Contemporary American Composers Part 7

To realize its possibilities musically is to give proof enough of the very highest order of genius,--a genius akin to that of Sophokles. It may be said that in general Paine has completely fulfilled his opportunities.

Mendelssohn also set two Greek tragedies to music, Sophokles' "Oedipus in Kolonos" and his "Antigone." Mendelssohn is reported to have made a first attempt at writing Grecian music, or what we suppose it to be, mainly a matter of unison and meagre instrumentation. He was soon dissuaded from such a step, however, and wisely. The Greek tragedians, really writers of grand opera, made undoubted use of the best musical implements and knowledge they had. Creative emotion has its prosperity in the minds of its audience, not in the accuracy of its mechanism. To secure the effect on us that the Greek tragedians produced on contemporary audiences, it is necessary that our music be a sublimation along the lines we are accustomed to, as theirs was along lines familiar to them and effective with them. Otherwise, instead of being moved by the miseries of Oedipus, we should be chiefly occupied with amus.e.m.e.nt at the oddity of the music, and soon bored unendurably by its monotony and thinness.

Mendelssohn decided then to use unison frequently for suggestion's sake, but not to carry it to a fault. His experiments along these lines have been of evident advantage to Paine, who has, however, kept strictly to his own individuality, and produced a work that, at its highest, reaches a higher plane, in my opinion, than anything in Mendelssohn's n.o.ble tragedies,--and I am not, at that, one of those that affect to look down upon the achievements of the genius that built "Elijah."

Paine's prelude is an immense piece of work, in every way larger and more elaborate than that to Mendelssohn's "Antigone" (the "Oedipus in Kolonos" begins strongly with only one period of thirteen measures). The opening chorus of Paine's "Oedipus" is the weakest thing in the work. The second strophe has a few good moments, but soon falls back into what is impudent enough to be actually catchy!--and that, too, of a Lowell Mason, Moody and Sankey catchiness. Curiously enough, Mendelssohn's "Antigone" begins with a chorus more like a drinking-song than anything else, and the first solo is pure _Volkslied_; both of them imbued with a Teutonic flavor that could be cut with a knife. In Mendelssohn's "Oedipus in Kolonos," however, the music expresses emotion rather than German emotion, and abounds in splendors of harmony that are strikingly Wagnerian--in advance.

[Music: Copyright, 1895, by Arthur P. Schmidt.

POSTLUDE TO "OEDIPUS TYRANNUS," BY J.K. PAINE.]

Paine's second chorus describes the imaginary pursuit by Fate of the murderer of King Laius. It is full of grim fire, and the second strophe is at first simply terrible with awe. Then it degenerates somewhat into an arioso, almost Italian. The fourth chorus defends the oracles from Jocasta's incredulity. It is written almost in march measure, and is full of robor.

At this point in the tragedy, where it begins to transpire to Oedipus that he himself was the unwitting murderer and the incestuous wretch whose exile the oracle demands before dispelling the plague,--here the divine genius of Sophokles introduces a chorus of general merriment, somewhat as Shakespeare uses the maundering fool as a foil to heighten King Lear's fate. No praise can be too high for Paine's music here. Its choric structure is masterly, its spirit is running fire. Note, as an instance, the effect at the words "To save our land thou didst rise as a tower!" where the music itself is suddenly uplift with most effective suggestion.

The sixth chorus shows the effect of Oedipus' divulged guilt and the misery of this fool of Fate. The music is an outburst of sheer genius.

It is overpowering, frightening. The postlude is orchestral, with the chorus speaking above the music. Jocasta has hanged herself, Oedipus has torn out his own eyes with her brooch. The music is a fitting reverie on the great play, and after a wild tumult it subsides in a resigned quietude.

From Greek tragedy to Yankee patriotism is a long cry, yet I think Paine has not wasted his abilities on his "Song of Promise," written for the Cincinnati May Festival of 1888. Though the poem by Mr. George E. Woodberry is the very apotheosis of American brag, it has a redeeming technic. The music, for soprano solo, mixed chorus, and orchestra, reaches the very peaks of inspiration. I doubt if any living composer or many dead masters could grow so epic, as most of this. In a way it is academic. It shows a little of the influence of Wagner,--as any decent music should nowadays. But it is not Wagner's music, and it is not trite academia. There is no finicky tinsel and no cheap oddity.

Considering the heights at which both words and music aimed, it is amazing that they did not fall into utter wreck and nauseating bathos.

That they have proved so effective shows the sure-footedness of genius. It is all good, especially the soprano solo.

This music is exquisite, wondrously exquisite, and it is followed by a maestoso e solenne movement of unsurpa.s.sable majesty. I have never read anything more purely what music should be for grandeur. And it praises our ain countree! It might well be taken up by some of our countless vocal societies to give a much needed respite to Handel's threadbare "Messiah."

When one considers the largeness of the works to which Paine has devoted himself chiefly, he can be excused for the meagreness and comparative unimportance of his smaller works for piano and vocal solo. The only song of his I care for particularly is "A Bird upon a Rosy Bough" (op. 40), which is old-fashioned, especially in accompaniment, yet at times delicious. The song "Early Spring-time" is most curiously original.

Of piano pieces there are a sprightly "Birthday Impromptu" and a fuga giocosa, which deals wittily with that theme known generally by the words "Over the Fence Is Out!" The "Nocturne" begins like Schumann, falls into the style of his second Novellette, thence to the largo of Beethoven's Sonata (op. 10, No. 3), thence to Chopinism, wherein it ends, an interesting a.s.semblage withal!

A long "Romance" for the piano is marked by some excellent incidents and much pa.s.sion, but it lacks unity. It is the last work in "An Alb.u.m of Pianoforte Pieces," which is otherwise full of rare delights. It is made up of opera 25, 26, and 39. Opus 25 contains four characteristic pieces,--a "Dance" full of dance-rapture, a most original "Impromptu,"

and a "Rondo Giocoso," which is just the kind of brilliantly witty scherzo whose infrequency in American music is so lamentable and so surprising. Opus 26 includes ten sketches, all good, especially "Woodnotes," a charming tone-poem, the deliciously simple "Wayside Flowers," "Under the Lindens," which is a masterpiece of beautiful syncopation, a refreshingly interesting bit in the hackneyed "Millstream" form, and a "Village Dance," which has much of that quaint flavor that makes h.e.l.ler's etudes a perennial delight.

Besides these, there are a number of motets, organ preludes, string quartettes, concert pieces for violin, 'cello, piano, and the like, all contributing to the furtherance of an august fame.

_Dudley Buck._

Music follows the laws of supply and demand just as the other necessities of life do. But before a demand could exist for it in its more austere and unadulterated forms, the general taste for it must be improved. For this purpose the offices of skilful compromisers were required, composers who could at the same time please the popular taste and teach it discrimination. Among these invaluable workers, a high place belongs, in point both of priority and achievement, to Dudley Buck. He has been a powerful agent, or reagent, in converting the stagnant ferment into a live and wholesome ebullition, or as the old Greek evolutionists would say, starting the first progress in the primeval ooze of American Philistinism.

A more thoroughly New England ancestry it would be hard to find. The founder of the family came over from England soon after the _Mayflower_ landed. Buck was named after Governor Dudley of the Plymouth Colony. He was born at Hartford, March 10, 1839. His father was a prosperous shipping merchant, one of whose boats, during the Civil War, towed the _Monitor_ from New York to Fortress Monroe on the momentous voyage that destroyed the _Merrimac's_ usefulness.

Buck, though intended for commercial life, borrowed a work on thorough-ba.s.s and a flute and proceeded to try the wings of his muse.

A melodeon supplanted the flute, and when he was sixteen he attained the glory of a piano, a rare possession in those times. (Would that it were rarer now!) He took a few lessons and played a church-organ for a salary,--a small thing, but his own.

After reaching the junior year in Trinity College, he prevailed upon his parents to surrender him to music, an almost scandalous career in the New England mind of that day, still unbleached of its Blue Laws.

At the age of nineteen he went to Leipzig and entered the Conservatory there, studying composition under Hauptmann and E.F. Richter, orchestration under Rietz, and the piano under Moscheles and Plaidy.

Later he went to Dresden and studied the organ with Schneider.

After three years in Germany, he studied for a year in Paris, and came home, settling down in Hartford as church-organist and teacher. He began a series of organ-concert tours lasting fifteen years. He played in almost every important city and in many small towns, popularizing the best music by that happy fervor of interpretation which alone is needed to bring cla.s.sical compositions home to the public heart. In 1869 he was called to the "mother-church" of Chicago. In the Chicago fire he lost many valuable ma.n.u.scripts, including a concert overture on Drake's exquisite poem, "The Culprit Fay," which must be especially regretted. He moved his family to Boston, a.s.suming in ten days the position of organist at St. Paul's; and later he accepted charge of "the great organ" at Music Hall,--that organ of which Artemus Ward wrote so deliciously.

In 1875 Theodore Thomas, whose orchestra had performed many of Buck's compositions, invited him to become his a.s.sistant conductor at the Cincinnati Music Festival and at the last series of concerts at the Central Park Garden in New York. Buck accepted and made his home in Brooklyn, where he has since remained as organist of the Holy Trinity Church, and conductor of the Apollo Club, which he founded and brought to a high state of efficiency, writing for it many of his numerous compositions for male voices.

Buck's close a.s.sociation with church work has naturally led him chiefly into sacred music, and in this cla.s.s of composition he is by many authorities accorded the very highest place among American composers. He has also written many organ solos, sonatas, marches, a pastorale, a rondo caprice, and many concert transcriptions, as well as a group of etudes for pedal phrasing, and several important treatises on various musical topics. His two "Motett Collections" were a refreshing relief and inspiration to church choirs thirsty for religious Protestant music of some depth and warmth.

In the cantata form Buck also holds a foremost place. In 1876 he was honored with a commission to set to music "The Centennial Meditation of Columbia," a poem written for the occasion by the Southern poet, Sidney Lanier. This was performed at the opening of the Philadelphia Exhibition by a chorus of one thousand voices, an organ, and an orchestra of two hundred pieces under the direction of Theodore Thomas. In 1874 he made a metrical version of "The Legend of Don Munio" from Irving's "Alhambra," and set it to music for a small orchestra and chorus. Its adaptability to the resources of the vocal societies of smaller cities has made it one of his most popular works.

Another bit of Washington Irving is found in Buck's cantata, "The Voyage of Columbus," the libretto for which he has taken from Irving's "Life of Columbus." It consists of six night-scenes,--"The Chapel of St. George at Palos," "On the Deck of the _Santa Maria_," "The Vesper Hymn," "Mutiny," "In Distant Andalusia," and "Land and Thanksgiving."

The opportunities here for Buck's skilful handling of choruses and his dramatic feeling in solos are obvious, and the work has been frequently used both in this country and in Germany with much success.

Buck, in fact, made the German libretto as well as the English, and has written the words for many of his compositions. His largest work was "The Light of Asia," composed in 1885 and based on Sir Edwin Arnold's epic. It requires two and one-half hours for performance and has met the usual success of Buck's music; it was produced in London with such soloists as Nordica, Lloyd, and Santley. It has been occasionally given here.

He has found the greater part of his texts in American poetry, particularly in Lanier, Stedman, and Longfellow, whose "King Olaf's Christmas" and "Nun of Nidaros" he has set to music, as well as his "Golden Legend," which won a prize of one thousand dollars at the Cincinnati Festival in a large compet.i.tion. His work is a.n.a.lyzed very fully in A.J. Goodrich' "Musical a.n.a.lysis."

[Music:

High in the purer air, High as the heart's desire, In a pa.s.sion of longing and fire, A bird sings sweet and fair; While a sunbeam, cheery and strong, Answers the joy of the song, And Spring, fair Spring is coming!

Copyright, 1893, by G. Schirmer.

FRAGMENT FROM "SPRING'S AWAKENING," BY MR. BUCK.]

Here, as in his symphonic overture to Scott's "Marmion," Buck has adopted the Wagnerian idea of the _leit-motif_ as a vivid means of distinguishing musically the various characters and their varying emotions. His music is not markedly Wagnerian, however, in other ways, but seems to show, back of his individuality, an a.s.similation of the good old school of canon and fugue, with an Italian tendency to the declamatory and well-rounded melodic period.

It might be wished that in his occasional secular songs Buck had followed less in the steps of the Italian aria and the English ballad and adopted more of the newer, n.o.bler spirit of the _Lied_ as Schumann and Franz represent it, and as many of our younger Americans have done with thorough success and not a little of exaltation. Note for instance the inadequacy of the old-style balladry to both its own opportunity and the otherwise-smothered fire of such a poem as Sidney Lanier's "Sunset," which is positively Shakespearean in its pa.s.sionate perfection.

In religious music, however, Mr. Buck has made a niche of its own for his music, which it occupies with grace and dignity.

_Horatio W. Parker._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of Horatio W. Parker]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HORATIO W. PARKER.]

When one considers the enormous s.p.a.ce occupied by the hymn-tune in New England musical activity, it is small wonder that most of its composers should display hymnal proclivities. Both Buck and Parker are natives of New England.

Parker was born, September 15, 1863, at Auburndale, Ma.s.s. His mother was his first teacher of music. She was an organist, and gave him a thorough technical schooling which won the highest commendation later from Rheinberger, who entrusted to him the first performance of a new organ concerto. After some study in Boston under Stephen A. Emery, John Orth, and G.W. Chadwick, Parker went to Munich at the age of eighteen, where he came under the special favor of Rheinberger, and where various compositions were performed by the Royal Music School orchestra. After three years of Europe, he returned to America and a.s.sumed the direction of the music at St. Paul's school. He has held various posts since, and has been, since 1894, the Battell Professor of Music at Yale.

His rather imposing list of works includes a symphony (1885), an operetta, a concert overture (1884), an overture, "Regulus" (1885), performed in Munich and in London, and an overture, "Count Robert of Paris" (1890), performed in New York, a ballad for chorus and orchestra, "King Trojan," presented in Munich in 1885, the Twenty-third Psalm for female chorus and orchestra (1884), an "Idylle"

(1891); "The Normans," "The Kobolds," and "Harold Harf.a.ger," all for chorus and orchestra, and all dated 1891; an oratorio, three or more cantatas, and various bits of chamber-music. His opus number has already reached forty-three, and it is eked out to a very small degree by such imponderous works as organ and piano solos, hymns, and songs.

In 1893, Parker won the National Conservatory prize for a cantata, and in 1898 the McCagg prize for an a cappella chorus.

Parker's piano compositions and secular songs are not numerous. They seem rather the incidental byplays and recreations of a fanry chiefly turned to sacred music of the larger forms.

Opus 19 consists of "Four Sketches," of which the "etude Melodieuse"

is as good as is necessary in that overworked style, wherein a thin melody is set about with a thinner ripple of arpeggios. The "Romanza"

is lyric and delightful, while the "Scherzino" is delicious and crisp as celery; it is worthy of Schumann, whom it suggests, and many of whose cool tones and mannerisms it borrows.

The "5 Morceaux Characteristiques" are on the whole better. The "Scherzo" is shimmering with playfulness, and, in the Beethoven fashion, has a tender intermezzo amoroso. This seriousness is enforced with an ending of a most plaintive nature. The "Caprice" is brilliant and whimsical, with some odd effects in accent. The "Gavotte" makes unusual employment of triplets, but lacks the precious yeast of enthusiasm necessary to a prime gavotte.