Paine's strong point is his climaxes, which are never timid, and are often positively titanic, thrilling. The climax of this chorus is notably superb, and the voices hold for two measures after the orchestra finishes. The power of this effect can be easily imagined. This work is marked, to an unusual extent, with a sensuousness of color.
The year eighteen hundred eighty-one saw the first production of what is generally considered Paine's most important composition, and by some called the best work by an American,—his setting of the choruses of the "Œdipus Tyrannus" of Sophokles. It was written for the presentation by Harvard University, and has been sung, in whole or in part, very frequently since. This masterpiece of Grecian genius is so mighty in conception and so mighty in execution that it has not lost power at all in the long centuries since it first thrilled the Greeks. To realize its possibilities musically is to give proof enough of the very highest order of genius,—a genius akin to that of Sophokles. It may be said that in general Paine has completely fulfilled his opportunities.
Mendelssohn also set two Greek tragedies to music, Sophokles' "Œdipus in Kolonos" and his "Antigone." Mendelssohn is reported to have made a first attempt at writing Grecian music, or what we suppose it to be, mainly a matter of unison and meagre instrumentation. He was soon dissuaded from such a step, however, and wisely. The Greek tragedians, really writers of grand opera, made undoubted use of the best musical implements and knowledge they had. Creative emotion has its prosperity in the minds of its audience, not in the accuracy of its mechanism. To secure the effect on us that the Greek tragedians produced on contemporary audiences, it is necessary that our music be a sublimation along the lines we are accustomed to, as theirs was along lines familiar to them and effective with them. Otherwise, instead of being moved by the miseries of Œdipus, we should be chiefly occupied with amusement at the oddity of the music, and soon bored unendurably by its monotony and thinness.
Mendelssohn decided then to use unison frequently for suggestion's sake, but not to carry it to a fault. His experiments along these lines have been of evident advantage to Paine, who has, however, kept strictly to his own individuality, and produced a work that, at its highest, reaches a higher plane, in my opinion, than anything in Mendelssohn's noble tragedies,—and I am not, at that, one of those that affect to look down upon the achievements of the genius that built "Elijah."
Paine's prelude is an immense piece of work, in every way larger and more elaborate than that to Mendelssohn's "Antigone" (the "Œdipus in Kolonos" begins strongly with only one period of thirteen measures). The opening chorus of Paine's "Œdipus" is the weakest thing in the work. The second strophe has a few good moments, but soon falls back into what is impudent enough to be actually catchy!—and that, too, of a Lowell Mason, Moody and Sankey catchiness. Curiously enough, Mendelssohn's "Antigone" begins with a chorus more like a drinking-song than anything else, and the first solo is pure Volkslied; both of them imbued with a Teutonic flavor that could be cut with a knife. In Mendelssohn's "Œdipus in Kolonos," however, the music expresses emotion rather than German emotion, and abounds in splendors of harmony that are strikingly Wagnerian—in advance.
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Copyright, 1895, by Arthur P. Schmidt.