III
In the modification of the romantic through the influence of the ultra-modern school, the musical development of Campbell-Tipton presents a circumstance which is typical of the experience of many American composers whose formative period coincides with the present transitional epoch. The style of the composer's earlier work rested upon a broad Germanic basis, modern, yet scarcely having passed from the modernity of Liszt to that of Strauss. His work in the earlier vein is vigorous, structurally firm, definite in its melodic contours, and warm in its harmonic color. Force of personality asserts itself, even if the means employed are not highly individualized and lean overheavily upon tradition. To this period belong 'Ten Piano Compositions' (opus 1); 'Romanza Appassionata' (opus 2), for violin and piano; 'Tone Poems' (opus 3), for voice and piano; two 'Legends,' and other works, especially songs. The culminating expression of this period is the 'Sonata Heroic,' for piano, a work of solidity and brilliance, in one broadly conceived movement. It is quasi-programmatical and is founded upon two themes, representing the 'Hero' and the 'Ideal,' the latter in particular being a melody of much warmth and beauty. These are variously interwoven in the development section, and lead to a return upon the second theme and a climax upon the heroic theme. The work has had various public performances in America and Europe. 'Four Sea Lyrics,' for tenor with piano accompaniment, on poems by Arthur Symons, belong, broadly speaking, to the period of the sonata. They are works of distinguished character, 'The Crying of Water' being especially poignant in its expressiveness. The somewhat elaborately worked out 'Suite Pastorale' (opus 27), for violin and piano, and 'Two Preludes' (opus 26), mark no particular departure in style, except that the second of the latter is so modern as to have no bar divisions.
With the 'Nocturnale' and 'Matinale' (opus 28), especially the former, comes a marked departure toward impressionism and ultra-modern harmonic effect, with a gain in color and a corresponding loss in structural quality. The 'Four Seasons' (opus 29), symbolizing four seasons of human life, bear out the tendency toward impressionism and harmonic emancipation, and at the same time seek a greater substantiality of design and treatment. There is an 'Octave Étude' (opus 30), for piano, and a 'Lament' (opus 33), for violin and piano. Among other songs are 'A Spirit Flower,' 'Three Shadows,' 'A Fool's Soliloquy,' 'The Opium Smoker,' and 'Invocation.' An opera is in process of completion. Campbell-Tipton was born in Chicago, in 1877, and lives at present in Paris.
Arthur Nevin would be deemed an out-and-out romanticist were it not that the authorship of so significant a work as an Indian opera, drawing freely upon Indian songs for thematic material, places him in the ranks of those who have proved the existence of available sources of aboriginal folk-music in America. Nevin is not, however, a nationalist, avowed or otherwise, but with the freedom and experimental eclecticism which has come to be so general a characteristic with American composers, he is ready to draw upon any promising new source of musical suggestion or inspiration. The opera in question, 'Poia,' text by Randolph Hartley, is based upon a sun legend of the Blackfeet Indians of Montana, with whom the composer spent the summers of 1903 and 1904 collecting material. 'Poia' was produced at the Royal Opera, Berlin, Dr. Karl Muck conducting, on April 23, 1910, under stormy circumstances, due to the violent opposition of an anti-American element in the audience. The composer was, nevertheless, many times recalled at the close. The orchestral score is elaborate and modern in instrumental treatment. While Nevin acknowledges Wagner as the chief formative influence upon his musical character, the music of 'Poia' presents little or nothing in the way of obvious Wagnerisms. It is freely lyrical, often very melodious, and, where not boldly characterized by Indian themes, is built on modern German lines. A second opera, 'Twilight,' in one act, has not been performed.
'The Djinns,' a cantata on the metrical fancy of the same name by Victor Hugo, won, with the a cappella chorus, 'The Fringed Gentian' (Bryant), the divided first prize of the Mendelssohn Club of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1912. The cantata is composed for mixed chorus accompanied by two pianos. The composer has chosen not to follow in his musical rhythms the metrical caprice of the poet, but to employ the words freely in a piece of modern musical tone-painting, following the single emotional crescendo and decrescendo of which the poem consists. The work is thoroughly representative of the restless energy of Nevin's muse and contains examples of the sustained lyricism and melodic and rhythmic charm which characterize much of his music. The miniature orchestral suite, 'Love Dreams,' had its first performance, under the composer's direction, at the Peterboro Festival in 1914. Other works of the composer are a pianoforte suite, 'Edgeworth Hills,' 'Two Impromptus' for piano, two mixed choruses on poems by Longfellow, 'At Daybreak' and 'Chrysoar,' and many songs of much charm, including a very direct and sincere piece of expression, 'Love of a Day,' the well-known 'Egyptian Boat Song,' and the exquisite 'Indian Lullaby' on a Blackfeet Indian melody. A piano trio in C major and a string quartet in D minor are in manuscript.
Charles Wakefield Cadman, despite his sympathetic and successful entrance—successful, very likely, because sympathetic—into the field of Indian music, can scarcely be justly classed as a downright nationalist. None of the reputed 'nationalist' composers of America, for that matter, will bear strict analysis as such, for in all cases their compositions upon aboriginal or other primitive melodies peculiar to America constitute but one department of their endeavor, and represent but one element of their ideal. Cadman, nevertheless, had he composed nothing beyond the famous Indian song, 'From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water,' would have done enough to prove the most important and valuable contention included in the nationalist creed, which is that aboriginal American folk-songs may be a stimulus to the making of good music of a new sort, and that there is nothing inherent in Indian melodies to repulse popular sympathy. Like other American nationalists, Cadman is at heart an eclectic. The nationalism of Grieg, Tschaikowsky, and Puccini interests him, but not so much as the American freedom of choice.
The song mentioned is one of a set of four which first brought the composer into public notice, in 1907. The others are 'Far Off I Hear a Lover's Flute,' 'The Moon Drops Low,' and 'The White Dawn is Stealing.' In his treatment of these Indian themes he does not accentuate their aboriginal character, but enfolds them naturally in a normally modern harmonic matrix, with very pleasing effect. These songs were followed by 'Sayonara,' a Japanese romance, for one or two voices; 'Three Songs to Odysseus,' with orchestral accompaniment (opus 52); 'Idyls of the South Sea'; and 'Idealized Indian Themes,' for the piano—revealing various phases of the composer's versatility and fertile fancy. A representative recent work is the 'Trio in D Major' (opus 56), for violin, violoncello, and piano, of which the leading characteristics are melodic spontaneity and freshness of musical impulse. Everywhere are buoyancy, directness of expression, motion, but little of thematic involution or harmonic or formal sophistication. It is the trio of a lyrist; from the standpoint of modern chamber music it might be called naïve, but the strength, sincerity and beauty of its melodies claim, and sometimes compel, one's attention. There are strong occasional suggestions of Indian influence, probably unintentional on the composer's part, as there is no evidence revealing this work as one of nationalistic intention. The trio has been widely performed.
Cadman has a completed three-act Indian opera, 'The Land of Misty Water,' libretto by Francis La Flesche and Nelle Richmond Eberhart. Forty-seven actual Indian melodies form its thematic basis. Other works are 'The Vision of Sir Launfal,' a cantata for male voices; 'The Morning of the Year,' a cycle for vocal quartet; and many works in various small forms. Cadman won the second prize in its class in the National Federation of Musical Clubs Prize Competition of 1911 with a song, 'An Indian Nocturne,' and one of the 'Four Indian Songs' was awarded a prize in a Pittsburgh Art Society competition.
The recent sudden appearance of John Alden Carpenter among American composers, with work of singularly well-defined individuality and notable maturity of style, is a phenomenon which calls to mind Minerva springing full-grown from the head of Jove. Except for a sonata for violin and piano, Carpenter's published work consists wholly of songs. The first set, 'Eight Songs for a Medium Voice,' show forth at once the unique personality of the composer. It is Carpenter's distinction, in a sense, to have begun where others have left off. He is a personality of the new musical time with its new and transformed outlook upon the art. The margin of advance gained by the most recent developments of modernity, more especially from the French standpoint, becomes his main territory, while it would be well-nigh impossible, from his work, to suspect that the old ground of tradition and formula had ever existed. Far from his modernity meaning complexity, it is attained generally by means of a veritably startling simplicity. It is the principles of modernity which interest him, and he seeks the simplest means of their exemplification. Above all, he takes high rank in the sensitive perception of beauty. These characteristics are all manifest in the 'Eight Songs' which comprise the richly beautiful 'The Green River' (Lord Douglas), a limpid setting of Stevenson's 'Looking-Glass River,' a setting of the Blake 'Cradle Song' which combines science and poetry in a remarkable degree in view of the simplicity of treatment, the somewhat overweighted 'Little Fly' (Blake), the lusty Dorsetshire dialect song, 'Dont Ceäre' (Barnes), a crisp interpretation of Stevenson's 'The Cock Shall Crow,' and characteristic settings of Waller's 'Go, Lovely Rose' and Herrick's 'Bid Me to Live.' Of four highly modernized and colorful Verlaine songs, Le Ciel and 'Il Pleure dans mon Cœur,' attain the most modern scheme of musical thought with astonishingly simple means; the Chanson d'Automne is sympathetically set, and 'Dansons la Gigue' is sufficiently sardonic. 'Four Songs for a Medium Voice' contain the mysterious tone-painting 'Fog Wraiths' (Mildred Howells), 'To One Unknown' (Helen Dudley), and two poems by Wilde, Les Silhouettes and 'Her Voice.'
In the somewhat elaborate settings of poems from Tagore's 'Gitanjali' Carpenter wrestles with the problem of setting prose poetry to music, often with felicitous effect and yet not always convincingly, despite the intrinsic beauty of his musical ideas. The violin sonata in its themes, its strikingly individual harmonic intuitions, and its structure generally, is of great beauty and interest. The composer was born in Illinois in 1876, graduated at Harvard and studied music with Bernard Ziehn and Sir Edward Edgar. In 1897 he entered the business established by his father in Chicago and has since directed it.
An American ultra-modernist of extensive attainments, but whose work has as yet come very little into public attention, is T. Carl Whitmer. In an age when sensationalism and sensuousness have predominated in the taste of the musical world it is not surprising to find but slight public progress being made by a composer whose whole tendency is in the direction of a highly clarified spirituality, as is the case with this composer. Whitmer has a spiritual kinship with that small group of composers (Arthur Shepherd in America, Hans Pfitzner in Germany, and d'Indy in France may be included in it) who, however different they may be in musical individuality, unite in banishing utterly from music not only the vulgar but also even the more distinguished aspects of the sensuously sweet, which chiefly and most quickly (except for the rhythmic element) recommends music to the multitude the world over. Whitmer's music is psychologically subtle and spiritually rarefied; in color it corresponds to the violet end of the spectrum. It shuns realistic and elemental qualities and seeks an ethereal expression which gives it not infrequently a sense of over-earthliness. Its salient characteristics are well represented in a soprano song, 'The Fog Maiden,' an achievement of extraordinary originality and distinction of mood. Among the composer's many other songs are the scintillating and crisp 'My Lord Comes Riding,' the poignantly expressive 'Song from the Gardener's Lodge,' the sanely ultra-modern 'Just To-night,' 'Song from Pippa Passes,' 'My Star,' 'Ah! Love, but a Day,' 'Cloud and Wind,' 'Nausicaa,' 'Willowwood,' 'Ballad of Trees and the Master,' 'I Will Twine the Violet,' 'Christmas Carol,' and 'Our Birth Is but a Sleep.' Whitmer's manuscripts include no less surprising an offering than six 'Mysteries,' or spiritual music-dramas, 'The Creation,' 'The Covenant,' 'The Nativity,' 'The Temptation,' 'Mary Magdalene,' and 'The Passion,' upon which works the composer has published a little essay entitled 'Concerning a National Spiritual Drama.' For chorus with orchestra is an 'Elegiac Rhapsody,' and for orchestra alone a set of 'Miniatures,' originally for piano, of which 'Sunrise' is the most important. There are an 'Athenian' sonata for violin and piano, various organ works, anthems, and women's choruses, and a number of 'Symbolisms'—readings of original texts with piano accompaniment.