Converse' ancestry is American as far back as 1630. Converse was born at Warren, Mass., October 7, 1832. After being well grounded in English and the classics, he went, in 1855, to Germany. Here he studied law and philosophy, and music at the Conservatorium in Leipzig. He enjoyed the instruction of Richter, Hauptmann, Plaidy, and Haupt, and made the acquaintance of Liszt and Spohr. Spohr was especially interested in, and influential in, his work, and confident of its success.
Returning to America, he graduated from the Law Department of Albany University in 1860, with the degree of LL.B. The B has since been dignified into a D, as a tribute to his unusual accomplishments. Converse declined the honor of a Doctorship of Music from the University of Cambridge, offered him by its professor, the well-known English composer, Sterndale Bennett, in recognition of his mastery of lore as evinced in a five-voiced double fugue that ends his Psalm-Cantata on the 126th Psalm.
This scholarly work was performed under the direction of Theodore Thomas in 1888, at Chicago.
A widely known contribution to religious music is Converse' hymn, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," which has been printed, so they say, in all the tongues of Christendom, and sold to the extent of fifty millions of copies. This tune occupied a warm place in my Sunday-schoolboy heart, along with other singable airs of the Moody and Sankey type, but as I hum it over in memory now, it tastes sweetish and thin. Its popularity is appalling, musically at least. Converse has written many other hymn-tunes, which have taken their place among ecclesiastical soporifics. Besides, he has recently compiled a collection of the world's best hymns into the "Standard Hymnal." In this field Converse, though conventional,—and conventionality may be considered inevitable here,—is mellow of harmony and sincere in sentiment.
Numberless attempts are made to supply our uncomfortable lack of a distinctly national air, but few of them have that first requisite, a fiery catchiness, and most of them have been so bombastic as to pall even upon palates that can endure Fourth of July glorification. Recognizing that the trouble with "America" was not at all due to the noble words written by the man whom "fate tried to conceal by naming him Smith," Converse has written a new air to this poem. Unfortunately, however, his method of varying the much-borrowed original tune is too transparent. He has not discarded the idea at all, or changed the rhythm or the spirit. He has only taken his tune upward where "God Save the Queen" moves down, and bent his melody down where the British soars up. This, I fancy, is the chief reason why his national hymn has gone over to the great majority, and has been conspicuously absent from such public occasions as torchlight parades and ratifications.
Except the work issued under the alias "Karl Redan," or the anagrams, "C.O. Nevers" and "C.E. Revons," his only secular musics that have been put into print are his American Overture, published in Paris, and a book of six songs, published in Germany.
Music is called the universal language, but it has strongly marked dialects, and sometimes a national flavor untranslatable to foreign peoples. So with these six songs, not the words alone are German. They are based on a Teutonic, and they modulate only from Berlin to Braunschweig and around to Leipzig. While the songs repay study, they are rather marked by a pianistic meditation than a strictly lyric emotion. "Aufmunterung zur Freude" is a tame allegretto; "Wehmuth" is better; "Täuschung" is a short elegy of passion and depth; "Ruhe in der Geliebten" is best in its middle strain where it is full of rich feeling and harmony. The ending is cheap. "Der gefangene Sänger" is only a slight variant at first on the "Adieu" credited to Schubert; it is thereafter excellent.
Converse has a large body of music in manuscript, none of which I had the pleasure of examining save a tender sacred lullaby. There are two symphonies, ten suites, and concert overture, three symphonic poems, an oratorio, "The Captivity," six string quartettes, and a mass of psalmodic and other vocal writing.
Of these works three have been produced with marked success: the "Christmas Overture," at one of the public concerts of the Manuscript Society, under the direction of Walter Damrosch; the overture "Im Frühling," at concerts in Brooklyn and New York, under the baton of Theodore Thomas; and the American overture, "Hail Columbia!" at the Boston Peace Jubilee under Patrick Gilmore, at the Columbian Exposition under Thomas, and in New York under Anton Seidl.
This last overture received the distinction of publication at Paris, by Schott et Cie. It is built on the rousing air of "Hail, Columbia!" This is suggested in the slow minor introduction; the air itself is indicated thematically as one of the subjects later appearing in full swing in a coda. The instrumentation is brilliant and the climax overwhelming.