HENRY HOLDEN HUSS.
Many American composers have had their first tuition from their mothers; few from their fathers. Mr. Huss is one of the latter few. The solidity of his musical foundation bespeaks a very correct beginning. He was born in Newark, N.J., June 21, 1862. His first teacher in the theory of music was Otis B. Boise, who has been for the last twenty years a teacher of theory in Berlin, though he was born in this country. Huss went to Munich in 1883 and remained three years. He studied counterpoint under Rheinberger, and won public mention for proficiency. At his second examination his idyl for small orchestra, "In the Forest," was produced; and at his graduation he performed his "Rhapsody" in C major for piano and orchestra. A year after his return to America this work was given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A year later Van der Stucken gave it at the first of his concerts of American compositions. The next year Huss' "Ave Maria," for women's voices, string orchestra, harp, and organ, was given a public hearing. The next year he gave a concert of his own works, and the same year, 1889, Van der Stucken produced his violin romance and polonaise for violin and orchestra at the Paris Exposition.
His piano concerto for piano and orchestra he played first with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1894, and has given it on numerous occasions since.
Other works, most of which have also been published, are: "The Fountain," for women's voices a cappella; a festival "Sanctus," for chorus and orchestra; an "Easter Theme," for chorus, organ, and orchestra; "The Winds," for chorus and orchestra, with soprano and alto solos; a "Festival March," for organ and orchestra; a concerto for violin, and orchestra; a trio for piano, violin, and 'cello; a "Prélude Appassionata," for the piano, dedicated to and played by Miss Adèle aus der Ohe, to whom the concerto is also dedicated.
This concerto, which is in D major, is a good example of the completeness of Huss' armory of resources. The first movement has the martial pomp and hauteur and the Sardanapalian opulence and color that mark a barbaric triumph. Chopin has been the evident model, and the result is always pianistic even at its most riotous point. Huss has ransacked the piano and pillaged almost every imaginable fabric of high color. The great technical difficulties of the work are entirely incidental to the desire for splendor. The result is gorgeous and purple. The andante is hardly less elaborate than the first movement, but in the finale there is some laying off of the impedimenta of the pageant, as if the paraders had put aside the magnificence for a period of more informal festivity. The spirit is that of the scherzo, and the main theme is the catchiest imaginable, the rhythm curious and irresistible, and the entire mood saturnalian. In the coda there is a reminder of the first movement, and the whole thing ends in a blaze of fireworks.
On the occasion of its first performance in Cincinnati, in 1889, Robert I. Carter wrote:
"It is preëminently a symphonic work, in which the piano is used as a voice in the orchestra, and used with consummate skill. The charm of the work lies in its simplicity. The pianist will tell you at once that it is essentially pianistic, a term that is much abused and means little. The traditional cadenza is there, but it is not allowed to step out of the frame, and so perfect is the relation to what precedes and follows, that the average listener might claim that it does not exist. Without wishing to venture upon any odious grounds of comparison, I want to state frankly that it is, to me, emphatically the best American concerto."
Huss is essentially a dramatic and lyric composer, though he seems to be determined to show himself also a thematic composer of the old school. In his trio, which I heard played by the Kaltenborn Quartette, both phases of his activity were seen. There was much odor of the lamp about the greater part of the trio, which seemed generally lacking that necessary capillarity of energy which sometimes saturates with life-sap the most formal and elaborate counterpoint of the pre-romantic strata. The andante of the trio, however, displayed Huss' singularly appealing gift of song. It abounded in emotion, and was—to use the impossible word Keats coined—"yearnful." Huss should write more of this sort of music. We need its rare spontaneity and truth, as we do not need the all too frequent mathematics of those who compose, as Tybalt fought, "by the book."
For the piano there are "Three Bagatelles": an "Étude Melodique," which is rather harmonic than melodic; an "Albumblatt," a graceful movement woven like a Schumann arabesque; and a "Pastoral," in which the gracefulness of the music given to the right hand is annulled by the inexplicable harshness of that given to the left.