A composer to whose songs Henry T. Finck in his 'Songs and Song Writers' gives a special place is Clayton Johns, of Boston (born 1857), who was a pupil of Paine and later studied two years at Berlin. Johns' songs number about one hundred. Mr. Finck finds in them a Franz-like quality and attributes their popularity to a simplicity without emptiness. Besides songs, Mr. Johns has written a few choruses and two pieces for string orchestra.
Frederick Field Bullard is another composer who wisely realized the natural limitations of his muse and devoted himself almost exclusively to song writing. His most successful song was his stirring and widely popular 'Stein Song,' which by its frequent use on all sorts of occasions has attached to itself somewhat the importance of a national song. Bullard's larger ambitions found expression in the ballad form, which he chose for a setting of Tennyson's melodrama 'The Sisters.'
W. H. Neidlinger (born in 1863) was a pupil of Dudley Buck. His long list of compositions comprises almost exclusively songs. The instinctive naïveté of Mr. Neidlinger's style has contributed to his success in a number of children's songs.
Of a larger mold and a more intensive beauty is the lyricism of Marcus Carroll, a composer Irish born but whose entire musical life has been spent in, and belongs to, America. Mr. Carroll's works include several short pieces for orchestra. There is an 'Intermezzo' of melodic and colorful beauty which was played by Anton Seidl, while a 'Dance of the Gnomes' and a 'Valse' have been often heard at the 'pop' concerts in Boston. Besides these there is a 'Romance' for 'cello and orchestra and some part-songs of which the charming cycle of songs for women's voices from Stevenson's 'Child's Garden of Verses,' entitled 'A Child's Day,' have been much sung. Mr. Carroll shows himself in these works to be a most gifted melodist. His style is sincere, straightforward, at times conventional, but there are a warmth of feeling and an abundance of color, grace, and vitality which render his work notably successful.
Another foreign-born composer who must be counted in the list of Americans is Edward Manning. Mr. Manning was born in Canada, but came early in life to New York where he studied with MacDowell. The greater part of Mr. Manning's compositions are songs, although there has lately come from his pen a trio for strings and piano which must take rank with the very best of American chamber music. Another larger work of Manning's is an aria, 'The Tryst,' for soprano and orchestra, which has been sung by Louise Homer. Manning has the essential and rare equipment of the real composer, the melodic gift. There is a strong Grieg flavor in his melodies and often in his harmonic treatment of them, but later songs show a tendency to a more advanced modernity.
Frank LaForge follows narrowly the path of the German lied composers. With no decided originalities, Mr. LaForge has written many highly artistic songs which often find place in song recital programs, especially in those of Mme. Gadski.
The name of Charles B. Hawley is one that for many years has figured largely on American singers' programs. Mr. Hawley has a true melodic vein which runs freely through a large number of songs. His harmonic treatment is, on the other hand, of the most conventional and there is nothing in his works to court criticism of an intimate order. Mr. Hawley in these characteristics stands as typical of quite a large group of American song writers. These composers write fluently, melodically, gracefully, and occasionally attain to a commanding lyrical eloquence, but for the greater part their work lacks distinction and flavor. Always too conventional, sometimes to a point of banality, it cannot contribute much to the upbuilding of a serious art in this country. The group thus described contains such writers as Victor Harris, C. W. Coombs, R. Huntington Woodman, Charles Gilbert Spross, James H. Rogers, Bruno Huhn, James W. Metcalfe, Ward Stephens, William G. Hammond, Franklin Riker, Oley Speaks, Jessie Gaynor, and Edna R. Parks.
V
America's contribution to church music has been large and varied. As chamber music seems to serve as the practice field for German composers, so does church music apparently occupy the less aspiring or intense moments of most of our writers. Composers of all classes and leanings have offered their share to the constantly increasing list of anthems and services to be found in the catalogues of our publishers and there seems to be, moreover, a legion whose entire efforts are in this field. As a whole this music may be classified like the music of other departments: a comparatively small percentage of it is good, much is mediocre, while the vast balance is worthless. The meritorious section of this work subdivides itself into several kinds of excellence. We have among our church musicians a certain few who write the sober and so-called ecclesiastical style which the canons of the English schools have laid down as being the fitting adjunct of the church's service, while, again, particularly in America, a large amount of church music is couched in an idiom somewhat more secular in tone, in which a more popular melodic treatment lends so-called 'human interest' to the work. To the more ascetic this form of writing is the bane of church music. Gounod is perhaps the instigator of this practice of importing into the church the profane sensuousness of a more worldly art. Despite a strong note of reactionary protest, he has had many imitators both in England and America, and the 'operatic' anthem has become a standard form. Of these two classes of church music, namely, the essentially sacred and that more secularly tinged, it is the latter that is abused in American church music. Whereas in England the great respect for tradition keeps most of her church composers within the narrow paths of ecclesiastical austerity—where, it must be said, they often become contrapuntally arid or musty—the American anthem writer too often sins on the other side and has a strong tendency to become sentimentally maudlin in accepting as a working rule Voltaire's keen definition of church music as 'the pursuit of sensuous pleasure in the duties of a cult established to combat such a pursuit.'
Many of the composers whose works have been the subject of the foregoing pages have written for the church, and in some cases their church music represents an important phase of their work. We have already spoken of Mr. Buck's importance as a church composer; other earlier composers whose church music was important are G. W. Marston, who wrote many anthems and sacred songs; W. W. Gilchrist, whose list of anthems and church cantatas is a long one; C. C. Converse, who, besides essaying a vast deal of serious music in a larger way, found his best success in several well-known hymns. Richard Henry Warren, Remington R. Fairlamb, and Smith N. Penfield are also names that have figured in the recent decades of ecclesiastical composition.