WHITING.
George Elbridge Whiting was born at Holliston, Mass., Sept. 14, 1842. He began the study of the piano at a very early age, but soon abandoned it for the organ. His progress was so rapid that at the age of thirteen he made his public appearance as a player. In 1857 he went to Hartford, Conn., where he had accepted a position in one of the churches, and while there organized the Beethoven Society. In 1862 he removed to Boston, but shortly afterwards went to England, where he studied the organ for a year with Best. On his return he was engaged as organist of St. Joseph’s Church, Albany, N. Y., but his ambition soon took him to Europe again. This time he went to Berlin and finished his studies with Radecke and Haupt. He then returned to Albany and remained there three years, leaving that city to accept a position at the church of the Immaculate Conception, Boston. In 1874 he was appointed organist at the Music Hall, and was also for some time at the head of the organ department of the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1878 he was organist for the third Cincinnati May Festival, and in 1879 accepted a position in the College of Music in that city, at the same time taking charge of the organ in the Music Hall, with what success those who attended the May Festivals in that city will remember. He remained in Cincinnati three years and then returned to his old position in Boston. Mr. Whiting ranks in the first class of American organists, and has also been a prolific composer. Among his vocal works are a mass in C minor (1872); mass in F minor (1874); prologue to Longfellow’s “Golden Legend” (1873); cantatas, “Dream Pictures” (1877), “The Tale of the Viking” (1880); a concert overture (“The Princess”); a great variety of organ music, including “The Organist,” containing twelve pieces for that instrument, and “the First Six Months on the Organ,” with twenty-five studies; several concertos, fantasies, and piano compositions, and a large number of songs.
The Tale of the Viking.
“The Tale of the Viking” was written in competition for the prize offered by the Cincinnati Musical Festival Association in 1879, and though unsuccessful, is still regarded as one of the most admirable and scholarly works yet produced in this country. The text of the cantata is Longfellow’s “Skeleton in Armor,” that weird and stirring story of the Viking, which the poet so ingeniously connected with the old mill at Newport.
The work comprises ten numbers, and is written for three solo voices (soprano, tenor, and barytone), chorus, and orchestra. A long but very expressive overture, full of the dramatic sentiment of the poem, prepares the way for the opening number, a short male chorus:—
“‘Speak! speak! thou fearful guest
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?’”
Next comes a powerful chorus for mixed voices (“Then from those cavernous Eyes”), which leads up to the opening of the Viking’s story (“I was a Viking old”), a barytone solo, which is made very dramatic by the skilful division of the song between recitative and the melody. In the fourth number the male chorus continues the narrative (“But when I older grew”), describing in a vivacious and spirited manner the wild life of the marauders on the sea and their winter wassails as they told the Berserker legends over their cups of ale. In the fifth the soprano voice tells of the wooing of “The blue-eyed Maid” in an aria (“Once, as I told in Glee”) remarkable for its varying shades of expression. At its close a brilliant march movement, very sonorous in style and highly colored, introduces a vigorous chorus (“Bright in her Father’s Hall”), which describes the refusal of old Hildebrand to give his daughter’s hand to the Viking. A dramatic solo for barytone (“She was a Prince’s Child”) pictures the flight of the dove with the sea-mew, which is followed by a chorus of extraordinary power as well as picturesqueness (“Scarce had I put to Sea”), vividly describing the pursuit, the encounter, and the Viking’s escape with his bride. A graceful but pathetic romance for tenor (“There lived we many Years”), which relates her death, and burial beneath the tower, leads to the closing number, a soprano solo with a full stately chorus, admirably worked up, picturing the death of the Viking, who falls upon his spear, and ending in an exultant and powerful burst of harmony, set to the words:—
“‘Thus, seamed with many scars,
Bursting these prison bars,
Up to its native stars
My soul ascended;
There from the flowing bowl
Deep drinks the warrior’s soul,
Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!’
Thus the tale ended.”
