Finishing in his earliest period with the strictly German influence, Gilbert had also done with the exhibition of a predominating modern French influence before his colleagues had awakened to the existence of such a thing. It is, however, significant to note that the 'Negro Episode' for orchestra, and arranged also for piano, dates from earliest days. An orchestral 'Legend' was a companion piece. The modern French influence appears in the richly colored and highly poetic soprano aria, 'Salammbô's Invocation to Tänith,' on Flaubert's text; in the very imaginative songs, 'Orlamonde' (Maeterlinck), and 'Zephyrus' (Longfellow), and in the fanciful tone-poem for piano, 'The Island of the Fay,' after Poe. From this general period came, in strong contrast, the barbaric and famous 'Pirate Song,' as well as the delicate 'Croon of the Dew,' and the 'South American Gypsy Songs.' A strong Celtic influence now asserted itself, based upon the Irish literary revival and a study of ancient bardic and other Celtic folk-songs. The chief results were the 'Lament of Deirdre,' a remarkable song of intensest pathos and mood-heaviness; four very individual songs called 'Celtic Studies'; and the 'Fairy Song,' all on verses of the Irish poets. A fine piece of American savagery from this period, presumably deriving from Whitmanic influences,is the song on Frederick Manley's poem, 'Fish Wharf Rhapsody.' These various phases finally yielded to a strong impulse toward a bold expression of Americanism, and Gilbert composed the 'Comedy Overture on Negro Themes,' a vigorous and jubilant work which has been widely heard and has awakened much interest in the composer. A less important 'Humoresque on Negro Minstrel Tunes,' for orchestra, followed, and a massive orchestral 'Negro Rhapsody,' first produced at the 'Norfolk Festival' under the composer's direction in 1913. 'The Dance in the Place Congo,' for orchestra, after a vivid word-painting by George W. Cable, is the composer's most extensive work. There are also for orchestra 'American Dances in Ragtime Rhythm,' and, in another vein, an impressive 'Symphonic Prologue' to J. M. Synge's 'Riders to the Sea,' conducted by the composer at the MacDowell festival at Peterboro, N. H., in 1914. There is a song on Whitman's 'Give me the splendid silent sun,' a chorus with orchestra, 'To Thee, America,' five 'Indian Scenes' for piano, and other works. Often rough in technique, though greatly resourceful, and rich in orchestral imagination, it is to the spirit of the time and nation that Gilbert makes his contribution and his appeal. He is the avowed enemy of tradition and fashion, whether in art, dress, or speech, and a fighter for freedom and individuality in music.
A. F.
Arthur Farwell is a composer who may well be called representatively American, inasmuch as his work contains elements which exemplify the spirit and aims of our native art. Mr. Farwell is perhaps most widely known for his studies in Indian music and for such of his compositions as are built from this material. He has realized, however, that presenting as it does only one phase, and that a more or less exotic one, Indian music in no way can stand as an accepted basis of ournational musical art. Mr. Farwell has kept well abreast of the tide of modern music and has cultivated a style in which its idioms are employed with considerable originality and imbued with the rare poetic feeling that is his. It is with this broadness of view also that Mr. Farwell conducted the Wa-Wan Press, established by him in 1901. This institution had as one of its principal missions the promulgation of the Indian and other folk elements in American composition and the exploitation of such works as employed this element. Its pages were, nevertheless, open to all native composers, irrespective of 'school,' who had something to say, and its founder has to his great credit the record of having lent early recognition to a number of the younger and progressive American composers.
Farwell's earlier compositions reveal the usual sway of varied influences with a tendency to the original harmonic treatment that has remained the distinctive feature of his late work. He may be said to have first 'found himself' in an overture, 'Cornell' (op. 9), written while he was a musical lecturer at Cornell University. Combining Indian themes and college songs in a sort of American academic overture, the vigor of style and effectiveness of scoring has gained for this work a permanent place in the orchestral répertoire. Following this Mr. Farwell devoted himself for some time to the study of and experiments in Indian music, and thus follow in his list of works several of his best-known compositions; the book of 'American Indian Melodies,' for piano; 'Dawn'; 'Ichibuzzh'; and 'The Domain of the Hurakan.' The orchestral version of the last-named work is a score of great impressiveness and of brilliant color. It has had several conspicuous performances which have done much to win recognition for his larger gifts.
The 'Symbolistic Studies,' comprising opera 16, 17, 18, and 24, are tone-poems with a generic title. Thecomposer describes them as being 'program music, the program of which is merely suggested,' an attempt, in other words, to create a form that shall offer the composer the means of unrestricted expression, while its musical coherence shall preserve an intrinsic worth and general appeal as absolute music. In the 'Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony' (opus 21) and the 'Navajo War Dance' (opus 29) Mr. Farwell has made further interesting and effective treatment of the Indian color. The set of pieces comprised under the former title contains some very atmospheric pages in which the strange monotony that marks the Indian song is obtained by novel uses of diatonic material at once bold and beautiful. The barbaric crudity is still further implied in the 'Navajo War Dance,' where Farwell has renounced almost all defined harmony, preserving only the vigorous rhythm of the dance in the bold intervals of the Indian melody.
Mr. Farwell was one of the first composers to write music for the so-called community pageants. In the 'Pageant of Meriden' and the 'Pageant of Darien' he has obtained a remarkable success by the masterly skill with which he has welded the diffusive elements of pictorial description, folk-song suggestion, dances and choruses, into a coherent and artistic whole. Equally successful along similar lines was Farwell's music for Louis N. Parker's play, 'Joseph and His Brethren,' and Sheldon's 'Garden of Paradise.'
In his vocal compositions Farwell shows some of his best inspirations. Among the larger of these works is a tone-poem for voice and orchestra, opus 34 (the words from Sterling's 'Duandon'), a score of rich color and poetic description in which the voice has little of what has heretofore been known as melody, but performs a more modern function of sounding the salient notes of harmonies that are woven in an ultra-modern profusion of color. The same is true of several otherlarge songs, such as 'A Ruined Garden' (opus 14), 'Drake's Drum' (opus 22), and 'The Farewell' (opus 33). In the second section of 'A Ruined Garden,' however, there is a clearer line of melody over a harmonic scheme of haunting loveliness. This song is one of the more popular ones of Mr. Farwell's list, having been sung frequently by Florence Hinkle and others of note. There is an orchestral version of the accompaniment which enhances its rich color effects. In his two most recent songs, 'Bridal Song' and 'Daughter of Ocean' (opus 43), the composer has applied in a more modern and highly colored scheme some of the experiments with secondary seventh chords that lend such interest to his later Indian studies.
In some of his shorter songs Farwell has again made some valuable contributions to the nationalistic development. Besides the interesting cowboy song, 'The Lone Prairie,' already mentioned (see Chap. VII), there is a remarkable utilization of the negro element in 'Moanin' Dove,' one of the 'negro spiritual' harmonizations beautiful in its atmosphere of crooning sadness. In concerted vocal music Farwell has made a setting of Whitman's 'Captain, My Captain' for chorus and orchestra (opus 34), a 'Hymn to Liberty,' sung at a celebration in the New York city hall (1910); some male and mixed choruses, and part-songs for children.
B. L.
Harvey Worthington Loomis occupies not merely a unique place in American music, but one which is elusively so, and difficult of both determination and exposition. To place the delicate and fragile spirit of a Watteau or a Grétry in the midst of the hurly-burly of American life would seem a sorry anachronism, as well as anatopism, on the part of the Providence which rules over the destinies of art. Yet it is some such position that Loomis occupies, a fact which tends toexplain why he has not received the attention at the hands of his countrymen that the rare originality, charm, and finish of his work merit. The court of Louis XVI would have opened its palaces and gardens to him, but the America of the twentieth century with difficulty finds standing room for him in the vestibule. Bringing with him such a nautilus-like spirit as animated the artists of an earlier France, he matured it in an America which as yet knew scarcely anything of any musical system or spirit beyond the German. It is, therefore, a wholly amazing phenomenon of art that, out of materials thus solid, Loomis contrived to fashion his aerial and delicately tinted fairy edifices of tone, of a character totally different from those of Teutons of the subtler sort, and foreshadowing the achievements of the later Frenchmen with a newly devised medium at their command. It is evidence of the purest kind of the yielding of matter to spirit.
Consider that exquisite masterpiece, 'In the Moon Shower'—a very epitome in miniature of Loomis' genius—a setting of Verlaine'sL'heure exquisefor singing voice, speaking voice, piano, and violin. It seems not to contain a harmony or a progression with which we have not long been made familiar by our Germanic system, and yet how complete the departure which it makes from the spirit of German tradition, and how utterly it dissolves the medium which it draws upon to re-materialize it as the shadowy reflection of a Verlaine dream. It is not that Loomis has not become familiar with, and in a measure assimilated, the later French idiom, but that, without the knowledge and employment of it, he earlier spontaneously breathed forth the quality of spirit which we now recognize in a Debussy or a Ravel. Loomis has also been exceedingly hospitable to native aboriginal themes and has treated them in the spirit of a delicate and refined impressionism.His technique is invariably of the nicest, with minute attention to every detail.
Loomis has produced much. There is a grand opera, 'The Traitor Mandolin'; two comic operas; incidental music of most aristocratic artistry to the plays 'The Tragedy of Death,' by René Peter, and 'The Coming of the Prince,' by William Sharp, and music of similarly refined mood to a number of pantomimes—a favorite form of Loomis—'The Enchanted Fountain,' 'Put to the Test,' 'In Old New Amsterdam,' 'Love and Witchcraft,' and 'Black and White.' There are many piano compositions of charm, sprightliness, humor, and impressionistic interest, including two books of 'Lyrics of the Red Man'; and many songs brimming with poetry and character, among them 'In the Foggy Dew,' 'Love Comes, Love Goes,' 'Hark, Hark, the Lark' (a delightful conception inviting no comparison with Schubert), and songs of negro character, such as the exquisite 'Hour of the Whippoorwill.' Loomis has written choruses and part-songs, and a stupendous quantity of excellent children's songs for schools. The composer was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1865 and makes his home in New York. He started upon his musical career in the National Conservatory, where he was awarded a free scholarship by Dr. Dvořák.
If, thus early, it may be said that the many musical ideals and influences which have struck root in America have centred and blended in any single composer, that composer is Frederic Ayres. The true eclecticism which constitutes the latest phase of American development, to have value for musical art, must necessarily involve the complete submergence and assimilation of hitherto unreconciled influences in a single new creativepersonality. Of such a new and authentic American electicism Ayres stands forth so clearly as the protagonist that a claim for him in this rôle will hardly be successfully disputed. This occupation of such a position is, however, a purely spontaneous circumstance, arrived at by obedience to no theory, but only through creative impulse.
Without being unduly extravagant, informal, though logical, as a formalist, Ayres commands his many qualities for the expressive purposes of a spirit eager for the discovery and revelation of perfect beauty. Such a perfection of beauty he by no means always finds; indeed, his earlier experimental excursions not infrequently left the ground rough over which he trod. And even at the present time he is only entering upon a full conscious command of his material. Only a keen sensitiveness to every significant influence, European and American, could have led to the development of so rounded and typical a musical character. Taught, in the first instance, by Stillman-Kelley and Arthur Foote, his broad sympathies led him early to blend the German, French, and American spirit through a devotion to no less striking a group of composers than Bach, Beethoven, Stephen Foster, and César Franck. A constant contact with natural scenes of the greatest grandeur, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, has undoubtedly exercised a broadening effect upon his conceptions. While he has not employed native aboriginal themes, or even made a special study of them, many of his melodies have a strong Indian cast, which is difficult to explain except on the basis of some psychological aspect of climatic and other environmental influences.
The trio for piano, violin, and 'cello (opus 13) abounds in supreme qualities of freshness and spontaneity. Taken as a whole, it is typical of the manner in which the composer rises, easily and blithely, outof the ancient sea of tradition into the blue of a new and happier musical day. The work was first heard on April 18, 1914, at a concert of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and has since had various public performances. The violin sonata (opus 15) is of great beauty and rich in characteristic qualities, and presents an interesting study in formal originality. A piano sonata (opus 16) and a 'cello sonata (opus 17) have been completed. Ayres has written songs of surpassing loveliness and originality. His 'Sea Dirge,' a setting of Shakespeare's 'Full Fathom Five,' from 'The Tempest,' reveals a poignancy of imagination and a perception and apprehension of beauty seldom attained by any composer. Other highly poetic Shakespeare songs are 'Where the Bee Sucks,' 'Come Unto These Yellow Sands,' 'It was a Lover and His Lass.' A richly colored vocal work is 'Sunset Wings' (opus 8), after Rossetti. 'Two Fugues' (opus 9) and 'Fugue Fantasy' (opus 12), for piano, of American suggestiveness, Indian and otherwise, are strikingtours de forceof originality. The 'Songs of the Seeonee Wolves' (opus 10), from Kipling's 'Jungle Book,' are vivid presentations of the composer's conception of the call of the wild. Ayres was born at Binghamton, N. Y., March 17, 1876, and lives in Colorado Springs, Col.
One of the most keenly individualized of American composers, and one of the most daring and original in the employment of ultra-modern resource, is Arthur Shepherd, formerly of Salt Lake City and at present connected with the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Mass. His work, as a whole, is almost unique in American music in the completeness of its departure from the styles of any individual composers who may earlier have stimulated or influenced him. The dominating factor in his work, almost from the beginning, has been the will to express himself in acertain manner, wholly his own, and on this positive ground extraneous influences have been able to gain but a scant foothold. Of the Brahms and Wagner influences which he acknowledges, the former can be traced only in his earliest pages, and the latter seems nowhere to appear. His harmony would make any other German than a radical Strauss enthusiast shrink with horror, so sweeping and so subversive of the usual order are its departures from the accepted scheme, while, on the other hand, it can be said to be very little suggestive of the characteristic harmonic quality of the modern French school. Especially it eschews the luscious and velvety harmonic surface of Debussy. In both melody and harmony, the saccharine—even the merely sweet—the sensuous and the languorous, Shepherd dethrones with the sedulous intolerance of a Pfitzner and, like that composer, exalts in its place a clear and luminous spiritual beauty. Otherwise he works in lines that cut, in chords that bite and grip, and rises often to great nobility of conception and expression. In his latest works, 'The Nuptials of Attila,' a dramatic overture after George Meredith, and a 'Humoreske' for pianoforte and orchestra, he has fought against the tendency toward over-complexity manifested in his earlier work, and has gained a greater clarity of harmonic texture.
The pianoforte sonata in F minor (opus 4), with which the composer took the National Federation of Musical Clubs' prize in the 1909 competition, is a massive work of great breadth of conception. The second movement shows Shepherd's peculiar power of evoking deeply subjective moods; it presents an almost ghostly quality of the elegiac and has much of nobility. The third movement makes bold use of a cowboy song and has a magnificent original melody of a broad Foster-like quality, but the composer holds 'nationalism' to be merely incidental to a broader artistic function.He rises to an unusual naturalness in this movement, which, like the others, is highly virile. 'The City in the Sea,' a 'poem for orchestra, mixed chorus, and baritone solo,' on Bliss Carman's poem, is a large work of extraordinary modernity and individuality. 'Five Songs' (opus 7) are worthily representative and contain much of beauty. There are also 'Theme and Variations' (opus 1), and 'Mazurka' (opus 2), for pianoforte, and a mixed chorus with baritone solo, 'The Lord Hath Brought again Zion.'
Noble Kreider, through the possession of that more exalted sense of beauty and flashing quality of inspiration which illuminates only the rarer musical souls of any period, takes his place with those in the forefront of American musical advance. In this capacity, however, his place is less that of a militant than that of a standard-bearer of ideals of beauty. He has the further distinction of being the only American composer, of first rank at least, who has found the complete expression of his personality and ideals through the medium of the piano, and who, as an inevitable corollary of this circumstance, has more intimately and sympathetically than any other made the piano speak its own proper language. American composers write seriously, and sometimes admirably, for the piano now and then; Kreider lives and breathes through it. It responds to him sensitively and with its whole soul, as it did to Chopin. It has become identified with his imaginative quality.
Chopin has, indeed, been the strongest influence in the formation of Kreider's musical character, and while, in his earlier work, nothing was more evident than this fact, in his later nothing is more evident than the emergence of his own individuality. So distinct, however, is Kreider's personality that it is unmistakably present even in much of his earliest music. Amystery and sombreness, as of an influence of the North, foreign to Chopin, dominates certain of his moods; and then Kreider is more of a pagan than Chopin was.
The 'Two Legends' (opus 1) have beauty and inspiration, if not a particular distinction of modernity. The 'Ballad' (opus 3) is of heroic and Ossianic cast, restless, like much of Kreider's music, with contained passion—a passion which at times flashes forth in unexpected lightning strokes. A 'Nocturne' (opus 4) is haunting in melody and of an almost Oriental languor. The 'Impromptu' (opus 5) is a darting and upspringing inspiration, with a middle section of great lyrical warmth and beauty. Opus 6 comprises two 'Studies,' both containing a very high quality of beauty with special technical interest. 'Six Preludes' (opus 7) are characteristic, at times Chopinesque, and always fresh and inspirational. The 'Prelude' (opus 8) is a broad and powerful processional of great cumulative dynamic force. 'Three Moods' (opus 9) show the full emergence of the composer's individuality; the second, 'The Valley of White Poppies,' is a rarely perfect and ecstatic inspiration. Opus 10 contains a 'Poem' and a 'Valse Sentimentale.' There is also an unpublished work for 'cello and piano and a very original 'Nocturne.' Kreider's development has been chiefly self-directed. His birthplace and home is Goshen, Indiana.
Benjamin Lambord is a composer whose work reflects in a striking manner the evolutionary upheaval which, in the present generation, has carried the nation from the end of the old epoch to the beginning of the new. There could not well be a closer fidelity to the old German musical spirit and style, especially as pertains to theLied, than in Lambord's early songs. Even that restricted medium, however, lent itself to all levels of creative impotence or dignity, and if there isa particular distinguishing characteristic in Lambord's work in that style, it is to be found in a peculiar depth of sincerity, an adumbration of personality yet to emerge in individualized expression. This quality will be observed in the first number, Christina Rossetti's 'Remember or Forget,' of the composer's opus 1, which consists of three songs. 'Four Songs,' opus 4, fall under the same dispensation; all indicate a leaning to poetry of high character. A trio for violin, 'cello, and piano (opus 5) from the same period shows good impulse and bold and well-defined themes, but is conventional in harmony and structure generally. An elaborate 'Valse Fantastique' (opus 6) shows a similar energy and boldness of contour. The modern musical ear must search diligently, however, to discover its fantastic element. 'Two Songs' (opus 7), on poems of Heine and Rückert, are deeply felt, and 'Lehn deine Wang' in particular manifests a tendency to enrich the older medium.
With opus 10, 'Two Songs with Orchestra,' however, the composer stands forth in a wholly new light, as an ultra-modern of exceptional powers, and with a subtlety, an imagination and a rich and varied color-sense of which the earlier works can be said to give no appreciable indication. The second of these songs, 'Clytie,' on a poem by André Chénier, is a highly mature expression in the ultra-modern Germanic idiom, technically speaking, though in its musical quality there is much of subtle individuality. The voice part is managed with an appreciation of both delicacy and power, as well as the requirements of artistic diction, and the accompaniment is a web of sensitive modulation and dissonance pregnant with sensuous beauty at every point. The upbuilding of the climax is masterly. The song was presented with much success at a concert of the Modern Music Society in New York in the season of 1913-14, when it was sung by Miss Maggie Teyte.At the same concert, under the composer's direction, was heard a number from his opus 11, 'Verses from Omar,' for chorus and orchestra. Here Lambord adds to his expressional scheme an effective pseudo-Oriental quality, gaining an insistent atmosphere with very simple means. Particularly interesting is the way in which he has varied the manner of employment of his main theme, showing a keen sense of thematic organization. Peculiarly gratifying is thea cappellarendering of the lines beginning 'But ah! that Spring should vanish with the rose' after the powerful climax for chorus and orchestra combined. The composer also has an 'Introduction and Ballet' (opus 8) for orchestra, a work of considerable elaborateness and much rhythmic and melodic variety, one which shows his thorough grasp of orchestral technique. With the nationalistic school Lambord has nothing in common. He is, however, a native New Englander, being born in Portland, Me., in 1879, and his earlier studies in composition were pursued under MacDowell at Columbia University. Later he travelled in France and Germany and studied orchestration with Vidal in Paris.
In the modification of the romantic through the influence of the ultra-modern school, the musical development of Campbell-Tipton presents a circumstance which is typical of the experience of many American composers whose formative period coincides with the present transitional epoch. The style of the composer's earlier work rested upon a broad Germanic basis, modern, yet scarcely having passed from the modernity of Liszt to that of Strauss. His work in the earlier vein is vigorous, structurally firm, definite in its melodic contours, and warm in its harmonic color. Forceof personality asserts itself, even if the means employed are not highly individualized and lean overheavily upon tradition. To this period belong 'Ten Piano Compositions' (opus 1); 'Romanza Appassionata' (opus 2), for violin and piano; 'Tone Poems' (opus 3), for voice and piano; two 'Legends,' and other works, especially songs. The culminating expression of this period is the 'Sonata Heroic,' for piano, a work of solidity and brilliance, in one broadly conceived movement. It is quasi-programmatical and is founded upon two themes, representing the 'Hero' and the 'Ideal,' the latter in particular being a melody of much warmth and beauty. These are variously interwoven in the development section, and lead to a return upon the second theme and a climax upon the heroic theme. The work has had various public performances in America and Europe. 'Four Sea Lyrics,' for tenor with piano accompaniment, on poems by Arthur Symons, belong, broadly speaking, to the period of the sonata. They are works of distinguished character, 'The Crying of Water' being especially poignant in its expressiveness. The somewhat elaborately worked out 'Suite Pastorale' (opus 27), for violin and piano, and 'Two Preludes' (opus 26), mark no particular departure in style, except that the second of the latter is so modern as to have no bar divisions.
With the 'Nocturnale' and 'Matinale' (opus 28), especially the former, comes a marked departure toward impressionism and ultra-modern harmonic effect, with a gain in color and a corresponding loss in structural quality. The 'Four Seasons' (opus 29), symbolizing four seasons of human life, bear out the tendency toward impressionism and harmonic emancipation, and at the same time seek a greater substantiality of design and treatment. There is an 'Octave Étude' (opus 30), for piano, and a 'Lament' (opus 33), for violin and piano. Among other songs are 'A Spirit Flower,''Three Shadows,' 'A Fool's Soliloquy,' 'The Opium Smoker,' and 'Invocation.' An opera is in process of completion. Campbell-Tipton was born in Chicago, in 1877, and lives at present in Paris.
Arthur Nevin would be deemed an out-and-out romanticist were it not that the authorship of so significant a work as an Indian opera, drawing freely upon Indian songs for thematic material, places him in the ranks of those who have proved the existence of available sources of aboriginal folk-music in America. Nevin is not, however, a nationalist, avowed or otherwise, but with the freedom and experimental eclecticism which has come to be so general a characteristic with American composers, he is ready to draw upon any promising new source of musical suggestion or inspiration. The opera in question, 'Poia,' text by Randolph Hartley, is based upon a sun legend of the Blackfeet Indians of Montana, with whom the composer spent the summers of 1903 and 1904 collecting material. 'Poia' was produced at the Royal Opera, Berlin, Dr. Karl Muck conducting, on April 23, 1910, under stormy circumstances, due to the violent opposition of an anti-American element in the audience. The composer was, nevertheless, many times recalled at the close. The orchestral score is elaborate and modern in instrumental treatment. While Nevin acknowledges Wagner as the chief formative influence upon his musical character, the music of 'Poia' presents little or nothing in the way of obvious Wagnerisms. It is freely lyrical, often very melodious, and, where not boldly characterized by Indian themes, is built on modern German lines. A second opera, 'Twilight,' in one act, has not been performed.
'The Djinns,' a cantata on the metrical fancy of the same name by Victor Hugo, won, with thea cappellachorus, 'The Fringed Gentian' (Bryant), the dividedfirst prize of the Mendelssohn Club of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1912. The cantata is composed for mixed chorus accompanied by two pianos. The composer has chosen not to follow in his musical rhythms the metrical caprice of the poet, but to employ the words freely in a piece of modern musical tone-painting, following the single emotional crescendo and decrescendo of which the poem consists. The work is thoroughly representative of the restless energy of Nevin's muse and contains examples of the sustained lyricism and melodic and rhythmic charm which characterize much of his music. The miniature orchestral suite, 'Love Dreams,' had its first performance, under the composer's direction, at the Peterboro Festival in 1914. Other works of the composer are a pianoforte suite, 'Edgeworth Hills,' 'Two Impromptus' for piano, two mixed choruses on poems by Longfellow, 'At Daybreak' and 'Chrysoar,' and many songs of much charm, including a very direct and sincere piece of expression, 'Love of a Day,' the well-known 'Egyptian Boat Song,' and the exquisite 'Indian Lullaby' on a Blackfeet Indian melody. A piano trio in C major and a string quartet in D minor are in manuscript.
Charles Wakefield Cadman, despite his sympathetic and successful entrance—successful, very likely, because sympathetic—into the field of Indian music, can scarcely be justly classed as a downright nationalist. None of the reputed 'nationalist' composers of America, for that matter, will bear strict analysis as such, for in all cases their compositions upon aboriginal or other primitive melodies peculiar to America constitute but one department of their endeavor, and represent but one element of their ideal. Cadman, nevertheless, had he composed nothing beyond the famous Indian song, 'From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water,' would have done enough to prove the most important and valuablecontention included in the nationalist creed, which is that aboriginal American folk-songs may be a stimulus to the making of good music of a new sort, and that there is nothing inherent in Indian melodies to repulse popular sympathy. Like other American nationalists, Cadman is at heart an eclectic. The nationalism of Grieg, Tschaikowsky, and Puccini interests him, but not so much as the American freedom of choice.
The song mentioned is one of a set of four which first brought the composer into public notice, in 1907. The others are 'Far Off I Hear a Lover's Flute,' 'The Moon Drops Low,' and 'The White Dawn is Stealing.' In his treatment of these Indian themes he does not accentuate their aboriginal character, but enfolds them naturally in a normally modern harmonic matrix, with very pleasing effect. These songs were followed by 'Sayonara,' a Japanese romance, for one or two voices; 'Three Songs to Odysseus,' with orchestral accompaniment (opus 52); 'Idyls of the South Sea'; and 'Idealized Indian Themes,' for the piano—revealing various phases of the composer's versatility and fertile fancy. A representative recent work is the 'Trio in D Major' (opus 56), for violin, violoncello, and piano, of which the leading characteristics are melodic spontaneity and freshness of musical impulse. Everywhere are buoyancy, directness of expression, motion, but little of thematic involution or harmonic or formal sophistication. It is the trio of a lyrist; from the standpoint of modern chamber music it might be called naïve, but the strength, sincerity and beauty of its melodies claim, and sometimes compel, one's attention. There are strong occasional suggestions of Indian influence, probably unintentional on the composer's part, as there is no evidence revealing this work as one of nationalistic intention. The trio has been widely performed.
Cadman has a completed three-act Indian opera, 'The Land of Misty Water,' libretto by Francis LaFlesche and Nelle Richmond Eberhart. Forty-seven actual Indian melodies form its thematic basis. Other works are 'The Vision of Sir Launfal,' a cantata for male voices; 'The Morning of the Year,' a cycle for vocal quartet; and many works in various small forms. Cadman won the second prize in its class in the National Federation of Musical Clubs Prize Competition of 1911 with a song, 'An Indian Nocturne,' and one of the 'Four Indian Songs' was awarded a prize in a Pittsburgh Art Society competition.
The recent sudden appearance of John Alden Carpenter among American composers, with work of singularly well-defined individuality and notable maturity of style, is a phenomenon which calls to mind Minerva springing full-grown from the head of Jove. Except for a sonata for violin and piano, Carpenter's published work consists wholly of songs. The first set, 'Eight Songs for a Medium Voice,' show forth at once the unique personality of the composer. It is Carpenter's distinction, in a sense, to have begun where others have left off. He is a personality of the new musical time with its new and transformed outlook upon the art. The margin of advance gained by the most recent developments of modernity, more especially from the French standpoint, becomes his main territory, while it would be well-nigh impossible, from his work, to suspect that the old ground of tradition and formula had ever existed. Far from his modernity meaning complexity, it is attained generally by means of a veritably startling simplicity. It is theprinciplesof modernity which interest him, and he seeks the simplest means of their exemplification. Above all, he takes high rank in the sensitive perception of beauty. These characteristics are all manifest in the 'Eight Songs' which comprise the richly beautiful 'The Green River' (Lord Douglas), a limpid setting of Stevenson's'Looking-Glass River,' a setting of the Blake 'Cradle Song' which combines science and poetry in a remarkable degree in view of the simplicity of treatment, the somewhat overweighted 'Little Fly' (Blake), the lusty Dorsetshire dialect song, 'Dont Ceäre' (Barnes), a crisp interpretation of Stevenson's 'The Cock Shall Crow,' and characteristic settings of Waller's 'Go, Lovely Rose' and Herrick's 'Bid Me to Live.' Of four highly modernized and colorful Verlaine songs,Le Cieland 'Il Pleure dans mon Cœur,' attain the most modern scheme of musical thought with astonishingly simple means; theChanson d'Automneis sympathetically set, and 'Dansons la Gigue' is sufficiently sardonic. 'Four Songs for a Medium Voice' contain the mysterious tone-painting 'Fog Wraiths' (Mildred Howells), 'To One Unknown' (Helen Dudley), and two poems by Wilde,Les Silhouettesand 'Her Voice.'
In the somewhat elaborate settings of poems from Tagore's 'Gitanjali' Carpenter wrestles with the problem of setting prose poetry to music, often with felicitous effect and yet not always convincingly, despite the intrinsic beauty of his musical ideas. The violin sonata in its themes, its strikingly individual harmonic intuitions, and its structure generally, is of great beauty and interest. The composer was born in Illinois in 1876, graduated at Harvard and studied music with Bernard Ziehn and Sir Edward Edgar. In 1897 he entered the business established by his father in Chicago and has since directed it.
An American ultra-modernist of extensive attainments, but whose work has as yet come very little into public attention, is T. Carl Whitmer. In an age when sensationalism and sensuousness have predominated in the taste of the musical world it is not surprising to find but slight public progress being made by a composer whose whole tendency is in the directionof a highly clarified spirituality, as is the case with this composer. Whitmer has a spiritual kinship with that small group of composers (Arthur Shepherd in America, Hans Pfitzner in Germany, and d'Indy in France may be included in it) who, however different they may be in musical individuality, unite in banishing utterly from music not only the vulgar but also even the more distinguished aspects of the sensuously sweet, which chiefly and most quickly (except for the rhythmic element) recommends music to the multitude the world over. Whitmer's music is psychologically subtle and spiritually rarefied; in color it corresponds to the violet end of the spectrum. It shuns realistic and elemental qualities and seeks an ethereal expression which gives it not infrequently a sense of over-earthliness. Its salient characteristics are well represented in a soprano song, 'The Fog Maiden,' an achievement of extraordinary originality and distinction of mood. Among the composer's many other songs are the scintillating and crisp 'My Lord Comes Riding,' the poignantly expressive 'Song from the Gardener's Lodge,' the sanely ultra-modern 'Just To-night,' 'Song from Pippa Passes,' 'My Star,' 'Ah! Love, but a Day,' 'Cloud and Wind,' 'Nausicaa,' 'Willowwood,' 'Ballad of Trees and the Master,' 'I Will Twine the Violet,' 'Christmas Carol,' and 'Our Birth Is but a Sleep.' Whitmer's manuscripts include no less surprising an offering than six 'Mysteries,' or spiritual music-dramas, 'The Creation,' 'The Covenant,' 'The Nativity,' 'The Temptation,' 'Mary Magdalene,' and 'The Passion,' upon which works the composer has published a little essay entitled 'Concerning a National Spiritual Drama.' For chorus with orchestra is an 'Elegiac Rhapsody,' and for orchestra alone a set of 'Miniatures,' originally for piano, of which 'Sunrise' is the most important. There are an 'Athenian' sonata for violin and piano, various organ works, anthems, and women's choruses, and a numberof 'Symbolisms'—readings of original texts with piano accompaniment.
William Henry Humiston has not given out a large quantity of work, but all that he has done bears the stamp of a genuine personality and indicates a composer of rich and sincere musical feeling. One may go further and say that Humiston is animated by the spirit of nobility of the old classicists from Bach down, and shares their passion for cleanness and clarity of expression. In his eschewing of the more fashionable ultra-modern idiom of the day there is neither a pose of 'back to Mozart' nor a sense of incapacity or unwillingness to join the chase. Merely he goes his own way and takes his own time about it, and the result is music that is worth hearing and that takes strong hold of the affections. In 'Iphigenia before the Sacrifice at Aulis' (poem by Sara King Wiley), a dramatic scene for soprano, chorus, and orchestra, Humiston has produced a work of great dignity, fervor, and beauty. His themes are few and trenchant, each an authentic creative idea, and he has admirably, in his music, contrasted the dramatic motives of the poem. His well-known 'Southern Fantasy,' for orchestra—the quiet Americanism of which makes it possible to include him in the present chapter—is based on three principal themes of negro character, and in general strikes the more sombre note of negro psychology, though a lively dance appears in the middle, later to be combined, with contrapuntal wit, with one of the other themes. It is a work of true beauty and reveals Humiston's mastery of orchestration. A suite for violin and orchestra is virtually, in its three movements, built out of a single theme, which the composer finally fugues for a climax. The work is no less beautiful than cleverand, like the compositions already mentioned, is bound to take a high place in the final accounting of American music. There is also an overture to 'Twelfth Night,' written for Maude Adams. Among Humiston's songs are: 'Song of Evening' and 'Song of a Young Girl' (both Sara King Wiley), 'Yo te amo' (Rosalie Jonas), 'Beauty's Daughters' (Byron), and 'Thou Beauteous Spring' (Kern).
A personality of unusual vigor and distinction of character is that of John Powell, who has rather suddenly come into notice through a number of large-dimensioned works of interesting content. Disregarding from the outset the classical thematic styles, the composer yet retains the cyclical forms, almost recklessly surcharging them with an Americanism of the boldest sort. This Americanism derives from the folk-songs and folk-music generally of the south-eastern part of the United States and from Virginia in particular. He easily brushes aside at a stroke the critical objections of the past decade to the modern harmonization of these folk-tunes. Through all his work is an unusual, an almost singular, opulence of impulse, of inspiration—the composer has an amazing amount to say and the notes tumble over themselves in his eagerness for expression. 'Sonata Virginianesque' (opus 7), for violin and piano, is in three movements, 'In the Quarters,' 'In the Woods,' and 'At the Big House,' and is based on negro motives and old reel tunes. There are three piano sonatas,Psychologique(opus 15),Noble(opus 21), andTeutonica(opus 24). The first treats of the human soul-struggle under the text 'The wages of sin is death.' TheSonata Nobleis strongly Virginian andvolkstümlich. The 'Teutonica' is an expression of the Teutonic psychology and is a kind of symphony for piano, in the form of anallegro sostenuto(sonata form), and a set of variations which comprise the elements of severalmovements. Opus 13 is a piano concerto in B minor and opus 23 is a violin concerto largely based on Virginian folk-tunes. The string quartet (opus 19) is strongly American, even in its finale, which is a tarentella. The piano suite 'In the South' (opus 16) includes 'Humming Birds,' a remarkable combination of realistic tone-painting and musical structure, a splendidly sombre 'Negro Elegy' and a big and virile 'Pioneer Dance,' on a melody of 'Crocker' fiddle-tune type. Another piano suite, 'At the Fair' (opus 22), gives us a classic on the notorious 'Hoochee-Coochee' dance; 'Clowns,' with peculiar harmonic and melodic kinks; 'Banjo-picker,' a remarkable art-expression of the typical banjo tune, and other movements. Beyond these are 'Variations and Double Fugue' (opus 20), for piano, on a theme of F. C. Hahr, a work of American characteristics, and 'Three Songs' (opus 18).
Blair Fairchild is one of the American composers who have preferred to live chiefly abroad, a sin for which the penalty is to be little known at home. Fairchild was heard in New York in the season of 1913-1914 with his choral and orchestral work 'From the Song of Songs,' which was performed at a concert of the Modern Music Society. It is a work of excellent musicianship, though singularly apart from the chief elements of modern French advance for a composer who is so much at home in Paris. The tonally 'non-committal' chord of the augmented fifth is occasionally employed, but otherwise the scheme is distinctly Germanic, though without violent modernity. The most memorable phrase of the work is a littlea cappellasection at the words 'I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,' which in its simple lyricism contrasts well with the more elaborate context. The choral writing is excellently managed. A companion work in the same form is 'David's Lament.' Fairchild has produced severalchamber music works, a string quintet (opus 20), aConcerto de Chambre(opus 26), for violin, piano, and string quartet, and a trio for piano, violin, and 'cello (opus 24), all maintaining his high standard of musicianship. For orchestra there is a pair of sketches, 'Tamineh,' after a Persian legend, containingSonge d'amourandPaysage, the score being dedicated to Florent Schmitt. There are also 'Six Psalms' for chorus (a cappella) and soli.
Maurice Arnold is a member of the group of Americans who came under the influence of Dvořák during the latter's stay in America, and he has lent his striking gifts to the cause of the romantic-nationalistic movement. His Symphony in F Minor, produced under his own leadership in Berlin in 1907, called forth warm praise from the German press, which found it a vigorous and poetic work, and in certain of its aspects boldly American. The directness and warmth of Arnold's melodic inspiration is equally manifest in the Sonata in B Minor for violin and piano. The main theme of the first movement is a rhythmically sparkling melody showing negro characteristics, although the composer achieves his effects of negro musical color without the employment of actual folk-tunes. The second movement attains a high level of beauty and intimate poetic appeal, and the last movement, in the character of a jig, is virile. Arnold's cyclical works are not highly involved thematically, though formally well-balanced; their strength lies in their admirable lyrical qualities. The very pleasing 'Plantation Dances' for orchestra have been heard in many places, but a 'Dramatic Overture' remains almost unknown. Other works are a cantata, 'The Wild Chase,' various piano exotics, including aDanse de la Midway Plaisance, a Turkish march, and aCaprice Espagnole, a number of songs, and two comic operas.
The work of Henry Schoenefeld bears a certain relationto that of Arnold in that both composers felt the influence of what Rupert Hughes has termed the 'Dvořákian invasion,' although Schoenefeld, like other Americans, had essayed the field of negro music before that historic event. The most significant and representative published work of the composer is the 'Sonata (quasi fantasia) for Violin and Piano' (opus 53), which won the prize offered by Henri Marteau in 1899. Schoenefeld's better known works comprise a suite for strings (opus 15), an overture, 'In the Sunny South,' and a festival overture, 'The American Flag,' all of which have been described by Hughes, as well as a 'Rural Symphony,' which won a National Conservatory prize. An ode for male chorus, solo and orchestra,Die drei Indianer, a 'Reverie' for string orchestra, harp, and organ, and two impromptus for string orchestra,Valse Nobleand 'Meditation,' are among the composer's later works, and there are many small piano compositions.
The last ten years of the composer's life have been devoted to a study of Indian music and themes, which have served as the inspiration of his recent compositions. He has composed a pantomime-ballet, 'Wachicanta,' founded on an Indian legend, the music of which idealizes Indian life, retaining the barbaric color. This ballet, in the opinion of Ruth St. Denis, the dancer, is the first adaptation of an Indian theme to the modern ballet form by an American composer.
Still later, and of greater magnitude, is Mr. Schoenefeld's opera in three acts and four scenes, based on a libretto in English, which portrays a tragedy of Indian life in Florida. The structure is modern, and the composer's purpose again to idealize his Indian material. Mr. Schoenefeld is of the belief that Indian folk-lore and tradition constitute the most poetic and essentially American musical material available. Mr. Schoenefeld was born in Hughestown in 1857.
It is seldom that a serious American composer trains all his batteries upon the target of a single musical form, but this is what Sidney Homer has done with respect to the song. In consequence he has attained a high development of his individuality in the song form, as well as having produced many examples of it, his published songs numbering nearly eighty. His work shows immense range of character, from a veritable drama in song form, such as the stormily emotional 'How's My Boy?' (Dobell), to childhood songs of the utmost simplicity, such as the 'Seventeen Lyrics from Sing-Song,' by Christina Rossetti, containing the charming 'Boats Sail on the Rivers.' While Homer frequently makes elaborate tone-poems of his accompaniments, he does not follow the modern French vocal declamatory style, but aims rather at what might be termed dramatic melody. He seeks an intimate union of music not only with the general emotional character and fluctuations, but also with the particular verbal shadings of the text. German in technical foundation, his individuality is well defined, and he is thoroughly emancipated from dependence upon the German idiom. 'Infant Sorrow,' an impassioned plaint of babyhood, is interestingly representative of the type of dramatic song which Homer has developed. It is one of two settings from the 'Songs of Experience' of the undying, yet strangely living, William Blake, the other, 'The Sick Rose,' being peculiarly poignant in its melody, which is almost entirely constituted of the intervals of the minor second and major seventh. The harsh 'Pauper's Drive' (Noël), and the bold challenge, 'To Russia' (Joaquin Miller), are in the dramatic tone-poem style, while the whimsical 'Fiddler of Dooney' (Yeats) more nearly approaches being a downrighttune. To the writing of sheer tunes Homer has devoted also a considerable share of his effort, with signal success, as the popularity of 'A Banjo Song' and 'Uncle Rome' testifies. Widely known, also, are his deeply felt setting of Stevenson's 'Requiem,' the charming and humorous 'Ferry me across the water,' on Christina Rossetti's poem, and the warmly melodious 'Dearest' (Henley), and Hood's 'Song of the Shirt.'
Almost exclusively devoted to vocal writing is Henry Clough-Leighter, who has over one hundred published songs and nearly an equal number of choral works, including settings of the Anglican Service. Exceptions are in the form of duets and studies for piano. In the classification somewhat loosely undertaken in the present chapter Clough-Leighter would be regarded as an eclectic. His work shows the influence of the various modern schools without leaning overheavily upon the individuality of any one of them, albeit there is evidence of a considerable influence from the Germany of Richard Strauss. He lays tumultuous siege to the strongholds of modern harmony and especially modulation, in which latter respect he is bold sometimes to a fault, inclining to a tonal restlessness that will not bear too much insistence. His harmonic fluency is unusual, and his workmanship immaculate. Among Clough-Leighter's most important choral works are: 'The Righteous Branch' (opus 32), 'Christ Triumphant' (opus 35), and 'Psalm of Trust,' all contrapuntal in treatment and requiring a large chorus of skilled voices. There are a number of song cycles, including 'Youth and Spring' (opus 5), 'Rossetti-Lyrics' (opus 58), 'Two Lyrics' of Victor Hugo (opus 53), all with piano accompaniment; 'Love-Sorrow' (opus 44) with accompaniment of violin, 'cello, and piano, and 'The Day of Beauty' (opus 48), for high voice, string quartet, and piano. 'Lasca,' a symphonic ballad for tenor and orchestra, is one of the best and most dramatic of thecomposer's works. 'Seven Songs' (opus 57) show a wealth of emotion and fancy,Requiescat(Oscar Wilde) attaining a considerable distinction of mood. Clough-Leighter is a native of Washington, D. C. (b. 1874), and held organists' posts there and in Providence. Latterly he has been head of the editorial department of the Boston Music Company, and has made Boston his home.
Marshall Kernochan, though his output has not been large, has written a number of songs possessing qualities of distinction. He is among those brave souls who have essayed Walt Whitman and in his two Whitman settings, indeed, he has come off with an unusual measure of success. These are: 'Out of the rolling ocean the crowd' and 'We two together.' While neither of these songs reveals striking originality or more than a mild modernism so far as harmony goes, they are conceived with a breadth and carried through with a power that lift them out of the usual run of contemporary native songs. The composer has made the most of the lyrical possibilities of the lines, and has done well with the less singable phrases by a careful attention to syllabic accent and duration. 'We Two Together' has an exquisite middle section and a very powerful climax, and will require a singer of heroic mold. 'Lilacs' (Armitage Livingston) is a little work of true delicacy and possesses style, and its companion, 'A Child's Song' (Richard Hovey), treats sympathetically a little masterpiece of childhood poetry. Among the composer's other songs are four on poems by Browning, 'A Serenade at the Villa,' 'Round Us the Wild Creatures,' from 'Ferishta's Fancies,' 'At the Window,' and 'Give a Rouse.'
Homer Norris has not been without an influence upon the development of ultra-modernism in America by virtue of being one of the first teachers of theory in this country to receive his training in Paris. Moreover, hewas writing songs revealing modern French influence at a time when probably Loeffler and Gilbert were the only others in America who knew what was happening to musical evolution in France. His richly harmonized 'Twilight' is a song of much beauty, and more daring than successful, probably, is 'Peace' (Sill), the accompaniment of which consists of nothing but slow descending scales of C. Interesting, also, as a bit of early French influence is the MaeterlinckEt s'il revenait un jour?of delicate mood. Norris has also a sacred cantata, 'Nain,' and a cycle for vocal quartet on words chosen from Whitman and entitled 'The Flight of the Eagle.'
Gena Branscombe is one of the very few women composers of America who have established for themselves a genuine creative musical individuality. Even among this few Miss Branscombe holds a position of distinction, partly through the intensity of her personality and partly through her approach to harmonic ultra-modernism, a field to which most women composers, being only melodists, are strangers. There would be no occasion to refer to the question of sex in the present instance except that when it is stated to be feminine it commonly implies an inevitable discount upon attainment and is urged as an excuse for feeble work, which circumstance entitles a woman composer for whom such excuse need not be made, as in the case of Miss Branscombe, to a measure of corrective credit. Inexhaustible buoyancy, a superlative emotional wealth, and a wholly singular gift of musical intuition are the qualities which have shaped the composer's musical personality. Being a woman, it may be said at once that structural ideals do not interest her. Her work is an outpouring of moods, moods of an intensity and richness which demand a high musical color scheme. This, not science—though Miss Branscombe is well grounded in theory—but a startlingcharacter of intuition, provides her withal. Her impatient melodies leap and dash with youthful life, while her accompaniments abound in harmonic hair-breadth escapes. No considered harmonic or modularity scheme gives her music its richness of color; she continually leaps into apparently remote progressions without looking before, and the same intuition which suggested the hazard suggests also the way out, which comes with surprising facility. She is best known for her many songs, among them the dreamful and haunting 'Krischna' and 'Dear Little Hut by the Rice Fields,' both Laurence Hope's poems, also Hope's 'Just in the Hush,' 'The Deserted Gypsy,' and the stirring 'Dear Is My Inlaid Sword'; the rich and impassioned Browning settings, 'There's a Woman Like a Dewdrop,' 'Serenade,' from 'In a Gondola,' 'Boot and Saddle,' etc.; the sombre 'Sleep, Then, Ah, Sleep!' (Le Gallienne); the fanciful and exotic little cycle 'A Lute of Jade' (Crammer-Byng), and many others. Miss Branscombe has written a very spirited 'Festival March' for orchestra, which was produced at the Peterboro Festival in 1914; an extendedConcertstückfor piano and orchestra; part-songs for women's voices; and a number of compositions for violin and piano. Miss Branscombe is Canadian by birth.
Alexander Russell is the composer of a number of songs of strong emotional appeal. He first became known for his setting of Lanier's 'Sunset,' a warmly colored work, but somewhat over-Wagnerized. 'My Heaven' (Harry S. Lee) also has lyrical intensity and bears out the chromatic scheme of the other. 'The Sacred Fire' (Alice Duer Miller) has more distinction of mood as well as greater unity of design, and 'Expectation' (John Hay) also shows an advance in style and individuality. 'In Fountain Court' (Arthur Symons) is perhaps his most mature and characteristic expression. Among other songs are 'Elegy on theDeath of a Mad Dog' (Goldsmith), 'The Prayer Perfect' (Riley), 'My True Love Lies Asleep' (Lizette Reese), and 'A Gypsy Song' (Braley). Russell's work shows chiefly the influence of the modern German school.
James Philip Dunn is a militant ultra-modern realist. He was first known by an extremely vigorous quintet for pianoforte and strings, in G minor, which was heard at one of the concerts of the New York Manuscript Society. It is of considerable thematic, and particularly of dramatic, interest, though scarcely revealing a settled style. Strauss, Wagner, Tschaikowsky, and Puccini have all influenced him strongly, with Strauss leading, but what ultimate personality will issue from this strenuously boiling melting-pot it is too early to say. The far from bashful realism of Dunn's setting of Poe's 'Annabel Lee,' for voice and orchestra, which was sung by Frank Ormsby at a People's Symphony Concert in the season of 1913-14, somewhat shocked the sensibilities of the critics, for futurism was still merely a name (Schoenberg's quartet not yet having arrived on the scene) and realism could still hold terrors for the sensitive. The goal of realism is the stage, and so in fact Dunn's latest works are designed for the theatre. They are called 'Lyric Scenes' and consist of two short and superlatively intense musical stage episodes, 'The Fountain,' after Charles McMillan, and the grewsome 'A Kiss in the Dark,' after Maurice Lavelle. They are truly amazing in musical structure and emotional content and may well be considered to represent thedernier criin realism, after which can come only the deluge—or futurism. The composer has also a sonata for violin and piano in G major and a piano tarantella and minuet.
Alexander Hull, whose great quantity of work is accessible as yet only through one book of ten songs, is a composer who is likely to be heard more of inthe future. These songs reveal influences ranging from Schubert to Hugo Wolf, but, of much greater importance, they reveal also a richly endowed creative musical personality, even if one that has only begun to find itself in terms of a matured art. One will look far for a clearer spiritual beauty than that of the 'Wanderer's Night Song' (Goethe), or for a fleeting spontaneity and dissolving charm surpassing that of the little 'Blue, Blue, Floweret Mine.' 'My Love Is Lovelier than the Sprays' (Ezra Pound) has moments of magical and haunting beauty, though it runs the risk that Hull not infrequently takes of sacrificing simplicity and clarity of the voice part to harmonic interest in the accompaniment. 'Within the Convent Close' (Wilbur Underwood) reveals the composer's power to establish and maintain a mood and it also hints at the unexploited possibilities of the secondary seventh chords. Hull experiments; he is quite willing to be unsuccessful, but he insists upon the essay and is thus strongly creative. He admits many influences, and therefore will find his own mature style tardily. He has written over one hundred songs, a symphony, a suite for string orchestra, a fantasia for orchestra with piano, violin compositions, a suite for piano, a piano sonata, choral, and other works.
A. Walter Kramer has put out a considerable number of works in small forms, ranging in tendency from the earlier to the later German and deriving influence occasionally from French sources. He is an eclectic, but from the German standpoint. His works are chiefly songs and string pieces. Among the former are: 'I Dreamed and Wept a-Dreaming' (Heine), very German in scheme, albeit sufficiently modern; 'In Dreams' (Prudhomme), a work of ultra-modern tendencies which follows its title well and successfully establishes its mood; 'Come to Me' (Christina Rossetti), a mood of spiritual exaltation, which presents an avoidanceof traditional harmonic formulæ not always to be found in Kramer's music; the languorous and somewhat Debussyish 'A Nocturne,' and 'Bes' ob All,' a song in negro character based upon a melody originally composed for violin, which suggests MacDowell in mood-quality. For violin and piano is the characteristicIntermède Arabe, a fervent 'Elegy' of melodic warmth and breadth, and other works. Beyond these are works for piano, 'cello and piano, string orchestra, organ, and a number of part-songs.
So rapidly and in such numbers do new American composers appear in these days that both omission and disproportion must occur in dealing with the coming generation in any such chapter as the present. A few names may be mentioned, however, of composers who have given indications of having serious aims. Francis Hendricks has written piano compositions that are not without charm and modernity of style, as well as songs. Charles T. Griffes, in songs and piano pieces, has shown a refined appreciation of modern ideals. Deems Taylor was heard at the MacDowell Festival in 1914, with an admirable ballad, 'The Highwayman,' for solo baritone, women's chorus, and orchestra. At the same festival was heard a prelude by Edward Ballantine to Herman Hagedorn's play 'The Delectable Forest,' a work regarded as subtle and imaginative, and two movements of Lewis M. Isaacs' ballet suite, 'Atalanta.' Chalmers Clifton's suite for trumpet and orchestra has been heard at a MacDowell Festival. Leo Ornstein, in his 'Preludes' and 'Impressions of Notre Dame,' for piano, has out-moded Schoenberg and Stravinsky and inaugurated the school of post-futurism.
American nationalists are not to be sought exclusively among the native-born, as the example of Dvořák shows. Carlos Troyer, an Alsatian of long residence in America, has made a significant contributionto the nationalistic phase of native music in his songs of the Zuñi Indians, collected during his sojourns with that extraordinary tribe. Among them are the 'Zuñian Lullaby,' 'Sunrise Call of the Zuñis,' 'The Coming of Montezuma,' 'Great Rain Dance of the Zuñis,' 'Festive Sun Dance,' and 'Hymn to the Sun.' If Troyer has not escaped Germanizing the accompaniments of these songs, neither has he obscured their essential character.
On the side of negro music contributions of great value have been made by two gifted representatives of the race, Harry Burleigh and Will Marion Cook. Burleigh is known by a number of original songs, sincere in their feeling and of much melodic and harmonic appeal, among them the favorite 'Jean' and the very passionate 'Elysium.' In 'Plantation Melodies Old and New' he has given excellent settings to seven highly characteristic negro songs, two of them, 'My Merlindy Brown' and 'Negro Lullaby,' being original, poems for the group being provided by R. E. Phillips, J. E. Campbell, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Of much original poetic fancy, as well as valuable in its presentation of various negro motives in effective development, is his piano suite, 'In the Southland,' which has MacDowellish touches about it. There are also 'Saracen Songs,' 'Five Songs of Lawrence Hope,' and arrangements of songs in H. E. Krehbiel's book, 'Afro-American Folk Songs.'
The work of Will Marion Cook presents some quite extraordinary qualities and in part deals with characteristics of the negro which have hitherto found little or no expression in terms of modern musical art. Such a thing as his song, 'A Negro Sermon,' was certainly never set forth in print before. It reflects the quintessence of the drollery and humor of the primitive negro in religion, and follows with prodigious alertness his swift and erratic, though deeply sincere, zig-zaggings ofthought and mood. It is an altogether amazing production, a psychological musical achievement. The same is to be said of 'An Explanation,' a negro court scene in the form of a song. From such unusual works as these to straightforward ragtime Cook's songs cover a wide range of style. The 'Rain Song' is whimsical and forceful, with elemental emotion and impulse, and 'Swim Along' is full of instinctive joy of life.
No composer in America has so completely arrived at an authentic and mature musical individuality along the line of ultra-modern European developments as Charles Martin Loeffler. Though of Alsatian birth, his long residence in this country has identified him with American musical life. Too much the artist to theorize about his art, he has enunciated no creed, although he has been known to suggest the idea that the composer's musical personality is largely constituted by the assimilation of all that is sympathetic to him in the range of his musical observation. Applying this principle to his own work, it is plain that his closest affiliation is with the school of modern France, although the work of no American composer is less closely identified than his with that of any one individual of the modern French group. There speaks through Loeffler's music a distinct personality, one that lives upon a high plane of poetic imagination, and whose intuitions are subtle and refined in a wholly extraordinary degree. Here is no convenient falling back upon modish scale effects or generic modern harmonies, but a pressing forward to the keenest and most poignant individualism. If it is an individuality that insists upon a veritable aristocracy of emotional and psychological subtlety, a total repudiation of the primitive passions which bind certaingreat composers to mother earth and lead them to brave the charge of occasional banality, on the other hand, it is one which gives an intense and unvitiated delight to those minds which are able to follow its excursions into the remote and unwonted regions of the soul. 'Tuneful' Loeffler's music cannot be called, but it sings constantly in its own preordained and peculiar way, and its motives are often haunting and always distinguished. Loeffler's literary researches are incredible in extent and singularity, and have undoubtedly had a far-reaching effect upon the character of his genius, as has also his intimate knowledge of and devotion to the Gregorian chant, of the austere arcanum of which he is a supreme master. He is a consummate master of orchestration and his orchestral works have been heard with most of the great orchestras of the world.
His serious claims as a composer were first made known through hisVeillées de l'Ukraine, for violin and orchestra, a suite based upon tales by Gogol, which was heard in Boston, with the composer as soloist, in 1891, although an earlier string quartet in A minor had been previously heard in Philadelphia. A sextet for two violins, two violas, and two 'cellos next came into notice, and after that a 'Fantastic' concerto for 'cello and orchestra. The 'Divertimento in A Minor,' for violin and orchestra, the composer played at a Boston symphony concert in 1895. Loeffler's fame has rested chiefly upon his remarkably imaginative tone-poems,La Mort de Tintagiles, after Maeterlinck,La Bonne ChansonandLa Villanelle du Diable, after Verlaine and Rollinat, respectively, and the 'Pagan Poem,' after Virgil, which includes a piano and three trumpets behind the scenes. The songs are exquisite reflections of the composer's subtle imagination; among them are:Harmonies du Soir,Dansons la Gigue,La Cloche fêlée,Timbres Oubliés, 'The Hosting of the Sidhe,' 'The Hostof the Air,' and 'To Helen.' There are also an octet for strings, clarinets, and harp; a quintet for three violins, viola, and 'cello; two rhapsodies for oboe, viola, and piano; 'By the Waters of Babylon,' for women's chorus, two flutes, 'cello, harp, and organ; and other works. The composer was for many years second concert master of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and makes his home in Boston and Medfield, Mass.
Extreme ultra-modernism, stopping, however, on the hither side of futurism, has not been pushed farther in America than in the very remarkable work of Carl Engel. Except that he is himself, he might be regarded as a disciple of Loeffler. His published work consists of several groups of songs, in which the voice is treated in the modern French mode of lyrical declamation over an accompanying tone-poem of high refinement of mood, a positively diabolical ingenuity and subtlety of invention, and impeccable technical finish. In this scheme—determined by the most recent Gallic influences—Engel goes his individual way, producing work that is always interesting and often unusual in both originality and beauty. Of the sixChansons intimes, on poems by Jean Moréas, one is struck particularly byA l'Océan, which is extraordinarily bold in its assertion of tragic oceanic emotion.Rionsis a fine piece of bitter ultra-modern irony—a companion piece to Loeffler'sDansons la Gigue.Trois Epigrammes, on poems by Paul Mariéton, have much of poignancy and eloquence and weave a dizzying web of ingenious ultra-modernism. One thinks—how far from Americanism is this remarkable work! Of 'Two Lyrics,' poems by Amy Lowell, 'The Sea Shell' is of most ingratiating charm, particularly with respect to its lilting motion; and here the composer has allowed himself to write atune! 'Three Sonnets' presentLecture du Soir(Chantavoine), an excellent example of Engel's capacity fororiginality,Dors, ma Belle(Marsolleau), andEn Voiture(Ajalbert), all of recent date. 'Four Lyrics' (poems by Cora Fabbri) are earlier songs and show the composer's point of departure.
Another extreme ultra-modern of Gallic musical sympathies is Henry Eichheim, who is known by a group of 'Seven Songs,' a showing not great in quantity but of a quality revealing at once a convincing distinction of achievement. It is not, however, the emotional refinements of the French poets to which Eichheim responds, but to the alluring and shadowy tints of the 'Celtic Twilight.' From Yeats he has chosen 'The Heart of the Woman' and 'Aedh Wishes His Beloved were Dead'; from Fiona Macleod, 'When the Dew is Falling,' 'The Undersong,' 'Across the Silent Stream,' and 'The Lament of Ian the Proud'; while he has made a single departure in the 'Autumn Song' of Rossetti. Individual and subtly felt as these songs are, Eichheim is concerned not so much with sheer or extreme ingenuity of means as with the attainment of the expression of deep and dreamful moods, modern in poetic expression, and hence demanding an equally modern musical treatment. This the composer gives them, finding a deeply sincere expression through the highly modern means employed. Perhaps the most eloquent of the 'Seven Songs' is 'Aedh Wishes His Beloved were Dead,' its solemn march of rich harmonic progressions conveying an emotion of singular depth and beauty. Eichheim has also written three symphonic poems.
Victor Herbert has made departures into the realms of serious music, notably of late years, in two grand operas, 'Natoma,' in three acts, and 'Madeleine.' 'Natoma,' the text of which is by Joseph D. Redding, was first produced on February 23, 1911, in Philadelphia and subsequently in New York and Chicago. It dealswith a story of Spanish and Indian life in California in the early part of the last century. The opera has had a very considerable measure of success and reveals Herbert's skillful handling of the orchestra, his power in broad concerted forms, and his unsuspected knowledge of Indian music. 'Madeleine,' produced at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in the season of 1913-14, was not regarded with an equal favor.
Besides some already included in this chapter there are other composers of foreign birth who either live or have sojourned here, as well as American composers who have preferred to live chiefly abroad.
Walter Morse Rummel, who makes his home in Berlin and Paris, has made for himself an individual and significant place in modern music. The tonal emancipation which Debussy gained through a basic devotion to the Gregorian chant, Rummel with increasing success seeks and finds in certain mediæval songs of the folk, in particular those of the troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. His earlier works, for example the 'Five Songs,' dating from 1906, seem conventional in scheme, although one notes their essential refinement andesprit. The 'Ten Songs for Children, Young and Old,' are of another stamp. Innocently simple in appearance, they reveal on closer observation all the sophistication of a profound devotee of the ecclesiastical modes, or, it may be, the spontaneous utterance of one with whom these have become 'second nature.' Like 'Alice in Wonderland,' they will speak with equal pertinence to children and grown-ups. 'A Fairy Suite,' for piano, being 'Five Short Stories Preceded by a Prologue and Followed by a Moral,' are an achievement of similar intent, scintillating with fancy, charm, humor, and modern interest. As the 'Prologue' and 'Moral' are practically identical, the purpose of the latter would seem to be to exhort us always, in art, to return to our main subject.
'Hesternæ Rosæ' consists of a collection of troubadour and other mediæval songs, rhythmically reconstructed from the original neumes, and hence hypothetical. They are profoundly interesting and merit close study. Rummel has composed also a quartet for strings, a violin sonata, for piano a 'Prelude,' 'Sea Voices,' and 'Seven Little Impressions for a Simple Mind,' and many songs.