The Suite Fantastique for piano and orchestra by the pianist Ernest Schelling has been heard in New York. It is a clever and brilliant work, and makes ingenious use of 'Yankee Doodle,' 'Dixie,' and the 'Swanee River.'
Arthur Fickenscher, at present living in Berlin, has developed a highly refined and highly modernized art of which more is likely to be heard later. One of his most important works is a setting of Rossetti's 'Willowwood' for chorus and orchestra.
A. F.
CHAPTER XV
THE LIGHTER VEIN
Sources of American popular music—Its past and present phases—American comic opera: Reginald de Koven; Victor Herbert; John Philip Sousa; other writers of light opera—The decline of light opera and the present state of theatrical music.
It cannot be too often reiterated that, however highly developed an art a nation's music may become, it inevitably springs from the germ of popular expression that voices itself in the simple songs of its masses, the folk-music. In this lies the essence of its being and to this it owes its vitality. America's history has been such as to deprive her in a great measure of a folk-music in the true sense of the word. Many causes have contributed to this; the decidedly non-idyllic character of its early phases and the suppressing hand of Puritanism were undoubtedly potent factors, but the fundamental reason lies in the absence of a national consciousness, which is necessarily lacking in a country of mixed peoples developing a borrowed civilization. Now that America is able to boast the beginnings of a sophisticated art, it is beginning to be more deplored that there is not present the rich vein of folk-music to lend to our native art that vital and distinctive touch that should give it its place among the nation's music.
The course of our national life has brought, however, from time to time, certain moments when there has emanated from the people a voice more distinctly local in its suggestions, not entirely lacking the influence of a borrowed expression, but blending with it a certain flavor of its own and thereby creating a sort of music in the folk-manner. Such were the songs of Stephen Foster, and such were the patriotic songs of the Civil War times, and in these two contributions to our native music we have the most genuinely and deeply emotional expressions that have yet sprung from Americans of European origin. Previous to the appearance of these, the complexion of our music had been almost entirely English, consisting as it did of patriotic or sentimental songs either actually imported from England or locally written songs which copied the English models so slavishly as to lose all distinction.
The negro element began at an early epoch to bear an influence on our expressions. As the one keenly suffering people in our midst, leading a life of elemental toil and possessing richly endowed musical natures, the negro, with his intensely emotional expression, was bound to make himself heard and felt throughout the land, and his songs entered largely into the fibre of our own expression. But even the most ardent supporter of the practice of employing the negro element as a basis for American music must admit that there is much of the exotic about it, and that by its employment alone our native art will never attain to that desideratum of the American composer, a nationalistic feeling.
It has already been remarked in commenting on this subject how Dvořák in handling this negro element remained unequivocally Slavic in idiom, and it has been noted, also, with what scant success our own composers have pursued the same efforts toward concocting what would seem an indigenous art. That such a nationalistic art, when it does finally evolve, will contain a strong strain of these various influences is undoubtedly the case, but the tinge of real local atmosphere which will constitute its nationalism will be an intangible quality not existing in any defined formula. It will not possess salient external features which our own composers may seize upon, but it will be charged with a consciousness that shall be inherent in the composers themselves and shall find unconscious voicing in their melodies. It is not unreasonable to suppose that it is from what we generally designate as our 'popular music' that such an art will emanate; from the street, the theatre, the dance hall, and more particularly from the sentimentalities of the popular songs which periodically hold the affections of such a vast public. Ephemeral as is the mass of this music that annually sweeps over our country, each phase of it leaves its mark, some deeper than others, but all contributing to the upbuilding of the national character of our music.