To some this arrangement may seem haphazard. Nevertheless it has system and purpose. The usual method followed in books that aim to be musical guides would have been much easier. Mine I believe best adapted to the needs of the average pianolist, who, it may be assumed, at the time he purchases his instrument, knows little or nothing about music of the higher kind; whose taste, in fact, still is to be developed.
I cannot imagine any one so obtuse to musical impressions as not to find Nevin's "Valse Caprice," Op. 6, No. 1, thoroughly delightful. It is the first of a set of several pieces comprised in his sixth work, this fact being expressed by the designation Opus 6, No. 1. The piece is full of pretty sentiment and I always like to imagine that it describes an episode during a dance. It has charming melodies. Ornamental figurations in the accompaniment, now above, now below, give the effect of whispered questions and answers during the dance. The questions—put by the man—are pressing and ardent, the answers—from the girl—playful and parrying. Sometimes they even ripple with chaff. Yet, toward the end of the dainty little composition, they become tinged with sentiment, as if she were afraid she might have gone a little too far and might "spoil things" and thought it just as well to let him know in time that, after all, she was not turning a wholly deaf ear to his pleading.
This piece I would follow with Nevin's "Intermezzo," Op. 7, No. 3. Although it belongs to an entirely different work I enjoy playing it immediately after the waltz and imagining that it relates to the same young couple—that he has led her out into the conservatory or on to a terrace overlooking a moonlight garden and under these romantic circumstances, is urging his suit more persistently than before. She, however, is a little too fond of flirting to let her real sentiments be known at once. But when, as if giving up the riddle in her dancing eyes and seemingly mocking smile, he appears about to lead her back into the ballroom, there is, at least so I like to read the music, a pretty little laugh, as much as to say, "Can't you read my real feelings under my mask of banter," a tender glance indicated by a retard on a charmingly expressive little turn of the melody—and she is in his arms.
Now I would repeat the waltz, to indicate that, carried away by their happiness, they have gone back into the ballroom and thrown themselves heart and soul into the dance. And there you have a little Nevin suite telling a pretty story.
To me one of this composer's most fanciful tone paintings is, "In my Neighbor's Garden," Op. 21, No. 2. This is one of a series of pieces the complete title of which is "May in Tuscany," and which he composed during a sojourn in Florence. You can hear a bird sing all through this piece, and that the composer so intended it, became clear to me when I found that its original title was "Rusignuolo," Italian for nightingale.
Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,
Make haste to wake the nightingale:
Let silence set the world in tune
To harken to that wordless tale
Which warbles from the nightingale.
Those lines from Christina Rosetti's "Bird Raptures," seem to me perfectly reflected in Nevin's composition, and equally so are these lines from the same poet's "Twilight Calm":—
Hark! that's the nightingale,
Telling the self-same tale
Her song told when this ancient earth was young:
So echoes answered when her song was sung
In the first wooded vale.
Or this from Byron's "Parisina":—
It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whisper'd word.