reached the stage where I might appeal to
Romeike for assistance. The mere mention of Miss Fox's name was
sufficient cause to make me blush profusely. Eventually my father was
forced to take steps in the matter when I began, in a valiant effort
to summon up the spirit of the lady's presence, to disturb the early
morning air with vocal assaults on _She Was a Daisy_, which, you will
surely remember, was the musical gem of _The Little Trooper_. Here are
the words of the refrain:
"She was a daisy, daisy, daisy!
Driving me crazy, crazy, crazy!
Helen of Troy and Venus were to her cross-eyed crones!
She was dimpled and rosy, rosy, rosy!
Sweet as a posy, posy, posy!
How I doted upon her, my Ann Jane Jones!"
You will admit, I think, at first glance, the superior literary
quality of these lines; you will perceive at once to what immeasurably
higher class of art they belong than the lyrics that librettists forge
for us today.
Wall Street broker, poet, green grocer, soldier, banker, lawyer,
whatever you are, confess the facts to yourself: you were once as I.
You have suffered the same feelings that I suffered. Perhaps with you
it was not Della Fox.... Who then? Did saucy Marie Jansen awaken your
admiration? Was pert Lulu Glaser the object of your secret but
persistent attention? How many times did you go to see Marie Tempest
in _The Fencing Master_, or Alice Nielsen in _The Serenade_? Was
Virginia Earle in _The Circus Girl_ the idol of your youth or was it
Mabel Barrison in _The Babes in Toyland_? Theresa Vaughn in _1492_,
May Yohe in _The Lady Slavey_, Hilda Hollins in _The Magic Kiss_, or
Nancy McIntosh in _His Excellency_? Madge Lessing in _Jack and the
Beanstalk_, Edna May in _The Belle of New York_, Phyllis Rankin in
_The Rounders_, or Gertrude Quinlan in _King Dodo_?
What do you whistle in your bathtub when you are in a reminiscent
mood? Is it _The Typical Tune of Zanzibar_, or _Baby, Baby, Dance My
Darling Baby_, or _Starlight, Starbright_, or _Tell Me, Pretty
Maiden_, or _A Simple Little String_, or _J'aime les Militaires_ (if
you whistle this, ten to one your next door neighbour thinks you have
been to an orchestra concert and heard Beethoven's _Seventh
Symphony_), or _Sister Mary Jane's Top Note_, or _A Wandering
Minstrel I_, or _See How It Sparkles_, or the _Lullaby_ from
_Erminie_, which Pauline Hall used to sing as if she herself were
asleep, and which Emma Abbott interpolated in _The Mikado_, or _A
Pretty Girl, A Summer Night_, or the _Policeman's Chorus_ from _The
Pirates of Penzance_, or _The Soldiers in the Park_, or _My Angeline_,
or the _Letter Song_ from _The Chocolate Soldier_, or _I'm Little
Buttercup_, or the _Gobble Song_ from _The Mascot_, or the _Anna Song_
from _Nanon_, or the march from _Fatinitza_, or _I'm All the Way from
Gay Paree_, or _Love Comes Like a Summer Sigh_, or _In the North Sea
Lived a Whale_, or _Jusqu'la_, or _The Harmless Little Girlie With the
Downcast Eyes_, or _They All Follow Me_, or _The Amorous Goldfish_, or
_Don't Be Cross_, or _Slumber On, My Little Gypsy Sweetheart_, or
_Good-bye Flo_, or _La Legende de la Mere Angot_, or _My Alamo Love_?
There is a very subtle and fragrant charm about these old
recollections which the sight or sound of a score, a view of an old
photograph of Lillian Russell or Judic, or a dip in the _Theatre
Complet_ of Meilhac and Halevy will reawaken. But it is only at a
revival of one of our old favourites that we can really bathe in
sentimentality, drink in draughts of joy from the past, allow memory
full away. You whose hair is turning white will be in Row A, Seat No.
1 for the first performance of a revival of _Robin Hood_. You will not
hear Edwin Hoff in his original role; Jessie Bartlett Davis is dead
and, alas, Henry Clay Barnabee is no longer on the boards, but the
newcomers, possibly, are respectable substitutes and the airs and
lines remain. You can walk about in the lobby and say proudly that you
attended the _first_ performance of the opera ever so long ago when
operettas had tune and reason. "Yes sir, there were plots in those
days, and composers, and the singers could _act_. Times have certainly
changed, sir. Come to the corner and have a Manhattan.... There were
no cocktails in those days.... There is no singer like Mrs. Davis
today!"
Well the poor souls who cannot feel tenderly about a past they have
not yet experienced have their recompenses. For one thing I am certain
that the revivals of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas to which De
Wolf Hopper devoted his best talents were better, in many respects,
than the original London productions; just as I am equally certain
that the representations of _Aida_ at the Metropolitan Opera House are
way ahead of the original performance of that work given at Cairo
before the Khedive of Egypt.
Then there is the musical revue, a form which we have borrowed from
the French, but which we have vastly improved upon and into which we
have poured some of our most national feeling and expression. The
interpretation of these frivolities is a new art. Gaby Deslys may be
only half a loaf compared to Marie Jansen, but I am sure that Elsie
Janis is more than three-quarters. Frank Tinney and Al Jolson can, in
their humble way, efface memories of Digby Bell and Dan Daly. Adele
Rowland and Marie Dressler have their points (and curves). Irving
Berlin, Louis A. Hirsch, and Jerome Kern are not to be sniffed at.
Neither is P. G. Wodehouse. Harry B. Smith we have always with us: he
is the Sarah Bernhardt of librettists.
Joseph Urban has wrought a revolution in stage settings for this form
of entertainment. Louis Sherwin has offered us convincing evidence to
support his theory that the new staging in America is coming to us by
way of the revue and not through the serious drama. Melville Ellis,
Lady Duff-Gordon, and Paul Poiret have done their bit for the dresses.
In fact, my dear young man--who are reading this article--you will
feel just as tenderly in twenty years about the _Follies of 1917_ as
your father does now about _Wang_. Only, and this is a very big ONLY,
the _Follies of 1917_, depending as it does entirely on topical
subjects and dimpled knees, cannot be revived. Fervid and enlivening
as its immediate impression may be it cannot be lasting. You can never
recapture the thrills of this summer by sitting in Row A, Seat No. 1
at any 1937 _reprise_. There can never be anything of the sort. The
revue, like the firefly, is for a night only. We take it in with the
daily papers ... and the next season, already old-fashioned, it goes
forth to show Grinnell and Davenport how Mlle. Manhattan deported
herself the year before.
So if the youth of these days chooses to be sentimental in the years
to come over the good old days of Urban scenery and Olive Thomas, the
Balloon Girls of the Midnight Frolic and the chorus of the Winter
Garden, he will be obliged to give way to the mood at home in front of
the fire, see the pictures in the smoke, and hear the tunes in the
dropping of the coals. Which is perhaps as it should be. For in 1937
the youth of that epoch can sit in Row A, Seat No. 1 himself and not
be ousted from his place by a sentimental gentleman of middle age who
longs to hear _Poor Butterfly_ again.
_April 25, 1917._
Two Young American Playwrights
_"Gautier had a theory to the effect that to be a member of
the Academy was simply and solely a matter of
predestination. 'There is no need to do anything,' he would
say, 'and so far as the writing of books is concerned that
is entirely useless. A man is born an Academician as he is
born a bishop or a cook. He can abuse the Academy in a dozen
pamphlets if it amuses him, and be elected all the same; but
if he is not predestined, three hundred volumes and ten
masterpieces, recognized as such by the genuflections of an
adoring universe, will not aid him to open its doors.'
Evidently Balzac was not predestined but then neither was
Moliere, and there must have been some consolation for him
in that."_
Edgar Saltus.
Two Young American Playwrights
In the newspaper reports relating to the death of Auguste Rodin I read
with some astonishment that if the venerable sculptor, who lacked
three years of being eighty when he died, had lived two weeks longer
he would have been admitted to the French Academy! In other words, the
greatest stone-poet since Michael Angelo, internationally famous and
powerful, the most striking artist figure, indeed, of the last half
century, was to be permitted, in the extremity of old age, to inscribe
his name on a scroll, which bore the signatures of many inoffensive
nobodies. I could not have been more amused if the newspapers, in
publishing the obituary notices of John Jacob Astor, had announced
that if the millionaire had not perished in the sinking of the
_Titanic_, his chances of being invited to join the Elks were good; or
if "Variety" or some other tradespaper of the music halls, had
proclaimed, just before Sarah Bernhardt's debut at the Palace Theatre,
that if her appearances there were successful she might expect an
invitation to membership in the White Rats.... These hypothetical
instances would seem ridiculous ... but they are not. The Rodin case
puts a by no means seldom-recurring phenomenon in the centre of the
stage under a calcium light. The ironclad dreadnaughts of the academic
world, the reactionary artists, the dry-as-dust lecturers are
constantly ignoring the most vital, the most real, the most important
artists while they sing polyphonic, antiphonal, Palestrinian motets in
praise of men who have learned to imitate comfortably and efficiently
the work of their predecessors.
* * * * *
If there are other contemporary French sculptors than Rodin their
names elude me at the moment; yet I have no doubt that some ten or
fifteen of these hackmen have their names emblazoned in the books of
all the so-called "honour" societies in Paris. It is a comfort, on the
whole, to realize that America is not the only country in which such
things happen. As a matter of fact, they happen nowhere more often
than in France.