A. Walter Kramer has put out a considerable number of works in small forms, ranging in tendency from the earlier to the later German and deriving influence occasionally from French sources. He is an eclectic, but from the German standpoint. His works are chiefly songs and string pieces. Among the former are: 'I Dreamed and Wept a-Dreaming' (Heine), very German in scheme, albeit sufficiently modern; 'In Dreams' (Prudhomme), a work of ultra-modern tendencies which follows its title well and successfully establishes its mood; 'Come to Me' (Christina Rossetti), a mood of spiritual exaltation, which presents an avoidance of traditional harmonic formulæ not always to be found in Kramer's music; the languorous and somewhat Debussyish 'A Nocturne,' and 'Bes' ob All,' a song in negro character based upon a melody originally composed for violin, which suggests MacDowell in mood-quality. For violin and piano is the characteristic Intermède Arabe, a fervent 'Elegy' of melodic warmth and breadth, and other works. Beyond these are works for piano, 'cello and piano, string orchestra, organ, and a number of part-songs.
So rapidly and in such numbers do new American composers appear in these days that both omission and disproportion must occur in dealing with the coming generation in any such chapter as the present. A few names may be mentioned, however, of composers who have given indications of having serious aims. Francis Hendricks has written piano compositions that are not without charm and modernity of style, as well as songs. Charles T. Griffes, in songs and piano pieces, has shown a refined appreciation of modern ideals. Deems Taylor was heard at the MacDowell Festival in 1914, with an admirable ballad, 'The Highwayman,' for solo baritone, women's chorus, and orchestra. At the same festival was heard a prelude by Edward Ballantine to Herman Hagedorn's play 'The Delectable Forest,' a work regarded as subtle and imaginative, and two movements of Lewis M. Isaacs' ballet suite, 'Atalanta.' Chalmers Clifton's suite for trumpet and orchestra has been heard at a MacDowell Festival. Leo Ornstein, in his 'Preludes' and 'Impressions of Notre Dame,' for piano, has out-moded Schoenberg and Stravinsky and inaugurated the school of post-futurism.
American nationalists are not to be sought exclusively among the native-born, as the example of Dvořák shows. Carlos Troyer, an Alsatian of long residence in America, has made a significant contribution to the nationalistic phase of native music in his songs of the Zuñi Indians, collected during his sojourns with that extraordinary tribe. Among them are the 'Zuñian Lullaby,' 'Sunrise Call of the Zuñis,' 'The Coming of Montezuma,' 'Great Rain Dance of the Zuñis,' 'Festive Sun Dance,' and 'Hymn to the Sun.' If Troyer has not escaped Germanizing the accompaniments of these songs, neither has he obscured their essential character.
On the side of negro music contributions of great value have been made by two gifted representatives of the race, Harry Burleigh and Will Marion Cook. Burleigh is known by a number of original songs, sincere in their feeling and of much melodic and harmonic appeal, among them the favorite 'Jean' and the very passionate 'Elysium.' In 'Plantation Melodies Old and New' he has given excellent settings to seven highly characteristic negro songs, two of them, 'My Merlindy Brown' and 'Negro Lullaby,' being original, poems for the group being provided by R. E. Phillips, J. E. Campbell, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Of much original poetic fancy, as well as valuable in its presentation of various negro motives in effective development, is his piano suite, 'In the Southland,' which has MacDowellish touches about it. There are also 'Saracen Songs,' 'Five Songs of Lawrence Hope,' and arrangements of songs in H. E. Krehbiel's book, 'Afro-American Folk Songs.'
The work of Will Marion Cook presents some quite extraordinary qualities and in part deals with characteristics of the negro which have hitherto found little or no expression in terms of modern musical art. Such a thing as his song, 'A Negro Sermon,' was certainly never set forth in print before. It reflects the quintessence of the drollery and humor of the primitive negro in religion, and follows with prodigious alertness his swift and erratic, though deeply sincere, zig-zaggings of thought and mood. It is an altogether amazing production, a psychological musical achievement. The same is to be said of 'An Explanation,' a negro court scene in the form of a song. From such unusual works as these to straightforward ragtime Cook's songs cover a wide range of style. The 'Rain Song' is whimsical and forceful, with elemental emotion and impulse, and 'Swim Along' is full of instinctive joy of life.
VI
No composer in America has so completely arrived at an authentic and mature musical individuality along the line of ultra-modern European developments as Charles Martin Loeffler. Though of Alsatian birth, his long residence in this country has identified him with American musical life. Too much the artist to theorize about his art, he has enunciated no creed, although he has been known to suggest the idea that the composer's musical personality is largely constituted by the assimilation of all that is sympathetic to him in the range of his musical observation. Applying this principle to his own work, it is plain that his closest affiliation is with the school of modern France, although the work of no American composer is less closely identified than his with that of any one individual of the modern French group. There speaks through Loeffler's music a distinct personality, one that lives upon a high plane of poetic imagination, and whose intuitions are subtle and refined in a wholly extraordinary degree. Here is no convenient falling back upon modish scale effects or generic modern harmonies, but a pressing forward to the keenest and most poignant individualism. If it is an individuality that insists upon a veritable aristocracy of emotional and psychological subtlety, a total repudiation of the primitive passions which bind certain great composers to mother earth and lead them to brave the charge of occasional banality, on the other hand, it is one which gives an intense and unvitiated delight to those minds which are able to follow its excursions into the remote and unwonted regions of the soul. 'Tuneful' Loeffler's music cannot be called, but it sings constantly in its own preordained and peculiar way, and its motives are often haunting and always distinguished. Loeffler's literary researches are incredible in extent and singularity, and have undoubtedly had a far-reaching effect upon the character of his genius, as has also his intimate knowledge of and devotion to the Gregorian chant, of the austere arcanum of which he is a supreme master. He is a consummate master of orchestration and his orchestral works have been heard with most of the great orchestras of the world.
His serious claims as a composer were first made known through his Veillées de l'Ukraine, for violin and orchestra, a suite based upon tales by Gogol, which was heard in Boston, with the composer as soloist, in 1891, although an earlier string quartet in A minor had been previously heard in Philadelphia. A sextet for two violins, two violas, and two 'cellos next came into notice, and after that a 'Fantastic' concerto for 'cello and orchestra. The 'Divertimento in A Minor,' for violin and orchestra, the composer played at a Boston symphony concert in 1895. Loeffler's fame has rested chiefly upon his remarkably imaginative tone-poems, La Mort de Tintagiles, after Maeterlinck, La Bonne Chanson and La Villanelle du Diable, after Verlaine and Rollinat, respectively, and the 'Pagan Poem,' after Virgil, which includes a piano and three trumpets behind the scenes. The songs are exquisite reflections of the composer's subtle imagination; among them are: Harmonies du Soir, Dansons la Gigue, La Cloche fêlée, Timbres Oubliés, 'The Hosting of the Sidhe,' 'The Host of the Air,' and 'To Helen.' There are also an octet for strings, clarinets, and harp; a quintet for three violins, viola, and 'cello; two rhapsodies for oboe, viola, and piano; 'By the Waters of Babylon,' for women's chorus, two flutes, 'cello, harp, and organ; and other works. The composer was for many years second concert master of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and makes his home in Boston and Medfield, Mass.
Extreme ultra-modernism, stopping, however, on the hither side of futurism, has not been pushed farther in America than in the very remarkable work of Carl Engel. Except that he is himself, he might be regarded as a disciple of Loeffler. His published work consists of several groups of songs, in which the voice is treated in the modern French mode of lyrical declamation over an accompanying tone-poem of high refinement of mood, a positively diabolical ingenuity and subtlety of invention, and impeccable technical finish. In this scheme—determined by the most recent Gallic influences—Engel goes his individual way, producing work that is always interesting and often unusual in both originality and beauty. Of the six Chansons intimes, on poems by Jean Moréas, one is struck particularly by A l'Océan, which is extraordinarily bold in its assertion of tragic oceanic emotion. Rions is a fine piece of bitter ultra-modern irony—a companion piece to Loeffler's Dansons la Gigue. Trois Epigrammes, on poems by Paul Mariéton, have much of poignancy and eloquence and weave a dizzying web of ingenious ultra-modernism. One thinks—how far from Americanism is this remarkable work! Of 'Two Lyrics,' poems by Amy Lowell, 'The Sea Shell' is of most ingratiating charm, particularly with respect to its lilting motion; and here the composer has allowed himself to write a tune! 'Three Sonnets' present Lecture du Soir (Chantavoine), an excellent example of Engel's capacity for originality, Dors, ma Belle (Marsolleau), and En Voiture (Ajalbert), all of recent date. 'Four Lyrics' (poems by Cora Fabbri) are earlier songs and show the composer's point of departure.