The art of music, Vol. 04 (of 14)

by Unknown

VIII

While the American people have shown themselves opposed to the conduct or subsidization of music by the national government, as this has been often proposed in plans for a national conservatory, we have seen, in the case of Wisconsin, that this does not apply to the state governments, at least in respect to the feature of popular education in music. Still less does it apply to the conduct of music by the municipal government. For many years the 'city fathers' of most American municipalities have provided band concerts in the public parks during the summer season. The programs of these concerts, however, until quite recently, were planned with little regard to education of the people in appreciation of the best music—the selections being of the so-called 'popular' order, the prevalent opinion of the directors being that the mass of the American people did not enjoy music of a high order.

A few far-seeing men, whose prescience was based on long and intimate acquaintance with the musical taste of every class in the community, had a confident faith that if selections of the best music were placed on the programs of the park concerts the public would become rapidly educated to prefer them to the other selections. This was done, and the result showed that the proposers of the innovation had been, if anything, too reserved in their prophecy. From the very beginning the new selections met with favor. Music lovers, many attending for the first time, crowded into the parks to hear the concerts and, by their intense interest during the performance and enthusiastic hand-clapping at its close, they not only silenced opposition, but even converted it into approval.

Said Arthur Farwell, supervisor of municipal music in New York from 1910 to 1913, in 'The Craftsmen' (Nov., 1910): 'The little comedy of resistance to classical music on the part of the average American man ends when he finds himself one of fifteen thousand similar persons—as happened repeatedly in New York this summer—listening in perfect silence to the great musical imaginings of the age by that most wonderful of instruments, the modern orchestra in the hands of a capable leader.'

New York is the acknowledged leader of American cities, and in many respects is their model in this development of municipal music from the most defective of instrumentalities for educating the people in musical appreciation into possibly its most effective one. Accordingly the story of the regeneration wrought in this municipality will indicate better than any other account the movement in the same direction all over the country. And for purposes of record it is well to quote Mr. Farwell, who in his official position was mainly responsible for the revolution:

'Municipal music in New York falls within the province of two departments, the Department of Parks and the Department of Docks and Ferries. It has been customary in the past to have frequent band and orchestral concerts at the Mall in Central Park with organizations of some size, and to have weekly concerts by smaller bands of twenty-one men and a leader in a number of the other parks. It has also been customary to have concerts nightly on all of the nine recreation piers on the North and East Rivers.

'Without describing the status of most of the music in the past, it may at least be said that the administrations supporting it let the work out to many independent band leaders, without requiring the upholding of musical standards, or having the means to uphold them, and without even suggesting such standards.

'The task of the new department heads, Charles B. Stover, Commissioner of the Department of Parks, and Calvin Tomkins, Commissioner of the Department of Docks and Ferries,[59] was therefore to place the work of providing municipal music upon a basis admitting of musical standards, and thus to make possible the systematic carrying out of new and progressive ideas.

'In the Park Department, Commissioner Stover's first act in extending the scope and influence of the municipal music was to increase the number of music centres. Most important of all, he increased the number of symphony orchestras to two, and opened a new music centre for orchestral music at McGowan's Pass in the upper end of the park, where there is a natural amphitheatre. The crowds from the upper East Side that frequent this portion of the park are made up of persons who for the most part have never heard a symphony orchestra. It is an interesting fact that at the first concert given them there was much curiosity, but little real response, up to the performance of a movement from a Beethoven symphony, which brought forth prolonged and enthusiastic applause until an encore number was played. The concerts at McGowan's Pass have grown steadily and rapidly in popularity, eager audiences of from four to six thousand, or more, assembling at every performance....

'One other feature of fundamental importance in any truly national development, a feature wholly new, has marked the season's concerts in Central Park. This is the establishment by Commissioner Stover of a rule that each of the two orchestras shall perform one new or little-heard composition by an American composer each week. This is a step of the utmost moment, not so much in the mere gaining of a hearing for the works now performed, as in the recognition of the composers of our own land as a factor in the creation of America's dawning musical democracy.

'On the recreation piers the band concerts provided by the Dock Department have been enjoyed by many thousands. An innovation there has been to classify the program, and give the concerts distinctive character on different evenings—an Italian Opera Night, American Night, Wagner Night, Folk Songs and Dances, German-Slavonic Night, etc....

'In these activities of only a single summer, it will be seen what a vista of possibilities has been revealed. If these developments have any meaning whatsoever, they have a meaning of the deepest sort for every American city and village. The magnitude of New York's operations is not the most important point. We are most deeply concerned with the spirit of these progressive activities, a spirit which may find its appropriate expression wherever there exists a community, large or small, which senses the upward trend of American humanity and democracy.'

M. M. M.

FOOTNOTES:

[56] It is reproduced in 'The Musician,' Vol. X, p. 484.

[57] This society must not be confounded with one of the same name founded in 1858 at St. Louis by Edward Sobolewsky, the opera composer, for the purpose of producing the best choruses.

[58] During the Civil War Root was a missionary of patriotism as well as of music, his 'Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching' and 'The Battle-cry of Freedom' contributing greatly to the martial spirit of the North. Cf. Chap. XI.

[59] Members of the so-called 'reform' administration of Mayor William J. Gaynor, which came into power January 1, 1910.

CHAPTER XI
THE FOLK ELEMENT IN AMERICAN MUSIC

Nationalism in music—Sources of American folk-song; classification of folk-songs—General characteristics of the negro folk-song—The negro folk-song and its makers—Other American folk-songs—The negro minstrel tunes; Stephen Collins Foster, etc.—Patriotic and national songs.

We have been frequently obliged to indicate, in the course of our 'Narrative History of Music,' that certain known facts about musical beginnings were not first facts—that there were premises upon which these facts were based—beyond the ken of the historian. Thus we discovered that some time in the early centuries of our era a type of chant known as plain-song was systematized by musicians, but we were unable to reveal the actual source of that music; later we came upon a more or less artistic expression in the form of troubadour songs, and again found their actual source shrouded in mystery—or tradition—and so forth. We were consequently forced to the conclusion that, as practice precedes theory, something else precedes artistic music, which is its source and real beginning. That something is the elementary expression of the race—or folk-song. Art music is rooted in folk-song as surely as the tree is rooted in the soil.

Folk-song is the musical expression of the racial genius. Art music is the individual expression of the same genius, plus the personal character of the artist. However distinctive or individual his expression, no composer has been able to divorce himself from the racial genius of which he is a part, any more than a poet of a nation has been able to rise above the national idiom. 'A creative artist,' says Mr. Henry F. Gilbert,[60] 'is like a noble tree. However tall the tree may grow, pointing ever heavenward, it still has its roots in the soil below and draws its sustenance therefrom. So with the great creative artist: however elevated and universal his utterances become, the roots of his being are so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the race of which he is a part, that the influence and color of this race spirit will be apparent in his greatest works.'

It follows, then, that a composition, if it is to be great, will be recognizable not only as the work of a man, but also as the product of a race. This may sound radical in the abstract, but the fact is easily demonstrated by concrete examples. To quote from the same source: 'When we survey with our mind's eye the bulk of German music and contrast it with the bulk of French music or Italian music we immediately perceive that there is a fundamental difference between them. Never mind whether we can define it or not, there the difference is, and I believe that most of us recognize it without any trouble. At bottom this difference is because of the difference in race. Inasmuch as the Italian composer in his music unconsciously expresses the peculiar temper and character of the people among whom he has been born and of whom he is a spiritual as well as a physical fragment, so the German composer expresses, likewise unconsciously, the quite different temper and character of the people from whom he sprang.... How can any one fail to recognize these national, or, say, racial characteristics? But there is a school of critics which maintains that the greatest music strikes the universal note, and is free from the taint of nationalism. If this were so we might expect to find the greatest music of Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Finland, or any other country to be very similar in its appeal and effect. We should find all this great music to be lacking in special racial character and to be expressive only of those characteristics which are common to all the different peoples. If this were true it would, of course, be possible to conceive of any great piece of music having been written by any person regardless of his nationality. But can you do it? Can you, for instance, conceive of Beethoven's symphonies being the normal expression of an Italian? Or of 'Tristan' having been written by an Englishman? Can you imagine the 'Pathétique' Symphony of Tschaikowsky having been written by a Frenchman, or Verdi's 'Otello' composed by a Norwegian? No; the trail of nationality is over them all.... I believe that the greatest creative artists have ever been national in the deepest sense of the word. They have been the mouthpieces of a people, and, while in their works they unrolled new and hitherto unknown visions of beauty, their masterpieces have always been an expression and extension of the race consciousness rather than a contradiction and denial of it.'

If we accept this dictum, it will be quite rational, in treating the music of any nation, to begin at the bottom—by defining the sources and general character of its folk-song. We should have no difficulty in doing this in the case of France, Germany, or, say, Spain, which are more or less racially simple, but not so when we take a country like Austria, for instance, which is the home of at least three different racial stocks. Each of these has a well-developed music of its own, which has a well-defined racial complexion quite distinct from that of the others. Now America is precisely in this position, but in a very much higher degree. We have not three, but thirty or more different racial stocks, and of these perhaps six or seven are of sufficient strength and sufficient permanence to have become definitely associated with the American soil. Only in a limited sense, however, are these race settlements 'localized,' as they are in Austria, and therefore capable of retaining in any degree their characteristics and traditions. America's position is, in fact, unique in that it fuses all these apparently antagonistic elements, thus obliterating in a large measure their own racial peculiarities and, by the addition of a new, a neutralizing element, substituting a new product. That product is still in the making, and the neutralizing element is so intangible as to defy definite description. Indefinitely it is the spirit born of the sense of liberty of action, opportunity and optimistic endeavor which colors the character of every settler or immigrant, irrespective of his extraction.

In contemplating the chaotic state of our 'national' music and in realizing that its ultimate character is in its formative stage, we are too apt to forget that it too has its folk-song antecedents, however heterogeneous they may be. We are not here concerned with the ultimate product, but with its ingredients. If these are partly English, Irish, Scotch, German, French, and Spanish, they are nevertheless legitimate, though these foreign ingredients may be dismissed with a mere mention in so far as they have suffered no peculiar transformation upon American soil; those that have suffered transformation, like those that are indigenous, must receive attention because they have become legitimate material for our composers to draw upon in order to identify their art with their country. In spite of the peculiar position of America with regard to artistic individuality, then, we may be justified in treating the story of American creative musical art in the usual manner—beginning with folk-song.