The composer has completed another 'melodrama' of a similar order, on Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin,' also with orchestral score, which, if anything, surpasses the 'Raven.' He has published about thirty songs and about an equal number of piano compositions and some for violin. Of the songs the 'Night Rider,' on a poem by Fullerton Waldo, is the most important, a high-spirited and poetic work. It is scored for orchestra. In most of these smaller works Beach has not embodied a very significant content, but they have ingenuity, charm, and sentiment. 'Plaintive Love' from opus 14 may be mentioned as colorful. He has many unpublished works, among them a light romantic opera, 'Niorada,' some excellent piano suites, two overtures, a 'Festival March,' a recent symphonic choral for orchestra and chorus entitled 'The Unnamed City,' and many songs. Bergh was the conductor of the orchestra in Central Park, New York, in the summer of 1914.
Joseph Henius, whose untimely death in 1912 cut short the career of a musician of high ideals, has left a published violin sonata of high merit. It was first produced by David and Clara Mannes in New York in 1909 and was enthusiastically received. It is fairly strict sonata form except for the slow movement. This is a romance of deep poetic fervor, alternately sombre and exalted, and reveals a lofty melodic beauty and much warmth of feeling. Henius has aimed at keeping melody plainly in view, and at the same time to gain perfection of the cyclic form. He was a pupil of Dvořák and a determined classicist. Among his manuscripts are a quintet in D major, a quartet in G minor, a comic opera and various songs.
A composer of classical leanings is Frank Edwin Ward (b. 1872), who has been connected with Columbia University as organist since 1904, and as Associate in Music since 1909. His works in the cyclical forms are a published sonata for violin and piano (opus 9), and, in manuscript, a quartet for piano and strings (opus 13), a string quartet (opus 22), and a suite for orchestra (opus 25). Modern in a general way, though not in the latter-day sense of the term, Ward's music exhibits an unusual melodic fluency and a harmonic variety and flexibility which often lend it interest and charm. It is music that is sincere and well-felt, and wholly devoid of strain. The workmanship is clean-cut and musicianly, and the form well-rounded and balanced. A rhapsody for piano and violin or violoncello (opus 10) is effective and spirited with an andante appassionato movement of much warmth. Of a group of short piano pieces (opus 5), 'Prelude' shows a distinguished and refined quality of musical thought, with much modulatory interest, and a MacDowellish 'By the Sea Shore' is very agreeable music. There are also a number of songs and organ pieces, two sacred cantatas, 'The Divine Birth' and 'The Savior of the World,' secular part songs, and over thirty anthems and services.
Carl Busch (b. 1862), although of foreign birth, has long been classed among American composers. He has for many years been identified with the musical life of Kansas City, Mo., where he is conductor of the symphony orchestra and the Philharmonic Choral Society. He has also conducted concerts in his native land, Denmark, where he was knighted by the government in 1912. His early studies were conducted in Copenhagen, but his work as a composer began only with his residence in America, now of twenty-five years' duration. Busch's tendency is almost wholly along romantic lines, and his achievements are of a substantial character. He is best known for his works for chorus and orchestra, impressive compositions conceived on broad lines. Among the most important of these are 'King Olaf,' and 'The Four Winds,' the latter of Indian character. Others are: 'The American Flag,' 'Paul Revere's Ride,' 'The League of the Alps,' and 'The Brown Heather.' Busch has an excellent technical command of orchestral resource, and has produced a number of large orchestral works, among them a prologue, 'The Passing of Arthur,' a rhapsody, 'Negro Carnival,' and a testimony to the persistence of Stephen Foster's fame and influence in string variations on 'The Old Folks at Home' and 'My Old Kentucky Home.' During the last ten years Busch has felt strongly the Indian influence and, aside from 'The Four Winds,' has produced an 'Indian Legend' for violin and piano, two groups of Indian songs, two symphonic poems and several smaller orchestral works, all of Indian character. From an earlier period are many songs and choruses and a number of violin pieces.
Also foreign born, and famous chiefly through his long and distinguished career as a conductor, Walter Damrosch (b. 1862) has made noteworthy incursions into the field of composition. Wherever David Bispham has sung, his stirring setting of Kipling's 'Danny Deever' is a popular favorite. In 1894 he essayed an American grand opera in 'The Scarlet Letter,' produced in Boston and New York under his own direction, but the work did not hold the stage. Much more favorable comment was evoked by his second opera, 'Cyrano,' text by W. J. Henderson, which was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on February 27, 1913. The critic of the 'New Music Review' wrote of Mr. Damrosch and this work, 'He has written in a well recognizable post-Wagnerian style.... His score is commendable for its coloring, its richness, and for the touch with which he has emphasized and elucidated passages now emotional, now gay, now picturesque, now tragic. The music of "Cyrano" is undoubtedly composed with skill, with verve, and in parts with spontaneity.' In the midst of a busy conductor's life Mr. Damrosch has unquestionably borne his share of the effort to make America an opera-producing nation.
Two other Americans coming within the present classification who have striven in the field of grand opera are Albert Mildenberg and William Legrand Howland. Mildenberg has written three grand operas, 'Michael Angelo,' in one act, and two three-act operas, 'Raffaelo' and 'Angelo,' none of which, however, have yet come to performance. His light operas have been produced at different times, 'The Wood Witch,' by the Bostonians; 'The Weather Vane,' by an independent company; and 'The Princess Delft,' by various American colleges. Howland has also written three grand operas, 'Nita,' 'Sarrona,' and 'Bébé.' These have been produced in Italy, 'Sarrona' being the only one to be heard in America, when given under somewhat trying conditions by an independent company in New York, February 10, 1910. It is a melodious score, rather lightly orchestrated, but not without moments of notable effectiveness.
VII
San Francisco, especially as the home of the Bohemian Club, with its world-famous 'Midsummer High Jinks' or 'Forest Festival,' holds a record as a city of composers that is little appreciated in the Eastern part of the United States. Of this group William J. McCoy has probably made the most significant contribution to musical art. A composer of high ideals and broad artistic vision, of large emotional capacity and wide experience, his work reveals him as an artist of no ordinary stature. Educated in America under William Mason, and in the German schools under Carl Reinecke and Moritz Hauptmann, he nevertheless at an early period made himself familiar with the principles of the French school. His music is characterized by directness of invention, breadth of resource, and an appealing emotional warmth, and shows him, as well, as an adept in orchestration. His virile and dramatic music for 'The Hamadryads,' the 'Midsummer High Jinks' of 1904, text by Will Irwin, was one of the strongest factors in the elevation of the Bohemian Club's festival to the high fame which it enjoys. The themes are all lyrically appealing and of jubilant spontaneity, those of 'hope' and 'supplication' being particularly felicitous, while the final processional march shows an almost Wagnerian breadth and rhythmic swing. The overture was performed in New York, on April 18, 1909, at a concert of the American Music Society at Carnegie Hall. McCoy's music for the 'Jinks' of 1910, 'The Cave Man,' text by Charles K. Field, shows a pronounced advance in the employment of modern resource. One of its chief features is the 'Song of the Flint,' a work of strong dramatic power. A grand opera, 'Egypt,' libretto by Charles K. Field, is the composer's most recently completed work, having been finished in 1914, and is thought to be his most representative and substantial achievement. An early symphony was performed in Leipzig in 1872. There are also an 'Ave Verum' for solo, male chorus and organ, a quintet in G, and various songs and short instrumental pieces. The composer is also the author of a theoretical work, 'Cumulative Harmony.' McCoy was born in Crestline, Ohio, in 1848.