Arthur Foote (1853) is one of the few prominent composers whose training bears the label “made in America,” for he never studied abroad. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and worked with Stephen Emery, a prominent theory teacher. Foote was graduated from Harvard in 1874, where he studied music in Professor Paine’s department. After organ study with B. J. Lang, Foote became organist of the First Unitarian Church founded in 1630, which post he filled from 1878 to 1910. This is doubtless the longest record of an organist in one church in America. Foote has been one of America’s finest teachers, and has influenced many, not only by his teaching, but by his broad-minded criticism. His harmony text-book, written with Walter R. Spalding, is among the most valuable and reliable in the musical world.

Foote has written scholarly and beautiful chamber and orchestral music which has placed him in the foremost ranks of American composers, but he has won the hearts of the entire English-speaking world by two little songs, Irish Folk Song and I’m Wearing Awa’.

Horatio Parker

Horatio Parker (1863–1919) inherited his talent from his mother who played the organ in Newton, Massachusetts, but she had a hard time interesting her son in music, for he disliked it very much. But at fourteen he had a change of heart going to the other extreme of having literally to be dragged away from the instrument. He studied with Emery and Chadwick, and then went to Germany to work with Rheinberger. He was organist in several churches and in 1894 was made professor of music at Yale University where he remained until his death.

In 1894, his best known work was performed in Trinity Church, New York. It is an oratorio, Hora Novissima (The Last Hour), on the old Latin poem by Bernard de Morlaix, with English translation by Parker’s mother also the author of the librettos for two other of his oratorios. Hora Novissima, one of America’s most important works, has been performed many times, not only in America, but it was the first American work given at the English Worcester Festival. It was so successful that Dr. Parker received the commission to write for another English festival at Hereford, and he composed A Wanderer’s Psalm. This was followed by The Legend of St. Christopher which contains some of Parker’s most scholarly contrapuntal writing for chorus. As another result of England’s recognition of his music, Cambridge University conferred upon the American composer the honorary degree of Doctor of Music.

Parker became famous for winning the prize of $10,000 offered by the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1911 for the best opera by an American. This was Mona, a story of the Druids in Britain, for which Brian Hooker, the American poet, wrote the libretto. In spite of the work having won the prize, it had no success with the public, and did not outlive its first season.

In 1915 Parker and Hooker won another $10,000 prize offered by the National Federation of Music Clubs, with an opera called Fairyland. It has not seen the light of day since its performances in Los Angeles.

Frederick Converse

Frederick Converse (1871), like many other Boston musicians, was graduated from Harvard (1893), when his Opus I, a violin sonata, was publicly performed. After study with Chadwick, he went to Germany to Rheinberger, returning in 1898, with his first symphony under his arm. He is now living in Boston. Converse has written many orchestral and chamber music works, and has often set Keats, the English poet, or used his writings as inspiration for his music,—Festival of Pan and Endymion’s Narrative, two symphonic poems, and La Belle Dame sans Merci, a ballad for baritone voice and orchestra.

Converse was the first of the present day Americans to have had an opera The Pipe of Desire produced by the Metropolitan Opera Company (1910).