Cantata Composers.—A number of American composers have turned their attention to composition in opera and cantata forms. Some of the composers already mentioned have written works of this character. The first of American composers to work in the field of the cantata was J. C. D. Parker, born in Boston, in 1828, a graduate of Harvard, and a teacher with many years of splendid work to his credit. His musical education was received at Leipzig. In 1854, he located in Boston and took up a varied career as organist, conductor, and teacher of piano and harmony, at the New England Conservatory. His large works include a cantata, “Redemption Hymn,” a secular cantata, “The Blind King,” and two works in oratorio form “St. John” and “The Life of Man,” the latter showing him at his strongest. Dudley Buck, organist, composer and teacher, is also one of the veterans of American music. He was born at Hartford, Conn., in 1839, attended Trinity College several years, began his musical instruction at sixteen years of age, went to Germany several years later, giving his attention principally to the organ and composition. In 1862, he returned to the United States, worked professionally in Hartford, Chicago, and Boston; in 1874, he went to New York, later to one of the leading churches of Brooklyn, which position he retained until 1905. His choral works in large form are “Don Munio,” “The Voyage of Columbus,” “The Golden Legend,” and the “Light of Asia,” his largest and most important work, which has been given in England. He has written many works for church use, much organ music, songs and concerted vocal music, especially for male voices.
Opera.—In opera we note the work of Paine (“Azara”); Chadwick (“Judith,” a sacred opera); Walter Damrosch, composer and conductor, born in Germany, in 1862, but a resident of the United States in childhood, and hence identified with music in this country, who has written a work of serious character to a libretto founded on Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter”; Reginald de Koven, born at Middletown, Conn., in 1859, with a list of several successful light operas to his credit, as well as many songs which have had wide appreciation; Edgar Stillman Kelley, born at Sparta, Wisconsin, in 1857, educated in Chicago and Germany, a resident of San Francisco for a number of years, where he brought out several notable works of a popular character for the stage as well as the orchestra, employing in the latter Chinese musical idioms with success in a humorous direction. A composer whose work in light opera has had much success is Victor Herbert, born in Dublin, Ireland. His professional career has been largely spent in this country, his work as conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra being notable.
Song Composition.—In the field of song composition, American composers have done very good work. The American seems to turn naturally to song and few of the most prominent of the native composers have neglected this field, as will have been noticed in previous paragraphs. Among those who have won high reputation in this line we note George L. Osgood, of Boston, born in 1844, composer, singer and teacher; Frank Lynes, of Boston, born in 1858, who has also written good concerted vocal music and piano pieces; Clayton Johns, born in Delaware, in 1857, but a resident of Boston during the greater part of his professional career, with a long list of part-songs and some piano pieces to his credit; and Ethelbert Nevin, born near Pittsburgh, in 1862, educated in the United States and in Europe, whose songs have a truly poetic character joined to music of a high order; a number of his piano pieces have also been most favorably received. He died in 1901.
Wm. Mason. L. M. Gottschalk. Dudley Buck.
H. M. Dunham. J. C. D. Parker. B. J. Lang.
Wallace Goodrich.
Piano Composition.—The dean of American teachers of the piano and of composers for that instrument is William Mason, born in Boston, in 1829, a son of Lowell Mason, who studied at home and abroad and spent two years with Liszt at Weimar. It was in 1854 that he came back to the United States and located in New York City. In addition to his works for the piano, some of which have been widely played, he is the author of an important technical work, which stamps him as an educator of originality and strength. A composer who is generally classed as American, although his ancestry, education and environment incline strongly to the French, is Louis Moreau Gottschalk, born in New Orleans, in 1829. He early showed marked inclination for music and was sent to Paris to study. His first reputation was won as pianist. He traveled over Europe, the United States and parts of South America, giving concerts, in which he gave the principal place to his own compositions. He died in Brazil, in 1869. In later years, American composers for the piano have not done such distinctive work as the two writers just mentioned, yet the names of Charles Dennee (1863), Wilson G. Smith (1855), James H. Rogers (1857), and William H. Sherwood (1854), composer, pianist and teacher, whose work in the educational field is most important; Edward Baxter Perry (1855), who has splendidly triumphed over the infirmity of blindness, and through his unique lecture recitals has been a strong factor in musical progress in the United States; and several men of foreign birth who have identified themselves with American musical education: Rafael Joseffy, in New York City, Carl Baermann and Carl Faelten in Boston, Constantin von Sternberg in Philadelphia, and Emil Liebling in Chicago. Two other names should be mentioned here, Henry Schradieck, of New York, whose influence as a violinist and teacher has been great, and F. L. Ritter, who occupied the chair of music in Vassar College, a pioneer in college musical work.
Organ Composition.—Nearly all of the best-known American composers have been organists, yet certain men have made that line of musical work peculiarly their own. Such men are B. J. Lang (1837), of Boston, organist, conductor and teacher; George E. Whiting (1842), who in addition to his high rank as an organist and teacher, has written most acceptably for his instrument, and also for the orchestra and in the large choral forms; George W. Warren (1828), and S. P. Warren (1841), whose sphere of activity is identified with New York City; E. M. Bowman (1848), organist, conductor, pianist and teacher; Samuel B. Whitney (1842), organist, noted for his work in training boy choirs, also his musical compositions for the Episcopal Church service; Clarence Eddy (1851), organ virtuoso with an international reputation; Henry M. Dunham (1853), who has written well for his instrument and has had an active and useful career as a teacher. Among the younger men of prominence as American organists who have put themselves abreast with modern progress, and have studied all schools, may be mentioned Everett E. Truette, Wallace Goodrich, Wm. C. Carl, Gerrit Smith, Charles Galloway, J. Fred Wolle, who organized the Bach Festival at Bethlehem, Pa., H. J. Stewart, a representative California organist.
Musical Criticism.—When indicating the various agencies for the shaping of musical appreciation in the United States, special mention must be made of a group of writers whose contributions to musical magazines, to the daily press in the large music centres, as well as their work in permanent form have influenced the taste of the American public to a degree not paralleled in any other country. These writers have enjoyed unusual opportunities and have used them well. The leading newspapers of the United States give much space to reports of musical events and have called to their aid writers of keen insight into musical matters, thorough equipment on the score of musical knowledge, and gifted with much skill in expression as well as mastery of literary style.
The Older Critics.—The first of these critics to claim our attention is John S. Dwight, born in Boston, in 1813, a graduate of Harvard, and a student of theology as well. Gifted with a sound taste in art matters, his reviews of musical works, concerts, etc., were very useful and helpful and much appreciated by the best circles of the city, for his associations were with the most famous literary and scientific men of his day. In 1852, he established a musical paper, Journal of Music, which lasted nearly thirty years. He died in 1893. Another of the older writers is George P. Upton, born in Boston, in 1834, a graduate of Brown University, who entered journalism at twenty-one, as a member of the staff of the Chicago Journal; after some years of service with that paper, he went to the Tribune, with which he has ever since been associated. Mr. Upton’s critical work covers the period of the growth of Chicago, which has been phenomenal in art as well as in commercial directions, and has been a most valuable factor in musical upbuilding. In recent years his pen was a great aid to Theodore Thomas in his efforts to establish the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His works in permanent form are “Woman in Music,” a series of books descriptive of the principal oratorios, operas, cantatas, and symphonies, translations from the German of Nohl’s biographies of musicians, and a “Life of Theodore Thomas.” Coincident with Mr. Upton’s work in the West is that of W. S. B. Mathews, born in London, N. H., in 1837. He was educated in Boston; after some years of musical work in the South, he located in Chicago, as organist, teacher, writer on musical matters. His reviews on local musical affairs appeared in several of the leading dailies, he was a contributor to Dwight’s Journal, and to all the musical papers that have come into the field since. Perhaps no contemporary writer on education in music has influenced, and so strongly, as many teachers and students of music as Mr. Mathews. He has written a “Popular History of Music,” “Hundred Years of Music in America,” “How to Understand Music,” “Primer of Musical Forms,” and several works on the great composers, with critical studies of their works.
