II
Music life in the United States must be traced back to the earliest days, those of musical activity in the churches of New England, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. In Charleston, South Carolina, in the early eighteenth century, a kind of musical drama flourished—the “ballad opera” of British origin. In New Orleans, a little later, French opera was established and survived into this century. There were ambitious composers like Francis Hopkinson, friend of GilbertStuart, and other personalities of the Revolutionary period. There were amateurs to whom European music was by no means unfamiliar. Even among the outstanding personalities of the period there were those who, like Thomas Jefferson, took part in performances of chamber music in their own homes; or who, like Benjamin Franklin, tried their hands at the composition of string quartets (which is something of an historic curiosity). We ourselves own a copy of Geminiani’sThe Compleat Tutor for the Violin, published in London in the seventeen-nineties, which was owned by one of our forbears of that period in Massachusetts.
Such facts, of course, are of interest from the standpoint of cultural history. Musicological research has taken due note of them, and probably the familiar error of confusing historical interest withmusical value has been made: the awkwardness of this early music has been confused with originality. The music is in no sense devoid of interest; one finds very frequently a freshness, a genuineness, and a kind of naiveté which is truly attractive. We find it hard to be convinced, however, that the parallel fifths, for instance, which occur from time to time in the music of William Billings, are the result of genuine, original style, rather than of a primitivemétier; and we well remember our curious and quite spontaneous impressions on first becoming acquainted with the music of Francis Hopkinson, in which we easily recognized eighteenth-century manner and vocabulary, but missed the technical expertise and refinement so characteristic of the European music of that period—even of that with little musical value.
Such facts as we know of the music lifeof that early time are of anecdotal rather than musical interest. They bespeak a sporadic musical activity which no doubt contributed tangibly to the music life in the large centers during the earlier nineteenth century. The city of New Orleans would seem to be exceptional in this respect. French in origin, then Spanish, again French, and finally purchased by the United States in 1803, it was a flourishing music center, and in the first half of the nineteenth century produced composers like Louis Gottschalk, who achieved a success and a reputation that was more than local or national, and that, on a certain level, still persists. The music life of New Orleans declined after the Civil War, as did the city itself, for some decades; however, the music life which had flourished there was of little influence on later developments in other parts of the country.
During the nineteenth century the United States seems to have received its real musical education. In 1825 Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, at that time professor of Italian literature at Columbia University, and Manuel Garcia, famous both as singer and teacher, were among those who established a first operatic theater in New York, which city thereby became acquainted with the most celebrated operatic works and artists of the time. In 1842 the New York Philharmonic Society, the oldest of our orchestras, was founded. Farther reaching was the influence of individual musicians like Lowell Mason in Boston, and Carl Bergmann, Leopold Damrosch, and Theodore Thomas, in New York and elsewhere—men who worked devotedly, indefatigably, and intelligently to bring the work of classic and contemporary composers before the American public.Mason and Thomas, toward the midcentury, organized and performed concerts of chamber music and provided the impulse toward an increasingly intense activity of this kind. Bergmann, as conductor of the New York orchestra, and, later, Thomas and Damrosch, led the way with orchestral concerts; the list of works which they introduced to the American repertory is as impressive as can be imagined. In addition to his activities in New York, Thomas also organized the biennial festivals at Cincinnati, and eventually became the first conductor of the Chicago orchestra—a post which he held until his death in 1905.
Concert life was already flourishing. Those organizations which, along with the New York orchestra, still dominate our music life, the Boston and the Philadelphia orchestras, were established,as was the Metropolitan Opera Company. They were, needless to say, initiated by groups of private individuals, of whom an appreciable number belonged to a public well provided with experience and curiosity, a public which loved music, possessed some knowledge of it, and demanded it in abundance. It is hardly necessary to point out that there were also those who cared less for music than for social esteem, prestige, and “glamor”—the reflected and artificial magic of something which they neither understood nor desired to understand, since it was the magic and not the substance that mattered; the more remote the substance, the more enticing the magic. Such contrasts always exist, and it was fashionable some years ago to throw this fact into high relief: in that way healthy and necessary self-criticism was evidenced.
Among the personalities we have reference to was Major Henry L. Higginson who founded, and then throughout his life underwrote, the Boston Symphony; he belonged to the personalities of authentic culture and real stature who demanded music in the true sense of the word, and who knew how and where to find it. It is unnecessary to discuss the artistic levels these organizations achieved; that is general knowledge. If today we are aware of certain disquieting symptoms pointing to a decline in quality by comparison with that period, they are the result of later developments to be considered in the following pages, in connection with concrete problems of today.
This necessarily brief and partial summary concerns the development of the American music public. From this public the first impulses toward actualmusical production in America arose. A natural consequence of these developments, musical instruction kept pace with them. Among those who received such instruction there were a few ambitious individuals. The general topic of music education in the United States will be discussed later; we here note in passing that much of the best in music education of the earlier days was contributed by immigrants—like the already mentioned Manuel Garcia—from the music centers of Europe. It was inevitable that, until very recent years (mention of this was made previously), anyone who wished to accomplish something serious was obliged to go to Europe for his decisive studies; it is also inevitable that what they produced bore traces of derivation from the various milieus—generally German or Viennese—in which they studied. Nor is it surprisingthat this derivation generally bore a cautious and hesitant aspect, and that the American contemporaries of Mahler and Strauss are most frequently epigenes rather of Mendelssohn or Liszt. Some acquired a solid craft, if not a bold or resourceful one; in the eighteen-nineties they were following in the footsteps of the midcentury romanticists, just as, twenty years later, their successors cautiously began to retrace the footsteps of the early Debussy. There were, of course, other elements too, such as those derived from folklore and, even at that time and in a very cautious manner, from popular music.
One cannot speak of the composers of the turn of the century without expressing the deep respect due them. They were isolated, having been born into an environment unprepared for what they wanted to do, an environment which didnot supply them with either the resources or the moral support necessary for accomplishment. If the limitations of what they achieved are clear to us today—we see it in perspective—they are limitations inevitably arising from the situation in which they found themselves, and it would be difficult to imagine that they could have accomplished more. If their influence on later developments at first glance seems slight, it must not be forgotten that these later developments would not have been conceivable had they not broken the ground. Surely many composers still active today remember with deep gratitude the loyal and generous encouragement and friendly advice and support received from them, as did this author from his former teachers, Edward B. Hill and Horatio Parker, and from older colleagues like Arthur Whiting, Arthur Foote, andCharles Martin Loeffler—men and musicians of considerable stature whose achievements were significant and who worked under conditions incomparably less favorable than those of recent date.
Let us again briefly summarize the situation at the beginning of this century: in several American cities there existed first-class orchestras, some of them led by conductors to be counted among the great of the period. Their repertory was comparable to that heard in any great European music center. There was an abundance of chamber music, as well as of solo instrumental and vocal concerts. There has been little change since that time. The change that has taken place lies in the fact that similar conditions now prevail in almost all major cities throughout our country, and, at least as important, that the concerts are presented to an overwhelmingly great extent byartists resident in America, that the majority of them are American citizens and an increasing number are natives of America. There are, to be sure, also complications and disturbing elements in the present situation; of this we shall speak later.
As far as opera is concerned, the situation is not parallel. In the early years of this century, there was in New York not only the Metropolitan, already known throughout the world, but for several seasons there was also the Manhattan Opera Company, more enterprising than the former, artistically speaking. There were independent companies also in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and the venerable and still existent company in New Orleans. At the time of this writing there is only the Metropolitan—which has become much less enterprising and less glamorous—inaddition to the more modest but more progressive City Center Opera. Finally, there is the short autumn season of the San Francisco Opera. The operatic situation is, superficially at least, less favorable than concert life.
No doubt there are reasons why a whole generation of musicians, in the second and third decades of our century, should have become conscious of a determination to prevail as composers, performers, scholars, and teachers. However, these reasons never are entirely clear. World War I and the experiences which it brought to the United States undoubtedly played a major role, but these experiences do not afford the full explanation since the movement already had begun before the war in the minds of many who had made their decisions even as children. In this sense the war effected little change. We shall deal withthis in the following pages, and shall attempt to arrive at an estimate of its scope and meaning.