II
These early apparitions of American musical art are now to us only matters of history. Whatever influence they may have had on the conditions of their day, our present day musical life has been unaffected by them. For the establishment of that which, for lack of better name, we call the American school of composers we again look to New England. Through the few composers known as the Boston group America first assimilated into its musical life the best traditions of European musical culture and in the labors of these men the American community was taught in some degree to look seriously upon the native composer and his achievement.
First in this list is the name of the man who stands as the patriarch of American music, John Knowles Paine, the first professor of music at Harvard University and the pioneer in the field of symphonic composition. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1839, Paine received a thorough academic training in Germany (1858-1862). While still abroad he produced several ambitious works and he returned to America with a fame that eventually secured for him the chair of music at Harvard. Here he filled an important mission in guiding the steps of many of the younger composers who studied with him. In the meantime Paine's academic life by no means stifled his creative impulse and his list of works shows a steady output up to within a short time before his death in 1906.
Important among Paine's larger works are the two symphonies, the first in C minor and the second ('Spring Symphony') in A major, the oratorio 'St. Peter,' two symphonic poems, 'The Tempest' and 'An Island Fantasy,' the music to Sophocles' 'Œdipus' for male voices and orchestra, and an opera, 'Azara.' Besides these there is a considerable list of chamber music and much in the smaller forms.
Paine's music, while never approaching modernity in the present-day application of the word, in passing through several periods of development arrived at a point where the idiom employed could in a broad sense be termed modern. An anti-Wagnerite in the early days of his academic austerity, he lived to be drawn into the Wagner vortex and in some of his later works the Wagner influence asserts itself. Perhaps the most representative of Paine's works is one which belongs to an earlier period, the music to Œdipus Tyrannus (1881). In this work Paine uses a classic-romantic medium far from rich in its color possibilities, with which, however, he obtains a notable variety of effect and a glowing warmth of style. In size of conception the summit of Paine's achievement is to be found in his opera Azara (1901) composed to a libretto of his own after the old Breton legend 'Aucassin and Nicolette.' Containing much that is beautiful, and estimable in its workmanship, the opera fails in dramatic force and has never come to a stage production. A concert performance of it was given, however, in 1906 by the Cecilia Society of Boston under the direction of B. J. Lang.
The most representative member of the present Boston colony, as well as one of the most eminent of American composers, is George W. Chadwick (born 1854). Mr. Chadwick's education also was a German one and on his return to America after three years' study in Leipzig and Munich he began to produce works of a scholarly formality. Had the course of Mr. Chadwick's development been arrested at this point he might fittingly bear the title of 'academic' which Mr. Rupert Hughes puts on him.[86] But between the date of these earlier works and Chadwick's latest works there has been in his art a steady development both in form and spirit, so that his recent scores, 'Adonis' (1901), 'Euterpe' (1904), 'Cleopatra' (1906), and 'Aphrodite' (1912), are distinctly representative of the modern school. These works, while purporting to be program music, are only qualifiedly so, for Chadwick always preserves a certain severe formalism which precludes the possibilities of his capitulation either to the impressionist vagaries of modern French music or to the polyphonic complexities of the Germans of to-day. In spite of this tendency to formality, Mr. Chadwick in his writing has achieved a notable freedom of style, a dramatic force and a mastery of orchestral color which contribute to give him a certain place among living orchestral composers. Mr. Chadwick enjoys the largest hearing of living American composers.
His name has been permanent in the lists of the Boston Symphony, while he has had frequent hearings in the other orchestras of America and Europe. Mr. Chadwick is also without question the best equipped and experienced of our native conductors, having been for many years the director of the Springfield and Worcester festivals.
Besides his orchestral works, Chadwick has shown himself a versatile and prolific composer in a great amount of chamber music, a large number of choral works, a comic opera, many songs, choruses, and piano compositions. Unlike the lyric genius of MacDowell, his talent does not find itself so fitted to the smaller forms and he seems often to slight them with an expression more or less banal in its conventionality. It must be added, however, that there are exceptions to this and one might cite the 'Ballad of Trees and the Master' as being one of Chadwick's best inspirations.
Mr. Arthur Foote has long been acknowledged in Europe as one of the foremost American composers. In his own country his influence has been as widely felt as that of any of his countrymen. Not only by his compositions but by his teaching as well, his name has become pre-eminent. Graduated from Harvard in 1874, he was granted the degree of A. M. in music the following year. His teachers in composition were Stephen A. Emery and Professor John Knowles Paine of Harvard. Furthermore, he studied the piano and the organ with B. J. Lang of Boston. All his training was received in this country, and the results of it may well be a source of pride to his countrymen.
Entering upon his career at a time when the standard of musical performance in this country was low, he was quick to respond to the influence of Theodore Thomas, and later Franz Kneisel, and to exert his efforts in raising the state of performance here toward its present equality with that of Europe. He was no less quick to study and to appreciate the great works pouring out upon Europe at that time. He has always kept in closest touch with the development of all branches of music down to the present, and has ever been active in bringing new works before the public.
As a composer he has written in nearly all forms except the opera. Many of his songs have achieved a world-wide fame, such as the 'Irish Folk-song,' 'I'm Wearing Awa' to the Land o' the Leal' and the brilliant Bedouin song for chorus of men's voices. These songs should not be taken as the complete expression of his genius, but should lead to the study of his other songs, more than a hundred in all, which are not less inspired because more difficult. A keen insight into the possibilities of the voice, a touch of lyric genius, and an unfailing ingenuity in accompaniments are their distinguishing characteristics.
In the treatment of string instruments Foote has been remarkably successful. Two trios, two quartets and a very fine piano quintet in A minor are conspicuous in the list of American music. The quintet has been and still is distinguished by many performances. Through the strings he approached the orchestra. A serenade in E for string orchestra has been frequently heard. Two suites for full orchestra, one in D minor and one in E, and a symphonic prologue, Francesca da Rimini, have proved his skill in combining instruments. Very recently he has written a series of pieces suggested by the Rubaîyat of Omar Khayyâm, which are far more brilliantly scored and are quite in keeping with the modern spirit of splendid tone color.
As organist for many years at the First Unitarian Church in Boston he acquired that intimate familiarity with the possibilities of the organ which shows in the many pieces he has written for it. But particularly as a pianist he won a wide fame, and the more than ten series of pianoforte pieces are written with an appreciation of pianistic effect which distinguishes them in the main from nearly all other pianoforte music produced in this country. Nor should the skill he has shown in editing the pianoforte works of many of the great masters pass unnoticed.
Of his compositions as a whole it may be said that they are astonishingly original in an age which has found it all but impossible to escape imitation. He is, like most of the great composers, largely self-taught, and yet there is scarcely a trace of mannerisms; nor what is even more remarkable, of the mannerisms of others. His music is the pure and perfectly formed expression of a nature at once refined and imaginative. In these days of startling innovations, the sincerity of which may not be unhesitatingly trusted, it sounds none the less spirited because it is unquestionably genuine and relatively simple. It stands forth as a substantial proof that delicate poetry and clear-cut workmanship have not yet failed to charm.
Although he has lived at New Haven for the past twenty years, during which time he has been professor of music at Yale, Horatio Parker's career is in a large measure identified with Boston and its circles. Parker was born (1863) at Auburndale, a suburb of Boston, and his earliest teachers were Stephen Emery and Chadwick. After his preliminary studies with these men Parker studied with Rheinberger in Munich. Returning home in 1885, he soon began to attract notice by the excellence of his compositions and to-day he stands as one of the commanding figures in American music. His compositions have won a dignified place for themselves and his conscientious labors at Yale have created a music department that far excels those of the other American universities in the practical advantages which it offers to the serious music student.
The list of Parker's works is long and varied. It contains, besides his two most famous works (the oratorio Hora Novissima and the opera 'Mona'), several orchestral scores, among others an overture (in E flat), a symphony, and 'A Northern Ballad.' There are also several shorter choral works, a few chamber music works, including a string quartet, a string quintet, and a suite for piano, violin and 'cello, besides many songs and piano pieces.
The same qualities of Parker's art which contribute to the success of Hora Novissima, the first work to bring him fame, are those which operate against the success of his latest and largest effort, the opera 'Mona.' The former offered to the composer the most suitable field for his scholarly but somewhat ascetic conceptions and by this same self-contained and poised loftiness of style, together with a rare skill in handling vocal masses in contrapuntal design, does he achieve in Hora Novissima a work of genuine strength and a valuable addition to the list of modern oratorios. The work, written in 1893 for the Church Choral Society of New York, received its first performance by that body. Performances by several other choral societies and at several musical festivals in America rapidly followed, and in 1899 it had the honor of being the first American work to appear upon the program of the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester, England, at which performance the composer conducted. Since that time it has assumed its place among the standard choral works of our day.
Parker's opera, 'Mona,' was awarded the prize offered by the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1911 in a contest of American composers. Its score reveals an enormous advance in the composer's mastery of resource, both as regards dramatic expression and orchestral color. There are an admirable freedom of line and sustained polyphonic interest, while the skill with which the orchestral color is distributed exhibits Parker's strongest feature. In spite of these merits the almost unanimous opinion of the music critics must be admitted, in a degree, as just. The opera, upon its production at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in 1911-12, was found to be lacking in a really convincing musical grip, due to the absence of an underlying emotional warmth and to the essentially unmelodic treatment of the solo voices. The choruses and mass effects proved the best features of the opera, again showing that Mr. Parker's first successes were in a field more suited to his talents than the domain of dramatic music. Another opera, 'Fairyland,' won another prize of ten thousand dollars in 1915.
Mrs. H. H. A. Beach stands quite in a class by herself as the only American woman who has essayed compositions in the larger form. Her success entitles her to a prominent place among the most serious of American composers. Her 'Gaelic Symphony' and her sonata for violin and piano are two long successful works, while recently she has had a most cordial and flattering reception in Europe for her piano concerto in which she herself played the solo part. Besides these works Mrs. Beach has written a Jubilate for chorus with orchestra, and a quantity of piano music and songs, of which some of the latter have achieved a wide popularity.
Mrs. Beach at her best writes in a broad and bold vein with a pulsing rhythmical sense, a natural melodic line, and she exhibits an extraordinary strength in the sustained and impassioned quality of her climaxes. On the other side, Mrs. Beach may be accused of having a harmonic sense rather too persistently conventional and in her less inspired moments her fault is that which Mr. Hughes[87] has pointed out, namely, a tendency to over-elaboration.
There are several other composers whose labors are identified with the musical life of Boston, although in some instances they have not been continuously resident there. Louis Adolphe Coerne received his early training at Harvard under Prof. Paine and was later awarded a doctor's degree in philosophy by the same university for his excellent book 'The Development of the Modern Orchestra.' Coerne's achievement in composition has been considerable; he is the author of two operas, one of which has been successfully performed in Germany. Other works include a symphonic poem on 'Hiawatha' and a ballet, 'Evadne.'
James C. D. Parker is one of the names associated with the older days of Boston's musical growth, for Mr. Parker graduated from Harvard in 1848 and his 'Redemption Hymn' was performed by the Handel and Haydn Society in 1877. He is best known by several melodious songs and by his church music.
George Whiting and George W. Marston are names which perhaps belong more properly in the list of church composers, as they were both closely identified with that field. The former, however, has written several works of large dimension, notably a cantata, 'The Golden Legend,' which has been much praised, while Mr. Marston's name is known outside of church circles by a surprisingly long list of songs, which, though slight in construction, are not without imaginative qualities.
Although not attaining to such a mastery of the more amplified forms as does Mrs. Beach, Margaret Ruthven Lang has made several successful essays in the form of orchestral overtures, which have been played. Miss Lang's best-known works, however, are her songs, the widespread popularity of certain ones of which has given her a real and lasting fame as a song writer.