The American Humoresque is based on old Negro minstrel tunes like Zip Coon, Dixie, and Old Folks at Home.
Gilbert was one of the founders of the Wa-Wan Press, established at Newton Center, Massachusetts, by Arthur Farwell. It was organized (1901) by composers in the interest of American compositions, and to study and encourage the use of Indian music. He died in 1928.
Arthur Farwell was born in St. Paul, Minnesota (1872). He attended college in Boston and studied music with Homer Norris (1860–1920), a Boston organist and composer, whose cantata Flight of the Eagle was based on a Walt Whitman poem. Farwell was also a pupil of Humperdinck in Berlin and Guilmant in Paris. The Indian music research, in which he is a pioneer, led him into the West to live among the Redskins and to make phonograph records of hundreds of tunes. He is also interested in community singing and music for the people. Practically a new field is his music for Percy MacKaye’s pageants Caliban and The Evergreen Tree.
Carlos Troyer, a very old Californian who died recently, spent his life collecting Zuni and Mojave-Apache songs, having realized their artistic value long before any one else. In his youth he was an intimate friend of Liszt. He travelled, later, through South American jungles, with his violin and music paper, writing down the tunes he heard, and several times he would have been burned by the savages, but saved himself by playing for them.
Harvey Worthington Loomis contributed a piano version of Omaha Indian melodies to the Wa-Wan Press (1904) called Lyrics of the Redman. In the preface Loomis shows that Indian themes should be used impressionistically, for he says: “If we would picture the music of the wigwam and the war-path we must aim by means of the imagination to create an art work that will project, not by imitation but by suggestion, the impression we have ourselves received in listening to this weird savage symphony in its pastoral entourage (surroundings) which, above all, makes the Indian’s music sweet to him.”
Natalie Curtis’ valuable service to Indian and Negro music was cut off by her tragic death in Paris (1921), from an automobile accident. Fortunately she left several works in which she gave not only information on the music of these primitive Americans and also the Songs and Tales of the Dark Continent of Africa, but in them she set down quite unconsciously the beauty of her character and the sincerity of her purpose. There are four volumes of Negro Folk Songs, and The Indians’ Book, besides the African book. Recently we heard two Spanish-Indian melodies, a Crucifixion Hymn and Blood of Christ, that Miss Curtis found in use in religious festivals near Santa Fe, New Mexico. They are Spanish in character, and are almost unaltered examples of the songs of the Middle Ages brought down to us by the Indian. These were arranged by Percy Grainger according to directions left by Miss Curtis.
Several American operas have been written on Indian legends and it would be difficult to find more picturesque subjects.
Our Light Opera Genius
Victor Herbert’s Natoma, given by the Chicago Opera Company in 1911, is an Indian story and one of his two grand operas. Born in Dublin, Ireland (1854), Herbert was the grandson of the novelist Samuel Lover. He was educated in Germany, and was a fine ’cellist. He came to the Metropolitan Opera orchestra as first ’cellist in 1886, and since then until his death in 1924, he delighted every one with his incomparable melodies in light operas.
After Patrick Gilmore’s death, Herbert in 1893, became bandmaster of the 22nd Regiment band which had become famous in 1869 and 1872 for two monster Peace Jubilees held in Boston. We think the 20th century, the age of gigantic enterprises, but——! for the first Jubilee, Gilmore had a chorus of 10,000 voices, and a band of 1,000! Not satisfied with this volume, in the second Jubilee he doubled the number! He also had cannons fired to increase the drum battery!