A prominent organist and teacher is Smith N. Penfield, who has also found time for the composition of numerous scholarly works, notably, an overture for full orchestra, an orchestral setting of the eighteenth psalm, a string quartette, and many pieces for the organ, voice, and piano. His tuition has been remarkably thorough. Born in Oberlin, Ohio, April 4, 1837, he studied the piano in Germany with Moscheles, Papperitz, and Reinecke, the organ with Richter, composition, counterpoint, and fugue with Reinecke and Hauptmann. He had also a period of study in Paris.
Another organist of distinction is Frank Taft, who is also a conductor and a composer. His most important work is a "Marche Symphonique," which was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was born in East Bloomfield, New York, and had his education entirely in this country, studying the organ with Clarence Eddy, and theory with Frederic Grant Gleason.
A young composer of many graceful songs is Charles Fonteyn Manney, who was born in Brooklyn in 1872, and studied theory with William Arms Fisher in New York, and later with J. Wallace Goodrich at Boston. His most original song is "Orpheus with His Lute," which reproduces the quaint and fascinating gaucheries of the text with singular charm. He has also set various songs of Heine's to music, and a short cantata for Easter, "The Resurrection."
An ability that is strongly individual is that of Arthur Farwell, whose first teacher in theory was Homer A. Norris, and who later studied under Humperdinck in Germany. Among his works are an elaborate ballade for piano and violin, a setting of Shelley's "Indian Serenade," and four folk-songs to words by Johanna Ambrosius, the peasant genius of Germany. Among others of his published songs is "Strow Poppy Buds," a strikingly original composition.
A writer of numerous elegant trifles and of a serious symphony is Harry Patterson Hopkins, who was born in Baltimore, and graduated at the Peabody Institute in 1896, receiving the diploma for distinguished musicianship. The same year he went to Bohemia, and studied with Dvôrák. He returned to America to assist in the production of one of his compositions by Anton Seidl.
Very thorough was the foreign training of Carl V. Lachmund, whose "Japanese Overture" has been produced under the direction of Thomas and Seidl, in the former case at a concert of that society at which many important native works have had their only hearing, the Music Teachers' National Association. Lachmund was born at Booneville, Mo., in 1854. At the age of thirteen he began his tuition at Cologne, under Heller, Jensen, and Seiss; later he went to Berlin to study with the Scharwenkas, Kiel, and Moskowski. He had also four years of Liszt's training at Weimar. A trio for harp, violin, and 'cello was played by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and a concert prelude for the piano was much played in concerts in Germany. Before returning to America, Lachmund was for a time connected with the opera at Cologne.
The Boston Colony.
To the composer potentially a writer of grand operas, but barred out by the absolute lack of opening here, the dramatic ballad should offer an attractive form. Such works as Schubert's "Erl-King" show what can be done. Henry Holden Huss has made some interesting experiments, and Fred. Field Bullard has tried the field.
