At the grave, all lined with bayberry and flowers, the coffin was lowered, and each of those present came forward and laid upon it a few of the flowers she loved so dearly.
MUSIC IN AMERICA TO-DAY
A YEAR or two ago a young lady came to my studio and asked for a single lesson. She told me that she had been studying in Germany for some years, and named the city, which is one of the well-known musical centers. She was then going to the West on her way home, and stopped a day over in New York expressly for a lesson from me. I heard her play several pieces, and was surprised and pleased with her manner and style. She phrased with intelligence and gave due attention to rhythmic requirements. Her tone was large, full, and musically resonant, and could not have been produced otherwise than through the agency of the upper-arm muscles, which were constantly in active use. The flexibility and elasticity of hands and wrists were also apparent, and finally the evident repose in action of all of these qualities capped the climax. I said to her: "My dear young lady, I cannot add to your playing, for it is already finished and artistic. I might possibly suggest a different rendering in certain parts, but, after all, this would amount only to a matter of taste. If you had studied exclusively under my guidance for a course of years, and I had succeeded in doing my best, aided by your own intelligence and careful practice, I should have sought to bring about just the result which you have reached. I think your teacher must be a young man." "He is," she replied; "but why?" "Because," I answered, "his method is free from the stiffness and rigidity of the old German school. Has he, perhaps, a method of his own?" Her immediate reply was, "He uses your method." She also told me her teacher's name, which I have now unfortunately forgotten. I think this teacher deserves to have more pupils!
But the time has gone by when it was necessary for students of the piano to go abroad to complete a musical education. There are now teachers of the piano of the first rank in all of our principal cities, who secure better results with American pupils than foreign teachers do, because they have a better understanding of our national character and temperament. Such men among my own former pupils are E. M. Bowman in New York, S. S. Sanford in New Haven, W. S. B. Matthews and William H. Sherwood in Chicago, and many others who are distinguished in their profession as teachers, and who have done and are doing much in furtherance of sound musical education and in the cultivation of a refined, musical taste in America. Our country has also produced composers of the first rank, and the names MacDowell, Parker, Kelley, Whiting, Paine, Buck, Shelley, Chadwick, Brockway, and Foote occur at once to the mind. Enormous progress in the art and science of music has been made in America since I began my studies in Germany in the year 1849. Our teachers meet in great numbers in convention during the summer months and in summer schools and classes, and it is difficult to overestimate the beneficent results which flow from these assemblies. They create a musical atmosphere, in which teachers and pupils live and move and have their being. They afford opportunities for the intelligent discussion of mooted questions and for the interchange of ideas, and lead to a wider dissemination of the best educational methods.
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton all have their chairs of music, and doubtless this is true of others of our universities and colleges. The city of New York has become one of the great musical centers of the world. The Philharmonic Society, the opera season, the Kneisel Quartet, and many others of high artistic merit, afford opportunities for the gratification of musical taste which are hardly to be excelled elsewhere; and the popularity of these and of the countless pianoforte recitals and chamber-music concerts bears eloquent testimony to the growth of an intelligent musical taste among us. Boston and Chicago have their world-renowned orchestras, led by Gericke and Thomas, who are passed masters of their art. The cities of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and St. Louis have their orchestras, each under competent leadership. The most celebrated artists at home and from abroad are heard in our principal cities. The season just closed (1900-01) is in striking contrast to those of my early manhood. Among the many prominent pianists who have played to us there are some of extraordinary talent, who give abundant promise of brilliant future achievement.
Ernst von Dohnányi, born at Pressburg, July 27, 1877, is a wonderfully talented musical composer and at the same time a pianist whose technic is complete, combining as it does the emotional, intelligent, and mechanical elements in happy union and adjustment. Von Dohnányi has by nature as intense, thorough, and complete a musical organization as ever came within my experience. He composes with marvelous spontaneity and rapidity. His ideas are fresh and original, and their expression and elaboration are effected with the freedom of an improvisation, thus in no way emphasizing their mechanical setting forth.
He is just completing, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, an elaborate symphony in D minor for grand orchestra, the scheme of which is as follows: I. Allegro; II. Adagio; III. Scherzo; IV. Intermezzo; V. Finale: Introduction, Tema con Variazioni; Fuga.
This is a massive production, apparently the result of inherent qualities carried into act by impulse, in other words, of spontaneous achievement. It is so instinctive and impulsive that the art of its construction hardly occurs to the hearer at first, but as an afterthought excites wonder and admiration.
Early in March of the present year (1901), Von Dohnányi, his wife, and a few other friends, among them Emil Pauer, dined at my house, and during the evening Von Dohnányi played his symphony on the pianoforte. This instrument is naturally quite inadequate to the interpretation of such a work, but Von Dohnányi's technic is so complete, his tone so massive while intensely musical, and his enthusiasm so contagious that we became conscious of an ever-increasing interest, steadily growing in intensity. The occasion and its experience will not be forgotten by any of those present.