In this line is opus 21, a group of four pieces called "Echoes of Ye Olden Time." The "Pastorale" is rather Smithian than olden, with its mellow harmony, but the "Minuetto" is the perfection of chivalric foppery and pompous gaiety. The "Gavotte" suggests the contagious good humor of Bach, and the "Minuetto Grazioso," the best of the series, has a touch of the goodly old intervals, tenths and sixths, that taste like a draught of spring water in the midst of our modern liqueurs.
The musical world in convention assembled has covenanted that certain harmonies shall be set apart for pasturage. Just why these arbitrary pastorales should suggest meads and syrinxes, and dancing shepherds, it would be hard to tell. But this effect they certainly have, and a good pastorale is a better antidote for the blues and other civic ills than anything I know, except the actual green and blue of fields and skies. Among the best of the best pastoral music, I should place Smith's "Gavotte Pastorale." It is one of the five pieces in his book of "Romantic Studies" (op. 57).
This same volume contains a "Scherzo alla Tarantella," which is full of reckless wit. But the abandon is so happy as to seem misplaced in a tarantella, that dance whose traditional origin is the maniacal frenzy produced by the bite of the tarantula. An earlier Tarantella (op. 34) is far truer to the meaning of the dance, and fairly raves with shrieking fury and shuddering horror. This is better, to me, than Heller's familiar piece.
The "Second Gavotte" is a noble work, the naïve gaiety of classicism being enriched with many of the great, pealing chords the modern piano is so fertile in. I count it as one of the most spontaneous gavottes of modern times, one that is buoyant with the afflation of the olden days. It carries a musette of which old Father Bach need not have felt ashamed,—one of the most ingenious examples of a drone-bass ever written.
The "Menuet Moderne" is musical champagne. A very neat series of little variations is sheafed together, and called "Mosaics." Mr. Smith has written two pieces well styled "Mazurka Poétique;" the later (opus 48) is the more original, but the sweet geniality and rapturously beautiful ending of opus 38 is purer music. "Les Papillons" is marked with a strange touch of negro color; it is, as it were, an Ethiopiano piece. Its best point is its cadenza. Smith has a great fondness for these brilliant precipitations. They not only give further evidence of his fondness for older schools, but they also partially explain the fondness of concert performers for his works. His fervid "Love Sonnet," his "Polonaise de Concert," full of virility as well as virtuosity, and his delicious "Mill-wheel Song," and a late composition, a brilliant "Papillon," rich as a butterfly's wing, are notable among his numerous works. Possibly his largest achievement is the three concert-transcriptions for two pianos. He has taken pieces by Grieg, Raff, and Bachmann, and enlarged, enforced, decorated, and in every way ennobled them. But to me his most fascinatingly original work is his "[Arabesque]," an entirely unhackneyed and memorable composition.
Smith's experience in teaching has crystallized into several pedagogic works. His "Scale Playing with particular reference to the development of the third, fourth, and fifth fingers of each hand;" his "Eight Measure," "Octave," and "Five Minute" studies, have brought the most unreserved commendation from the most important of our teachers. A late and most happy scheme has been the use of a set of variations for technical and interpretative instruction. For this purpose he wrote his "Thèmes Arabesques," of which numbers one and eighteen not only have emotional and artistic interest, but lie in the fingers in a strangely tickling way.
To Mr. Constantin Sternberg.
Arabesque.
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