Contemporary American Composers Part 18

W.H. Neidlinger's first three songs were kept in his desk for a year and then kept by a publisher for a year longer, and finally brought out in 1889. To his great surprise, the "Serenade," which he calls "just a little bit of commonplace melody," had an immense sale and created a demand for more of his work. The absolute simplicity of this exquisite gem is misleading. It is not cheap in its lack of ornament, but it eminently deserves that high-praising epithet (so pitilessly abused), "chaste." It has the daintiness and minute completeness of a Tanagra figurine.

Mr. Neidlinger was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1863, and was compelled to earn the money for his own education and for his musical studies.

From Dudley Buck and, later, C.C. Muller, of New York, he has had his only musical instruction. He lived abroad for some time, teaching the voice in Paris, then returned to live in Chicago. He has written two operas, one of them having been produced by the Bostonians.

Mr. Neidlinger builds his songs upon one guiding principle, that is, faithfulness to elocutionary accent and intonation. As he neatly phrases it, his songs are "colored sketches on a poet's engravings."

The usual simplicity of Mr. Neidlinger's songs does not forbid a dramatic outburst at the proper time, as in the fine mood, "A Leaf;"

or the sombre depth of "Night," "Nocturne," and "Solitude;" or yet the sustainedly poignant anguish of "The Pine-tree." Occasionally the accompaniment is developed with elaborateness, as in the bird-flutings of "The Robin," and "Memories," an extremely rich work, with its mellow brook-music and a hint of nightingale complaint in the minor.

"Evening Song," a bit of inspired tenderness, is one of Mr.

Neidlinger's best works. Almost better is "Sunshine," a streak of brilliant fire quenched with a sudden cloud at the end. Other valuable works are "Messages," the happy little Scotch song, "Laddie," and "Dreaming," which is now sombre, now fierce with outbursts of agony, but always a melody, always ariose.

Mr. Neidlinger has made a special study of music for children, his book, "Small Songs for Small Children," being much used in kindergarten work. A book of his, devoted to a synthetic philosophy of song, is completed for publication; he calls it "Spenser, Darwin, Tyndall, etc., in sugar-coated pills; geography, electricity, and hundreds of other things in song."

_The Cleveland Colony._

The city of Cleveland contains a musical colony which is certainly more important than that of any town of its size. About the tenth of our cities in population, it is at least fourth, and possibly third, in productiveness in valuable composition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILSON G. SMITH.]

The most widely known of Cleveland composers is Wilson G. Smith. He has been especially fortunate in hitting the golden mean between forbidding abstruseness and trivial popularity, and consequently enjoys the esteem of those learned in music as well as of those merely happy in it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of Wilson G. Smith]

His erudition has persuaded him to a large simplicity; his nature turns him to a musical optimism that gives many of his works a Mozartian cheer. Graciousness is his key.

He was born in Elyria, O., and educated in the public schools of Cleveland, where he graduated. Prevented by delicate health from a college education, he has nevertheless, by wide reading, broadened himself into culture, and is an essayist of much skill. His musical education began in 1876, at Cincinnati, where his teacher, Otto Singer, encouraged him to make music his profession. In 1880 he was in Berlin, where he studied for several years under Kiel, Scharwenka, Moskowski, and Oscar Raif. He then returned to Cleveland, where he took up the teaching of organ, piano, voice, and composition.

The most important of Smith's earlier works was a series of five pieces called "Hommage a Edvard Grieg," which brought warmest commendation from the Scandinavian master. One of the most striking characteristics of Smith's genius is his ability to catch the exact spirit of other composers. He has paid "homage" to Schumann, Chopin, Schubert, and Grieg, and in all he has achieved remarkable success, for he has done more than copy their little tricks of expression, oddities of manner, and pet weaknesses. He has caught the individuality and the spirit of each man.

In his compositions in Grieg-ton Smith has seized the fascinating looseness of the Griegorian tonality and its whimsicality. The "Humoresque" is a bit of t.i.tanic merriment; the "Mazurka" is most deftly built and is full of dance-fire; the "Arietta" is highly original, and the "Capricietto" shows such ingenious management of triplets, and has altogether such a crisp, brisk flavor, that it reminds one of Lamb's rhapsody on roast pig, where he exclaims, "I tasted _crackling_!" The "Romance," superb in gloom and largeness of treatment, is worthy of the composer of "The Death of Asra." A later work, "Caprice Norwegienne," is also a strong brew of Scandinavian essence.

A "Schumannesque" is written closely on the lines of Schumann's "Arabesque." A later "Hommage a Schumann" is equally faithful to another style of the master, and dashes forth with characteristic and un-nave gaiety and challenging thinness of harmony, occasionally bursting out into great rare chords, just to show what can be done when one tries.

The man that could write both this work and the highly faithful "Hommage a Schubert," and then whirl forth the rich-colored, sensuous fall and purr of the "Hommage a Chopin," must be granted at least an unusual command over pianistic materials, and a most unusual acuteness of observation.

He can write _a la_ Smith, too, and has a vein quite his own, even though he prefers to build his work on well-established lines, and fit his palette with colors well tempered and toned by the masters.

In this line is opus 21, a group of four pieces called "Echoes of Ye Olden Time." The "Pastorale" is rather Smithian than olden, with its mellow harmony, but the "Minuetto" is the perfection of chivalric foppery and pompous gaiety. The "Gavotte" suggests the contagious good humor of Bach, and the "Minuetto Grazioso," the best of the series, has a touch of the goodly old intervals, tenths and sixths, that taste like a draught of spring water in the midst of our modern liqueurs.

The musical world in convention a.s.sembled has covenanted that certain harmonies shall be set apart for pasturage. Just why these arbitrary pastorales should suggest meads and syrinxes, and dancing shepherds, it would be hard to tell. But this effect they certainly have, and a good pastorale is a better antidote for the blues and other civic ills than anything I know, except the actual green and blue of fields and skies. Among the best of the best pastoral music, I should place Smith's "Gavotte Pastorale." It is one of the five pieces in his book of "Romantic Studies" (op. 57).

This same volume contains a "Scherzo alla Tarantella," which is full of reckless wit. But the _abandon_ is so happy as to seem misplaced in a tarantella, that dance whose traditional origin is the maniacal frenzy produced by the bite of the tarantula. An earlier Tarantella (op. 34) is far truer to the meaning of the dance, and fairly raves with shrieking fury and shuddering horror. This is better, to me, than h.e.l.ler's familiar piece.

The "Second Gavotte" is a n.o.ble work, the nave gaiety of cla.s.sicism being enriched with many of the great, pealing chords the modern piano is so fertile in. I count it as one of the most spontaneous gavottes of modern times, one that is buoyant with the afflation of the olden days. It carries a musette of which old Father Bach need not have felt ashamed,--one of the most ingenious examples of a drone-ba.s.s ever written.

The "Menuet Moderne" is musical champagne. A very neat series of little variations is sheafed together, and called "Mosaics." Mr. Smith has written two pieces well styled "Mazurka Poetique;" the later (opus 48) is the more original, but the sweet geniality and rapturously beautiful ending of opus 38 is purer music. "Les Papillons" is marked with a strange touch of negro color; it is, as it were, an Ethiopiano piece. Its best point is its cadenza. Smith has a great fondness for these brilliant precipitations. They not only give further evidence of his fondness for older schools, but they also partially explain the fondness of concert performers for his works. His fervid "Love Sonnet," his "Polonaise de Concert," full of virility as well as virtuosity, and his delicious "Mill-wheel Song," and a late composition, a brilliant "Papillon," rich as a b.u.t.terfly's wing, are notable among his numerous works. Possibly his largest achievement is the three concert-transcriptions for two pianos. He has taken pieces by Grieg, Raff, and Bachmann, and enlarged, enforced, decorated, and in every way enn.o.bled them. But to me his most fascinatingly original work is his "Arabesque," an entirely unhackneyed and memorable composition.

Smith's experience in teaching has crystallized into several pedagogic works. His "Scale Playing with particular reference to the development of the third, fourth, and fifth fingers of each hand;" his "Eight Measure," "Octave," and "Five Minute" studies, have brought the most unreserved commendation from the most important of our teachers.

A late and most happy scheme has been the use of a set of variations for technical and interpretative instruction. For this purpose he wrote his "Themes Arabesques," of which numbers one and eighteen not only have emotional and artistic interest, but lie in the fingers in a strangely tickling way.

What might be called a professorial simplicity is seen in many of Smith's songs. The almost unadorned, strictly essential beauty of his melodies and accompaniments is neither neglect nor cheapness; it is restraint to the point of cla.s.sicism, and romanticism all the intenser for repression. Take, for example, that perfect song, "If I but Knew," which would be one of a score of the world's best short songs, to my thinking. Note the open fifths, horrifying if you thump them academically, but very brave and straightforward, fitly touched.

There is something of Haydn at his best in this and in the fluty "Shadow Song," in "The Kiss in the Rain," and "A Sailor's La.s.sie," for they are as crystalline and direct as "Papa's" own immortal "Schaferlied."

[Music: To Mr. Constantin Sternberg.

ARABESQUE.

Wilson G. Smith, Op. 39.

Copyright, 1889, by O. Ditson & Co.]

Smith has gone over to the great majority,--the composers who have set "Du bist wie eine Blume;" but he has joined those at the top. Two of Smith's songs have a quality of their own, an appeal that is bewitching: "Entreaty," a perfect melody, and "The Dimple in Her Cheek," which is fairly peachy in color and flavor.

A strange place in the world of music is that held by Johann H. Beck, whom some have not feared to call the greatest of American composers.

Yet none of his music has ever been printed. In this he resembles B.J.

Lang, of Boston, who keeps his work persistently in the dark, even the sacred oratorio he has written.

All of Beck's works, except eight songs, are built on very large lines, and though they have enjoyed a not infrequent public performance, their dimensions would add panic to the usual timidity of publishers. Believing in the grand orchestra, with its complex possibilities, as the logical climax of music, Beck has devoted himself chiefly to it. He feels that the activity of the modern artist should lie in the line of "amplifying, ill.u.s.trating, dissecting, and filling in the outlines left by the great creators of music and the drama." He foresees that the most complicated scores of to-day will be Haydnesque in simplicity to the beginning of the next century, and he is willing to elaborate his best and deepest learning as far as in him lies, and wait till the popular audience grows up to him, rather than write down to the level of the present appreciation.

The resolve and the patient isolation of such a devotee is nothing short of heroic; but I doubt that the truest mission of the artist is to consider the future too closely. Even the dictionaries and encyclopaedias of one decade, are of small use to the next. The tiny lyrics of Herrick, though, have no quarrel with time, nor has time any grudge against the intimate figurines of Tanagra. The burdened trellises of Richard Strauss may feel the frost long before the slender ivy of Boccherini's minuet.

[Music: A FRAGMENT OF THE SCORE OF "SALAMMBo," BY JOHANN H. BECK.]

Science falls speedily out of date, and philosophy is soon out of fashion. Art that uses both, is neither. When it makes crutches of them and leans its whole weight on them, it will fall with them in the period of their inevitable decay.

Of course, there is evolution here as well as in science. The artist must hunt out new forms of expressing his world-old emotions, or he will not impress his hearers, and there is no gainsaying Beck's thesis that the Chinese puzzle of to-day will be the antique simplicity of a later epoch. But it must never be forgotten, that art should be complex only to avoid the greater evils of inadequacy and triteness. A high simplicity of plan and an ultimate popularity of appeal are essentials to immortal art.

It is my great misfortune never to have heard one of Beck's works performed, but, judging from a fragment of a deliciously dreamy moonlight scene from his unfinished music drama, "Salammbo," which he kindly sent me, and from the enthusiasm of the severest critics, he must be granted a most unusual poetic gift, solidity and whimsicality, and a hardly excelled erudition. His orchestration shows a hand lavish with color and cunning in novel effects. Several of his works have been performed with great applause in Germany, where Beck spent many years in study. He was born at Cleveland, in 1856, and is a graduate of the Leipzig Conservatorium.

In art, quality is everything; quant.i.ty is only a secondary consideration. It is on account of the quality of his work that James H. Rogers must be placed among the very best of modern song-writers, though his published works are not many. When one considers his tuition, it is small wonder that his music should show the finish of long mastery. Born in 1857, at Fair Haven, Conn., he took up the study of the piano at the age of twelve, and at eighteen was in Berlin, studying there for more than two years with Loschorn, Rohde, Haupt, and Ehrlich, and then in Paris for two years under Guilmant, Fissot, and Widor. Since then he has been in Cleveland as organist, concert pianist, and teacher.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of James H. Rogers]

His songs are written usually in a characteristic form of dramatic, yet lyric recitative. His "Alb.u.m of Five Songs" contains notable examples of this style, particularly the "Good-Night," "Come to Me in My Dreams," and the supremely tragic climax of "Jealousy." The song, "Evening," with its bell-like accompaniment, is more purely lyric, like the enchanting "At Parting," which was too delicately and fragrantly perfect to escape the wide popularity it has had. His "Declaration" is ravishingly exquisite, and offers a strange contrast to the "Requiescat," which is a dirge of the utmost largeness and grandeur. His graceful "Fly, White b.u.t.terflies," and "In Harbor," and the dramatic setting of "The Loreley," the jovial "Gather Ye Rosebuds"

of jaunty Rob Herrick, the foppish tragedy of "La Vie est Vaine" (in which the composer's French prosody is a whit askew), that gallant, sweet song, "My True Love Hath My Heart," and a gracious setting of Heine's flower-song, are all noteworthy lyrics. He has set some of Tolsto's words to music, the sinister love of "Doubt Not, O Friend,"

and the hurry and glow of "The First Spring Days," making unusually powerful songs. In the "Look Off, Dear Love," he did not catch up with Lanier's great lyric, but he handled his material most effectively in Aldrich' "Song from the Persian," with its Oriental wail followed by a martial joy. The high verve that marks his work lifts his "Sing, O Heavens," out of the rut of Christmas anthems.

Of instrumental work, there is only one small book, "Scenes du Bal," a series of nine pieces with lyric characterization in the spirit, but not the manner of Schumann's "Carneval." The most striking numbers are "Les Bavardes," "Blonde et Brune," and a fire-eating polonaise.

These close the lamentably small number of manifestations of a most decisive ability.

Another Cleveland composer well spoken of is Charles Sommer.

A young woman of genuine ability, who has been too busy with teaching and concert pianism to find as much leisure as she deserves for composition, is Patty Stair, a prominent musical figure in Cleveland.

Her theoretical studies were received entirely at Cleveland, under F.

Ba.s.sett. Her published works include a book of "Six Songs," all of them interesting and artistic, and the "Madrigal" particularly ingenious; and a comic glee of the most irresistible humor, called "An Interrupted Serenade;" in ma.n.u.script are a most original song, "Flirtation," a jovial part song for male voices, "Jenny Kissed Me," a berceuse for violin and piano, a graceful song, "Were I a Brook," a setting of Thomas Campion's "Pet.i.tion," and another deeply stirring religious song for contralto, "O Lamb of G.o.d."