Homer Grunn (1880) who taught piano in Phoenix, Arizona, profited by the opportunity to gather Indian tunes, which he has put into songs, a music drama and orchestral works.
Ethelbert Nevin—Poet-Composer
Ethelbert Nevin (1862–1901) told his father that he would not mind being poor all his life if he could just be a musician! And the father, a music lover himself, allowed his sensitive, dream-loving, poetic son to study in America and in Europe. Perhaps “Bert’s” mother had something to do with the decision, for she, too, was sensitive and fine, and so much of a musician that her grand piano was the first to cross the Allegheny mountains into Edgeworth, the town near Pittsburgh where the Nevins were born.
Ethelbert Nevin was a romanticist who found the medium of his expression in short songs and piano pieces. He had a gift of melody surpassed by few and he reached the heart as perhaps no other American except Stephen Foster had done. Narcissus for piano and The Rosary have swept through this country selling in the millions. Mighty Lak’ a Rose, published after his early death, was a close third. Several others of his songs may be ranked among the best that America has produced. Nevin was what Walt Whitman would have called a “Sweet Singer.”
Robin Hood and His Merrie Crew Come to Life in the 19th Century
Reginald de Koven (1859–1920) will ever be remembered for his delightful light opera Robin Hood on which we were brought up. His song, Oh, Promise Me, will probably be sung when he will have been forgotten. De Koven’s last two works were operas, of which Canterbury Tales after Chaucer was performed at the Metropolitan Opera House and Rip Van Winkle from Washington Irving and Percy Mackaye, by the Chicago Opera Company. One of his best songs is a setting of Kipling’s Recessional.
“Pilgrim’s Progress”—An American Oratorio
One of the most respected American composers is Edgar Stillman Kelley, born in Sparta, Wisconsin, in 1857, whose American forefathers date back to 1650. After study in Stuttgart, Kelley went to California, where he was composer, teacher, critic, lecturer, writer and light opera conductor. Later he was professor at Yale, dean of composition at the Cincinnati Conservatory, and since 1910, a fellowship at the Western College at Oxford, Ohio, gives him the leisure and economic freedom to compose. His orchestral works include incidental music to Ben Hur, Aladdin, Chinese suite, a comic opera, Puritania, Alice in Wonderland, two symphonies, Gulliver and New England, incidental music to Prometheus Bound, and an oratorio based on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. If you do not know Kelley’s delightful song, The Lady Picking Mulberries, allow us to introduce the little Chinawoman to you. You will meet at the same time an old acquaintance,—Mr. Pentatonic Scale.
Several of the older school of composers in America, faithful pioneers whose works are rarely heard now were Silas G. Pratt (1846–1916); Frederic Grant Gleason (1848–1903), who lived and worked in Chicago from 1877 to the time of his death; William Wallace Gilchrist (1846–1916), a writer of cantatas and psalms, Episcopal church music, two symphonies, chamber music and songs, who spent most of his life in Philadelphia; Homer N. Bartlett (1846–1920), composer of piano pieces; William Neidlinger (1863–1924), writer of many charming children’s songs.
Frank van der Stucken (1858) who was born in Texas, but lived in Europe from 1866 until 1884, was the first conductor to give an entire program of American orchestral works in America and also at the Paris Exposition of 1889. For years he was conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and he has composed many large orchestral works. He died abroad in 1929.