This provoked from that conservative of conservatives, the music copyist, a patronizing annotation, "Quinten!" to which Gleason added "Gewiss!" A series of augmented triads, smoothly manipulated, was another curiosity of the score.
Possibly Gleason's happiest work is his exquisite music for that most exquisite of American poems, "The Culprit Fay." It is described in detail in Upton's "Standard Cantatas," and liberally quoted from in Goodrich' "Musical Analysis." While I have seen both the piano and orchestral scores of this work (op. 15), and have seen much beauty in them, my space compels me to refer the curious reader to either of these most recommendable books.
Gleason has had an unusual schooling. He was born in Middletown, Conn., in 1848. His parents were musical, and when at sixteen he wrote a small matter of two oratorios without previous instruction, they put him to study under Dudley Buck. From his tuition he graduated to Germany, and to such teachers as Moscheles, Richter, Plaidy, Lobe, Raif, Taussig, and Weitzmann. He studied in England after that, and returned again to Germany. When he reappeared in America he remained a while at Hartford, Conn., whence he went to Chicago in 1876. He has lived there since, working at teaching and composition, and acting as musical critic of the Chicago Tribune. An unusually gifted body of critics, dramatic, musical, and literary, has worked upon the Chicago newspapers, and Gleason has been prominent among them.
Among other important compositions of his are a symphonic cantata, "The Auditorium Festival Ode," sung at the dedication of the Chicago Auditorium by a chorus of five hundred; sketches for orchestra, a piano concerto, organ music, and songs.
As is shown by the two or three vocal works of his that I have seen, Gleason is less successful as a melodist than as a harmonist. But in this latter capacity he is gifted indeed, and is peculiarly fitted to furnish forth with music Ebling's "Lobgesang auf die Harmonie." In his setting of this poem he has used a soprano and a barytone solo with male chorus and orchestra. The harmonic structure throughout is superb in all the various virtues ascribed to harmony. The ending is magnificent.
A work completed December, 1899, for production by the Thomas Orchestra, is a symphonic poem called "The Song of Life," with this motto from Swinburne:
"They have the night, who had, like us, the day;
We whom the day binds shall have night as they;
We, from the fetters of the light unbound,
Healed of our wound of living, shall sleep sound."
The first prominent musician to give a certain portion of his program regularly to the American composer, was William H. Sherwood. This recognition from so distinguished a performer could not but interest many who had previously turned a deaf ear to all the musical efforts of the Eagle. In addition to playing their piano works, he has transcribed numerous of their orchestral works to the piano, and played them. In short, he has been so indefatigable a laborer for the cause of other American composers, that he has found little time to write his own ideas.
