Contemporary American Composers Part 6

Arnold now went upon a tramping tour in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.

Some of his compositions show the influence of his journey. He then entered the Cologne Conservatory, studying under Wuellner, Neitzel, and G. Jensen. His first piano sonata was performed there at a public concert. He next went to Breslau, where, under the instruction of Max Bruch, he wrote his cantata, "The Wild Chase," and gave public performance to other orchestral work. Returning now to St. Louis, he busied himself as solo violinist and teacher, travelling also as a conductor of opera companies. When Dvorak came here Arnold wrote his "Plantation Dances," which were produced in a concert under the auspices of the Bohemian composer. Arnold was instructor of harmony at the National Conservatory under Dvorak.

The "Plantation Dances" are Arnold's thirty-third opus, and they have been much played by orchestras; they are also published as a piano duet; the second dance also as a solo. Arnold has not made direct use of Ethiopian themes, but has sought the African spirit. The first of the dances is very nigresque; the second hardly at all, though it is a delicious piece of music; the third dance uses banjo figures and realizes darky hilarity in fine style; the fourth is a cake walk and hits off the droll humor of that pompous ceremony fascinatingly.

Arnold's "Dramatic Overture" shows a fire and rush very characteristic of him and likely to be kept up without sufficient contrast. So also does his cantata, "The Wild Chase." Arnold has written two comic operas. I have heard parts of the first and noted moments of much beauty and humor. The Aragonaise, which opens the third act, is particularly delightful. The orchestration throughout displays Arnold's characteristic studiousness in picturesque effect.

For piano there is a czardas, and a "Valse elegante" for eight hands; it is more Viennese than Chopinesque. It might indeed be called a practicable waltz lavishly adorned. The fruits of Arnold's Oriental journey are seen in his impressionistic "Danse de la Midway Plaisance;" a very clever reminiscence of a Turkish minstrel; and a Turkish march, which has been played by many German orchestras. There is a "Caprice Espagnol," which is delightful, and a "Banjoenne," which treats banjo music so captivatingly that Arnold may be said to have invented a new and fertile and musical form. Besides these there are a fugue for eight hands, a "Minstrel Serenade" for violin and piano, and six duets for violin and viola.

There are also a few part songs and some solos, among which mention should be made of "Ein Marlein," in the old German style, an exquisitely tender "Barcarolle," and a setting of the poem, "I Think of Thee in Silent Night," which makes use of a particularly beautiful phrase for pre-, inter-, and postlude. Arnold has also written some ballet music, a tarantelle for string orchestra, and is at work upon a symphony, and a book, "Some Points in Modern Orchestration." His violin sonata (now in MS.) shows his original talent at its best. In the first movement, the first subject is a snappy and taking example of negro-tone, the second has the perfume of moonlit magnolia in its lyricism. (In the reprise this subject, which had originally appeared in the dominant major, recurs in the tonic major, the key of the sonata being E minor.) The second movement is also in the darky spirit, but full of melancholy. For finale the composer has flown to Ireland and written a bully jig full of dash and spirit.

_N. Clifford Page._

The influence of j.a.panese and Chinese art upon our world of decoration has long been realized. After considering the amount of interest shown in the Celestial music by American composers, one is tempted to prophesy a decided influence in this line, and a considerable spread of j.a.panese influence in the world of music also. j.a.panese music has a decorative effect that is sometimes almost as captivating as in painting.

The city of San Francisco is the natural gateway for any such impulse, and not a little of it has already pa.s.sed the custom house. In this field Edgar S. Kelley's influence is predominating, and it is not surprising that he should pa.s.s the contagion on to his pupil, Nathaniel Clifford Page, who was born in San Francisco, October 26, 1866. His ancestors were American for many years prior to the Revolution. He composed operas at the age of twelve, and has used many of these immature ideas with advantage in the later years. He began the serious study of music at the age of sixteen, Kelley being his princ.i.p.al teacher. His first opera, composed and orchestrated before he became of age, was ent.i.tled "The First Lieutenant." It was produced in 1889 at the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco, where most of the critics spoke highly of its instrumental and Oriental color, some of the scenes being laid in Morocco.

In instrumentation, which is considered Page's forte, he has never had any instruction further than his own reading and investigation. He began to conduct in opera and concert early in life, and has had much experience. He has also been active as a teacher in harmony and orchestration.

An important phase of Page's writing has been incidental music for plays, his greatest success having been achieved by the music for the "Moonlight Blossom," a play based upon j.a.panese life and produced in London in 1898. The overture was written entirely on actual j.a.panese themes, including the national anthem of j.a.pan. Page was three weeks writing these twelve measures. He had a j.a.panese fiddle arranged with a violin finger-board, but thanks to the highly characteristic stubbornness of orchestral players, he was compelled to have this part played by a mandolin. Two j.a.panese drums, a whistle used by a j.a.panese shampooer, and a j.a.panese guitar were somehow permitted to add their accent. The national air is used in augmentation later as the ba.s.s for a j.a.panese song called "K Honen." The fidelity of the music is proved by the fact that Sir Edwin Arnold's j.a.panese wife recognized the various airs and was carried away by the national anthem.

Although the play was not a success, the music was given a cordial reception, and brought Page contracts for other work in England, including a play of Indian life by Mrs. Flora Annie Steel.

Previously to the writing of the "Moonlight Blossom" music, Page had arranged the incidental music for the same author's play, "The Cat and the Cherub." Edgar S. Kelley's "Aladdin" music was the source from which most of the incidental music was drawn; but Page added some things of his own, among them being one of the most effective and unexpected devices for producing a sense of horror and dread I have ever listened to: simply the sounding at long intervals of two gruff single tones in the extreme low register of the double ba.s.ses and ba.s.soons. The grimness of this effect is indescribable.

An unnamed Oriental opera, and an opera called "Villiers," in which old English color is employed (including a grotesque dance of the clumsy Ironsides), show the cosmopolitan restlessness of Page's muse.

An appalling scheme of self-amus.e.m.e.nt is seen in his "Caprice," in which a theme of eight measures' length is instrumented with almost every contrapuntal device known, and with psychological variety that runs through five movements, scherzando, vigoroso, con sentimento, religioso, and a marcia fantastico. The suite called "Village Fete" is an experiment in French local color. It contains five scenes: The Peasants Going to Chapel; The Flower Girls; The Vagabonds; The Tryst; The Sabot Dance; and the Entrance of the Mayor, which is a pompous march.

On the occasion of a performance of this, Louis Arthur Russell wrote: "His orchestra is surely French, and as modern as you please. The idiom is Berlioz's rather than Wagner's."

CHAPTER III.

THE ACADEMICS.

_John Knowles Paine._

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN KNOWLES PAINE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of John K. Paine]

There is one thing better than modernity,--it is immortality. So while I am a most ardent devotee of modern movements, because they are at worst experiments, and motion is necessary to life, I fail to see why it is necessary in picking up something new always to drop something old, as if one were an awkward, b.u.t.ter-fingered parcel-carrier.

If a composer writes empty stuff in the latest styles, he is one degree better than the purveyor of trite stuff in the old styles; but he is n.o.body before the high thinker who finds himself suited by the general methods of the cla.s.sic writers.

The most cla.s.sic of our composers is their venerable dean, John Knowles Paine. It is an interesting proof of the youth of our native school of music, that the princ.i.p.al symphony, "Spring," of our first composer of importance, was written only twenty-one years ago. Before Mr. Paine there had never been an American music writer worthy of serious consideration in the larger forms.

By a mere coincidence Joachim Raff had written a symphony called "Spring" in 1878, just a year before Paine finished his in America.

The first movement in both is called "Nature's Awakening;" such an idea is inevitable in any spring composition, from poetry up--or down.

For a second movement Raff has a wild "Walpurgis Night Revel," while Paine has a scherzo called "May Night Fantasy." Where Raff is uncanny and fiendish, Paine is cheerful and elfin. The third movement of Raff's symphony is called "First Blossoms of Spring," and the last is called "The Joys of Wandering." The latter two movements of Mr.

Paine's symphony are "A Promise of Spring" and "The Glory of Nature."

The beginning of both symphonies is, of course, a slow introduction representing the torpid gloom of winter, out of which spring aspires and ascends.

Paine's symphony, though aiming to shape the molten gold of April fervor in the rigid mold of the symphonic form, has escaped every appearance of mechanism and restraint. It is program music of the most legitimate sort, in full accord with Beethoven's canon, "Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei." It has no aim of imitating springtime noises, but seeks to stimulate by suggestion the hearer's creative imagination, and provoke by a musical telepathy the emotions that swayed the nympholept composer.

The first movement of the symphony has an introduction containing two motives distinct from the two subjects of the movement. These motives represent Winter and the Awakening.

The Winter motive may be again divided into a chill and icy motif and a rushing wind-motif. Through these the timid Awakening spirit lifts its head like the first trillium of the year. There is a silence and a stealthy flutter of the violins as if a cloud of birds were playing courier to the Spring.

Suddenly, after a little prelude, as if a bluebird were tuning his throat, we are enveloped in the key of the symphony (A major) and the Spring runs lilting up the 'cellos to the violins (which are divided in the naf archaic interval of the tenth, too much ignored in our over-colored harmonies). The second subject is propounded by the oboes (in the rather unusual related key of the submediant). This is a lyrical and dancing idea, and it does battle with the underground resistance of the Winter motives. There is an elaborate conclusion of fiercest joy. Its ecstasy droops, and after a little flutter as of little wings, the elaboration opens with the Spring motive in the minor. In this part, scholarship revels in its own luxury, the birds quiver about our heads again, and the reprise begins (in A major of course) with new exultance, the dancing second subject appears (in the tonic), overwhelming the failing strength of the Winter with a cascade of delight. Then the conclusion rushes in; this I consider one of the most joyous themes ever inspired.

There is a coda of vanishing bird-wings and throats, a pizzicato chord on the strings--and Spring has had her coronation.

"The May Night Fantasy" is a moonlit revel of elves caught by a musical reporter, a surrept.i.tious "chiel amang 'em takin'

notes." A single hobgoblin ba.s.soon croaks ludicrously away, the pixies darkle and flirt and dance their hearts out of them.

The Romance is in rondo form with love-lorn iteration of themes and intermezzo, and deftest broidery, the whole ending, after a graceful Recollection, in a bliss of harmony.

The Finale is a halleluiah. It is on the sonata formula, without introduction (the second subject being not in the dominant of A major, but in C major, that chaste, frank key which one of the popes strangely dubbed "lascivious"). The elaboration is frenetic with strife, but the reprise is a many-hued rainbow after storm, and the coda in A major (ending a symphony begun in A minor) is swift with delight.

This symphony has been played much, but not half enough. It should resist the weariness of time as immortally as Fletcher's play, "The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen" (in which Shakespeare's hand is glorious), for it is, to quote that drama, "fresher than May, sweeter than her gold b.u.t.tons on the bough, or all th'enamell'd knacks o' the mead or garden."

John Knowles Paine is a name that has been held in long and high honor among American composers. He was about the earliest of native writers to convince foreign musicians that some good could come out of Nazareth.

He was born in Portland, Me., January 9, 1839. He studied music first under a local teacher, Kotzschmar, making his debut as organist at the age of eighteen. A year later he was in Berlin, where for three years he studied the organ, composition, instrumentation, and singing under Haupt, Wieprecht, and others. He gave several organ concerts in Germany, and made a tour in 1865-1866. In February, 1867, his "Ma.s.s"

was given at the Berlin Singakademie, Paine conducting. Then he came back to the States, and in 1872 was appointed to an instructorship of music at Harvard, whence he was promoted in 1876 to a full professorship, a chair created for him and occupied by him ever since with distinguished success.

His first symphony was brought out by Theodore Thomas in 1876. This and his other orchestral works have been frequently performed at various places in this country and abroad.

His only oratorio, "St. Peter," was first produced at Portland in 1873, and in Boston a year later. It is a work of great power and much dramatic strength. Upton, in his valuable work, "Standard Oratorios,"

calls it "from the highest standpoint the only oratorio yet produced in this country."

This oratorio, while containing much of the floridity and repet.i.tion of Handel at his worst, is also marked with the erudition and largeness of Handel at his best. The aria for St. Peter, "O G.o.d, My G.o.d, Forsake Me Not," is especially fine.

A much-played symphonic poem is Paine's "The Tempest," which develops musically the chief episodes of Shakespeare's play. He has also written a valuable overture to "As You Like It;" he has set Keats'

"Realm of Fancy" exquisitely, and Milton's "Nativity." And he has written a grand opera on a mediaeval theme to his own libretto. This is a three-act work called "Azara;" the libretto has been published by the Riverside Press, and is to be translated into German. This has not yet been performed. Being, unfortunately, an American grand opera, it takes very little acuteness of foresight to predict a long wait before it is ever heard. In it Paine has shown himself more a romanticist than a cla.s.sicist, and the work is said to be full of modernity.

Paine wrote the music for Whittier's "Hymn," used to open the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, and was fitly chosen to write the Columbus March and Hymn for the opening ceremonies of the World's Fair, at Chicago, October 21, 1892. This was given by several thousand performers under the direction of Theodore Thomas.

A most original and interesting work is the chorus, "Phoebus, Arise."

It seems good to hark back for words to old William Drummond "of Hawthornden." The exquisite flavor of long-since that marks the poetry is conserved in the tune. While markedly original, it smacks agreeably of the music of Harry Lawes, that nightingale of the seventeenth century, whose fancies are too much neglected nowadays.

Paine's strong point is his climaxes, which are never timid, and are often positively t.i.tanic, thrilling. The climax of this chorus is notably superb, and the voices hold for two measures after the orchestra finishes. The power of this effect can be easily imagined.

This work is marked, to an unusual extent, with a sensuousness of color.

The year eighteen hundred eighty-one saw the first production of what is generally considered Paine's most important composition, and by some called the best work by an American,--his setting of the choruses of the "Oedipus Tyrannos" of Sophokles. It was written for the presentation by Harvard University, and has been sung, in whole or in part, very frequently since. This masterpiece of Grecian genius is so mighty in conception and so mighty in execution that it has not lost power at all in the long centuries since it first thrilled the Greeks.