The first creative activities in American music were those of the psalm-tune writers in New England, William Billings, Oliver Holden, Lowell Mason, and others which have been spoken of in our chapter on the Beginnings of Musical Culture (pp. 45 ff.). Historically these early hymns are interesting, and, had not European culture so completely influenced the later course of American composition, it is not unlikely that they might have served in some measure as a contributory vein to our native art. They remain, however, but the reflection of the colorless puritanism which was their source, a naïve expression which can hardly be placed in the category of art and hence as American compositions do not here claim our further notice.
While in the early years of New England there was developing a music which, in a way, sprang from the people—a music which really expressed a vital phase of the common life—there were elsewhere springing up the first growths of a more sophisticated art. This art, borrowed from European culture, has served as the real foundation of all that is esoteric in American music to-day, but at the same time its presence has fostered those influences which constitute the barrier to a vital national expression. It is significant that these first appearances of a more ambitious art were in a department where there could be no nourishment from native roots of tradition, taste, or even understanding—that of opera.
In spite of these circumstances, so discouraging to the healthy growth of a natural art-expression, it must be related that the operas of William H. Fry (born in Philadelphia, 1813; died 1864) were serious in their aim and in their workmanship showed the hand of a surprisingly skilled artist and one well versed in the older dramatic formulas. The claim that Fry has to the title given him by certain writers as 'the first American composer' is therefore considerable. Fry's training was entirely European. He was for some time resident in Paris, where, we are told, he was a friend of Berlioz. Of Fry's several operas 'Leonora' (produced in 1845) seems to have been the most successful.The book is after Victor Hugo'sNotre Dame de Paris, and, while the score represents merely (as do many more modern American operatic scores) a strange mingling echo of the several European models of the day, there are a vitality and a grasp of form which make the achievement in a measure phenomenal.
Associated with Fry in his musical life was another pioneer of the opera field, George F. Bristow (born in 1825; died in 1898), whose scores, however, have less of dramatic freedom than have those of Fry, being more strongly marked with the influences of German classicism. Bristow's works include an opera, 'Rip Van Winkle,' an unfinished opera, 'Columbus,' the oratorios 'Praise to God' and 'Daniel,' five symphonies, two overtures, string quartets, and many shorter works.
Another name that finds place in the early annals of American music is that of Stephen Emery (born 1841; died 1891), counted a composer in his day but now known to us chiefly as one of America's first theoreticians and the teacher of many whose names are now well known.
Larger is the place filled by the name of Gottschalk. Louis Moreau Gottschalk may be claimed as an American, having been born at New Orleans in 1829, but his decidedly Creole origin and French education seem to remove him from the line of relationship with those Anglo-Saxon traditions which we are apt to consider as constituting the purely American.
Gottschalk enjoyed during his life equal fame as pianist and composer. His claim to the former was probably just; Berlioz himself spoke with enthusiasm of his playing and of our own artists we have the testimony of many, such as William Mason, Carl Bergmann, and Richard Hoffman, as to the genuine enjoyment which they obtained in hearing the concerts of Gottschalk. But how evanescent has been the fame of his compositions, existing only in the memory of comparativelyfew; as entities they are already silent pages of notes. All that is heard of his music to-day is an occasional faint tinkle of that surviving strain of sentimentality which was destined to such continued popularity in the polite répertoire, 'The Last Hope.' Gottschalk wrote two operas and several orchestral scores and many songs, but his piano compositions comprise the bulk of his works. While there are among these compositions many pages of beauty not unlike that of Chopin, and in the dance compositions on negro-creole and Spanish themes a certain vigor and distinction, the majority of them represent the merest vehicles of virtuosity written to tickle the ears of a public which had been brought up on the banalities played by the sensational pianists that visited America in those days. Over-sentimental, and at times vulgar, as the art of Gottschalk now appears to us, his place in American music is an important one and we cannot but feel that amid environments more sustaining to a higher ideal of art such a genuinely musical temperament as was his would have produced an art less ephemeral.
These early apparitions of American musical art are now to us only matters of history. Whatever influence they may have had on the conditions of their day, our present day musical life has been unaffected by them. For the establishment of that which, for lack of better name, we call the American school of composers we again look to New England. Through the few composers known as the Boston group America first assimilated into its musical life the best traditions of European musical culture and in the labors of these men the American community was taught in some degree to look seriously upon the native composer and his achievement.
First in this list is the name of the man who stands as the patriarch of American music, John Knowles Paine, the first professor of music at Harvard University and the pioneer in the field of symphonic composition. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1839, Paine received a thorough academic training in Germany (1858-1862). While still abroad he produced several ambitious works and he returned to America with a fame that eventually secured for him the chair of music at Harvard. Here he filled an important mission in guiding the steps of many of the younger composers who studied with him. In the meantime Paine's academic life by no means stifled his creative impulse and his list of works shows a steady output up to within a short time before his death in 1906.
Important among Paine's larger works are the two symphonies, the first in C minor and the second ('Spring Symphony') in A major, the oratorio 'St. Peter,' two symphonic poems, 'The Tempest' and 'An Island Fantasy,' the music to Sophocles' 'Œdipus' for male voices and orchestra, and an opera, 'Azara.' Besides these there is a considerable list of chamber music and much in the smaller forms.
Paine's music, while never approaching modernity in the present-day application of the word, in passing through several periods of development arrived at a point where the idiom employed could in a broad sense be termed modern. An anti-Wagnerite in the early days of his academic austerity, he lived to be drawn into the Wagner vortex and in some of his later works the Wagner influence asserts itself. Perhaps the most representative of Paine's works is one which belongs to an earlier period, the music toŒdipus Tyrannus(1881). In this work Paine uses a classic-romantic medium far from rich in its color possibilities, with which, however, he obtains a notable variety of effect and a glowing warmth of style. In size of conceptionthe summit of Paine's achievement is to be found in his operaAzara(1901) composed to a libretto of his own after the old Breton legend 'Aucassin and Nicolette.' Containing much that is beautiful, and estimable in its workmanship, the opera fails in dramatic force and has never come to a stage production. A concert performance of it was given, however, in 1906 by the Cecilia Society of Boston under the direction of B. J. Lang.
The most representative member of the present Boston colony, as well as one of the most eminent of American composers, is George W. Chadwick (born 1854). Mr. Chadwick's education also was a German one and on his return to America after three years' study in Leipzig and Munich he began to produce works of a scholarly formality. Had the course of Mr. Chadwick's development been arrested at this point he might fittingly bear the title of 'academic' which Mr. Rupert Hughes puts on him.[86]But between the date of these earlier works and Chadwick's latest works there has been in his art a steady development both in form and spirit, so that his recent scores, 'Adonis' (1901), 'Euterpe' (1904), 'Cleopatra' (1906), and 'Aphrodite' (1912), are distinctly representative of the modern school. These works, while purporting to be program music, are only qualifiedly so, for Chadwick always preserves a certain severe formalism which precludes the possibilities of his capitulation either to the impressionist vagaries of modern French music or to the polyphonic complexities of the Germans of to-day. In spite of this tendency to formality, Mr. Chadwick in his writing has achieved a notable freedom of style, a dramatic force and a mastery of orchestral color which contribute to give him a certain place among living orchestral composers. Mr. Chadwick enjoys the largest hearing of living American composers.
His name has been permanent in the lists of the Boston Symphony, while he has had frequent hearings in the other orchestras of America and Europe. Mr. Chadwick is also without question the best equipped and experienced of our native conductors, having been for many years the director of the Springfield and Worcester festivals.
Besides his orchestral works, Chadwick has shown himself a versatile and prolific composer in a great amount of chamber music, a large number of choral works, a comic opera, many songs, choruses, and piano compositions. Unlike the lyric genius of MacDowell, his talent does not find itself so fitted to the smaller forms and he seems often to slight them with an expression more or less banal in its conventionality. It must be added, however, that there are exceptions to this and one might cite the 'Ballad of Trees and the Master' as being one of Chadwick's best inspirations.
Mr. Arthur Foote has long been acknowledged in Europe as one of the foremost American composers. In his own country his influence has been as widely felt as that of any of his countrymen. Not only by his compositions but by his teaching as well, his name has become pre-eminent. Graduated from Harvard in 1874, he was granted the degree of A. M. in music the following year. His teachers in composition were Stephen A. Emery and Professor John Knowles Paine of Harvard. Furthermore, he studied the piano and the organ with B. J. Lang of Boston. All his training was received in this country, and the results of it may well be a source of pride to his countrymen.
Entering upon his career at a time when the standard of musical performance in this country was low, he was quick to respond to the influence of Theodore Thomas, and later Franz Kneisel, and to exert his efforts in raising the state of performance here toward its present equality with that of Europe. He was no less quick tostudy and to appreciate the great works pouring out upon Europe at that time. He has always kept in closest touch with the development of all branches of music down to the present, and has ever been active in bringing new works before the public.
As a composer he has written in nearly all forms except the opera. Many of his songs have achieved a world-wide fame, such as the 'Irish Folk-song,' 'I'm Wearing Awa' to the Land o' the Leal' and the brilliant Bedouin song for chorus of men's voices. These songs should not be taken as the complete expression of his genius, but should lead to the study of his other songs, more than a hundred in all, which are not less inspired because more difficult. A keen insight into the possibilities of the voice, a touch of lyric genius, and an unfailing ingenuity in accompaniments are their distinguishing characteristics.
In the treatment of string instruments Foote has been remarkably successful. Two trios, two quartets and a very fine piano quintet in A minor are conspicuous in the list of American music. The quintet has been and still is distinguished by many performances. Through the strings he approached the orchestra. A serenade in E for string orchestra has been frequently heard. Two suites for full orchestra, one in D minor and one in E, and a symphonic prologue, Francesca da Rimini, have proved his skill in combining instruments. Very recently he has written a series of pieces suggested by the Rubaîyat of Omar Khayyâm, which are far more brilliantly scored and are quite in keeping with the modern spirit of splendid tone color.
As organist for many years at the First Unitarian Church in Boston he acquired that intimate familiarity with the possibilities of the organ which shows in the many pieces he has written for it. But particularly as a pianist he won a wide fame, and the more than ten series of pianoforte pieces are written with an appreciationof pianistic effect which distinguishes them in the main from nearly all other pianoforte music produced in this country. Nor should the skill he has shown in editing the pianoforte works of many of the great masters pass unnoticed.
Of his compositions as a whole it may be said that they are astonishingly original in an age which has found it all but impossible to escape imitation. He is, like most of the great composers, largely self-taught, and yet there is scarcely a trace of mannerisms; nor what is even more remarkable, of the mannerisms of others. His music is the pure and perfectly formed expression of a nature at once refined and imaginative. In these days of startling innovations, the sincerity of which may not be unhesitatingly trusted, it sounds none the less spirited because it is unquestionably genuine and relatively simple. It stands forth as a substantial proof that delicate poetry and clear-cut workmanship have not yet failed to charm.
Although he has lived at New Haven for the past twenty years, during which time he has been professor of music at Yale, Horatio Parker's career is in a large measure identified with Boston and its circles. Parker was born (1863) at Auburndale, a suburb of Boston, and his earliest teachers were Stephen Emery and Chadwick. After his preliminary studies with these men Parker studied with Rheinberger in Munich. Returning home in 1885, he soon began to attract notice by the excellence of his compositions and to-day he stands as one of the commanding figures in American music. His compositions have won a dignified place for themselves and his conscientious labors at Yale have created a music department that far excels those of the other American universities in the practical advantages which it offers to the serious music student.
The list of Parker's works is long and varied. Itcontains, besides his two most famous works (the oratorioHora Novissimaand the opera 'Mona'), several orchestral scores, among others an overture (in E flat), a symphony, and 'A Northern Ballad.' There are also several shorter choral works, a few chamber music works, including a string quartet, a string quintet, and a suite for piano, violin and 'cello, besides many songs and piano pieces.
The same qualities of Parker's art which contribute to the success ofHora Novissima, the first work to bring him fame, are those which operate against the success of his latest and largest effort, the opera 'Mona.' The former offered to the composer the most suitable field for his scholarly but somewhat ascetic conceptions and by this same self-contained and poised loftiness of style, together with a rare skill in handling vocal masses in contrapuntal design, does he achieve inHora Novissimaa work of genuine strength and a valuable addition to the list of modern oratorios. The work, written in 1893 for the Church Choral Society of New York, received its first performance by that body. Performances by several other choral societies and at several musical festivals in America rapidly followed, and in 1899 it had the honor of being the first American work to appear upon the program of the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester, England, at which performance the composer conducted. Since that time it has assumed its place among the standard choral works of our day.
Parker's opera, 'Mona,' was awarded the prize offered by the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1911 in a contest of American composers. Its score reveals an enormous advance in the composer's mastery of resource, both as regards dramatic expression and orchestral color. There are an admirable freedom of line and sustained polyphonic interest, while the skill with which the orchestral color is distributed exhibitsParker's strongest feature. In spite of these merits the almost unanimous opinion of the music critics must be admitted, in a degree, as just. The opera, upon its production at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in 1911-12, was found to be lacking in a really convincing musical grip, due to the absence of an underlying emotional warmth and to the essentially unmelodic treatment of the solo voices. The choruses and mass effects proved the best features of the opera, again showing that Mr. Parker's first successes were in a field more suited to his talents than the domain of dramatic music. Another opera, 'Fairyland,' won another prize of ten thousand dollars in 1915.
Mrs. H. H. A. Beach stands quite in a class by herself as the only American woman who has essayed compositions in the larger form. Her success entitles her to a prominent place among the most serious of American composers. Her 'Gaelic Symphony' and her sonata for violin and piano are two long successful works, while recently she has had a most cordial and flattering reception in Europe for her piano concerto in which she herself played the solo part. Besides these works Mrs. Beach has written aJubilatefor chorus with orchestra, and a quantity of piano music and songs, of which some of the latter have achieved a wide popularity.
Mrs. Beach at her best writes in a broad and bold vein with a pulsing rhythmical sense, a natural melodic line, and she exhibits an extraordinary strength in the sustained and impassioned quality of her climaxes. On the other side, Mrs. Beach may be accused of having a harmonic sense rather too persistently conventional and in her less inspired moments her fault is that which Mr. Hughes[87]has pointed out, namely, a tendency to over-elaboration.
There are several other composers whose labors areidentified with the musical life of Boston, although in some instances they have not been continuously resident there. Louis Adolphe Coerne received his early training at Harvard under Prof. Paine and was later awarded a doctor's degree in philosophy by the same university for his excellent book 'The Development of the Modern Orchestra.' Coerne's achievement in composition has been considerable; he is the author of two operas, one of which has been successfully performed in Germany. Other works include a symphonic poem on 'Hiawatha' and a ballet, 'Evadne.'
James C. D. Parker is one of the names associated with the older days of Boston's musical growth, for Mr. Parker graduated from Harvard in 1848 and his 'Redemption Hymn' was performed by the Handel and Haydn Society in 1877. He is best known by several melodious songs and by his church music.
George Whiting and George W. Marston are names which perhaps belong more properly in the list of church composers, as they were both closely identified with that field. The former, however, has written several works of large dimension, notably a cantata, 'The Golden Legend,' which has been much praised, while Mr. Marston's name is known outside of church circles by a surprisingly long list of songs, which, though slight in construction, are not without imaginative qualities.
Although not attaining to such a mastery of the more amplified forms as does Mrs. Beach, Margaret Ruthven Lang has made several successful essays in the form of orchestral overtures, which have been played. Miss Lang's best-known works, however, are her songs, the widespread popularity of certain ones of which has given her a real and lasting fame as a song writer.
In grouping the foregoing names and labelling them as the 'Boston group' it must not be understood to imply that the art of these writers forms a school in the sense of its having a common distinctive idiom or style. The group marks in some of its members, as has been said before, an early era of American composition. The fact that Boston became the birthplace of America's first serious musical art was probably due to the presence there of the largest and best permanent orchestra, to the establishment of the first university department of music (at Harvard), and doubtless also in no small degree to the general intellectual life of the New England metropolis.
Generally speaking, however, locality plays but a small part in marking the traits of our native composers. As in all places and at all times, opportunity to hear and to be heard has drawn the best talent to the larger centres. The musical life of New York, as well as that of Chicago, while differing in many essential features from that of Boston, discloses many similar phases of artistic endeavor as we compare the contemporaneous musical life of these cities.
Among the names of those who were the pioneers in the musical culture of New York none is better known than that of William Mason, the first of America's great pianists, who in his earlier life did valiant service in America for the cause of Schumann and Brahms and whose entire life represents one of the highest and most effective of America's cultural influences. Dr. Mason was a son of Lowell Mason (q. v.) and was born in 1829. He spent the years from 1849 to 1854 in Europe, where he was one of the intimate circle of pupils which surrounded Liszt at Weimar.
Dr. Mason's place as a composer is not a large one. His list of works is represented almost exclusively by piano compositions, of which he wrote about forty. They are all in the smaller mold, and, while they are rather stereotyped and conventional in their lines, they have found a place in the pianistic répertoire as grateful and pleasing pieces of piano music.
The composer of church music has had a large place in the field of American composition. The impetus given to this branch of art by the New England 'psalm-tune teachers' was a strong one and it is but a natural consequence of their labors that to-day the church commands the services of so many of our writers. We shall consider the church composers and their works in subsequent paragraphs of this chapter, but the name of the Nestor of anthem writers—Dudley Buck—deserves mention in this place as being one of the first workers in the general musical service of earlier days in New York. Moreover, while the present fame of Buck rests largely upon his church music and upon one or two deservedly popular songs, he must not be overlooked as one of the first composers in America to essay the larger forms of cantata and oratorio.
Buck was born in Hartford in 1839. He studied at Paris and at Dresden for two years. Returning to America, he pursued his career first in his native city, later at Chicago and Boston, finally settling in 1875 at New York, where he passed the remainder of his life. Apart from the large mass of church music, more largely representative of his real mission than any other of his compositions, the list of Buck's works includes a symphonic overture 'Marion,' a comic opera 'Deseret,' besides a list of something like eighteen cantatas, the most ambitious of which is 'The Light of Asia.'
Buck's style never achieved a distinctive vein, nor is it ever marked with a loftiness of conception, but insteadthere are, in the best of his pages, a Mendelssohnian fluency of writing and a natural melodic line which have gained for his works the favor of a large public.
One of the first native composers to receive serious recognition in Chicago was Silas G. Pratt, a musician who seems to have had a Wagner-like genius for self-exploitation, but whose brilliant career must be said to have been incommensurate with the real value of his works. Pratt was born in 1846 and as early as 1872 gave a concert of his own works in Chicago. Several years later he produced some of his larger works at concerts in Germany and England, and in 1885 his oratorio, 'The Prodigal Son,' and an anniversary overture were given in London. His opera 'Zenobia' had meanwhile (1882) been given in Chicago. Besides these works Pratt wrote two symphonies, a symphonic suite, and several works which are evidently an effort toward a national music, at least such is the implication of their titles and programs. One of these represents a battle of the Civil War, another depicts the incidents of Paul Revere's ride, while a third bears the impressive title 'The Battle of Manila.'
Another potent activity in the earlier days of Chicago's musical life was that of Frederic Grant Gleason (born in 1848), who has to his credit an imposing list of large works, including two operas, 'Montezuma' andOtho Visconte, a symphonic poem, 'Edris,' several cantatas, and many smaller works. Gleason was highly esteemed by Theodore Thomas, who produced many of his works in the Chicago concerts of the Thomas Orchestra.
Henry Schoenefeld was one of the first Americans to follow Dvořák's suggestion in adopting native folk-song as thematic material. Schoenefeld was born in Milwaukee in 1857 and on his return from Europe in 1879 took up his residence in Chicago. Not unlike his are the talents and aims of Maurice Arnold, another ofthe first to exploit the negro themes, which he successfully incorporated into a violin sonata and a series of 'Plantation Dances.' Both will receive more extended notice in a later chapter.
As against these early efforts at instilling negro flavor into our national music may be noted one of the first attempts at utilizing Indian music as a thematic basis. This was done by Frederick R. Burton in his cantata 'Hiawatha' (1898). Besides this, the most successful of his works, Burton wrote a cantata, 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' and the last years of his life were devoted to writing one of the most important contributions to the literature of American folk-music, a book on Indian music entitled 'American Primitive Music,' which was published in 1909, after Mr. Burton's death.
New York is often accused of being peculiarly non-representative of typical American life. The accusation is, in a measure, just and holds good in its application to musical conditions. As the metropolis, where, without doubt, more music than anywhere else in the country is heard, New York lacks a local life of its own; there is no feeling of neighborly companionship among its art workers, and in consequence there hardly exists that which we could term a New York 'group' of composers in the sense to which the term is applied to Boston's community of music-makers. New York claims as citizens many of America's best known composers, but they figure too little in the musical life of the city and are the objects of too little local pride.
An exception to this, however, is found in the case of Arthur Whiting, whose concerts bring him often into public view and whose local reputation as a pianist is undoubtedly far greater than his recognition as a composer. Deserving of the latter, however—and that by reason of a very serious and notable achievement increative fields—Arthur Whiting must be counted as one of the real ornaments of America's list of composers. Mr. Whiting's well-known Brahms enthusiasm and his activities as a producer of Brahms' works bring upon him the suspicion of being a thorough-going Brahmsite, even in his own compositions; a suspicion, however, not well founded, for Mr. Whiting is quite free from the Brahms influence. That he is ofttimes prone to intellectuality, and too rarely gives himself up to the spontaneous and expressively beautiful, is perhaps a more just accusation, but the statement that Mr. Whiting is an artist of deep sincerity, of high ideals, and of thorough equipment must remain unchallenged.
Mr. Whiting's recent work has been almost exclusively in the smaller forms. He has, however, in the past written several larger works, the best known of which is his Fantasie for piano and orchestra. This work, recently revived at a concert given by the American Academy, has a rhythmic energy that makes it 'American' in the best sense—a genuine and spontaneous expression of the national nervously intense temperament. For the most part, however, the orchestra has seemed to have but small inspiration to offer to him and his sober formal sense and his own distinctions of style lead him more naturally to the piano, the vocal quartet, and to other chamber music combinations as his medium of expression.
Henry Holden Huss is principally known through his successful handling of the larger forms and he can point with just pride to the real success which has been that of his piano concerto in D minor, his violin concerto, and his sonata for violin and piano. These, as well as a sonata for violoncello and piano, have all found acceptance with a number of the best living interpretive musicians, who have given Huss a very wide hearing.
Mr. Huss acknowledges himself a thorough-going Wagnerite and confesses to coming largely under the influence of his works, but the bulk of his writings shows other influences, notably in the strong sense of the classic cyclical form, which Mr. Huss handles with an excellent mastery and in which he proves himself an artist of great resource and equipment. Another favorite form with Huss is the extended aria with orchestra, and in this form he has written several of his best works. Among these may be mentioned 'Cleopatra's Death' for soprano, 'Nocturne' for the same voice, 'The Seven Ages of Man' for baritone, 'Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead' for alto, and 'After Sorrow's Night' for soprano. In the last-named work Mr. Huss has employed a harmonic scheme which in its modern freedom represents his most advanced development.
At the head of the list of America's lyricists there stands a name perhaps more illustrious than any other which she boasts—that of Ethelbert Nevin. To speak critically of the art of Nevin is a delicate and a difficult task. Its nature does not invite critical examination or demand extended analysis. Nevin's music, in its absence of decided intellectual qualities, presents no striking originalities of style, but remains throughout the simply spontaneous and unaffected utterance of a real and deeply musical nature. It possesses, nevertheless, a strongly individual style (often becoming, we must confess, a mannerism) and an irresistible charm. Moreover, the wide appeal which it has made must be sufficient proof of the real vitality that underlies the seemingly slight psysiognomy of this delicate lyricism. To the aspiring mind, in the presence of an expression so genuine, there must come a strongregret that with such poetical tenderness and grace there should not have been a vein of greater virility to have sounded a deeper note; one that would have played a more important part in the upbuilding of our national art. Despite the fact that the natural flow of Nevin's lyricism beguiled him continually along the lines of least resistance, his life's record was that of a very hard-working and conscientious artist.
Nevin was born near Pittsburgh in 1862. He had the advantage of early musical studies at home and abroad during a European sojourn of his family and he commenced his professional studies in 1881 under B. J. Lang and Stephen Emery in Boston. In 1884 he went to Berlin, where he worked diligently at his piano studies under Karl Klindworth. Returning home, two years later, he settled at Boston and taught, concertized, and followed more zealously his increasing inclination for composition. In 1891, after the publication of some of the songs and piano pieces which have since become so generally popular, Nevin's fame rapidly increased and he was able to indulge his taste for the roving life which he followed during the last ten years of his life, living at Paris, Berlin, Florence, Algiers, and elsewhere, with intervening visits to America, where he was heard in concerts of his own works. In the fall of 1900 Nevin settled at New Haven, where he died suddenly in February, 1901.
The list of Nevin's works comprises almost exclusively short songs and piano compositions. Exceptions to this are several choruses, two pieces for violin and piano, and a posthumously published cantata. That Nevin had larger ambitions in his later life is shown from certain of his letters and the sketches of larger works which he left unfinished. But as the result of his early habits of composition, of the too easy flow of his melody, and perhaps also of his too early successes he was kept within the confines of those miniatureand delicate forms which he made his own domain. The characteristics of Nevin's music, as displayed in these works, are, first, a melodic sense which, though lacking in variety because of decided mannerisms that control it, is full of graceful charm and genuine lyrical quality; second, a harmonic sense ever more limited in its scope but of natural and moving expressiveness. Into the naïve fabric of this the composer contrived to instil a flavor which, if not decidedly original, had a strongly individual feeling.
The first of Nevin's works to reach any popularity was 'A Sketch Book,' published in 1888. Several of its numbers are still reckoned among the most popular of Nevin's works. This was followed by several similar albums of songs and piano pieces until 1891, when, in a book of piano pieces entitled 'Water Scenes,' he published what was to be a piece of world-wide popularity, 'Narcissus.' 'A Book of Songs' (1893) contains the best of Nevin's vocal works. Regarded as a whole, they lack a uniformity of style and despite Mr. Thompson's assertion[88]that Nevin felt but slightly the influences of other composers, these songs show decided traces of the stamp which the study of other writers put upon his work. Chopin is perhaps the prevailing influence that shows itself. Some of the songs of this group mark Nevin's nearest approach to a dramatic style. In parts of number seven of this group, entitled Nocturne, there is a considerable sweep of fiery strength, and the two entitled 'Orsola's Song' and 'In the Night' exhibit a virile content rarely present in Nevin's work. We need not speak of the more popular songs of Nevin, such as 'The Rosary,' 'Little Boy Blue,' ''Twas April,' and 'Mighty Lak' a Rose.' Their appeal lies largely in the sentimental though genuinely tender and deep touch of pathos which they contain.
Nevin's piano works are distinctly Chopinesque.
Suave and elegant figures, grateful to the player, abound in these works and show the hand of the skillful pianist that Nevin was. Some of these piano pieces have become quite as popular as have the songs, and the collections entitled 'In Arcady' and 'A Day in Venice' have been placed in the household répertoire.
Ethelbert Nevin made no claims for his art. Almost unconscious of the larger world of a more universal expression, which the past and present might have offered to him, he created his own limited world and lived therein. We shall mistake, however, if we judge too slightingly of this world as the dilettante expression of a mereprécieux. Something there is of genius in a man who can speak to so many. Ethelbert Nevin was an ornament to American music and the fame of his works will outlive the bulk of our more esoteric art.
It is difficult to find a fitting name to follow that of Nevin. While we have had writers in the smaller forms who equalled and even surpassed Nevin in dramatic force, or in subtleties of construction, the remainder of our purely lyrical writers, it must be said, are on a considerably lower plane and there is lacking in the work of most of them the elegance and fastidiousness which bring these small works within the pale of art. The status of many American songs is—unfortunately with truth—described in Grove's Dictionary (Vol. IV, 'Song'), where it is said: 'Many other American composers whose songs, whilst enjoying a great popularity, descend almost to the lowest level of vocal music.'