Contemporary American Composers Part 1

Contemporary American Composers.

by Rupert Hughes.

FOREWORD.

One day there came into Robert Schumann's ken the work of a young fellow named Brahms, and the master cried aloud in the wilderness, "Behold, the new Messiah of music!" Many have refused to accept Brahms at this rating, and I confess to being one of the unregenerate, but the spirit that kept Schumann's heart open to the appeal of any stranger, that led him into instant enthusiasms of which he was neither afraid nor ashamed, enthusiasms in which the whole world has generally followed his leading--that spirit it is that proves his true musicians.h.i.+p, and makes him a place forever among the great critics of music,--a small, small crowd they are, too.

It is inevitable that a pioneer like Schumann should make many mistakes, but he escaped the one great fatal mistake of those who are not open to conviction, nor alert for new beauty and fresh truth, who are willing to take art to their affections or respect only when it has lost its bloom and has been duly appraised and ticketed by other generations or foreign scholars. And yet, even worse than this languorous inanition is the active policy of those who despise everything contemporary or native, and subst.i.tute sciolism for catholicity, contempt for a.n.a.lysis.

While the greater part of the world has stayed aloof, the problem of a national American music has been solving itself. Aside from occasional attentions evoked by chance performances, it may be said in general that the growth of our music has been unloved and unheeded by anybody except a few plodding composers, their wives, and a retainer or two. The only thing that inclines me to invade the privacy of the American composer and publish his secrets, is my hearty belief, lo, these many years! that some of the best music in the world is being written here at home, and that it only needs the light to win its meed of praise.

Owing to the scarcity of printed matter relating to native composers, and the utter incompleteness and bias of what exists, I have based this book almost altogether on my own research. I studied the catalogues of all the respectable music publishers, and selected such composers as seemed to have any serious intentions. When I heard of a composer whose work, though earnest, had not been able to find a publisher, I sought him out and read his ma.n.u.scripts (a hideous task which might be subst.i.tuted for the comparative pastime of breaking rocks, as punishment for misdemeanors). In every case I secured as many of each composer's works as could be had in print or in ma.n.u.script, and endeavored to digest them. Thousands of pieces of music, from short songs to operatic and orchestral scores, I studied with all available conscience. The fact that after going through at least a ton of American compositions, I am still an enthusiast, is surely a proof of some virtue in native music.

A portion of the result of this study was published _au courant_ in a magazine, awakening so much attention that I have at length decided to yield to constant requests and publish the articles in more accessible form. The necessity for revising many of the opinions formed hastily and published immediately, the possibility now of taking the work of our musicians in some perspective, and the opportunity of bringing my information up to date, have meant so much revision, excision, and addition, that this book is really a new work.

The biographical data have been furnished in practically every case by the composers themselves, and are, therefore, reliable in everything except possibly the date of birth. The critical opinions gain their possibly dogmatic tone rather from a desire for brevity than from any hope--or wish--that they should be swallowed whole. No attempt to set up a standard of comparative merit or precedence has been made, though it is inevitable that certain music-makers should interest one more than certain others even more worthy in the eyes of eminent judges.

It may be that some inspectors of this book will complain of the omission of names they had expected to find here. Others will feel a sense of disproportion. To them there is no reply but a pathetic allusion to the inevitable incompleteness and asymmetry of all things human.

Many will look with skepticism at the large number of composers I have thought worthy of inclusion. I can only say that the fact that an artist has created one work of high merit makes him a good composer in my opinion, whether or no he has ever written another, and whether or no he has afterward fallen into the sere and yellow school of trash.

So Gray's fame is perennial,--one poem among many ba.n.a.lities.

Besides, I do not concur in that most commonplace fallacy of criticism, the belief that not more than one genius is vouchsafed to any one period of an art, though this opinion can be justified, of course, by a very exclusive definition of the word genius. To the average mind, for instance, the whole literary achievement of the Elizabethan era is condensed into the name of Shakespeare.

Contemporary with him, however, there were, of course, thirty or forty writers whose best works the scholar would be most unwilling to let die. There were, for instance, a dozen playwrights, like Jonson, Fletcher, Ford, Marlowe, and Greene, in whose works can be found literary and dramatic touches of the very highest order. There were poets less prolific than Spenser, and yet to be credited with a few works of the utmost beauty, minor geniuses like Ralegh, Sidney, Lodge, s.h.i.+rley, Lyly, Wotton, Wither, John Donne, Bishop Hall, Drayton, Drummond, Herbert, Carew, Herrick, Breton, Allison, Byrd, Dowland, Campion--so one might run on without naming one man who had not written something the world was better for.

All periods of great art activity are similarly marked by a large number of geniuses whose ability is not disproved, because overshadowed by the presence of some t.i.tanic contemporary. It would be a mere impertinence to state such an axiom of art as this, were it not the plain truth that almost all criticism of contemporaries is based upon an arrant neglect of it; and if it were not for the fact that I am about to string out a long, long list of American music-makers whose ability I think noteworthy,--a list whose length may lead many a wiseacre to pull a longer face.

Parts of this book have been reprinted from _G.o.dey's Magazine_, the _Century Magazine_, and the _Criterion_, to whose publishers I am indebted for permission. For the music reproduced here I have to thank the publishers whose copyrights were loaned for the occasion.

If the book shall only succeed in arousing in some minds an interest or a curiosity that shall set them to the study of American music (as I have studied it, with infinite pleasure), then this fine white paper and this beautiful black ink will not have been wasted.

CHAPTER I.

A GENERAL SURVEY.

Coddling is no longer the chief need of the American composer. While he still wants encouragement in his good tendencies,--much more encouragement than he gets, too,--he is now strong enough to profit by the discouragement of his evil tendencies.

In other words, the American composer is ready for criticism.

The first and most vital flaw of which his work will be accused is the lack of nationalism. This I should like to combat after the sophistic fas.h.i.+on of Zeno,--showing, first, why we lack that desideratum, a strictly national school; secondly, that a strictly national school is not desirable; and thirdly, that we most a.s.suredly have a national school.

In building a national individuality, as in building a personal individuality, there is always a period of disciples.h.i.+p under some older power. When the rudiments and the essentials are once thoroughly mastered, the shackles of disciples.h.i.+p are thrown off, and personal expression in an original way begins. This is the story of every master in every art: The younger Raphael was only Perugino junior.

Beethoven's first sonatas were more completely Haydn's than the word "gewidmet" would declare. The youthful Canova was swept off his feet by the unearthing of old Greek masterpieces. Stevenson confesses frankly his early efforts to copy the mannerisms of Scott and others.

Nations are only cl.u.s.ters of individuals, and subject to the same rules. Italy borrowed its beginnings from Byzantium; Germany and France took theirs from Italy; we, ours, from them.

It was inconceivable that America should produce an autocthonous art.

The race is one great mixture of more or less digested foreign elements; and it is not possible to draw a declaration of artistic, as of political, independence, and thenceforward be truly free.

Centuries of differentiated environment (in all the senses of the word environment) are needed to produce a new language or a new art; and it was inevitable that American music should for long be only a more or less successful employment of European methods. And there was little possibility, according to all precedents in art history, that any striking individuality should rise suddenly to found a school based upon his own mannerism.

Especially was this improbable, since we are in a large sense of English lineage. As the co-heirs, with those who remain in the British Isles, of the magnificent prose and poetry of England, it was possible for us to produce early in our own history a Hawthorne and a Poe and an Emerson and a Whitman. But we have had more hindrance than help from our heritage of English music, in which there has never been a master of the first rank, Purcell and the rest being, after all, brilliants of the lesser magnitude (with the permission of that electric Englishman, Mr. John F. Runciman).

A further hindrance was the creed of the Puritan fathers of our civilization; they had a granite heart, and a suspicious eye for music. Here is a cheerful example of congregational lyricism, and a lofty inspiration for musical treatment (the hymn refers to the fate of unbaptized infants):

"A crime it is! Therefore in Bliss You may not hope to dwell; But unto you I shall allow The easiest room in h.e.l.l."

It was only at the end of the seventeenth century that singing by note began to supplant the "lining-out" barbarism, and to provoke such fierce opposition as this:

"First, it is a new way--an unknown tongue; 2d, it is not so melodious as the old way; 3d, there are so many tunes that n.o.body can learn them; 4th, the new way makes a disturbance in churches, grieves good men, exasperates them, and causes them to behave disorderly; 5th, it is popish; 6th, it will introduce instruments; 7th, the names of the notes are blasphemous; 8th, it is needless, the old way being good enough; 9th, it requires too much time to learn it; 10th, it makes the young disorderly."

At the time when such puerility was disturbing this cradle of freedom and cacophony, Bach and Handel were at work in their contrapuntal webs, the Scarlattis, Corelli and Tartini and Porpora were alive.

Peri, Josquin and Willaert and La.s.sus were dead, and the church had had its last ma.s.s from the most famous citizen of the town of Palestrina. Monteverde was no longer inventing like an Edison; Lulli had gone to France and died; and Rameau and Couperin were alive.

At this time in the world's art, the Americans were squabbling over the blasphemy of instruments and of notation! This is not the place to treat the history of our music. The curious can find enlightenment at such sources as Mr. Louis C. Elson's "National Music of America." It must be enough for me to say that the throttling hands of Puritanism are only now fully loosened. Some of our living composers recall the parental opposition that met their first inclinations to a musical career, opposition based upon the disgracefulness, the heathenishness, of music as a profession.

The youthfulness of our school of music can be emphasized further by a simple statement that, with the exception of a few names like Lowell Mason, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Stephen A. Emery (a graceful writer as well as a theorist), and George F. Bristow, practically every American composer of even the faintest importance is now living.

The influences that finally made American music are chiefly German.

Almost all of our composers have studied in Germany, or from teachers trained there; very few of them turning aside to Paris, and almost none to Italy. The prominent teachers, too, that have come from abroad have been trained in the German school, whatever their nationality. The growth of a national school has been necessarily slow, therefore, for its necessary and complete submission to German influences.

It has been further delayed by the meagre native encouragement to effort of the better sort. The populace has been largely indifferent,--the inertia of all large bodies would explain that. A national, a constructive, and collaborative criticism has been conspicuously absent.

The leaders of orchestras have also offered an almost insurmountable obstacle to the production of any work from an American hand until very recently. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has been a n.o.ble exception to this rule, and has given about the only opening possible to the native writer. The Chicago Orchestra, in eight seasons under Theodore Thomas, devoted, out of a total of 925 numbers, only eighteen, or something less than two per cent., to native music. Yet time shows a gradual improvement, and in 1899, out of twenty-seven orchestral numbers performed, three were by Americans, which makes a liberal t.i.the. The Boston Symphony has played the compositions of John Knowles Paine alone more than eighteen times, and those of George W.

Chadwick the same number, while E.A. MacDowell and Arthur Foote each appeared on the programs fourteen times. The Kaltenborn Orchestra has made an active effort at the promulgation of our music, and especial honor is due to Frank Van der Stucken, himself a composer of marked abilities; he was among the first to give orchestral production to American works, and he was, perhaps, the very first to introduce American orchestral work abroad. Like his offices, in spirit and effect, have been the invaluable services of our most eminent pianist, Wm. H. Sherwood, who was for many years the only prominent performer of American piano compositions.

Public singers also have been most unpatriotic in preferring endless repet.i.tion of dry foreign arias to fresh compositions from home. The little encore song, which generally appeared anonymously, was the opening wedge for the American lyrist.

Upon the horizon of this gloom, however, there is a tremor of a dawning interest in national music. Large vocal societies are giving an increasing number of native part songs and cantatas; prizes are being awarded in various places, and composers find some financial encouragement for appearing in concerts of their own work. Ma.n.u.script societies are organized in many of the larger cities, and these clubs offer hearing to novelty. There have latterly appeared, from various publishers, special catalogues vaunting the large number of American composers represented on their lists.

Another, and a most important sign of the growing influence of music upon American life, is seen in the place it is gaining in the college curriculum; new chairs have been established, and prominent composers called to fill them, or old professors.h.i.+ps that held merely nominal places in the catalogue have been enlarged in scope. In this way music is reestablis.h.i.+ng itself in something like its ancient glory; for the Greeks not only grouped all culture under the general term of "Music," but gave voice and instrument a vital place in education.

Three of our most prominent composers fill the chairs at three of the most important universities. In all these cases, however, music is an elective study, while the rudiments of the art should, I am convinced, be a required study in every college curriculum, and in the common schools as well.

a.s.suming then, for the nonce, the birth--we are too new a country to speak of a Renascence--of a large interest in national music, there is large disappointment in many quarters, because our American music is not more American. I have argued above that a race transplanted from other soils must still retain most of the old modes of expression, or, varying them, change slowly. But many who excuse us for the present lack of a natural nationalism, are so eager for such a differentiation that they would have us borrow what we cannot breed.

The folk-music of the negro slaves is most frequently mentioned as the right foundation for a strictly American school. A somewhat misunderstood statement advanced by Dr. Antonin Dvorak, brought this idea into general prominence, though it had been discussed by American composers, and made use of in compositions of all grades long before he came here.

The vital objection, however, to the general adoption of negro music as a base for an American school of composition is that it is in no sense a national expression. It is not even a sectional expression, for the white Southerners among whose slaves this music grew, as well as the people of the North, have always looked upon negro music as an exotic and curious thing. Familiar as it is to us, it is yet as foreign a music as any Tyrolean jodel or Hungarian czardas.

The music of the American Indian, often strangely beautiful and impressive, would be as reasonably chosen as that of these imported Africs. E.A. MacDowell had, indeed, written a picturesque and impressive Indian suite, some time before the Dvorakian invasion. He a.s.serts that the Indian music is preferable to the Ethiopian, because its st.u.r.diness and force are more congenial with the national mood.

But the true hope for a national spirit in American music surely lies, not in the arbitrary seizure of some musical dialect, but in the development of just such a quality as gives us an individuality among the nations of the world in respect to our character as a people; and that is a Cosmopolitanism made up of elements from all the world, and yet, in its unified qualities, unlike any one element. Thus our music should, and undoubtedly will, be the gathering into the spirit of the voices of all the nations, and the use of all their expressions in an a.s.similated, a personal, a spontaneous manner. This need not, by any means, be a dry, academic eclecticism. The Yankee, a composite of all peoples, yet differs from them all, and owns a st.u.r.dy individuality.

His music must follow the same fate.