I
Let us turn our attention to a brief survey of some of these phases of the popular music, both past and present.
Generally speaking, the bulk of this music may be classified into the two form-divisions which distinguish the main orders of all musical art—the dance and the song form, the rhythmic and the lyric. While the latter predominated in the popular music of past decades, the present-day tendencies give greater importance to the dance and even the larger part of our popular songs are set to the more enlivening rhythms of the prevailing dance measures. We have seen that the 'minstrel show' provided the medium whereby the first purveyors of popular music reached the public. It was through the means of this popular entertainment that many of the early favorites reached fame. With the rise of the vaudeville or 'variety show' the character of popular music underwent a considerable change. The introduction of the comic song brought a new element into its nature and then came that slough of sentimentalism which was to remove from our popular music the naïve but sincere appeal of the old ballads and replace them with the more sophisticated but vulgar frivolities.
The sentimental song has, however, never entirely disappeared from the popular répertoire; it has, indeed, persistently maintained a considerable place in the affections of every period. Even the younger of our own generation can recall the phase of popular taste that existed just before the inauguration of a new order in the appearance of 'ragtime.' Almost all of the then popular melodies consisted of songs replete with the so-called 'heart quality.' The mild eroticism of 'Sweet Marie' and 'The Sweetest Story ever Told' shared the popular favor with the patriotically sentimental 'Comrades' and 'Just Break the News to Mother,' songs in which the memory of the war lingered and which were prompted by the success of the military drama. While the popularity of these songs has been great, the public has been indifferent to the composers, and they have had to be content with an almost anonymous fame. Some of the men who represent this past decade of the sentimental song are: Charles K. Harris, whose greatest success was 'After the Ball'; Charles Graham, Felix McGlennon, H. W. Petrie, and Paul Dresser.
The reappearance of the negro-element in the form of the 'coon song' marks an important epoch in the evolution of our popular music. The 'coon song' presents to us the light-hearted side of the negro; the pathos of the slave is never presented in these later negro songs—only the 'darky's' picturesqueness, his quasi-humorous vagabondage, and, in the more vulgarized types, his frenzied ribaldry.
The coon song has passed through a number of development stages. The first examples, such as 'Kentucky Babe' and 'Little Alabama Coon,' were of a naïve variety which contained but the merest suggestion of the real negro element. There has been a subsequently wider utilization of the syncopated rhythms which constitute the popularities of 'ragtime' and present-day examples, such as 'Waitin' for the Robert E. Lee,' represent a rather complicated and decidedly more characteristic type than do the coon songs of preceding seasons.
Following the success of the coon song there was an exploitation of the 'Indian' song. These songs were even less genuine in origin than their antecedents. The Indian element was often obtained by the employment of a sort of garbled Oriental ragtime or of a disguised Celtic idiom, and only the titles revealed these compositions as Indian. 'Hiawatha' and 'Tammany' were among the first of these songs, and they were followed by a large number of imitations.
Besides these two principal classes of popular music employing a local color in its idiom, countless experiments have been made with other varieties. The Oriental has been much used and the refrain of the once popular 'Streets of Cairo' has served as the 'leitmotif' of a thousand and one pieces partaking of a pseudo-Orientalism. The Irish song has had a persistent vogue; it has several representative types; the sentimental 'Annie Rooney' and 'Maggie Murphy' of earlier days have been succeeded by the more boisterous 'Bedelia' and the perennial 'Mr. Dooley.' There is usually a saving grace of humor in these Hibernian offerings which palliates even their most patent vulgarity.
The vogue of the more recent popular music has been dictated by the various dance fads which have lately seized the public fancy. First the 'turkey trot' and 'barn dance' brought forth such originalities as 'Alexander's Rag Time Band' and 'Everybody's Doin' It,' these to be followed by an avalanche of various 'glides' and 'rags.' The music of the dances and dance songs is unique in its blending of certain negro qualities of rhythm and melody with a strange indeterminate sense of something Slavic or Oriental in their abandon. The last aspect of popular dance music is that furnished by the importation of the 'tango,' maxixe and other Latin American dances. Most of the more popular tunes to which these steps are danced are pronouncedly Spanish and have in most cases been imported with the dances themselves.
An ingenious procedure on the part of the popular composer has been to weave into the verse or refrain of a song a few measures of some well-known popular classic. One of the first and perhaps the best known example is the use of Mendelssohn's 'Spring Song' in the refrain of the song so disrespectfully called 'That Mendelssohn Rag.' Following this there have appeared many such appropriations and nearly the entire list of the popular melodies of the standard classics has been thus utilized.
Viewed as a whole, the popular music of to-day presents an expression far in advance of that of even a few years ago. Some of it contains subtleties of harmonic and rhythmic design that would have been caviar to the public of yesterday. It is to be regretted that this advance in form has been made at the sacrifice of the more ingenious spirit of the early popular music, and that the tone of most of our popular music to-day is so uniformly vulgar.