Contemporary American Composers Part 10

Chadwick usually succeeds, however, in catching foreign flavors. His "Song from the Persian" is one of his best works, and possibly the very best is his "Sorais' Song," to Rider Haggard's splendid words.

It has an epic power and a wild despair. Up to the flippancy of its last measures, it is quite inspired, and one of the strongest of American songs. The "Danza" is captivating and full of novelty. "Green Grows the Willow" is a burden of charming pathos and quaintness, though princ.i.p.ally a study in theme-management. "Allah," however, is rather Ethiopian than Mahommedan. His "Bedouin Love Song" has little Oriental color, but is full of rush and fire, with a superb ending. It is the best of the countless settings of this song. I wish I could say the same of his "Thou Art so Like a Flower," but he has missed the intense repression of Heine.

[Music: _To Mrs. G.H. Stoddard._

TWO FOLK SONGS.

I

G.W. Chadwick

O love and joy are for a day, Then tears and sorrow after, O love is for a summer's day, And then farewell to laughter.

If love and joy are for a day And then farewell to laughter, To live with love give me one day Though tears forever after.

Copyright, 1892, by Arthur P. Schmidt.]

The "Serenade" displays an interesting rhythm; "The Miller's Daughter"

is tender, and "A Warning" is delightfully witty. One regrets, however, that its best points were previously used in Schumann's perfect folk-song, "Wenn ich fruh in den Garten geh'." Chadwick has two folk-songs of his own, however, which are superb. "He Loves Me" is a tender, cradle-song-like bit of delicious color. The "Lullaby" is a genuinely interesting study in this overworked form. "The Lily" has the pa.s.sionate lyricism of Chaminade, and "Sweet Wind that Blows" is a fine frenzy. The "Nocturne" is dainty and has its one good climax.

"Before the Dawn" has some of Chadwick's best work; it is especially marked by a daring harmonic--you might say--_impasto_.

His princ.i.p.al works, besides those mentioned, may be catalogued (I am unable to do more than catalogue most of them, having seen only one of them, "The Lily Nymph," performed, and having read the score of only the "Melpomene" overture): Concert overtures, "Rip Van Winkle"

(written in Leipzig, 1879, and played there the same year), "Thalia"

(1883), "Melpomene" (1887), "The Miller's Daughter" (1887), and "Adonais" (in memory of a friend, 1899); Symphonies, in C (1882), in B (1885); an Andante for string orchestra (1884), and numerous pieces of chamber-music. In the case of the cantata, "The Lily Nymph,"

Chadwick's art was quite futilized by the superb inanities of the book he used. The "Melpomene" is a work of infinitely more specific gravity. It is one of the most important of American orchestral works.

As his "Thalia" was an "overture to an imaginary comedy," so this, to an imaginary tragedy. It has been played by the Boston Symphony and many other orchestras. It has that definiteness of mood with that indefiniteness of circ.u.mstance in which music wins its most dignified prosperity.

It opens with the solitary voice of the English horn, which gives a notable pathos (read Berlioz on this despairful elegist, and remember its haunting wail in the last act of "Tristan und Isolde"). The woeful plaint of this voice breathing above a low sinister roll of the tympanum establishes at once the atmosphere of melancholy. Other instruments join the wail, which breaks out wildly from the whole orchestra. Over a waving accompaniment of clarinets, the other wood-winds strike up a more lyric and hopeful strain, and a soliloquy from the 'cello ends the slow introduction, the materials of which are taken from the two princ.i.p.al subjects of the overture, which is built on the cla.s.sic sonata formula. The first subject is announced by the first violins against the full orchestra; the subsidiary theme is given to the flutes and oboes; after a powerful climax, and a beautiful subsidence of the storm in the lower strings, the second subject appears in the relative major with honeyed lyricism. The conclusion, which is made rather elaborate by the latter-day symphonists, is reduced to a brief modulation by Mr. Chadwick, and almost before one knows it, he is in the midst of the elaboration. It is hard to say whether the composer's emotion or his counterpoint is given freer rein here, for the work is remarkable both for the display of every technical resource and for the irresistible tempest of its pa.s.sion. In the reprise there is a climax that thrills one even as he tamely reads the score, and must be overpowering in actual performance: the cheerful consolation of the second subject provokes a cyclonic outburst of grief; there is a furious climax of thrilling flutes and violins over a mad blare of bra.s.s, the while the cymbals shiver beneath the blows of the kettledrum-sticks. An abrupt silence prepares for a fierce thunderous clamor from the tympani and the great drum (beaten with the sticks of the side-drum).

This subsides to a single thud of a kettledrum; there is another eloquent silence; the English horn returns to its first plaint; but grief has died of very exercise, and the work ends in a coda that establishes a major harmony and leaves the hearer with a heart purged white and clean.

The "Melpomene" overture is a work of such inspiration and such scholarship that it must surely find a long youth in the chronicle of our music.

_Arthur Foote._

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARTHUR FOOTE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of Arthur Foote]

The nearest approach Americans make to the enthusiastic German _Mannerchor_ is in the college glee clubs. The dignity of their selections is not always up to that of the Teutonic chorus, but they develop a salutary fondness for color and shading, exaggerating both a little perhaps, yet aiming at the right warmth and variety withal.

Even those elaborate paraphrases and circ.u.mlocutions of Mother Goose rhymes, to which they are so p.r.o.ne, show a striving after dramatic effect and richness of harmony, as well as a keen sense of wit and humor that are by no means incompatible with real value in music.

Among their other good deeds must be counted the fostering of the musical ambitions of Arthur Foote, who was for two years the leader of the Glee Club of Harvard University. Though he has by no means been content to delve no deeper into music than glee-club depths, I think the training has been of value, and its peculiar character is patent in his works. He is especially fond of writing for men's voices, and is remarkably at home in their management, and he strives rather for color-ma.s.ses than for separate individualities in the voices.

Among his larger works for men's voices is an elaborate setting of Longfellow's poem, "The Skeleton in Armor," which is full of vigor and generally st.u.r.dy in treatment, especially in its descriptions of Viking war and seafaring. The storm-scenes, as in Mr. Foote's "Wreck of the Hesperus," seem faintly to suggest Wagnerian _Donner und Blitzen_, but in general Mr. Foote has resisted the universal tendency to copy the mannerisms so many take to be the real essence of the Bayreuthian. A pretty bit of fancy is the use of a spinning-wheel accompaniment to the love-song, although the spindle is nowhere suggested by the poem. Indeed, the spinning is treated as a characteristic motif for the Norseman's bride, somewhat as it is Senta's motif in "The Flying Dutchman."

The chief fault with the "Skeleton" chorus is that it is always choric. There are no solos, and the different registers are never used separately for more than a bar or two, before the whole ma.s.s chimes in. Even the instrumental interludes are short, and the general effect must be rather undiversified, one of sympathy, too, for the unrested chorus.

"The Wreck of the Hesperus" is an ambitious work, built on large lines, but hardly represents Mr. Foote at his best. It is for mixed voices, and is pitched in a most lugubrious key, being always either vociferous with panic or dismal with minor woe. A worse trouble yet is the attempt to make a short poem fit a long composition. The Procrustean operation strains even Longfellow sadly.

This blemish is lacking in "The Farewell of Hiawatha," which is written for men's voices. Though it, too, is of a sad tone, its sombre hues are rich and varied as a tapestry. Its effects, though potent, seem more sincere and less labored. It is altogether n.o.ble.

A larger body of sacred music for mixed voices than many other Americans can boast, also swells Foote's opus-score. Here he shows the same facility with the quartette as in his other works. In fact, I think the effect of glee-club training on his young mind has strongly influenced his whole life-work. And, by the way, the most talented of all the great Sebastian Bach's twenty-one children--every one a musical opus, too--was diverted from the philosopher's career for which he was intended, and into professional musicianship, by just such a glee-club training in the universities at Leipzig and Frankfort.

Almost all of Foote's compositions are written in the close harmony and limited range of vocal music, and he very rarely sweeps the keyboard in his piano compositions, or hunts out startling novelties in strictly pianistic effect. He is not fond of the cloudy regions of the upper notes, and though he may dart brilliantly skyward now and then just to show that his wings are good for lighter air, he is soon back again, drifting along the middle ether.

He has won his high place by faithful adherence to his own sober, serene ideals, and by his genuine culture and seriousness. He is thoroughly American by birth and training, though his direct English descent accounts for his decided leaning toward the better impulses of the English school of music. He was born at Salem, Ma.s.s., March 5, 1853, and though he played the piano a good deal as a boy, and made a beginning in the study of composition with Emery, he did not study seriously until he graduated from Harvard in 1874. He then took up the higher branches of composition under the tuition of John Knowles Paine, and obtained in 1875 the degree of A.M. in the special department of music. He also studied the organ and the piano with B.J.

Lang at Boston, and has since made that city his home, teaching and playing the organ.

His overture, "In the Mountains," has been much played from the ma.n.u.script by orchestras, among them the Boston Symphony. Besides a considerable amount of highly valuable contributions to American chamber-music, and two fine piano suites, he has written a great many piano pieces and songs which deserve even greater popularity than they have won, because, while not bristling with technical difficulties, they are yet of permanent worth.

I know of no modern composer who has come nearer to relighting the fires that beam in the old gavottes and fugues and preludes. His two gavottes are to me among the best since Bach. They are an example of what it is to be academic without being only a-rattle with dry bones.

He has written a Nocturne that gets farther from being a mere imitation of Chopin than almost any night-piece written since the Pole appropriated that form bodily from John Field and made it his own.

One of his most original pieces is the Capriccio of his D minor Suite, which is also unusually brilliant in color at times; and he has an Allegretto that is a scherzo of the good old whole-souled humor.

Foote, in fact, is never sickly in sentiment.

Of his rather numerous songs, the older English poets, like Marlowe, Sidney, Shakespeare, Suckling, and Herrick, have given him much inspiration. The song "It Was a Lover and his La.s.s" is especially taking. His three songs, "When You Become a Nun, Dear," "The Road to Kew," and "Ho, Pretty Page!" written by modern poets in a half-archaic way, display a most delicious fund of subtile and ironic musical humor. "The Hawthorn Wins the Damask Rose" shows how really fine a well conducted English ballad can be. Among his sadder songs, the "Irish Folksong," "I'm Wearing Awa'," and the weird "In a Bower" are heavy with deepest pathos, while "Sweet Is True Love" is as wildly intense and as haunting in its woe as the fate of the poor Elaine, whose despair it sings. This I count one of the most appealing of modern songs.

[Music: IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS La.s.s

ARTHUR FOOTE, Op. 10, No. 1.

1. It was a lover and his la.s.s, With a hey and a ho, With a hey and a ho, and a hey, and a hey non-i-no!

That o'er the green cornfield did pa.s.s, In the springtime, the springtime, The only pretty ring-time, When birds do sing hey ding a ding!

Sweet lovers love the spring.

2. And therefore take the present time, With a hey and a ho, With a hey and a ho, and a hey, and a hey non-i-no!

For love is crowned with the prime, In the springtime, the springtime, The only pretty ring-time, When birds do sing hey ding a ding!

Sweet lovers love the Spring. (_Shakespeare._)

Copyright, 1886, by Arthur P. Schmidt & Co.]

His greatest work is undoubtedly his symphonic prologue to Dante's story of "Francesca da Rimini," for full orchestra. Without being informed upon the subject, I fancy a certain programmism in the prologue that is not indicated in the quotation at the beginning of the work:

"Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria."

The prologue, however, seems to me to contain more than the psychological content of these lines from the fifth canto of the "Inferno."

The slow introduction in C minor begins with a long, deep sigh, followed by a downward pa.s.sage in the violas and 'cellos that seems to indicate the steps that bring Dante and Vergil down to the edge of the precipice past which the cyclone of the d.a.m.ned rolls eternally. There is some shrieking and shuddering, and ominous thudding of the tympani (which are tuned to unusual notes), then follows a short recitative which might represent Dante's query to Francesca how she came to yield to love. Suddenly out of the swirling strings the first subject is caught up; it is a frenzy pa.s.sionately sung by the first violins, reenforced by the flutes at the crises. The second subject appears after a sudden prelude by the bra.s.s; it is a very lyric waltz-tune in the relative major, and doubtless depicts the joy recalled in sorrow. The conclusion is quite lengthy; it is also in waltz form, and is first announced by a single flute over the violins and violas, the first violins keeping to the gloomy G string. This air is now given to a solo horn, and a fierce and irresistible dance fervor is worked up. The elaboration begins with the first subject in F sharp minor, caught up fiercely from a downward rush. The reprise is not long delayed, and the second subject appears, contrary to custom, in the tonic major instead of the tonic minor. The coda is deliciously tender and beautiful, possibly because, being a prologue, the work must prepare for a drama that begins cheerfully; possibly because after all there is comfort in bliss remembered in sorrow.

Tschakowski has written a symphonic poem on the same subject, which has been also the inspiration of numberless dramas, and is one of the most pathetic pages in all literature; even the stern old Dante says that when he heard Francesca tell her story he almost died of pity, and fell to the ground as one dead.

A Serenade for string orchestra (op. 25) contains a Prelude, a tender Air, a luscious Intermezzo in the rich key of B major with soli for violin and 'cello, a Romance with a good climax, and a gallant Gavotte with special attention to the too much slighted violas.

Opus 36 is a suite for full orchestra. It has been played by the Boston Symphony, and consists of a brilliant Allegro; an Adagio of deep sincerity and beautifully varied color, a period wherein the bra.s.s choir, heavily scored, chants alone, and the division of the theme among the wood-wind over the rushing strings is especially effective; a very whimsical Andante with frequent changes of tempo, and soli for the English horn in antiphony with the first oboe; and a madcap Presto that whisks itself out in the first violins.

Two other published works are a string quartette (op. 4) and a quintette for piano and strings (op. 36). This begins in A minor with a well woven and well derived set of themes, and ends in a scherzo in A major with spinning-song characteristics. Between these two movements comes an intermezzo of strongly marked Scotch tone. This has been performed by the Kneisel Quartette.