Both in spirit and technique Stillman-Kelley's artistic personality may be seen in microcosmic scope, as it were, in his highly individual song, 'Israfel' to the poem of Edgar Allan Poe. Here are the serene beauty, the highly imaginative harmonic tinting, the touch of the fantastic, the formal amplitude and symmetry, the predominance of phantasy over passion, which characterize all of the composer's work. The companion song, 'Eldorado,' on Poe's poem of that name, is equally typical of the composer's genius, though strongly contrasted with 'Israfel' in subject.
Stillman-Kelley first became known through his intensely characteristic and 'atmospheric' music for 'Macbeth,' dating from early days in San Francisco. This he has in later years revised and cast in the form of an orchestral suite, composing for the play a wholly new overture of momentous proportions. This is a massive and sombre work, dealing with the conflict of conscience and evil ambition, its murky content being relieved only by the introduction of a theme of the joys of Gaelic royalty, which later on assumes a grim aspect, being stated in conjunction with the theme of ambition.
The 'Aladdin' suite has perhaps been less infrequently heard than Stillman-Kelley's other orchestral works. In this work the composer availed himself of certain Chinese themes, of which he made a characteristically thorough study while in San Francisco (and which resulted also in his widely known song 'The Lady Picking Mulberries'). This suite is in the composer's most genial vein and is a tour de force of piquant orchestration. Its movements depict 'The Wedding of Aladdin and the Princess,' 'A Serenade in the Royal Pear Garden,' 'Flight of the Genie with the Palace,' and 'The Return and Feast of the Lanterns.'
Stillman-Kelley's greatest recent offering is his 'New England' symphony, in B minor, produced by the Litchfield County Choral Union, at Norfolk, Conn., June 3, 1913. In it the composer has sought to embody 'something of the experiences, ambitions, and aspirations of our Puritan ancestors.' It was greeted as a work of large importance, needing further hearing for its full appreciation. The composer has completed sketches of a 'Gulliver' symphony and an 'Alice in Wonderland' suite, the subjects of both of which attest his love of the fantastic and call attention to his equal devotion to the element of humor. There is an orchestral score of 'Israfel.'
In chamber music form he has produced a quintet for strings and piano which has had much success on both sides of the Atlantic, and a less well-known string quartet in variation form. There are also a few early songs and piano compositions. Mention should be made of the composer's very successful and famous music for the dramatic presentation of 'Ben Hur,' and the exquisite 'Song of Iras' taken from it.
Born in Wisconsin, Mr. Stillman-Kelley has lived successively in Stuttgart, San Francisco, New York, New Haven (where he occupied the chair of music at Yale University during a year's absence of Horatio Parker), and Berlin. He now (1914) holds a 'composer's fellowship' at Western College, Oxford, Ohio, giving lectures there and at the Cincinnati conservatory. His chief teacher in theory was Seifriz, in Stuttgart.
III
Among the most earnest and advanced leaders of American music stands Arne Oldberg (b. 1874), a musical personality of the highest nobility and idealism, and a consummate master of his art. Unquestionably as fully equipped master of thematic development in the cyclic forms as America has produced, his loftily conceived chamber music and orchestral works present themselves in a spiritual and technical serenity, artistic authenticity and completeness, which baffle the critical beholder. Indeed, it is with the music-makers who wrote before relentless Beethoven forced the skyey goddess down into the world-struggle that Oldberg has the closest spiritual kinship. Never since Mozart has music been more bafflingly 'absolute' than in the bulk of his works in orchestral and chamber music, and piano forms. The appearance of these works, so modern from the standpoint of thematic and formal development in this epoch, seems to call for a revision of modern musical psychology and philosophy. Much of modern 'pure' music is too dramatic to endure a comparison in this respect, or else too philosophical and too deeply involved in the world-problem. To Brahms' technical system that of Oldberg more nearly corresponds than to any other.
In this music, at the same time, there is no reversion to the style of an earlier day; it carries no slogan of 'back to Mozart.' Trained as he was in the severe school of Joseph Rheinberger, to Oldberg, to be sure, the modern French school does not exist, but neither, for that matter, does the traditional shadow of turgidity and heaviness which hangs about the Teutonic genius even at its most idealistic. Those who think to perceive a measure of old-fashionedness in his music are looking at the letter rather than the spirit, which is ever onward and creative, though in its own way, and without admitting that modern progress lies only in the adoption of the Gallic idiom. It is the music of spiritual upliftment and refreshment, waiting its day until sensationalism and mere color-riot shall have lost their power to appeal.
The two quintets for piano and strings (opera 16 and 24) present a joyous and upspringing lyricism all but unknown to the music of the day, together, especially in the latter and more mature work, with a thematic involution that would be appalling were it not for the exuberant spontaneity of their inspiration. A string quartet in C minor (opus 15) is a less complete revelation of the composer's powers. A woodwind quintet in E flat major (opus 18), on the other hand, is a miracle of gladness and of grave and haunting loveliness.