How music grew, from prehistoric times to the present day

by Marion Bauer; Ethel R. Peyser

Music Has Grown Up

CHAPTER XVIII
Bach—The Giant

Bach and Handel rescued the Germans from the reputation of being musical barbarians, for Germany had not had a Lully or a Palestrina! But just in time, Bach and Handel entered and Bach carried composition to maturity and religious musical art to its highest point, while Handel was one of the foremost opera and oratorio composers of his day.

And indeed not until Mozart’s day did the Italians think that Germany was anything but barbarous, not in fact until they were outranked in Italian Opera by a German.

Of all the unassuming men of genius Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) is the most lovable. Never did he seem to realize that he was doing anything, but the will of God, never did he seem to care what people thought of his work, but went on composing, supporting twenty children, often with so little money that he tutored and played at funerals to eke out a living. In his life there was little glitter. Bach was a saint, if there was ever a saint. Although some few admired Bach during his lifetime, it was not until one hundred years after his death that his works were known and that he received the fame he deserved.

The Bach family for six generations were musicians, beginning with his grandfather “to the 5th power,” Veit Bach, a Thuringian baker in the 16th century whose pleasure “was to use a small zither, which he took with him to play, while the mill was moving.” All his descendants became musicians down to and beyond Johann Sebastian.

The Bachs were great family lovers and every year they held reunions, at which all of the different members living in various parts of Germany, met together and enjoyed a jolly time singing and playing.

Sebastian was born in 1685 in Eisenach, the town where Martin Luther wrote his stirring chorales. His father Ambrosius began very early to teach him music, the family profession, and Sebastian started with the violin.

But the poor little boy lost both father and mother when only ten years of age, and he was left to be brought up by his elder brother, Johann Christopher. Sebastian was passionately fond of music and although Christopher taught him to play the clavier, nevertheless this sad little tale is told:

Sebastian had seen Christopher with a book of music including pieces by Froberger, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, and others. Sebastian was very anxious to get it and play bits from it. Christopher forbade him to touch it and put it away in a cupboard, which fortunately had a lattice door, for Sebastian, every night during the full moon, (because he did not dare to use a candle), copied the book note for note. When Christopher discovered this, the little lad was soundly scolded and was witness to Christopher’s burning it before his poor eyes!

It did not seem to daunt him, for from this time on, he copied the great works whenever he could.

It became necessary for Sebastian to earn money to save Christopher’s purse, and in 1700 he became a choir boy at St. Michael’s in Lüneburg, where he received lessons without paying for them. He was happy here, with a library where he could copy music to his heart’s content, and every vacation he went on foot to Hamburg to learn of the great organist, Reinken. He visited too the court of Celle where he heard Couperin’s music, which no doubt helped to develop his style.

Soon he left Lüneburg and went to Saxe-Weimar where he entered the orchestra of Prince Johann Ernst. But his interest was in the church and when he was eighteen he tried for the post of organist in the Church at Arnstadt. He played so delightfully, despite his youth, that he was accepted at the first hearing!

He composed many works here and learned much about the organ, that was to be valuable to him and to us. He was well liked, too, and his playing was enjoyed. Nevertheless, his interest in others was so great, that he decided to go to see Buxtehude in Lübeck, and he was so interested in the master’s art that he forgot about his church in Arnstadt and stayed four months instead of one! When he returned he was severely reprimanded. Later, he received a second reprimand which is of tremendous interest for he was accused of “interspersing the chorale with many strange variations and tones, to the confusion of the congregation.” He was charged with the crime of being original!

Due to this lack of sympathy, he accepted a post as organist at Mühlhausen in 1707 and later in the year married his cousin, Maria Barbara, with great rejoicings. They had seven children, two of whom were the famous Wilhelm Friedemann and Karl Philip Emanuel.

The next year he became Concertmaster (first violinist), to the Duke of Weimar and remained there until 1718. This was a very fruitful composing period, for he had no money worries. He studied the Italian masters, especially Vivaldi, and wrote some excellent cantatas. However, he went soon to the Prince of Anhalt-Cothen, as Court Choir Master.

He made concert trips from here to Dresden and Leipsic, and it was in Dresden that he challenged the proud Marchand, the French organist, to a public improvisation contest on a theme, new to both of them. But the contest never took place, because, unknown to Bach, Marchand heard him play and when the time for the contest came, Marchand had left town hurriedly in an early post-chaise. And strange as it may seem, Emperor Frederick I gave Marchand one hundred ducats and Bach got nothing!

Bach’s new patron was a fine man and a Protestant and gave Bach every chance. At Weimar, he had become well known for his religious works and beautiful playing. But, as he had no organ, he wrote music for harpsichord, violin, chamber music and the orchestra, which was far from “grown up.” Here, too, he wrote the Brandenburg Concertos and the first part of his epoch-making work The Well-tempered Clavichord (48 Preludes and Fugues, 1722) which he finished in 1744. It is still the greatest work of its kind. In it he reaches the highest point of contrapuntal writing.

In 1720, while Bach was traveling with the Prince, his wife died. After a year and a half he married a charming singer, Anna Magdalena Wulkens, one of his pupils. They had twelve children and lived very happily. The lovely little tunes that he wrote for Anna Magdalena and his children have come down to us and many of us have played them in the first years of our music study. Isn’t it wonderful to think that the great Bach, who wrote some of the masterpieces of the world, could also write simple little Minuets and Preludes that any child can play?

But with all Bach’s comfort he missed an organ! Deep in his soul, he craved the making of religious music—it was part of his thinking. His religious ideas tied up with his music, were his life. So we see this saint leaving happiness at Cothen for an ill-paid post in Leipsic, as Cantor (1723) at the school of St. Thomas, where, succeeding Johann Kuhnau, he stayed the rest of his life and wrote his greatest works.

Bach wrote to a friend that he thought a long while before leaving his “gracious, music loving and discriminating Prince ... but it happened that my master married a ... princess who ... weaned my master from the loving interest he had ... toward our glorious art. And so God arranged that the post of Cantor at St. Thomas’ should fall vacant.... I took three months to consider the future and was induced to accept, as my sons were studious and I was desirous ... of gratifying their bent by entering them in the school ... and thus, in the name of the Most High, I ventured and came to Leipsic.”

Note, dear reader, the nobility, spirituality and sweetness here, thinking of his children and not of his career!

He struggled against the unsympathetic town council, the school, and lack of money. He wrote to his friend Erdman, “My present income averages $700. When funerals are numerous I make more, but if the ‘air is healthy’ then my income falls. During the past year I have earned $100 less, owing to the small number of deaths.”

In 1732 he wrote one of his few attempts at comedy.—the Coffee Cantata set to music on a text by Picander. Leipsic had become a slave to the new luxury, coffee, and in this Picander found material for a satire.

Besides his regular work, he had to teach dull, undisciplined pupils, attend to services in four churches, and be satisfied with the few singers and players he found for the performances he directed.

Yet, fed with the spirit of love that was within him, he was happy and his home was a center of joy. He never became too sad until he lost his sight three years before his death. Even then he dictated his compositions and conquered discouragement!

Bach’s life was made happier when Philip Emanuel became Court musician and clavier player to Frederick the Great, and he talked so much of his father that Bach was invited to Potsdam.

When Frederick the Great, who was playing the flute in his orchestra, heard that Bach was in Potsdam, he put down his flute and interrupted the concert saying, “Gentlemen, old Bach has arrived.” Bach appeared in his traveling clothes and was invited to improvise a fugue in six parts, which he did to the great admiration of all.

Yet many felt that his writings were lacking in charm! This was no doubt because people were getting accustomed to the Italian melodies which had become popular in Germany. Furthermore, when he wrote “The Art of Fugue” his son could sell but thirty copies and finally sold the plates for the mere cost of the metal! Students are grateful that copies of this work were saved, for it is still the greatest authority on fugue writing.

In 1749, Bach underwent an operation on his eyes but lost his sight and in 1750 died of apoplexy. So little was he appreciated that his grave was destroyed in the renovation of the Johanneskirche grounds. His supposed remains were discovered in 1894 and re-interred one hundred and forty-four years after his death. But—what remains of Bach, no known or unknown grave can bury.

A quarter of a century after Bach’s death, Mozart said, on hearing a Bach Cantata, “At last I have heard something new and have learned something.” Then later Mendelssohn re-discovered him, and Schubert, too, helped to bring him to the world’s notice. And not until 1850, a century after his death, was the Bach Society formed to honor Bach, the corner-stone of modern music.

Bach was a stalwart man with fine deep eyes, broad forehead and a grave face, lit with kindly humor. He had dignity and calm, was always courteous, and criticised only his pupils whom he wanted to help. When asked one time, how he played so well, he remarked, “I always have had to work hard.” He could stand no one who was pretentious and conceited. He wanted his rights but never boasted. One year besides fulfilling his other duties he wrote a cantata every Sunday! He wrote them as a preacher writes sermons. They had to be done and he never neglected his duty.

Bach was a devoted father and husband and his home was one of the happiest of any great genius. Many of his children were musical and he said that he had an orchestra in his own home!

Even his little half-witted son had genius and during the last years of Bach’s life when the dear old man had become blind, the little boy sat at the clavier, Bach’s favorite instrument, and improvised to the joy of his father.

Bach’s Works

It is impossible to describe in words just what Bach accomplished, so surpassing in beauty are his best works.

He brought the art of polyphonic writing to its highest and most sublime point. His value to the student cannot be exaggerated, for he is the musical Bible to all who would be musicians.

The organ was the core of his musical thinking and it is in the things which center about the organ that his art is loftiest.

Although he was most ingenious in writing counterpoint, he was never dry and tricky as were other writers. His subjects were always original and his melodic line always of rare beauty.

His works are most varied: fugues, motets, cantatas, passions, oratorios, concertos, sonatas and suites. He was a radical in his day, for he threw over conventional notions of harmony as to proper keys and insisted upon a new system of tuning the clavier, so as to use the whole range of tones. The “Well-tempered Clavichord,” two groups of 24 Preludes and Fugues in 24 keys, was the outcome of this. It was so called because it was written to show the possibilities of a clavier (or clavichord) tuned according to an idea of his, enabling one to play in all keys. This was one of the greatest discoveries in the whole story of music, for it made possible all the music which has followed. The keyboard was divided into equal half-steps. This made twelve half-steps within each octave and thus all the intervals became fixed, and modulation from key to key was possible. Heretofore, if one went from one key to another, the instrument sounded out of tune, but now instruments were tuned, as we glibly say, “to scale.”

He invented a new fingering in which the thumb and little finger were used for the first time. We wonder why the thumb had been snubbed!

The pianoforte was just coming into prominence in Bach’s day but he preferred the clavier, on which he felt he could play with more expression.

He developed the fugue to its highest point. A fugue is an enlarged canon in which the fragments of theme or melody are taken up and answered by two, or more, voices. One voice declares the subject and the answer is repeated usually in the dominant key a fifth above, while the first voice gives the counter-subject. There are various kinds of fugues, depending on their construction. After the voices have all entered, separated sometimes by little passages called “episodes,” a section in which the subject is freely developed comes, and then the stretto, in which all the parts enter racing and overlapping, building up to a climax; then follows the cadence or ending.

To write a noble or lofty fugue, neither dry nor pedantic, takes art to the nth power! Bach had the art that touched Heaven’s borders! In truth you can safely divide fugues into two classes—Bach’s and all others!

None of Bach’s works were published until he was forty years old, and most of them not until long after his death, and many of his manuscripts were lost and never published at all.

The list of his works is stupendous; the Bach Gesellschaft (Bach Society, 1850) published them in sixty volumes! Among them were the 48 Preludes and Fugues (The Well-tempered Clavichord Collection); 12 Suites; many Inventions in 2 and 3 parts; partitas; 12 concertos for 1, 2, 3 and 4 claviers with orchestra; many sonatas and concertos for violin, flute, viola da gamba, clavier, and orchestra; several overtures for orchestras; vocal works; 200 motets and cantatas; 5 Passions, of which the greatest are the St. Matthew and the St. John; 5 masses of which his B Minor Mass is a world masterpiece; oratorios; magnificats; many organ works, and old German chorales harmonized for voices.

When you can, try to hear Wanda Landowska play Bach compositions on the harpsichord. It is a glimpse into the beauty of the saintly Bach.

Also try to hear the great Bach Festival, directed by Frederick Wolle held yearly in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Moravian Church.

In a list of great men, Bach would be classed with Euripides, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Goethe.

Bach did not write for people, he wrote for his own soul. He never seemed able to write theatric music, for his was the drama of the spirit. Always, his music was the result of his musings, the confessions of his ideals. So he attained a loftiness, grandeur and sublimity far removed from even some of the most dramatic writers.

Bach’s Sons

Bach’s sons reached great eminence. The eldest was Wilhelm Friedemann (1710–1784), an unusually talented man on whom the father built great hopes. But while Friedemann inherited his father’s musical talent he did not have his character, and was looked upon as a disgrace to the family on account of his dissolute ways. He was the greatest organist of his time and most of his compositions, which were considered very fine, have been lost to the world, for he did not take the trouble even to write them down, but played them from memory.

The third son, Karl Philip Emanuel (1714–1788), although trained to be a lawyer, could not resist the urge of music, and after going through two universities decided to become a musician to Frederick the Great. He was “general manager” of all the music at court until the Seven Years’ War put an end to his position after almost thirty years’ service. He then spent the rest of his life in Hamburg. As composer, conductor, teacher and critic his influence was great. He was loved and respected by the whole city. In his day he was regarded as being as important as his father, but we know that he was not in the same class, although he was the greatest of his contemporaries. He did not imitate his father’s style but developed the sonata into the form that Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven perfected. He was an innovator, not only in form, but in the treatment of melody and harmony. His best sonatas were written at the court of Frederick the Great.

In the growth of music he is the link between his immortal father and Haydn. Haydn was more gifted than he and made the seeds planted by Philip Emanuel blossom luxuriantly.

Johann Christoph (1732–1795) was an upright, modest, amiable man, and a splendid musician keeping up the family traditions.

Johann Christian (1735–1782), the youngest of those who outlived the father, might be called the Italian Bach, because he went to Italy in 1754, became organist of the Milan Cathedral, and wrote vocal music in the Neapolitan style. He left his position as organist, married an Italian prima donna, wrote many operas and spent the last twenty years of his life in London, as director of concerts.

Curious as it may seem, the great and gifted Bach family died out in 1845, with a grandson of Johann Sebastian. Out of twenty children there seems not to have been one to carry the line to the present day.

CHAPTER XIX
Handel and Gluck—Pathmakers

George Frederick Handel—Master of Oratorio
(1685–1759)

In the last chapter we saw Bach rescue music from the danger of emptiness and frivolity, by perfecting polyphonic music and dignifying church music as it had not been since Palestrina.

Bach and Handel were alike in that they were both born in Germany when music, especially opera, had become mechanical and full of set rules. They were both Lutherans and Thuringians. They worked about the same time, and tried to encourage the hearts and minds of their country, torn by the Thirty Years’ War; both were polyphonic masters; both organists. Bach attached himself to Frederick the Great, the protector of the faith, and Handel went to England, where there was liberty of thought; and both, died blind and of apoplexy.

The differences, with so many similarities, are most interesting. Bach, modest, retiring, was always a German subject; Handel became an English subject. Bach was a homebody with twenty children; Handel was a traveler and never married. Bach wanted only to satisfy himself; Handel, to satisfy the public. Bach was humble, Handel arrogant. Bach seldom fought for his rights, while Handel would dismiss even his masters. Bach cared little for applause, but Handel could not live without it. Bach was devoted to the lyric, Handel to the epic. Handel is usually (not always) heroic, Bach is usually religious (not always, of course). Handel is popular, easy to understand; Bach is deep, coming from the soul, and it takes more thought than the crowd is always willing to give to appreciate this giant.

Handel achieved great worldly success, and treated nobles as equals. Poor Bach worked contentedly in an humble position and struggled for money and profited by “bad air.” (See page [248].)

Bach demanded faith and love of art, Handel demanded ready ears. Bach never intended to make music, he only wanted to express his devotion in the best medium he had; Handel wanted fame and riches and the approval of the crowd. Handel died rich and Bach died poor.

George Frederick Handel (1685–1759) who wrote the immortal oratorio Messiah, and one of the greatest opera composers of his time, was born in Halle, Saxony. His father was a barber, but managed to get the title “Chamberlain to the Prince of Saxe-Magdeburg.”

Handel’s father wished him to study law, but George Frederick did not like the idea and besides he showed great musical gifts. One day when he was a little boy, he found hidden in the attic, a clavichord upon which he secretly played every chance he had.

Not long after this “find,” something most important happened. His father was going to Weissenfels to the Duke’s castle and had no intention of taking George Frederick with him. So, Father Handel seated himself in the coach, taking things comfortably, when he spied little George Frederick dashing along by the great wheels. He paid no attention to him, but after going a mile and realizing that the little boy was still following, he called out “What do you want?” “I want to go with you,” answered Handel, and although his father was quite annoyed, George Frederick’s will, as always, prevailed and he went with his father! At the court the Duke saw, very quickly, how gifted the little Handel was. His father relented and on his return to Halle, George Frederick was given instruction on the organ, harpsichord and in composition with Zachau, and taught himself the oboe and violin, greedily mastering all the music he could find.

Although he studied music he seems to have respected his father’s wishes and studied law and even after his father died in 1697, he continued, but later gave it up for music. At seventeen he entered the University, and studied, besides music, the literary classics which were of great use to him later.

On leaving the University he went to Hamburg, the musical center of Germany, where he heard Keiser’s works and received good advice from Johann Mattheson, the composer, tenor and conductor, who later engaged George Frederick in a duel.

The quarrel came about in this way: Handel was to lead Mattheson’s opera, Cleopatra, in order to relieve Mattheson, who sang the part of Antonio. After Antonio was “killed,” Mattheson being free to lead, entered the orchestra pit to take Handel’s place as leader. Handel was infuriated. They met later and fought a duel in which Handel was saved by a large metal button which snapped Mattheson’s rapier! What a little thing a button is and what it did for music!

Handel’s first four operas were written here for the Hamburg stage. But Almira (1705) is the only one ever heard now.

Handel in Italy

Next he visited Florence, Rome and Venice during which time he had the happiest three years of his life. He composed a cantata, an oratorio and other works; he learned much of melody and sweet flowing music, which softened his dry, stiff use of German counterpoint, and he gathered material for his later London work.

An amusing story is told of him in Venice. There was a carnival going on and Handel went to it. At one of the costume balls, he sat down to a harpsichord uninvited and began improvising, thinking that no one would know him. A gorgeously garbed figure dashed through the crowd to his side, and almost overcome by the music, gasped, “This is either the Devil or the Saxon.” (Handel was called “The dear Saxon”—“Il cáro Sarsone” in Italy.) It was Domenico Scarlatti’s first meeting with Handel, and forever after they remained warm friends.

In Vienna he met Steffani (Chapel Master) who persuaded him to go to Hanover and after a short time, the Elector, who became George I of England, appointed him Chapel Master and gave him permission to go to England for a visit before taking up his new work.

This visit was the turning point in Handel’s career, for later he became an English subject and he—but we must not get ahead of our story!

Handel in England

Handel went to England about fifteen years after the death of Purcell, “The Orpheus of England.” Handel was quick to see Purcell’s good points and modelled his first English work to celebrate the Peace of Utrecht, on Purcell’s Te Deum.

After arriving in London he wrote Rinaldo with an Italian libretto in fourteen days! He was the speed maniac of the 17th and 18th centuries. His librettist said of him, “Mr. Handel barely allowed me time to compose my verses.” Later he arranged Rinaldo for harpsichord and all England played it, especially the lovely aria Lascia ch’io Piango (Let Me Weep).

Yet Handel doesn’t seem to have made money out of Rinaldo, which brought the publisher, Walsh, $10,000, about which Handel said, “My dear fellow, the next time you shall compose the opera and I will publish it.” (History of Music, by Paul Landormy.)

Later, he became the guest of the Duke of Chandos, at whose house he wrote at least sixteen compositions.

King George had been very angry with Handel for leaving Hanover and remaining in England, but forgave him later, and Handel was made Director of the Royal Academy of Music which the King founded in 1719. Among Handel’s duties were the getting of the artists for the operas. This meant much to him and allowed him to travel all over Europe. He composed operas almost as people wrote their letters, for in eight years he produced eleven successful operas! Think of that for work!

Handel and His Rivals

But—he had a rival, Battista Buononcini, protégé of the mighty Duke of Marlborough, and a musical war raged in London. John Byrom, a humorist of the day wrote:

Some say, as compared to Buononcini

That Mynheer Handel’s but a ninny

Others aver that he to Handel

Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.

Strange all this difference should be

’Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee.

Handel won, however, and Buononcini left England. In 1729, another opera venture was started, an Italian opera society, of which Handel was made the Director. Off he went to Dresden and brought back Senesino, a tenor, and other famous singers. But Handel did not get along well with his singers and subordinates. He was too high-handed and because of his quarrels the opera was given up! On one occasion he dragged the singer, Cuzzoni, to the window and threatened to throw her out if she did not sing the way he wished. Various other reasons were given too,—one, the dispute between Cuzzoni, who was called the “Golden Lyre” and another soprano, Faustina, the wife of Hasse, a rival conductor. Colley Cibber, a critic of the time said: “These costly canary birds contaminate the whole music loving public with their virulent bickerings. Cæsar and Pompey did not excite the Romans to more violent partisanship than these contentious women.”

And now we see Handel bankrupt and superseded in another theatre by his two rivals, Porpora and then Hasse (1699–1783) of Hamburg. However, they too were unsuccessful.

On went Handel, writing operas and oratorios and conducting at special functions. His health snapped, but his will was so powerful that this forceful man recovered, and presented two more operas, which were not successful. In spite of all his failures and lack of tact, he had faithful friends who arranged a successful benefit concert in 1738 for him. At about the same time a statue was erected in Vauxhall Gardens, an honor never before paid to a living composer!

He composed, while writing for the stage all these years, twelve sonatas for violin or flute with figured bass, thirteen sonatas for two violins, oboes or flutes and bass, six concerti grossi, twenty organ concertos and twelve concertos for strings, many suites, fantasies and fugues for harpsichord and organ. It is difficult to understand how one brain could do all this!

Handel Forsakes Opera

After his ill success with the Italian Opera House, he gave up writing operas and devoted himself to oratorios. In thirteen years (1739–1752) he wrote nineteen. Among these are Saul in which is the famous “Dead March,” Joseph, and many other important ones, but towering over all The Messiah, and Heracles, which Romain Roland says is “one of the artistic summits of the 18th century.”

They are not all oratorios, for Heracles and several others are not religious in subject, but are dramatic epics.

Handel’s sight failed him, but even this did not stop his torrential activity to his death in 1759.

He had become an English subject, so was buried with pomp at Westminster Abbey.

He was loved even though he was fiery of temper, and had a will that no one could conquer.

His music is full of his gusts of feeling but always correct and his art perfect. In his work he always held himself under great control and it mirrors his power and balance. He loved wind instruments and people often considered his music noisy!

He wrote forty-two operas, two passions, ninety-four cantatas, ten pasticcios, serenatas, songs and the instrumental works mentioned above. The famous Handel Largo comes from one of his operas, Xerxes, and was an aria Ombra mai fu (Never was there a Shadow).

Handel used counterpoint, but always knew when to unbend and use delightful flowing melody, so he became popular.

Other men, Hasse, Telemann and Graun, contemporaries of Handel, followed the popular Italian models but without Handel’s genius for melody and sublimity, and were never heard of after their own generation had passed away.

Handel’s Messiah, which he wrote in twenty-four days, was first given in Dublin. It took the people by storm and when the king heard it, thrilled by the “Hallelujah Chorus,” he rose to his feet, and since then it is the custom to stand during that number. It has become the Christmas Oratorio and is sung in churches and societies all over the world. It has lost none of its first popularity among the people and is loved as few works have ever been. It thrills because it is sincere, big, and arouses religious feeling. Oratorio was his special gift to the world and one never hears the name of Handel without thinking of The Messiah.

Handel seemed to reunite the forms: oratorio and opera, under his massive will. At first some of his oratorios were given in costume, showing the influence of opera.

Handel had many enemies in England, but he also had friends. Although imperious, he had a sweet side, and made friends with humble folk who loved music, even though he hobnobbed with royalty. Thomas Britton, a coal heaver, his friend, is sketched by an artist of the day in a picture where Handel is playing The Harmonious Blacksmith to Alexander Pope, the Duchess of Queensbury, Colley Cibber and other famous folk. Yet he stormed at everyone and even royalty “quaked in their boots” and were forced to behave themselves at rehearsals and concerts which Handel directed.

Accused of using someone’s melody, he answered, “That pig couldn’t use such a melody as well as I could!” He helped himself to so many that he was called the “Great Plagiarist.”

His latter life was spent quietly, with a few intimate friends, drinking his beer and smoking his beloved pipe. He was always generous and as he grew older seemed to become kindlier and softer. He contributed largely to the Foundling Asylum and even played the organ there.

He wanted to die on Good Friday, “in hopes,” he said, “of meeting his good God, his sweet Lord and Saviour on the day of his resurrection,” and on Good Friday, April 6th, 1759, he died.

Christoph Willibald Gluck—Father of Modern Opera
1714–1787

Now we come to the next genius, Christoph Gluck (1714–1787) born when George Frederick Handel was twenty-nine years old. He also attacked the frivolous drift of his time, but in another field from Handel and Bach, and gave the fashionable, aimless Italian opera its death blow for all time.

Gluck’s life is different from Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven as you will see later when you have read about all of these. For, until he was almost forty years old, Gluck did nothing to make him great, whereas these other men showed from their earliest years that they were unusual.

Gluck belongs to two periods for his life bridges Bach’s and Haydn’s. You will see how he first belonged to the frivolous fashion-loving composers like Hasse, Jomelli and Piccinni, and how later he blossomed into the great renewer and constructor of opera and escapes into a class of his own! His is the most remarkable instance of a man who starts with an ordinary talent, and later in life grasps a vision that never came to him in his early youth and which was not caught by others in his day.

Furthermore he was able to carry his point and not merely see the vision and let it go by. But first let us see how his life unfolded, for a man’s life helps us to understand his works.

Christoph Willibald Gluck, born July 2nd, 1714, at Weidenwang, near Nüremberg, was the son of a gamekeeper, who moved from estate to estate in the service of princes and nobles, and at the time of Christoph’s birth, was ranger to Eugene, Prince of Savoy. So, this little boy destined to become the great Chevalier von Gluck, was a child of the people even as was Haydn and others.

Gluck Starts Traveling

When he was three years old he was taken to Bohemia, (now Czecho-Slovakia), for his father entered the service of Prince Lobkowitz, a great music lover, of whom you will hear again. His parents were quite poor, yet it is remarkable that above everything else they gave Christoph a good education and at twelve he went to a Jesuit school near Eisenberg, the home of Prince Lobkowitz.

Here he learned to sing and to play the organ, the violin, the ’cello and the clavier. He was diligent and became most proficient and was loved and admired by the school fathers. But little did they dream that some day he was to write classic operas, based not on Christian stories but the pagan dramas of the Greeks!

When nearly nineteen, he left the seminary and said good-bye to the Church of St. Ignatius and went to Prague. To support himself and to carry on his scientific and musical studies he gave lessons, played for rustic festivals and earned money the best way he could, until Prince Lobkowitz became interested in him and introduced him to the musical circle at court. Here he met Count Melzi who took him to Milan, where he was taught by Giovanni Battista Sammartini, a celebrated organist and teacher of counterpoint. After four years of study he completed his musical education.

In Milan, he wrote his first opera, Artaserse which was performed in 1741. Metastasio, the popular librettist, wrote the words to Artaserse, as he did for many of Gluck’s works written in the loose style of the Italian opera. He was now twenty-eight and in the five years spent here, he composed eight operas, through which he gained great popularity. But not yet had it come to him to revolutionize opera; he simply used the old pattern which was really nothing but groups of songs, recitatives and choruses having very little connection except to give the performers the chance to do musical feats to amaze the audience with their skill. The story of these operas, meagre as it was, stopped short, for some long and elaborate cadenza, and then it went on again with no thought of the meaning of the drama but rather to tickle the taste of the audience and the performer. The orchestra, too, was a step-child, for no one cared where it came in as long as it was politely subdued, keeping the singers on the key, and doing its best to be heard only when bidden. So, Gluck followed these ideas in the beginning and perhaps it was better that he did, otherwise he might never have realized how far opera had strayed from the ideals of Monteverde.

Having eight operas to his credit, he began to get commissions from other cities and countries, and next accepted an invitation, in 1745, to go to London as composer of opera at the Haymarket Theatre. In 1746 he wrote La Caduta de Giganti (The Fall of the Giants), with no doubt a libretto of Metastasio’s, then he gave his Artamene and was assisted in their production by Handel, who is supposed to have treated the works with contempt. He is said to have exclaimed, “Even my shoe-black can write better counterpoint than Gluck.” But we must remember that Gluck had not yet become the great Gluck. His visit to England was fruitful, for Gluck heard and digested the great oratorios of Handel, and realized that the voice and orchestra might be handled the same way in opera. No doubt his mission was beginning to dawn on him; it came, not as a great revelation, but gradually.

He Makes Success of Failure

Another thing that gave him a push forward and shows how great people can make a success of failure: he was asked to write a pasticcio (Italian word meaning a meat-pie), or a string of melodies, very fashionable in his day. He strung together his best airs from his Italian operas, and called it Pyramus and Thisbe, but it was a dismal failure. “Ah, ha!” he must have thought, “why shouldn’t this musical drivel fail, for it is naught but trash, and with nothing that is needed to make a good literary drama.” So this was one of the experiences that led him to reform opera, making the words fit the music and not stopping a performance, so that a popular soloist could sing a meaningless trill and then start again with the other part of the word,—the way that opera was being written at that time.

After his London ups and downs he went to Paris and heard the operas of Rameau. He realized now the value of musical declamation and recitative to the meaning and action of opera if used with thought, and he was not slow in taking suggestions.

Gluck was probably the most all round man of his day, for he knew literature and science as did few musicians. He knew all the influential people in the arts, sciences, and music in London, Hamburg, Dresden and Vienna, and his home was a center of learned and delightful people. When in Vienna but a short time, he was commissioned to write an opera and he produced, with success, La Semiramide, after which he went to Copenhagen. His next opera Telemacco in which he began to work out his new ideas was well received, in Rome and Naples.

In 1750 after many disappointments, he was married to a lady he had long adored. They lived happily together, for Marriane Pergin not only brought him money which was a great joy, but was always his devoted and understanding help-mate. She was an accomplished woman, and a companion that many might envy. But, sad to say, they had no children, so they adopted a niece of Christoph’s, a lovely little girl with great musical talent. The three lived lovingly together until the poor little child sickened and died, making the Glucks most unhappy, for they adored her, as is often the case, even more than if she had been their own child.

In 1751 Gluck journeyed to Naples. Didn’t he travel a lot in the days of the stage coach and brigands! In the same year he became conductor to Prince Frederick at Vienna and in 1754 was officially attached to the opera, and Maria Theresa made him court chapel master.

Soon after, the Pope, pleased with what he had done in Rome, made him Chevalier of the Golden Spur and from that time he always styled himself Ritter (Chevalier) von Gluck.

In Il re pastore (The Shepherd King), we see the dawning of Gluck’s best period of writing (1756). The overture is better music than he had written before, and from this time on, Gluck became the genius in the opera world for which he is known. From 1756 to 1760 he lived apart from the world studying and after this he began to broadcast his ideas in writing and composing.

When the Archduke Joseph of Austria, afterwards the Emperor, married Isabella of Bourbon, Gluck wrote Tetede which was performed with great pomp. After this he wrote the ballet Don Giovanni, or The Libertine, particularly interesting, for it certainly gave Mozart an idea for his own great work Don Giovanni.

Again our “wandering minstrel” moved, this time to Bologna where he conducted a new opera which, strange to say, showed not a sign of his new ideas!

“Orpheus and Euridice” is Born

Soon he met Calzabigi, another librettist, with whom he wrote his first epoch-making opera Orpheus and Euridice. Although in some parts it is written like the older operas, he used many of his new ideas. The public at first were bewildered but they liked it. The next opera written with his new librettist was Alceste, so different was it, and so full of his best thought that the public did not like it. The pleasure-loving people went to be amused and heard music almost as serious as oratorio. It was austere, and its climax was not satisfactory. Yet it and Orpheus and Euridice mark the birth of music drama which Mozart and Wagner developed further.

In Orpheus and Euridice the chorus was an important part of the drama as it had been in the old Greek drama from which Gluck took many of his stories; and was not something dragged in to fill up space. Instead, too, of the over-embroidered arias they were simple and expressive, and the characters were real living beings, instead of figures on which to drape showy melodies. Naturally, the composers were jealous of him and went so far as to say that the principal singer had written Orpheus and Euridice.

Gluck said of his Alceste: “I seek to put music to its true purpose; that is, to support the poem, and thus to strengthen the expression of the feelings and the interest of the situation without interrupting the action.... In short, I have striven to abolish all those bad habits which sound reasoning and true taste have been struggling against now for so long in vain.” He abolished the unnecessary cadenza, a fancy, trilly part composed by the soloist himself and used just before the close of a piece. You will see in a later chapter how Beethoven dealt with it.

Happily Gluck and Calzabigi still continued working together and in 1770 he wrote Paride and Elena (Paris and Helen) which proved Gluck to be a writer of beautiful romantic song.

By now Vienna and Paris were enthusiastic about him, yet he was severely criticized because he dared to write and compose differently from everyone else. The adventurer into new paths must always expect trouble from those who have not caught up with him.

Trouble Brews for Gluck

Now our traveler goes to Paris where he presents Iphigenia in Aulis. The story was taken from a play of the French dramatist Racine. Although this was the fourth work in Gluck’s new style it was not as good as the others. His enemies did their utmost to hurt him as they resented his coming into Paris to reform French opera. And as the musicians and singers were not good artists, it was almost impossible to give it well, and probably it would never have reached the stage had it not been for Marie Antoinette the French Queen who was later guillotined. She had been a real friend and pupil of Gluck, when a young princess in Vienna. Nevertheless the opera pleased its audiences, and it paid well, and Gluck was given a new court office in Vienna.

In 1776 the trouble that had been brewing with Gluck’s opponents came to a climax. Piccinni was his great Italian rival and the city of Paris was torn as to who was the better composer. All the literary men and the court were divided into factions, one for and one against Gluck. Some great men, including Jean Jacques Rousseau were Gluckists, while others of importance were Piccinnists. Never had there been so great a contention for musical glory or struggle against new ideas. It was a most extraordinary thing, but it does show that there was great musical interest or people would never have wasted so much time in argument and in writing for or against these men. Finally it came to a head, and it was decided to give them both the same libretto of Iphigenia in Tauris to see who could write the better opera. Gluck completed his within the year and after nearly three years, Piccinni finished his. They were both performed and needless to say Gluck won the award and even Piccinni said himself that Gluck’s was the better. It is nice to know that after Gluck’s death, Piccinni tried to collect funds to raise a memorial as a tribute to him! So artistic rivalry need not dim admiration.

In Iphigenia in Tauris again the master rises to great heights. His overture was splendid, his orchestral color was superb. He pictured the different characteristics of the various groups of people and of the individuals themselves in word and music as it never had been done before.

He wrote Armide in 1777. It did not succeed although it was very lovely and dreamy and in it, he suggested the sounds of babbling brooks and the song of the nightingales.

Gluck wrote thirty operas, seven of which are in his new style: Don Giovanni, Orpheus and Euridice, Paris and Helen, Alceste, Iphigenia in Tauris, Iphigenia in Aulis and Armide.

New Paths

And thus this great path-breaker advanced opera seria (grand opera).

The old sinfonia in three movements which opened the opera, disappeared, and instead came the introduction or overture, suggesting the opera itself. He taught and wrote that composers could do anything to assist the action of the opera; he elevated the story to an important place; the characters in the plot were thought of as people and not as puppets, and they were studied individually and not as machinery only. The situations in the story governed the kind of music he used and he tried hard to make the orchestra a main part of the opera. It seems odd that nobody had thought of this before. Yet you have seen how much time had been given to the voice throughout the ages, and how long it had taken instruments to arrive at their full importance. So we see Gluck improving as he worked with a better librettist. From now the opera writer had to use thought in composition, as he would in writing a play.

A Very Cross Conductor!

But Gluck had trouble with the singers on account of his innovations. He was the crossest conductor of his time, would allow no one to dictate to him, and scolded the singers as they had never been scolded before.

He must have looked droll conducting, for he used to take off his wig during rehearsals, and wrap a cloth about his head to keep the draughts from fanning him! He would rage if the singers tried to do what they had been permitted to do in other operas! Some singers demanded extra pay when Gluck conducted. Sometimes he would repeat a passage twenty or thirty times and no pianissimo was soft enough and no fortissimo loud enough! Someone said of him while he was conducting, “He lives and dies with his heroines, he rages with Achilles, weeps with Iphigenia and in the dying scene of Alceste throws himself back in his chair and becomes as a corpse.”

Otherwise he was always the kind soul who attracted everybody from Marie Antoinette down. She used to receive him in her boudoir so that they could enjoy conversation without court formalities.

One day two prima donnas refused to obey him when rehearsing Iphigenia, and he said: “Mesdemoiselles, I have been summoned here to Paris especially to produce Iphigenia. If you sing, well and good, but if not, that is your business; only I shall then seek an audience with the Queen, and inform her that the opera cannot be performed, and I shall put myself into my carriage and straightway leave for Vienna.” You may know that the ladies did their best!

In closing let us tell you what Berlioz, a master of orchestration, said of Gluck’s orchestration in Alceste: “Of its kind I know nothing more dramatic, nothing more terror-inspiring.” And this was said of a man who had only the simplest orchestra with which to work. After much fighting, he was the first to introduce into the orchestra the kettle-drums and cymbals, which moderns have used with grandeur.

Gluck lived to see his own success, but the Piccinni strife and the jealousies may have weakened his constitution, for he died rather suddenly in 1787, a few weeks after the first performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

There are many memorials in Europe to Gluck, not the least being his bust which stands beside Lully and Rameau in the Grand Opera of Paris.

Public Concerts

It is very hard to realize that time was when there were no public concerts. Music was confined for so many centuries to the churches, to the public squares, to the King’s Chamber, or to the ball rooms of wealthy nobles, that it had not become the democratic art that it is now. Of course the first opera houses in Italy had been steps in the direction of bringing music to the people. The concerts begun by the Danish organist, Buxtehude, in Lübeck about 1673, and the Tonkünstler-societät in Vienna of the same period were the first public concerts. In England, John Banister started concerts at about the same time, which were the first to admit an audience by payment of a fee. Handel’s friend, Thomas Britton, the coal-heaver, gave concerts at his home for 10 shillings the series!

The 18th century saw a great development in giving public concerts. In France, the Concerts Spirituels were begun in 1725. The object of these were to give music to the people on the days of religious festivals when the opera house was closed. There were about 24 concerts a year; the political events of 1791 put an end to the society but it had already given the people a taste for concerts, and many new societies grew out of it. The festivals of Three Choirs in West England (see page [190]) were founded in 1724, and the Academy of Ancient Music in 1710. The Musikverein in Leipsic was founded in 1743 and was later turned into the famous Gewandhaus concerts in 1781.

This movement for public concerts went hand in hand with the development of instruments and the perfecting of performers. In fact the word concert came from “consort—the union or symphony of various instruments playing in concert to one tune.”

The Mannheim School

The symphony came to life in Germany. Paul Landormy in his History of Music tells us that it was the time of the “poor scholars” who were educated free from expense in the schools with the understanding that they were to learn the “musician’s trade” and take part in the concerts organized by the cities and the courts. Thus symphony orchestras grew up all over Germany,—Munich, Stuttgart, Dresden, Darmstadt, Hamburg where Telemann conducted, in Leipsic, Berlin and Mannheim.

In Mannheim appeared the most important group of composers, known as the Mannheim School, and many wrote the early symphonies which led from the works of Bach to those of Haydn and Mozart. The best known of these composers are: Johann Stamitz (1717–1757), Franz Xavier Richter (1709–1789), Anton Filtz, Christian Cannabich, Ignaz Holzbauer, Ernst Eichner and Giovanni Battista Toeschi. Under the direct influence of the Mannheim School were: François Joseph Gossec (1734–1829), a Belgian living in Paris who wrote many symphonies; Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805) known as one of the first writers of chamber music in the form used by the classic writers; Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1701–1775) of Milan; the sons of Bach, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, and Joseph and Michael Haydn.

From the painting by J. B. Greuze, in the Louvre, Paris.
Chevalier Christoph Willibald von Gluck.
Father of Modern Opera.

From a statue by Barrias, in the Luxembourg Gallery, Paris.
The Boy Mozart.

CHAPTER XX
“Papa” Haydn and Mozart—the Genius

Franz Joseph Haydn
1732–1809

About the time in history when Franz Joseph Haydn was born, the world was very much upset. No one knew what to think or how. It was a time of battle and struggle as he was born in the midst of the Seven Years’ War and lived during the French Revolution. Everyone except for a few great persons felt bitter and discontented and doubt was everywhere. This seems to be the way wars and conflicts affect all peoples and it is why wars are so damaging.

Yet out of this mixture of feeling and thinking, the great classic period of music was created by such men as Bach and Haydn and Mozart and the finishing touches were put on it by Beethoven, the colossus.

Franz Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau (1732), a little town in Austria near Vienna. His father was a wheelwright and his mother was a very good cook. Beethoven’s mother, too, was a professional cook.

These simple parents, his brothers and sisters, measuring not a baker’s, but a wheelwright’s dozen, had an hour or two of music every evening after the hard day’s work, and Mathias, the father, played the harp and sang. It was during these evenings that little Joseph’s father noticed that at the age of six he was passionately fond of music.

One time at a festival the drummer failed to appear and there was no one who could play for the choristers who were to march through the town. His teacher, Frankh, called Joseph and showed him how to make the drum stroke and told him to practice it. When he was left by himself he found a meal tub, over which he stretched a cloth, put it on a stool and drummed with such vigor that the whole thing toppled over and he and his drum were covered with meal! But he learned to drum! And the people laughed when in this solemn church festival, the little six year old Joseph was seen drumming the big drum carried by a hunchback in front of him. The drums on which he played are still at Hainburg. But, we forget, we have not brought him from Rohrau!

Not long before J. M. Frankh, a relative, came to visit the Haydns, and it was decided that he should take Joseph to Hainburg to teach him. The excitement, of course, was great and little Joseph felt very important with all the hustle and bustle preparing for his departure. Little did Saperle (his nickname) realize what a hard master he was getting in Frankh, who only cared for the pay he received from Joseph’s father. Nevertheless he learned much and showed great talent while at Hainburg and one day a great thing happened. Reutter, the organist of St. Stephen’s in Vienna, visited Frankh and as they talked of music the conversation turned to the choir school which Reutter directed. Frankh sent for Joseph, a slight, dark haired, dark eyed little boy, and Reutter asked him to read a piece of music at sight. Joseph looked at it and said: “How can I, when my teacher couldn’t?” Yet, Joseph did sing it sweetly and he entered the choir school. Here his life was a misery, for Reutter was harsh and unsympathetic, but soon Joseph’s hard life in the choir school was over, for one very cold winter night, he felt a little frisky, as many a healthy lad does, and pulled off the wig of a man in the choir. Reutter, who had wanted an excuse to rid himself of Joseph, because his voice had begun to break, threw him out into the cold. Poor Saperle had no other place to go and wandered about all night, until he met his acquaintance Spangler, a tenor who was very poor and so had sympathy with Haydn. He took him home to live with him and his wife and child in his attic,—one small room with no comfort and no privacy. All this time young Haydn was forced to earn his daily bread by teaching as much as he could, playing for weddings, baptisms, funerals, festivals, dances and street serenadings. This street serenading was a sweet and pretty custom of the time.

One night Haydn and some other youths serenaded Kurz, a prominent comedian. Kurz, pleased by the music below his window, called to the lads: “Whose music is that?” “Joseph Haydn’s,” called back Haydn. “Who is he and where?” asked Kurz. “Down here, I am Haydn,” said Joseph. Kurz invited him upstairs and Haydn, at the age of seventeen, received a commission for a comic opera, which had two special performances.

All this time he mixed with the poor and laboring people, and their songs became his songs, and his heart was full of their frolics and their pains. He was of the people and was so filled with their humor that later he was called the father of humor in music.

Soon, in order to be alone, and to work in peace, he took a room in another attic, and bade good-bye to his very good friends. His room was cold in winter and let in the rains and snows, but it did have a spinet on which Haydn was allowed to play, and fortunately Metastasio the librettist lived in this house. Here Haydn studied the works of Karl Philip Emanuel Bach, Fuchs’ Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Parnassus, Parnassus meaning the mountain upon which the Greek Muses lived and so comes to mean the home of learning). He practised too, during this time, on any instrument he could find and learned so much that he became the founder of the modern orchestra.

When Metastasio discovered that there was a hard working musician in his house he met him and then introduced him to Porpora the greatest Italian singing teacher in Vienna. Not long after meeting him, Porpora entrusted to his care Marianne Van Martines, his ten year old pupil, the future musical celebrity. At seventeen Marianne wrote a mass which was used at St. Michael’s Church and she became the favorite singer and player of Empress Maria Theresa. You see women even in those days composed and performed!

So began Haydn’s successes. Porpora engaged him as accompanist, and treated him half way between a valet and a musician, but Haydn’s sweet nature carried him through all unpleasantnesses and he was so anxious to learn and to earn his six ducats that he did not care if he did have to eat with the servants.

In 1751–2, he wrote his first mass, his first string quartet, and his first comic opera for Kurz, The Crooked Devil, the music of which has been lost. Soon after he met Gluck at the concerts of the Prince of Hildburghausen, where Haydn acted as accompanist; at the prince’s house too, he met Ditter von Dittersdorf, the violinist. The princes and nobles of these days did much for music for it was usually at their homes and under their guidance that the composers received opportunities to work.

Nevertheless, we see Haydn during these days slaving to make his daily bread, but with the money he made he bought books on music theory and held himself sternly down to hard work, morning, noon, and night.

In 1755 Baron von Fürnburg, a music amateur, who gave concerts at his home, asked him to compose for him, and he wrote eighteen quartets, six scherzandi for wind instruments (the ancestors of his own symphonies), four string quartets, to be played by the village priest, himself, the steward, and the ’cellist Albrechtsberger.

All these pieces show how much happier he was since becoming part of the Baron’s staff, for they are merry and jolly, and filled with that humor which Haydn was the first to put into music.

Here, too, he met the cultivated Countess Thun, who was so interested in his struggle for success, and in the youth himself that she became his pupil. From this time on he began to earn more and to live more comfortably.

Everything seemed to be clearing up for him now. The Countess introduced him to Count Morzin, a Bohemian nobleman of great wealth, and in 1759 he became his musical director. His orchestra had eighteen members and here he wrote his first Symphony (the first of one hundred and twenty-five!)

All this time he kept up his teaching and very soon married the daughter of a wig-maker, who did not understand him and with whom he was very unhappy, but he lived with her like the good man he was until within a few years of his death.

Haydn and the Esterhazys

Soon after Haydn’s marriage, Count Morzin had to cut down expenses and dismissed his musical staff, but Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy engaged him and he lived with him thirty years under salary with all his expenses paid,—thus ended his struggles to make a living. He composed in comfort and had a few able musicians to play whatever he wrote. He had quiet, solitude and appreciation,—the need of all art workers.

From 1761 to 1790 in the Esterhazy home he wrote most of his immortal works,—six of his best symphonies; the oratorio The Seven Words from the Cross (1785) which he himself thought was a masterpiece; six string quartets.

His orchestra here had six violins and violas, one violoncello, one double bass, one flute, two oboes, two bassoons and four horns,—seventeen in all; later he had twenty-two to twenty-four including trumpets, kettle-drums and from 1776–1778 the newest arrival, the clarinet.

His duties were to rehearse the orchestra daily, give music lessons, compose for the orchestra and instruct the singers engaged by the prince. Oh, yes! he had to tune his own harpsichord, on which he played when he led the orchestra.

Haydn led a beautiful life with the Esterhazy family. In the summer he hunted and fished, and in the winter, went off to Vienna to hear the orchestra and meet great personages attracted by the art, music and court life. But he had to keep on composing for the Esterhazys, who were constantly entertaining and there were many special occasions to be celebrated with Haydn’s lovely music.

It seems hard for us to realize that one family could play the compositions of one man continually, but we have rarely had so great a man to listen to!

Haydn in England

In 1790 Haydn’s fame had spread abroad, especially to England. Salomon, a violinist and concert manager begged him to come to conduct twenty concerts with a new composition for each concert, for which he was to receive a fabulous sum. He gave his first concert February 25th, 1791. He was now about sixty years old and his popularity was so great that the Prince of Wales engaged him for twenty-six court concerts. He forgot to pay him, but later Parliament sent him one hundred guineas (about $500). Money at that time bought four or five times what it buys now, so Haydn went back to Austria, rich and famous and with a degree from Oxford. The English asked him many times to return and finally in 1794 he went again and was greeted with even more enthusiasm. Few composers in all the world have lived to see such triumphs as did the jovial, charming “Papa Haydn,” as his warm friend and pupil Mozart called him. But withal, Haydn was modest and unassuming and never hesitated to give his services in concerts for the poor or to give money to the sick.

Besides all the money he must have received, he had a generous pension from his friends, the Esterhazys, who demanded very little of his time. So now, with leisure, he could do his greatest works and at this period he wrote two oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons. They were more than successful. Emil Naumann says this of The Seasons: “It is not until we come to Haydn that we witness the joys and sorrows of men and women of our own time and dwellers in our own land, the tiller of the soil, the wine-presser and shepherd, or homely figures like Simon the farmer, his daughter Anna and the peasant Lucas, in The Seasons.” Then he says of The Creation: “We move with him through the German spinning room, where the girls relate stories to the accompaniment of the musical hum of the spinning wheel, or we rove through woods to follow the chase. His whole heart is in nature. He loves to depict her in her many varying aspects, and at all seasons, and all is touched with a light, tender hand. His types are of home.... His delineation of nature is ever the same, fresh and loving, whether we look at The Seasons or at The Creation.”

Haydn said of his English experience, “It is England which has made me famous in Germany.”

In 1797 he wrote God Preserve the Emperor which became the Austrian National Hymn, and later put it in his quartet called the Kaiser Quartet. From this time on, nearly every nation honored him,—Russia, France, Sweden, England, Austria, Germany. And as Haydn was leaving for England, when Mozart said to him, “Papa, you are scarcely fitted for such an undertaking, mixing with the big world without the gift of language,” he replied, “Aye, but my language is understood by the whole world.”

And this is the keynote of Haydn’s greatness, his music is and was understood by the whole world, so true and simple and melodious is it.

A Gala Performance

One year before his death when he was seventy-six years of age, he was so feeble that he had to be carried to the concert hall where a great performance of The Creation was given in his honor under the direction of Salieri, who later taught Beethoven. Princes and nobles and grand ladies did him homage and the ladies threw their beautiful cloaks over his couch to keep him warm, for it was a cold night in March, 1808. When that part of the oratorio came where they sing, “And there was light,” it is said that Haydn exclaimed, “Not I, but a power from above created that.”

He died on May 30th, 1809, from shock, it is said, caused by the booming of cannon near his house when the French besieged Vienna.

So passed this conscientious musician, whose belief is summed up in these sentences: “I know that God appointed me a task. I acknowledge it with thanks, and hope and believe I have done my duty and have been useful to the world. May others do likewise.”

Haydn’s Gift to Music

1. He made over the orchestra, he discovered that muted strings made a beautiful winning effect.

2. He and Mozart at about the same time, added the clarinet to the orchestra.

3. He was the first composer who brought humor, that difficult thing which is neither wit nor comicalness, to music, although others had brought fun and boisterousness.

4. He was the first to use the individual tone color of each instrument, so, rightly he has been called the father of the modern orchestra.

5. He developed sonata-form in the sonata itself, the quartet, concerto and symphony. He was one of the first to establish two themes instead of one in the movements of sonata-forms. This was a great innovation and made the sonata a far more living thing and gave the composers who followed him a richer field to carry out musical design and human feeling.

6. He wrote about 1,407 works! 157 symphonies of which 18 are masterpieces, 83 string quartets, 66 piano sonatas, 5 oratorios, 42 German and English songs, 336 Scotch songs, 40 canons, 13 part songs for three and four voices, 5 German marionette operas written for the Esterhazy theatre, 14 Italian operas, 163 pieces for the baryton (viola da bordona), a favorite instrument of one of the Esterhazy princes, 47 divertimenti and trios, 15 concertos for different instruments, 15 masses, 5 other sacred works, 400 single minuets and waltzes. (Emil Naumann.)

7. Among his larger vocal works with orchestra are: Alcide (1762), Philemon and Baucis, entre acte music for King Lear and many others. His symphonies are so numerous and so many in the same key that in order to tell them apart some have been given such names as Surprise Symphony, The Farewell Symphony, the Military Symphony, Queen of France, The Oxford, the fascinating Kinder Symphonie (children’s symphony) and on and on!

Mozart and Haydn

Mozart was years younger than Haydn and died while still very young, but they were the closest friends. Haydn was his teacher, but lived to think of Mozart as his superior and didn’t hesitate to say so. This again shows the great spirit of Haydn.

Although Haydn was an innovator and a master of form his rules were never cast into molds he could not break through inspiration. A critic once asked him about the introduction to the Mozart Quartet in C major which had been much discussed on account of its complex harmonies,—a work which today we look upon as one of the greatest examples of his genius. Haydn replied in a decided tone, “If Mozart has written it, be sure he had good reason for so doing.” Albrechtsberger, a strict technician, questioned him about the use of consecutive fourths which was breaking a good old-fashioned law of harmony. Haydn replied, “Art is free and must not be fettered by handicraft rule. The cultivated ear must decide, and I believe myself as capable as any one of making laws in this respect.” Thus spoke the great musician and not just the teacher and follower.

He loved his art so well that he welcomed the young Mozart to Vienna generously, because of his genius. Haydn, when asked by a manager to have one of his operas follow the night after one of Mozart’s refused, saying: “It would be too much to venture, for next to the great Mozart it would be difficult for anyone to stand. Could I force home to every lover of music the grandeur and inimitableness of Mozart’s operas, ... and display of genius, and were I able to impress all others with the same feelings which excite me, the nations would contend for the possession of so rare a gem. Let Prague strive to hold fast the priceless man. But reward him adequately, for without this the history of great men is truly sad and offers to posterity little inducement to exertion, as indeed many a hopeful mind lies fallow for want of encouragement. It angers me only that Mozart has not yet been engaged at some Imperial court. Pardon this digression but I love the man dearly.” When he left Mozart he wrote to his friend Frau von Gennzinger, “I am inconsolable at parting,” and then he tells with the simplicity of a child “a happy dream” he had listening to a performance of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. (Adapted from Naumann.)

And thus we see this cheerful-hearted man according honor and love even to his rivals, his broad realistic humor showing itself, as well as charm, dignity and beauty, in all his works whether in music or in life.

Papa Haydn was a good and truly religious man. He leaves us an example of kindliness and thoughtfulness, for even the people who loaned him money, which he repaid, were remembered in his will. A touching story is told of him; that when he returned to his parent’s home, he kissed the floor upon which his mother and father used to walk, so well had he remembered them, yet so simple had he remained, he who played among and played with and played for the greatest people who lived in his time.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1756–1791

Now we come to the greatest musical genius of all time. For, whereas Bach, Handel, Haydn, Gluck, and Beethoven excelled in many things, Mozart excelled in everything; living but thirty-five years, about half the time of most of these, he outstripped them all in natural genius.

Wolfgang Amadeus, born in Salzburg on the 27th of January, 1756, was the son of Leopold Mozart, under chapel master to the hated Archbishop of Salzburg. His mother was the daughter of a minor official in Hildenstein, and was not a cook as were the mothers of Haydn and of Beethoven. However, Madam Mozart’s not having been of that profession did not lessen her son’s genius!

One day when little Wolfgang was four years old, his father found the boy busily writing. He warned his father not to disturb him, as he was writing a concerto for the harpsichord. And, sure enough, when the father looked over the boy’s shoulder he saw that he was not scribbling as most children of four years do, but was actually composing a work for harpsichord and orchestra, which he afterwards played to show how it should go. In spite of the blots of ink, it could easily be read.

Mozart’s father was a wise and kindly man. He soon appreciated that the boy was destined for a great career, and decided that he must be properly trained.

Wolfgang was a sweet and loving child, very kind and easy to control, although he and his sister “Nannerl” were “regular” children and loved to play as other children. The father decided to take them both on a concert tour through Europe, in order to meet the great musicians and to earn money for their education.

In May, 1765, Wolfgang and his pretty little sister gave their first concert in London “for the benefit” so the sign read, “of Miss Mozart aged thirteen and Master Mozart eight years of age, prodigies of nature ... a concert of music, with all the overtures of this little boy’s composition.”

The people, tired of all the pomp and ceremony of fashion, were eager for something different and were ready to listen to youthful prodigies, so the hall was crowded, and everyone was amazed.

They were beautifully brought up, charming, merry and unspoiled by the gifts showered upon them. Father Mozart gave the presents to them by degrees, teaching them the value of all things, from jewels to flattery.

Because of this training, Mozart always remained modest, did everything with gratitude to God and greatest love for his parents. He was especially loving to Nannerl to whom he brought every new idea. In fact Mozart radiated friendship and love.

The Children Tour Europe

On this concert tour (1765) in Paris, London, Holland and Switzerland, Mozart was received with great enthusiasm everywhere. When they came back, Mozart had no time to become conceited for he began a strict course of study and at twelve he composed his first mass and his first opera Bastien et Bastienne, which is still played and is charming. At fourteen he was assistant concertmaster to the Archbishop of Salzburg, and then began a series of woes, for the Archbishop was a mean character and treated him most unjustly.

However, in 1777, we see him in Paris with his mother, where to his great advantage he heard Gluck’s operas and met Gluck. Shortly after that his mother died, and it made a very deep scar in his heart. Soon he was absorbed in composing and finishing Idomeneo and in this year (1781) took up his residence in Vienna. In the next, he married Constance Weber and wrote Il Seraglio in which his heroine is called Constance. They say he was teased for this, but he did not mind very much. In 1786 he wrote the unexcelled Marriage of Figaro, which at first was not appreciated, but soon came into its own.

Prague began to love Mozart and gave him ovations. To show his appreciation he composed Don Giovanni (1787) and so great was the people’s delight in this masterpiece that Emperor Joseph made him court composer at the salary of $400 a year! Too bad it was not more, for poor Mozart was never free from the heart-breaking struggle to make enough money to live. You will recall the letter of Haydn in the last section where he wished some nation would adopt Mozart and free him from care, so great was Haydn’s appreciation and love for Mozart, which Mozart returned. When listening to a piece of Haydn’s, a critic once said: “I wouldn’t have written it like that, would you?” “No,” replied Mozart, “and do you know why? Because neither of us would have had the idea!” Isn’t it refreshing to see men so great in wisdom and works that they become greater because of their loyalties.

Yet this man, a genius almost divine, was so hated by petty musicians, so badgered by unjust criticism, that when he was dying he believed that someone had poisoned him!

In spite of his enemies, he was known for his gaiety and bubbling fun, which ever overflowed into his music. No one seems to know why his country did not free him of money worry.

Appreciation Comes Late

As it so often happens with great men, after his death public subscriptions were collected and statues erected as a tribute to his memory. At Salzburg you can see a statue of him, and yearly festivals of his works are held in his honor; and in Vienna, the opera house is decorated with frescoes of scenes from the Magic Flute!

After his visit to Prague he was never well, and when he had finished the inimitable Magic Flute he started work on his last composition, the great Requiem (a mass played for the dead) which influenced Catholic Church music for years. He became very despondent, in great contrast to his usual high spirits, and poor Constance did everything to cheer him. One day, while writing the Requiem, Mozart began to weep and declared he was writing it for himself, “I feel I am not going to last much longer, some one has certainly given me poison, I cannot get rid of this idea.”

In November, being an ardent member of the Masonic brotherhood, as were also Beethoven and Haydn, believing as they did in the freedom and brotherhood of man, he wrote a cantata and led it himself at his lodge. Ill and despondent, he continued work on the Requiem, finished while he was dying. All during this time he longed to hear his Magic Flute which was constantly given at the opera house, and like a child, he would say: “I guess they have just reached this or that point,” and he would hum the music as he thought it must be progressing at the opera. The day before he died, Roser, his friend, played some of the opera on the harpsichord to cheer him.

The afternoon before his death, after finishing the Requiem, he and some of his friends sang it. At the Lacrymosa, Mozart wept. He said to Sussmayer, his friend, “Did I not say I was writing the Requiem for myself?” Later he asked his wife to tell Albrechtsberger of his approaching end, so that he would be ready to take his post at St. Stephen’s. During his last hours he was informed that he had been made director of all the music at St. Stephen’s with a salary that for the first time in his life would have enabled him to live in comfort, but it was too late! At midnight, on December 5th, 1791, he lost consciousness and fell into a slumber from which he did not awake. His wife was so overcome with grief that she was too ill to attend his funeral. A few faithful friends followed the coffin, but had to turn back as a furious tempest was raging and they could not force their way through the driving rain and sleet. Thus passed one of the rarest spirits that has ever brought Music to earth, and he lies in a grave unknown and unmarked. In 1859, the city of Vienna erected a monument to his memory near the spot where he was probably buried.

Sad, sad end for so great a man! He and Raphael, Keats and Shelley and Jesus, Himself, all died early in their careers and yet had time to leave the world a finer and more lovely place for us.

Mozart Prince of Musicians

Why do we celebrate Mozart in what seems to be exaggerated terms?

Where Handel was a great epic composer, Bach a great religious composer, Gluck, a dramatic writer, Haydn more versatile than many of the others yet not dramatic, Beethoven lyric, free and hating all tyrannies, in Mozart we have great opera, great masses, great epics, symphonies and chamber music quartets and quintets.

The list of his works is gigantic! How he was able in the short span of his life, to write down so much, to say nothing of composing them, is a problem that cannot be solved!

With his usual tendency not to finish work until the last minute, he wrote the overture to Don Giovanni the night before the first performance. He composed and scored it for orchestra in less time that it took the copyists to copy the parts, and the audience was forced to wait almost an hour until Mozart appeared at the conductor’s stand to direct the unrehearsed overture. When the curtain rose on the first act Mozart said, “The overture went off very well on the whole, although a good many notes certainly fell under the desks!”

Mozart promised a group of country dances to a count, but failed to keep his word. The count invited him, putting dinner time an hour ahead. When Mozart arrived he was shown into a room, was given music paper, quills and ink and was asked to compose, then and there, four country dances to be performed the next evening. In a half hour’s time he wrote the entire orchestra score and earned his dinner!

Mozart could be not only humorous, but tragic in the same work, making his humor seem greater by contrast. Don Giovanni and the Magic Flute could be called tragic-comedies they are so rich in both moods.

In the Marriage of Figaro he originated what Emil Naumann calls conversational opera, although Rossini’s Barber of Seville, and Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment follow it in style they do not reach it in real fun, melody and quality. When we say some of his operas were humorous we do not mean that they were comic operas.

In Don Giovanni he originated romantic opera, and although Weber in Oberon and other operas have their fine moments, none approach the awe-inspiring, continuous beauty of Mozart’s.

He was the first to write a great fairy opera, The Magic Flute, composed when he was writing the Requiem! Although the librettist wrote it for money, Mozart wanted it idealistic and true to his beliefs.

Cosi Fan Tutti (They’re All Alike) was really and truly comic opera, and Titus shows his mastery of the formal and severe style. So in all these he left models for those who followed him. Had he done but this one thing he would have been great indeed.

Coming into the world when he did, he was the connecting link between the old Italian opera and Gluck, who idealized what the old Florentines did, on the one hand, and the romantic and romantic comic opera of the later masters of Germany and France, on the other.

In instrumental music he is the link between Haydn and Beethoven. Let us see how! He furthered the work of Haydn in the quartets and quintets by making them more human and more expressive of sorrow, pain, passionate grief and the deeper things than Haydn. In his six quartets dedicated to Haydn he says, “I labored over these.” This does not agree with the usual statement, says Naumann, “that he shook his music out of his sleeve.”

Out of his forty-nine symphonies nine rank, some think, with Beethoven’s nine! In the finale of the Jupiter symphony he does so great a musical feat that as yet no one has surpassed it. For in it he writes a fugue along with the sonata form of the symphony, so spontaneous and so lovely that even Bach himself could not have reached the freshness of it.

Mozart treated the fugue with the same limpid mirthfulness that he used in less strict forms of music. This Beethoven never achieved for his fugues were always a bit labored, but Mozart was perfectly at home in contrapuntal writing.

Mozart also invented the art song! This is different from the regular song for the music changes from verse to verse to make the meaning of the poem or words more expressive. Thus he paved the way for Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and other great song writers, as he did for the symphonist Beethoven and those born later.

He opened the gate, not to a national art, but to an international art, for he was a world figure.

So, we leave Mozart, the Genius, for Beethoven, the Colossus, who deepened and glorified music and gave it a broader path along which to travel.

After a “Portrait of a Young Man” (Mozart?) by Prud’hon, in the Louvre, Paris.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

From the head by Gourwitch.
Ludwig van Beethoven.

CHAPTER XXI
Beethoven the Colossus
1770–1827

Let us see what was happening in the world into which Beethoven was born.

The French Revolution had closed the 1700s with blood and terror, and the American Colonies were uneasy under British rule, and before Beethoven was six, the American Revolution was in full blast.

It was another time like the Renaissance, when people began to think for themselves. In other words, the individual was commencing to count more than the nation.

Slowly we see the idea die out that only the nobles and the wealthy had the right to life, liberty and happiness, and we see the ideas of freedom and equality taking the place of serfdom and slavish obedience to over-lords. All this may seem strange to appear in a book on music but art always mirrors the life and feelings of the people of its time.

Then came Napoleon, who dragged the French army through the continent of Europe, until he was defeated at Waterloo by the English.

Then, too, came the War of 1812 between England and America, and unrest seemed to be over the face of the world.

But through it all came the insistent demand of the people for more democratic governments, and these new demands grudgingly granted by monarchs caused revolts and uprisings everywhere.

This was the time when men like Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Fichte and other famous poets and philosophers did their thinking and writing.

And into this world, the great democrat, Beethoven, came to add his contribution to life, liberty, and beauty, as have few others of our race.

And so the road is made easy for the people who followed Beethoven,—Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin, and later Wagner, who helped make the 19th century, a great musical era.

Romanticism

Instead, now, of people writing around a well known song, as they did in the cantus-firmus days, originality was the keynote; instead of conventional forms, composers began to find new forms and to compose from the heart; instead of writing dainty and graceful music, they wrote music of power; instead of holding back what they wanted to say, they poured out in rich melody their very deepest, loveliest and most exalted feelings,—caring more for what they felt themselves than for the effect on their audiences. Instead, too, of mathematical rules, they wrote themselves, their hopes and their fears into their compositions, and this freedom is labeled the Romantic Movement in Music.

Now appeared the great vocal and instrumental soloists (virtuosi). They developed because of the advance in the making of instruments. Beethoven could write more richly with the piano he had, than if he had lived in Bach’s time. For the advance in instruments helps the composer and the composer, the instruments.

Since music became of age, we have seen many things happen to it: the advance in instruments, of the orchestra, and opera, and the development of the sonata and symphony.

Ludwig van Beethoven was the bridge between the classic writers and those to follow him: Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Liszt, members of the “Romantic School.”

Before explaining what Beethoven did to advance music, you must hear about his life, for he was so interesting that knowing him will help you to understand his work.

Although born in Bonn, Germany, his ancestors on his father’s side were of Dutch-Flemish stock like our old friends, Okeghem and Willaert. You will notice that the syllable before his last name is “van.” If his name had been German, it would have been “von.” He was proud of his Dutch origin and corrected anyone who misspelled it. This frankness, you will see, was a part of his character.

An Unhappy Boyhood

He was born December 16th, 1770, and his mother was the chief cook in the Castle of Ehrenbreitstein. His father, a tenor, and his grandfather were musicians in the band of the Elector of Cologne at Bonn. His mother was sweet and loving, but his father was unkind and intemperate. According to some accounts, his boyhood was spent in poverty and his father tried to drive him to earn money for the family. It was very hard on Beethoven that his mother should have died early in his life.

At four years of age Ludwig’s father insisted upon his learning to play the piano, and as he did not want to practise, he was whipped often. Later he started to work in earnest and in spite of hating it, played in public when he was eight and at eleven he had mastered Bach’s forty-eight Preludes and Fugues, a difficult task even for a grown up. Besides, he had written three piano sonatas published in 1781. We think he wasted little time after his first whippings!

When thirteen, he went on the opera staff where he played accompaniments for rehearsals, without pay. Not a bad job for a lad!

One of his first teachers was Pfeiffer, who belonged to the opera troupe and boarded with the Beethovens. Beethoven now was growing most enthusiastic about music and took up the study of the organ. Not only this, but he wrote a funeral cantata for organ, which excited the whole town.

He played the piano very beautifully, as did Mozart, and when he went to Holland with his mother, at eleven, he played at many private houses, and gained confidence in himself.

Think of it! When Beethoven was twelve, Neefe, his teacher and organist at Bonn, left town and Beethoven took his place. This proves his great ability, because playing for services was complicated. He was so successful that Neefe prophesied he would become a second Mozart!

In 1787, Beethoven, despite his poverty, went to Vienna, where Mozart said that he would “make a noise in the world,” and gave the young pianist a few lessons. Not long afterwards, Beethoven was recalled to Bonn where his life was much saddened by the deaths of his mother and his little sister.

At this time he made the acquaintance of the von Bruening family,—mother, three boys and a girl, whose friendship was one of the inspiring events of his boyhood. He gave lessons to Eleanore and to a brother, and was a close friend to them all. Here he was introduced to the marvels of literature, which proved to be a lifelong love and a solace for the sad hours after he became deaf. He also accompanied the von Bruenings on holidays in the country, and through them met Count Waldstein, a young noble and amateur musician, who was most enthusiastic over Beethoven’s budding talent. Through Count Waldstein he was brought to the attention of the Elector of Bonn, who gave the young musician a place as viola player in the orchestra of his national theatre. Here he made several lifelong friends,—Franz Ries, who probably taught him to play the violin and viola, the two Rombergs, Simrock and Stumpff. His old teacher Neefe, was pianist and stage manager in the theatre.

Now his home became most unhappy because of his father’s drunkenness and bad habits. The Court, however, in 1799, looked after Beethoven and saw that part of his father’s salary was paid to him to help him care for the family. In addition to this the money he earned by playing and by giving lessons enabled him to support his brothers and sister.

He Meets Papa Haydn

When Papa Haydn passed through Bonn on his way to London, Beethoven went to visit him, and brought with him, instead of candy or flowers, a cantata which he had written for the occasion. Haydn was delighted with him and offered to teach him if he would go to Vienna. So, in 1792, on the advice of Count Waldstein, we see him again in Vienna, studying counterpoint with Haydn. At first he frankly imitated his master, and although he leaned more toward Mozart’s colorfulness of style than Haydn’s, from the older composer he learned how to treat and develop themes, and how to write for the orchestra.

When Haydn left Vienna for his second visit to England, Beethoven studied with Albrechtsberger, also with Schenck, Salieri and Förster. Although he was an amazing student his teachers were afraid of and for him, for his ideas were ahead of his day. They failed to see in him the great pathfinder, and naturally thought he was a dangerous radical or “red” as we would say.

Beethoven’s Friendships

The story of Beethoven’s life is a story of a few faithful friendships. He was not befriended for his personal beauty, but for his inner beauty. His head was too big for his body, he did not care what sort of clothes he wore, nor did he have any regard for conventions, fashions or great personages. He was a real democrat and cared nothing for titles and the things smaller men respect. Once Beethoven’s brother called on him and left his card upon which was written, next his name, “Man of Property.” Beethoven in return sent his card on which he wrote, “Man of Brains.”

Thinking that Napoleon was going to free mankind, he dedicated the Eroica, the third symphony, to him. But when he heard that Napoleon had set himself up as Emperor, in a violent rage, he trampled on the dedication page.

One day he and Goethe were walking along the street when the King passed by. Goethe stood aside with uncovered head but Beethoven refused to alter his path for royalty and kept on his hat, for he felt on an equality with every man and probably a little superior. But he lost his friendship with Goethe because of his many failures to conform to customs.

At twenty-seven Beethoven began to grow deaf. It made him very morose and unhappy. In 1800 he wrote to his friend Wegeler, the husband of Eleanore von Bruening, “My hearing during the last three years has become gradually worse. I can say with truth that my life is very wretched. For nearly two years past I have avoided all society because I find it impossible to say to people ‘I am deaf.’ In any other profession this might be tolerable but in mine, such a condition is truly frightful.”

Beethoven was forceful and noble in spirit, quick tempered, absent-minded, gruff, and cared little for manners and customs except to be honest and good. But although he was absent-minded he never neglected his work or his obligations to any man, and his compositions show the greatest care and thought. He worked a piece over and over before it was finished and not, like Mozart, did it bubble from him whole and perfect.

He was too high-strung and impatient to teach much and Ferdinand Ries, the son of Franz, and Czerny seem to be his only well-known pupils. But he taught many amateurs among the nobility, which probably accounts for many of his romances. In later years, he withdrew unto himself and became irritable and suspicious of everybody, both because of his deafness and the misery his family caused him.

Yet this great man, tortured with suspicions and doubt, and storming often against his handicap, always stood upright and straight and never did anything dishonorable or mean. In fact, he was a very moral man, who lived and composed according to the dictates of his soul and never wrote to please or to win favor.

He made valuable friends among music lovers and patrons such as Prince and Princess Lichnowsky, Prince Lobkowitz, Count Rasomouwsky, Empress Maria Theresa and others, to whom he dedicated many of his great works. This he did only as a mark of his friendship rather than for gain.

He was clumsy and awkward and had bad manners and a quick temper, and he had a heavy shock of black hair, that was always in disorder, but the soul of the man shone out from his eyes and his smile lit up his face. Although he is said to have been unkempt, he was exceedingly clean, for when he was composing he would often interrupt his work to wash.

When the Leonore overture was being rehearsed, one of the three bassoon players was missing. Prince Lobkowitz, a friend of Beethoven, jokingly tried to relieve his mind by saying, “It doesn’t make any difference, the first and second bassoon are here, don’t mind the third.” Beethoven nearly pranced with rage, and reaching the street later, where the Prince lived, he crossed the square to the gates of the Palace and stopped to shout at the entrance, “Donkey of a Lobkowitz!” and then passed on, raving to himself. But there was a warm, sweet streak in his nature for his friends loved him dearly, and he was very good to his nephew Carl, who lied to him and deceived him. Carl added to Beethoven’s unhappiness, for when he was lonely and in need of him, Carl never would come to him unless for money.

Beethoven had a high regard for women and loved Countess Guicciardi, who refused many times to marry him, but he dedicated The Moonlight Sonata and some of his songs to her.

We see his great heart broken by his nephew, we see his sad letters begging him to come and take pity on his loneliness, we see him struggle to make money for him; and all Carl did was to accept all and give nothing. Finally this ungrateful boy was expelled from college because he failed in his examinations. This was such a disgrace that he attempted to commit suicide. As this was also looked upon as a crime he was given twenty-four hours to leave Vienna and so enlisted in the army. Nevertheless Beethoven made Carl his sole heir. Doesn’t this show him to be a really great person?

Beethoven the Pianist

While at Vienna he met the great pianists and played far better than any of them. No one played with such expression, with such power or seemed worthy even to compete with him. Mozart and others had been charming players and composers, but Beethoven was powerful and deep, even most humorous when he wanted to be.

He worked well during these years, and with his usual extreme care changed and rechanged the themes he found in his little sketch books into which, from boyhood he had put down his musical ideas. Those marvelous sketch books! What an example they are! They show infinite patience and “an infinite capacity for taking pains” which has been given by George Eliot as a definition of genius.

The Three Periods

At his first appearance as a pianist in Vienna he played his own C major Concerto in 1795. From 1795 to 1803 he wrote all the works from opus 1 to 50. In these were included symphonies 1 and 2, the first three piano concertos, and many sonatas for piano, trios and quartets, a septet and other less important works.

This is the first period of Beethoven’s life. His second period in which his deafness grew worse and caused him real physical illness, extended to 1815—in this the trouble with his nephew and the deceit of his two brothers preyed on his mind, to such an extent, that he became irascible and unapproachable. His lodgings were the scene of distressing upheavals and Beethoven was like a storm-beaten mountain!

For consolation, he turned to his music, and in the storm and stress he wrote the noble opera Fidelio, and the third symphony, Eroica, concertos, sonatas and many other things.

Someone once asked him, “Why don’t you write opera?” He replied, “Give me a libretto noble enough for my music.” Evidently this is the reason why he wrote only one opera. We find another example of his patience and self-criticism, as he wrote four overtures for Fidelio. Three of them are called Leonore overtures and one Fidelio. The third Leonore seems to be the favorite, and is often played.

By 1822, the beginning of the third period, the great music maker was stone deaf! Yet he wrote the magnificent Mass in D and his last symphony, the Ninth, with the “Hymn of Joy,” two of the great masterpieces of the world, although he was unable to hear one note of what he had composed as he could not hear his beloved violin even when he held it close to his ears.

Imagine Beethoven—stone deaf, attending a performance of the Ninth Symphony in a great hall—not knowing that it had had a triumphal success until one of the soloists turned him around to see the enthusiastic faces and the hands clapping and arms waving, for he could hear not a sound! He who had built such beautiful things for us to hear, knew them only in his mind!

Beethoven was a great lover of nature. He used to stroll with his head down and his hands behind his back, clasping his note book in which he jotted down the new ideas as they came to him. He wrote to a friend, “I wander about here with music paper among the hills and dales and valleys and scribble a bit; no man on earth could love the country as I do.”

Beethoven Makes Music Grow

If you have ever seen a sculptor modeling in clay you know that his great problem is to keep it from drying, because only in the moist state can it be moulded into shape. In the same way, we have seen in following the growth of music, that no matter how beautiful a style of composition is, as soon as it becomes set in form, or in other words as soon as it hardens, it changes. Let us look back to the period of the madrigal. You remember that the early madrigals were of rare beauty but later the composers became complicated and mechanical in their work and the beauty and freshness of their compositions were lost. The people who felt this, reached out for new forms of expression and we see the opera with its arias and recitatives as a result. The great innovator Monteverde, broke this spell of the old polyphonic form, which, like the sculptor’s clay, had stiffened and dried.

The same thing happened after Bach brought the suite and fugue to their highest. The people again needed something new, and another form grew out of the suite, the sonata of Philip Emanuel Bach, Haydn and Mozart. The works of these men formed the Classic Period which reached its greatest height with the colossus, Beethoven. As we told you, he used the form inherited from Haydn and Mozart, but added much of a peculiar power which expressed himself. But again the clay hardened! Times and people changed, poetry, science and philosophy led the way to more personal and shorter forms of expression. Up to Bach’s time, music, outside of the folk-song, had not been used to express personal feeling; the art was too young and had grown up in the Church which taught the denial of self-expression.

In the same way, the paintings up to the time of the 16th century did not express personal feelings and happenings, but were only allowed to be of religious subjects, for the decorating of churches and cathedrals.

Beethoven, besides being the peak of the classic writers, pointed the way for the music of personal expression, not mere graceful expression as was the fashion, which was called the “Romantic School” because he was big enough to combine the sonata form of classic mould with the delicacy, humor, pathos, nobility and singing beauty for which the people of his day yearned.

This led again to the crashing of the large and dried forms made perfect by Beethoven and we see him as the bridge which leads to Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schubert and Schumann and we see them expressing in shorter form every possible human mood.

Beethoven was great enough to bring music to maturity so that it expressed not only forms of life, but life itself.

How and what did he do? First, he became master of the piano and could from childhood sit down and make marvelous improvisations. He studied all forms of music, counterpoint, harmony, and orchestration. At first he followed the old forms, as we see in the first two symphonies. In the third symphony, the Eroica, he changed from the minuet (a relic of the old dance suite) to the scherzo, an enlarged form of the minuet with more chance for musical expression,—the minuet grown up. In sonatas like The Pathetique, he used an introduction and often enlarged the coda or ending, to such an extent that it seems like an added movement, so rich was he in power in working over a theme into beautiful musical speech.

Later we see him abandoning set forms and writing the Waldstein Sonata in free and beautiful ways. Even the earlier sonatas like The Moonlight and its sister, Opus 27, No. 2, are written so freely that they are called Fantasy Sonatas, so full of free, flowing melody has the sonata become under his hand.

His work becomes so lofty and so grand, whether in humorous or in serious vein, that when we compare his compositions to those of other men, he seems like one of the loftiest mountain peaks in the world, reaching into the heavens, yet with its base firmly standing in the midst of men.

A Composer of Instrumental Music

Beethoven was distinctly a composer of instrumental music, although he wrote the opera Fidelio, also the Ninth Symphony in which he made great innovations in symphonic form and introduced the Choral.

Up to this time, composers in the Classic School had paid more attention to the voice and to the soloists in the concertos than to the orchestra. Thus we see men like Mozart leaving a space toward the end of the movement in a concerto for the soloist to make up his own closing salute to his audience before the orchestra ended the piece. These cadenzas became acrobatic feats in which the players wrote the most difficult “show-off” music. Beethoven, with his love for the orchestra and his feeling that the soloist and the orchestra should make one complete unit, wrote the cadenza himself and thereby made the composition one beautiful whole rather than a sandwich of the composer, soloist and composer again.

Fancy all this from a man who, when he multiplied 14 × 26 had to add fourteen twenty-sixes in a column! We saw this column of figures written on a manuscript of Beethoven’s in an interesting collection, and the story goes that Beethoven tried to verify a bill that was brought to him in the midst of a morning of hard work at his composing.

Besides his symphonies, concertos and sonatas in which are light moods, dark moods, gay and sad moods, spiritual heights and depths, filling hearers with all beauty of emotion,—he wrote gay little witty things, like the German Dances, The Fury over the Loss of a Penny (which is really funny), four overtures, many English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh and Italian folk-song settings. He also wrote one oratorio called The Mount of Olives, two masses, one of which is the magnificent Missa Solemnis, one concerto for the violin that is the masterpiece of its kind, and the one grand opera Fidelio.

Thus we have told you about the bridge to the “Romantic Movement” which will follow in the next chapter.

Beethoven could have said with Robert Browning’s “Abt Vogler”

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws....

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Johann Sebastian Bach.

George Frederick Handel.

Franz Josef Haydn.

Carl Maria von Weber.

Three Classic Composers and an Early Romantic Composer.

The Piano and Its Grand-parents.
Courtesy of Morris Steinert & Sons, Company

CHAPTER XXII
The Pianoforte Grows Up—The Ancestry of the Pianoforte

The Ancestry of the Pianoforte

We feel so familiar with the Pianoforte that we call it piano for short and almost forget that it is dignified by the longer name. We forget too, that Scarlatti, Rameau and Bach played not on the piano but on its ancestors, and that Byrd, Bull and Gibbon did not write their lovely dance suites for the instrument on which we play them today.

The Pianoforte’s family tree has three distinct branches,—strings, sounding board and hammers. First we know the piano is a stringed instrument, although it hides its chief characteristic, not under a bushel, but behind a casing of wood.

Where Stringed Instruments Came From

We have seen the stringed instrument developed from the bow when primitive man winged his arrow in the hunt, and heard its twang. Later desiring fuller tone, the sounding board grew, when early peoples sank bow-like instruments and reeds into a gourd which increased and reflected the sound as the metal reflector behind a light intensifies it.

Strings to produce sound, must be rubbed, like the bow drawn across violin strings, plucked as the mandolin or the harp is plucked, or struck with a hammer as was the dulcimer.

In the ancient times there were two instruments much alike, the psaltery and the dulcimer, both with a triangular or rectangular sounding box across which are stretched strings of wire or gut fastened to tuning pins. The difference between these two “relatives” is that the psaltery is plucked with fingers or a plectrum, and the dulcimer is struck with hammers. So the psaltery is the grandfather of the virginal, spinet, clavecin, and harpsichord, while the dulcimer is the remote ancestor of the pianoforte.

The first record we find of a dulcimer is a stone picture near Nineveh, of an Assyrian king in 667 B.C., celebrating a triumphal procession. This dulcimer, suspended from the neck of the player, is being struck with a stick in his right hand, while his left palm on the string checks the tone. Here we have the first stringed instrument which was hammered and muffled, two important elements in the piano.

In Persia the dulcimer was called the santir and is still used under different names in the Orient and other places. In Greece and other countries it was called the psalterion, and in Italy, the dolcimelo. Later, the Germans had a sort of dulcimer called the Hackbrett, probably because it was “hacked” as the butcher hacks meat! We see the dulcimer in many shapes according to the fancy of the people who use it. The word comes from dulce—the Latin for “sweet” and melos—the Greek for “melody.”

As people grew wiser and more musical, they padded their hammers or mallets; this gave the idea for the padded hammer of the piano for checking the tone as our Ninevehan did with his left palm.

Should you ever listen to a gypsy band, you will hear the dulcimer or cembalo.

The Keyboard

The third element in the making of the piano is the keyboard.

It is evident that the piano keyboard and the organ keyboard are practically the same. The water organs of the Greeks and Romans had keyboards, but as the Christian Church forbade the use of organs as sacrilegious, keyboards were lost for almost a thousand years.

The keyboard seems to have developed from the Greek monochord used in the Middle Ages to give the pitch in convent singing. It was tuned with a movable bridge or fret pushed back and forth under the strings and fingers. First it was stretched with weights hung at one end. It was a simple matter to add strings to produce more tones, later tuning pins were added and finally a keyboard. This was the whole principle of the clavichord. (We might say that the monochord and dulcimer are the Adam and Eve of the pianoforte family.)

The Clavichord

In the clavichord, each key drove a metal tangent against a string and was held there as was the bridge of the monochord. The tone was dependent on the place where the tangent struck. The string vibrated on one side of the tangent, but the other part of the string was deadened by a strip of cloth. The strings were about the same length and often two or three keys operated the same string so that it was possible to make a very small instrument. In the 16th century, it usually had twenty keys; in the 18th century, four octaves or fifty keys, but of course there were less than fifty strings! Later, every key had its own string and these were called bundfrei or unfretted clavichords, while the others were called gebunden or fretted. The clavichord was usually small enough to carry under the arm, although sometimes it was made with legs. Should you be in New York you must see the collection of beautifully ornamented clavichords and harpsichords at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Crosby Brown Collection.

Bach liked the clavichord better than the harpsichord and the early pianos that blossomed in his day. Because of the pressure of the tangent, it was possible to get a delicately graded tone when the key was pressed, a wavy, rocking, pulsating effect, which made each player’s performance very individual, but to us, now, it sounds thin and metallic. The word “clavichord” comes from clavis—a key, and chord—a string. Clavichords and also virginals were often played in pairs, no doubt for richer effect and for volume.

Large instruments developed slowly because before the 11th century, wire-drawing (making) was not known, so all keyed string instruments were strung with gut.

Harpsichord

128TH SONNET

SHAKESPEARE AND THE HARPSICHORD

How oft when thou, my music, music play’st

Upon that blessed wood, whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st

The wiry concord that my ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand:

Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,

At the wood’s boldness, by thee blushing stand!

To be so tickled they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gate,

Making dead wood more blessed than living lips.

Since saucy jacks so happy are in this

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

The harpsichord, we like to call the “Jack and Quill” instrument—for it is played by keys, jacks and quills which pluck its strings, instead of pressing or hammering. This is like a keyboarded zither, and is shaped something like our grand piano.

Each key has a string. Pressing the key pushes a jack, from whose side projects a small quill or spine which twangs the string. When the key is released, the quill slips back into the first position and a damper falls upon the string. The strings vary in length according to the pitch for the harpsichord has no tangent to divide off the string as had the clavichord and monochord. Thus the harpsichord on account of its long and short strings is not square like the clavichord but is shaped more like the harp and the grand piano.

Some one said that the harpsichord tone was “a scratch with a note at the end of it.” And yet, when we hear Wanda Landowska play the harpsichord today, it sounds very beautiful indeed. Smaller varieties are called virginals and spinets. Perhaps the spinet is named for its inventor Spinetti, or perhaps the word comes from “spinet” meaning spine, a thorn or point. The virginal comes from the word virgo—meaning maiden and was the popular instrument for the “ladies” of the day. There were larger harpsichords, too, with two and three keyboards and very many varieties, both small and large. The clavichord and the harpsichord were known from the 15th century and were associated with the organ until the 17th century, when the Ruckers family developed harpsichord making into a fine art. The first mention of the harpsichord, is in the “Rules of the Minnesingers” (1404).

The First Pianofortes

Early in the 18th century, music ceased to be just pretty sounds, and musicians wanted instruments on which they could express deeper feelings and began to look around for some way to make the harpsichord meet this need.

It came about in this way. Pantaleone Hebenstreit, a fiddler at the Saxon court played a dulcimer which he enlarged by adding to it a second system of strings. He tuned it in equal temperament, as Bach had the clavichord, and used hammers on it which produced very beautiful and loud tones. Louis XIV saw this, and liking it, called it the Pantaleone. But, shortly after this, Gottlieb Schroeter heard it and said, “only through hammers can the harpsichord become expressive.”

So in 1721 Schroeter submitted to the King of Saxony his idea of a harpsichord which could play soft and loud or in Italian piano and forte (the fortepiano or loud-soft instrument). But as he had none made he did not get credit for the invention until after much argument, based on accounts in his diary. As always, when a thing is needed someone will invent it.

The man who actually made the first pianoforte was an Italian, Bartolomeo Cristofori (1653–1731) of Padua; and the Frenchman Marius, and the German, Christoph Gottlieb Schroeter, followed suit. In 1709, Cristofori exhibited harpsichords (gravicembali) with hammer action capable of producing piano and forte effects. He advertised it in the paper as a gravicembali col piano e forte. By 1711, the fame of his invention had spread into Germany. In February, 1716, Marius in France tried to improve the harpsichord with hammers which he called the clavecin à mallets, and made two types.

Schroeter about this time made the two kinds also. The piano had little standing, however, until Gottfried Silbermann took advantage of Bach’s criticism of his pianos and made a grand type.

The next experimenters in pianos were, Frederici of Gera (died in 1779), who made the square. Spaeth, who made grands and George Andreas Stein in Augsburg, who was trained by Silbermann, invented the Viennese action on which a light touch was possible and for this reason Mozart used it.

Burkhardt Tschudi, a piano maker in London, had a Scotch assistant, James Broadwood, who became his partner (1770). Later the firm became John Broadwood and Sons, which it has remained. It was the first to use the damper and the soft pedals. For some time they used Zumpe’s style of square piano but later made their own. This house used the Cristofori action which made a more solid and heavier tone than the Viennese action, and was known as the English action, excellent for large rooms and concerts. These actions suited the different methods of piano playing.

Stein’s daughter Nanette Streicher, a marvelous player and a cultivated woman, upon inheriting her father’s piano business moved to Vienna and for forty years was considered an expert in the piano world. Thayer, in his life of Beethoven says: “In May, Beethoven, on the advice of medical men, went to Baden, whither he was followed by his friend Mrs. Streicher ... who took charge of his lodgings and his clothes, which appear to have been in a deplorable state.” Thayer says that Beethoven always preferred the piano of Stein to any others. Beethoven wrote to Nanette: “Perhaps you do not know, though I have not always had one of your pianos, that since 1809 I have invariably preferred yours.”

So, you see a woman could keep house and be a manufacturer as well, even in the early 19th century!

Then came Sebastien Erard (1752–1831) who made the first French piano in 1777. Erard invented many new things for the piano and formed a company in England. This firm was advertised on the hand bill announcing Liszt’s concert in Paris when he was twelve years old.

Added to these names is Ignaz Josef Pleyel (1757–1831), who also made a piano with a very sympathetic tone which Chopin made famous from 1831. The Pleyel and the Erard are still the leading pianos of France.

For some years the pianoforte went through many changes. As you are not learning to make a piano, you will have to take it for granted that there were many many steps taken from this time on to make the modern piano. However, the thing that held it back was the all-wood frame which could not stand the strain of the tightly drawn strings and it was a long time before the makers gave up the beautiful wood for the sturdier metal. About the time of Beethoven, playing the piano became a more complicated thing than it had been, and a grown up instrument was needed, so musical instrument makers had to “step lively” to keep pace with the music. At every concert, and often in the middle of a piece, the player would have to stop to retune the instrument on which he was playing. Therefore, all energy was bent to making the frame of the piano rigid, the strings more elastic and the pins firmer, and the metal frame was used.

All these special things were accomplished in later years. Some of the inventors were John Isaac Hawkins, an Englishman, who patented the upright pianoforte in 1800 in the United States, William Allen, a Scotchman, who introduced metal braces in 1820 and Alpheus Babcock, who patented the iron frame in a single cast, in Boston, in 1825. It was an American, Jonas Chickering, of Boston, who invented the complete iron frame for the concert grand, and at present, after many years, the instrument which seventy-five years ago bent under the pull of the strings, can now stand the strain of thirty tons! Chickering made pianos as early as 1823.

After this there was much experimentation in pianos, culminating here, in the pianos made by Steinway and Sons the ancestor of which was the firm of Heinrich Englehard Steinweg, of Brunswick, Germany, starting as organ makers. In 1848 Heinrich’s sons went to New York City and changed their name to Steinway, where Theodore, the eldest, continued the firm as Steinway and Sons.

Of course, the methods of stringing and tuning a piano have taken years to develop—all of which we cannot go into in this book. Now, instead of twenty strings, as we saw them in the clavichord, we have 243 strings to produce 88 tones.

So now we have the harpsichord with hammers “grown up” into the pianoforte, with its myriad parts, no longer made by hand, but carefully manufactured by machinery and the finest of them are American.

Piano Buying Created a Holiday in the 18th Century

“When the pianoforte was completed and ready to be delivered at the house of the impatient purchaser (in Germany) a festival took place; the maker, was the hero of the hour, and accompanied the piano followed by his craftsman and apprentices, if he had any. (In those days the pianos took months and months to make, for they were made by hand and the makers received cash in part payment and the rest was made up in corn, wheat, potatoes, poultry and firewood!)

“The wagon which conveyed the precious burden was gaily decorated with wreaths and flowers, the horses magnificently decked out, a band of music headed the procession, and after the wagon followed the proud maker, borne on the shoulders of his assistants; musicians, organists, schoolmasters and dignitaries marching in the rear. At the place of destination the procession was received with greetings of welcome and shouts of joy. The pastor of the place said a prayer and blessed the new instrument and its maker. Then the mayor or the burgomaster of the place delivered an address,—dwelling at great length upon the importance of the event to the whole community, and stating, perhaps, that the coming of such a new musical instrument would raise their place in the eyes of the surrounding country. Then followed speeches by the schoolmaster, doctor, druggist, and other dignitaries, and songs by the Männerchor (men’s chorus) of the place. Amidst the strains of the band, the pianoforte was moved to its new home. A banquet and a dance closed the happy occasion.” (From Reminiscences of Morris Steinert by Jane Marlin.)

“The Piano and Pneumatics”

It is very difficult to know just when this important instrument first was invented. It seems to have started with a mechanical organ and many were the experimenters among whom was John McTammany, a soldier in the Civil War who while disabled turned his mind to mechanics and became one of the great pneumatic (air power) experts. And so, just as we arrive at the beautiful instrument, the piano, comes another instrument far more complicated, whose possibilities are still in its infancy. At present the automatic piano is operated by bellows and pneumatic tubes (which look together like a bunch of gray spaghetti) and through which the air is exhausted and acts in such a way that the piano hammers fall against the piano strings. Into these instruments are placed perforated music rolls which travel over a tracker bar full of holes, each one having its rubber spaghetti tube. When the bellows work and the perforation of the roll passes over a perforation of the tracker bar, the air is released and its exhaustion causes the hammer to fall on the strings. This sounds simple,—but it is not!

There are three kinds of automatic players,—one, the piano player, which is now practically extinct in this country, a cabinet which moves up to the piano, and with a series of keys corresponding to the keys on the piano which, when in action presses down the piano keys and the tune starts.

Then we have the player piano. In this, whether it be an upright or a grand piano, the machinery is inside the piano itself (instead of being in the outside cabinet), so that one can hardly tell at first glance whether it is an automatic instrument or not. The perforated roll is put on inside the piano.

All these piano player bellows work either by electricity or by the feet. So in the latter, one cannot help playing with “sole”!

The reproducing piano is the third type of player. This is magical, for it reproduces the player’s performance as he plays it himself. Therefore we can entice Paderewski, Bauer, Rachmaninoff and all the other great players into our own drawing rooms and hear them with their superb skill. These are usually operated by electricity, yet the Æolian Company and probably others, have a reproducing piano which is propelled by the pedals as were the old ones before the invention of the electric player. Furthermore, some of the reproducing pianos have a mechanism with which you yourself can interpret any piece you desire. This gives the music lover who has been denied the study of music a chance to enjoy interpreting great music.

It is an impossibility to overestimate the value of the player piano to the young student, to increase his auditory repertoire, for the music of the world is his for the turning of a lever!

Their Contribution to Art

For a long time, the mechanical player has been looked on as a step-child, to be made fun of and scorned. Today, the great critics and best musicians recognize its value which is not as a substitute for a piano but as an instrument in itself. Sir Henry J. Wood of England says: “I realize the value ... of the pianola ... for a good many of the people in our audiences ... are acquiring by its means a closer acquaintance with the great musical masterpieces.”

He says in another place, “It’s a foolish and a shortsighted policy to despise any means by which we may add to the sum total of musical appreciation.”

And Edwin Evans, English critic and writer, says: “The player piano relieves the musician of the technical difficulties of the keyboard.... It does not relieve him from the duty of thinking musicianly, on the contrary, ... it makes it a point of honor with him to give ... fuller employment to his brain and sensibility.... There are dozens of scores nowadays which it is an impossibility to read at the piano and very trying to read on paper. Here the player piano is a boon and a blessing for it unravels every mystery and solves every problem.”

Besides this, it can be played so skilfully by some that even musicians can be fooled as to whether human or mechanical fingers are playing. Gustave Kobbé said, in his Pianolist, something like this: “There are only about five professionals who can play the piano better than an accomplished pianolist.”

To prove its artistic worth further, Percy Grainger, Alfredo Casella and Igor Stravinsky and other great moderns are writing music especially for the player piano because they can use the whole eighty-eight notes with full orchestral effects, without stopping to think of the meagre ten fingers of man! So we see in the future the possibility of this becoming one of the creative instruments.

Other “Canned” Music

Then we have the phonographs and radio. These cannot be considered instruments in the same way as the player piano and reproducing piano, but are invaluable means of musical education and are doing, with the player piano, a marvelous work in introducing people to the great music of the world. Of course, it depends upon the way all these music carriers are used, for if you have poor music on them, it will mean nothing to you, but if you hear the “wear evers” on them, you will have a touch of heaven in your life, forever.

Pianists Come to View

As an outcome of the work of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, the piano appeared because of the need of a more powerful instrument than the harpsichord and clavichord. At this time there were two particular schools of piano playing,—the Viennese, light and delicate in tone, and the English school, producing a more solid and more brilliant tone.

The principal pianists of the Viennese school were Johann Hummel, who, as a boy of seven, was a pupil of Mozart, Franz Duschek, Mozart and Pleyel. Later Beethoven himself appeared, the profound pianist in this group, but also an advocate of Clementi’s methods.

The Clementi School is named from Muzio Clementi (1752–1832), the “Father of the Pianoforte.” He was a composer of piano pieces, especially of sonatas which are still of musical value. Who of us has not studied Clementi’s sonatinas? Besides being a great player, a teacher and a composer, Clementi published a work called Gradus ad Parnassum, piano studies, a form which sprang up because of the need to develop a technic for the new instruments when the piano was young.

Clementi, at fourteen, went to England, where he lived all his life and became interested in the making of pianos. He was associated with the firm of Clementi and Company, later Collard and Collard, and it is said that he gave the Broadwoods much advice in the making of their “grand” piano. So we see Clementi as a founder of piano technic, and an instrument maker! He lived eighty years, during the last years of Handel and Scarlatti, and he survived Beethoven, Schubert and Weber. It is said that Mozart took a theme from a Clementi sonata for one of his operas. His pupils were quite famous: John B. Cramer, the composer of many important piano studies still in use; Johann L. Dussek, one of the first to invent and write down finger exercises, and there were many others.

There were two schools with Clementi at the head of one, and Mozart, of the other. With Hummel, a pupil of Mozart, the Classic School closed, and then Clementi’s ideas came to the fore in the new Romantic School.

The New Romantic School

One of the earliest of these new Romanticists was John Field, who was born in Ireland, visited London, had quite a career in Russia and foreshadowed Chopin in his playing. Then there was Ferdinand Ries, son of Beethoven’s early friend and teacher, Franz Ries; but the most famous of this period were Ignaz Moscheles and Frederick Kalkbrenner, a fluent composer and writer of studies. He was the first pianist to teach Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum.

Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) was a Bohemian and from about 1815, the most brilliant pianist in Germany, France, Holland and England. He was Mendelssohn’s teacher. Chopin wrote three études (studies) on an order from Moscheles. He is a very important figure in the growing up of piano music.

Carl Czerny (1791–1857) was another very important pianist and one of the few pupils of Beethoven. He was a follower of Hummel and Clementi and won great fame as a teacher in Vienna, where he lived. He wrote a great many pieces, about a thousand in all, making many arrangements of orchestral works and many piano studies, which we still use today. Beethoven encouraged him to make a piano version of his Fidelio. Czerny was the teacher of many able musicians.

Frederick Chopin, you will find out later (Chapter 24) changed piano music from the bravura to a poetic and deeper style. His touch and tone were so enchanting that he created a completely new fashion in piano playing which has not been lost. (See page [322].)

Clara Schumann (1819–1896), the wife of Robert Schumann, was the leading woman pianist of the day, in fact, of many days.

In the times of Mozart and of Liszt, improvising (before audiences and at parlor entertainments), was very popular and a part of a musical education; around 1795, after the Paris Conservatory was founded, it seemed to die out. However, organists today often improvise while waiting for the church service to begin. Dupré, one of the famous French organists, who has played in the United States, improvises whole sonatas on given themes.

After Chopin, Schumann and Schubert there was a great love of the short piano piece and as the piano was being developed more and more, it was natural that pianists should become numerous. So piano playing was heard in the concert hall and in the parlor where it was, to be sure, often light and frivolous and yet quite often,—serious and delightful. The light and decorated pieces were usually called salon music and today many are written which are classed as salon pieces. Cécile Chaminade, as delightful and clever as her pieces are, is a typical salon composer, Rubinstein, also, with such pieces as Melody in F, is a writer of salon pieces, and there are countless others.

Among the people who were prominent as pianists and composers in that day, especially in Poland, where Chopin was born, were Alois Tausig, a pupil of Thalberg and Josef Wieniawski, who was the teacher of the “Lion of Pianists,” Ignace Jan Paderewski.

Around Paris gathered many pianists among whom were Ignace Leybach an organist and composer at Toulouse, Henry Charles Litolff the famous publisher, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American pianist and the author of The Last Hope, and Eugene Ketterer. The following, with many others, centered around Vienna: Joseph Löw, Theodore Kullak, Louis Köhler, Gustav Lange and Louis Brassin.

Dashing Playing

A little later, due to the improvements of the piano, another school grew up called by some, the Bravura Pianists, because the pieces for these pianists were written to show off brilliant technic. Most of the people were flashy pianists, yet there were some very marvelous performers, for among them, Liszt himself figures and Thalberg, a Swiss, who was Liszt’s rival for piano honors.

Another set of pianists and composers was Henry Herz, Alexander Dreyschock, Emil Prudent and Adolph Henselt, a Bavarian, who was an amazingly poetic and beautiful player.

Practically all these pianists were prominent composers in their day.

About this time we see women coming into great prominence as professional pianists. The first one to interest us is Marie Felicité Denise (Moke) Pleyel, who was Miss Moke, the beloved of Berlioz and the lady whom he intended to kill but changed his mind! She was an inspiring teacher, a pupil of Herz, Moscheles and Kalkbrenner and was admired by Mendelssohn and Liszt.

The Growth of Violin Music

The same things seem to have happened to violin playing and violin music at this time as happened to the piano. There was always the competition between writing fine, deep music and showy, spectacular music, which, when played, would please an audience. But the violin was the same then as it had been for years,—the only advance it had made was the perfecting of the bow by François Tourte, assisted by Giovanni Battista Viotti, Pugnani’s greatest pupil. We use his bow today. It has about one hundred white horsehairs, the tension of which is controlled by a screw at the nut in the finger grip. But the thing that did affect violinists and violin playing was the fact of the rise in the 19th century of the orchestra and chamber music. From the time that madrigals were first accompanied by instruments, we have heard about Chamber Music, but the string quartet in sonata form as we know it today, had as its father, Haydn, and Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805) as a godfather. The link between the Corelli School of violinists and this school was Viotti who was one of the first men to write a violin concerto in sonata form.

The violinists of this period were also given to bravura playing as were the pianists. This was a safe thing for great violinists like Paganini to do, but for the less gifted, it often developed into, not music at all, but musical calisthenics. Here is the group which appeared in the early 19th century: Rudolph Kreutzer, to whom Beethoven dedicated his famous Kreutzer Sonata; Andreas Romberg (1767–1821) who knew Haydn and Beethoven at Vienna and took Spohr’s place as concert master at Gotha. He wrote music somewhat in the style of Mozart. Then comes the “Wizard of the Bow,” Nicolo Paganini, standing alone and belonging to no school.

He was born in Genoa and began to play in public in 1795, when he was thirteen years old. A very pretty story is told of Paganini and the spider:

When Nicolo was a very poor and lonely student, he had a pet spider that used to listen to him practise. Every time Nicolo would touch the bow to the strings, out came Mr. Spider to listen attentively. Now there was a little girl, the daughter of a shop-keeper near by; she adored the great, tall, slender youth who spent most of the day and most of the night playing on his violin. She fell ill and died, and by a curious coincidence, the spider was killed. Paganini was so overcome by the loss of his admiring comrades that he left home at once and wandered from place to place, playing the guitar when he could not get work with his violin.

Later he played all over Europe and had the crowd with him for his matchless brilliancy in rapid work, his deep pathos and exceptional beauty of tone. He has probably never been surpassed in double stopping, chromatics and his pizzicati (plucking the strings). Isn’t it too bad the greatest violinist in the world lived before the gramophone was invented, so we have no records of his playing as we have of Mischa Elman, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Albert Spalding and Maud Powell!

In this period, Ludwig Spohr was of great importance. He was a friend of Mendelssohn and, curious enough, was an admirer (one of the early ones) of Wagner. He had been an intimate of Weber and played with Paganini at Rome and knew Rossini. His rank as a violinist was acknowledged. He did not stand for “fire works” but demanded fine music. He was always a classical musician, for his early love was Mozart. You will meet him again in the next chapter. He traveled all over Europe and met many great men and his autobiography is a rich store of anecdotes and interesting facts.

At this time too, there were many great violinists in France, Austria, Germany and Italy. We would like to write a whole volume on the brilliant pianists of the late 19th and 20th centuries such as Paderewski, De Pachman, Godowsky, Busoni, Rosenthal, Harold Bauer, Gabrilowitsch, Hofmann, Rachmaninov, Teresa Carreño, Myra Hess, Guiomar Novaes, Katherine Bacon, John Powell, Percy Grainger, Levitski and innumerable others!

More about Radio

1927 witnessed the broadcasting of enchanting concerts by the Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitzky, The New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Willem Mengelberg, The New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch, Children’s Concerts under Ernest Schelling and many other organizations. The important broadcasting companies maintain superb musical organizations and there is growing up a valuable radio musical field for pleasure as well as for education. Mr. Damrosch’s musical lectures on the Ring have elicited nearly one million letters, from all parts of the world!

1929 sees the capitulation of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra to the value of radio in a series of broadcasts.

On many programs are heard the world’s greatest artists.

CHAPTER XXIII
Opera Makers of France, Germany and Italy—1741 to Wagner

As with all things that are over-popular and over-used, the opera in the 18th century became trifling and empty, except for the work of some few geniuses.

The music of the ancient Egyptians and Chinese advanced very little, on account of fast and firm laws, and opera remained the same for a long time, because of the strict rules. For there were laws governing the kind of arias, the number of men’s parts and women’s parts, when and where ballets and choruses should come in, the number of acts and many another clogging rule. But, worst of all, the people in the audiences knew the rules so well that they made a fuss when any composer dared to depart from them. Such was the case when Gluck came on the scene, and when he left it, with all the changes he made, other rules became just as binding!

You saw the effort of Gluck to reform opera in order to arrive at truth and sincerity; you saw how Mozart dignified the forms that were being used by enriching them, by his sparkling humor, by his new musical devices and limitless outpourings of melody. Beethoven, too, made his one masterpiece, Fidelio, stand for sincerity rather than triviality, and now von Weber we see adding to opera the story of peasant life in Germany, combined with mystery and beauty. Yet, with all these forerunners of a newer opera, many composers had to work very hard and much time had to pass by until we reach the great change under Wagner’s genius.

Von Weber Writes Fairy Tale Opera

Because Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) had so great an influence on opera writers, we will start with him.

Weber was the founder of romantic German opera,—the opera that dealt with people and their feelings and the folk song of the German nation. He was the first to combine the story of everyday life with the charm of imagination. Being of a long line of barons and also a great pianist, he raised the position of musicians to a high level in society, so that after him, pianists and violinists were looked upon as artists and not as artisans.

He seemed to understand the life of his time, and suited his work to his surroundings so beautifully, that it immediately led away from the trivialities into which Italian opera had drifted, into something more worth while. He was a true romantic, as he put into his operas warmth of feeling, elegance and delightful melody. He had a lovely sense of what was dramatic or theatric, and he knew the orchestral instruments as well as he knew the piano, for which he wrote skilfully.

He was born at Eutin, near Lübeck, where Bach had lived, and showed great musical gifts when he was a little boy. And although he was delicate, his father dearly wanted him to be a second Mozart. Michael Haydn, brother of Papa Haydn taught him and Weber showed great ability at the piano and could sit down and improvise and read music at sight.

He was taught by Abbé Vogler in Vienna, who first introduced him to folk music, which he used with such pleasing skill later. (By the way, Abbé Vogler, a famous organist and teacher, was the Abt Vogler of Robert Browning’s poem.) Weber became conductor of the orchestra at Breslau at 18. But, being a delicate boy, he could not stand many of the things he did and he broke down in health.

Later he was unfortunate enough to become secretary to Duke Ludwig of Württemberg at Stuttgart who was not a fit companion for a young man. Weber mixed in the gay life of the Duke and his friends, fell into bad habits, and drifted into money difficulties. Strange to say, during this time he read much and even wrote some music encouraged by Danzi, his friend.

However, he got into a scrape trying to help his father out of a financial difficulty, angered the King and was banished in 1810; and though cleared of his guilt, he remained in exile for some time. Then deciding to turn over a new leaf, with a mind teeming with ideas, he settled down to work.

He soon became known for his compositions and was made Musical Director at the Prague Theatre, where he won popular favor by writing national songs. He undertook to organize a Dresden troupe, after having done a similar work in Prague, but he was annoyed by bad health and the jealousies of his rivals. Nevertheless, here he produced Der Freischütz, Enchanted Huntsman, which Berlin received in 1821 with wild enthusiasm, while Euryanthe, given almost at the same time, was not, in Vienna, very successful.

Weber’s operas, as the beginning of German romantic opera, are on the direct road to Wagner’s. Wagner inherited from Gluck and Weber, and Gluck inherited directly from the German Singspiel (sing-play) of the 18th century, which was a play composed of dances and songs not unlike the English masque and the French ballet and vaudeville. It came before opera in Germany, yet made the basis for a German school, for it used German song and German subjects. Mozart, too, was one of Weber’s musical fathers, especially in his Magic Flute.

We see Weber, now, as we saw Mozart, combining the supernatural with national or German melody, and using both imagination and realistic effects. His Oberon is full of fairy atmosphere and Der Freischütz is often uncanny and awesome. He keeps the spoken dialogue of the old Singspiel and in Der Freischütz deals for the first time with peasant life. His orchestration is lovely and his skill with it was so great that he is still looked upon as one of the important men in the development of the orchestra. He paints the individual characters beautifully by giving each one suitable music to sing.

He reached dramatic heights by his contrasts between mellow quietness and brilliant effects. He made use of all the resources on his instruments, their defects as well as their good points. No one had ever before written more weird music than in the scene of the Wolf’s Glen, in Der Freischütz.

His piano music, including many fine sonatas, was rich with new and brilliant effects and his Concertstück (Concert-piece) was the father of the symphonic poems which were later written by Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, and Richard Strauss. Thus did Weber give much to music’s growth.

Louis Spohr (1784–1854) who was later a kind friend to Wagner, wrote ten operas which belong, too, in the Romantic School of Weber. He, however, was best known for his violin concertos, written in the classic style of Haydn and Mozart. He wrote these because he lived in the time of the great piano and violin virtuosi (brilliant performers) in Vienna. His work is tiresome to us because of his many mannerisms.

Grétry and Opéra Comique

Now we will go back a little and take up the French School with Grétry, the first man of importance in France after Rameau, and the founder of the comedy opera (opéra comique).

André Ernest Modeste Grétry (1741–1813), was born in Liège. He excelled in the opera buffa imported from Italy, which, due to the great sense of humor of the French, immediately became popular. In spite of their vulgarity there was much in these comedy operas that was delightful and they were on subjects which interested the people. Grétry was very skilful and successful in this kind of opera of which he wrote fifty in addition to much church music, six symphonies and many instrumental pieces.

Later, opéra comique, a more refined form of this opera buffa, had a long vogue in France. It became more serious, too, getting very close to grand opera, except that it had spoken words. Opéra comique always kept its naturalness, was simple, straightforward in story and informal in action. Another important difference from grand opera was that it could be easily given in small theatres, for it needed no spectacular scenes. This of course made opéra comique popular, for composers liked to write it, as they had a better chance to have their works performed than if they had written grand opera with costly scenes. This form has been the inspiration of many of the French composers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Opéra comique is first found in Paris at the time of the War of the Buffoons in 1752 the year that Pergolesi’s little opera La Serva Padrona, took Paris by storm.

Now, Paris had become the great meeting place for composers, and we find Italians and Germans going there to give operas, combining the ideas of Rameau, Lully and Gluck, with their own national styles. They often displaced the French musicians and Paris was a center of jealousies and heart aches in the midst of its brilliancy.

Cherubini—Musical Czar of Paris

The first of these foreigners to invade France was Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842), a Florentine, who became the musical czar of Paris. He was educated in Italy and in the beginning wrote Italian opera in the popular style. He went to London on invitation and was made composer to the King. In 1788 we see him in Paris giving his opera Demophon. In this, instead of being trivial in the waning Italian style, he became “grand” and pompous! Nearly every one that followed, copied him. Beethoven himself thought him to be the greatest living composer, because of his Lodoiska (1791) and The Water Carrier.

Cherubini started as a composer of church music and wrote most of his operas from 1780 to 1800. He returned to church music later in life and wrote his great Credo for eight voices. He composed in all forms required of the Roman Catholic service and one of the noblest, sacred writings is his Requiem in C.

But his opera writing influenced his church music and made him and many who followed him, compose such spectacular church music that the solemn polyphony of the 17th century was well-nigh lost. About twenty years ago, the Pope decided that this style of writing was not suitable for the church and so ordained it, that only Gregorian Chant should be sung in the Roman Catholic Church. History repeats itself and Church music, as in the time of St. Gregory and of Palestrina, had to have another “house-cleaning.”

Cherubini’s orchestration was broad and fine and his overtures were classic models. He seemed to have followed Mozart’s style rather than Gluck’s and joined the classic style with the modern. He had vigor, and was free from mannerisms, and was looked upon as a great man. As the head of the Paris Conservatory he was able to befriend many a struggling composer. He died after a long useful life, at 82.

His Medée and The Water Carrier (Les deux journées) mark the greatest accomplishment in his life—both are tragic yet are opéra comique because they contain spoken dialogue. Remember this instance of tragic opéra comique and it will explain how it differs from what we call comic opera.

Followers of Gluck

Following the time of Gluck in Paris there was a group of composers who were so much influenced by him that they are looked upon as his disciples. One of these was his own pupil, Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), who in turn taught Beethoven, Schubert and others.

One of the links between the 18th and 19th centuries was Etienne Nicholas Méhul (1763–1817), a Frenchman, who worked with Gluck. He dared to take his themes from life and wrote opéra comique with a serious aim. Even though he lived in the turbulence of the French Revolution, he wrote thirty operas, among which the greatest is Joseph. He was made inspector at the new Conservatory and also an Academician, and was one of the most loved composers of his day. He was often noble in musical expression and handled his chorus and orchestra with skill. He wrote little of anything but opera, but pointed the way for others, especially in the use of local color and national feeling.

The next follower of Gluck, Gasparo Spontini (1774–1851), born in Italy, of peasant stock, was one of the first to write historic opera, which was further developed by Meyerbeer and others. Technically, this is known as French Grand Opera, which was being developed at the same time as opéra comique. It appealed to hearts and imagination, for the people loved the great scenes and patriotism portrayed.

Spontini first went to Paris in 1803 and the people did not like his work. But he persisted, studied Gluck and Mozart as hard as he could, and produced Milton, which showed the public that his work had some beauty. After this he wrote La Vestale, a noble work which swept him into favor and he won a prize offered by Napoleon and judged by Méhul, Gossec (a composer), and Grétry.

Weber, however, while Spontini was absent came to Paris with Der Freischütz, and took his place in the hearts of the people. Cast down by losing his popularity, Spontini returned to Italy. His musical ability was not equal to his great plots, yet, as the first writer of historic opera he deserves a place in the growing up of musical drama.

Grétry made French opéra comique out of opéra bouffe. Among the well known writers of opéra comique in France were François Adrienne Boieldieu, Daniel François Esprit Auber, Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold, Jacques François Halévy.

Boieldieu (1775–1834) was born in Rouen and became, in 1800, professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory. He wrote piano pieces and operas, and is best known for his La Dame Blanche (“The White Lady”) which is still heard in Paris. His operas combine sweet melody, amusing rhythm with not a little dramatic style. He shows in his works a real understanding of how characters and action should be handled.

Auber (1782–1871) called “The Prince of Opéra Comique,” was born in Paris, and later he became the Director of the Conservatory and Imperial Chapel Master to Napoleon III. His best known operas are Fra Diavolo, The Black Domino, Masaniello, or La Muette de Portici (The Dumb Girl of Portici). He had great popularity during his day.

Hérold (1791–1833) was not as accomplished as either Auber or Boieldieu. He was the son of a piano teacher and studied at the Conservatory under Méhul. In 1812 he won the Prix de Rome (the prize given by the Conservatory for composition, which permitted the student to go to Rome to perfect himself in his art, and to increase his culture, at the expense of the Government.) His best operas are Zampa and Le Pré aux Clercs. He was particularly good in orchestration, and his works are still heard.

The last one in this group is Jacques François Halévy (1799–1862), who is chiefly famous for La Juive (The Jewess), a type of historic opera, even though he wrote many in the style of opéra comique. It is still given today, and it was while singing in this opera, at the Metropolitan Opera House that Caruso was stricken with his fatal illness and Martinelli, a few years later was taken ill, and so it is looked upon with superstition by some of the singers.

Meyerbeer Composes Very Grand “Grand Opera”

Next, comes Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864), and he followed the historic style that Spontini had begun. He, though a German, captured the French audiences and is famous chiefly for writing grand scenes, rather than for noble music in grand opera. His name was Jacob Liebmann Beer, but he changed it to Meyerbeer. He was the son of a Jewish banker and had no struggle for money as did so many of the composers. He began as a pianist and was also a pupil of Abbé Vogler. He was unsuccessful in Germany, so went to Italy. After an invitation to hear his opera Il Crociato (The Crusader) performed in Paris, he took up his residence there.

His style was a queer mixture of German counterpoint, Italian melody and French rhythm, and after blotting up all the popular fashions of the day, he gave his Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil), The Huguenots and Le Prophète (The Prophet) with different degrees of success in Paris. Eugène Scribe was chief librettist in this period. Later Meyerbeer’s operas were given in Berlin, with Jenny Lind in the title rôles and he became very famous. Dinorah and L’Africaine (The African Maid) were very popular and are still in the repertory of opera companies. But his style seems insincere and showy according to those who expect more of opera than grand effects, glitter and elaborate scenery. The Huguenots was probably his finest piece of work.

Among other composers in Germany whose names you may come upon in other places are: Heinrich Marschner (1795–1861), Conradin Kreutzer, Lortzing (1801–1851), von Flotow (1812–1883), composer of Stradella and Martha, and Otto Nicolai (1810–1849) who wrote the delightful bit of fluff, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Later we see the old Singspiel take the form of Comic Opera (not opéra comique) with such Germans as Carl Millocker and von Suppé and Victor Nessler in his Trumpeter of Sakkingen and The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and Johann Strauss, the great Viennese Waltz King, whose “Blue Danube” and other waltzes are so familiar. (Vienna was as famous for the waltz as America is for jazz.)

Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann

Another German who went to Paris was Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880) from Cologne, who became more of a Parisian than the Parisians. He was quite a fop and Wagner once called him “the musical Clown” for he was often seen wearing a yellow waist-coat and trousers, sky blue coat, grey gloves, a green hat and he carried a red sun shade. How like an electric sign he must have looked! But withal, he was so popular in Vienna that when Wagner approached the Opera House about his Meistersinger he was told that they were too busy producing Offenbach’s operas to consider his. He was the best box-office attraction of his time, and the managers could not get enough of his works. Offenbach was important because he founded a new kind of light opera, or the operetta, which is light in story, charming and winsome. His chief operas are The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, La Belle Hélène and his masterpiece The Tales of Hoffmann of which you probably know the often-played Barcarolle. He felt that it was his finest work and was very eager to be present at its first performance at the Opéra Comique in Paris, but before he had finished orchestrating it, he died. When it was given, the following year, it was praised as the work of a genius.

His followers were Planquette, with Chimes of Normandy, Lecocq and his La Fille de Mme. Angot, and Giroflé-Girofla, and Franz von Suppé with Fatinitza, Boccaccio and the Poet and Peasant overture, played at all movie-houses!

In Vienna Johann Strauss with his waltzes, and the most perfect comic opera of its kind, Die Fledermaus (The Bat) still sparkling and delightful, Zigeuner-Baron (Gypsy-Baron), all owe their start in life to Offenbach’s genius. We too, in America, have had the gifted Victor Herbert with his Mlle. Modiste, The Serenade, The Red Mill and many other lovely operettas and Reginald De Koven with Robin Hood. The inimitable pair in England, Sir Arthur Sullivan and his librettist W. S. Gilbert, wrote comic operas that have become classics. (See page [341].)

So, the foppish Offenbach sowed fruitful seed, and the crop that followed him have given high pleasure and delightful times to many, and probably will, for years to come.

An Italian Trio—Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti

We have dipped into Germany and France so now we must see what was going on in Italy.

Few Italians realized that great musical advances were being made in other countries and kept on doing the same old things. But one or two became famous because they left Italy to mingle with the other composers and audiences of Europe.

Among the best known of these was Giacchino Rossini (1792–1868), who became director of the Theatre Italien, in Paris, after visits to Vienna and London. His masterpiece was William Tell, based on the Schiller poem dealing with the hero of Swiss history. Among other things, and very delightful, was his Barber of Seville, which was modelled after the Marriage of Figaro, the conversational opera invented by Mozart, whose influence can also be seen in his Semiramide.

Rossini’s church music, such as the well known Stabat Mater is also florid but full of beautiful living melody. This and the Solemn Mass are often given today. He was a brilliant composer, an innovator and did much to abolish the foolish cadenza in opera. His work is very ornate but shows skill in concerted pieces,—choruses and the endings or finales of the acts.

One of the best known followers of Rossini in Italy was Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848) with his Daughter of the Regiment, Lucrezia Borgia and Lucia di Lammermoor from Sir Walter Scott’s story, The Bride of Lammermoor. He wrote showy brilliant things like the sextet and the mad scene from Lucia and by his very skill in these musical fireworks, kept back opera founded on truth and sincerity.

Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835), unlike Donizetti, wrote only in the grand style and not in the comique. His best known works are Norma, I Puritani (The Puritan) and La Sonnambula (The Sleep Walker). Though he was a better writer than Donizetti, Bellini is heard far less often today. He also used too many frilly, frothy effects and held back the advance of opera.

Opera Singers of the Period

As there cannot be successful opera without opera singers, here are the names of a few who have gone down to history: Angelica Catalani, Giudittza Pasta, Henriette Sontag, Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, Maria Garcia Malibran, Pauline Viardot Garcia, Henriette Nissen, Giulia Grisi, Jenny Lind, Caroline Carvalho, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Zelia Trebelli, Pauline Lucca, and Adelina Patti, and Manuel Garcia, John Braham, Domenico Ronconi, Nicholas Levasseur, Joseph Tichatschek, Guiseppe Mario, Enrico Tamberlick, Theodor Wachtel, Charles Santley and John Sims Reeves.

English Opera-Ballad
18th Century

Fifteen years after the period in which Purcell glorified English music, Handel went to England and gathered about him composers who wrote along the lines which he popularized. In addition to this, ballad-operas, part songs, “catches” (separate songs or ballads) were very popular. In London, there were comic plays made of strings of songs such as Gay’s Beggar’s Opera which were sisters to opera buffa in Italy, opéra bouffe in France, and the Singspiel in Germany.

Forty-five of these ballad-operas were produced in 15 years. The arrangers of these amusing song-plays included the names of Dr. Pepusch, a German who lived in London; Henry Carey (1692–1743), famous as the composer of Sally in our Alley, God Save the King (our America); and Thomas Arne (1710–1778) who wrote many masques, numerous ballad-operas, and set many of the Shakespeare lyrics and wrote many glees and ballads. Some of these part songs were very beautiful and somewhat like the madrigals of earlier days.

Many of the church composers in their lighter moods wrote some of these ballad-operas, among them: Samuel Arnold, with his Maid of the Mill, a pasticcio, “Notable,” says Waldo Selden Pratt, “as the first native music drama, since Purcell”; William Jackson; Thomas Atwood and Charles Dibden who was so successful with his Shepherd’s Artifice that he wrote seventy others, and thirty musical monologues, among which were Sea Songs. Some other well known men were Michael Arne, son of Dr. Thomas Arne with his Fairy Tale, Almena and Cymon from Garrick’s play of the same name; James Hook with some two thousand songs and twenty-five plays; William Shield, the viola player and song writer; Stephen Storace, clever violinist and the author of The Haunted Tower and Pirates, and his sister Ann Storace, a singer. At this time there were two clubs, one called the “Catch Club” and another the “Glee Club,” and one also called “Madrigal Society,” and before 1800 we have a list of glee writers including the two Samuel Webbs, Sr. and Jr., Benjamin Cook and his son Robert, John Wall Callcott, a pupil of Haydn, who won many medals from the “Catch Club.”

From now on, England was influenced by foreign composers, especially Mendelssohn, Weber and Gounod, and made ballad operas and operettas freely adapted from continental works, besides glees and songs and music for the Church of England services. The interest in music was great and some of the church music and glees at the time were excellent. In this period, the Birmingham Festivals were started, Horsley founded the Concentores Sodales (1748–1847), a group formed along the lines of the earlier Catch and Glee Clubs. The Philharmonic Society also was formed (1813) and among its great leaders were Cherubini in 1815, Spohr 1820 and 1843 and Weber 1826 and Mendelssohn many times after 1829. Through the effort of the Earl of Westmoreland, the Royal Academy of Music was organized in 1822. Among the composers of this period were Samuel Wesley (1776–1837). He was a Bach enthusiast and wrote much church music and other classic forms; William Crotch (1775–1847), George Stark, an intimate of Weber and Mendelssohn, who edited Gibbon’s Madrigals; William Horsley, who edited Callcott’s Glees and wrote glees himself, symphonies and songs and handbooks. There were many others in this period but too numerous to mention here.

In the next period England’s composers free themselves from the Mendelssohn School and begin to branch out. Do not think that Mendelssohn was not good for them. He gave much that England needed, and also brought English composers in contact with European music. But they liked church music and the ballad opera and the charming part songs, rather than the heavier operas of Europe. Among writers of cathedral music, are Sir George A. MacFarren, John Bacchus Dykes, whose name appears in our hymn books, Joseph Barnby, Samuel Wesley mentioned above, and Henry Smart. In 1816, Sir William Sterndale Bennett was born, he was a choir boy and entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1835. The House of Broadwood (English piano makers) sent him to Leipsic to study and he came under the influence of Mendelssohn and Schumann. He was the director of the Royal Academy of Music, a fine pianist and wrote many compositions, among which his Cantata A Woman of Samaria is not as dry as the usual sacred works of this period.

Another great writer of this time was Sir John Stainer (1840–1901). Some of his things are given today in our churches and are very beautiful and impressive. He is the author of valuable text-books.

Light Opera

At this time, some writers of a sort of belated ballad opera appeared in the persons of:

Michael William Balfe who wrote thirty operas among which is The Bohemian Girl, still played and greatly admired; William Vincent Wallace, like Balfe an Irishman, who is famous for his Maritana; and then of course, Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842–1900), who probably needs very little introduction to any American or any Englishman for he wrote The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, the only fairy opera without a mortal in it, Pinafore, Patience, Princess Ida, Trial by Jury, Ruddigore and many others, including the first light opera, Cox and Box, which was the first time that he and W. S. Gilbert, as librettist, worked together. W. S. Gilbert was the author of the inimitable and amusing Bab Ballads. If you haven’t read them you have a treat in store for you! They wrote together in a fresh, mock-heroic, humorous vein, and it seems as if they were made for each other, so delightfully did they play into each other’s hands.

Sullivan was the son of a clarinet player and teacher. He also began, as did so many British Islanders, as a choir boy and entered the Royal Academy of Music on a Mendelssohn Scholarship. Later he went to the Leipsic Conservatory and wrote some music to Shakespeare’s Tempest, which established his fame in England. Besides his operas he wrote much incidental music, some anthems and cantatas, among these The Golden Legend and The Prodigal Son are the best. He wanted very much to write grand opera, but he never seemed to work well in this vein and his Ivanhoe did him little good.

And so, we leave opera until the wand of the Wizard Wagner changes the whole path of music.

CHAPTER XXIV
The Poet Music Writers—Romantic School

Schubert—Mendelssohn—Schumann—Chopin

You have seen how Romantic Music began, and why Beethoven is often the first name mentioned when Romanticism is talked about, for he was the colossal guidepost pointing the way.

He was as far from the classical forms of Bach, as from later writers who have “jumped over the musical traces” altogether. All were, and still are, trying to free themselves from conventions, and to express their feelings satisfactorily.

It is natural to begin the Romantic school with Schubert, the first figure of great importance. But there was one John Field (1782–1837) from totally different surroundings who is still remembered for his fine piano nocturnes.

Impressed with the quiet and solemnity of the night, he knew how to put it into beautiful melody. He was born in a little out-of-the-way street in Dublin, not far from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and near the birthplace of that romantic poet, Tom Moore. His father and his grandfather, both musicians, forced the infant prodigy, and at ten, he played, publicly, a concerto composed by his father.

At twelve, the boy was apprenticed, or “hired out,” as pupil and salesman to Clementi, the composer and piano manufacturer in London. He showed off the pianos so well to the customers, that Clementi soon realized he had made a good bargain. The boy played in London as the “ten-year-old pupil of Clementi,” on whom he no doubt tried out his Gradus ad Parnassum. (Page [320].)

Five years later he played his own “Concerto for the grand fortepiano, composed for the occasion.” Clementi was shrewd, and started a branch of his piano business in St. Petersburg, taking Field with him.

One of the ear-marks of Romantic music is the title of the piano piece or song. Until the romantic period music was designated usually by the number of the work or by its form such as gavotte, minuet, rondo, sonata, etc., but the Romantics wrote what they felt, and with the exception of Chopin, gave descriptive names to their pieces. In 1817 John Field wrote a concerto named L’incendie par l’orage (The Fire from the Storm), a musical picture.

His influence was more important than his music. We see his hand in the playing and composing of the poet-pianist, Frederick Chopin.

Although Weber appeared in a different musical field he, too, had a strong influence. He was four years younger than Field but had greater opportunities and was one of the first of the Romantic School.

Charles Mayer (1799–1862) was a direct follower and pupil of Field. His études (studies) ranked with those of Henselt, who wrote the delightful If I Were a Bird, and he had an influence upon Chopin, too.

Schubert—Maker of Songs

And now we come to Franz Peter Schubert (1797–1828), born in Vienna of a schoolmaster father, and a mother, who, like Beethoven’s, was a cook.

The musical comedy, Blossom Time, was built upon some of Schubert’s most beautiful melodies and episodes from his life. We must never trust too far stories told this way, which often contain unreliable details, however this charming operetta gives an interesting glimpse of Schubert’s devotion to composition. It is true that he wrote wherever he was, covering his cuffs as well as the menus and programs in the taverns with the endless flow of themes which eventually became world-famous songs. Schubert was not a mere writer of songs; he created the form known as Lieder and through all his works, torrents of melody seemed to spring from him eternally.

He was the thirteenth of nineteen children, five of which were of a second marriage, and there was no wealth or luxury for Franz, so his father worked hard to pay for his music lessons.

His teacher said that no matter what he tried to teach him in violin, piano, singing, the organ or thorough-bass, Franz knew it already, for he learned everything almost at a glance.

He was first soprano in the church choir of Lichtenthal and the beauty of his voice attracted much attention. He also played the violin in the services, and stole little stray minutes to write songs or pieces for strings and piano.

When he was sent to the school for Imperial choristers the boys laughed at his coarse, grey clothing, the big “Harold Lloyd spectacles,” and his retiring, bashful manners. They soon changed when they discovered the astonishing things he could do. His home-spun clothes were exchanged for the uniform trimmed with gold lace worn by the Imperial choristers, who formed an orchestra to practise daily music by Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini and Beethoven. Among them was Spaun and when he won his confidence, Franz told him that he had written many pieces and he would write more, but could not afford to buy the music paper. His new friend made it possible for Schubert to have paper and many other luxuries, in which Spaun did something to benefit the world,—a little kindness which brought great results.

The extreme ease with which Schubert absorbed all learning made him neglect the study of counterpoint, because after all he could not give all his time to music, for he was a schoolteacher and had to work hard to get along. His heart was not in his work, for while hearing the pupils recite he wrote themes on every scrap of paper he could find.

He wrote with lightning rapidity. The early songs met with immediate favor which encouraged him to write music in larger form. He was of the people and wrote from the heart, and to the heart. He hoped for the same success with his symphonies and chamber music, but the symphonies never reached the perfection of his songs, and his disappointment was keen when the critics did not rate them as highly.

However, the steady flow of melody, the torrent of themes, never ended and his chamber music is like a song with lovely play of instruments. Who can forget the haunting beauty of the Unfinished Symphony? This was left unfinished, indeed, not by Schubert’s death as many suppose, but the composer felt that he had arrived at a summit of beauty in the second movement, and he dared not add a third, lest he could not again reach the heights.

His tenth and last symphony in C major takes an hour to perform and is heard frequently. Robert Schumann wrote that it was of “Heavenly length.”

Schubert lived when the romantic poets gave him wonderful verse for his texts. He loved the literature of Goethe and Heinrich Heine, both of whom knew the hearts of the simple people.

The world will never forget the wonderful heritage left by this genius who died at thirty-two leaving vast quantities of great works. Besides creating new forms in song he also gave the pianists pieces that were new and important. He left no concertos, nor did he write for solo violin, but his piano sonatas and chamber music are of value. Der Erl-Koenig (The Erl King), Der Doppelganger (The Shadow), and Death and the Maiden, all sounded the last note in tragedy, and he also wrote many lovely songs in lighter mood.

The Well Favored Mendelssohn

Most masters who have left the world richer for having lived, were born in poverty and knew the sorrows of privation, not so with Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809–1847), loved by the many who have played his Songs Without Words, or who have heard Elman’s fingers fly over his violin in the concerto, said to be the best writing ever done for that instrument.

Popular as are many works from the polished and fluent pen of Mendelssohn, the oratorios Elijah and Saint Paul are noble for these contain some of the most dramatic and inspired writing. In that work which is typical of Mendelssohn and his personality, he showed more characteristics of the older classical school than of the romantic. If he had lived during the classical period he would have been a greater composer, for he was romantic by influence and classic in taste.

Has not the Spring Song the shimmer of spring and the Spinning Song the whir of the wheels? One can easily imagine the kindly touch of a loving hand in Consolation, while the Hunting Song is alive and going. This is the romantic music that became the model for thousands of small pieces.

It in said frequently that if Mendelssohn had been less conventional, his work would have been more forceful, because he had much that was truly fine.

Mendelssohn lived among the most brilliant literary lights of his day. His refinement was reflected in his music. He was petted by an adoring father, mother and sisters, who gave him every opportunity to study and compose, and he was much sought after socially. He devoted much time to the study of languages, sketching in water colors and traveling in Italy and Switzerland. His sister Fanny, whose musical education was of the utmost assistance to her brother whom she idolized, would have been famous but for her father’s prejudice against women in professional life. She was a gifted composer and it is claimed that she wrote many of her brother’s songs and some of the Songs Without Words.

Her death was a mortal blow from which Mendelssohn never recovered. Extremely sensitive, his affection for his family was most intense and filled his life.

His grandfather was the eminent philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, who being a Hebrew, was open to the sorrows caused by prejudice. He was such a great man, however, that he succeeded in breaking down barriers not only for himself, but for his race.

Abraham Mendelssohn was pleased to call himself, “First the son of the famous Moses Mendelssohn, then the father of the eminent Felix Mendelssohn.” His banking house in Berlin is still in the family.

The most noted musicians and artists were entertained in the Mendelssohn home, and heard the compositions of the gifted young man. In 1821 the boy was taken to Goethe’s home where he played and improvised for the poet. He was delighted with him for his musical talent, and because he had inherited the gift of conversation and letters from his grandfather, of whom Goethe was very fond. Young Mendelssohn never shocked the great old poet as did Beethoven, for his manner was always correct.

In 1825 Mendelssohn went to Paris to Cherubini who was asked whether his talent justified cultivation beyond the average stage. The master was very enthusiastic, but his father would not leave him in Paris, even in charge of the noted teacher. Returning to Berlin he wrote the overture to Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826). It reflects the dancing elves and the humor of Shakespeare, while the orchestra has a delicate touch, similar to that shown by Berlioz at the same period. Mendelssohn was only seventeen when he wrote it, with all its finish and its flawless musical treatment. Much that he did at that period shows his natural flow of genius. Music seemed to gush from his soul like pure, fresh water from a spring, making one think of cool fountains, sparkling with melody and clarity. These qualities are also in the Fingal’s Cave or Hebrides overture, and he takes you on his delightful trips in Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The way these numbers reflect his impressions and the way he transmitted them to others is typical of the Romantic School. The purity of his musical form related him to the classical and gave inklings of the Symphonic Tone Poem.

In his symphonies Mendelssohn also told tales of his travels, as in the Italian Symphony, and in his Scotch Symphony in which he made use of Scotch folk tunes. He also wrote much chamber music. He left some piano concertos which may not attract the professionals of today but are the joy of many piano students who play them arranged for two pianos.

Mendelssohn tried operas but like many others failed to find a good libretto. This was the trouble with one he produced in Berlin. Added to this there were many intrigues and jealousies at the opera house which turned him bitterly against that city.

However, he accomplished one of the greatest things ever done for music. The works of Bach and Handel had been so neglected that they were almost forgotten. He knew them well, and wanting others to love them as he did, he assembled a great chorus and gave Bach’s Passion according to Saint Matthew. This was the first performance since Bach’s death, and it brought these works back to us. Imagine Mendelssohn’s popularity and talent as a conductor to have been able to do this at the age of twenty! Then he traveled again, and after roaming through Italy, Switzerland and France, he went to London where he created a stir as pianist, composer and conductor. Besides his splendid education he had a winsome and attractive personality, and his success was very great. He made, in all, nine visits to England.

Having been brought up in the Christian faith, he married the daughter of a French Protestant minister and had five children. They went to live in Germany and becoming conductor of the Leipsic Gewandhaus orchestra, he made the city the musical center of Germany. He founded the Leipsic Conservatory of Music (1843), where he gave his old teacher Moscheles an important post. This conservatory is well known here for many American musicians of the last generation were educated there.

Mendelssohn conducted many festivals and he always aroused new interest in Bach, whom he presented at every opportunity.

His Saint Paul had success in Duesseldorf (1837), and during his last visit to England (1846), he gave at the Birmingham festival Elijah, second today in popularity only to Handel’s Messiah.

When Mendelssohn returned to Leipsic, he showed traces of overwork and the death of his sister coming at the same time, made him unable to resist the strain. He died November 4, 1847, when only 38. His happy life shines through his music so full of beauty and sunshine.

Schumann—The Supreme Poet

Robert Schumann (1810–1856), a tower of beauty, strength, imagination and dramatic fervor even judged by 20th century standards, still thrills us as we recognize his genius. What a price he paid for his life filled with joys and griefs!

We are grateful for the solidity of his building, his breadth of vision, the wonders of his imagination, the beauty of his poetic fancy, and above all, the vastness of his musical knowledge. A peak among the composers of the Romantic School, he has scaled the heights of dramatic fervor as he has touched the sun-flecked valleys. To him we owe the naming of pieces, and the feeling of emotion which the composer felt when he named them,—The Happy Farmer, The Prophet Bird, The Rocking-Horse, End of the Song, The Child Falls Asleep, etc.

All who have been milestones in music have been well educated, yet how unjustly people say musicians know nothing but music. Many have not had only culture from their studies, but also have come from refined homes. So Schumann, born at Zwickau, Saxony, had an educated father, a book-seller. His mother wanted Robert to be a lawyer, and did not wish his musical talent to interfere. He began to compose and study music at seven, but he studied law, literature and philosophy, later, at the University of Leipsic.

After a year he went to the famous University of Heidelberg (1829), which has always been proud that the great composer was one of its students.

Schumann returned to Leipsic on account of the musical life. With his return began the romance of his life, one of the most beautiful love stories in musical history. He studied with Frederick Wieck, whose little daughter Clara was a prodigy pianist. He became a member of the household and was charmed by the talent of the child. Meanwhile he was studying as pianist, and being ingenious, he invented an instrument to develop his weak fourth finger, but it ruined his hand and unfitted him for his career.

Now he gave more attention to composition and to musical criticism. This gave him the chance to help some of the brilliant musicians of the day. He brought Chopin to the notice of Germany, and proclaimed the genius of young Johannes Brahms. He also formed a deep friendship for Mendelssohn.

Valuable as are all writings which reveal his thoughts, his richest gift to the world was his music, in which he preached the gospel of beauty.

As Schumann grew into manhood he began to know the depths of sorrow, some of his finest works having been an outburst of his tortured soul. Clara Wieck was now a young woman and a great pianist. It was natural that an affection should spring up between them. But Clara’s father had greater hopes. He could not see a struggling young musician and critic as the husband of his talented child. During this long and painful courtship when Schumann dared not speak his love to Clara he wrote compositions with which to tell his story, and she understood. One of these expressions was the lovely Warum asking the question, “Why?” so longingly.

In those days a case could be brought into court and the reason demanded why a parent should refuse to allow a marriage. Schumann went to law, and the court decided that Wieck’s objections were without cause. But the year of strain told upon his health and nerves and he began his married life under a cloud of illness. The young pair were ideally happy, he wrote glorious music, and she took pride in playing his piano works on all her programs.

With all her accomplishments—and she was a great artist—she was first a devoted wife who cared for her husband as though he had been her child. Schumann’s very finest work was done during these years. His inspiration drove him chiefly to songs, full of lyric beauty like Schubert’s; indeed, when speaking of lieder the names of Schubert and Schumann are always linked.

Mendelssohn urged Schumann to teach in the Leipsic Conservatory, but he left there soon to make a tour of Russia with his wife. That year they settled in Dresden, a quieter city, because his nerves were beginning to forecast the shadow of his future.

Mendelssohn loved Schumann and admired him as composer, writer and critic. He conducted the first performance of Schumann’s B flat symphony at a Gewandhaus concert of Clara Schumann, and the happiness of the three was tremendous. Schumann did not think of himself alone, but was always trying to help his colleagues. Schubert wrote his C major symphony in March of the year he died and never heard it, but Schumann had the score sent to Mendelssohn in Leipsic for its first performance after a wait of eleven years.

Notwithstanding his nerves, Schumann was now in his full power and the amount he wrote is incredible. Most of his chamber music was written in 1842, three of the string quartets being dedicated to Mendelssohn. The work that gave him fame all over Europe was the quintet for piano and strings, opus 44; with Clara at the piano, Berlioz heard its first performance and spread the news of his genius through Paris. About this time the Variations for Two Pianos were written and played by Robert and Clara Schumann.

Another interesting and popular number is Carnaval, a collection of named sketches in three-four time each one portraying some person or thing. Eusebius and Florestan have caused much curiosity—the secret is that Schumann was a student of himself and these were meant to show his conflicting moods. Chopin is represented, also Mendelssohn, while Chiarina is Clara.

A strange thing happened to Schumann in Vienna. He was visiting the graves of Beethoven and Schubert which are not far apart, and he found a steel pen on Beethoven’s tomb. He took this for an omen, but used it only for his most precious works. He wrote the B flat symphony with it and the magic seemed to work!

Schubert is universally praised for the beauty of his themes, but who could surpass the loveliness of Schumann’s melodies? The contrasts between the exquisite little tone-pictures of Kinderscenen and the grandeur of the sonatas and the Fantasia mark the breadth of his genius, while the amount he accomplished in his short span of life was marvelous.

He was but twenty-five when he first showed mental trouble, and at forty-four his case was hopeless. He tried to end his life by jumping into the Rhine and was taken to an asylum near Beethoven’s birthplace, Bonn, where he died two years later, survived by his wife and two daughters.

What a price he paid for his life filled with joys and griefs!

Chopin—“Proudest Poet-Soul”

Robert Schumann wrote that Chopin was “the boldest, proudest poet-soul of his time.” Such a tribute from him meant more than all the praise we can give him now; it shows that he had admiration and respect from his rivals as he had idolatry from the literary, artistic and refined circles of Paris.

Frederic Chopin (1809–1849) was born in Poland of a French father and a Polish mother. The difference one finds in the date of his birth, February 22 or March 1, is owing to the difference between the Russian and Polish calendars, and those of other countries.

Like Mozart he showed talent very early and at nine played his first public concert. His mother, unable to be present, asked him what the audience liked best. “My collar, Mamma!” he answered, proud of the little lace collar on the black velvet jacket! He was elegant then, and always kept his air of distinction, and a love for beauty.

Shortly after beginning music study, Chopin tried to compose, and felt such authority that he undertook to change certain things written by his teacher. His earliest work was a march dedicated to the Grand Duke Constantin, which was arranged for brass-band and printed without the composer’s name.

From his two teachers in Poland, both ardent patriots, Chopin must have absorbed much of the national feeling so strongly marked in his works. As it was a day of flashy salon (Page [322]) playing, his teacher, Joseph Elsner, felt that Chopin was the founder of a new school in which poetic feeling was leading music out of the prevailing empty acrobatic finger feats!

The world owes much to that wise teacher who instilled a love of Bach into his young pupil. He answered some one who blamed him for allowing Chopin too much freedom: “Leave him alone! he treads an extraordinary path because he has extraordinary gifts and follows no method, but creates one. I have never seen such a gift for composition.” Later he marked his examination papers: “Chopin, Frederic (pupil for three years), astounding capacity, musical genius.”

At fifteen Chopin was adored by his companions and always held the affection of those who knew him. He seems to have been the original “matinee idol” of Paris, whenever he played, for he was the most poetic and finest pianist ever heard.

Though Chopin was seemingly French in manner, habits and tastes, he was extraordinarily patriotic and his music is perhaps the finest expression of Poland the world has ever seen.

No one has surpassed, or even equalled Chopin in writing for the piano. He understood its possibilities, limitations, tonal qualities and power to express emotion.

He did not leave a great quantity of compositions, but a well-ordered collection of music, so individual that even today, with all his imitators, when we hear Chopin—(and where is there a piano recital without at least one number?)—we instantly recognize it as his.

Strongly marked rhythms are among his most fascinating characteristics. He glorified and elaborated the dances of Poland, as had others in the past, who made art pieces of the gavotte, minuet, bourrée, gigue, etc.

What lovelier numbers on a program than Chopin’s mazurkas, polonaises, waltzes? There is also irresistible swing in the Ballades, Impromptus, the Berceuse, Barcarolle, and what could rival in fantasy the Nocturnes or Preludes? The Etudes cover a variety of moods, while his Scherzos stand alone in piano literature.

Chopin left no symphonies, no chamber music, except two piano sonatas and one for ’cello and piano, and what he did for voice could be told in a few words. He also wrote two piano concertos in which the piano work is beautiful but the orchestration is not as fine.

These concertos and his piano sonatas were the largest forms in which he wrote, proving that he could have succeeded here had he not chosen to perfect music in the smaller forms.

Chopin never had a fair start in life in the way of health, and while his delicate appearance made him the more interesting, especially to the ladies, he was a real sufferer. It would be unfair to believe that his work would have been greater had he enjoyed complete health, for his unhappiness and his sufferings gave him a sense of the mysterious and the beyond. He lived in a world far from material things and seemed able to translate all he felt into music.

He had the devotion of many idolizing friends, tireless in their efforts to make him happy and keep him working so that he should not brood over his illness (tuberculosis). Foremost among these was the famous French novelist George Sand, whose love and companionship were the source of rare inspiration and comfort. She was a woman of vast mental and physical power and seemed to impart her strength to him. But Chopin was a favorite not only with women but among the men, as we learn through the letters he left. We find many from Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Delacroix, the French painter, and innumerable others.

Concertizing began to fatigue him beyond endurance. Returning to Paris from a tour during a hard winter in England, he grew so ill that he rarely left his bed, although he did not die until the following October, 1849.

Chopin had asked that the Mozart Requiem be given at his funeral, which occurred October 30, from the Madeleine Church in Paris. The singer Lablache who had sung the Mozart number at Beethoven’s funeral also performed this tribute for Chopin.

In addition to the Requiem, Lefebure-Wely, one of the fine organists of Paris, played Chopin’s preludes in B and E minor, and the familiar funeral march from the first sonata was arranged for orchestra and played for the first time.

Heller—The Children’s Chopin

We may not find the name of Stephen Heller (1813–1888) on many of the “grown-up” programs, but no pupils’ recitals are complete without several of his lovely melodies.

He was the friend of children and devoted himself more to teaching and writing for the young minds and small hands than did any of his companions. Heller was intended for a lawyer, but his talent as shown at nine was great enough for him to study with Carl Czerny in Vienna. He became a fine concert pianist and toured Europe. Taken ill during one of these tours, he was adopted by a wealthy family who allowed him all the time he wanted for composing. Most of his study was done in Paris where he was a friend of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt and other prominent artists of the day.

He left several hundred piano pieces, nearly all masterpieces in a field where he stands practically alone. He wrote in the style developed by Mendelssohn and Schumann, and what Chopin is to the music world of the “grown-ups,” Heller is to the young student.

Painted by Kriehuber.
Franz Schubert.

After the Painting by Bendemann.
Robert Schumann.

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

After the Painting by F. V. Delacroix.
Frédéric Chopin.

Poet Music Writers.

(Romantic School.)

After a painting by Lenbach.
Richard Wagner, the Wizard.

CHAPTER XXV
Wagner—the Wizard

Wilhelm Richard Wagner
1813–1883

Richard Wagner, the Wizard, called out of the past a vast company of gods and goddesses, giants, knights and heroes, kings and queens. He made them live for us with all their joys and sorrows, loves and hates, in his great music dramas, for which he has been recognized as one of the rare geniuses of the world.

Evoked by his music-magic they pass before us,—the gods and heroes of Walhalla,—Wotan, Brünnhilde, valiant Siegfried, Pfafner the giant who is turned into a dragon, Mime the dwarf, the Rhine Maidens and the Valkyries; Parsifal the guileless youth who became the Knight of the Holy Grail, and Lohengrin his son, the beautiful knight who marries Elsa, a lady of rank of the Middle Ages.

We see the minnesingers Tannhäuser and Wolfram von Eschenbach in one of their famous Minstrel Tournaments with the hand of the lovely Elizabeth as a prize; we also meet the lovable shoemaker-mastersinger Hans Sachs in Nüremberg, of the 16th century, and David his merry apprentice, lovely Eva Pogner and the charming knight Walter von Stolzing, and Beckmesser the clownish mastersinger; then there are the imperious Irish Queen, Isolde and Tristan, her lover, with Kurvenal his faithful servant. Wagner makes not only the mythological persons relive but he brings back realistic pictures of the everyday life and customs of the German people of the Middle Ages.

Wagner had his idea of what opera should be and nothing short of his ideal interested him. He kept to his purpose and accomplished miraculous things whether he suffered or starved or was banished from his country.

Richard was born at a time, favorable for hearing and knowing the Viennese composers of the 18th and early 19th centuries, who had increased the importance of the orchestra. He could hear too the music of Schumann and Schubert, with all the new beauty and warm feeling they radiated. This new depth appeared not only in the orchestra but also in piano and vocal music. In Wagner’s time, people felt deeply about everything,—science, philosophy, literature, and especially politics; and many were the quarrels and discontents among nations. Even our own country was torn by a cruel war.

Wagner listened to the works of Mozart and of Beethoven, whom he admired immensely. He approved of Beethoven’s use of the chorus in the Ninth Symphony, which had no little effect on his work and ideals.

Among the people who most influenced Wagner was Gluck, who first fought for sincerity and truth in opera drama. Gluck did not have the advantage of the grown up orchestra and freer forms, yet Gluck did so much to free opera that Wagner was fortunate indeed to have come after him. Another great influence was Weber, who mixed everyday story in a delightful play of fancy and picturesqueness. Wagner, after hearing Weber’s Die Freischütz, was very much impressed.

Meyerbeer, a contemporary, although rather artificial and always working for effects, nevertheless showed Wagner the value of gorgeous scenic productions. Wagner was fond of the stage, and Meyerbeer’s big scenes sank into the mind of the young composer-poet, who liked to be called a poet rather than a musician!

Musically, Franz Liszt was probably the greatest influence in Wagner’s life and we often hear in Wagner’s works bits of melody which remind us of Liszt.

It is not fair to say that he was great just because he followed Gluck, Weber, and Mozart, for he brought music out of its old ruts and was copied by hundreds of composers.

The hero of this chapter was born in Leipsic in 1813 and was the youngest of nine children. His father died shortly after his birth and his mother married an actor playwright named Geyer and they all went to live in Dresden. His stepfather felt that Richard had musical gifts and he proved a very kind and wise parent. He died when the boy was only eight.

Richard must have been a most interesting little chap, for he always did everything with what we would call “pep” and persistence. He loved poetry and was devoted to the theatre. His stepfather had always allowed him to go “back stage” at the playhouse, so the youth became familiar with stage craft, which he used later in producing his music dramas.

He read the Greek and German poets and dramatists at a very early age. He was the first of the musical geniuses to be trained in the arts before he started music. So we can picture a little chap, “stage-struck,” studying when he should, seeing plays when he could, and listening to the works of Weber and Beethoven which enchanted him, and storing up ideas, but as yet showing no great leaning toward music as a profession.

The family moved back to Leipsic in 1827 where he went to school until he entered the university in 1831. He heard much orchestral music and became so deeply charmed with Beethoven, that he copied the Ninth Symphony from a score, to become familiar with it. The Ninth Symphony with chorale takes about two hours to perform, imagine how long it took to copy it! An instance of the wizard’s energy and “stick-to-it-iveness”!

A Killing Play

He began to study music with C. G. Müller, for Beethoven’s works made him decide that he wanted to know more. He also was taught by Theodore Weinlig, the cantor or singer of St. Thomas’ school. At sixteen, he wrote a play which had so tragic a plot that he killed off forty-two of the characters, and afterwards said, he had to bring some back as ghosts to wind up the drama, for there were no characters left alive! His drama reading made him exaggerate tragedy in his own play! After this he wrote a sonata, a polonaise and a symphony, in classic style, performed in 1833.

In 1830 there had been a political revolution in Germany and it greatly impressed the young man for he was an independent thinker in politics as well as in music.

He visited Vienna in 1832 but he found it so appreciative of Hérold’s opera Zampa and Strauss’ waltzes that he could not bear it and left almost immediately. He was much like Beethoven in disposition for he was quick to anger and kind in great gusts, and could be most agreeable to his friends.

His Early Operas

He had gone to Vienna with his symphony but showed it to no one; it is said that Mendelssohn saw it but forgot about it. Here he wrote the poem and some poor music for an opera Die Hochzeit (The Wedding) which he tore up the next year.

Then off to Prague went he (1832), and wrote his first libretto, for you must remember he did not go to people like Metastastio or Molière for his libretto but wrote his own. Had he not been a composer he certainly would have been a literary man. In fact, he was, for he wrote more pamphlets and books than many a writer! Yet, he showed his real genius as a composer.

But he was so poor now that he was glad to get a job as a chorus master at the mean salary of 10 florins ($5) a month! It was here he wrote the opera Die Feen (The Fairies) a wildly romantic work, after which he returned again to Leipsic. For the first time he heard Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient sing, whose marvelous talent influenced him all his life. In 1834 as a conductor of a troupe with headquarters in Magdeburg, he tried to produce his second opera the tragic Das Liebesverbot (Forbidden Love), modeled after Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure; but it was so badly given that it was a dismal failure. The second was like Bellini and Auber, both of whom he admired and it was too early in his life (twenty-one) to show new ways of composing.

Soon he went to Königsberg, where (1836) he married Wilhelmina Planer, a young actress whom he met in the theatre, and he spent the year trying to get his Magdeburg troupe out of difficulties. Later he was given a post in Riga.

While at Riga his duty was to lead orchestral concerts, at many of which Ole Bull the Norwegian violinist played, here too, he read Rienzi of Bulwer-Lytton, the English writer, and wrote a libretto and opera on the showy model of Meyerbeer. He said himself that it “out-Meyerbeered Meyerbeer.” Leaving hastily, debts and all, with Rienzi in his hand, he went to Paris (the goal of all composers) in a sailing vessel, with his new wife and a dog named Robber, stopping over in England. The trip took four long perilous weeks. From the sailors he learned the story of the Flying Dutchman, which he afterwards used in his opera of that name.

We wish we could tell you the whole story of this gale-tossed, unhappy mariner, the Flying Dutchman, and how at last he found happiness and relief from storms and troubles of life by finding his mate in the maiden Senta. You will love the music and the story which is woven about Senta in the beautiful ballad bearing her name.

In this opera, Wagner first used the leit-motif or leading theme (particularly in the overture) which he used as we use a name or description of a person, idea or thing, except that he used them in music instead of in words. For example, when Senta comes in to the story, either as someone’s thought or as a person, or when she is spoken of, her theme is heard, woven into the music. So it is when Siegfried appears in the operas of the Ring of the Nibelungen, you hear the Siegfried theme; when the Gold is mentioned, you hear the Gold theme; or if the Giants appear, their theme is heard,—so it is with the Dragon and everything connected with the story. You hear in some form, their name plates, as it were, and so by listening, you can follow just what is going on through the music. This is one of the things that Wagner developed, though Gluck and others had attempted to use it.

During his stay in Paris, he had a struggle for existence and did everything possible to gain a livelihood, while striving to get a hearing for his compositions. He wrote, in his misery, the Faust Overture, the first work to win recognition.

He went to see Meyerbeer on his way to Paris, for Meyerbeer was very popular and his approval could have aided poor Richard. Some say Meyerbeer helped him and others say he did not. Wagner gained little from him. Even when he first went to see Liszt, who later became his best friend, it is said that Liszt snubbed him. Wagner never stopped writing his theories for the papers, and a hot-headed young scribbler he was! Yet withal he submitted the story of The Flying Dutchman to the director of the Paris Opera House who rejected it as an opera, but gave the story to Dietsch, the conductor, to write the music. This did not daunt Wagner, who, after a defeat, worked harder or his next task. So he wrote another Flying Dutchman, story and music and orchestration in seven weeks!

However, luck began to favor him, and Rienzi (1842) was accepted by the Dresden Opera and was so successful that he became conductor in Dresden, which saved him for a while from money worries, and The Flying Dutchman, which had gone begging so long, was loudly demanded. Strange to say, this wonderful legend did not succeed, for the people missed the little tricks of Meyerbeer and they could not understand the flowing music in new form. Wagner was very disappointed for the story was one of the old German (Teuton) legends and he thought the German people would love it.

Later, however, Spohr gave it with great success at Cassel, and won Wagner’s gratitude for his understanding and kindness.

Now comes Tannhäuser, an entrancing legend which inspired him to study more deeply into the Teutonic legends. This he produced in Dresden, and other German cities played it later. Everything became topsy-turvy in the musical and political world. Wagner was writing fiery things about freedom in music and politics, nothing to amount to much, but enough to rouse his enemies, who became hateful and hissed Tannhäuser,—calling it nerve-killing, distressing music without melody. How could anyone fail to find melody in Oh Thou Sublime Sweet Evening Star, the Pilgrim’s Chorus, the Venusburg music and the colorful overture with themes of the whole opera? Yet music affects people this way when it is new in structure. “There is no melody” is said today when the so-called modern music is played. This should make us stop and listen carefully and look back on what happened to the writers of the past when they dared differ from the crowd. Perhaps calling your attention to this will make you listen with open ears and open minds to the new, which so soon becomes the familiar.

So Wagner, while conducting other operas in Dresden, began on Lohengrin and finished it in 1847. But he was impetuous and his written articles irritated the people. His ideas were fiery and his musical speech so odd, that even Schumann, who was very sympathetic, only partially understood him or his music. However he did say that Wagner would have a great influence on German opera, but Mendelssohn, after hearing Tannhäuser, only liked the second finale. Even his friend Madame Devrient, though she loved and admired him, said: “You are a man of genius but you write such eccentric stuff, it is hardly possible to sing it.”

Never did Wagner feel that he was at fault, so great was his faith in his ideas of doing away with arias, of not having stopping places in an opera, just to begin some other song, and of making the words equally important to the music.

The Nibelungen Ring

While working at Lohengrin he had started his studies of the Icelandic and Germanic Saga, the Nibelungenlied. These tales changed under his pen into the story of Siegfried, which he wove into the trilogy known as The Nibelungen Ring or Trilogy with a Prologue, as he called it, and as we call it now—The Tetralogy (in four parts).

The four dramas of the Ring of the Nibelung are:

(1) The Rhine Gold (Das Rheingold)

(2) Valkyrie (Die Walküre)

(3) Siegfried

(4) The Twilight of the Gods (Die Götterdämmerung)

Many things happen in these tales but it takes the four to tell the one big story:

Alberich the wicked Nibelung, a gnome, in his greed steals the gold from the Rhine Maidens who were guarding it, hidden in the Rhine. They tell him that the one who fashions a ring out of the gold will rule the world, but must forego love. Alberich makes the ring but Wotan the god of the gods wrests it from him. During the drama various people secure the Ring but it had been cursed by Alberich and brings disaster to all who get it. Finally the very gods themselves are doomed to destruction, and Brünnhilde the oldest of the Valkyries, the daughters of Wotan, returns the stolen treasure to the waters of the Rhine.

The Wizard has painted in magnificent music the great Rhine River, flowing across the stage; the fire surrounding Brünnhilde until she is rescued by the valiant Siegfried, who knows no fear; Valhalla the home of the gods; the hunt in which Siegfried drinks from the magic horn of memory; and his funeral pyre into which Brünnhilde casts herself and her horse carrying the ring which she has taken from Siegfried’s finger back to the Rhine Maidens from whence it came.

The scenes are gigantic and so is the music. Wagner, with his ideals for freedom and the betterment of humanity, used these legends as a cloak to cover his personal opinions which would have been looked upon as anarchism if he had not used such clever and artistic symbols. In Alberich’s greed for the gold, is hidden Wagner’s ideas of the Government’s greed for power against which he had fought so strenuously. Another lesson is that anyone possessing the gold is denied love, showing that greed kills human feelings.

Because the Opera at Dresden did not use the things he liked, he rebelled openly against the popular political and musical ideas; he was banished and went to Zürich, Switzerland. Here he wrote more fiery literature and made more enemies and a few friends, and the enmity he stirred up against himself delayed his success. He hoped for a better state of political life in order to write freer and more beautiful music.

While he was in Zürich, Liszt, in Vienna, produced Lohengrin with success. It was given to celebrate Goethe’s birthday (1850), before a brilliant audience, and now Wagner’s fame seemed sure, though his “pockets were empty.” Lohengrin’s success was slow in Germany, as it took about nine years to reach Berlin and Dresden. It was thought to be without melody! Can you hear Lohengrin’s song to the Swan, the Wedding March or the Prelude? Listen to it in your mind’s ear or auralize it! Wagner’s themes were so marvelously interwoven and he did such amazing things with his orchestra, that it was difficult for people to unravel the torrential new music. They were not prepared for endless music flowing on like speech, suiting the music to the word and not stopping the action to show off the singer’s skill. What Gluck tried to do, Wagner did. His operas were music dramas because the action or drama was his first thought.

For fifteen years in exile, he gave himself to literary work and composition. He had ample time now to write of his musical theories and his feelings about life.

Soon, London called him to lead the Philharmonic Society, which he did during the time he was completing Valkyrie and sketching Siegfried. He tried to interest the English in Beethoven and others whom he loved, but of little avail. The people preferred the delightful delicacy of Mendelssohn to the solidity of Beethoven. So here again he made more enemies than friends, and his bitter pen did not help to smooth things over. By the time he left London, he had finished the Valkyrie.

In this great music drama, he tells the story of Siegmund and Sieglinda, Brünnhilde and the Valkyries who carried the dead warriors from the battle fields on their saddles to Valhalla. You hear in the galloping music of the Ride of the Valkyries and the Fire Music and Love Song of the first act, such music as never was written by anyone but Wagner! Oh, it is a wonderful legend, explaining itself, in Wagner’s own poems and with the short music name tags (leit-motifs) which are enlarged and turned around and intermingled with other name tags and which stand out beautifully when you know how to listen.

Tristan and Isolde and Meistersinger

While in Zürich, Wagner met the merchant Otto Wesendonck, whose beautiful and poetic wife Wagner loved dearly. She was a great influence in his life and they were friends for many years. It was during his friendship that he started the love drama of Tristan and Isolde.

In 1859 he finished the love drama which tells of Tristan and the lovely Queen of Ireland and how they drank the love potion and how they loved and were separated. A noble story with some of the most grippingly beautiful music ever written!

But with this masterpiece of masterpieces completed, he could get nobody to produce it. Everyone said it was impossible to sing it, and we know even today that it takes very special musical gifts and few can do it well. For it is quite true that Wagner, with all his theories about composition, thought little of the singer’s throat muscles and more of what he wanted to say.

Poor Wagner was disconsolate! He could not get his works performed and he was still prevented from returning to Germany, the country he loved. So off he went to Paris and there Tannhäuser failed utterly after three terrible, turbulent, horrible performances, which almost ended in riots, no doubt planned ahead by his enemies.

But to offset this disaster, he was allowed to return home and everyone rejoiced in his arrival. No doubt his treatment in Paris softened the German heart.

Not long after this Wagner and his wife separated and some years later in 1871, he married Cosima Liszt, who had been the wife of Hans von Bülow.

After Wagner conducted opera on a tour through Russia, Hungary, Bohemia (Czecho-Slovakia) and many German cities, Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, sent for Wagner and offered him an income, and from this time on Wagner composed without financial worries. He was commissioned in 1865 to complete The Ring, and Tristan and Isolde was performed by Hans von Bülow.

Again political intrigues and his enemies drove him to Switzerland, and after Tristan and Isolde was given and while he was in Switzerland, he completed The Ring and Die Meistersinger, the most beautiful comic opera in the world, which was also produced by von Bülow in Munich, June 21st, 1868. And now we fulfill our promise to you, which we made in Chapter VIII about the Meistersinger:

Walther von Stolzing, a young knight, falls in love at first sight with Eva the beautiful daughter of Pogner, the goldsmith of Nüremberg, who has promised her to the winning singer in the coming Festival of the Mastersingers. Beckmesser, the old town clerk, counts on winning as he also loves Eva. As Walther does not belong to the music guild, he has to pass the examination. Beckmesser gives him so many bad marks for not keeping the committee’s rules that he is not admitted.

But Hans Sachs, the greatest Meistersinger of all, the town cobbler, thought Walther a beautiful singer even though he broke musical laws and the very freedom and the new loveliness in his music charmed him.

In the evening when Walther and Eva try to run away, Beckmesser decides to serenade Eva. Hans Sachs, cobbling shoes in his doorway interrupts Beckmesser’s ludicrous serenade with a jolly song, in which he marks all Beckmesser’s mistakes with his hammer, just as Beckmesser had marked Walther’s. The neighborhood is aroused, confusion follows, Beckmesser gets a beating and Hans Sachs slips Eva and Walther into his own house.

Next day Walther sings a song to Hans which he has dreamed and Hans writes it down. Beckmesser comes in and finding the words steals them, sure he could win if he sang a song of Hans Sachs.

Beckmesser fails miserably and Sachs calls on Walther to sing it. Here he sings Walther’s Prize Song, which wins the approval of the Meistersingers, and the prize—lovely Eva.

Here we get a splendid idea of what Wagner felt about new music, for in the Meistersinger he tried to picture the jealousies of composers, who condemned the beauty of his inspiration and new ideas and methods.

Never was there an opera more delightful for young people, who love the melodies and charming pictures of medieval Nüremberg.

Bayreuth

About this time the Valkyrie and Rhinegold had been given at the Court Theatre in Munich (1869–1870). The King gave up his plan to build a new theatre for these stupendous works, which needed special machinery because of the elaborate stage effects. Wagner insisted that scenery was as important as the words and music. So he started to build, by general subscription over all Europe, a theatre at Bayreuth. He succeeded so well that not only did Europe contribute but America, too, and groups of people banded together to collect money for it. Wagner was now the fashion and finally the new opera house opened August 13th, 1876, with The Ring, for he had finished Die Götterdämmerung the year before.

Artistically it was successful but not financially. If his pen had been dipped in honey and not in bitters, he would have won his public more easily, but he seemed unable to be diplomatic. So off he went to London and other places to conduct concerts to make money to pay the debts of his new theatre. Later he wrote the Festival March, for the Philadelphia Centennial (1876), which helped financially.

The people were divided into two camps,—those for Wagner, and those against him. So strong was the feeling, that during the 1880’s, in Germany, signs in cafés read: “It is forbidden to discuss religion or Wagner”! The proprietors wished to save their chairs and china which the fists of their patrons would destroy.

Parsifal

During this time he was at work on Parsifal, a drama in music as serious as oratorio yet with the most thrilling stage effects and richness of music. Parsifal, Tristan and Isolde, The Ring and Die Meistersinger are to every other opera what a plum pudding is, compared to a graham cracker. In fact, all Wagner’s late music dramas are like plum puddings, so rich and compact are they.

Parsifal was produced in 1882 in Bayreuth and was not given again for six years. Later it was the occasion for yearly pilgrimages to Bayreuth, as if to a shrine. It is so long that it takes the better part of an afternoon and evening to perform it, yet you sit enraptured before its gripping spell of beauty and holiness.

In 1903 the musical world was startled by the first performance in America of Parsifal, as Wagner, in his will, had forbidden a stage performance outside of Bayreuth. It was covered by copyright until 1913, which was supposed to have protected it from performance. Heinrich Conried, director of the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City, in his eagerness for novelties, disregarded the master’s wish, and mounted an elaborate production under the direction of Alfred Hertz. This so offended the Wagner family that they refused to allow anyone who had taken part in that performance to appear in Bayreuth.

Bayreuth became a Mecca, to which pilgrims went every other year, to attend the festivals. After the World War, Wagner’s family turned to America for help to continue these festivals, interrupted by the war, as the Wizard himself had done, when building his theatre. In 1924 his son, Siegfried, visited America, conducted some symphony concerts and secured funds to carry on the festivals.

Parsifal is a combination of three legends—of which one is the Parsifal of our old friend the Minnesinger Wolfram von Eschenbach (1204). (Chapter VIII.)

It is the story of the Redemption of Mankind, told in symbols with great beauty of poetry, music and scenery. It is certain to fill you with religious fervor, for it reaches the depths of your soul and raises you above the things of the earth. Amfortas, the guardian of the Holy Grail, whose wound represents the suffering of mankind, hears the mystic voice of his father, Titurel, who tells him that not until a sinless one comes with pity in his heart will the wound be healed. Parsifal, “the guileless fool,” is his redeemer.

The year following the first production of Parsifal Wagner’s health began to fail and he went to Venice where he died suddenly in 1883. He was buried with fitting honors at Bayreuth which always honors the memory of the Great Master of German Opera.

Here is a picture of Wagner in the words of his brother-in-law: “the double aspect of this powerful personality was shown in his face; the upper part beautiful with a vast ideality, and lighted with eyes which were deep and severe, gentle or malicious, according to the circumstances; the lower part wry and sarcastic. A mouth cold and calculating and pursed up, was cut slantingly into a face beneath an imperious nose, and above a chin which projected like the menace of a conquering will.”

How the Wizard Changed Opera

When Wagner reached his full power, he composed drama rather than opera in the old sense.

His music explained the words and action and expressed the state of mind of the character.

The melodies are used very much like the theme in a sonata. These leit-motifs (leading motives) are usually carried, as we told you, in the weavings of his wonderful orchestral webs. This theme or leit-motif or name tag, is tossed from instrument to instrument in numberless entrancing ways. Sometimes he uses a flickering theme for flames as in the fire music of The Valkyrie or glorious chimes or trumpetings as in Parsifal to cast a holy spell; but, whatever he uses, he charms and holds you spellbound.

He combines the counterpoint of the 16th century masters, with a most modern feeling for harmony, inherited from the classic Germans. He used harmony in a new way with a freedom it never before had reached, and pointed the way for modern composers of today.

As the Wizard, Wagner throws a glamor over the most mystic happening, as when Siegmund, in Die Valkyrie, withdraws the Sword from the tree; or in the most commonplace fact as when Eva tells Hans Sachs that she has a nail in her shoe. In The Meistersinger, you can always tell that he is making fun of Beckmesser, because his name tag shows him to be petty and ridiculous.

Although Wagner’s music is rich, very clear to us and beautiful, in his day it seemed complicated and discordant, because of its great volume and sonority, the result of the perfect part-writing.

For the first time, he makes the brasses of equal importance to the string and wind instruments. It is thrilling to hear the trombones and his beautiful use of trumpets. He used many of Berlioz’s ideas in muffling horns and added new instruments, too, among them, the bass clarinet and the English horn (cor anglais), which is a tenor oboe and not a horn at all!

Wagner had a beautiful way of dividing up the parts for violins and other instruments into smaller choirs which answered each other and with which he could get special effects. For example, the Prelude of Lohengrin is probably the nearest thing in shimmering music to what the angels must play, so heavenly is it. Here he divides the violins into many parts and it is far more beautiful than if they all played the same thing. Thus, he gave more value to the instruments and greatly improved the orchestra.

His preludes in which you hear the leading motives or name tags, are a table of contents for what follows.

Wagner did not use tricks of decoration like Meyerbeer nor did he give show-off pieces for his singers’ benefit. His idea was to use sincere musical speech to tell the story and not one bit did he care how hard the singer worked to carry out his idea.

Wagner, above all, was a dramatist, choosing lofty and noble themes of heroic and ideal subjects in which his imagination could play. He loved the sublime and the great spectacle.

The chief interest of Wagner’s opera is in the orchestra which carries the theme webs. He used neither the folk song in its simple beauty nor accepted classic arias which could be taken out and sung. His song is often declaimed and appears not to sing with the orchestra, for the voices are used as instruments and not to show off vocal skill. Yet, Liszt was quick to take out from the operas and transcribe for piano the Fire Music, the Ride of the Valkyrie and many others which we now sing and whistle.

Finally, Wagner by his example has given courage to the man of ideas, if he will believe in himself and work without ceasing.

CHAPTER XXVI
More Opera Makers—Verdi and Meyerbeer to Our Day

After reading about the feats of the Wizard it is not surprising that he had many followers,—those who openly claimed to take him for an example, and others who did not realize how much they received from him and would not like to have been called his followers!

Verdi—The Grand Old Man of Italy

After following the Italian methods of writing opera and having become a very famous composer, Verdi received inspiration from Wagner in the last three or four years of his very long life. He was much loved and it is difficult to tell whether it was his operas or his beautiful character which prompted the affection. He was called “the Grand Old Man of Italy.” A national hero was he, and the Italians’ idol. Praise and flattery did not make him proud but spurred him to work through trouble and good fortune, and so he became one of the greatest opera writers. He was born a few months after Wagner, in the village of Roncole near Parma, and his life was interesting, for he lived at the time when opera was popular and was going through the Wagner upheaval which spread all over Europe.

He had a unique chance to make opera more important in Italy, and succeeded in giving it a new impetus, even though in the beginning his popular things followed popular patterns.

Verdi and the Organ grinder

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) was the son of an innkeeper and, as a little boy, showed marked musical talent. He was a good obedient little fellow, but always rather melancholy in character and never joined the village boys in their noisy amusements. “One thing only could rouse him from his habitual indifference, and that was the occasional passing through the village of an organ grinder. To the child, who in after years was to afford an inexhaustible repertory to those instruments for half a century all over the world, this was an irresistible attraction. He could not be kept indoors, and would follow the strolling player as far as his little legs could carry him.” (Grove’s Dictionary.)

Who has not heard the Miserere from Il Trovatore played, all out of tune, by an Italian organ grinder who sends a little monkey around with a cup to gather in the pennies? We remember an organ grinder in San Francisco who ground out the Miserere. Each year or two that we returned there were more of the notes missing. Ten years later, the performance was quite “toothless” and sounded very funny.

All his life, Verdi kept a little spinet that his father bought for him in 1820. We see him then, at seven, deep in musical study and at ten he was the organist of Roncole, going to school in Busseto, a nearby town. One night when he was walking the three miles to go back to Busseto after church, the poor little fellow was so weary that he missed the road and fell into a canal, narrowly escaping death! Is it not splendid that his village appreciated his talent and gave him a scholarship which made it possible for him to go to Milan to continue his musical studies!

His Operas

He did not compose an opera until 1839 when his Oberto in the style of Bellini was produced in Milan with such success that he received orders to write three more from which he gained much good-will and fame.

It must have been a thrilling time for opera writers, because Wagner was composing, too, and you know the great excitement he caused. Amidst this interesting whirl of opinion, Verdi wrote one of the operas ordered by the Milan director, and during this time he was sorely stricken by the deaths of his wife and two lovely children. Besides this, his opera failed and in his discouragement the poor young man made up his mind to give up composition. However, a rare good friend coaxed him back to his work after a little rest, and he produced his successful Nebucco (Nebuchadnezzar) (1842), I Lombardi the next year and his well known Ernani (1844). In this, his first period, he used as models, Bellini and men of his type, not writing anything startlingly new.

In his second period he wrote operas nearly as fast as we write school compositions, and among the famous things are Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore, La Traviata (story from Dumas’ Camille or Dame aux Camelias), (1853), and The Masked Ball (1859). Ernani and Rigoletto are founded on stories by Victor Hugo. The first performance of La Traviata in Venice was a failure due more to the performers, than to the opera itself which still crowds opera houses of the world.

The greatest opera of his third period is Aida (1871), one of Verdi’s masterpieces. An opera on an Egyptian subject was ordered by the Khedive of Egypt for the opening of the Italian Opera House in Cairo, for which Verdi received $20,000. Mariette Bey a famous Egyptologist made the first sketch in order to give the right local atmosphere to the libretto. Curiosity ran so high that every seat was sold before the first night and it was a great success. Think how electrified the audience must have been by the tenor solo, “Celeste Aida,” one of Caruso’s greatest successes; by the realistic Nile scene; the voice of the priestess in the mammoth Egyptian temple, and the famous march with trumpets made specially for it!

Dear old lovable Verdi was a wise man as well as an accomplished composer. He used more modern methods in Aida to hold audiences who were hearing about Wagner and his startling innovations.

Other operas of this third period were La Forza del Destino and one given at the Paris Grand Opera, Don Carlos, which was not up to his standard. Until this time he showed great mechanical skill and a sense of color and melody. The great singers have revelled in the operas of his second period. In our day Marcella Sembrich, Nellie Melba, Frieda Hempel, Luisa Tetrazzini, Amelita Galli-Curci, Florence Macbeth and many others have sung the coloratura,—frilly, soaring, gymnastic-singing, still very popular. However in Aida, Verdi departed much from the usual, and people said that he was copying Wagner, because they didn’t know the difference between the influences which change a person’s ways, and imitation.

So he deserted the old models, Auber, Meyerbeer and Halévy for something more substantial, his deeper and gigantically conceived Aida. James Wolfe of the Metropolitan Opera said of the bigness of this work as produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York: “I have played before audiences of 30,000 in arenas in Mexico. I am so at home in the opera that I do cross-word puzzles waiting for my cue, and yet at the Metropolitan when I first played the King in Aida with its flaming music, its hundreds of people and its scores of horses, I was over-awed and frightened!”

After this, Verdi’s splendid mass, The Requiem, was written for the death of the Italian hero Manzoni. In it he approaches the German school in depth and seriousness, veering away from the emptiness of Italian writing.

In his last efforts he seems definitely influenced by Wagner; for, with his Otello and Falstaff we find a new Verdi, surpassing in form and sincere melody anything that he had done. He was very fortunate to have Arrigo Boito, his friend, to write librettos based on Shakespeare’s Othello and Merry Wives of Windsor. When Falstaff was given in New York (1925) a young American baritone, Lawrence Tibbet, in the rôle of Ford, flashed into fame.

Verdi was a man of the people, loving Italy and being loved in return, a master of voice, ready to take good suggestions to improve his work, always kind, high-minded, and generous. He knew the orchestra and wrote for it in a way that not only gave, in his last three masterpieces, a new flavor to Italian opera, but led the way for future composers.

Boito and His “Mefistofele”

Arrigo Boito (1842–1918), journalist, poet, and composer sprang into prominence with his Mefistofele, in which the Russian singer, Chaliapin, has attracted huge audiences at the Metropolitan. When it was first given in Italy, the audiences missed the coloratura arias, and the critics were very hard on the young composer. So he went back to journalism for many years. His next opera Nero has a gory plot, but is real and not embroidered as were most of the Italian operas. Boito had studied in Germany and had absorbed much of the realism and truthfulness that Gluck and Wagner, taught. Nero had an elaborate first performance (1924) by the celebrated Arturo Toscanini, one of the greatest living conductors, at La Scala in Milan. It is a tremendous stage spectacle, surpassing in scenic effect many of the older melodramas.

“Cavalleria Rusticana” and “I Pagliacci”

In 1890 the first truly realistic opera was written in Italy. A prize was offered by the publisher Sonzogno and an unknown man, Pietro Mascagni, won it with Cavalleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry). He was born in 1863, the son of a baker. He was a musical boy, but his father wished him to be a lawyer, so he had to work at the piano in secret. One day when he had been locked up by his father who did not want him to practise, he was discovered by his uncle, who sympathized with him and took him to Count Florestan, who helped the young musician to study in Milan.

Mascagni’s work in Cavalleria Rusticana was vivid and he used both the old and the new style of writing. It is full of the most entrancing melody (the Intermezzo, the Brindisi, or drinking song, and Santuzza’s aria, Voi lo sapete). He also wrote Iris and Amico Fritz, which never equalled Cavalleria.

With Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1858–) it was different, for only after writing a number of operas did he produce a success in the world-famous I Pagliacci. He wrote the tragic story of these strolling players as well as the music, which is not as popular in style as Cavalleria, but it is superbly put together and very dramatic. As these operas are both short, they are often performed together. The rôle of Canio (I Pagliacci) was one of Caruso’s masterpieces. How wonderful to think that his voice has been preserved for the future generations through his records of which Ridi Pagliaccio (Laugh Clown) is one of the finest. It is generally admitted that Caruso’s voice was the most glorious of our age, and certainly there was no artist more idolized than he. In this same opera Antonio Scotti’s performance of the famous Prologue is equally beautiful.

Giordano

Umberto Giordano (1867) goes into peculiar realms for subjects for his operas. He uses local political intrigues and literature for his themes, and is known especially for his André Chenier and Fedora which are given in many opera houses of the world. In Siberia he uses folk songs of Russia. He has recently set The Jest by Sem Benelli librettist of L’Amore dei Tre Re (The Love of Three Kings) by Italo Montemezzi.

Puccini the Popular Idol

Now we come to a delightful opera maker, Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). He is the greatest modern Italian with the exception of Verdi. He has a distinctive touch that gives him individuality. He keeps a nice balance between voice, orchestra and melody. His music is always full of color and feeling. His themes, for the most part, touch the heart and have gained wide popularity.

His first opera was Manon Lescaut, the same story which Massenet used in his delightful opera Manon; La Bohème is his next and is often said to be his best. It is a tale of artist life in the Latin Quarter of Paris and is full of romance, color, gaiety and sadness. His story is taken from Murger’s Vie de Bohème, which was a fortunate choice. Madame Butterfly is another of his glittering successes. It has a decided Japanese flavor in its musical phrases. It is based on a story by John Luther Long, which was made into a play by David Belasco. Butterfly was one of Geraldine Farrar’s loveliest rôles.

Tosca, in which Farrar, Caruso and Scotti made a famous trio, is a blood curdling drama of murder, cruelty and love, full of music which mirrors the story. The libretto was taken from Victorien Sardou’s La Tosca, a celebrated drama in which the “divine Sarah” (Bernhardt) made one of her most brilliant successes.

He uses interesting little musical devices which make it easy to recognize a Puccini piece, and his music has charm. It is built on Italian tradition but is distinctly of the 19th century. He enjoyed the greatest popularity of his day, and there have been few, excepting perhaps Verdi and Wagner, whose operas have been so well known. His beautiful melody, piquant airs, fine rhythms, clever orchestration and humanness of plot, make Puccini very often touch the edge of opéra comique. Although he uses a musical phrase over and over again, it is not like the Wagner leit-motif. There are no concerted finales or clearly defined stopping places as there used to be in earlier operas. So you see, Puccini profited by Wagner and Verdi.

His Girl of the Golden West, a California story of the days of ’49, had its world première (first production) at the Metropolitan Opera House (1910). For some time Puccini had been looking for a libretto for a new opera. While in New York, to be present at the Metropolitan production of Madame Butterfly, he was also searching for material in the hope of finding an American story. Again David Belasco came to his aid. His own Girl of the Golden West, a picturesque play, was being given and he invited Puccini to see it. He was interested and turned it into an opera. The rehearsals at the Metropolitan were most interesting with Puccini and Belasco working together. Emmy Destinn and Caruso sang the leading rôles.

It is realistic, dramatic, beautiful in parts, and not written for coloratura exhibitions! But when it was produced it proved too Italian for Americans and too American for the Italians, so Puccini was disappointed in its lack of success.

Puccini’s operas, as well as Verdi’s and others, have a new popularity, that of the mechanical player audience, the gramophone and playerpiano.

Wolf-Ferrari and “The Jewels of the Madonna”

One of the most delightfully witty opera writers is Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876), son of a German father and Italian mother, and writer of The Secret of Suzanne (her secret was that she smoked!) a very droll and amusing story. He is musical grandchild to Mozart, so delicately does he sketch and so charming is his melody. If you hear his operas, including the tragic and exciting but beautiful The Jewels of the Madonna, you will certainly say that he can make more out of a little, than almost anyone. With a small orchestra he seems to work miracles, and his melodies are gracious and his rhythms captivating.

Montemezzi Visits America

Whether it was Lucrezia Bori (Spanish soprano) or Montemezzi who made L’Amore dei Tre Re (The Love of Three Kings) so entrancing, is hard to say. Here is lovely music flowing on endlessly! It is rich and deep; the voice is handled delightfully, and the orchestration is masterly and beautiful throughout. The Love of Three Kings is real music drama and few other operas have so fine a libretto.

Montemezzi with his American wife paid a visit to America (1925) and was fittingly received at the Metropolitan Opera House where Edward Johnson and Lucrezia Bori delighted people with the lovely opera.

Some of the other modern names in Italy are Giovanni Sgambati (instrumental pieces); Giuseppi Martucci (instrumental pieces); Marco Enrico Bossi, a famous Italian organist whose visit to this country in 1925 ended tragically, as he died on the boat on his way home, and Buongiorno, Eugenio di Parani and Franchetti, and Amilcare Ponchielli (1834–1886), composer of La Giaconda.

Now let us turn to what France has done in opera in the second half of the 19th century.

French Opera

When Meyerbeer was musical czar of Paris, we see not only Wagner in France, but six other important composers. Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) was a tone poet; Charles Ambroise Thomas (1811–1896), Charles François Gounod (1818–1893), and Georges Bizet (1838–1875) were opera writers; Charles Camille Saint-Saëus (1835–1921) was a composer of concertos, piano and chamber music and of one famous opera; and César Franck the Belgian (1822–1890) who lived in Paris, although not an opera writer, influenced the composers of opera who lived after him.

Mignon came from the heart of one of these, Ambroise Thomas, winner of the Prix de Rome, and in 1871 the director of the Paris Conservatory. He wrote several works, among them a successful opera Hamlet, yet none have done as much for his reputation as Mignon.

Félicien David (1810–1876) is known for his symphonic poem Le Desert and his Laila Rookh, an opera which was given at the Opéra Comique.

Another well known name is Benjamin Godard (1849–1895). Do you remember the Berceuse from his opera Jocelyn? He wrote Le Dante and La Vivandière and many salon pieces for young students of the piano.

Gounod’s “Faust”

Faust, in connection with music, makes us think of Gounod. Gounod was born in Paris and showed musical ability when a boy. He was graduated from the Conservatory and won the Prix de Rome (1837).

His interest always seemed to be in religious music for he went to Italy to study Palestrina and Bach. His study resembled a church for it had stained glass windows and an organ, and furnishings which gave it a religious atmosphere. After he returned from Rome he studied for the priesthood but soon gave it up.

Gounod’s musical training was very broad for at first he was influenced by Rossini, Weber and Mozart, and later by Bach and Palestrina.

His Messe Solennelle (Solemn Mass) was given in 1861 and his Faust in 1859. This is considered to be one of the most tuneful operas written in the 19th century, and packs opera houses all over the world. His Romeo and Juliette, though not as popular is still given and his Médecin Malgré Lui (Doctor in Spite of Himself) (from Molière’s play), “is a gem of refined setting” says Clarence Hamilton.

Among his other operas are Philemon and Baucis, La Reine de Saba (The Queen of Sheba) both inferior to Faust.

During the Franco-Prussian war he lived in London where he produced his oratorios The Redemption and Mors et Vita (Death and Life) with his Gounod Choir, and held in England a somewhat similar place to Handel and Mendelssohn, for he, too, had many disciples.

He was a master of beautiful melody and instrumentation.

There is a new school in Paris whose slogan is, “Back to Gounod” in order to recapture his way of writing melody!

Everybody Loves “Carmen”

In Georges Bizet we see a man of genius who produced but one great work. To be sure he lived only thirty-seven years, two years longer than Mozart with his hundreds of pieces, yet Bizet is of great importance in French opera and is looked upon by musicians as a man of rare power, and he is loved by everyone for his marvelous Carmen. Louis Gruenberg, the American composer, said, “I have looked in vain for a flaw in Carmen but it is perfection throughout. It is the one opera in the world that wins both musicians and the masses alike, and it disarms criticism.”

Emma Calvé will always be remembered as Carmen, for she not only sang the part with its intense melody and Spanish color, but she lived it on the stage.

Bizet is an amazing orchestral tone painter, and one of the greatest of all opera writers.

The story of Carmen is taken from a novel of Prosper Mérimée and is full of the sun, the shadows, the fascinating dances, the bull fight and the romance which belong particularly to Spain. Carmen is an opéra comique, for in the original version as played in Paris it has spoken dialogue.

His other things full of charm are Jeux d’enfants, four-hand pieces, the Arlesienne Suite (dances) so pictureful and emotional. It is used as ballet sometimes for Carmen.

Bizet was not appreciated and at first Carmen was a failure, but many geniuses ahead of their time have shared the same fate.

After a painting by Giacometti.
Georges Bizet.

Vincent d’Indy.

Camille Saint-Saëns.

Jules Massenet.

Gustave Charpentier.

French Composers of the 19th Century.

It seems quite reasonable that after all the experiences France has been through in the early and middle 19th century she should now blossom out, not with remodelled Italian opera, but with her own opera and her own ways of writing music.

The two influences were without doubt from César Franck and Bizet whose sincerity not only influenced musicians but rather quickly gained the public. The third influence was of course, Wagner, who, though he infuriated many, gained followers for his theories everywhere that his music was heard. In France, Reyer and Chabrier were both Wagner enthusiasts and did much to bring him finally into the Paris Opera House a little before the 20th century (adapted from The Art of Music). Out of these influences came a fine group of gifted composers,—d’Indy, Dukas, Charpentier and others.

Ernest Reyer (1823–1909), who was an ardent follower of Wagner, had a hard time because of the new harmonies he used. His last opera Salammbo is better known to us than the others, and his works are still played in Paris at the Grand Opera.

A man famous as composer of the tone poem, España, Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–1894) must come in here, for at the time of his death he was writing a most interesting opera, Briseis, which was finished by his pupils. The day before he died Robert Louis Stevenson stopped in the middle of a sentence, in his novel The Weir of Hermiston, one of his best. The first woman to receive the Prix de Rome in France, Lili Boulanger (1892–1918) did much of her composing in bed during her last illness; her devoted sister Nadia, a prominent musician in Paris, and had received the second Prix de Rome, finished the deathbed works. And did we not see Mozart finishing his Requiem on the last day of his life? Illness and impending death seem not to matter to men and women who have genius.

This group was striking out for something new, and was influenced by Wagner’s theories, Franck’s return to the old classic style, the Russian school, the re-action against Wagner and the renewed interest in orchestral concerts in Paris (adapted from C. G. Hamilton).

Saint-Saëns—the Child Prodigy and Octogenarian

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) wrote in all styles from classic to the newest of program music. He is another who gave concerts before he was twelve years old; he studied at the Conservatory, lived in Paris as a composer, organist and pianist, was a learned man and a very good musical critic. Later in life he lived in Algiers, which accounts for the oriental touch in his music. He journeyed over much of the world and we heard him in Carnegie Hall, on his last trip to this country in 1915, on his way to the San Francisco exposition where he played the organ and conducted his opera Samson and Delilah. He played some of his most technically difficult pieces when he was in his eighties. He wrote some symphonies, some descriptive symphonic poems, Le Rouet D’Omphale, Phæton, Dance Macabre (very weird and rhythmic) and others. Out of five, his G minor is the most brilliant piano concerto.

He is best known for his opera Samson and Delilah which is carried into fame by the two arias, My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice and Love Come to My Aid. This last is of the finest lyric writing in French opera and the first is surpassingly emotional. The choral parts (often sounding like early Hebrew music) show a real master at work, and the effect of the whole is very dramatic, whether sung as oratorio or opera.

It is not as an opera writer, however, that Saint-Saëns wished to go down to history for he threw his whole strength into trying to make the French public know and love the classics. Paul Landormy says: “From the historic point of view, Saint-Saëns is a notable figure. Saint-Saëns is the French Mendelssohn.... He undertook the musical education of France at the exact moment when Berlioz despaired of succeeding with the task, and he prepared the public for the great French School of symphonists which arose toward the end of the 19th century.”

In 1871 Saint-Saëns was made president of the newly formed National Society of Music of which you will read later.

The ballet was used to advantage by Clement Philibert Léo Délibes (1836–1891) a master of this form of music and dance. He built up a certain atmosphere that is particularly French. His ballets, Coppelia and Sylvia and his opera Lakmé are conventional and very popular. Lakmé is opéra comique because of the spoken words and of its romantic character. Délibes always has a certain delicacy of color, and charm which captivates.

Another composer who writes in an exotic vein (or an out-of-the-nation-to-which-he-belongs way, with all the color of the other nation in costumes and scenes) is Edouard Victor Antoine Lalo (1823–1892). Lalo was trained to sincerity by his models, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. This does not mean copying, for his music is not anything like the music of these men. He skilfully drew a variety of effects from his orchestration, and his music has individuality. His best known work in opera is Le Roi d’Ys. He also wrote a work for violin and orchestra Symphonie Espagnole which is a pet of all the violinists because of its brilliancy and beauty.

Massenet

Jules Massenet (1842–1912) was something like a modern French Meyerbeer and an Offenbach combined, yet his work is far more worth while. Before he died he was at the height of his popularity in Europe and America, and the repertory of the Hammerstein Opera in New York included many of Massenet’s works. He composed operas so rapidly that his public could not forget him!

He built on Gounod and Ambroise Thomas and gained much from Wagner. He used continuous melody and some of the principles of the leit-motif. Wagner’s music compared to Massenet’s was thick for Massenet’s is thin!

Whether Massenet will always remain popular is a question. His operas are engaging and clever, and he knew how to write theatre music to please the public. The most important of his operas (about fifteen), are Manon and Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. The title parts of both were sung by the brilliant Mary Garden, in this country. (See Chapter VIII.) Manon ranks second to the Jongleur. You know, too, the Meditation from Thäis, another of his popular successes. It was written for Sybil Sanderson, an American singer, in Paris. Massenet’s operas did not show his tremendous knowledge of counterpoint, of which he was professor at the Conservatory. His position was later filled by André Gédalge who has taught most of the composers of today. Gédalge is also the composer of some very fine symphonies, sonatas and an extraordinary Treatise on the Fugue.

Other writers of this period are Xavier Leroux (1863–1919), Gabriel Pierné, born the same year, composer of a delightful oratorio, Children’s Crusade. He is now conductor of the Colonne Orchestra in Paris. André Messager, born ten years before these two is the composer of some very charming light operas of which Veronique is the best known. There are also the great organists Charles Marie Widor (1845) with ten organ symphonies and many other works, and Alexandre Guilmant (1837–1911), a great organist who came to America while one of the writers of this book (Ethel Peyser) was at Vassar College, where he inaugurated the new organ.

Followers of César Franck

Although César Franck was not a successful opera writer, he influenced composers by showing how to combine modern harmony successfully with the classic form.

Among the many César Franck’s revival of the classic style influenced are Gabriel Pierné, Henri Duparc (1848), and Ernest Chausson (1855–1899), Franck’s pupils. Chausson was first known through Helen, a three-act opera and Le Roi Arthus, which show what he might have accomplished had not an accident caused his death. Besides the operas he wrote beautiful chamber music, orchestral works and songs. His Poem for violin is full of gentle, yet deep feeling. All his work has veiled mystery and is very lovely.

The most important pupil of César Franck is Vincent d’Indy (1851), one of the most important figures in France. He founded, with Charles Bordes and Guilmant, the organist, the Schola Cantorum, and revived interest in sacred music. He has been in this country and is admired for his symphonic works, his operas Fervaal and L’Étranger (The Stranger), piano pieces and chamber music. One of his symphonic poems, Istar, was made into a ballet for Mme. Ida Rubenstein and was performed for the first time at the Grand Opera in Paris, in 1924.

Alfred Bruneau (1857) links the Wagner period with Debussy’s. His operas are rarely given outside of Paris. His manner was new and caused much discussion. He based many of his plots on Émile Zola’s writings, and was conductor of the Opéra Comique. The Attack on the Mill was given in America.

Charpentier’s “Louise”

Gustav Charpentier (1869) comes next. He made his name with the delightful opera about the dressmaker apprentice Louise, a musical novel on the life in Montmartre, one of the artist quarters of Paris. Charpentier wrote the book, which was the story of his own life. He also wrote its sequel Julien. No one who has ever been in Paris fails to be deeply stirred by this picture of the simple home life of the midinette or sewing girl. Mary Garden created the part of Louise in America and it was the first rôle of her operatic career. In one scene, you hear the almost forgotten street cries of Paris. He has also written a charming work for orchestra, Impressions of Italy, which is the result of his having won the Prix de Rome in his youth.

This brings us up to the 20th century to which we shall devote an entire chapter. But in order to finish our story of French opera, we will merely introduce you to Claude Achille Debussy, the ultra-modern harmonist and weaver of mystery and beauty, who ushered in the 20th century with his lovely and enchanting opera, Pelleas and Melisande written on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck. For ten years the composer worked over this masterpiece, and it was produced for the first time at the Opéra Comique, in Paris in 1902. Here we find something that never had been before,—opera completely separated from all the old ideas of what opera should be. But in tearing down the old, Debussy gave something very rare, beautiful, sensitive, touching a very high artistic peak, in its place. This was pure impressionism in music, just what romanticism was to the early 19th century. This carries the French School to its highest degree of mystic beauty.

Coming later than Debussy’s opera are Maurice Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole (The Spanish Hour), Henri Rabaud’s Marouf, Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe Bleue, also a Maeterlinck libretto and second only to Pelleas and Melisande in atmospheric charm, Albert Roussel’s Padmavati, an Oriental opera, that has been produced very recently at the Grand Opera in Paris, and Florent Schmitt’s Le Petit Elfe Ferme l’Oeil (The little elf winks its eye) presented at the Opéra Comique in 1924.

Humperdinck—The Fairy Tale Man—Germany

Outside of the operas of Richard Strauss, of which we have written elsewhere, there have been few outstanding opera writers in Germany since Wagner. Among those are Ludwig Thuille (1861–1907), whose Lobetanz was given at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1911; Eugene d’Albert (1864), who has lived in Germany most of his life, although he was born in Scotland, and wrote the lovely Tiefland which was performed in America; Max Schillings (1868), whose Mona Lisa was performed at the Metropolitan; Hans Pfitzner (1869), who wrote an operatic legend based on Palestrina; Siegfried Wagner (1869), son of Richard; and Leo Blech (1871).

The one great exception was Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921), born in Bonn, Beethoven’s birthplace. He is perhaps closer to the hearts of children than any one else who ever wrote music. This seems much to say, but when you hear that it was he who wrote that beautiful little fairy story Hansel and Gretel, we are sure you will agree. The San Carlo Opera Company has given special performances of it in English. Would it not be nice if operas were given in the language you best understand? You would then find out for yourselves that this is the story of Babes in the Woods. How fine it would have been too, if you had been able to hear in your own language the other opera written by Humperdinck! This was Koenigskinder (Children of the King), which gave one of the loveliest rôles to Geraldine Farrar, and brought a large flock of real geese on the stage to take part in the performance. The other name of the opera is The Goose-Girl, which explains the presence of the geese. Geraldine Farrar always brought one or two with her when she acknowledged the applause and there was always an awful squawk! In this opera too, there is a horrid old Witch. Humperdinck found joy and inspiration in the folk music of Germany, much of which deals with fairies, elves, witches and inhabitants of the world of imagination.

Humperdinck was a great musician and he had the honor of being asked to prepare the score of Parsifal for the publishers.

Because of the beauties of his melodies, the lovely subjects he selected and his sympathy with the finer and higher things of life, it is a pity that Humperdinck left so few works.

He was attracted to the theatre and wrote much music as theatre music for plays. This is called incidental music, that is, it is incidental and the play’s the thing! Just before he died Humperdinck wrote the incidental music for the Miracle which is a great spectacle in pantomime. This means that there is no speaking, only tableaux and acting. He did not live to finish it, but it was completed by his son, for the production made by Max Reinhardt.

CHAPTER XXVII
Some Tone Poets

Probably you think that any music on a program is program music! Of course it is, but not in the special use of the word, for when it is program music, it has a story of its own and has to be described in more or less detail so that the audience can understand what it is about. Therefore, we find two classes of music—absolute music, which needs no story to explain it, and—program music, which does. Beethoven’s best works are known by their opus number while most of Schumann’s have descriptive titles. Early composers sometimes wrote music describing or imitating something, like Daquin’s Cuckoo, Jannequin’s Battle of Marignan, The Carman’s Whistle, etc. These pieces were program music in a way, but the modern tone poets went further by writing music with rather extended stories and with music not as simple as it used to be, but nevertheless an outgrowth of ballad form, sonata and the symphony.

Suppose you wanted to write a tone poem! First you must have a subject and then you must write music to explain it. Let us say you were going to write a Subway Tone Poem, your program notes might read something like this: The hero rushes away from his office, into the hurrying, scurrying street, down the slippery, crowded subway steps, and when he reaches the noisy turnstile slips in his fare and meets his young lady. He leads her through the crowd, protecting her from the jostling mob. Then they enter the train and above the noise and bustle they cast sweet glances at each other and converse. The train stops occasionally and finally they get off at their station. They walk to her home, along an empty side street where it is quiet and charming. He doffs his cap and we leave them, both thinking lovely things about each other.

Don’t you think you’re ready now to write a tone poem?

Berlioz, Innovator

Up to Hector Berlioz’ time (1803–1869), there was no definite attempt to write a tone poem with an elaborate story. This man, one of the most complicated in musical history, did much to help music and future musicians, for he started to tell stories in music without scenery or dialogues.

He was born near Lyons, France, the son of a doctor who wanted him to study medicine, but as he almost fainted several times in the dissecting room, he gave it up. This was his first rebellion and all his life he struggled against nearly everything that existed. His was a noble discontent in many ways, for he believed deeply in his own ideas and suffered much putting them into practice. He lived shortly after the French Revolution when everything was topsy-turvy. Many of the old things that people had looked upon with reverence had vanished and he tried, as other young men of his day, to forge new ideas according to his sense of right.

One day he saw some musical score paper and realized in a moment, what wonderful things might be done with it and exclaimed: “What an orchestral work one might write on that!” and quite suddenly, he decided to write music! He could only play the guitar, the flute and the flageolet and knew practically nothing of harmony. He certainly paid well for his decision, for he had a hard struggle with himself and circumstances.

He took one of his compositions to Professor Lesueur at the Paris Conservatory, and was admitted.

Berlioz Versus Cherubini

Cherubini, Director of the Conservatory, made a rule that men and women should use separate doors leading into the library. Not knowing this rule, Berlioz entered by the door reserved for the women and sat down to read a score of his beloved Gluck. Cherubini, thin, pale-faced, with tousled hair and fiercely shining eyes, came up to Hector and reprimanded him for breaking the rule. They had a noisy fight, chasing in and out among the desks and when Berlioz reached the door, he looked back at Cherubini and called out: “I am soon coming back to study Gluck again.” Being a determined boy, he did come back, but Cherubini, on whom his future depended, was his staunch enemy for life.

His parents were infuriated with Hector for his conduct in and out of school. His mother, a pious woman, practically disowned him and his father gave him but a small allowance with the stipulation that unless he could soon prove his ability in music, he should have to go back to medicine. So he tried desperately to earn money, by singing in choruses, playing the flute and teaching, hoping that he could win the Prix de Rome, which would give him a few years in Rome and three thousand francs. After terrific opposition by Cherubini and held back, too, by his own lack of diplomacy, either by submitting works that were written too poorly or too well, he lost many chances for the prize and finally, after four attempts, he won the coveted award with his cantata Sardanapalus. The amusing thing about this is, that he left out the parts then looked upon as modern, and difficult, which would have lost him the prize, but the first time it was played in public, he put them all in, and the piece was successful.

Then he fell in love, and after much posing and strutting about and foolish behavior, he married the young Irish actress, Harriet Smithson. They were very unhappy and unfortunate, but he was good to her and even gave up composing to earn a living by writing, and he proved an exceptionally gifted writer and critic.

His autobiography, too, is most interesting for he sees himself as a romantic hero and tells the tale with great dramatic energy and exaggeration.

With Intent to Murder!

At one time he was engaged to another woman who was unkind to him and he wrote: “Two tears of rage started from my eyes and my mind was made up on the spot to kill without mercy.” But being impetuous and quick tempered, he never reached the scene of murder, for, when about to sail to where she was, he either fell or jumped into the water, which very much dampened his ardor for killing.

One night, Chopin and Schumann followed him because he had threatened to kill himself. But, at the crucial moment Berlioz changed his mind!

Life for Berlioz was a drama in which he was the leading man, and he watched his own performance, as if he were a part of the audience. He craved novelty at every turn. He was sensitive, high-strung and vain, and yet withal, he had the dignity of being loyal to his beliefs in himself, and did not want to deceive anybody. He wrote with humor, brilliancy and understanding, he had faith in his work, and was sufficiently heroic to stick to his course whatever the cost. He was a martyr, for he suffered in order to do what he wished in music, and was never appreciated.

Although he went to England, Germany, Austria and Russia, and was very successful, Paris, only, interested him. In 1863, his opera The Trojans in Carthage failed and in 1868, he died, a broken-hearted man.

Berlioz’s Contribution to Music

It seems strange, but Berlioz disliked Bach and Palestrina and worshiped Beethoven, Gluck and Weber. He was jealous of Wagner and did everything he could to make Tannhäuser a failure in Paris.

Berlioz invented new ways, as do our Jazz Bands today, to make the instruments produce different sounds. He put bags over the horns, hung up the cymbals and had them struck with sticks instead of clapping them together, dressed up the drumsticks in sponges, and was much pleased at the effect made when a trombone played a duet with a piccolo. He made propaganda for new instruments especially for the horn, invented by Adolphe Saxe, which was called Sax Horn, and from which descended the Saxophone, so behold Berlioz, the founder of the Jazz Band!

Where other composers would use four trombones or one, he used sixteen! In his Requiem for example, he used sixteen trombones, twelve ophicleides (cornets with extra levers or keys), eight pairs of kettle drums, two bass drums, a gong and of course, all the regular string and reed instruments. He boasted after the first performance, that a man had a fit from the excessive noise!

The Intimate Friend of Instruments

He wrote the sort of melody that showed off each particular instrument to its best advantage. He studied them as if they were human beings, and he understood their characters and temperaments, what they could do and at what they would balk. He showed the possibilities of the choirs of wood wind instruments, a rich heritage for us today. The orchestra playing a piece of his, directed by him was matchless in its effect. Effect was the keynote of his writings. As the first great master of tonal effect, he is unsurpassed, and his book on orchestration is still one of the most practical text books on the subject.

Berlioz used the idée fixe (fixed idea) or leit-motif, not as Wagner used it later, but quite definitely, twisting a theme in many ways to bring out different phases of the same subject. Thus, Berlioz founded the dramatic in music, without scenery and without words, which is the Symphonic Tone Poem.

The majority of the people did not understand him any more than they understand Stravinsky today. His greatest work was his Symphony Fantastic written in 1829, in which he used the idée fixe to tell about the life of the artist, in true program music style for which he fought and almost bled. In Harold in Italy, he makes a departure by giving to the viola, the rôle of the “leading lady” which had not been done up to his day. He often used voices with the orchestra as he did in his tone poems Romeo and Juliet, and The Damnation of Faust.

The noisy Requiem is one of the finest things he did, and his overtures, the best of which is the Benvenuto Cellini, are fine works. The oratorio, The Infancy of Christ, written in classic style, was well received, but his operas never succeeded.

He paved the way for new orchestral effects and prepared the ground for Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and all the other orchestral composers. He was a musical Byron, for he was more interesting than beautiful, more vivid than noble, a sincere poseur, faithful to his ideas and always searching for romance.

Hector Berlioz.
(Father of the Tone Poem.)

Franz Liszt.
Sympathetic Teacher, Composer, Pianist and Friend to Young Musicians.

He was well versed in literature, always carried Virgil in his pocket, and loved and admired Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, Walter Scott and other great writers on whose works he based many compositions. In his fascinating autobiography, he said, “The dominant qualities of my music are passionate expression, internal fire, rhythmic animation and unexpected change,” and he was right.

And so we leave this romantic man, craving sensation in his life and in his music, exaggerated in word and tone, and thank him for what Daniel Gregory Mason calls, “His contribution to the unresting progress of art.”

He was not appreciated in Paris until after his death, and some one said that the stones hurled at him in contempt were soon piled up for him in the pedestals of his monuments.

Franz Liszt

Another Mozart seems about to appear, for Franz Liszt (1811–1886), too, was an infant prodigy!

He was born in Raiding, Hungary, and his father, Adam Liszt, who was steward to Prince Esterhazy, gave Franz piano lessons and managed his first concert tours.

At nine Liszt played in public, then went to Vienna and took lessons from Carl Czerny and Salieri. When twelve years old he played in Paris and “set the world on fire” with his brilliancy. Some one said that after his first concert that he had a triumphal progress to fame over the laps of great ladies, for he was petted and “bon-bonned” and kissed by all.

Liszt wanted to go to the Conservatory in Paris, but as he was a foreigner, Cherubini, though a foreigner himself, would not admit him.

Advertising Liszt

Here is a handbill used for advertising the little boy Liszt:

“An Air”

With grand Variations by Herz, will be performed on Erard’s New Patent-Grand Pianoforte, by:

Master Liszt

Who will likewise perform an Extempore Fantasia and respectfully requests two written Themes from any of the Audience upon which he will play his Variations

This illustrates two interesting things. The first, the mention of the grand pianoforte, which had not been in use very long; the second, the fashion in Liszt’s day of improvising before an audience, a “stunt” almost like solving a cross-word puzzle without a dictionary!

For a long time, he was advertised as two years younger than he was, and his father carried him to the piano; but he soon rebelled at this pretense and it was discontinued.

Liszt Shows His Unselfishness

After Liszt’s father died in 1827, he gave up concert tours for a while, and settled down with his mother for eight restful years to study and teach the piano. Liszt generously gave his mother all the money he had made in his successful tours because, he said, she had made so many sacrifices for him. At this time he grew spiritually deeper and well fitted for the glories to come. Like Berlioz, Liszt was born a short time after the French Revolution, when new ideas were coming into literature, religion and art, through which this young and gifted artist tried to guide himself in a wholesome way that shaped his future life.

Liszt again made concert tours through Europe (1839), and astounded everyone with his playing and the charm of his personality. Musicians and audiences were at his feet! He made a great deal of money, too, and grew so popular that artists painted him, ladies knelt before him in adoration, tableaux were given in his honor, monuments erected to him and societies named after him.

His kindness to the poor and needy was unfailing. When Pesth was inundated by a flood, he sent a generous gift to the sufferers; he established a fund for the poor in Raiding and completed the necessary sum for the Beethoven monument at Bonn. He never accepted money for teaching after he was “grown up” for he wanted to be a help to his some three hundred pupils. It is said that after 1847 he never gave a concert for his own benefit! An extraordinary character!

In 1843, he went to Weimar, as a visiting artist. Soon he met Princess Von Sayn Wittgenstein of Russia who realized his great gifts and influenced him to become more than a pianist. Later in the year we see him as Choir Master living at Weimar and attracting the greatest people of the musical world to him. Here Liszt was able to help young musicians who came from all over the world. Wagner would never have been so successful, had not Liszt aided him during his exile. He stood by him with patience and loving kindness and helped him to produce his operas. He was of untold assistance to Schumann and Berlioz, Rubinstein, Cornelius and countless others by performing their works when nobody else dared to. Liszt was in high favor with society, and having a love for the new in music, he used his popularity to help music grow. Wagner himself said: “At the end of my last stay in Paris, when ill, broken down and despairing, I sat brooding over my fate, my eye fell on the score of my Lohengrin, totally forgotten by me. Suddenly I felt something like compassion that this music should never sound from off the death-pale paper. I wrote two lines to Liszt; his answer was the news that preparations for the performance were being made on the largest scale the limited means of Weimar would permit.” Liszt’s motto was, “First Place to the Living.”

Liszt’s Professional Life

Liszt’s services were demanded for concerts and festivals in many towns from 1852–1859. The people, however, could not understand how their idol could believe in Wagner and Berlioz, and there were many rabid discussions. Very soon Liszt brought out his own symphonic poems, Tasso, Prometheus, Mazeppa, Les Preludes, and his two piano concertos (1855–1857), utilizing his romantic ideas.

After leaving Weimar, which some biographers claim was because of the adverse criticism of Cornelius’ opera, The Barber of Bagdad, Liszt went to Rome. Here his deep mystical nature and his need for rest and time for contemplation, led him to enter one of the Holy Orders of the Church, and the Pope gave him the honorary title of Abbé. Pope Pius IX adored him and called him his Palestrina. The church music which he composed there included his oratorios St. Elizabeth, The Christus, his unfinished Stanislaus, the Hungarian Coronation Mass and the Requiem.

Liszt returned to Weimar every spring and summer and conducted many festivals and concerts, including the Beethoven centenary. He was also much interested in the National Academy at Pesth, so now he divided his time between Rome, Pesth, and Weimar.

He wrote many brilliant piano pieces, among them his nineteen remarkable Hungarian Rhapsodies based on the melodies he heard from the gypsies. Besides composing music, teaching and helping other musicians and giving to the needy, he wrote essays and criticisms.

In appearance Liszt was tall and thin with deep-set eyes and bushy eyebrows and a mouth which turned up at the corners when he smiled. His charm of manner won all who came in contact with him.

A story is told of him that he as a youth was sitting to the artist Scheffer for his portrait, and fell into a theatrical pose, probably with his head thrown back and one hand thrust into the breast of his buttoned coat, which was characteristic. As this did not impress the painter, Liszt, realizing it, cried with much embarrassment, “Forgive, dear master, but you do not know how it spoils one to have been an infant prodigy.”

In spite of Liszt’s outward affectation and posing, he had a noble character. He was simple and whole-souled, free from jealousy and the love of money. He died highly honored in 1886 at the age of seventy-five at a Wagner festival in Bayreuth. In fact it was difficult to tell who received more honor at Bayreuth, Liszt in the audience or Wagner at the conductor’s desk.

Liszt’s Accomplishments

As a pianist, no one has surpassed Liszt and he revealed the piano’s possibilities. In addition to his pianoforte compositions, he made “arrangements” of symphonies, chorals, operas, songs and every other form, which brought them closer to the people. His arrangements are so brilliant, although over-decorated and cheap in effect, that he shows that the piano can almost reproduce the orchestra.

Liszt was not as great a composer as he was a pianist and stimulator of other musicians, and much of his music was written for effect. Yet he was a great critic and his love of music for the future rather than of the past, led him to be sympathetic with young composers, for whom he opened the way. The people who gathered about him disliked old forms and were looking for new music in which he encouraged them. Among the musicians who were friends and pupils at Weimar, were: Joseph Joachim Raff, Peter Cornelius, Eduard Lassen, who took Liszt’s place when he left Weimar, Leopold Damrosch, the father of Walter and Frank Damrosch of New York, Alexander Ritter, the pianist and inspirer of so many great people, and hundreds of others.

Liszt wrote many symphonic and choral pieces which showed marked originality. Although not as profound as Wagner, he helped Wagner so much that their names would be forever linked, even if his daughter Cosima had not been Wagner’s wife.

Rubinstein and Von Bülow

Among other friends of Liszt of value to musical history were Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894) (page [443]), the Russian, and Hans von Bülow (1830–1894), a German. Both these men were great pianists and wrote noteworthy compositions. Liszt was a great stimulus to them and they had many points in common. Rubinstein was romantic and von Bülow, classic. Rubinstein did much to link Germany and Russia musically, which was a help to both nations. Von Bülow was an illustrious pianist, friend of Wagner, famous conductor, and editor of many musical scores, among them an edition of Beethoven’s Sonatas, still in constant use. Both these men did much for pianists all over Europe.

Other great pianists and composers of their day were: Nikolai Rubinstein (Anton’s brother) (1835–1881); Theodor Leschetizky (1830–1915), trained by Carl Czerny, and he in turn trained hundreds of pianists; Karl Tausig and many others.

Of course, the effect of these pianists was to make music and the piano more popular, thus adding greatly to the musical culture of the world.

Tchaikovsky

You probably know of Piotr (Peter) Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) as a great symphony writer, but he was also a successful writer of tone poems such as The Tempest, Francesco di Rimini, Manfred, based on Byron’s Manfred, Hamlet, The Storm, Romeo and Juliet and two incomplete poems, Destiny and Voievoda. Tchaikovsky was born in Russia, he went to the school of Jurisprudence and later entered the Ministry of Justice but soon began to compose music and took a medal for composition for a piece which he wrote on Schiller’s Ode to Joy, the poem Beethoven used in his 9th Symphony. He also wrote The Nut Cracker Suite for orchestra, adapted from the score of a Ballet, which includes a Russian dance, an Arab dance, a Chinese dance, flower waltz, and other fascinating, whirling, delightful dances.

Many of Tchaikovsky’s things not called tone poems have very definite programs, such as The Snow Maiden (Snegovrotchka) a favorite legend and music to a fairy tale—the parts are named Chorus of Blind Gusslee Players, Monologue of the Frosts, Appearance of the Wood Demons and so on.

Sergei Rachmaninov

Boecklin’s painting Isle of Death, inspired Sergei Rachmaninov (1873) to write a most beautiful musical poem about its sombre trees and the sea. As a distinguished pianist he has glorified the art in all countries, especially in America. He was a student of Siloti and of Zvierev, a friend of Tchaikovsky. His masters in harmony and theory were Taneiev and Arensky. He has held musical posts of honor and has written remarkable piano concertos, chamber music works, choruses and one opera, Aleko. You probably know his much played C minor Prelude which has been a sort of visiting card of Rachmaninov to the public.

Richard Strauss, the Proteus of Music

In the list of tone poets, Richard Strauss (1864), or Richard II is one of the most important. It is strange that he should have the same name as Wagner, for his father Franz Strauss, a skilled horn player, disliked Wagner and his compositions intensely. Richard’s mother was the daughter of a brewer and they all lived in Munich, where the son was born.

When he was a little boy, he wrote musical notes before he could write the alphabet, and at six, composed little pieces. By the time he was twenty he had written compositions which put him with Schubert and Mozart, in the ranks of musical prodigies.

Until his sixteenth work Aus Italien (From Italy) (1886), his first tone poem, he did not depart from the classic forms, although there were a few signs of change in style in a violin sonata which he wrote just before the tone poem. In fact, he was so much against Wagner and his innovations, that no one could have guessed that later he himself would be considered an innovator and would be accused of imitating Wagner.

During his youth, after hearing Siegfried he wrote to a friend about the music of Mime: “It would have killed a cat and the horror of musical dissonances would melt rocks into omelettes.”

When he met von Bülow, the old master thought little of his talents, but the young man gave him a surprise. For, when Richard went to Meiningen he had never led an orchestra in his life and without one rehearsal, conducted his Serenade for Strings, opus 7. Von Bülow realized his great ability, made him assistant conductor, and a year later when he left Meiningen, Strauss took his place.

It was about now that Richard met Alexander Ritter the violinist and radical thinker who, he said, changed his life by introducing to him new ideas. He became converted to Wagner. When he heard Tristan and Isolde he was thrilled by it. So, like Proteus, the god who changed his form to suit his adventure, Strauss, the musical Proteus changed his ideas to suit his opinions.

Wearied by hard work after writing many classical pieces including a sonata, an overture, the Festmarsch, a violin concerto, songs, a horn concerto and other things, he became very ill. He said to a friend that he was ready to die, and then added, “No, before I do, I should love to conduct Tristan.” This shows that the young man could change his opinion and become devoted to what he loathed years before, a fine quality which continually brought down upon his head criticism from smaller folk. Yet this Proteus-like quality was a sign of his power for growth.

Because he did not gain strength quickly from his illness, he went to Italy and then wrote his first symphonic poem Aus Italien (From Italy) in a new and modern vein.

When he returned, he led the orchestra in the Court Theatre of Munich and then went to Weimar for two years, and this former young classicist was now hailed as the leader of modern composers! He produced, here, three tone poems: Macbeth, Don Juan and Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) (1888–1890).

Then, on account of illness (1892) he went to Greece, Egypt and Sicily. During this tour, he wrote Guntram, which he produced on his return to Weimar.

He became interested in the Bayreuth festivals and in 1894 he conducted a production of Tannhäuser, after which he married Pauline de Ana who played Elizabeth. Before this, he had made her the heroine of his first opera, Guntram (1893).

Not long after this he gave up the Weimar post and went to Munich with his bride. He became the conductor there and at the same time, led the Berlin Philharmonic concerts until the double work and commuting became too much for him. He gave up Berlin and Arthur Nikisch succeeded him,—the same Arthur Nikisch who later took the baton of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in America.

In 1899 he became the leader of the Royal Opera in Berlin in which city he decided to live and from there made trips all over the world including the United States, first in 1904 and later, after the World War. During his last tour, we heard him play the piano for his songs which are unsurpassed in beauty, and conduct some of his own orchestral works with skill and enthusiasm.

He is tall and slender, with kindly blue eyes, rather informal in manner. He has the air of a happy man even if he has received some of the harshest criticism from friends and foes that any composer has had from earliest times. His wife used to sing his songs in public. He is fond of games, especially the card game “skat” and like the true grandson of a brewer enjoys his glass of beer.

Strauss’s Contribution to Music

Among Strauss’ greatest works are his operas Electra, Salome and Der Rosenkavalier and his nine tone poems. Despite all the harsh things critics have said of him, Strauss has always maintained that, although he did not write in accepted forms, he felt that the form should always be suitable to the subject, for “as moods and ideas change so must forms.” This, Ernest Newman said in defence of Strauss, and it may be applied to all arts.

So Strauss is not formless but like Proteus, has many forms. Cecil Gray said, “he seems to have an irresistible itch to provoke the amazement and the horror of the multitude.” This is quite true, especially in Salome, Electra and Der Rosenkavalier in which opera he went back to Mozart form as a model. It seems incredible that a man who could write the noble songs that he has written should have chosen such unpleasant plots for his operas!

In Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) he was distinctly a follower of Liszt. His friend Alexander Ritter is said to have written the poem after the music.

At the time that it was first played, it caused so much comment that Strauss, like Browning, laughed at people for trying to “read” more into it than he wrote. Browning was asked whether he meant a certain thing in one of his poems, and his reply was something like this: “Madam, I never thought of it, but if you think it is there, I am more than glad to know it.”

His Don Juan is delightful, too, but his Til Eulenspiegel (1895) which tells of the mischievous pranks of Til, is one of the finest examples of humor in music and probably will outlive many works of this modern period, his own as well as others. He wrote it in the form of a classical Rondo, because he could picture Til’s ever recurring deviltry and exploits in this form. Poor Strauss was reviled for this daringly written music, too, yet this tone poem is an amazing piece of work and was given gloriously as a ballet in New York City a few years ago by Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet.

In Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), Strauss uses the idée fixe or leit-motif. This is based on a prose poem of Nietzsche.

In Don Quixote he goes back to the form of the classical variation, for it is an ingenious way of showing the varying sides of the character of Don Quixote. Here he shows events and not ideas, a most definite story in tones. You can almost see the attack on the wind-mills and you can actually hear the sheep bleating, the church music of passing pilgrims, and the love tale of Dulcinea. In this piece, program music reaches its height.

In Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) (1898) Strauss frankly quotes from his musical works. He does not have to prove that he is the hero, for he admits it! When Strauss was asked what the poem meant, he said, “There is no need of a program, it is enough to know that there is a hero fighting his enemies.” In it, you can really hear the carping critics, his retorts, the triumphs and the defeats. It is very interesting and amazingly well written.

The Domestic Symphony (Sinfonia Domestica) is the story of a family for one day. There is the father motif, the mother motif and the baby motif! The final fugue represents education very aptly for you get from it the sense of flight and struggle and the never endingness of education.

One of his last works is The Alpine Symphony. His other works include an early opera Feuersnoth, and his songs which are among the greatest ever written by any composer, ranking him with Franz, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Hugo Wolf.

Strauss shows in all his work great pictorial power. He paints in tones if ever a man does. His humor in music is amazing. He tries to make vivid in music a thing as simple as a fork and as complex as a philosophic idea. Some one said of him, comparing him to Wagner, that he started out to write symphonic poems and really wrote music dramas, while Wagner started out to write music dramas and ended by writing Tristan and Isolde, a super-symphonic poem with voices added.

Richard Strauss is the last of the great German classic and romantic composers who have ruled the musical world for the past two centuries. Still living in Germany he has opened the way to many of the younger composers, who have learned much from his methods of orchestration and handling music in the large forms. While he out-Wagnered Wagner in strange and new harmony, he now seems old fashioned in comparison to Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Honegger. Although Strauss seemed to us very complex and exaggerated a few years ago, it was very interesting to notice that when his works were revived in America after the War, the audiences had grown up musically to the point where they seemed no longer unintelligible or ultra-modern.

We remember when we were leaving the opera house after the first performance of Salome in this country, hearing one ill bred, untutored woman say, “Gee! Goit, but that was one big noise!” By this time she has probably reached the point where she is jazzing the Salome dance with real pleasure and understanding!

He did many unusual things with instruments, added many new ones, and as someone said, he loves to have the “trombone play like a piccolo!”

No one can say where Strauss will stand as a composer, for time alone can place him. However, we make bold to state that he will stand high in the company of the world’s composers.

Chabrier (1841–1894)

As imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, there is no proof of the success of the tone poem more telling than the fact that practically every composer in the musical world has written symphonic tone poems. In fact today, one hundred tone poems are written to one symphony! Berlioz had his followers in France, and in the group around César Franck were several who wrote tone poems. One of the most charming of these poets was Alexis Emanuel Chabrier (1841–1894) who took up music first as an amateur while studying law in Paris, and while he was Minister of the Interior. Later he became so devoted to music that he gave all his time to it.

Among his works are operas and many other forms of music, the loveliest of which is the Rhapsody on Spanish tunes called España. It is a model of its kind and in it he uses the collected material with rare skill. It shows him very clever in reproducing foreign atmosphere and feeling. He was born in Ambert, France, and died in Paris.

Debussy

Claude Achille Debussy (1862–1918) although talked of in another chapter, must be mentioned as a composer of tone poems in this. Among his most famous works are Après-midi d’Un Faune, La Mer, Les Nuages, Fêtes, and Sirènes which are all surpassingly lovely, written in Debussy’s special harmonies with which he wove a mystical, far away atmosphere, so compelling and yet so magical that you think you are in a mysterious cloudland. He usually uses a scale of whole tones. In Pelleas and Melisande, his greatest work (opera) you seem to look into a distant land which never did and never will exist, except in the glorious reaches of his or our imaginations. So to those of us who love fairy realms, cloudland and beauty of idea and serene expression, Debussy will be a rare treat and never vanish from our mind’s ear.

Ravel

Maurice Ravel (1875) still living in Paris, seems to love Spanish themes as did Chabrier and Bizet. One of the loveliest tone poems is his Rhapsodie Espagnole in four movements. His Mother Goose suite and La Valse are also lovely, modern, short orchestral works.

He writes with rare distinction and beauty. In the chapter on 20th century music, Ravel will make another appearance.

Paul Dukas (1865)

Among the most humorous and delightful tone poems is L’Apprenti-Sorcier (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) by Paul Dukas (1865). Dukas too, will appear in another chapter.

CHAPTER XXVIII
Late 19th Century Composers Write New Music on Old Models

Brahms in Germany—Franck in France

After calling Beethoven a Colossus, there does not seem to be room for any one else, and yet Brahms (1833–1897) is no less of a genius. You will often hear people speak of “the three Bs,”—Bach, Beethoven and Brahms; and of these, Brahms being closer to our own day has had the advantage and influence of the past. But perhaps he also had the disadvantage of having had some one else say what he would like to have been the first to say! That Brahms continued the things that Beethoven began, may be understood from the fact that many call Brahms’ first symphony The Tenth, meaning that Brahms had begun his symphonies where Beethoven left off.

Johannes Brahms at Home.

After the painting by Rongier.
César Franck.

It is not easy to write of Brahms without seeming to exaggerate, because if we speak of his songs we must say that no one ever created more beautiful song form; if we speak of his chamber music we must acknowledge that he understood writing for instruments as no one before or since has surpassed. His piano pieces, too, are pure delight! Where will one find finer work than his one concerto for violin and those for piano? His four symphonies have so far been unsurpassable and his choral works, too. If he had never written anything but the German Requiem this would have marked him as one of the world’s masters. Has he not justified Schumann’s exclamation upon meeting him in 1853, when Brahms was twenty years old? “Graces and Heroes have watched the cradle of this young genius who sprang ‘like Minerva, fully armed from the head of Jove.’” But Brahms was very modest and was always embarrassed in the presence of praise. While he was compared to Beethoven he waited until very late in life to write symphonies. “How can I write a symphony,” he is reported to have said, “when I feel the shadow of the great Beethoven treading constantly behind me?”

He was born in Hamburg. His father, who was a musician, rejoiced greatly when little Johannes at an early age gave proof that he was gifted. The Brahms family was very poor, and instead of becoming a great artist according to his desire, Johannes’ father from the time he was old enough to earn his living, was a double-bass player. Even though he was the best in Hamburg, he and his wife, who was also musical, had to struggle and save to give their little son the best teachers in piano and composition.

In order to make more than the small amount gained by playing in the orchestras the father organized what we call “the little German band” which played in the open air. Father Brahms and five other musicians attracted the people wherever they went. The boy who had begun to earn a few pennies by arranging dances and marches for the little bands of the cafés, wrote music for his father’s band, and early in the morning even while he brushed shoes before others were awake, the thoughts which became his loveliest songs came to his mind.

Brahms meets Remenyi

When Johannes was fifteen he gave his first public piano recital and made a deep impression. It started him on the road to fame, for he played so well that he was engaged to accompany the Gypsy violinist, Remenyi, who played all over the world and became very famous. Brahms went into many countries with him but never came to America, where Remenyi was a great idol. Gypsy-like, he was happy in his wanderings and when he was old went into vaudeville, drawing thousands wherever he played. He was about to face one of these immense audiences in San Francisco but drew only a few tones from his beloved violin when his magic fingers were stilled in death!

Remenyi was a great influence in Brahms’ life, for it was through him that Brahms became fascinated with the Gypsy Dances which the composer gave the world as Hungarian Dances. He wrote them for piano solos, duets and bits of them may be found all through Brahms’ orchestral writings. This is folk music, even though it was not the folk music of the country in which Brahms was born.

Another important thing that came into his life through Remenyi was his meeting with Joachim, one of the greatest violinists and teachers of the world. At a concert given by Remenyi when playing the Kreutzer sonata of Beethoven the piano was tuned so low that Brahms was compelled to transpose the entire piano part a semitone (half-step) higher while playing it. Joachim who was in the audience came behind the stage to congratulate the players, and gave Brahms letters of introduction to Liszt, then at Weimar, and Schumann at Düsseldorf. This visit led to Schumann’s article about him, mentioned at the opening of this chapter.

Brahms and the Schumann’s

Brahms became a favorite visitor at the home of Schumann and his brilliant wife Clara Schumann. He was hailed by all the celebrities who assembled at the frequent soirées and musicales, as a musician of great promise. His compositions show a strong influence of this early friendship. But Brahms repaid this kindness, for when the ill-fated Schumann died, he became like a son to the bereaved Clara Schumann, who loved him as one.

As this splendid pianist had played her husband’s piano works all over Europe, so she made known the first piano concerto of her young friend. She made a success in spite of the fact that it was not particularly well received at its first performance at the Leipsic Gewandhaus, probably because Brahms was not as great a pianist as he was a composer. His feeling seems to have made him want to turn the piano into an orchestra. He felt everything in a massive way and was very exact.

At the age of twenty-one Brahms became Director of the Court Concerts and of the Choral Society of the Prince of Lippe-Detmold. Being very conscientious he learned much from this experience, which helped him toward becoming one of the greatest writers of choral works as his German Requiem and The Song of Fate prove.

Outside of his music Brahms led an uneventful life. He never married, and devoted such affection as he might have given to a family to music. It is told that someone who knocked at his door, receiving no answer, entered to find him sobbing violently under the emotion caused by some music that he was composing.

When Brahms was about forty he visited Vienna and was so delighted with the musical life he found there that he remained for the rest of his days. As we note the delightful swing of his Waltzes, it is easy to believe that he felt the Viennese moods, which found their way into his compositions.

There is little to say of his general habits except that he was devotedly fond of out-door life and he interrupted his work only to take long jaunts in the open, usually in company with sympathetic friends, for he was friendly, and needed companionship. He did not give up all his time to composing, for he was director of the great Singverein (Choral Society) and he gave some marvelous performances of the choral works of Bach, Beethoven, and of other oratorios and masses.

Brahms died (1897) at sixty-four from a cold he caught while attending the funeral of his friend Clara Schumann. He now lies in the same cemetery as Beethoven and Schubert.

His Contribution to Music

Although Brahms did not create any new forms, there are so many different sides in his compositions, that it is hard to describe any one in particular. He came into the world at the time when music was turning toward the dramatic, because of Wagner’s influence. It seemed that Brahms, himself, was afraid to hear Wagner, whose work he admired. Brahms never wrote an opera and he never wrote pictorial works such as tone poems. His writings were “absolute music” that is, music in its purest form, neither imitating nor representing anything but music. Here was Brahms between the tone poems of Liszt, and the operas of Wagner, and he remained true to pure music! It is said that Hans von Bülow invited him to attend the first performance of Parsifal but he refused saying that he had a dread of Wagnerians, (but not of Wagner)! Although Brahms wrote when the romantic school was at its height, he brought back classicism with a force that influenced the entire musical world. In addition to the classic and romantic forms, many works are called classic to distinguish them from popular music.

Brahms was of the peasant type, and honesty was one of his strongest qualities. This honesty, sincerity and simplicity may be found in every line of his music, which never has light or frothy moments, and which shows everywhere that he loved Bach. He left a large number of very great works. Indeed, one might study Brahms for years and even then never know all he wrote.

He was the center of a group of song writers to whom he must have been an inspiration and an example. His lyrical gift and form, which mean that his songs almost sing themselves, was so great that it is hard to understand how he could have written symphonies and sonatas which, to many people, sound complex, thick and confused. But many people, even good musicians feel this way about Brahms. May we not believe that some day their ears will be opened to its beauties and joys?

The song writers of this period were many as they are in all periods in every country. Many write one or two songs that are lucky enough to become popular, but this does not make a great composer, for the great either bring something new into the world, or create music which by its quality moves other people to write good and beautiful music.

Song Writers

Brahms towered among song writers after the time of Schubert and Schumann. He carried forward the form which has given Germany fame for her exquisite lieder (songs). Great beauty with simplicity of vocal melody against an accompaniment that had the character of a full-fledged piano piece distinguished these songs from those of an earlier period in which the accompaniment gave just a little support to the singer. The old songs however, were often heart appealing by their very simplicity for they had almost a folk-song manner.

Franz Abt (1819–1885) was one of these writers. He must have made a fortune out of When the Swallows Homeward Fly—only, as the composer can not control these things, he probably never knew that this song was to be found on nearly every piano in America for almost fifty years!

Robert Franz (1815–1892) made the world want to singer German lieder for the haunting beauty of his songs. The Rose Complained and In Autumn are fair examples of a collection said to include 350 published songs.

In Chapter XXIV you have seen the place in song occupied by Schubert and Schumann. From them to Brahms does not seem such a great stretch, but only the musician knows how wide it is. The form in which Brahms wrote lieder brought a new feeling to the composers, not by way of imitation, but because vocal music developed naturally into the paths along which he led the way.

Richard Strauss, known for his great tone poems, also for his operas Salome, Elektra and The Rose Cavalier, shortly after Brahms wrote some of the most beautiful songs in the world.

We also find many by his colleagues, Felix Weingartner (1863), Hans Pfitzner (1869), Mahler and others, whose songs, though beautiful, showed their skill less than their operas, symphonies, and choral works.

Hugo Wolf—Song Genius

Hugo Wolf (1860–1903) will be regarded, as time goes on, as one of the greatest composers of the 19th century. This, notwithstanding the fact that he published 260 songs and nothing at all for orchestra, and in chamber music, he wrote only one very interesting quartet introduced in this country nearly twenty years ago by the Flonzaley Quartet. Such a master would no doubt have left more than songs, would have been one of the musical beacon-lights of the world, had his life not been one of tragedy.

His story, indeed, exceeds in unhappiness that of Schumann or even of Beethoven. Early in the best days of his life, his mind began to give way, and during periods of sanity he wrote with unbelievable fluency only to be suddenly cut off from the power. He was fully aware of his condition and his fate, and his letters expressing his emotions and describing his agony are too sad to write about.

Hugo Wolf, born at Windischgratz in Styria (1860) was the fourth son of a leather-currier who was also a musician. The home was the scene of much chamber music in which Hugo played the second violin. The people of Styria loved the old Italian operas, and Wolf frequently expressed the belief that he had some Latin blood in his veins. This seemed to show in his music for he wrote songs in Italian and Spanish style and he was particularly attracted to French music and musicians. One wonders could greater songs have been written than his (Spanisches Liederbuch) Spanish Song Book which includes not only thirty-four brilliant folk-melodies, but also ten noble religious songs.

Romain Rolland, the great French writer on musical subjects wrote: “It has been said that the Spanisches Liederbuch is to Wolf’s work what Tristan is to Wagner’s.”

Indeed many who write of Wolf have said that his vivid power of expression, and inspiration could only be compared to Wagner’s. The poems he selected proved what a high literary taste he had. For a time he was a musical critic and made the bitterest enemies because of the abuse he hurled at Brahms.

His story may be quickly told for he got most of his education from the libraries and from reading the scores of the great masters. Having no piano he could be found daily sitting on a bench in the park studying the Beethoven sonatas. But he loved Wagner best of all, and held his meeting with that master his life’s greatest joy. Wolf had composed little until after he was twenty-eight, then his writing was feverish, interrupted only by his lapses of mind. He died in one of these spells, of pneumonia, at 37. All his work was done in four or five years, for of the last nine years during five of them (1890–95) he was prostrated and often unable to speak.

Bruckner

Among the composers around this time and later, there are but few who have left more than a ripple on the musical ocean. Some created a stir in their own day and even now there is hot discussion about them among the critics, while some people are pleased and others are not.

In those days, as now, every composer had his friends and people who felt it to be their duty not only to stand up for their friend, but to ridicule “the other fellow.” So it was with Brahms, for in the same way that he was abused by those who measured him against Wagner, his friends refused to recognize in Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) a rival of their idol (Brahms).

Brahms was living in Vienna but he was not born there, so the feeling was strong against him when he began to threaten the position of the Viennese, Anton Bruckner, who though nine years older than Brahms, was not recognized so early. There was much in favor of Bruckner. He was a very fine musician. Themes, melodies bubbled forth constantly like an oil-gusher, but he did not know how or when to stop them. If he had only known how to control this continuous flow, he might have been as great a figure as Brahms and the story of his life been different.

It is wonderful, however, what he made of himself, for he was a poor schoolmaster and organist who had only his natural gifts to start with, and had little education. But he wrote symphonies by the wholesale and they were so long that they fairly terrified conductors to whom he brought them in the hope of having them performed. He won his point, however, and lived to gain no small amount of recognition. We heard several of his symphonies in America in 1924, the hundredth anniversary of his birth in Ausfelden, Upper Austria. He died in Vienna in 1896.

Anton Bruckner wrote during the time of the height of Richard Wagner’s glory and the dawn of Richard Strauss’s fame, and was eleven years younger than Wagner, whom he idolized.

Mahler in America

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) enters at this point. It would be difficult to make a definite statement about him, for whatever be said for or against him, is sure to draw argument. He had been a storm-center for many years before his death, and even afterward those who were against him waged war quite as bitterly, while those for him fought more valiantly than ever.

America was in the thick of this fight and many friendships of long standing were broken on account of it. Mahler living in New York as recently as 1908–1911 makes us realize the more fully what men of genius have had to suffer.

Mahler was a powerful musical genius, with astounding ability to work and amazing skill in handling his massive scores. He died at the age of fifty-one leaving so many symphonies, choral and festival works that it was a wonder how one man could have accomplished that much even had he lived to be a hundred.

We marvel at his genius, but do we want to hear often works that last for hours and hours? Some do, who can follow his themes, his amazing treatment of them and his ingenious writing for instruments. Others are fatigued by the length of time he dwells upon one subject and by the length of the work itself, and they sometimes object to his strong contrasts in light and shade. But all this must be left to the future, the scales in which all art is weighed. We should be thankful that America enjoyed the benefits Mahler brought.

He made his American début as conductor at the Metropolitan Opera House, January 1, 1908, and in 1909 he became conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The labor was so hard, more in trying to adjust himself to the ideas of his Board of Directors than in the work itself, that it broke his health and he returned to his home to die that same year.

He came here with a tremendous career behind him. It was strange, having all his life led operas and produced them in lavish fashion, he did not write one! But he did write many beautiful and very difficult songs. When his works are given, it is usually made a gala occasion, as they can only be done by the largest organizations and with the greatest artists. The Society of the Friends of Music give some work by Mahler each season in New York.

Gustav Mahler was born in Kalischt, Bohemia, and died in Vienna. He studied philosophy at the Vienna University and among his teachers of music were Julius Epstein and Anton Bruckner.

When Anton Seidl left the opera house of Prague, 1885–86, Gustav Mahler jointly with Angelo Neumann succeeded him. He made a great success of the Court Opera of Vienna where he was director of the house and conductor for ten years, but he demanded nothing short of perfection. His insistent ardor for the best in music and in its performance caused him the greatest unhappiness and really cost him his life.

Max Reger

Max Reger (1873–1916) caused a stir during the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. His father, a schoolmaster and good organist, wanted Max to be a schoolteacher, but at an early age young Max began to write for piano and organ. After hearing Die Meistersinger and Parsifal in Bayreuth (1888) he was so stirred that he began to write big works. Reger was perhaps most influenced by Bach, and notwithstanding his very modern ideas he never lost sight of the old classic form which may have made his work seem stiff and formal at times. Some of his songs are very fine and his orchestral numbers are frequently played in America.

Max Bruch (1838–1920) was born in Berlin and besides being a composer of chamber music, three symphonies and familiar violin concertos, he wrote many choral works.

Father Franck

From this period, but not from this same country, arose one of the most important and most beautiful influences of the 19th century. We have learned enough about the world’s great men to know that we can never judge by appearances, unless we are keen enough to recognize a beautiful soul when it looks through kindly eyes.

Such was the countenance of César Franck (born in Liège, Belgium, 1820—died in Paris, 1890), often called the “French Brahms”—but he was neither French, nor was he enough like Brahms to have been so called. While César Franck was not French, we may say that the entire French school of the second half of the 19th century was of his making. This, because instead of devoting himself to playing in public and making long concert tours, he preferred to have a quiet home life so that he could compose. This seriously disappointed his father who had sent him from Liège to the Paris Conservatory.

He was but five years of age when Beethoven died, but his work throughout his entire life strongly showed the influence of the Master of Bonn, perhaps because his first teacher in Paris was Anton Reicha, a friend and admirer of Beethoven.

While all of Beethoven’s nine symphonies are known and played all over the world, César Franck is known by one which is played very often and by all orchestras. Where Beethoven wrote many sonatas both for piano alone and for piano and violin, when we hear the name of César Franck, we immediately think of the one famous sonata for violin and piano which was so popular that it was also arranged for violoncello. This was written in very free and practically new form.

César Franck has written a number of fine works for piano and for orchestra, and for stringed instruments, but when it comes to organ works, it would take a large volume to tell of them. Most pianists play the Prelude, Aria and Finale, also the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, just as nearly all the violinists play the sonata, which are masterpieces. Being deep in church music, and also a very religious man it was perhaps natural that among his best known works should be Les Béatitudes for orchestra, chorus and soloists, and Redemption, a work sung frequently by the Oratorio Societies of America and Europe. It was d’Indy who said: “In France, symphonic music originated with the school of César Franck.” There were not, however, many symphonies, but he was a master in the symphonic poem. The best known among these are Les Éolides (The Æolides), Les Djinns on Victor Hugo’s splendid poem of that name and Le Chasseur Maudit (The Accursed Hunter). Also very well known is the piano quintet, and we hear sometimes the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra.

Franck at the Paris Conservatory

César Franck was different from most composers, for his father, like Father Mozart, was very determined that he should be a pianist and took the boy on a concert tour when he was only ten years of age! He gave concerts throughout Belgium, and at fourteen his father took him with his brother Joseph to the Paris Conservatory, where later he became a distinguished professor.

There are many examples in life where a talent runs away with its possessor. So it was with young César, who, after only a year’s schooling, entered the concours or competition. He covered himself with glory in the piano piece he had to play, but when he was tested for reading at sight, it flashed through his head how funny it would be to transpose the piece three notes lower! And so he did, without a mistake! But the judges were so horrified that he should dare do anything different from what was expected that they decided not to give him the prize because he had broken the rules! But, Cherubini, our old acquaintance there was great enough to know what the boy had done, and through his influence a special prize was created for César Franck called the Grand Prix d’Honneur which has never, since then, been conferred upon anyone!

César Franck was very mild and sweet in nature but when it came to his music he was almost rebellious in his independence. To understand the degree of his daring you must know what a concours means.

The graduating classes of the Paris Conservatory are drawn up to play their pieces and to receive the criticism of the judges, and the prizes. They all play the same thing so the judges can tell exactly how each compares with the other. Five of the most famous musicians of the world are selected and they sit in judgment. Imagine this terrifying ordeal! A couple of years after the first occurrence, César Franck had to enter an organ competition, and again his genius got away from his judgment. He was expected to improvise a sonata on one subject given him by the judges and a fugue on another subject. Franck passed in very orderly fashion through the first part, but when it came to the fugue he thought how amusing it would be to work the sonata subject into the fugue subject, a feat which startled these wise judges by its colossal daring and the stupendous manner in which he accomplished it. But did they give him the first prize? Not they! Talk about “Red Tape”—he had not followed the rules and all he received out of the brilliant feat was a second prize! But the world got César Franck.

Composer, Teacher, Organist

We little realize how a tiny deed may influence the world! We may almost reckon that a kind-hearted priest was responsible for what César Franck became as a composer! After he had had the wonderful musical training at the Conservatory he refused to travel as a concert artist, but wanted to remain at home and marry. This separated him completely from his father. Besides wanting his son to play, he objected to his marrying an actress when he was twenty-six. Here is where the priest first befriended him, for he performed the ceremony that made them man and wife.

But the days of revolution in Paris (1848) were upon them and pupils did not come in great numbers. Poverty such as Franck had never known faced him and his bride. But his good friend the priest was called to a church and he immediately appointed César Franck as organist. The instrument was very fine and his happiness was complete for he loved church services above everything. This brought him directly under the musical influence of Bach, which after all, was the greatest in his life. Later he became organist of Saint Clothilde where the organ was even finer and his composing hours were fairly absorbed by writing for the organ.

The programs given by concert-organists are usually divided between Bach and César Franck, with a few numbers by Alexandre Guilmant, the great French organist, Charles Marie Widor, Theodore Dubois and a few other Frenchmen.

With all the composition that this grand old man of musical France left behind him, he left a still greater thing in the young men who were his pupils, some of whom were among the most important figures in the late 19th century.

It is a singular fact that César Franck died almost exactly as did two of his most famous pupils, Ernest Chausson and Emmanuel Chabrier. The former was killed in the Bois de Boulogne while riding a bicycle and Chabrier was killed by a fall from a horse. Their beloved professor was knocked down by an omnibus, and although he seemed to recover and continue with his lessons and composing, he became ill from the effects and died a few months later, in his 68th year.

During this last illness he wanted to get out of bed to try three new chorales for organ, which he read through day after day as the end approached. This was the last music from his pen for the manuscripts were lying beside him when the priest gave him the last rites of the Catholic Church.

If one could sum up the outstanding features of César Franck’s music, they would be nobility and lofty spirit, true reflections of his unfaltering religious faith.

Franck’s Pupils

César Franck did more than just devote teaching hours to his pupils. He had them come to his home, and surrounded by youth and enthusiasm, his own power grew greater. They played their new works for each other and for the Master, and out of this was born the Société Nationale (National Society). It swung both the public taste and the composers out of the light, frivolous opera of the day into a love for, and a support of French symphonic and chamber music. The Society was founded in 1871, just following the Franco-Prussian war and was a protest against the German musical domination in France, in fact it was a direct aim against Wagner. In spite of the fact that Franck was influenced by Bach, Beethoven and Wagner, he worked sincerely to develop the classic French school outside of opera form.

Another great national institution which grew out of the influence of César Franck was the famous Schola Cantorum founded by Vincent d’Indy and Charles Bordes, his pupils, and Alexandre Guilmant.

Among the Franck pupils in addition to d’Indy and Bordes may be mentioned, as a few of the foremost, Alexis de Castillon (1838–1873), Emmanuel Chabrier (1842–1894), Henri Duparc (1848) famous for some of the most beautiful songs in all French music, Ernest Chausson (1855–1899), Guillaume Lekeu (1870–1894), of the Netherlands, and composer of Hamlet, a tone poem and other pieces, Pierre de Bréville (1861), Guy Ropartz (1864), Gabriel Pierné, Paul Vidal, and Georges Marty.

But his influence did not stop here, for it touched many, including such close friends as Alexandre Guilmant and Eugene Ysaye, the renowned violinist, as well known in America as in Europe. He was a countryman of César Franck and played for its first performance anywhere, Franck’s violin sonata dedicated to him.

Alberic Magnard (1865–1914), was related musically to Franck through d’Indy his chief teacher. Magnard met death by the enemy in his own home during the war.

We could fill a volume concerning these interesting men, but we must continue our musical journey. From among them, however, we must learn a little more about Vincent d’Indy, not only because he is a great composer and teacher, but he has taught many Americans.

Vincent d’Indy

Vincent d’Indy (1851) a musician of finest qualities and almost countless achievements, is a cultured and educated gentleman. He was brought up by his grandmother, a woman of education and refinement, for his mother died when he was very young. He therefore learned to love culture and elegance early in his life, but this did not prevent him from doing the sort of work which make men a benefit to art and to mankind. In addition to being a musician, he is a skilled critic and writer, also a great teacher and organizer, proof of which may be found in what he has done for France, indeed, for the world, in the Schola Cantorum. He has written many books as well as magazine and newspaper articles and an immense number of musical compositions. He was born in Paris and was a member of the Garde-Mobile during the Franco-Prussian war.

Until the time that he left home for military service he studied the piano with Louis Dièmer, a noted pianist and teacher of Paris, and harmony with Marmontel and Lavignac, both equally famous. Upon his return from war service, his days with César Franck began, and these were precious hours for both the pupil and the teacher who recognized the young man’s power.

He made several trips to Germany, the first in 1873 when he carried to Brahms the César Franck score of Redemption sent with the composer’s compliments. At this time he also met Liszt and Wagner, and later he attended the Bayreuth performances including the world première (first performance) of Parsifal. His musical activities led him from the organ loft to becoming tympani (kettle-drums) player in the Colonne Orchestra, where he went, no doubt, to learn the instruments of the orchestra and how to handle them. He found out, because he is most skilled in writing for orchestra.

He has had many prominent pupils, and it is his pride and his ambition to continue along the lines laid down by César Franck. He has had more than ordinary success as a conductor going to many countries to conduct his own compositions. He came twice to America as guest conductor of the Boston Symphony appearing with that organization in its home and also in New York.

Vincent d’Indy, following the ideal of Franck is largely responsible for the return of music in his country to symphony, from which it had strayed far. In this period there was a general feeling to bring music back to classical form. This young school was doing it in France as Brahms had done it in Germany and the result was that many composers wrote symphonies. If we look through musical history since then, we will find that the revival of a feeling for the classics has helped to make the latter part of the 19th century very rich.

Although d’Indy has written several operas, there has been no attempt to give them in this country, which is strange because it is very difficult to get operas that are worth producing at the Metropolitan Opera House or in Chicago, the only other city in America that supports its own opera on a large scale.

D’Indy is living in Paris (1925), where the life around him bristles with study, achievement and ambition. He is as much of an inspiration to his pupils as was his own teacher, but this is the 20th century, in which conditions, and men, are different from those of the past! He has not stood still but has gone steadily ahead, although his influence upon the very modern writers must have been healthy and restraining, notwithstanding the fact that only a few years ago he was regarded as a modern.

Gabriel Fauré

In the musical history of France, the name of Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) looms high. He was born in Pamiers, and was taught by the Dean of French musical folk, Camille Saint-Saëns. Like all the musicians of France, no matter whether or not they planned to use it as a profession, they devoted as much time to the organ as to the piano, and most of them became famous organists even though they had not planned to be organists. For this reason France has more great organists and organ compositions to offer than any other country of the world.

Gabriel Fauré became the organist of Rennes and later went to Saint Sulpice and Saint Honoré, and finally he became organist of the Madeleine in 1896. These churches are among the greatest in France, and to be organist in any one of them means that he is a great musician.

Fauré had honors showered upon him for he gave his country some of the most brilliant works contributed by any of her sons. In France the compositions of Gabriel Fauré are highly valued, but with the exception of a few songs, are not known in America, the more the pity. Fauré is better known here as the head of the Conservatory in which his life was spent until his very recent death. He went there to share the classes in composition, counterpoint and fugue with André Gédalge, succeeding Jules Massenet, and in 1905 Fauré succeeded Theodore Dubois as Director of the Conservatory. Still more honors heaped upon him made him a member of the Académie, for which no one can be named until there is a vacancy. He was therefore the successor to Ernest Reyer.

In 1910 the world was much stirred when Gabriel Fauré was made Commander of the Legion of Honor, a distinction given only when a man has done something very great.

In addition to these tributes to his standing in the community and his achievements as an artist, he took numerous prizes for his compositions of which there were three operas, much incidental music, symphonies, a well known violin and piano sonata, some fine chamber music and much music for the organ and for choruses. But beyond the appreciation always shown Fauré for his larger works, he will always be loved in France because he was regarded as the French Schubert, so lovely were his melodies and so lavishly did he write.

He kept pure and true the ideals and characteristics of French music, more so, indeed, than did many who may be better known to the concert-goers of this country.

English Composers in Classical Forms

While the Germans, French and Austrians were writing, England had composers, who although not so famous, nevertheless kept music alive in England.

Sir William Sterndale Bennett (1816–1875) with his many orchestral and choral works of which his cantata, The Woman of Samaria, is best known; Sir George A. Macfarren (1813–1887) with operas and oratorios, especially his cantata, Rebekah; his brother, Walter Cecil Macfarren (1826–1905), conductor, and composer of orchestral music; Sir John Stainer (1840–1901), organist, composer of very lovely anthems, and much church music, and Professor of Music at Oxford; Sir Frederick Bridge (1844–1924), organist of Westminster Abbey, writer of text-books on music, and of anthems, part songs and oratorios; Sir Arthur C. Mackenzie (1847), composer of many works including two Scotch symphonies and a cantata, The Cottar’s Saturday Night; Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848–1918), Professor of Music at Oxford after Stainer, and writer of many important books on music and of compositions in many forms; Arthur Goring Thomas (1851–1892), who wrote operas, cantatas, and many songs; Sir Frederick Hymen Cowen (1852), with operas, cantatas, symphonies and chamber music; Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1853–1924), born in Dublin, Ireland, Professor of Music at Cambridge since 1887, student of Irish folk music, and writer of chamber music and short pieces, also of valuable books on musical history and other musical subjects; Edward German (1862), famous for his Henry VIII Dances, much incidental theatre music, and an operetta, The Moon Fairies, in which he used the last libretto written by Sullivan’s inimitable partner, Sir W. S. Gilbert; and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), an Englishman of African descent, whose music for chorus and for orchestra is based on American Indian legend, and on Negro folk songs.

And living today is Edward William Elgar (1857), the dean of English composers. While not adding to the new music, he is famous for many pieces, among which are The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles, other oratorios, symphonies, and his march, Pomp and Circumstance.

Women Writers in England

Among the women in England, Dame Ethel Smyth (Dame is an honorary title in England) (1858) is known for her opera The Wreckers, and her comic opera The Boatswain’s Mate. Some of her operas have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and at Covent Garden, London. Besides she has written songs for the Suffrage Movement, incidental music, and music in large forms.

Liza Lehman (1862–1918), wrote In a Persian Garden, Nonsense Songs, and The Daisy Chain, which made her famous.

“Poldowski,” Lady Dean Paul, daughter of Wieniawski, the Polish composer and violinist, has written piano pieces and lovely songs in Debussy style. She has had considerable influence in getting the work of the younger British composers and her countryman, Szymanowski, heard in London.

Rebecca Clarke, a young Englishwoman, has written several chamber music works which place her in the foremost rank of women composers. On two occasions she received “honorable mention” in the Berkshire chamber music prize competition offered by Mrs. F. S. Coolidge, at Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

CHAPTER XXIX
Music Appears in National Costumes

We cannot tell you very much about the history of music in Russia because until the 19th century, the Russians had little but their folk songs and church music. For many centuries the Christian priests disliked to have them sing their legends and folk songs because they were not of Christian origin and so music had a very difficult road to go.

Another thing which kept music as an art from growing, was the edict in the Church against the use of instruments. But as there is always a silver lining to every cloud the unaccompanied singing became very lovely.

For ages, then, there was the most strikingly beautiful natural music in the folk tunes of this gigantic country, three times as large as the United States. Its cold bleak steppes or plains and its nearness to the East gave them fascinating and fantastic legends, and a music sad, wild and colorful with strange harmonies—their inheritance from the Slavs and Tartars. All these date back to days before the Christian era, so you can understand even though they are of surpassing beauty, the Church was afraid of the wild, tragic, pagan melodies and rhythms.

In the early 18th century, at the time of and after Peter the Great, there were many Europeans who came to Russia and brought along their music or their own national ideas of music, so that Russia had foreign opera and foreign teachers. When Catharine the Great was Queen she appreciated the wonderful store of folk legends and was very good to composers both Italian and Russian, of whom there were very few.

Very soon, a man from Venice, Catterino Cavos, went over and was clever enough to write Italian opera using the Russian folk songs and legends. This was a fine idea, because it gave suggestions to Russians as to what could be done with their folk songs. The next thing that happened was the terrible defeat of Napoleon, in 1812, by the Russians and the burning of Moscow. When important political things happen and when a favorite city is nearly destroyed, people’s imaginations are stirred and it makes them think about the things of their own land. The Russians were no different from other folks. After the way was prepared by Vertowsky, Dargomyzhsky, and Seroff, Michael Glinka (1804–1857) wrote his opera, A Life For the Tsar, for the time was ripe for serious Russian national music. He was tired of the music of the Italians, introduced into Russia in 1737, and the French music introduced by Boieldieu and others a little after 1800. He made a close study of Russian folk song and of composition, and became the father of the new Russian music. He studied in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) with Charles Mayer and John Field, the Irish composer of nocturnes who found his way into Russia with Clementi. Glinka became an invalid and his travels for his health brought him to Paris where he was very much interested in the works of Berlioz. When he wrote his first opera, he said he wanted the Russians “to feel at home,” and so we see in it the magic background of Russia with the flavor and interest of the Orient. Another opera of his was Ruslan and Ludmilla which also pictures their national life. Besides this, Glinka, in some Spanish caprices, brought Spanish folk songs before the eyes of the musical art world.

Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky

An important group followed in the footsteps of Glinka, called “The Five.” The members wanted national music and sincere opera in any form they desired. The Russian Ballet, which tells a story and is not a mere exhibition of fancy steps, was an outcome of this freedom.

There were two schools about this time in Russia, constantly at odds with each other. The “Russian Five” was one school and the leaders of the other were Anton and Nikolai Rubinstein and Peter Ilytch Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) whose fame is probably greater than any other Russian. Tchaikovsky became very interested in the European composers, and studied composition with the founder of the Petrograd Conservatory, Anton Rubinstein. He was made professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory in 1866. While there he wrote many operas and articles for Moscow papers. He married unhappily and had a nervous breakdown in 1877 and lived very quietly, a sensitive nervous man all his life. He visited the United States in 1891, and conducted his Sixth Symphony, The Pathetique, at the opening of Carnegie Hall in New York City. Visiting England and then returning to Russia, he died in 1893 of cholera. Besides the symphonic poems about which we told you, he wrote several overtures, six symphonies, four suites, three ballets, eleven operas, two of which, La Pique Dame and Eugen Onegin have been given outside of Russia.

His work is very emotional and often tragic with captivating melodies often based on folk songs with rich orchestral color. But withal, his work was based more on the German tendencies and forms of music than the works of the younger Russians, therefore, Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein were pitched in musical battle for some years against this other school.

“The Five”

Alexander Borodin (1834–1887), a scientist and physician and a friend of Liszt, wrote crashing and flashy music with what they called “Modern harmonies.” It seemed full of discords for the people of his time but to us is fascinating and piquant! His Prince Igor, a story of adventure and war not unlike Le Chanson de Roland, is a beautiful opera with striking melody and dances.

Modeste Moussorgsky (1839–1881) probably had more natural genius than any of the rest of “The Five,” even though his work had to be edited by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908). Moussorgsky’s music had the real spirit of Russia, sad, colorful, full of wild dances based as is most of this Russian music, on the folk songs of his native land. Besides this, it is very human and touches the soul of people as they listen. His songs are real treasures. His music is truly a portrait of the Russian people.

He wrote a very beautiful opera called Boris Godounov richly laden with the Oriental color, and pathos and tragedy of Russia’s past. A very interesting thing to know is that Rimsky, because of his wider knowledge of harmony and orchestration, corrected Moussorgsky’s works and very often changed things that seemed to him quite wrong. Recently we have examined a score of Moussorgsky and compared it to the corrected version of Rimsky and we now find that Moussorgsky’s score was even more vivid and modern to our ears than Rimsky’s. Several composers have arranged for orchestra Moussorgsky’s piano pieces, Pictures from an Exposition, and have brought out beauties in color, humor and scenic painting in the music.

The next man, Mily Balakirev (1837–1910), a country boy steeped in folk songs, became the founder and leader of this Group of Five. He founded a free music school in Petrograd and later became the conductor of the Royal Musical Society, of the Imperial Musical Society, and Imperial Chapel. His works are chiefly in symphony form, brilliantly and effectively orchestrated. Some of his piano pieces and songs are very beautiful, but his greatest gift to music was his careful study of Russian national story and song, and he furthered the revival of the Oriental in Russian musical art.

César Cui (1835–1918), born at Vilna, Poland, was the son of a French officer, and became a great authority on military science. He wrote eight operas which were more lyric than dramatic and, as Balakirev’s friend and first disciple among “The Five,” he helped this younger Russian School with his musical compositions and writings for the press.

Last but not the least of this “Five” is Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov (1844–1908), who was born in Novgorod, and while a student at the Petrograd Naval College, became an advocate of the theories of Balakirev to keep Russian music, Russian. While on a three-year cruise, he wrote his first symphony, and on another, as a young naval officer, he came to America.

Very soon he left the navy and became a teacher and conductor in Petrograd. He is best known in this country for his orchestral suite, Shéhérazade, which gives a glamorous picture of some of the stories from “The Arabian Nights” as told by the Persian Queen, Shéhérazade. Another famous thing of his, is his second symphony Antar. Probably no other person among the Russians could give you the effect and colorfulness of the Orient as Rimsky. He takes most of his stories from Russian legends and his operas are entrancing. The best of these are The Snow Maiden, Sadko, and the humorous, fantastic and tuneful Coq d’Or (“The Golden Cockerel”). He has written works for the piano, and some of the songs out of his operas, such as The Song of India and Shepherd Lehl are probably familiar to you.

These five men and the group including Anton and Nikolai Rubinstein, Sergei Tanieiev (1856–1915) and Tchaikovsky, were very antagonistic, as we said before, until finally some of the Five went on the staff of the various conservatories in Russia and the breach seemed to be healed; and now new men have appeared, out-distancing even the Five in modern harmony, Alexander Scriabin (1872–1919) and Igor Stravinsky (1882).

Coming after these celebrated Russians were Anton Arensky (1861–1906), Alexander Glazounov (1865), both writers of symphonies, piano pieces and chamber music, Anatole Liadov (1855–1914), Serge Liapounov (1859), Nikolai Medtner (1879), Catoire, Reinhold Glière (1875), Ippolitov Ivanov (1859), Alexander Gretchaninov (1864), Serge Vassilenko (1872), Theodor Akimenko and Sergei Rachmaninov (1873), who has spent many years in America where he is known as a brilliant composer and gifted pianist. (Page [409].)

Bohemia—Czecho-Slovakia

Another country rich in national characteristics, donning national costume in art music as well as in folk music, is Bohemia—or Czecho-Slovakia. It is the land of harp players, street musicians and the gypsy, where nearly everybody seems to be musical. The Esterhazy family, nobles who were patrons of Haydn and other composers, were Bohemians.

In Prague, their principal city, Gluck, Mozart, Weber and many other foreigners were appreciated when their own countries turned deaf ears to them, but it is not until the middle of the 19th century, that Bohemia gave the world its own composers. Among these were Frederick Smetana (1824–1884), a pupil of Liszt and a fine pianist. He became the opera conductor at Prague and like Beethoven, became afflicted with deafness, but it unbalanced his mind and he died in an insane asylum at sixty. He wrote a number of pieces for chamber combinations, symphonic poems, symphonies and operas of which the best known is the Bartered Bride, a picture of Bohemian life.

The greatest Bohemian and one of the ablest musicians of the 19th century, is Antonin Dvorak (pronounced Dvorjak) (1843–1904), a peasant and son of an innkeeper and butcher at Mühlhausen. Coming from the people, he was familiar with the folk songs, and although his father wanted him to be an innkeeper and butcher, Antonin used to follow the strolling players and showed a decided talent for music. He learned to sing, to play the violin and the organ, and studied harmony. Later he went to Prague to continue his work. He was very poor but Smetana befriended him, and five years after he entered school, he wrote his first string quartet. Thirteen years afterwards, he became organist at $60.00 a year at St. Adalbert’s Church. He is another man whom Liszt helped by performing his works and finding publishers for them. He became famous through his fascinating Slavonic Dances and was soon invited to London after his Stabat Mater had been performed there. He wrote The Spectre’s Bride for the Birmingham Festival of 1885, and his oratorio for the Leeds Festival, St. Ludmilla, in the following year. The University of Cambridge made him Doctor of Music and before that, he had been Professor of Music at the Prague Conservatory. Soon he came to New York and received a salary of $15,000 a year as director of the New York Conservatory of Music. Homesickness overcame him and he went back to Bohemia where his opera, Armide, was given before he died.

Dvorak was a sound musician. He had studied Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert but was devoted to his own folk-lore and the harmonies which appealed to his nation. He was particularly interested in national types of music and when in America the negro music appealed to him tremendously. While here, he taught H. C. Burleigh, the negro composer and singer, with whom he had an interesting and fruitful friendship. When he went back to Bohemia, he wrote the New World Symphony, built on negro folk ideas, and a string quartet in which he has used negro themes. Isn’t it curious that it often takes an outsider to show us the beauties at our own door step?

He wrote many songs, symphonic poems and five symphonies and many other forms of music. Although he was very strict in the use of form, his work was free, full of melody and imagination. It is distinguished by warm color, beautiful rhythms and flowing melody, daring modulations and withal a sense of naturalness. Some people consider him one of the greatest masters of orchestration of the 19th century. Probably you have heard Fritz Kreisler and many others play the famous Humoresque, and you may also know his incomparable Songs My Mother Taught Me.

Roumania

Georges Enesco (1881) a most gifted violinist, conductor and composer, born in Cordaremi, is the principal representative of Roumania. His first work is Poème Roumain, in which, as well as in many others, he shows his Roumanian birth. He wrote symphonies and other orchestral works, chamber music and songs.

The Land of the Polonaise

Poland first springs into prominence as an art center in music with Frédéric Chopin, but it has produced many other pianists and pianist-composers,—among them, Carl Tausig.

If you like brilliant salon and over-decorated pieces, you will enjoy the works of Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1924), who was born of Polish descent in Breslau. He was a fine pianist and had a long list of pupils including the brilliant American, Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler.

Poland has given us Ignace Jan Paderewski (1860), whose Minuet you probably know, and whose amazing piano skill is familiar to you. While he has written many piano pieces, a fairly successful gypsy opera, Manru, an interesting piano concerto and a symphony, it is as pianist that he will be remembered. He has been the idol of every nation in which he has played.

His pupil, Sigismund Stojowski (1870), has lived in America since 1906 and has written orchestral works, a piano concerto and many piano pieces.

The Land of the Fiords and Skalds—Norway and Sweden

Here is another country with a rich folk-lore, half pagan and half Christian.

Ole Bull, the violinist, also did much for Norwegian music in the 19th century. One of the first composers was Halfdan Kjerulf (1815–1868) who was born in Christiania (Oslo) and studied in Leipsic. He gave up his life to composition. Henrietta Sontag as well as Jenny Lind introduced his songs to the public; like his delightful piano pieces they are national in flavor. If you have the chance, hear his Lullaby and Last Night.

Norway! The land of the Vikings, of Odin and Thor, of the eddas and sagas, of skalds and harpists, of sprites and trolls, fiords, mountain kings and the mischievous Peer Gynt—all brought to life by the magic wand of Edvard Hagerup Grieg (1843–1907).

Surely one of the greatest poet-composers of recent times, he brought out the beauties of the Norwegian folk song and dance, and dressed up serious music in national costume. Ole Bull assisted Grieg by recognizing his ability when he was a very young man. Grieg was sent to the Leipsic Conservatory but he overworked and became ill, and went to Copenhagen, where he met Niels Gade, under whose guidance some of his earlier works were written. He returned to Norway and was again stimulated by Ole Bull; he met a young composer, Rikard Nordraak, and together they did a good deal of work toward establishing a national school. Again Liszt acts as an international aid society to young musicians, for he now befriends Grieg in Rome. The government of Norway granted a life pension to Grieg so that he might give all his time to composition, after which he wrote incidental music to the celebrated Peer Gynt of Ibsen. He lived in the country and in 1885 built his villa “Troldhaugen” near Bergen. His wife, who is still living in “Troldhaugen,” sang many of his songs.

His short pieces are like portraits of Norway and he is able to catch with marvelous ease and simplicity, the peculiar harmonies, mingling minor and major keys together in a most charming way. Although a lyric writer, he has written a piano sonata, three sonatas for violin and piano, and a most effective piano concerto, all of which show brilliancy and keen dramatic sense. His Holberg Suite for piano and the Elegiac melodies and the Norwegian theme for strings are full of rich, romantic feeling. As a song writer, too, Grieg ranks very high.

Some of the other Norwegians are: Johan Severan Svendsen (1840–1911), Wagnerian in feeling yet writing his compositions with strong Norwegian color. Christian Sinding (1856), whose Rustling of Spring you will remember, puts on the national costume of his native Norway in his writings, although educated in Germany. Among others are Johan Selmer, Gerhard Schjelderup and Madam Agathe Backer-Gröndahl, pianist-composer of decided charm.

Jenny Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale” (1820–1887) and Christine Nilsson (1843–1921), did much to bring Norse folk songs to the attention of the world. These melodies were very much admired because they reflected the coolness and the sadness of the land of the fiords.

Denmark

We now go to the land of Buxtehude, the celebrated organist of Lübeck. Although J. Hartmann, director of the Conservatory of Copenhagen, has been called “The Father of Danish Music,” the first great composer was Niels Wilhelm Gade (1817–1890). He started as a maker of instruments, became a member of the Royal Orchestra at Copenhagen and won a prize with his first work, an orchestral overture, Echoes from Ossian. Mendelssohn played this in Leipsic and from this time on they were great friends. Gade succeeded him as conductor of the Gewandhaus Concerts in Leipsic; in 1848, he returned to Copenhagen and held many positions, among which was court chapel master. Gade’s works were a mixture of the Romantic and the Classic Schools to which he added Danish qualities. He wrote well in symphonic style and in choruses, songs and piano pieces.

Among others were Asger Hamerik (1843), a pupil of Von Bülow and Berlioz, Otto Malling (1848–1915); Ludwig Theodor Schytte (1850–1909), a student of Gade and Liszt, who lived for a long time in Germany, where he died. His short piano pieces are classics for all young piano students. Edward Lassen, Victor Emanuel Bendix and August Enna are other well known Danes.

Sweden

The first of the romantic writers in Sweden is Anders Hallen (1846). His music was massive and Wagnerian in effect, showing the somberness of the influence of his native province Bohuslän. He had a great sense of melody and his marches and dances in his native style are happy and delightful. Emil Sjögren (1853–1918) was called “The Schumann of the North,” for he wrote mostly piano pieces, a beautiful violin sonata and vocal solos and showed a great deal of charm and warmth of feeling. We might add to this list Wilhelm Stenhammar, who wrote operas and choral works, and Hugo Alfven.

Music in the Country of Lakes—Finland

Finland, “the land of a thousand lakes,” and of virgin forests and meadows, has always been a country of great beauty and sadness.

Of all her composers, Jan Sibelius is the greatest (1865). He was educated as a lawyer but being a violinist, he decided to pursue a musical career. He is remarkable as a writer of symphonic poems, and sings with compelling beauty the legends of his country taken from The Kalevala, the epic poem which ranks with the greatest legendary poems of all times. Besides The Kalevala are the short lyrics or Kanteletar, sung to the lute of steel strings, which is called The Kantele. These legends and songs are always a source of great joy to the Finns and were first arranged by Elias Lönnrot in the early part of the 19th century. The symphonic poems of Sibelius are Karelia, The Swan of Tuonela and Lemminkäinen from The Kalevala. He wrote other compositions, of course, including cantatas and ballads and string quartets and choruses. His Finlandia is a true picture of the Finnish people and country, and his Fourth Symphony is one of the 20th century’s monumental works.

It is interesting to note in his Finnish songs a peculiar five-four rhythm which is haunting and fascinating. He was recognized as a great musician, for he is the only one of this time who drew a government pension. In 1914, Sibelius was in America for the Norfolk Festival for which he had written a special work, a symphonic poem, Aalottaret (Daughter of the Ocean). At the same time Yale University conferred a degree upon him. He lives far north in Finland away from cities, surrounded for many months of the year by great snow fields.

Selim Palmgren is a writer of charming piano pieces who, in 1924, was teacher at the Eastman Conservatory in Rochester, New York.

Other composers in Finland were Bernard Crusell (1775–1838), and Frederick Pacius (who was born in Hamburg in 1809 and died in Helsingfors in 1891), the Father of Finnish Music and the author of the National Hymn Wartland and Suomis Song (Suomi means Finland). He was a violinist, a follower of Spohr and composed a great many musical works.

Among others is Armas Järnefelt (1864), an orchestral conductor and composer living in Stockholm.

Spain—The Land of the Fandango

One of the most adventurous and likeable people that we have met in the history of music is Isaac Albeniz (1860–1909). He was born in Spain and started his travels when he was a few days old. He ran away from home when he was nine years old and toured about, making money by playing the piano. He loved travel and his life as a young man is a series of runnings-away-and-being-brought-back. He became a very great pianist and Alphonso XII was so pleased with his playing and so delighted with his personality, that at fifteen he was granted a pension and being free from money worry, he realized the dream of his life and went to see Franz Liszt.

He became a player approaching Von Bülow and Rubinstein in skill.

He kept composing attractive and popular Spanish tunes using the rich, rhythmic Spanish folk songs in rather new and modern harmony. He finally decided to give up his life as a popular composer and brilliant pianist, and settled down to serious composition. The next thirty pieces took him longer to write than his four hundred popular songs!

In 1893 he went to Paris in a most wonderful period, and met Debussy, Fauré, Duparc and d’Indy.

His most important composition is Iberia, a collection of twelve Spanish piano pieces. Among his other things are Serenade, Orientale and Aragonaise, all in Spanish dress.

He was a very rare personality with a rich nature, exuberant, happy and merry, even until his death.

He was the real center of Spanish music and influenced all who came after him. He was to Spain what Grieg was to Norway, Chopin to Poland, Moussorgsky to Russia, and Dvorak to Bohemia or Czecho-Slovakia.

Enrique Granados

Following Albeniz, was another great Spaniard, Enrique Granados (1867–1916), who was born in Lérida, Spain, and met a tragic death on a transport in the English Channel during the World War. Unlike Albeniz, he did not write in a modern vein, but rather in the accustomed harmonies. He was more Spanish for this reason than Albeniz, less original and without the great charm of the other master.

The only opera in Spanish that has ever been sung at the Metropolitan Opera House was his Goyescas in 1916. The principal rôle was sung by Anna Fitziu. First he wrote this as an opera in 1899. Later he made a piano version of it, very much like a suite, which was played with great success by Ernest Schelling. He also wrote symphonic poems among which was Dante with a vocal part, sung by Sophie Braslau, in 1915, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

He is one of Spain’s great sons and the rich and sincere national spirit which he put into his music makes him beloved of his compatriots.

CHAPTER XXX
America Enters

Not long ago we visited the medieval castle of Amboise in Touraine, France, for the 400th celebration of the birth of the French poet, Ronsard. (Chapter XI.) A program of madrigals by Jannequin, Costeley, Lassus and others who had used Ronsard’s poems as texts, was given in the room where the poet himself had entertained his friends. We were impressed by the beauty of the old castle and the aged towers and ramparts. It was here that we realized the meaning of TRADITION!

The peasant children passing under the watch tower in the village below the castle are reminded daily of a past replete with history and romance! They know without having been taught that here their poet Pierre de Ronsard and the Italian painter, Leonardo da Vinci, lived, worked and died. This watch tower was old when Columbus discovered America!

The lack of tradition, this unconscious knowing of the past, that Europe has in abundance is often held up to us in America as a serious loss in our art life. The question came to us: Is there nothing in our country to make up for the absence of this historical and romantic background?

As in a motion picture, there passed before our minds the Grand Canyon of Arizona, the Rocky Mountains, the snow-capped peaks of the Pacific slope, the Columbia River, the Mississippi and the Hudson, Golden Gate of California, Niagara Falls, and the Plains, lonesome stretches of sand and sage-brush vast as the sea! Surely such wondrous beauty should inspire artists to create great works.

But this is a day of cities, aeroplanes, automobiles, speed and unrest, when the mind rules instead of the heart! And we must “watch our step” or we will become the slaves of this Age of Invention instead of being the masters. All this is reflected in our art life and we must guard our creative talent if we would rank with European nations in the making of music.

We already rank with them in performing it, and in organizations, such as our orchestras, opera houses, chamber music organizations, music schools, music settlements, music club activities, community singing, glee clubs, oratorio societies, and amateur orchestras. America needs music and loves it as never before. Perhaps out of all this music study and concert-giving in addition to what might be done with the radio and mechanical instruments, which are now making records of the world’s finest compositions, there will come a race of real music lovers and creators. They will study our national traits and will unite them with the earnest work of American composers of today and yesterday; they will open their minds to the natural beauties of nature; they will try to raise the standard of the general public, and they will make music in America grow. May every American reader take this to heart!

In our chapter on “National Portraits in Folk Music” we told you that we have no definite traits in our music that could be called national because this country was settled by people of many different nationalities and races. All these peoples brought to the “Promised Land” their customs and traditions, their song and story world. We can still see traces in the present generation of the early settlers: New England and the South are Anglo-Saxon; Louisiana and the northern border, French; California, Spanish; New York and Pennsylvania, Dutch; Minnesota, Scandinavian; Missouri and Wisconsin, German. Besides, the Italians, Irish, Russians and Germans have settled in all parts of this huge “melting pot”!

There is however an Americanism that is hard to define, but is the result of the intermingling of all nationalities. It is the spirit of the pioneer that sent our forefathers, foreigners many, across the plains in the “covered wagon”; the spirit of youth and enthusiasm of a country still new; the spirit that works out gigantic commercial problems and miraculous inventions with the same fervor with which an artist creates; it is the spirit of an inspired sculptor before the unfinished block of marble. All of which must combine in our music before we can create a national idiom.

But we must go back and travel with you the rocky road,—“Music in America.”

Pilgrims and Puritans

The Pilgrims and Puritans who reached our “stern and rock-bound coast” early in the 17th century did not approve of music, except for the singing of five hymn tunes! The first book printed in America was the Bay Psalm Book (1640) at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its heading was:

“The Psalmes in Metre: Faithfully translated for the Use, Edification, and comfort of the Saints in publick and private, especially in New England.”

“Spiritual Songs” were not at first included, but later about fifty English hymn tunes, sung in unison were used. It went into many editions, found its way to England and Scotland, and was preferred by many to all others.

Music was forbidden as a trade in New England and a dancing master was fined for trying to start a class. The early settlers thought “to sing man’s melody is only a vain show of art” and objected to tunes because “they are inspired”! So the Puritans were forbidden to invent new tunes. You can understand that an art could not easily flourish in such stony ground.

Mr. Oscar G. Sonneck, an authority on the history of American music, says in his book, Early Concert-life in America: “The Puritans, the Pilgrims, the Irish, the Dutch, the Germans, the Swedes, the Cavaliers of Maryland and Virginia and the Huguenots of the South may have been zealots, adventurers, beggars, spendthrifts, fugitives from justice, convicts, but barbarians they certainly were not.... Possibly, or even probably, music was at an extremely low ebb, but this would neither prove that the early settlers were hopelessly unmusical nor that they lacked interest in the art of ‘sweet conchord.’... What inducements had a handful of people, spread over so vast an area, struggling for an existence, surrounded by virgin forests, fighting the Redman, and quarreling amongst themselves, to offer to musicians? We may rest assured that even Geoffrey Stafford, ‘lute and fiddle maker’ by trade and ruffian by instinct, would have preferred more lucrative climes and gracefully declined the patronage of musical Governor Fletcher had he not been deported in 1691 to Massachusetts by order of his Majesty King William, along with a batch of two hundred other Anglo-Saxon convicts.

“There were no musicians by trade, ... and as the early settlers were not unlike other human beings in having voices, we may take it for granted that they used them not only in church, but at home, in the fields, in the taverns, exactly as they would have done in Europe and for the same kind of music as far as their memory or their supply of books carried them. That the latter, generally speaking, cannot have been very large, goes without saying.... Instruments were to be found in the homes of the wealthy merchants of the North and in the homes of the still more pleasure seeking planters of the South. Indeed, there can be little doubt that the nearest approach to a musical atmosphere ... was to be found in the South rather than in the North. Still, we might call the period until about 1720 the primitive period in our musical history.

“After 1720 we notice a steadily growing number of musicians who sought their fortunes in the Colonies, an increasing desire for organs, flutes, guitars, violins, harpsichords, the establishment of ‘singing-schools,’ an improvement in church music, the signs of a budding music trade from ruled music paper to sonatas and concertos, the advent of music engravers, publishers and manufacturers of instruments, the tentative efforts to give English opera a home in America, the introduction of public concerts, in short the beginnings of what may properly be termed the formative period in our musical history, running from 1720 until about 1800.”

The first organ in America came from London in 1713 for the Episcopal Church of Boston, but it remained unpacked for seven months, as many objected to an organ at divine services. The fate of music hung in the balance with the Puritans but fortunately it won out.

Rev. James Lyon, a graduate of Princeton University, “Patriot, preacher and psalmodist,” published in 1792 a collection of psalms, anthems and hymns, called Urania, to which he added a few of his own compositions and a dozen or so pages of instructions for his singing-school in Philadelphia. Other collections followed.

William Billings

William Billings, born in Boston, in 1746, was one of our first composers. He took his music seriously, was self-taught, and wrote his first music on leather with chalk, in the tannery where he worked. He was queer and was laughed at, but he was so sincere in his love of music that he won friends who encouraged him to publish (in 1770) a new psalm-book, The New England Psalm Singer, or American Chorister. As singing-schools had been formed to learn how to read and to sing the church music, the time was ripe for more difficult music than had been allowed by the Pilgrim Fathers. Billings, although he knew nothing about it, tried some experiments in counterpoint, and introduced some “fugue-tunes,” which really were not fugues at all, into his hymns. That he enjoyed the result may be seen from this quotation: “It has more than twenty times the power of the old slow tunes, each part straining for mastery and victory, the audience entertained and delighted, ... sometimes declaring for one part, and sometimes for another. Now the solemn bass demands their attention, next the manly tenor; now the lofty counter, now the volatile treble. Now there; now here again, O ecstatic! Rush on, you sons of harmony!”

In the preface to his book we find the first American musical declaration of independence, for he states that Nature and not Knowledge must inspire thought, and that “it is best for every composer to be his own carver.” But later he showed a bigness of spirit, for he writes humbly: “Kind Reader, no doubt you remember that about ten years ago I published a book ... and truly a most masterly performance I then thought it to be. How lavish was I of encomiums (praise) on this my infant production!... I have discovered that many of the pieces were not worth my printing or your inspection.”

This second book was called Billings’ Best because it became very popular. Many of his tunes were sung around the camp-fires of the Revolutionary Army, and even the Continental fifers played one of his airs. He was a fiery patriot, and when Boston was occupied by the British, he paraphrased the 137th Psalm, and wrote:

By the rivers of Watertown, we sat down;

Yea, we wept as we remembered Boston!

This was the time when the young Mozart was astonishing the courts of Europe, and the Colossus Beethoven was born!

For a long time there was prejudice against instrumental music in New England, so the first concerts gave selections from Handel’s Messiah and Haydn’s Creation, which after all were oratorios.

Later William Billings’ singing class in Stoughton, Massachusetts, founded in 1774 to study and perform psalm tunes and oratorios became the Stoughton Musical Society in 1786 and was looked upon as the earliest musical organization in America. It is still in existence. But Mr. Sonneck discovered that in Charleston, South Carolina, the St. Cecilia Society was founded twenty-four years earlier.

The next important society founded was the Boston Handel and Haydn. It is still alive and has had great influence on musical life not only in its native city but throughout America. After the war of 1812, a musical jubilee was held in Boston. It was so successful, that a society was formed from the fifty members of the Park Street Church choir and others interested in “cultivating and improving a correct taste in the performance of sacred music.” This was the Handel and Haydn, which has lived up to its intention. The young society showed American spirit and asked Beethoven to write a work for it! The Colossus was pleased with this recognition from over the seas, and in one of his note books had written “The oratorio for Boston.”

Music in Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia

Although New England was the cradle of music, Philadelphia was the art center in the second half of the 18th century, and went ahead of Boston in culture, because it was not held down by Puritan laws. In 1741 Benjamin Franklin published Dr. Watt’s hymns, and later invented an instrument called the harmonica,—not the little mouthorgan. Franklin’s instrument was a set of thirty-five circular glasses arranged on a central rod, tuned to play three octaves and enclosed in a case that looked like a spinet. There is one in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Try rubbing the edge of your tumbler with a moist finger and you will hear the sound this instrument made.

In Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, we read that fashionable ladies “would talk of nothing but ... pictures, taste, Shakespeare and the musical glasses.” These had been invented by no less a person than Gluck! He played a concerto on twenty-six drinking glasses, accompanied with “the whole band,” and claimed he could play anything that could be performed on a violin or harpsichord! It was after hearing them in London, that Franklin improved upon them and made his harmonica.

Francis Hopkinson, “First American Poet-Composer”

On whom should fall the title of first American composer? William Billings was born before Francis Hopkinson (1757–1791), but in 1759, Hopkinson wrote a secular song, My Days Have Been so Wondrous Free, eleven years before Billings’ New England Psalm Singer saw the light of day. Billings was the product of New England Psalmody, was an uncouth self-taught son of the people. Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia, was a college bred man, lawyer, poet, essayist, patriot, composer, harpsichord player, organist, and inventor.

He was an intimate friend of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson and Joseph Bonaparte; a member of the Continental Congress, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

He wrote in the style of Carey and Dr. Arne in England, and we have eight songs dedicated to “His Excellency George Washington, Esquire,” and in the dedication Hopkinson says: “With respect to this work ... I can only say that it is such as a lover, not a master, of the arts can furnish.”

The Beggar’s Opera was presented in New York in 1750 and in Philadelphia in 1759. In 1787, Washington went to a puppet opera in Philadelphia. In 1801 selections from Handel’s Messiah were given in the hall of the University of Pennsylvania. We hear of Francis Hopkinson’s playing on the first organ in Christ Church, Philadelphia, and as early as 1749, John Beals, a “musick-master from London” comes to the Quaker city to teach “violin, hautboy, (oboe) flute and dulcimer,” and advertises as ready to play for balls and entertainments. So we see Philadelphia growing up rapidly, with opera, oratorio, instrumental music and music teachers!

Franklin and Washington often commented on the unusually fine music that they heard in the town of Bethlehem (Pennsylvania). Today the early appreciation of music is continued in the yearly Bach Festival held in the Moravian Church under the direction of Frederick Wolle. Musicians from everywhere attend these remarkable performances at Bethlehem.

Trinity Church in New York had an organ in 1741, although there were concerts at least ten years earlier. An English schoolmaster, William Tuckey, was the first to train choir boys for the services about 1756.

Early Opera

We should hardly expect to find French and Italian operas in America before the 1800s, but way down south in New Orleans in 1791, a troupe was giving performances of parts of operas and vaudeville, and perhaps an occasional opera of Grétry or Boieldieu. From 1810, the company performed opera regularly, and until recently, there was French opera in New Orleans.

Every time an opera company came to New York, The Beggar’s Opera was played, along with other Ballad-Operas. In 1796, there were two operas by Americans, Benjamin Carr and Pellisier, but all details have been lost.

Mr. Elson says, “At the beginning of the 19th century Charleston and Baltimore entered the operatic field, and travelling troupes came into existence, making short circuits from New York through the three large cities, but avoiding Boston, which was wholly given over to Handel, Haydn, and psalms.”

The first time that New York heard Home, Sweet Home was on November 12, 1823, in a melodrama by John Howard Payne, Clari, the Maid of Milan. Payne, an American, wrote the words, and Henry Carey, the English composer, the music.

The first grand opera that New York heard was Weber’s Der Freischütz. It was probably a very crude performance as they made many changes to suit public taste, but it was a great success, especially the melodramatic scenes.

In 1825, Manuel Garcia, a Spanish tenor, came to New York with his family of singers, including his daughter, who afterwards became the famous Mme. Malibran. He gave The Barber of Seville and ten other Italian operas which were a revelation to the new world. They called Garcia the “Musical Columbus.”

After this, New York was never without some opera venture. One company followed another, and although the people seemed to enjoy the novelty for a while, they never gave it whole-souled patronage.

The first opera written (1845) by an American was Leonora by William H. Fry (1813–1864). It was performed in Philadelphia, and thirteen years later in New York. It was in the Balfe and Donizetti style. He composed symphonies and wrote for the New York Tribune on musical subjects, and did much to make people realize the benefit of music.

In 1855 George Bristow composed the second American opera, Rip Van Winkle. He and Fry started a crusade against the German musicians who had come over to America after the revolution of 1848, fearing that they would extinguish the feeble American flame of composing.

Orchestras

The father of American orchestras was a German oboe player, Gottlieb Graupner. When Haydn went to London to direct the largest orchestra formed, up to that time, Graupner played with him. Graupner went to Boston (1799), and at once formed the first American orchestra. About the same time in New York, a society called the “Euterpian” was founded; it gave one concert a year for thirty years! From 1820 to 1857 there was in Philadelphia, a “Musical Fund Society”; its object was to improve musical taste and to help needy musicians. It gave the first performance in America of Beethoven’s First Symphony, as well as choral works.

In Boston the last concert of the Philharmonic Orchestra as Graupner’s band was called, took place in 1824, and another more important orchestra was formed sixteen years later. Before the Boston Symphony came, an orchestra was given to the city by the Harvard Musical Association. It was controlled by a group of people brought up on Handel, Haydn and Beethoven, who would not permit their idols to be replaced by such anarchists as Berlioz and Wagner! Many of the young foreign orchestral players wanted the new works by the “anarchists,” so they seceded from the Harvard Musical Association and called themselves the Philharmonic Society. As there were not enough people interested in classical music to support two orchestras they were soon replaced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which was put on a permanent basis by Colonel Henry L. Higginson, who founded it and supported it during his lifetime. Georg Henschel conducted the first concert in 1881, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra has always been one of the greatest musical institutions in America. The conductors have been Wilhelm Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Max Fiedler, Karl Muck, Henri Rabaud, Pierre Monteux, and Serge Koussevitzky.

The New York Philharmonic Society, born in 1842, was founded through the efforts of a violinist, Uriah Hill, its first conductor, and it always gave works of value. Among its conductors have been: Theodore Thomas, Dr. Leopold Damrosch, Anton Seidl, Walter Damrosch, Emil Paur, Wassili Safonoff, Henry Hadley, Gustav Mahler, Theodore Spiering, Josef Stransky, Willem Mengelberg, Willem van Hoogstraten, Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Arturo Toscanini, a genius among conductors.

Theodore Thomas (1835–1905), who was born in Germany but came to this country at the age of ten, was the first great musician to live in America and to advance the condition and standards. He gave this country its first taste for the aristocrat of music, chamber music, and with William Mason, the pianist, presented Schumann and Brahms to America. They were young radicals, and wanted to make everybody love the music they loved. Thomas introduced Wagner, too, and can’t you imagine the discussions the Wizard’s music raised when even Europe was torn in its opinions of the master innovator? Franz Liszt sent Thomas parts of the scores which the young conductor tried out even before they had been played in Europe. He had an orchestra of his own in 1864 that ran a close race with the Philharmonic Society in New York, and he took it out on tour, giving other cities the chance to hear orchestral music. Theodore Thomas was a musical missionary! In 1877 and 1879 he was conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and in 1890 the Chicago Orchestra was formed where he remained until his death in 1905. Frederick Stock followed Thomas, and the Chicago Orchestra has helped to cultivate music in the Middle West.

The Damrosch Family

In 1871, a German conductor, destined to develop music came to New York and after a few months, sent for his family. This was Dr. Leopold Damrosch, who founded the Oratorio Society (1873), and the New York Symphony Society (1877), which was merged with the Philharmonic in 1928. The Oratorio Society, for many years directed by Walter Damrosch, is today conducted by a gifted American, Albert Stoessel.

In the early years feeling ran high between the followers of Theodore Thomas and Dr. Damrosch, and many stories are told of the rivalry in playing new European scores. One of Damrosch’s greatest early triumphs was the performance of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust. He also gave the first performance of Brahms’ First Symphony.

During this time, Dr. Damrosch’s young son, Walter, was playing second violin, learning through experience, his father’s profession, and he is today the conductor of the New York Symphony Society, and a commanding figure in America.

Dr. Damrosch was also a pioneer in introducing Wagner to us. Two years after the Metropolitan Opera House was built (1882), Dr. Damrosch was made director and conductor of German opera. He imported some of the great Wagnerian singers, Madame Materna, Marianne Brandt, Mme. Seidl-Kraus, Anton Schott, and others. Wagner opera had come to stay. After a short illness, Dr. Damrosch died (1885) and his son Walter, then nineteen years of age, fell heir to the position of conductor of German opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, and of the Oratorio Society. Through Walter Damrosch’s efforts, Lilli Lehmann, the foremost Wagnerian singer, was engaged for the Metropolitan; he also engaged Emil Fischer, basso, Max Alvary, tenor, Anton Seidl, conductor, and Mme. Lillian Nordica (Lillian Norton), one of the first Americans at the Metropolitan.

Walter Damrosch composed the popular American song, Danny Deever on the poem by Rudyard Kipling. One never can think of this stirring song, without remembering David Bispham, who sang it into fame. Bispham was another native, who was for years a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and an oratorio singer. Damrosch is the composer of two grand operas, The Scarlet Letter on a text from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, and Cyrano de Bergerac, of Edmond Rostand’s, made into a libretto by W. J. Henderson. He also wrote incidental music to three Greek Tragedies Iphigenia in Aulis, Medea and Electra, first performed in the open air theatre of the University of California, in Berkeley, by Margaret Anglin and her company.

Damrosch married the daughter of James G. Blaine in 1890, and soon after, he started an opera venture which for several years visited the large cities and brought Wagner into many places where his music had been merely a hearsay. He has been a pioneer in championing the cause of modern composers, and many well known European works have had their first American performances at his New York Symphony concerts.

Dr. Frank Damrosch, older brother of Walter, is an important educator, the head of the Institute of Musical Art, and was once conductor of the Oratorio Society, and of the “Musical Art Society” in which were sung unaccompanied all the lovely motets and madrigals of Palestrina, Lassus, and many others. Dr. Frank Damrosch also founded the People’s Choral Union in which working men and women were taught singing and became members of a chorus of twelve hundred voices which performed the classic oratorios. He also founded the Young People’s Concerts, which have brought to young people of New York the finest music the world has produced. For several years, Mr. Walter Damrosch has had these in charge, and his talks explaining the works performed are quite as enjoyable as the music.

The Mason Family

Another famous family in American music is the Mason family, dating back to Lowell Mason (1792–1872) who was born at Medfield, Massachusetts. His principal work was a collection of hymn tunes which he harmonized, and won him the title of “Father of American Church Music.” He was president and conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society, and was a born teacher. He travelled from one society to another in distant cities, training choruses, giving encouragement and advice. He moved to New York in 1851.

Lowell Mason’s third son, Dr. William Mason (1829–1908), was also a pioneer. In his long life he saw music grow in America from crude beginnings and reach a height that seems almost unbelievable, in one short century. He not only heard but played, piano concertos with orchestras as fine as those he found in Europe when he went to study with Moscheles, Hauptmann, Richter, and Franz Liszt. Mason was one of the young artists permitted to be a friend as well as a pupil of the kindly Music Master. Dr. Mason and Theodore Thomas were the first to give chamber music concerts, and thus introduced many masterpieces of Brahms and Schumann, for as “modernists” they loved to bring new compositions to the public. Dr. Mason in his whole-hearted love of his art, and sincerity and geniality is worthy of our deepest respect and admiration. He composed about fifty piano pieces, and with W. S. B. Mathews he arranged a piano method that was very popular and successful. We feel sure that if you search in that old box of music that mother used to study, you will find a copy. No doubt she played his Silver Spring, Reverie Poetique and Danse Rustique.

Daniel Gregory Mason, one of the foremost composers, lecturers and writers on music, is a nephew of Dr. William Mason. He was born in 1873, was graduated from Harvard University in 1895. His compositions include many works in large form, sonatas, a string quartet on Negro themes, a piano quartet, a symphony, a fugue for piano and orchestra, a Russian Song Cycle, piano pieces; Mr. Mason has written many valuable books on musical subjects and on Music Appreciation, and is at present professor of music at Columbia University.

Gottschalk—the Picturesque

We have been telling you about the composers in the northern part of the United States, and those who had come from Germany like the Damrosch family, but here is one composer and gifted pianist who brought a new color into American music. Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), born in New Orleans, was the child of an English father and Creole mother, thus mixing Spanish, French and English blood. He was an infant prodigy; he played the piano at four, the organ at six, and at thirteen he went to Paris to study. He was praised by Chopin, and appeared in concerts with Hector Berlioz. He charmed everyone who heard him, and was the first American pianist to receive European honors. The Infanta of Spain made a cake for him and a celebrated bull-fighter gave him a sword! He toured Cuba and North and South America, giving more than a thousand concerts. But the life was too hard on him and he died at the age of forty in Rio Janeiro, Brazil.

The Last Hope, Ojos Creollos (Creole Eyes), Banjo, Souvenirs of Andalusia are among the most popular of his ninety compositions for piano, which showed the strong influence of life in Louisiana, his love of sunshiny Spain, and his study in France. Here we find rhythms closely related to ragtime and jazz, as well as the slow fascinating Spanish dance. Today his works are forgotten, but for many years they were played throughout the land.

Stephen Collins Foster

Stephen Collins Foster (1826–1864), for whom we have claimed the right to be called a composer of folk songs, was born in Lawrenceville (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, on the fiftieth anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. The understanding he showed of the Negro came to him because his parents were Southerners. He showed talent for music when he was very young, and taught himself to play the flageolet when he was seven years old. He was very self-willed and did not like discipline, so he taught himself practically all he knew of music. His first composition, Tioga Waltz for four flutes, was written when he was a school boy. It was first played in school, with Stephen in the lead. His first song, Open thy Lattice, Love, was published in 1842. For several years, five boys met at the Foster home, and Stephen taught them to sing part songs. He composed many pieces for them, among them Oh, Susannah, Old Uncle Ned and Old Black Joe.

About 1830, an actor, Thomas Rice, had the idea of dressing up like an old negro porter in Pittsburgh, from whom he borrowed the clothes, and singing a song he had heard from a negro stage driver:

Turn about and wheel about, and do jist so,

And ebery time I turn about, I jump Jim Crow.

The song, accompanied by a dance, took the audience by storm, especially when the porter appeared on the stage, half dressed, and demanded his clothes, because the whistle of the steamboat had just blown and the old fellow had to “get back on the job.” So “Daddy” Rice became the father of “Negro Minstrels,” and travelled all over America and even England, singing and dancing negro songs. A few years later Stephen Foster sent his Oh, Susannah to a travelling minstrel troupe, and the song took “like wild fire.” He decided to write songs as a profession, in spite of his family who thought he had wasted time “fooling around” with music, and insisted on his going to work.

While Oh, Susannah is a “rollicking jingle,” Old Uncle Ned is the “first of the pathetic negro songs that set Foster apart from his contemporaries and gave him a place in musical history,” says Harold Vincent Milligan. “In this type of song, universal in the appeal of its naïve pathos he has never had an equal.”

Another claim he has as a folk song composer, is that he never studied as most people do who want to be composers. He knew very little about harmony and less of counterpoint, and his is “music that has come into existence without the influence of conscious art, as a spontaneous utterance, filled with characteristic expression of the feelings of a people.” (H. E. Krehbiel.) Perhaps he was right when he said that he was afraid that study would rob him of the gift of spontaneous melody that was his to such a marked degree, because he was not naturally a student and might never have carried his studies far enough. At any rate we have every reason to be grateful for the simple direct songs which are dear to us and as near to our hearts as any folk song of any age or country whose author has been forgotten!

He was sweet-natured, irresponsible, refined and sensitive, but easily influenced. His publishers made $10,000 out of his songs, but he made little and spent much. He married in 1850, but the union was not happy.

During his last years spent in New York, he was poverty-stricken and miserable, and sold his songs, as soon as they were written, for a few dollars in order to live. It seems too bad to have to say that much of his money and his life were squandered thoughtlessly.

Curiously enough, his favorite poet was Edgar Allan Poe, whose life resembled his own in many sad details. He loved to go up and down in the Broadway stages, often thinking out his melodies as he rode. This reminds us of Walt Whitman, who rode up and down Fifth Avenue alongside his friend Pete Dooley, the driver of the stage coach!

Stephen Foster died in New York in 1864 as the result of an accident in which he had severed an artery. He was saved from burial in Potter’s Field, by the arrival of his brothers and his wife, and he was buried in Pittsburgh beside his parents whom he had immortalized in The Old Folks at Home.

CHAPTER XXXI
America Comes of Age

For many years Boston was a center of musical life.

At the close of the Civil War a school was well under way in New England, which we might call the classical period of American music.

B. J. Lang

Although Benjamin J. Lang (1837–1909) never published his compositions and never allowed them to be heard, he had much influence on Boston’s musical life, having been conductor of the Handel and Haydn and of the St. Cecilia societies, and the piano teacher of such musicians as Arthur Foote, William Apthorp, Ethelbert Nevin and Margaret Ruthven Lang, his daughter.

John Knowles Paine

John Knowles Paine (1839–1906), was the first professor of music at Harvard. In 1862, he gave his services without pay for a course of lectures on music, but they were not appreciated. When President Eliot became head of the University, music was made part of the college curriculum with Professor Paine at the head of the department. In 1896, Walter R. Spalding was made assistant and since Professor Paine’s death has been full professor.

Professor Paine was the first American who wrote an oratorio. St. Peter was performed in 1873 in Portland, Maine, his birthplace. Next, he wrote two symphonies, one of which was often played by Theodore Thomas. Paine’s Centennial Hymn opened the Philadelphia Exhibition, with more success than the Wagner March, it is said.

Professor Paine was a pioneer in many fields of American composition and taught American composers to follow in the lines of sincerity and honesty which he carved out for himself.

Dudley Buck

Dudley Buck (1839–1909), was a noted organist, composer and teacher. He did not remain in New England (Hartford, Connecticut) where he was born, but held church positions in Chicago, Cincinnati, Brooklyn, and New York, and was active in the musical life of these different cities. His principal works were anthems and hymns, still in use, music for the organ and valuable text-books, also many popular cantatas.

George Chadwick

George Chadwick, one of our most important composers, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1854. He studied in Germany with Reinecke, Jadassohn and Rheinberger, three celebrated teachers who had more to do with forming the taste of the American composers than any American teacher.

Chadwick comes of a musical family. His musical life began as alto singer in a Lawrence church choir, where later he blew the bellows of the organ, but soon was promoted from blowing to playing it. He began composing while in High School. He was a student at the New England Conservatory, founded in 1867, but was not allowed to study with the idea of becoming a professional. When he saw that he would receive no further help from his father toward music-training, the young musician of twenty-two went to Michigan for a year. He taught music, conducted a chorus, gave organ recitals, saving enough to study in Leipsic. Jadassohn told Louis Elson that Chadwick was the most brilliant student in his class.

In 1880, Chadwick returned to Boston where he has lived ever since. From 1880 he was first, teacher, then musical director of the New England Conservatory. Some of his pupils have become leaders in American music,—Horatio Parker, Arthur Whiting, J. Wallace Goodrich (organist), Henry K. Hadley and others.

Chadwick has composed more orchestral works than any other American. A list of them includes three symphonies, a sinfonietta, six overtures, three symphonic sketches for orchestra, a lyric sacred opera, Judith, music to the morality play Everywoman, much chamber music, many choral works and about fifty songs, of which the best known is perhaps Allah.

Arthur Foote

Arthur Foote (1853) is one of the few prominent composers whose training bears the label “made in America,” for he never studied abroad. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and worked with Stephen Emery, a prominent theory teacher. Foote was graduated from Harvard in 1874, where he studied music in Professor Paine’s department. After organ study with B. J. Lang, Foote became organist of the First Unitarian Church founded in 1630, which post he filled from 1878 to 1910. This is doubtless the longest record of an organist in one church in America. Foote has been one of America’s finest teachers, and has influenced many, not only by his teaching, but by his broad-minded criticism. His harmony text-book, written with Walter R. Spalding, is among the most valuable and reliable in the musical world.

Foote has written scholarly and beautiful chamber and orchestral music which has placed him in the foremost ranks of American composers, but he has won the hearts of the entire English-speaking world by two little songs, Irish Folk Song and I’m Wearing Awa’.

Horatio Parker

Horatio Parker (1863–1919) inherited his talent from his mother who played the organ in Newton, Massachusetts, but she had a hard time interesting her son in music, for he disliked it very much. But at fourteen he had a change of heart going to the other extreme of having literally to be dragged away from the instrument. He studied with Emery and Chadwick, and then went to Germany to work with Rheinberger. He was organist in several churches and in 1894 was made professor of music at Yale University where he remained until his death.

In 1894, his best known work was performed in Trinity Church, New York. It is an oratorio, Hora Novissima (The Last Hour), on the old Latin poem by Bernard de Morlaix, with English translation by Parker’s mother also the author of the librettos for two other of his oratorios. Hora Novissima, one of America’s most important works, has been performed many times, not only in America, but it was the first American work given at the English Worcester Festival. It was so successful that Dr. Parker received the commission to write for another English festival at Hereford, and he composed A Wanderer’s Psalm. This was followed by The Legend of St. Christopher which contains some of Parker’s most scholarly contrapuntal writing for chorus. As another result of England’s recognition of his music, Cambridge University conferred upon the American composer the honorary degree of Doctor of Music.

Parker became famous for winning the prize of $10,000 offered by the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1911 for the best opera by an American. This was Mona, a story of the Druids in Britain, for which Brian Hooker, the American poet, wrote the libretto. In spite of the work having won the prize, it had no success with the public, and did not outlive its first season.

In 1915 Parker and Hooker won another $10,000 prize offered by the National Federation of Music Clubs, with an opera called Fairyland. It has not seen the light of day since its performances in Los Angeles.

Frederick Converse

Frederick Converse (1871), like many other Boston musicians, was graduated from Harvard (1893), when his Opus I, a violin sonata, was publicly performed. After study with Chadwick, he went to Germany to Rheinberger, returning in 1898, with his first symphony under his arm. He is now living in Boston. Converse has written many orchestral and chamber music works, and has often set Keats, the English poet, or used his writings as inspiration for his music,—Festival of Pan and Endymion’s Narrative, two symphonic poems, and La Belle Dame sans Merci, a ballad for baritone voice and orchestra.

Converse was the first of the present day Americans to have had an opera The Pipe of Desire produced by the Metropolitan Opera Company (1910).

Two College Professors

David Stanley Smith, a native of Toledo, Ohio (1877), belongs to this New England group, for he was graduated from Yale University and since 1903 has been, first, instructor in the music department and later full professor. He has composed some excellent chamber music, and several of his string quartets were played by the famous Kneisel Quartet (1886–1917) which organization has had a generous share in improving musical taste in this country.

Edward Burlingame Hill, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1872), is one of the professors of music at Harvard University. He has composed piano pieces, songs, and orchestral works, and has written many articles on music.

Mrs. H. H. A. Beach Prepares the Path for American Women

One of the most important composers of the New England group, is Mrs. H. H. A. Beach (1867). She was Amy Marcy Cheney, an astonishing little child who before her second year sang forty tunes. Louis Elson tells that at the age of two she was taken to a photographer, and just as he was about to take the picture, she sang at the top of her voice, See, the Conquering Hero Comes! She could improvise like the old classic masters, and could transpose Bach fugues from one key to another, at fourteen. When sixteen, she made her début as a pianist, and at seventeen she played piano concertos with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, also with Theodore Thomas’ orchestra.

Mrs. Beach received her training in America. Her first work in large form was a mass sung in 1892 by the Handel and Haydn Society. She next composed a scena and aria for contralto and orchestra, sung with the New York Symphony Society. It was the first work by a woman and an American to be given at these concerts, which Walter Damrosch conducted.

The next year, Mrs. Beach was invited to write a work for the opening of the woman’s building at the Chicago Columbian World’s Exposition. She has two piano concertos and a symphony (The Gaelic) to her credit, also a violin sonata, a quintet for flute and strings, many piano pieces and splendid songs among which must be mentioned The Year’s at the Spring, June, and Ah, Love, but a Day.

Mrs. Beach prepared the way for other American women, not only by showing that women could write seriously in big forms, but also by her sympathetic encouragement of talent and sincerity wherever she finds it.

Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867), daughter of B. J. Lang, is also a Boston composer. Irish Mother’s Lullaby is the best known of her many art songs, in addition to which she has written an orchestral Dramatic Overture which Arthur Nikisch played, when he was conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Among our best song writers are many women:—Harriet Ware, Gena Branscombe, Alice Barnett, Fay Foster, Eleanor Freer, Mana Zucca (who has written also a piano concerto, and piano pieces), Rhea Silberta, Ethel Glenn Hier (piano pieces and songs), Fannie Dillon (piano pieces and violin compositions), Mabel Wood Hill (songs, chamber music and an arrangement of two preludes and fugues of Bach for string orchestra), Lilly Strickland, Mabel Daniels, Katherine Ruth Heyman (songs, many of them in old Greek modes, and a book, Relation of Ultramodern Music to the Archaic), Rosalie Housman (songs, piano pieces and a complete Hebrew Temple Service), Gertrude Ross, Mary Turner Salter, Florence Parr Gere and Pearl Curran, writer of several popular successes. And although she is not a composer of art songs, we must not forget Carrie Jacobs Bond, whose End of a Perfect Day has sold in the millions, and her songs for little children have brought joy to many.

One of Our Most Scholarly Musicians

Another Boston musician and composer, teacher of piano and composition is Arthur Whiting (1861), nephew of the organist and composer George Whiting. He has made a specialty of harpsichord music, and plays charmingly on the little old instrument. Since 1895, he has lived in New York City.

Charles Martin Loeffler—First Impressionist in America

Charles Martin Loeffler is a composer belonging to a different class from any of the Boston group just mentioned. Loeffler is French by birth, as he was born in Alsace in 1861, French in his musical training and in his musical sympathies. For forty-two years he has lived in Boston, twenty of them at the second desk (next to the concertmaster) of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was the first composer to write in this country, the kind of music that existed at the end of the 19th century in France,—the music of Fauré, Dukas, Chausson and Debussy. The seed he planted did not fall on fertile soil, for all his fellow musicians as well as the orchestral conductors, from whose hands the public received its music, were Germans and German trained. They knew their “three B’s,” their Wagner and even the French Berlioz, but Loeffler brought something different, something disturbing, and was not easy to place. His music belonged neither to the classical nor to the romantic school.

Not only in America did this new French music have a fight, but on its own ground in France was it misunderstood! But you have seen from Monteverde to Wagner that the path of true innovation never ran smooth!

Loeffler’s work is original, the work of a musician completely master of the modern orchestra and of modern harmony with its colorful and expressive effects. Besides this there was a spirit that never before had come into art. This was given the name of Impressionism, the getting of effects from objects, painted, or described in literature, without elaborate details. In music, composers who try to suggest to the hearer an image existing in their own minds are called Impressionists. This image may be a thought, an emotion, a definite object, a poem, a picture, a beautiful tree, the grandeur of Niagara, any one of a thousand things that await the hand of the Alchemist-Musician to be transmuted into tone.

All Loeffler’s compositions reflect this impressionism, and he was the first, but not the last of these poetic tone impressionists in America. He is foremost a composer of symphonic poems: La Mort de Tintagiles (The Death of Tintagiles) after the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, A Pagan Poem after Virgil, La Bonne Chanson (The Good Song) after Verlaine, La Vilanelle du Diable, The Mystic Hour with male chorus, Psalm 137 with female chorus. He also wrote an eight part mixed chorus, For One who Fell in Battle. Other orchestral works include a suite in four movements for violin and orchestra called Les Veillées de l’Ukraine (Evening Tales of the Ukraine), concerto for ’cello and orchestra, first played by Alwyn Schroeder with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Divertissement for violin and orchestra, and Spanish Divertissement for saxophone and orchestra. There are also important works for chamber music: two rhapsodies for clarinet, viola and piano, an octet for strings and two clarinets, a quintet and a quartet built on Gregorian modes; and he has written a group of songs for medium voice and viola obligato with French texts by Verlaine and Beaudelaire, two impressionist poets.

The Red Man Attracts Composers

The next composer, Henry F. Gilbert, born in Somerville, Massachusetts (1868), brings us into an interesting field, the study of Negro and Indian folk music. After working with Edward MacDowell, Gilbert turned his attention to a thorough investigation of Negro music, resulting in orchestral works based on Negro themes such as, American Humoresque, Comedy Overture on Negro Themes, American Dances, Negro Rhapsody, and The Dance in Place Congo, a symphonic poem which was mounted as a ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House (1918).

Gilbert tells that the Comedy Overture was rescued from a wreck that was to have been a Negro Opera, based on Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus. What a pity he did not complete it!

The American Humoresque is based on old Negro minstrel tunes like Zip Coon, Dixie, and Old Folks at Home.

Gilbert was one of the founders of the Wa-Wan Press, established at Newton Center, Massachusetts, by Arthur Farwell. It was organized (1901) by composers in the interest of American compositions, and to study and encourage the use of Indian music. He died in 1928.

Arthur Farwell was born in St. Paul, Minnesota (1872). He attended college in Boston and studied music with Homer Norris (1860–1920), a Boston organist and composer, whose cantata Flight of the Eagle was based on a Walt Whitman poem. Farwell was also a pupil of Humperdinck in Berlin and Guilmant in Paris. The Indian music research, in which he is a pioneer, led him into the West to live among the Redskins and to make phonograph records of hundreds of tunes. He is also interested in community singing and music for the people. Practically a new field is his music for Percy MacKaye’s pageants Caliban and The Evergreen Tree.

Carlos Troyer, a very old Californian who died recently, spent his life collecting Zuni and Mojave-Apache songs, having realized their artistic value long before any one else. In his youth he was an intimate friend of Liszt. He travelled, later, through South American jungles, with his violin and music paper, writing down the tunes he heard, and several times he would have been burned by the savages, but saved himself by playing for them.

Harvey Worthington Loomis contributed a piano version of Omaha Indian melodies to the Wa-Wan Press (1904) called Lyrics of the Redman. In the preface Loomis shows that Indian themes should be used impressionistically, for he says: “If we would picture the music of the wigwam and the war-path we must aim by means of the imagination to create an art work that will project, not by imitation but by suggestion, the impression we have ourselves received in listening to this weird savage symphony in its pastoral entourage (surroundings) which, above all, makes the Indian’s music sweet to him.”

Natalie Curtis’ valuable service to Indian and Negro music was cut off by her tragic death in Paris (1921), from an automobile accident. Fortunately she left several works in which she gave not only information on the music of these primitive Americans and also the Songs and Tales of the Dark Continent of Africa, but in them she set down quite unconsciously the beauty of her character and the sincerity of her purpose. There are four volumes of Negro Folk Songs, and The Indians’ Book, besides the African book. Recently we heard two Spanish-Indian melodies, a Crucifixion Hymn and Blood of Christ, that Miss Curtis found in use in religious festivals near Santa Fe, New Mexico. They are Spanish in character, and are almost unaltered examples of the songs of the Middle Ages brought down to us by the Indian. These were arranged by Percy Grainger according to directions left by Miss Curtis.

Several American operas have been written on Indian legends and it would be difficult to find more picturesque subjects.

Our Light Opera Genius

Victor Herbert’s Natoma, given by the Chicago Opera Company in 1911, is an Indian story and one of his two grand operas. Born in Dublin, Ireland (1854), Herbert was the grandson of the novelist Samuel Lover. He was educated in Germany, and was a fine ’cellist. He came to the Metropolitan Opera orchestra as first ’cellist in 1886, and since then until his death in 1924, he delighted every one with his incomparable melodies in light operas.

After Patrick Gilmore’s death, Herbert in 1893, became bandmaster of the 22nd Regiment band which had become famous in 1869 and 1872 for two monster Peace Jubilees held in Boston. We think the 20th century, the age of gigantic enterprises, but——! for the first Jubilee, Gilmore had a chorus of 10,000 voices, and a band of 1,000! Not satisfied with this volume, in the second Jubilee he doubled the number! He also had cannons fired to increase the drum battery!

From Gilmore’s Band, Herbert became conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, also guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, but he had made such a success as composer of light operas, that he finally devoted all his time to the theater. Among Herbert’s most popular successes are: The Serenade, The Idol’s Eye, Babes in Toyland, Mlle. Modiste, Naughty Marietta, The Madcap Duchess, etc.

Julian Edwards (1855–1910), like Victor Herbert was born a British subject, in Manchester, England, and was a successful composer of light opera. He also wrote many sacred cantatas.

Sousa, the March King

Our most famous bandmaster is America’s “March King,” John Philip Sousa (1856), once leader of the United States Marine Band. Who has not marched to Stars and Stripes Forever, Washington Post, or Liberty Bell? Who does not love them, be he “high” or “low brow”? With Sousa leading, the band has played around the world, and no American composer is better known abroad. In fact, Sousa’s music was considered as “typically American” twenty years ago as is jazz today.

Another Indian Opera

Now for the Redskins again! Charles Wakefield Cadman’s Indian opera Shanewis was given at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1918. Cadman is well known for many songs which have become popular, At Dawning and The Land of the Sky-blue Water, a lovely Indian song. Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania (1881), Cadman received musical training in Pittsburgh. For some years he has been living in California.

Another Pennsylvanian, who spent several years among the Indians, studying their music and using genuine themes for his opera Poia is Arthur Nevin (1871), younger brother of Ethelbert Nevin. For several years he was professor of music at the University of Kansas.

A professor at the same college is Charles Sanford Skilton (1868), writer of many cantatas and orchestral Indian dances.

Thurlow Lieurance (1897), one of the latest recruits to Indian music lore, is so well known for By the Waters of Minnetonka that we almost forget other songs and a music drama in which he has used Indian themes tellingly. One of these is a Navajo blanket song.

The blankets woven by the Navajo women are not only remarkable examples of primitive art, but tell the stories of the tribe. No two blankets are the same, and like the music we write, are expressions of the weaver’s hopes, fears, joys and sorrows.

Homer Grunn (1880) who taught piano in Phoenix, Arizona, profited by the opportunity to gather Indian tunes, which he has put into songs, a music drama and orchestral works.

Ethelbert Nevin—Poet-Composer

Ethelbert Nevin (1862–1901) told his father that he would not mind being poor all his life if he could just be a musician! And the father, a music lover himself, allowed his sensitive, dream-loving, poetic son to study in America and in Europe. Perhaps “Bert’s” mother had something to do with the decision, for she, too, was sensitive and fine, and so much of a musician that her grand piano was the first to cross the Allegheny mountains into Edgeworth, the town near Pittsburgh where the Nevins were born.

Ethelbert Nevin was a romanticist who found the medium of his expression in short songs and piano pieces. He had a gift of melody surpassed by few and he reached the heart as perhaps no other American except Stephen Foster had done. Narcissus for piano and The Rosary have swept through this country selling in the millions. Mighty Lak’ a Rose, published after his early death, was a close third. Several others of his songs may be ranked among the best that America has produced. Nevin was what Walt Whitman would have called a “Sweet Singer.”

Robin Hood and His Merrie Crew Come to Life in the 19th Century

Reginald de Koven (1859–1920) will ever be remembered for his delightful light opera Robin Hood on which we were brought up. His song, Oh, Promise Me, will probably be sung when he will have been forgotten. De Koven’s last two works were operas, of which Canterbury Tales after Chaucer was performed at the Metropolitan Opera House and Rip Van Winkle from Washington Irving and Percy Mackaye, by the Chicago Opera Company. One of his best songs is a setting of Kipling’s Recessional.

“Pilgrim’s Progress”—An American Oratorio

One of the most respected American composers is Edgar Stillman Kelley, born in Sparta, Wisconsin, in 1857, whose American forefathers date back to 1650. After study in Stuttgart, Kelley went to California, where he was composer, teacher, critic, lecturer, writer and light opera conductor. Later he was professor at Yale, dean of composition at the Cincinnati Conservatory, and since 1910, a fellowship at the Western College at Oxford, Ohio, gives him the leisure and economic freedom to compose. His orchestral works include incidental music to Ben Hur, Aladdin, Chinese suite, a comic opera, Puritania, Alice in Wonderland, two symphonies, Gulliver and New England, incidental music to Prometheus Bound, and an oratorio based on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. If you do not know Kelley’s delightful song, The Lady Picking Mulberries, allow us to introduce the little Chinawoman to you. You will meet at the same time an old acquaintance,—Mr. Pentatonic Scale.

Several of the older school of composers in America, faithful pioneers whose works are rarely heard now were Silas G. Pratt (1846–1916); Frederic Grant Gleason (1848–1903), who lived and worked in Chicago from 1877 to the time of his death; William Wallace Gilchrist (1846–1916), a writer of cantatas and psalms, Episcopal church music, two symphonies, chamber music and songs, who spent most of his life in Philadelphia; Homer N. Bartlett (1846–1920), composer of piano pieces; William Neidlinger (1863–1924), writer of many charming children’s songs.

Frank van der Stucken (1858) who was born in Texas, but lived in Europe from 1866 until 1884, was the first conductor to give an entire program of American orchestral works in America and also at the Paris Exposition of 1889. For years he was conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and he has composed many large orchestral works. He died abroad in 1929.

Rosseter Gleason Cole (1866), composer of songs, piano pieces, organ pieces, cantatas and works for orchestra and ’cello, takes his themes from American and general sources. He is organist in Chicago and has charge of the music courses of the summer session of Columbia University. He has held many important posts and taken numerous prizes. His cantata The Rock of Liberty was sung at the Tercentenary Celebration, 1920, of the settlement of Plymouth.

Arne Oldberg, born in Youngstown, Ohio (1874) is director of the piano department of Northwestern University (Michigan) and has many orchestral works, written symphonies, concertos and overtures, which have had frequent hearings. He has also composed much chamber music.

There are also Harry Rowe Shelley (1858), writer of much important church music; James H. Rogers, composer of teaching pieces for the piano and many fine songs, including a cycle In Memoriam, which is a heartfelt expression of sorrow in beautiful music; Wilson G. Smith, composer of many piano teaching pieces and musical writer; Louis Coerne, writer of opera and of works for orchestra; Ernest Kroeger of St. Louis who also used Indian and Negro themes in works for orchestra and piano; Carl Busch of Kansas City, composer of orchestral works, cantatas, music for violin and many songs, in some of which we see the Indian. In California we meet Wm. J. McCoy and Humphrey J. Stewart who have composed church music and have written often for the yearly out-door “High Jinks” of the San Francisco Bohemian Club, in which many important composers have been invited to assist; Domenico Brescia, a South American composer living in San Francisco, who wrote interesting chamber music played at the Berkshire Chamber Music Festivals; and Albert Elkus, a composer of serious works for orchestra and piano. Smith died in 1929; Coerne in 1922.

But this is growing into a musical directory! And even neglecting many who have done much to make music grow in America, we must proceed for we have important milestones ahead.

For many years New York has been the American center of music. Few of the people in musical life are native New Yorkers, but have come from all parts of the States and Europe to this musical Mecca.

MacDowell Greatest American Poet-Composer

The greatest romanticist and poet-composer of America up to the present is Edward MacDowell (1861–1908). Some of the romanticism of the early 19th century has become mere imitation of the style which arose as a protest against the insincere forms of the 18th century. But the true spirit of romance never dies and never becomes artificial,—such romance had MacDowell. He was sincere, always a poet, always himself, and in spite of his Irish-Scotch inheritance, German training and love of Norse legends, he expressed MacDowell in every note. He lived before the time when we question “How shall we express America in Music”? In fact he was much against tagging composers as American, German, French, and so on.

Edward MacDowell, born in New York City, began piano lessons when he was eight. One of his teachers was the brilliant South American Teresa Carreño, who later played her pupil’s concerto with many world orchestras. At 15, he entered the Paris Conservatory where he was fellow student with Debussy.

While there, MacDowell studied French, and during a lesson amused himself by drawing a picture of his teacher. When caught, the teacher, instead of rebuking him, took the sketch to a friend, a master at the École des Beaux Arts, the famous old art school of Paris. The artist found the sketch so good that he offered to train him without charge but Edward had made up his mind to be a musician and did not accept the offer.

In 1879, MacDowell studied composition at Frankfort with Joachim Raff, one of the composers of the Romantic period. Raff introduced him to Liszt, who invited MacDowell to play his first piano suite at Zürich (1882). The composer’s modesty is reflected in these words which Lawrence Gilman quotes: “I would not have changed a note in one of them for untold gold, and inside I had the greatest love for them; but the idea that any one else might take them seriously had never occurred to me.” This suite was his first published composition.

In 1884, he married Miss Marian Nevins of New York, and theirs was one of the most beautiful marriages in musical history, although their meeting was amusing! The young girl had crossed the ocean to continue her music studies at a time when it was not a common occurrence, and when she went to Raff for lessons, he sent her to a young countryman of hers, “an extraordinary piano teacher.” She was indignant to be sent to a young inexperienced American in that fashion, but she went! The young inexperienced American did not want to teach an American girl, because he felt she would not be serious enough to do the kind of work he demanded, but he accepted her! Later she accepted him!

Edward MacDowell.
America’s Greatest Poet-Composer.

Charles Griffes.
American Impressionist.

In 1888, he established himself in Boston as pianist and teacher. His first concert was with the Kneisel Quartet, and in 1889 he successfully played his concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He made tours through the States giving recitals and appearing with the orchestras. Winning immediate recognition, his position as an exceptional composer grew. In 1896 the Boston Symphony Orchestra presented his first piano concerto and his orchestral Indian Suite on the same program in New York. Such an honor had never before been shown an American!

In 1896, he became professor of the new Chair of Music at Columbia University in New York City. After resigning his post in 1904, his health broke as the result of an accident, and for several years he was an invalid. All the care of physicians, devoted friends, his parents, and his courageous wife, could not restore his memory, and in 1908, he died in New York and was buried in Peterboro, N. H. A natural boulder from where he often watched the sunset, marks the spot—fitting for one who loved Nature as he did.

Shortly before his passing, a group of friends formed a society, the MacDowell Club of New York, which has for its object the promoting of “a sympathetic understanding of the correlation of all the arts, and of contributing to the broadening of their influence, thus carrying forward the life-purpose of Edward MacDowell.” He wished musicians to know the value of associating with artists outside of the field of music. Eugene Heffley, (1862–1925) an intimate friend of MacDowell and first president of the MacDowell Club did much to make the MacDowell music known and loved, just as he did for Charles Griffes, Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin and others who have come with new messages.

Some people have statues erected, others have towns and streets named for them, but besides the numerous MacDowell Clubs throughout the States, the most beautiful memorial is the MacDowell Association at Peterboro. Early in his career, MacDowell found it impossible to work well in the city, and by happy chance he and his wife discovered a deserted farm which they bought for the proverbial “song.” Here the composer spent his summers in the beautiful New Hampshire woods, in the heart of which he built the little log cabin, which in his words, is

A house of dreams untold

It looks out over the whispering tree-tops

And faces the setting sun.

And in this “house” he told many of his dreams in lovely melody! While ill, he often expressed the desire to share the inspiration-giving peace and beauty of his woods with friends, workers in music and the sister arts. Out of this wish has grown the colony for creative workers, which has been a haven to hundreds of composers, poets, painters, sculptors, dramatists, and novelists. The “Log Cabin” is the seed out of which twenty studios have sprung. The small deserted farm has spread over 500 acres, and Mrs. MacDowell with the aid of faithful friends has made a dream come true!

MacDowell was a composer for the pianoforte, although he wrote some lovely songs; a few orchestral works, best known of which is The Indian Suite, in which he employs Indian themes; and several male choruses written when he conducted the New York Mendelssohn Glee Club. We love and remember him for his Woodland Sketches, Sea Pieces, Fireside Tales, New England Idyls (opus 62 and his last work), virtuoso-studies, and the four sonatas—the Tragica, Eroica, Norse and Keltic.

W. H. Humiston (1869–1924), composer, lecturer, musical critic, organist, assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and a pupil of MacDowell, had the most complete collection of Bach and Wagner in this country and was a great authority on their writings. This collection now belongs to the MacDowell Association, and is in the colony library at Peterboro.

Henry Holden Huss

Henry Holden Huss (1862), born in Newark, New Jersey, has lived in New York since his early twenties when he returned from studying with Rheinberger in Munich. Before his European days he was a pupil of his father, George J. Huss, a Bavarian who came to America during the 1848 revolution, and was one of the best musical educators in this country. Huss also studied with O. B. Boise (1845–1912), an American theorist and teacher. As concert pianist, Huss has played his piano concerto, one of the best American works, with all the important orchestras. Raoul Pugno, the much-loved French pianist, and Adele aus der Ohe also played it abroad and in America.

Huss has always aimed for the highest ideals as teacher, composer and pianist. A classicist at heart, his works are written on classic models,—a beautiful violin sonata with poetic slow movement, many chamber music works, a concerto for violin and orchestra, besides The Seven Ages of Man for baritone and orchestra, often sung by the late David Bispham, Cleopatra’s Death, for soprano and orchestra, a female chorus Ave Maria, and many fine art songs and piano pieces, the most beautiful of which is a tone poem To the Night, a lovely impressionistic composition that ranks with the best that America has produced.

Two other pupils of O. B. Boise, Ernest Hutcheson (1871) an Australian, and Howard Brockway (1870), a Brooklynite, have done much to make music grow in America. Hutcheson, who studied also with Max Vogrich in Australia and Reinecke in Leipsic, has made so enviable a career as pianist and teacher, that one forgets he has a symphony, a double piano concerto and several other large works in manuscript. Brockway, who harmonized Lonesome Tunes, folk songs from the Kentucky Mountains collected by Miss Loraine Wyman, is also the composer of a symphony played in Boston (1907) by the Symphony Orchestra, a suite, ballad-scherzo for orchestra, many piano works and songs. Hutcheson, Brockway and Boise were teachers in the Baltimore Peabody Institute, one of the important music schools, under direction of Harold Randolph, a fine musician and pianist.

George F. Boyle (1886) of New South Wales has, since 1910, been professor at the Peabody Institute. He has composed many piano pieces, songs and orchestral works.

Rubin Goldmark

Rubin Goldmark (1872), is known as the best toastmaster in the music world! Born in New York, he was one of Dvorak’s most talented pupils and inherits his gifts from his noted uncle Carl Goldmark (1830–1915), a Hungarian composer of the overture Sakuntala and the opera The Queen of Sheba, the symphony The Rustic Wedding and much else. Rubin Goldmark has written several important tone poems,—Samson, Gettysburg Requiem, Negro Rhapsody, based on negro themes, and other fine things for orchestra, chamber music, piano and violin numbers and as a teacher he has laid the foundations for several American composers among whom are:—Frederick Jacobi, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. Each score from Goldmark’s pen is an addition to American music.

Henry Hadley

Henry K. Hadley (1871) by right of birth and training belongs to the New England group of composers, but most of his life was spent in Germany where he got his orchestral experience, and in different parts of America where he has conducted orchestras—Seattle, Washington, San Francisco and New York. Hadley is one of the few Americans who has conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Hadley has taken many prizes for opera, symphony, cantata and an orchestral rhapsody. To this he has added numerous other orchestral and chamber music works and over 100 songs.

Albert Mildenberg’s “Michael Angelo”

In these days when the cry is for American opera, it seems regrettable that an opera ready for production should lie idle because of the death of its composer. Perhaps no work in history has had a more tragic story than Michael Angelo by Albert Mildenberg (1878–1918). In 1908, Mildenberg signed a contract in Vienna for the production of the opera. The following year on the way to Europe, the ship, Slavonia, was wrecked, and although the composer escaped, his entire orchestral score and parts went to the bottom of the sea. Courageously he rewrote the work, and sent it to the Metropolitan Opera House in competition for the $10,000 prize, won by Horatio Parker. Before it had reached the judges, in some way, still unexplained, the major part of the score disappeared! Again, Mildenberg set to work with the sketches he had, and made a third score, but it cost him his life, for though the opera was completed before his death, he was too ill to carry it further.

In addition to this grand opera, Mildenberg, a pupil of Rafael Joseffy, wrote many piano pieces. He also composed The Violet, I Love Thee, and Astarte, songs that had a popular vogue and are still found on many programs, and romantic comic operas, The Wood Witch and Love’s Locksmith, besides a cantata and many choruses.

Two other operas which had Metropolitan Opera House productions were The Temple Dancer by John Adam Hugo (1873) and The Legend by Joseph Carl Breil (1870).

John Alden Carpenter—Modernist

John Alden Carpenter (1876), one of America’s foremost composers, was born in Park Ridge, Illinois, and educated at Harvard where he took the music course, studying afterwards in England with Edward Elgar, the English composer. A business man, Carpenter still devotes his time to composing music that has put him among America’s leading musical lights. While he might be called a romanticist, his tendencies are impressionistic, and none understands better than he the charms of rich and unusual harmonies, the use of modern melodic and orchestral effects, and the value of humor in music. All these we find in his Adventures in a Perambulator for orchestra, and his ballet Krazy Kat, where jazz rhythms are used to great advantage. One of the most beautiful works of its kind, is the ballet after Oscar Wilde’s The Birthday of the Infanta, performed by the Chicago Opera Company, and his first ballet written for the Metropolitan Opera Company is called Skyscraper, certainly American! Carpenter’s settings of Tagore’s Gitanjali are among America’s finest songs; he has many others, a concertino for piano and orchestra and a violin sonata.

An All-American Symphony

Eric Delamarter (1880), born in Lansing, Michigan, has written a Symphony After Walt Whitman in which he has used twenty-year old street songs from the “Barbary Coast” (San Francisco Bowery), Lonesome Tunes of Kentucky, and a fox-trot rhythm with newer street songs. These, Delamarter has woven into a symphony with skill and sincerity. The material is All-American although neither Negro nor Indian.

Delamarter is a well-known musical critic in Chicago, an organist, composer of many other works for orchestra, organ, and oratorios, incidental music for drama, cantatas and songs and since 1917 assistant conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Noble Kreider and Edward Royce, son of Professor Josiah Royce of Harvard University, have both written well for the piano. Harold Bauer has played variations and short pieces by Edward Royce.

Ernest Schelling—Pianist-Composer

Ernest Schelling (1876), born in Delaware, New Jersey, appeared as pianist at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, at the age of four! His musical training abroad included several years with Paderewski. He has made many concert tours in Europe and America, and for two seasons has conducted the children’s concerts of the New York Philharmonic Society. His important orchestral works include a symphonic legend, a suite, two numbers, Suite Phantastique and Impressions From An Artist’s Life, for piano and orchestra, and his latest work to enjoy wide popularity, The Victory Ball.

John Powell—Virginian

All the charm and refinement of the Southern gentleman are reflected in John Powell’s personality, along with an earnest sincerity and conviction. He was born in Richmond, Virginia, (1882), is a graduate of the University of Virginia, and a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky and Navratil in Vienna. He has made an international reputation as brilliant pianist and is also one of our most gifted composers. Powell’s works show classical training in form, with which he combines a rich romantic feeling and a love for folk music.

He believes that music should draw on the folk element for its strength, and has proved his theory by using freely the folk music he knows best, that of the negro. In the South, At the Fair, piano pieces, show this early influence and his fund of humor, and in his Negro Rhapsody for piano and orchestra, Powell has painted a picture of the negro in many moods—sinister and menacing, primitive bordering on barbaric, as well as humorous, care-free and childlike.

His Sonata Teutonica which first brought him before the public is of extraordinary strength, length and talent. He has written other sonatas for piano and for violin, songs, chamber music and orchestral works.

Negro Spirituals versus Jazz

This brings us face to face with one of the most discussed questions of the day: the influence of Negro music and jazz on serious composition. The pure Negro music is the Spiritual and not jazz, which may be the typically American idiom we have been waiting for.

It is not Negro but is developed from the Negro dance rhythm, from a real folk music; it is the result of Negro music played upon by American life and influences; through it we may learn to free ourselves musically, and show the true American spirit of adventure and daring which until now has been absent in our native compositions. The path has been travelled from the songs of Stephen Foster, Negro Minstrels, “coon songs” and “cake walks,” to jazz with its elaborate orchestration unlike any other existing music, and its complicated rhythms. Jazz rhythm is contrapuntal rhythm. Europe says that it is our one original and important contribution to music! This is a strong statement, but as “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” their serious 20th century composers have flattered us by writing jazz, and we have Piano Rag by Stravinsky, a Syncopated Sonata by Jean Wiener, jazz by Darius Milhaud, Casella, Honegger, and even Debussy was tempted into writing Golliwogg’s Cake Walk.

In Los Angeles (April, 1925), Walter Henry Rothwell with his Philharmonic Orchestra played an American Caprice by Henry Schoenefeld (1857) one of many works in which the composer has used Indian and Negro themes.

Henry Thacker Burleigh, Most Noted Colored Composer

His arrangement of the Spiritual, Deep River, has made Harry Burleigh’s name known on two continents, and its success has led many into that field. Burleigh (1866) was one of the foremost among the Dvorak pupils, and has held the position of leading baritone in St. George’s Church for many years, as also at the Temple Emanuel on Fifth Avenue. His name is found on practically every program where Spirituals are sung.

Of Burleigh’s race is R. Nathaniel Dett (1882), conductor of the Hampton Singers, also director of the music department of Hampton College. His name was introduced by Percy Grainger, who played his characteristic Negro dance called Juba Dance in Europe and America. Dett’s greatest works are his arrangements of the Spirituals for chorus. Grainger wrote of him: “There is in his treatment of blended human voices that innate sonority and vocal naturalness that seem to result only from accumulated long experience of untrained improvised polyphonic singing, such as that of Southern Negroes, South Sea Polynesians and Russian peasants. These things are branches of the very tree of natural communal song.”

David Guion, a young Texan, is well known in this field and also for his piano setting of Turkey in the Straw.

Louis Gruenberg Finds New Paths

Louis Gruenberg (1884) was born in Russia but came to America at the age of two. At nineteen he went to Europe and became the pupil of Ferruccio Busoni, the Italian pianist-composer who spent most of his life in Berlin and Vienna and also taught for two years at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Gruenberg had followed conventional lines of composition for some years, receiving prizes in Berlin and New York (in 1922 he was awarded the Flagler prize for a symphonic poem Hill of Dreams). His works of this period comprise symphonic poems, a string quartet, a piano concerto, a symphony, a suite for violin, also a sonata, two operas, songs and piano pieces.

He began to study America, to ask himself what was the spirit of Americanism that had not yet found its way into music, and his answer was not the Negro jazz, but the white man’s jazz expressing the “spirit of the times.” As a result he changed his way of writing. The compositions of this period are a violin sonata, a set of piano pieces called Polychromatics, a Poem in sonatina form for ’cello, four pieces for string quartet, a viola sonata, an orchestral tone-poem, a group of short piano pieces in jazz rhythms with the amusing name of Jazzberries, three violin pieces in the same style, a group of songs Animals and Insects, texts by Vachel Lindsay, and that same poet’s Daniel which Gruenberg has set as Daniel Jazz for tenor and chamber music orchestra, and Creation, a Negro sermon by James Weldon Johnson, a poet, who has just won the Spingarn Prize for the most distinctive work (1924–1925) of an American of African descent.

Two Jazz Geniuses

Irving Berlin, the genius of the age in writing typical American jazz, was born in Russia and has had no musical training. He picks out his irresistible melodies by ear and his aide writes them down to the delight of the millions in all corners of the earth, from New York to the Sahara desert, where the phonograph has carried them. The sheiks no longer sing in ancient pentatonic melody to their lady loves, but turn on the phonograph which ably plays some of his hundred American songs: My Wife Goes to the Country, Snooky Ookums, Along Came Ruth, If You Don’t Want Me Why Do You Hang Around? Mandy, Say it with Music, What’ll I Do, All Alone, and many from the musical revues (Music Box Revue, especially). His earlier Alexander’s Rag Time Band goes back to cake walk days and has become a classic of its kind and the model for popular music following it. He rose from poverty to riches through giving great delight to the public.

George Gershwin (1898) flashed into the lime-light through his jazz piano concerto Rhapsody in Blue and his extraordinary playing of it with Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra. In this piece we find a merging of classic form with the “voice of the people”! It will be interesting to watch this young man, not yet thirty, to see the outcome of grafting a musical education on to his unusual natural gifts. As a result of the success of his experiment he has been commissioned to write a New York Concerto for the New York Symphony. He is a Brooklyn boy brought up as a “song plugger” for a publisher of popular music, playing their songs in vaudeville acts and in cafés.

Charles Tomlinson Griffes

Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884–1920) was a poet-composer whose early death was a serious loss to America, for every thing he wrote was an addition to our music. He was impressionistic in style, and we are grateful for the lovely art songs, Five Poems of Ancient China and Japan, three songs with orchestral accompaniment to poems of Fiona MacLeod, ten piano pieces and the Sonata which have never been surpassed in beauty and workmanship by any American, the Poem for flute and orchestra, the string quartet on Indian themes, and his orchestral tone-poem, The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan. For the stage, Griffes composed a Japanese mime-play, Schojo, a dance drama, The Kairn of Korwidwen and Walt Whitman’s Salut au Monde, a dramatic ballet. The last two were presented at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where interesting experiments in music and the drama have been made by the Misses Lewisohn.

Griffes was a native of Elmira, New York, and his first studies were made with Miss Mary S. Broughton, who recognized her young pupil’s unusual talent and took him to Germany for study. His composition work was done with Humperdinck, and Rüfer, and from 1907 until his death he taught music at Hackley, a boys’ school in Tarrytown, New York.

Lawrence Gilman, American critic, says of him: “He was a poet with a sense of comedy.... Griffes had never learned how to pose—he would never have learned how if he had lived to be as triumphantly old and famous as Monsieur Saint-Saëns or Herr Bruch or Signor Verdi.... It was only a short while before his death that the Boston Symphony Orchestra played for the first time (in Boston) his Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan ... and the general concert-going public turned aside ... to bestow an approving hand upon this producer of a sensitive and imaginative tone-poetry who was by some mysterious accident, an American!... He was a fastidious craftsman, a scrupulous artist. He was neither smug nor pretentious nor accommodating. He went his own way,—modestly, quietly, unswervingly ... having the vision of the few....”

Whithorne’s American Impressions

Emerson Whithorne (1884) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and studied there and in Europe. After writing some forty songs and compositions in Oriental and European fashion, he has given us in his New York Days and Nights, a group of piano pieces in which are cleverly pictured Times Square, Hudson River ferry boats, Trinity Church chimes, etc. His latest work is a ballet, Sooner and Later, written with Miss Irene Lewisohn for the Neighborhood Playhouse, in which they have combined the primitive and the very modern in an original and pictureful manner.

Albert Spalding—America’s Violinist-Composer

When Walter Damrosch took the New York Symphony Orchestra on tour in Europe, Albert Spalding (1888, Chicago) went along as joint soloist with John Powell, playing his violin concerto. Besides this, Spalding has written many small pieces for violin, other orchestral and piano works, and a string quartet played (1924) by the Flonzaley Quartet. Spalding ranks with the great violinists of the world.

Three other violinists showing talent as composers are Edwin Grasse (1884), who in spite of the handicap of blindness, has composed some charming violin pieces, violin sonatas and string quartets; Samuel Gardner, who has written orchestral works, chamber music and short violin pieces; and Cecil Burleigh, short poetic pieces for violin and for piano and a violin concerto.

American Music Guild

To encourage the composing and appreciation of high class American composition, ten American composers formed an association, the American Music Guild. The members are Marion Bauer, Chalmers Clifton, Louis Gruenberg, Sandor Harmati, Charles Haubiel, Frederick Jacobi, A. Walter Kramer, Harold Morris, Albert Stoessel and Deems Taylor.

Albert Stoessel (1894, St. Louis) is professor of music at New York University, conductor of the New York Oratorio Society, of the New York Symphony concerts at Chautauqua, N. Y., of the Worcester Festival and composer of chamber music and orchestral works.

Deems Taylor (1885, New York) is musical critic of the New York World, and the composer of songs and orchestral works (Through the Looking Glass Suite) and he has written much choral and incidental music for plays and motion pictures. One of his most graceful works is the ballet in The Beggar on Horseback. His opera The King’s Henchman was given at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1927. The book is by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

A. Walter Kramer (1890, New York) is a critic and writer on musical subjects, composer of many songs that have made his name familiar, orchestral works, a Rhapsody for violin and orchestra, pieces for violin, organ and piano, and a symphonic tone poem on Masefield’s Tragedy of Nan.

Harold Morris (1889, Texas) has never written little pieces, but has jumped into classical forms which he treats in a most modern way, in piano sonatas, a violin sonata, a trio, quartet, a concerto for piano and orchestra, and a tone poem on a Tagore text. He has studied only in America.

Frederick Jacobi (1891, San Francisco), had his latest work, a symphony, performed in 1924; he has also written a string quartet on Indian themes, songs with orchestra, short pieces and orchestral tone poems in all of which his gift of poetic expression is uppermost.

Chalmers Clifton (1889, Jackson, Miss.), is conductor of an orchestra which has as object the training of young orchestra players, a much needed addition to American musical education. He has written some chamber music and music for a pageant.

Sandor Harmati (1894), Hungarian by birth, founded the Lenox String Quartet and has composed several string quartets and orchestral works. He has taken numerous prizes for his compositions and is now conductor of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra.

Charles Haubiel (1894, Delta, Ohio), has composed works in the classical form and is teacher of piano and theory.

Marion Bauer (1887) was born in Walla Walla, Washington. She has written 30 songs, 20 piano pieces, two violin sonatas, a string quartet, and a work for chamber music orchestra, and choruses. She writes and lectures on music, and is Asst. Professor at New York University.

American Academy in Rome

A few years ago Edward MacDowell was one of the founders of an Academy in Rome for American students on the principle of the Roman prize of the Paris Conservatory. Several of the young prize-winners have profited by their visit to the ancient city of culture where they are living and working with funds provided by the Academy. Unfortunately the music fellowship does not admit women! Among those to enjoy this advantage are Leo Sowerby (1895, Grand Rapids, Michigan) who has written a piano concerto and a double piano concerto, also a work called Synconata in syncopated rhythms which has been played by Paul Whiteman and many other compositions in large and small forms; Howard Hanson (1896, Wahoo, Nebraska) who is now director of the Eastman School of Music at Rochester, New York, and has written a number of orchestral and chamber music works; and Wintter Watts, the composer of many beautiful art songs and an orchestral tone poem, Young Blood.

Leo Ornstein—The Independent

“What are discords?” was asked of Leo Ornstein (1895, Russia). “I can not tell,” he answered. “Somewhere there is a law of harmony.... What it is I can not tell. Only I know that under certain conditions ... I hear it, I get color impressions.... If some of the tones are gray, somber, violent is that my fault?... In a word, I am not concerned with form or with standards of any nature.” This is the young composer’s declaration of independence, and in his early compositions he has lived up to it! One of his piano works, Wildmen’s Dance, goes back to primitive man for his inspiration and wild rhythms. He is original and daring as few Americans have ever been. His last work was a piano concerto played by him with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. He has written sonatas for piano, for ’cello and violin, besides many piano pieces, which he plays well, as he is an exceptional pianist.

Although he has been in America since childhood, his early life in Russia, in which he suffered the terrors of the pogroms (the massacres of the Jews), is reflected in his work. His training was under the direction of Bertha Tapper and Percy Goetschius.

A gifted young modernist whose orchestral and chamber works are often played by important organizations, is Aaron Copland (1898), pupil of Rubin Goldmark and Nadia Boulanger, of Paris. He received (1925) the first Guggenheim Fellowship in Music.

Experimentalists

Henry Eichheim, of Boston, has had many performances of his colorful Chinese and Japanese impressions. Carl Ruggles is an independent thinker and composer, experimenting in many combinations of harmonies and instruments. Two extremists, who have not yet proven the value of their ideas and whose works must be regarded as experiments are Henry Cowell of California and George Antheil who lives in Paris. Sometimes, however, out of the wildest experiment comes something that may make music grow.

Song Writers

There are many composers who are well known not for symphonies and chamber music but for songs. There are so many that we can list but a few: Alexander Russell, R. Huntington Woodman, Carl Deis, William Arms Fischer, Charles Fonteyn Manney, Clayton Johns, Sidney Homer, Charles Gilbert Spross, Oley Speaks, Louis Campbell-Tipton, Philip James, William C. Hammond, G. Bainbridge Crist, Marshall Kernochan, Eastwood Lane, Richard Hammond, Harry Osgood, Charles B. Hawley, Adolph Martin Foerster, Richard Hageman, Edward Ballantine, Clough Leighter, Victor Harris, Isidore Luckstone, Percy Lee Atherton, John Beach, Paolo Gallico, Arthur Bergh, Morris Class, Walter Morse Rummel, Blair Fairchild, Rudolph Ganz (Swiss-American), Eugen Haile (German-American), Frank La Forge, Harold Vincent Milligan, Timothy Spelman, Edward Horsman, Tom Dobson, Oscar G. Sonneck. Mr. Sonneck (1873–1928) was less known as a musicianly composer, than as a musicologist whose vast knowledge made him invaluable as the first librarian of the music division of the Library of Congress in Washington (1902–1915). His books form an important addition to musical Americana. He was editor of the Musical Quarterly, and secretary of the Beethoven Association.

Foreigners Writing in America

Many who are making music grow in America were born in Europe and while they may not be American composers, they are composers in America, and most of them have become American citizens.

Ernest Bloch, born in Geneva, Switzerland (1880), has been here since 1916, when the Flonzaley Quartet played his String Quartet. Owing to his Jewish descent his work shows an Oriental strain rather than Swiss national feeling. Among his important orchestral works are Jewish Poems, Psalms, a symphony, Israel, Schelomo, for ’cello and orchestra, a prize symphonic rhapsody, America, and a Concerto Grosso for strings. He took the Coolidge prize with his Viola Suite, and has also a violin sonata and a piano quintet. He has taught in New York, Cleveland and San Francisco. A pupil, Ethel Leginska, the English pianist and orchestral conductor, has composed an interesting string quartet, piano pieces and works for orchestra.

Percy Aldridge Grainger, born in Melbourne, Australia (1882), appeared as a pianist at the age of ten and has never stopped since! His mother was his first teacher and later he was a pupil of Busoni and intimate friend of Grieg, whose concerto he played upon his first American appearance (1915). During the World War he became naturalized and served in the American army. As composer he is unique, being self-taught, and although knowing the compositions of all the great masters, he goes to folk music for his themes and ideas, and has become an authority on British and Scandinavian folk music, and is collecting music of the American Indian and the Negro.

Among Grainger’s best known pieces are: Molly on the Shore, Colonial Song, Shepherd’s Hey, Irish Tune from County Derry, Country Gardens and Turkey in the Straw, all folk-melodies around which he has woven most fascinating harmonies, and has brought back the old songs in modern dress. In the spring of 1925 he gave two concerts which he called, with true Grainger originality, “Room Music” instead of chamber music.

Carl Engel, although born in Paris (1883), and educated in France is an American citizen and the director of the Music Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. Engel has written in addition to essays in delightful style, a Tryptich (a violin sonata in three movements), and enchanting songs, marking him a lover of modern harmony.

Two Frenchmen in New York, Carlos Salzedo, one of the world’s leading harpists, and Edgar Varese are foremost among the innovators, bringing to the public through their own compositions and the work of the International Composers’ Guild, the latest styles in music. They hand the public the new works of the most extreme composers before the ink is dry on the manuscript. Most of these are composed in dissonance or so-called cacophony (from two Greek words kakos,—bad; phono,—sounds). Through the efforts of these men, the League of Composers, and the Pro Musica Society (E. Robert Schmitz, founder and president), many present day compositions are heard in America.

Lazare Saminsky, a Russian, choirmaster at Temple Emanu-El, New York, has written several symphonies and a chamber opera, Gagliarda of a Merry Plague. He has made a deep study of Hebrew music.

Kurt Schindler, (Berlin, 1882), first conductor of the New York Schola Cantorum, a chorus, is an authority on Russian, Spanish and Finnish folk music, of which he has made many collections. He has also written art songs and choruses.

Leopold Godowsky, born in Russia (1870), one of the greatest living pianists, has written much for piano and made many arrangements.

Among the world famous violinists, several living in America, Fritz Kreisler (1875), Mischa Elman (1892) and Efrem Zimbalist (1889), have added to violin literature, arrangements of piano pieces and songs, as well as a few original compositions. Kreisler, with Victor Jacobi, wrote the music for the light opera Apple Blossoms.

Some Patrons of Music in America

America has been fortunate in its patrons of music who like the Esterhazys and Lobkowitzs of old have advanced music by founding and maintaining orchestras, music schools, chamber music, festivals and prize competitions. Among these are Henry Lee Higginson (1834–1919), Boston Symphony; Harry Harkness Flagler, New York Symphony; W. A. Clark, Los Angeles Philharmonic; George Eastman, Rochester Symphony and Eastman School of Music; Juilliard Musical Foundation, Mrs. Edward Bok, Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; the Edward J. de Coppet (1855–1916), the Flonzaley Quartet; Carl Stoeckel, festivals at Norfolk, Connecticut; Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim and Mr. and Mrs. Murry Guggenheim, summer concerts by Edwin Franko Goldman’s Concert Band; Mrs. Elizabeth Shurtleff Coolidge, Berkshire Chamber Music Festivals. Also the American Society for the Publication of Chamber Music, the National Music League, the Walter Naumberg prize, the National Federation of Music Clubs, the League of Composers, the National Bureau for the advancement of Music, and many music schools and settlements have helped to make music grow.

It is not out of place to include here Arthur P. Schmidt (1846–1921) of Boston as a patron of music, for by his devotion to American composers and the faith with which he published their works as early as 1876 has made music grow. Under this head we must also include Gustav Schirmer (1829–1893) and Oliver Ditson (1811–1888).

Symphony Orchestras

Besides the orchestras in Boston, New York and Chicago, of which we have already told you, many new ones have been formed to the advancement of music in America: Philadelphia, (Leopold Stokowski, conductor); Detroit, (Ossip Gabrilowitsch); San Francisco, (Alfred Hertz); Cincinnati, (Fritz Reiner); Los Angeles, (Arthur Rodzinsky); St. Louis, (Guest Conductors); Cleveland, (Nikolai Sokoloff and Rudolph Ringwall); Rochester, (Eugene Goossens); Syracuse, (Vladimir Shavitch); Omaha, (Sandor Harmati); Portland, Oregon, (Willem van Hoogstraten); Minneapolis, (Henri Verbrugghen); State Symphony Orchestra, New York City, founded by Josef Stransky, (Emo von Dohnanyi and Alfredo Casella, in the season of 1925–26); and the American Symphony Orchestra composed entirely of Americans under Howard Barlow, founder and conductor; the Young Men’s Symphony Orchestra (Paul Henneberg), founded by the late Alfred Lincoln Seligman with Arnold Volpe, conductor; American Orchestral Society, (Chalmers Clifton). (See page [514].)

Besides the orchestras mentioned, the symphony orchestras of the motion picture houses all over the country are doing a very great service by the excellent music and the fine performances given to millions of people every day.

Among orchestras which helped to build love of music in this country were the Russian Symphony Orchestra (Modest Altschuler), the Volpe Symphony Orchestra (Arnold Volpe), and the People’s Symphony Concerts (F. X. Arens), all of which are out of existence.

Within the last few years the desire for music in the summer time has led to many open air concerts and operas. Of these the concerts of the Philharmonic Orchestra in the Lewisohn Stadium, those in the Hollywood Bowl (Los Angeles, California), Willow Grove, Pa., the Goldman Concert Band, playing on the Campus of New York University and in Central Park are the most widely known.

Ravinia Park which provides one of the most magnificent opera companies possible to assemble makes a delightful summer night playground for Chicago people.

We regret that opera has not kept pace with the symphony orchestras in America. The Metropolitan Opera Company (New York City), the Chicago Opera Company (Chicago, Illinois), the San Francisco Opera Company (G. Merola’s new venture), the Philadelphia Civic and the American Opera Company are in operation (1929). There are many cities holding summer opera.

There is every reason to be proud of the growth of music in America, and New York City today is the great musical center of the world.

Since writing this chapter, New York has lost the State Symphony, The American Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Symphony Society. Walter Damrosch has turned his orchestral interests to the radio in order to enlarge the sphere of music education. Due to the merger of the Philharmonic Symphony, Ernest Schelling conducts the concerts for children.

CHAPTER XXXII
Twentieth Century Music

There was once an old man who said: “I have lived to see the post-chaise give way to the locomotive but I cannot and will not accept the automobile!” What would he have said to the aeroplane? But this old man was not different from the people today, who seem unable to accept the new music and take it as a personal affront when they must listen to it. Like the automobile and the aeroplane, however, it is here, and is a part of the 20th century!

Nothing that lives stands still; there must be constant change and growth, or decay sets in. This is as true of music as it is of ourselves and the things around us. We have watched this process of change in music from prehistoric man to the 20th century; we have seen certain periods bursting with new ideas, works and forms; we have seen individuals tower above their fellows, marking epochs to which their names have become attached, like the Palestrinian era, the Bach era, and the Wagner period; and we are living in a moment of new ideas, works and forms, on which we cannot pass final judgment. Time alone must be the judge!

There is no point at which a period ends and a new one begins, for they overlap. We saw harmony grow out of polyphony; we saw the romantic Beethoven rise out of the classic Beethoven; in the romantic Chopin, we found the germs of impressionism (for definition, see page [483]), and in Debussy’s impressionism, we see the breaking away from traditions into a new world of sound.

Polyform Music

When we begin our music lessons, we are taught the musical alphabet,—the major scale, and then, the minor and the chromatic. So accustomed are we to these scales that we forget there was a time when they did not exist, and that new ones may be added, for they are not fixed for all time. There have been, as you know, the no-scale time, the pentatonic scale, the Greek modes, the Ecclesiastical or Church modes, the diatonic (major and minor) scale, the chromatic scale and the so-called whole-tone scale of Debussy. Beethoven and all the writers of the classic period used the diatonic scales which gave their works a definite tonality, that is, a home tone to which all the tones try to return. If, for example, you sing Yankee Doodle and stop before the last note, you feel very uncomfortable, because you have not sounded the home tone towards which all the tones are reaching. To the diatonic modes, Chopin and Wagner added a frequent use of the chromatic scale, which enriched music. In addition to diatonic and chromatic harmony, along came Debussy with his melodies in whole steps, and he also went back to the old Greek modes, using them in new and unexpected ways. Today we have all the past to draw upon and the composers are quick to take advantage of their rich inheritance and to add innovations.

In the 20th century the influences have come from Paris and Vienna,—Debussy and Schoenberg,—and later Stravinsky, the Russian. From the French has come a style of writing called polytonality, and from Vienna has come atonality. Don’t be afraid of these names for they are easily explained!

Courtesy of “Musical America.”
Arnold Schoenberg (Austrian).

Igor Stravinsky (Russian).

Composers of Music in Extremely Modern Style.

Claude Achille Debussy.

Courtesy of Roland Manuel.
Maurice Ravel.

Leaders of the French Impressionistic School.

Having said that tonality is a system in which all tones gravitate to a central tone (they all come home to roost!) it is not difficult to understand through the formation of the word poly—many, tonal—tones, that it means the use of several keys or tonalities at the same time, a counterpoint of key against key, or scale against scale, instead of note against note as it was in the Golden Age of Polyphony. Think of a cantus firmus in C major, and a counter melody in F♯ minor! (Between ourselves if skilfully handled, it has possibilities!) Ravel, Milhaud and Honegger know how to do it. Of course in the old system we change from key to key by means of a musical bridge called modulation, but in polytonality, the bridge is discarded, and the unrelated keys are heard piled on top of each other in layers.

Atonality, the system which Schoenberg and his followers use, is based on the chromatic scale of twelve half steps, on each one of which, chords (major and minor) may be built. This gives a more varied tonal paint-box than the old diatonic modes and the chromatic scale of former days, for it has now become an independent scale, and is not a part of the diatonic family.

Multi-and Poly-Rhythms

Rhythm also reflects this age of unrest, and there have been decided changes which seem to return to the Middle Ages to the period of bar-less music writing. Instead of finding a piece written throughout in ¾ metre or ⁴⁄₄, it will be multi-rhythmic or poly-rhythmic. Multi-rhythmic means many shiftings from one rhythm to another; poly-rhythmic means a counterpoint of different rhythms all played at the same time. The English composer, Cyril Scott, uses multi-rhythms (where almost every measure changes its metre), and the French Florent Schmitt uses poly-rhythms, (for example, triplets against eighth notes in common time in the right hand, and ⁶⁄₈ metre in the left).

In the 15th and 16th centuries every one wrote motets, masses and madrigals; in the 17th century every one wrote suites and from this time on, opera; in the 18th, sonata form; in the 19th, sonatas and short romantic pieces. In the 20th century, no one form is used more than another, but all forms are undergoing changes as the composers reach out for freedom. This is the day of the large orchestra and of the small chamber music groups; symphonies have been replaced by the shorter symphonic poem, the tendency being for short forms. The four-hour music drama has given way to the one-act operas, and the dance drama or ballet as the Russian Diaghilev introduced it, is a 20th century development. The orchestral writing has changed greatly from the methods of Berlioz, Wagner and Strauss, for while they were masters of large mass effects, the composers of today are treating each instrument individually, in other words, they are using orchestration, poly-instrumentally! In chamber music, we have the string quartet, but in addition, many experiments are being made in combining instruments of unrelated families, like strings, wind, brass and percussion, as we find in Stravinsky’s chamber music.

It is often said that modern music has no melody, but it would be more correct to say that it has new melody, resulting from the attempt to push aside old forms, old harmonies, old rhythms; now we have arrived at a new era of polyphony, abounding in dissonance, that often is cacophonous rather than harmonious. We call this period the Polyformic era.

Another Renaissance

The men who ushered in this Polyformic era were Claude Debussy in Paris, Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna, and Alexander Scriabin in Russia. Richard Strauss, then at his height, is a good example of the overlapping of two periods, for he represents the classical German school of the 19th century, and has also pointed the way to the future. Igor Stravinsky, although younger, is one of the strongest factors in this new Renaissance which in scope and power reminds us of the rebirth of learning in the Middle Ages.

Another cause for the breaking away from old forms and conditions was the World War, which cut off the composers from the usual sources of musical supply, and forced them to develop their own ideas. This led to new groups arising in all parts of the world, who, rebelling against restraint, put wild experiments in the place of time honored customs.

Claude Achille Debussy

Although Claude Achille Debussy (1862–1918) was almost forty when the 20th century came in, only in this century has his work been known and imitated. He was the direct outcome of a movement in France, after the Franco-Prussian War to develop French music along the lines started by Rameau and Couperin. This meant breaking away from the classic models of Beethoven and the dramatic music of Wagner. He exchanged the romantic style of Schumann and Chopin for a new impressionistic style.

Claude Debussy was born in St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. He attended the Paris Conservatory when he was eleven and studied with Marmontel, Lavignac and Guiraud. In 1884, with a cantata, L’Enfant Prodigue, he won the Prix de Rome which has started the career of so many French composers! During this, his first period, he wrote many lovely songs to poems by Verlaine and Baudelaire, the same impressionistic poets who inspired Charles Martin Loeffler in America; Suite Bergamasque, which includes the lovely Clair de Lune (Moonlight); the work which first brought him fame, L’Après-midi d’un Faune (Afternoon of a Faun); the beautiful string quartet; Chansons de Bilitis; Three Nocturnes for Orchestra, and the unique opera Pelleas and Melisande, which took him ten years to write! It was first given in the Paris Opéra Comique (1902).

In this opera, Debussy showed himself an innovator; it was a new kind of harmony and melody and never before had an opera like it been written. He gave an exact impression in music of Maeterlinck’s imaginative, mystic play. This is not a case where music drowns the meaning of the story but each word is colored and interpreted by the music. Debussy accomplished what the Camerata, Gluck and Wagner tried to do. By the time he wrote Pelleas and Melisande, his style was established and the proof of his high attainment is seen in his many imitators.

He worked very slowly and carefully and often destroyed what had taken him hours to write. Although an innovator, he was a deep student well grounded in the traditions of the past, a lover of Mozart and of the 18th century French writers, and when he seemingly broke all rules he gave something new in their place, not in the spirit of experiment but of sincere conviction.

He was surrounded by painters who like Claude Monet, Pissarro and Sisley did not paint actual things, but rather ideals of things; and by poets who like Verlaine, Gustave Kahn, Henri de Régnier, Pierre Louys and Stéphane Mallarmé did not write about things but rather the impression and images things gave them. He was absorbed and delighted by this non-photographic kind of art and translated into his music the veiled, mystic, idealistic, silver glimmering impressions that others put into paint and into words. This is Impressionism in art.

Musically, Debussy was influenced by Wagner, although he fought against him, and by some of the French composers in whose day he began to write, like Chabrier and Chausson. From Moussorgsky and other Russians he learned much about old modes, color effects and free expression; and with Erik Satie he talked over many musical problems, no doubt gaining much from this curious musical caricaturist and humorist. No matter how extreme and absurd Debussy’s music might have sounded twenty-five years ago to the people, they must have felt the mystic beauty and rare poetic charm of his work.

Someone, as a joke, put a Butterick pattern on a playerpiano roll as a music record, and it sounded so ridiculous that a composer hearing it, said: “Ah, that must be a Debussy piece!” But, you see this was twenty-five years ago!

No matter how revolutionary his piano pieces may have sounded, today they have become almost classics! The combination of poetic imagination, romanticism and impressionism are seen in the titles: Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the Water), L’Isle joyeuse (Happy Island), La Cathédrale engloutie (The Engulfed Cathedral), Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain).

For his daughter Claude, who died the year after her father, Debussy wrote six little piano pieces called the Children’s Corner. At the time he was writing them, little Claude used to drag the manuscripts around like a ragdoll, telling anyone she met, “These are my pieces, my father is writing them for me.” They were: Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum, Jimbo’s Lullaby, The Doll’s Serenade, The Snow Falls, The Little Shepherd and Golliwogg’s Cakewalk.

Among his later works are: Three symphonic sketches, La Mer (The Sea); the mystery play on a book by d’Annunzio, Le Martyre de St. Sebastien (The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian); a work for two pianos, Noir et Blanc (Black and White); a Sonata for Violoncello and Piano and twelve Studies for Piano.

In his Minstrels, Children’s Corner and General Lavine we find humor, a characteristic of 20th century music.

His music was vague and dreamy, and many composers were weakened rather than strengthened by trying to imitate him, for they had neither his genius nor his poetry. What he gave us was genuine, what others tried to copy was affected. His inventions such as the whole-tone scale and the pastel shades of music were so much a part of him that to use them today shows a lack of originality. But to those coming after him, who did not imitate him but worked out their own ways, he was a path-breaker of great value.

Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel (1875) has lived in or near Paris most of his life, although he was born in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées. He was a student at the Conservatory under Gabriel Fauré and André Gédalge. He did not receive the Prix de Rome, perhaps because in his early works he already showed tendencies, which must have seemed revolutionary to musicians who had not yet grown accustomed to the innovations of Debussy. Ravel developed his ideas at the same time and under the same influences as Debussy. You will often hear that Ravel imitated Debussy, but it is less an imitation than a development along the same lines. Ravel, too, is an impressionist, a poet, a lover of veiled mystic effects, suggesting images rather than reproducing them. He has a keen rhythmic sense, perhaps a heritage of his birthplace, so close to the Spanish border.

None of the 20th century composers understands the orchestra better than Ravel as may be seen in his ballet Daphnis and Chloe, Rhapsodie Espagnole, his delightful Mother Goose and La Valse. His short opera, L’heure espagnole is full of charming music and splendid workmanship; his quartet written in 1902–3 is one of the finest examples of 20th century chamber music. For piano he has added a rich contribution in the Sonatina, Pavane for a Dead Child, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Les Miroirs (Looking Glasses), Gaspard de la Nuit, Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Tomb of Couperin), and his songs are very beautiful, including Histoires Naturelles (Natural History) and the Greek and Hebrew folk songs.

Ravel’s latest work is a revelation of all his abilities, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child’s Sorceries), a ballet in early form with modern music. It is a fantasy tale about a little boy, who will not do his lessons and in a fury injures a squirrel; the chairs, grandfather’s clock, frogs, fairies, sprites, squirrels, arithmetic dwarfs from the book he has destroyed, and tea-pots rebel and talk “at him,” until he binds up the wound of the squirrel. Into this, Ravel puts humor and even sentiment; he makes some of the chairs dance a minuet, other characters, a fox trot, and includes many old and new dances. He shows his magic handling of the orchestra and with extreme cleverness he even has the chair and the shepherdess sing a song in canon form and at the end all join in singing a fugue of “heavenly beauty.”

A follower of Ravel is Maurice Delage, who has written some very interesting songs and an orchestral work in which he is modern enough to imitate the sounds of an iron foundry!

An enthusiastic follower and friend of Ravel, is Roland Manuel, critic, writer and composer. He has never written what is called ultra (very) modern music, but everything he does, songs, chamber music, operetta, or ballet is marked with good taste, refinement and fine musicianship.

Other Frenchmen who have added to the 20th century style are Paul Dukas (1865), whose opera based on Maeterlinck’s Ariane et Barbe Bleue (Ariadne and Blue Beard) is second only to Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande; Vincent d’Indy (1851); Déodat de Sévérac (1873–1921), a writer of charming piano music whose impressionism reflects his love of Nature; Albert Roussel (1869), a pupil of the Schola Cantorum, whose Symphony and opera Padmavati show splendid talent; Florent Schmitt (1870) whose orchestral works and piano quintet are important; André Caplet (1880–1925), Charles Koechlin (1867), and Erik Satie (1869–1925).

Erik Satie—Cartoonist

Erik Satie is a riddle! Many are the heated discussions he has caused. His influence has been through what he has said, not what he has done. He was a caricaturist rather than a great composer, giving amusing titles to frivolous little pieces that show humor, in which one never knows whether he was laughing at or with the world. He loved short disconnected pieces and did much to make the young composer break away from long symphonic forms. He was a friend of Debussy, godfather to the Group of Six, and later to four “youngsters” who call themselves the “School of Arcueil” where Satie lived. His name should have been Satyr for with his pointed ears, eyebrows, and beard, he looked the part! Among his compositions are the ballets, Parades and Relache, and a dramatic aria with orchestra, Socrates.

The School of Arcueil, which has not yet proven its value is composed of Sauguet, Maxime Jacob, Desormières and Clicquet-Pleyel, who take pleasure in American jazz effects and have tried amusing experiments.

The Group of Six

The World War reacted directly and indirectly upon a group of composers in France. Daring and brutality are the keynote of almost all the works of the years from 1914 to the present day. Debussy and Ravel with their poetic imagery did not express the feelings of the younger men, so they were pitilessly brushed aside by Les Jeunes (The Young) who overthrew the accepted forms for their own experiments.

These young composers did not band together like the “Russian Five,” but a French critic called them “The Six,” and the name stuck! They were not united by oneness of purpose or by ideal, they just happened to be friends and their music was often presented on the same programs and Erik Satie “who had been throughout thirty-five years the instigator of all audacity, the manager of all impudence” was their confidential adviser. The six are Germaine Tailleferre who played her piano concerto in America (1925) and has written two charming ballets; Louis Durey (1888); Georges Auric (1899), and François Poulenc (1899), both of whom have written ballets; Darius Milhaud (1892) and Arthur Honegger (1892).

Of these, Milhaud and Honegger are by far the most important. Milhaud has written ballets, chamber music and orchestral works with great fluency, often showing fine gifts and flashes of beauty. Born into this age of storm and stress, Milhaud has written brutally, but he is at heart a romantic composer and will probably change as we get further away from the war.

Honegger has had a sensational success with a work in oratorio form, Le Roi David (King David), and with a tone poem, Pacific—231, which is a type of locomotive. Honegger has broken from the Group, and has gone his own independent way, writing beautiful songs, orchestral and chamber music, and giving promise of being one of the most important composers of the period.

There are many other young French composers showing the different tendencies of the day, some are writing in classic form, some in romantic, but all are very independent. Some have wiped out the past and are trying to build anew, not realizing that they are building on sand, for there can be no skyscraper without a foundation deep enough to carry it!

Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Nicolai Scriabin (1871–1915) was born in Moscow, Russia, and was sent to a military school; instead of becoming an army officer, he turned to music, and was a pupil of Safonov, for several years conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and of Taneiev. His early works show the influence of Chopin and Arensky, but he soon developed a style of his own, that has made him one of the important composers of the beginning of the 20th century. An English writer, Eaglefield Hull, thinks that “the sonatas of Scriabin are destined in the future to occupy a niche of their own, together with the forty-eight Preludes of Bach, the thirty-two Sonatas of Beethoven, and the piano works of Chopin.” To explain in a few words the innovations of Scriabin would be impossible, but he broke away from fixed scales and tonality, and opened new roads to composers following. He used neither polytonality nor atonality, although his methods border on the latter. He built new chords, not major and minor as we know them, but in intervals of fourths. Here is a typical Scriabin chord which he used as we use a major triad (c-e-g) as the center around which to build a composition:

Won’t you be surprised to hear that Scriabin went back to Pythagoras and his theory of harmonics or overtones to get this chord? He called these combinations “mystic chords” for he was a student of Theosophy, and wanted to use music as a means to express occult ideas. With this in mind, he wrote a tone-poem, Prometheus, which, according to Scriabin’s directions, Modest Altschuler played in New York with a color organ throwing colors on a screen while the orchestra was playing the music. Two other of his large works for orchestra Le Divin Poème and Le Poème de L’Extase show his extraordinary harmonic originality.

Besides the ten sonatas in very free form, he wrote hundreds of shorter piano pieces, disclosing his deep poetic, mystic nature. Composers have imitated him, but his music is so tagged with Scriabin’s individuality that, like the whole-tone scale of Debussy, imitation is easily detected.

L’Enfant Terrible of Modern Music—Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky (1882) has influenced more young musicians than any other living composer! He intended to become a lawyer, but instead studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov, and his early works reflect his teacher. We never know how meeting someone may change our course in life, and Stravinsky’s meeting with Serge Diaghilev changed his!

Diaghilev, director of the Russian Ballet, recognized a gift in the young Stravinsky, who was busy writing an opera from a fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen, The Nightingale. He commissioned him to write a ballet on a fairy tale, L’Oiseau de Feu (The Fire Bird) which was produced in Paris (1910) and brought Stravinsky instant fame. The next year this was followed by the delightful Petrouchka. His most famous score Le Sacre du Printemps (Rites of Spring) was produced in Paris in 1913, causing a near-riot, as it was received with hissing and catcalls by a public unprepared for its brutality, its savage rhythm, and raucous dissonance.

In this work Stravinsky went back to primitive times when Russia was pagan, and he explains, “Thus we see Russian peasants dancing in the springtime, accompanying the rhythms by their gestures and their feet.” An English critic Edwin Evans, sees behind the pagan rite, “The marvelous power ... in all Nature to grow, to develop, and to assume new forms.” (We have watched this happen in music.)

After Le Sacre du Printemps, Stravinsky wrote Les Noces a ballet founded on pagan Russian marriage customs. In this work he has used a chorus of voices and four pianos in place of an orchestra. He finished the opera The Nightingale and in 1917 wrote an orchestral poem based on the themes from the opera.

In the short ballet L’Histoire du Soldat (Story of the Soldier), Stravinsky has used popular music of the fair, circus, music hall, not folk music, and we find our jazz and tango in it, as also in his Piano Rag Music and Ragtime for orchestra. His songs composed for the most part to nonsense verses, are among the cleverest things he has done.

Stravinsky wrote a group of string quartet pieces in which he made the violins sound like bells. This was not because he tried to imitate bells but on the strings he uses the harmonics or overtones that are heard in bells. This is one of the secrets of his unusual harmonies.

Overtones

We hear so much about overtones and harmonics that perhaps we can trace for you the growth of music along the path of Pythagoras’ theory, showing how we arrived at this era of dissonance.

Harmonic Series

First men and women singing in unison produced music in octaves, 1 and 2 of the harmonic series. Next came the centuries of organum when the parts were sung in fifths and fourths, 2, 3, and 4 of the harmonic series. Then followed the centuries of the major triad (c-e-g), 4, 5, and 6 of the harmonic series. When the 7th overtone in the harmonic series appeared, we had the very important dominant 7th chord (c-e-g-b♭), looked upon as outrageous heresy and dissonance! It was years, even centuries, before it was admitted as a respectable member of the family! The 9th harmonic forming the dominant 9th chord (c-e-g-b♭-d) had the same hard row to hoe, and is one of our modern chords. César Franck shocked the musicians by opening his famous violin sonata with this chord! We can trace the whole-tone scale of Debussy to the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th overtones of the series, (b♭-c-d-e-f#). Scriabin’s “mystic chord” is formed from the 8th, 11th, 7th, 10th, 14th, and 9th overtones (c-f#–b♭-e-a-d). It is a short step now to polytonality and atonality, to Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Milhaud, and Honegger.

You have seen the white ray of sunlight enter your window, which upon a second glimpse divides into all the colors of the rainbow. In other words, the white light is the fundamental tone, which is the sum of all the other colors, much as any single tone is the sum of its overtones, and it is with these overtones that our modern composers are experimenting. Here we see that modern music is the result of evolution (slow growth) and not revolution!

Heart Music Disappears

Stravinsky, l’enfant terrible in music, the most daring composer of a most daring period has thrown over all restraint! His music has no heart quality, and so strongly is he influencing the younger men, that “heart music” has gone out of style, a brusque, ugly music taking its place, because the composers are afraid that to show sentiment would be weakness! However, the high class music of today is trying to express humor, activity and vigor, for which reason our jazz appeals to Europeans. The War made Stravinsky the “man of the hour” in music. He is the direct opposite of the refined, beauty-worshipping Debussy and mystic Scriabin. The composers upset by the devastating war, needed strong food, and they hungrily pounced upon the morsels flung to them by Stravinsky, the ring-leader.

But withal, “the worm will turn” and already, those with ears to hear, realize a change in the air, and they foretell a new classic period made out of this hurly-burly of many forms, touched by the fairy wand, “Things-that-Live”! And Stravinsky himself has turned.

After Stravinsky had written several ballets for his countryman, Diaghilev, he turned his attention to chamber music, and wrote works for small groups of wind instruments and a string quartet, Concertino, and a concerto for piano and wind instruments, in which he tried all sorts of experiments. He believes in absolute music, and has written these without program, making the music express what he has to say. Whether he has succeeded, must be laid before Judge Time. He is supreme master of orchestration, and is largely responsible for treating each instrument as though it were playing a solo, which we described as poly-instrumentation. We should not have enjoyed Stravinsky as a neighbor, for he begged, borrowed or bought every kind of instrument and learned all their tricks by trying them out himself.

We know very little of what is going on in Russia today, but Serge Prokofiev, one of the younger Russian composers, has left his home and lives in Paris where his works are often given. He has written piano concertos, violin concertos, and the best we have heard from his pen is a chorus with orchestral accompaniment, Sept, ils sont Sept (Seven, they are seven). He has also written ballets and operas.

A fellow-student with Serge Prokofiev in the Petrograd conservatory was Nicolai Miaskovsky, now living in Moscow where he heads the musical movement. His principal works are symphonies, one of which was played in Paris by a countryman, Lazare Saminsky, in June, 1925.

Another young composer whose piano sonatas have come out of Russia is Samuel Feinberg. They are somewhat in the style of Scriabin.

The two Tcherepnins, father and son, are living in Paris. The son, Alexander, has written chamber music in 20th century style.

Poland

In modern Poland, Karol Szymanowski (1883) has written symphonies, chamber music, songs, piano sonatas and many other piano pieces which reflect Polish national color and French impressionism (See Page [520]).

Lady Dean Paul, who writes under the name of Poldowski, although living in London, is really a Pole. (Page [439].)

Tadeusz Iarecki, of New York City, recently received a prize in Poland for writing the best composition by a native composer. This same quartet took the first Berkshire Chamber Music Prize (1918) and was published in New York by a society whose object is the publication of American Chamber Music.

Alexander Tansman (1892) a young Pole has met with unusual success in Paris, where he writes works for orchestra, chamber music and ballet.

Arnold Schoenberg, Musical Anarchist

Arnold Schoenberg, born in Vienna (1874), taught himself until he was twenty. He then studied with Alexander von Zemlinsky, who later became his brother-in-law. Zemlinsky once pointed him out saying, “He is in his early twenties and I have taught him all I know; he brought me an orchestral work recently for which he had to paste two pieces of score paper together to write out his score, so large an orchestra had he employed!” This was his tone poem, Pelleas and Melisande, first performed in 1904. To this early period belong some songs, a song cycle with orchestra on texts by Jens Peter Jacobsen, Gurrelieder, and the sextet, Verklärte Nacht (Illumined Night).

Both Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler were his friends, and through Mahler’s efforts many of his compositions were performed. His string quartet was played in America by the Flonzaley Quartet. His Chamber Symphony, and his second string quartet, with solo voice, performed (1924) at the Berkshire Chamber Music Festival, belong to this same period.

So far, all that Schoenberg composed was based more or less on models of the past, but being naturally an anarchist in music he tried to escape from doing what others had done. Instead of writing works that took fifty minutes to play like his string quartet (in one movement), he wrote five orchestral pieces and piano pieces that were mere suggestions of compositions, so short were they. He cut out all development of themes, all old forms, all feeling for tonality, writing in the twelve-tone scale which we explained as atonality; he built his chords in intervals of fourths instead of thirds, and purposely changed all the rules of harmony; he distorted all the intervals, using a seventh or ninth instead of the octave, and making every fourth and fifth a half step larger or smaller than was customary. His melodies are marked by large skips and queer intervals, but when one once knows his language, by its very queerness, it is easily recognized as Schoenberg’s. Although he has broken away from the slavery of old traditions, he may have “jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire”!

In Pierrot Lunaire, a cycle of twenty-one songs with chamber music accompaniment, he uses a curious effect for the voice “which must be neither sung nor spoken.” This same effect he uses in chorus in his music drama, Die Glückliche Hand (The Lucky Hand) for which he also wrote the libretto. Although this and another music drama Erwartung (The Awaiting) were begun in 1909, they were both performed for the first time in 1924 in Vienna. This long delay was due to the prejudice against the work of this innovator, who on the one hand has been laughed at, scorned, and reviled, and on the other praised to the skies by a small group of disciples and imitators whose works sound very much like their teacher’s.

Among these pupils are Egon Wellesz (1885) who more than the other disciples has broken away from the master. He has gone his way in writing music for the stage and combining the old ideas of ballet and orchestral music with Greek drama in a modern dance drama. He has also written interesting chamber and orchestral music. Dr. Wellesz is also an authority on musical history; he has written many books and articles on the subject, especially on early opera, Byzantine and Oriental music. He has written a book on Schoenberg (1921).

Alban Berg (1885), also a Schoenberg pupil, has written unusually fine chamber music and a new opera, Wozzek, fragments of which were played at a festival in Prague (Czecho-Slovakia) in May, 1925, by the International Society of Contemporary Music, a movement most valuable in encouraging and developing modern music. This society holds yearly meetings in Europe, at which are heard the works of all the young composers of the world, each country having a branch, which sends its share of new works to make the festival’s programs.

Others of the Schoenberg group are Anton von Webern (1883), Paul Pisk, Karl Horovitz (1884–1925), Ernest Krenek, and Ernest Toch (1887).

Erich Korngold

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1898) startled the musical world, just before the War, by the astonishing compositions he wrote as a little boy. Among these were orchestral works and a piano sonata of extraordinary promise. He was born in Vienna and is the son of a musician and musical critic. Young Korngold is known in America as the composer of Die Todte Stadt (The Dead City) an opera in which the soprano, Maria Jeritza, made her first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House. In many ways the opera goes back to the old pre-Wagner form and is full of melody, unusual in a young 20th century composer! He has written other operas bordering on the lighter Viennese operetta and has kept away from the Schoenberg influence.

Modern German Music

Richard Strauss was the last of the great classic school of German composers, which for two hundred years had led the world in music. Curious as it seems, he has not influenced directly the younger composers, who turned to Debussy, Busoni, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. (Page [410].)

Busoni the Great

Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) although an Italian, had a strong influence in two fields of German music, that of piano playing and composing. He lived in Berlin and was one of the brilliant thinkers and musicians of the period. He left chamber music and orchestral works, also several operas, one of which, The Harlequin, finished just before his untimely death, combines traditional form with radical ideas. His sonatinas for piano and a set of studies on American Indian Themes are important. He made a deep study of all methods, old and new, and gave his pupils the advantage of this wide experience.

Although the young Germans are not copying the huge symphonic form of Bruckner and Mahler, these two have gained greatly in popularity and are serving as models. Hans Pfitzner (1869), opera composer, is one of the most German of the living composers of the pre-war period; Franz Schreker (1878), an Austrian, living in Berlin, has taught many of the younger composers. He writes operas and songs. Schoenberg, although in Vienna, is felt even in Berlin.

Hindemith

Of the young Germans, Paul Hindemith is the most important. He was born in 1895 and according to Riemann, “is the freshest and most full-blooded talent among the younger German composers.” He seems to satisfy the two factions, for he is not too radical for the Old or too old-fashioned for the New, so as Lawrence Gilman says, “he carries water on both shoulders.... He seems to be able to write polytonally or atonally if he chooses, and also to write as the Academics might observe, like a gentleman. Richard Strauss is reported to have said to him: ‘Why do you write atonally when you have talent?’”

Today he is viola player in the Amar Quartet, but he has played in cafés, in the “movies,” dance halls, operetta theatres, and jazz bands! Although only thirty, he has many chamber music pieces to his credit and three dramatic works. His success has been tremendous.

A society to further an interest in the new music was founded by Hermann Scherchen and Eduard Erdmann. Scherchen created a sensation in Berlin just before the war by conducting Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and after having been a prisoner of war in Russia he came back with renewed purpose of bringing the new music to the public. He has published a few songs and a string quartet. His right-hand man Erdmann, besides being a pianist, has written a symphony, the first attempt of a youth without orchestral experience, which astonished the audience as a combination of Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, “to which is added a portion of genuine Erdmann flavor,” says Hugo Leichtentritt.

Another young German is Heinz Tiessen (1887), who is writing besides piano music in atonality, incidental music to a drama by Hauptman, and songs.

Philipp Jarnach (1892), a pupil of Busoni, Spanish by birth, educated in Paris, lives in Berlin and writes in the new style. Kurt Weill (1900) is also a gifted Busoni-ite.

Ernst Toch (1887), Viennese by birth, who lives in Germany has written string quartets, sonatas, concertos, and a symphony.

Heinrich Kaminsky is accepted in Germany as the composer who is trying to build a bridge from Bach to modern times. His Concerto Grosso for double orchestra commands great respect.

Hungary—Bartók and Kodály

Béla Bartók (1881) and his friend Soltan Kodály (1882) have done much to bring Hungarian folk music into the modern world, for they are steeped in folk tunes, which they use with skill and imagination. Bartók has written a short opera, two ballets, orchestral works, string quartets, violin sonata, and many piano compositions. His children’s pieces are delightful, based as they are on Hungarian folk tunes.

We have spoken at length of the gypsy music of the Hungarians brought to us by Brahms, Liszt and Sarasate (violinist and composer). We also told you that the Hungarians were Magyars. Adjoran Otvos, in the League of Composers Review says: “Bartók and Kodály have accomplished a pioneer work of quite a different nature, an exploration into the folk music of Hungary which has yielded a collection of historic significance, the most important and only authentic one made in that country.

“Bartók, poor and supported only by a scholarship, started in 1905, an investigation of the music of his race. Spending a week with a friend in the country, he heard a servant, while at work, singing a tune quite different from the hybrid (mixed breed) gypsy airs which pass for Magyar music, in Hungary and elsewhere. He contrived to conceal himself and day after day, while the servant worked, recorded a number of songs whose primitive character, he at once recognized. With this impetus, he embarked on a tour which lasted over two years, as long as his money held out. On his journeys among the peasants he met Kodály, out on a similar mission of research. Without previous inkling of each other’s aims, they proceeded together, recording the ancient songs of the Magyars in the compilation which is famous today.”

Ernest von Dohnányi

Ernest von Dohnányi (1877) a noted pianist and composer of Hungary has spent most of his life in Berlin and has toured Europe and America in piano recitals. He has written many works for orchestra, chamber music, piano and opera, all of which show more influence of Brahms than of men of his own land. He has been engaged as conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra of New York for the season 1925–26.

A twenty-eight year old pupil of Béla Bartók, Georg Kosa, shows decided gifts in his first orchestral work, Six Pieces for Orchestra.

Czech School

The Czech school founded by Smetana and Dvorak and Zdenko Fibich (1850–1900) and continued by Vitezslav Novak (1870), Josef Suk (1874), and Vaclar Stepan (1889), has had a rebirth in the 20th century. Leos Janacek, although over seventy, is the leading spirit; Rudolf Karel (1881), a pupil of Dvorak, Bohuslav Martinu, a follower of Stravinsky, and Ernest Krenek (1902), a pupil of Schreker, and Alois Haba (1893), pupil of Novak and Schreker are the working forces. (Janacek died in 1928.)

The Quarter-Tone Man

Alois Haba first wrote chamber music, then he tried some interesting experiments for which he is known as the “quarter-tone man.” We have heard of quarter-tones among the Hindus and Arabs (Chapter VI) and as the human ear has become more educated, the possibility of dividing the scale into quarter-tones is much discussed, and seems to be the next step in developing music along the line of overtones (see above). Did you ever realize that as with eyes that are far-sighted or near-sighted, ears may vary too, in the amount they hear? Most people think that every one hears alike, but this is not so. Stravinsky was one day sitting with a friend on the shore of a Swiss Lake near which he lived. The friend said the water was calm and still, but Stravinsky heard, a definite musical sound! Many of these musical sounds unheard by our ears he has shown us in his music. In the same way it is said that Haba has an extraordinarily keen ear and in trying to express what he hears, he has written two string quartets in the quarter-tone system. Stringed instruments are not in tempered scales and lend themselves to any division of the interval, into third-tones, as Busoni tried, and quarter-tones as Haba has written. But he has gone further and has made a piano on which quarter-tones may be played. This may prove to be the basis of music of the future, or it may be merely one of the numerous experiments without lasting value.

Arthur Honegger.
(Swiss-French)

Darius Milhaud.
(French)

Courtesy of “The Musical Quarterly.”
Béla Bartók.
(Hungarian)

Photograph, Victor Georg.
Louis Gruenberg.
(American)

Composers of Today.

Courtesy of “The Musical Digest.”
G. Francesco Malipiero.
(Italian)

Courtesy of “The Musical Quarterly.”
Alfredo Casella.
(Italian)

Photograph, Mendoza Galleries.
Arnold Bax.
(English)

Photograph, Bertam Pach.
Eugene Goossens.
(English)

Composers of Today.

Italy and the New Order

For many centuries Italy has been known as producing the opera of the world. Of late years opera has not been considered the highest form of musical art, so with the coming of the 20th century, a group of composers has been working in Italy, trying to get away from the old opera writing and to develop along the line of orchestral and chamber music.

Alfredo Casella (1883) is perhaps responsible for this movement for he lived in Paris for many years and came in contact with Debussy’s music and the modern movement there. One of his earliest works to attract attention in America was War Films, a series of orchestral pictures that were very real. He has written piano pieces, chamber music and orchestral works and one of his latest is a ballet, in which it looks as though he were leaving his path of dissonance for in this he has used folk song as a basis for a new and delightful expression.

G. Francesco Malipiero (1882) has written two string quartets, one of which received the Coolidge Prize of the Berkshire Chamber Music Festival; in these he has broken away from the large sonata form. He has also written lovely songs.

Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880) has written two operas on texts by Gabrielle d’Annunzio called La Nave (The Ship) and Fedra. His most recent work, Fra Ghirardo was performed at the Metropolitan in 1929.

Ottorino Respighi (1879) wrote operas in true Italian fashion, but deserted them for chamber music and orchestral works. Pines of Rome and Fountains of Rome, we hear often. His Violin Concerto in Gregorian Mode was played by Albert Spalding. His latest opera, La Campana Sommersa (The Sunken Bell) was given at the Metropolitan in 1928.

All these men show the traces of the Italian love of melody, with the influence of French impressionism, and German romanticism.

Two or three of these modern Italians now live in Paris, among them Santoliquido and Vincenzo Davico, both song writers.

And now Noah’s Ark has been put to music by a young Italian, Vittorio Rieti with wit and humor, in a work for orchestra, played in May, 1925, at the Prague Festival.

Manuel de Falla

In Spain, one man who has continued along the lines of Albeniz and Granados is Manuel de Falla (1876). He studied first with Felipe Pedrell, the father of the modern Spanish school. In 1907 he went to Paris where he met Debussy and Dukas. He wrote a ballet El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician). He combines a picturesque Spanish folk style with a modern way of writing music. One of his most attractive works is a scenic arrangement from a chapter in Don Quixote, Cervantes’ masterpiece, as Spanish as a Spanish fandango. It is a marionette ballet called El Retablo de Maese Pedro (Master Pedro’s Puppet Show). It is a charming work and you will like it. His writings have simplicity, and freshness, which can come only from deep study and so perfect a mastery of art that there is no self-consciousness. He is a true nationalist delighting in Spanish color; his music has nobility and humanness as well as charm.

The Netherlands

Clarence G. Hamilton says in his Outlines of Music History that Netherland composers are patriotically laboring for a distinctive school. Few names are known outside of Holland, with the exception of Alphonse Diepenbroek (1862–1921), Dirk Schaefer (1874), Sem Dresden (1881), James Zwart (1892), Julius Roentgen (1855), who has collected many of the Dutch folk songs, and Dopper, conductor and composer for orchestra.

In Belgium, Jan Blockx (1851–1912) wrote successful operas and chamber music; Paul Gilson (1865) has written orchestral and chamber music works which have won him a foremost place among modern Flemish composers; both César Franck and Guillaume Lekeu were Flemish (Belgian); Joseph Jongen, while not writing in the very modern style, is well known for his symphonic poems, chamber music, a ballet S’Arka (produced at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels), songs, piano pieces and organ works.

Switzerland

Jaques Dalcroze (1865) is better known as the inventor of Eurythmics, a system of music study from the standpoint of rhythm, than as composer, but he has written many charming songs in folk style. Gustave Doret (1866), has written several operas, cantatas, oratorios which have been performed in his native land and in Paris. Hans Huber (1852) has a long list of compositions in all forms. Ernest Bloch, though born in Switzerland is living in America and is by far the greatest innovator of these Swiss writers. Emile Blanchet, is a writer of piano music, rather more poetic than of the very modern style. Arthur Honegger, the foremost young composer of France, though born in Havre, is often claimed as a Swiss composer, because his parents are Swiss. Rudolph Ganz, pianist, composer and conductor in America was born in Switzerland.

England

When we come to Frederick Delius (1863) we meet first with a new feeling in English music. He has written orchestral pieces (Brigg Fair, concertos, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring), chorals (Appalachia, The Song of the High Hills and others), chamber music and songs. He was the first Englishman to write in the impressionistic way. His opera The Village Romeo and Juliet is very modern in form, and the music interprets the story and is not built like the Italian operas.

Delius is of Dutch-French-German stock, but was born in England, and has lived there and in France. He never tried for music posts or prizes but has remained apart to compose. Though his work often sounds like the 18th century virginal music, he is not conscious of it.

He has, in his chorals, done some of the best work since Beethoven, says one biographer, and in them are strength, power and beauty, quite different indeed from the sensuous and sweet smaller works. He is a careful worker, a great idealist, and a truly great musician.

There are many well-trained musicians like Holbrooke and Hurlstone who have done much for music in England but this chapter belongs to those who are carrying on 20th century ideas.

Among them is Vaughan Williams (1872) to whom folk music is as bread to others. He uses it whenever he can. In his London Symphony, his most famous work, he has caught the spirit of the city and it is a milestone of the early 20th century. Isn’t it curious that the most important work written on the poetry of our American Walt Whitman is by an Englishman! This is the Sea Symphony for orchestra and chorus, an impressive work by Vaughan Williams. He has also written Five Mystical Songs, Willow Wood (cantata), On Wenlock Edge (six songs), Norfolk Rhapsodies, In the Fen Country.

Granville Bantock (1868) is a musical liberator for he was the first to free English composers from the old style of Mendelssohn and the new kind of classicism of Brahms, and release them to write as they felt. He wrote music on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Persian), Sappho, Pierrot of the Minute, Fifine at the Fair, Hebredean (Scotch) Symphony, which shows his love of Scotch music, and many other works. He succeeded Elgar at Birmingham University and has made valuable studies and collections of Folk Music.

A lover of chamber music, the fantasy and fancy, is Frank Bridge (1879). He is a thorough musician and has written The Sea, the Dance Rhapsodies for orchestra, symphonic poem Isabella on Keats’ poem of the same name. Three Idylls for Strings and other works.

Gustave Holst (1874) whose original name was von Holst although he is not of German descent, was a pupil of Sir Charles V. Stanford and is now an inspiring teacher and conductor. He has had many posts and has written many important works: an opera, The Perfect Fool, the Hymn to Jesus, one of the finest choral works of the century, The Planets, a very fine orchestral work, military band music, songs and part songs, some of which are written with violin accompaniment,—a charming idea!

John Ireland (1879), has written a fine piano sonata and a violin sonata, Decorations (a collection of small pieces), Chelsea Reach, Ragamuffin and Soho Forenoons, chamber music and orchestral pieces.

Cyril Scott (1879) was trained in Germany. He is a mixture of French impressionistic writing and Oriental mysticism, as you can see from the titles of his pieces: Lotus Land (Lotus is an Egyptian flower), The Garden of Soul Sympathy, and Riki Tiki Tavi, a setting of Kipling’s little chap of the Jungle Book, which is very delightful. He is one of the first English Impressionists who paved the way for the young English School. He has made many interesting experiments in modern harmony and rhythm.

Arnold Bax (1883), of Irish parentage, is a gifted and poetic composer who has written many things in small and large forms, chamber music and piano sonatas, The Garden of Fand for orchestra, Fatherland, a chorus with orchestra and other things, all of which show him to have a creative imagination and rich musical personality.

Lord Berners (1883) (Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson), a lover of the works of Stravinsky and Casella of the modern Russian and Italian Schools, was trained in an old-fashioned way, and then Stravinsky and Casella, seeing in his music possibilities for freer writing, encouraged him to break away from old ways, and he became one of the most modern of the young English composers. He writes interestingly in caricature and sarcasm, in fact he is a musical cartoonist in such pieces as the Funeral March of a Pet Canary, Funeral March of a Rich Aunt, full of originality and of fun in choosing subjects. He wrote, too, three pieces, Hatred, Laughter and A Sigh which are amazing musical studies. His work is interesting because of its daring in his very correct surroundings.

Eugene Goossens (1893) of Flemish ancestry, understands dissonance and modern combinations, which he uses with fascinating charm. His violin sonata and Nature Pieces for piano show his depth of feeling, his Kaleidescopes (12 children’s pieces) show his humor, love of the grotesque, and Four Conceits, his power to be musically sarcastic. His Five Impressions of a Holiday and Two Sketches for String Quartet are so delightful that modern music would have lost much without them. He is a gifted conductor and has directed concerts in London, in Rochester, New York, and is engaged as guest conductor of the New York Symphony in 1925–26.

Arthur Bliss (1891) like Stravinsky, whom he admires, is the enfant terrible of English music and is not held down by any rule or fixed standards except that of good taste. He uses instruments in daring ways, and shows a natural knowledge of them. One of his pieces is for an unaccompanied Cor Anglais (English horn). Among his pieces are The Committee, In the Tube (Subway) at Oxford Circus, At the Ball. He wrote a Color Symphony, so-called because when composing it, he experienced a play of color sensation, although he did not write it to be used with the color organ, as does Scriabin in Prometheus. He is a most daring experimenter, and altogether an interesting young musician. In Rout, a gay piece for voice and chamber orchestra, he used meaningless syllables in place of words. He spent several years in Los Angeles, but has returned to England.

America

In America we not only hear the works of all the people of whom we have spoken in this chapter, but among our composers are a few who show marked twentieth century ways of composing. Some of them are American born, some have adopted the country, but all are working for the advancement of American music: Loeffler, our first impressionist, Bloch, Carpenter, Gruenberg, Whithorne, Morris, Jacobi, Marion Bauer, Eichheim, Carl Engel, Ornstein, Varese, Salzedo, Ruggles, Cowell, Antheil, and Copland.

Several organizations have worked for the cause of modern music by presenting concerts devoted to works by contemporary Europeans and Americans. The Pro Musica Society has been responsible for the visits to this country of Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartok, Darius Milhaud, Alexandre Tansman and Arthur Honegger.

The League of Composers (founded 1923) has had many notable “first performances” of compositions by Schoenberg, Bloch, Bartok, Stravinsky, Gruenberg, Malipiero, Hindemith, Copland, de Falla, Whithorne, Carrillo, etc.

Our Good-Bye

This book has been longer than it should have been, yet our sins have been of omission rather than commission. But if we have only made you realize that the world cannot stand still, that music is always growing whether we understand it or not, and the good is handed on to the next generation even though much “falls by the wayside,” we will not have written in vain.