Rupert Hughes

La lune Était sereine et jouait sur les flots.
La fenÊtre enfin libre est ouverte À la brise;
La sultane regarde, et la mer qui se brise,
LÀ-bas, d'un flot d'argent brode les noir Îlots.
(Victor Hugo, "Les Orientales.")

[Listen]

E.A. MACDOWELL, Op. 37, No. 1.

music

music continued

Copyright, 1889, Arthur P. Schmidt.

But MacDowell did not reach his freedom without a struggle against academia. His opus 10 is a piano suite published at the age of twenty-two, and opus 14 is another; both contain such obsolescences as a presto, fugue, scherzino, and the like. But for all the classic garb, the hands are the hands of Esau. In one of the pieces there is even a motto tucked, "All hope leave ye behind who enter here!" Can he have referred to the limbo of classicism?

It is a far cry from these to the liberality that inspired the new impressionism of "Woodland Sketches" (op. 51) and "Sea Pieces" (op. 55), in which he gives a legitimate musical presentation of a faintly perfumed "Wild Rose" or "Water Lily," but goes farther, and paints, with wonderful tone, the moods inspired by reverie upon the uncouth dignity and stoic savagery of "An Indian Lodge," the lonely New England twilight of "A Deserted Farm," and all the changing humors of the sea, majesty of sunset or star-rise, and even the lucent emerald of an iceberg. His "From Uncle Remus" is not so successful; indeed, MacDowell is not sympathetic with negro music, and thinks that if we are to found a national school on some local manner, we should find the Indian more congenial than the lazy, sensual slave.

He has carried this belief into action, not only by his scientific interest in the collection and compilation of the folk-music of our prairies, but by his artistic use of actual Indian themes in one of his most important works, his "Indian Suite" for full orchestra, a work that has been often performed, and always with the effect of a new and profound sensation, particularly in the case of the deeply impressive dirge.

A proof of the success of MacDowell as a writer in the large forms is the fact that practically all of his orchestral works are published in Germany and here, not only in full score, but in arrangement for four hands. They include "Hamlet;" "Ophelia" (op. 22); "Launcelot and Elaine" (op. 26), with its strangely mellow and varied use of horns for Launcelot, and the entrusting of the plaintive fate of "the lily maid of Astolat" to the string and wood-wind choirs; "The Saracens" and "The Lovely Alda" (op. 30), two fragments from the Song of Roland; and the Suite (op. 42), which has been played at least eight times in Germany and eleven times here.

The first movement of this last is called "In a Haunted Forest." You are reminded of Siegfried by the very name of the thing, and the music enforces the remembrance somewhat, though very slightly.

Everything reminds one of Wagner nowadays,—even his predecessors. Rudyard Kipling has by his individuality so copyrighted one of the oldest verse-forms, the ballad, that even "Chevy Chace" looks like an advance plagiarism. So it is with Wagner. Almost all later music, and much of the earlier, sounds Wagnerian. But MacDowell has been reminded of Bayreuth very infrequently in this work. The opening movement begins with a sotto voce syncopation that is very presentative of the curious audible silence of a forest. The wilder moments are superbly instrumented.

The second movement, "Summer Idyl," is delicious, particularly in the chances it gives the flautist. There is a fragmentary cantilena which would make the fortune of a comic opera. The third number, "In October," is particularly welcome in our music, which is strangely and sadly lacking in humor. There is fascinating wit throughout this harvest revel. "The Shepherdess' Song" is the fourth movement. It is not prÉcieuse, and it is not banal; but its simplicity of pathos is a whit too simple. The final number, "Forest Spirits," is a brilliant climax. The Suite as a whole is an important work. It has detail of the most charming art. Best of all, it is staunchly individual. It is MacDowellian.

While the modern piano sonata is to me anathema as a rule, there are none of MacDowell's works that I like better than his writings in this form. They are to me far the best since Beethoven, not excepting even Chopin's (pace his greatest prophet, Huneker). They seem to me to be of such stuff as Beethoven would have woven had he known in fact the modern piano he saw in fancy.

The "Sonata Tragica" (op. 45) begins in G minor, with a bigly passionate, slow introduction (metronomed in the composer's copy, quarter note-50). The first subject is marked in the same copy, though not in the printed book, half note-69, and the appealingly pathetic second subject is a little slower. The free fantasy is full of storm and stress, with a fierce pedal-point on the trilled leading-tone. In the reprise the second subject, which was at first in the dominant major, is now in the tonic major, though the key of the sonata is G minor. The allegro is metronomed quarter note-138, and it is very short and very wild. Throughout, the grief is the grief of a strong soul; it never degenerates into whine. Its largo is like the tread of an Æschylean choros, its allegro movements are wild with anguish, and the occasional uplifting into the major only emphasizes the sombre whole, like the little rifts of clearer harmony in Beethoven's "Funeral March on the Death of a Hero."

The last movement begins with a ringing pomposo, and I cannot explain its meaning better than by quoting Mrs. MacDowell's words: "Mr. MacDowell's idea was, so to speak, as follows: He wished to heighten the darkness of tragedy by making it follow closely on the heels of triumph. Therefore, he attempted to make the last movement a steadily progressive triumph, which, at its climax, is utterly broken and shattered. In doing this he has tried to epitomize the whole work. While in the other movements he aimed at expressing tragic details, in the last he has tried to generalize; thinking that the most poignant tragedy is that of catastrophe in the hour of triumph."

The third sonata (op. 57) is dedicated to Grieg and to the musical exploitation of an old-time Skald reciting glorious battles, loves, and deaths in an ancient castle. The atmosphere of mystery and barbaric grandeur is obtained and sustained by means new to piano literature and potent in color and vigor. The sonata formula is warped to the purpose of the poet, but the themes have the classic ideal of kinship. The battle-power of the work is tremendous. Huneker calls it "an epic of rainbow and thunder," and Henry T. Finck, who has for many years devoted a part of his large ardor to MacDowell's cause, says of the work: "It is MacDowellish,—more MacDowellish than anything he has yet written. It is the work of a musical thinker. There are harmonies as novel as those we encounter in Schubert, Chopin, or Grieg, yet with a stamp of their own."

The "Sonata Eroica" (op. 50) bears the legend "Flos regum Arthurus." It is also in G minor. The spirit of King Arthur dominates the work ideally, and justifies not only the ferocious and warlike first subject with its peculiar and influential rhythm, but the old-fashioned and unadorned folk-tone of the second subject. In the working out there is much bustle and much business of trumpets. In the reprise the folk-song appears in the tonic minor, taken most unconventionally in the bass under elaborate arpeggiations in the right hand. The coda, as in the other sonata, is simply a strong passage of climax. Arthur's supernatural nature doubtless suggested the second movement, with its elfin airs, its flibbertigibbet virtuosity, and its magic of color. The third movement might have been inspired by Tennyson's version of Arthur's farewell to Guinevere, it is such a rich fabric of grief. The finale seems to me to picture the Morte d'Arthur, beginning with the fury of a storm along the coast, and the battle "on the waste sand by the waste sea." Moments of fire are succeeded by exquisite deeps of quietude, and the death and apotheosis of Arthur are hinted with daring and complete equivalence of art with need.

Here is no longer the tinkle and swirl of the elf dances; here is no more of the tireless search for novelty in movement and color. This is "a flash of the soul that can." Here is Beethoven redivivus. For half a century we have had so much pioneering and scientific exploration after piano color and tenderness and fire, that men have neglected its might and its tragic powers. Where is the piano-piece since Beethoven that has the depth, the breadth, the height of this huge solemnity? Chopin's sensuous wailing does not afford it. Schumann's complex eccentricities have not given it out. Brahms is too passionless. Wagner neglected the piano. It remained for a Yankee to find the austere peak again! and that, too, when the sonata was supposed to be a form as exhausted as the epic poem. But all this is the praise that one is laughed at for bestowing except on the graves of genius.

The cautious Ben Jonson, when his erstwhile taproom roisterer, Will Shakespeare, was dead, defied "insolent Greece or haughty Rome" to show his superior. With such authority, I feel safe in at least defying the contemporary schools of insolent Russia or haughty Germany to send forth a better musicwright than our fellow townsman, Edward MacDowell.

Edgar Stillman Kelley.

EDGAR STILLMAN KELLEY.

While his name is known wherever American music is known in its better aspects, yet, like many another American, his real art can be discovered only from his manuscripts. In these he shows a very munificence of enthusiasm, scholarship, invention, humor, and originality.

Autograph of Edgar Stillman Kelley

Kelley is as thorough an American by descent as one could ask for, his maternal ancestors having settled in this country in 1630, his paternal progenitors in 1640, A.D. Indeed, one of the ancestors of his father made the dies for the pine-tree shilling, and a great-great-grandfather fought in the Revolution.

Kelley began his terrestrial career April 14, 1857, in Wisconsin. His father was a revenue officer; his mother a skilled musician, who taught him the piano from his eighth year to his seventeenth, when he went to Chicago and studied harmony and counterpoint under Clarence Eddy, and the piano under Ledochowski. It is interesting to note that Kelley was diverted into music from painting by hearing "Blind Tom" play Liszt's transcription of Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" music. I imagine that this idiot-genius had very little other influence of this sort in his picturesque career.

After two years in Chicago, Kelley went to Germany, where, in Stuttgart, he studied the piano with Kruger and Speidel, organ with Finck, composition and orchestration with Seiffritz. While in Germany, Kelley wrote a brilliant and highly successful concert polonaise for four hands, and a composition for strings.

In 1880 he was back in America and settled in San Francisco, with whose musical life he was long and prominently identified as a teacher and critic. Here he wrote his first large work, the well-known melodramatic music to "Macbeth." A local benefactor, John Parrot, paid the expenses of a public performance, the great success of which persuaded McKee Rankin, the actor, to make an elaborate production of both play and music. This ran for three weeks in San Francisco to crowded houses, which is a remarkable record for many reasons. A shabby New York production at an ill-chosen theatre failed to give the work an advantageous hearing; but it has been played by orchestras several times since, and William H. Sherwood has made transcriptions of parts of it for piano solo.

The "Macbeth" music is of such solid value that it reaches the dignity of a flowing commentary. Beyond and above this it is an interpretation, making vivid and awesome the deep import of the play, till even the least imaginative auditor must feel its thrill.

Thus the gathering of the witches begins with a slow horror, which is surely Shakespeare's idea, and not the comic-opera can-can it is frequently made. As various other elfs and terrors appear, they are appropriately characterized in the music, which also adds mightily to the terror of the murder scene. Throughout, the work is that of a thinker. Like much of Kelley's other music, it is also the work of a fearless and skilled programmatist, especially in the battle-scenes, where it suggests the crash of maces and swords, and the blare of horns, the galloping of horses, and the general din of huge battle. Leading-motives are much used, too, with good effect and most ingenious elaboration, notably the Banquo motive. A certain amount of Gaelic color also adds interest to the work, particularly a stirring Gaelic march. The orchestration shows both scholarship and daring.

An interesting subject is suggested by Kelley's experience in hunting out a good motif for the galloping horses of "Macbeth." He could find nothing suitably representative of storm-hoofed chargers till his dreams came to the rescue with a genuinely inspired theme. Several other exquisite ideas have come to him in his sleep in this way; one of them is set down in the facsimile reproduced herewith. On one occasion he even dreamed an original German poem and a fitting musical setting.

Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, in his book on "Sleep and Its Derangements," is inclined to scout the possibility of a really valuable inspiration in sleep. He finds no satisfactory explanation for Tartini's famous "Devil's Sonata" or Coleridge' proverbial "Kubla Khan." He takes refuge in saying that at least the result could not be equal to the dreamer's capabilities when awake; but Kelley's "Macbeth" music was certainly an improvement on what he could invent out of the land of Nod.

After composing a comic opera, which was refused by the man for whom it was written because it was too good, he drifted into journalism, and wrote reviews and critiques which show a very liberal mind capable of appreciating things both modern and classic.

Kelley was again persuaded to write a comic opera to the artistic libretto, "Puritania," by C.M.S. McLellan, a brilliant satirist, who has since won fortune by his highly successful and frequently artistic burlesquery. The work won excellent praise in Boston, where it had one hundred performances. The work musically was not only conscientious, but really graceful and captivating. It received the most glowing encomiums from people of musical culture, and largely enhanced Kelley's musical reputation in its run of something over a year. On its tour Kelley was also the musical conductor, in which capacity he has frequently served elsewhere.

Kelley plainly deserves preËminence among American composers for his devotion to, and skill in, the finer sorts of humorous music. No other American has written so artfully, so happily, or so ambitiously in this field. A humorous symphony and a Chinese suite are his largest works on this order.

The symphony follows the life of "Gulliver in Lilliput." In development and intertwining of themes and in brilliance of orchestration, it maintains symphonic dignity, while in play of fancy, suggestive programmaticism, and rollicking enthusiasm it is infectious with wit. Gulliver himself is richly characterized with a burly, blustering English theme. The storm that throws him on the shores of Lilliput is handled with complete mastery, certain phrases picturing the toss of the billows, another the great roll of the boat, others the rattle of the rigging and the panic of the crew; and all wrought up to a demoniac climax at the wreck. As the stranded Gulliver falls asleep, the music hints his nodding off graphically. The entrance of the Lilliputians is perhaps the happiest bit of the whole delicious work. By adroit devices in instrumentation, their tiny band toots a minute national hymn of irresistible drollery. The sound of their wee hammers and the rest of the ludicrous adventures are carried off in unfailing good humor. The scene finally changes to the rescuing ship. Here a most hilarious hornpipe is interrupted by the distant call of Gulliver's aria, and the rescue is consummated delightfully.

In nothing has Kelley showed such wanton scholarship and such free-reined fancy as in his Chinese suite for orchestra, "Aladdin." It is certainly one of the most brilliant musical feats of the generation, and rivals Richard Strauss in orchestral virtuosity.

While in San Francisco, where, as every one knows, there is a transplanted corner of China, Kelley sat at the feet of certain Celestial cacophonists, and made himself adept. He fathomed the, to us, obscure laws of their theory, and for this work made a careful selection of Chinese musical ideas, and used what little harmony they approve of with most quaint and suggestive effect upon a splendid background of his own. The result has not been, as is usual in such alien mimicries, a mere success of curiosity.

The work had its first accolade of genius in the wild protests of the music copyists, and in the downright mutiny of orchestral performers.

On the first page of the score is this note: "This should be played with a bow unscrewed, so that the hairs hang loose—thus the bow never leaves the string." This direction is evidently meant to secure the effect of the Chinese violin, in which the string passes between the hair and the wood of the bow, and is played upon the under side. But what self-respecting violinist could endure such profanation without striking a blow for his fanes?

The first movement of the suite is made up of themes actually learned from Chinese musicians. It represents the "Wedding of Aladdin and the Princess," a sort of sublimated "shivaree" in which oboes quawk, muted trumpets bray, pizzicato strings flutter, and mandolins (loved of Berlioz) twitter hilariously.

The second movement, "A Serenade in the Royal Pear Garden," begins with a luxurious tone-poem of moonlight and shadow, out of which, after a preliminary tuning of the Chinese lute (or sam-yin), wails a lyric caterwaul (alternately in 2-4 and 3-4 tempo) which the Chinese translate as a love-song. Its amorous grotesque at length subsides into the majestic night. A part of this altogether fascinating movement came to Kelley in a dream.

The third chapter is devoted to the "Flight of the Genie with the Palace," and there is a wonderfully vivid suggestion of his struggle to wrest loose the foundations of the building. At length he heaves it slowly in the air, and wings majestically away with it.

It has always seemed to me that the purest stroke of genius in instrumentation ever evinced was Wagner's conceit of using tinkling bells to suggest leaping flames. And yet quite comparable with this seems Kelley's device to indicate the oarage of the genie's mighty wings as he disappears into the sky: liquid glissandos on the upper harp-strings, with chromatic runs upon the elaborately divided violins, at length changed to sustained and most ethereally fluty harmonics. It is very ravishment.

The last movement, "The Return and Feast of the Lanterns," is on the sonata formula. After an introduction typifying the opening of the temple gates (a gong giving the music further locale), the first theme is announced by harp and mandolin. It is an ancient Chinese air for the yong-kim (a dulcimer-like instrument). The second subject is adapted from the serenade theme. With these two smuggled themes everything contrapuntal (a fugue included) and instrumental is done that technical bravado could suggest or true art license. The result is a carnival of technic that compels the layman to wonder and the scholar to homage.

A transcription for a piano duet has been made of this last movement.

In Chinese-tone also is Kelley's most popular song, "The Lady Picking Mulberries," which brought him not only the enthusiasm of Americans but the high commendation of the Chinese themselves. It is written in the limited Chinese scale, with harmonies of our school; and is a humoresque of such catchiness that it has pervaded even London and Paris.

This song is one of a series of six lyrics called "The Phases of Love," with this motive from the "Anatomy of Melancholy": "I am resolved, therefore, in this tragi-comedy of love, to act several parts, some satirically, some comically, some in a mixed tone." The poems are all by American poets, and the group, opus 6, is an invaluable addition to our musical literature. The first of the series, "My Silent Song," is a radiantly beautiful work, with a wondrous tender air to a rapturous accompaniment. The second is a setting of Edward Rowland Sill's perfect little poem, "Love's Fillet." The song is as full of art as it is of feeling and influence. "What the Man in the Moon Saw" is an engaging satire, "Love and Sleep" is sombre, and "In a Garden" is pathetic.

Besides two small sketches, a waltz and a gavotte, and his own arrangements, for two and for four hands, of the Gaelic March in "Macbeth," Kelley has published only three piano pieces: opus 2, "The Flower Seekers," superb with grace, warm harmony, and May ecstasies; "Confluentia," whose threads of liquidity are eruditely, yet romantically, intertangled to represent the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle; and "The Headless Horseman," a masterpiece of burlesque weirdness, representing the wild pursuit of Ichabod Crane and the final hurling of the awful head,—a pumpkin, some say. It is relieved by Ichabod's tender reminiscences of Katrina Van Tassel at the spinning-wheel, and is dedicated to Joseffy, the pianist, who lives in the region about Sleepy Hollow.

To supplement his successful, humorously melodramatic setting of "The Little Old Woman who Went to the Market her Eggs for to Sell," Kelley is preparing a series of similar pieces called "Tales Retold for Musical Children." It will include "Gulliver," "Aladdin," and "Beauty and the Beast."

Kelley once wrote music for an adaptation of "Prometheus Bound," made by the late George Parsons Lathrop for that ill-starred experiment, the Theatre of Arts and Letters. The same thoroughness of research that gave Kelley such a command of Chinese theories equipped him in what knowledge we have of Greek and the other ancient music. He has delivered a course of lectures on these subjects, and this learning was put to good and public use in his share in the staging of the novel "Ben Hur." His music had a vital part in carrying the play over the thin ice of sacrilege; it was so reverent and so appealing that the scrubwomen in the theatre were actually moved to tears during its rehearsal, and it gave the scene of the miraculous cure of the lepers a dignity that saved it from either ridicule or reproach.

In the first act there is a suggestion of the slow, soft march of a caravan across the sand, the eleven-toned Greek and Egyptian scale being used. In the tent of the Sheik, an old Arabian scale is employed. In the elaborate ballets and revels in the "Grove of Daphne" the use of Greek scales, Greek progressions (such as descending parallel fourths long forbidden by the doctors of our era), a trimetrical grouping of measures (instead of our customary fourfold basis), and a suggestion of Hellenic instruments,—all this lore has not robbed the scene in any sense of an irresistible brilliance and spontaneity. The weaving of Arachne's web is pictured with especial power. Greek traditions have, of course, been used only for occasional impressionisms, and not as manacles. Elaborately colored modern instrumentation and all the established devices from canon up are employed. A piano transcription of part of the music is promised. The "Song of Iras" has been published. It is full of home-sickness, and the accompaniment (not used in the production) is a wonderwork of color.

Kelley has two unpublished songs that show him at his best, both settings of verse by Poe,—"Eldorado," which vividly develops the persistence of the knight, and "Israfel." This latter poem, as you know, concerns the angel "whose heart-strings are a lute." After a rhapsody upon the cosmic spell of the angel's singing, Poe, with a brave defiance, flings an implied challenge to him. The verse marks one of the highest reaches of a genius honored abroad as a world-great lyrist. It is, perhaps, praise enough, then, to say that Kelley's music flags in no wise behind the divine progress of the words. The lute idea dictates an arpeggiated accompaniment, whose harmonic beauty and courage is beyond description and beyond the grasp of the mind at the first hearing. The bravery of the climax follows the weird and opiate harmonies of the middle part with tremendous effect. The song is, in my fervent belief, a masterwork of absolute genius, one of the very greatest lyrics in the world's music.

Harvey Worthington Loomis.

Autograph of Harvey Worthington Loomis

In the band of pupils that gathered to the standard of the invader, Antonin DvÔrÁk, when, in 1892, he came over here from Macedonia to help us, some of the future's best composers will probably be found.

HARVEY WORTHINGTON LOOMIS.

Of this band was Harvey Worthington Loomis, who won a three years' scholarship in Doctor DvÔrÁk's composition class at the National Conservatory, by submitting an excellent, but rather uncharacteristic, setting of Eichendorff's "FrÜhlingsnacht." Loomis evidently won Doctor DvÔrÁk's confidence, for among the tasks imposed on him was a piano concerto to be built on the lines of so elaborate a model as Rubinstein's in D minor. When Loomis' first sketches showed an elaboration even beyond the complex pattern, DvÔrÁk still advised him to go on. To any one that knows the ways of harmony teachers this will mean much.

Loomis (who was born in Brooklyn, February 5, 1865, and is now a resident of New York) pursued studies in harmony and piano in a desultory way until he entered Doctor DvÔrÁk's class. For his musical tastes he was indebted to the artistic atmosphere of his home.

Though Loomis has written something over five hundred compositions, only a few works have been published, the most important of which are "Fairy Hill," a cantatilla for children, published in 1896 (it was written on a commission that fortunately allowed him liberty for not a little elaboration and individuality), "Sandalphon," and a few songs and piano pieces.

A field of his art that has won his especial interest is the use of music as an atmosphere for dramatic expression. Of this sort are a number of pantomimes, produced with much applause in New York by the Academy of Dramatic Arts; and several musical backgrounds. The 27th of April, 1896, a concert of his works was given by a number of well-known artists.

These musical backgrounds are played in accompaniment to dramatic recitations. Properly managed, the effect is most impressive. FÉval's poem, "The Song of the Pear-tree," is a typically handled work. The poem tells the story of a young French fellow, an orphan, who goes to the wars as substitute for his friend Jean. After rising from rank to rank by bravery, he returns to his home just as his sweetheart, Perrine, enters the church to wed Jean. The girl had been his one ambition, and now in his despair he reËnlists and begs to be placed in the thickest of danger. When he falls, they find on his breast a withered spray from the pear-tree under which Perrine had first plighted troth. On these simple lines the music builds up a drama. From the opening shimmer and rustle of the garden, through the Gregorian chant that solemnizes the drawing of the lots, and is interrupted by the youth's start of joy at his own luck (an abrupt glissando); through his sturdy resolve to go to war in his friend's place, on through many battles to his death, all is on a high plane that commands sympathy for the emotion, and enforces unbounded admiration for the art. There is a brief hint of the Marseillaise woven into the finely varied tapestry of martial music, and when the lover comes trudging home, his joy, his sudden knowledge of Perrine's faithlessness, and his overwhelming grief are all built over a long organ-point of three clangorous bride-bells. The leit-motif idea is used with suggestive clearness throughout the work.

The background to Longfellow's "Sandalphon" is so fine an arras that it gives the poet a splendor not usual to his bourgeois lays. The music runs through so many phases of emotion, and approves itself so original and exaltedly vivid in each that I put it well to the fore of American compositions.

Hardly less large is the—Loomis calls it "Musical Symbolism," for Adelaide Ann Proctor's "The Story of the Faithful Soul." Of the greatest delicacy imaginable is the music (for piano, violin, and voice) to William Sharp's "Coming of the Prince." The "Watteau Pictures" are poems of Verlaine's variously treated: one as a head-piece to a wayward piano caprice, one to be recited during a picturesque waltz, the last a song with mandolin effects in the accompaniment.

The pantomimes range from grave to gay, most of the librettos in this difficult form being from the clever hand of Edwin Starr Belknap. "The Traitor Mandolin," "In Old New Amsterdam," "Put to the Test," "Blanc et Noir," "The Enchanted Fountain," "Her Revenge," "Love and Witchcraft" are their names. The music is full of wit, a quality Loomis possesses in unusual degree. The music mimics everything from the busy feather-duster of the maid to her eavesdropping. Pouring wine, clinking glasses, moving a chair, tearing up a letter, and a rollicking wine-song in pantomime are all hinted with the drollest and most graphic programmism imaginable.

Loomis has also written two burlesque operas, "The Maid of Athens" and "The Burglar's Bride," the libretto of the latter by his brother, Charles Battell Loomis, the well-known humorist. This latter contains some skilful parody on old fogyism.

In the Violin Sonata the piano, while granting precedence to the violin, approaches almost to the dignity of a duet. The finale is captivating and brilliant, and develops some big climaxes. The work as a whole is really superb, and ought to be much played. There are, besides, a "Lyric Finale" to a sonata not yet written, and several songs for violin, voice, and piano.

A suite for four hands, "In Summer Fields," contains some happy manifestations of ability, such as "A June Roundelay," "The Dryad's Grove," and, especially, a humoresque "Junketing," which is surely destined to become a classic. From some of his pantomimes Loomis has made excerpts, and remade them with new elaboration for two pianos, under the name of "Exotics." These are full of variety and of actual novelty, now of startling discord, now of revelatory beauty. A so-called "Norland Epic," freely constructed on the sonata formula, is one of Loomis' most brilliant and personal achievements.

Loomis has an especial aptitude for writing artistic ballet-music, and for composing in the tone of different nationalities, particularly the Spanish. His pantomimes contain many irresistible dances, one of them including a Chinese dance alternating 4-4 with 3-4 time. His strikingly fleet "Harlequin" has been published.

The gift of adding art to catchiness is a great one. This Loomis seems to have to an unusual degree, as is evidenced by the dances in his pantomimes and his series of six pieces "In Ballet Costume," all of them rich with the finest art along with a Strauss-like spontaneity. These include "L'Amazone," "Pirouette," "Un Pas Seul," "La CoryphÉe," "The Odalisque," and "The Magyar." One of his largest works is a concert waltz, "Mi-CarÊme," for two pianos, with elaborate and extended introduction and coda.

A series of Genre Pictures contains such lusciousness of felicity as "At an Italian Festival," and there are a number of musical moments of engaging charm, for instance, "N'Importe Quoi," "From a Conservatory Program," "A Tropical Night," a fascinating "Valsette," a nameless valse, and "Another Scandal," which will prove a gilt-edged speculation for some tardy publisher. It is brimming with the delicious horror of excited gossipry. An example of how thoroughly Loomis is invested with music—how he thinks in it—is his audacious scherzo, "The Town Crier," printed herewith.

In songs Loomis has been most prolific. He has set twenty-two of Shakespeare's lyrics to music of the old English school, such as his uproarious "Let me the cannikin clink," and his dainty "Tell me where is fancy bred."

"The Lark" is written in the pentatonic scale, with accompaniment for two flutes and a harp.

In the same vein are various songs of Herrick, a lyrist whose verse is not usually congenial to the modern music-maker. Loomis' "Epitaph on a Virgin" must be classed as a success. Indeed, it reaches positive grandeur at its climax, wherein is woven the grim persistence of a tolling bell. In the same style is a clever setting of Ben Jonson's much music'd "To Celia."

In German-tone are his veritably magnificent "Herbstnacht" and his "At Midnight," two studies after Franz. Heine's "Des Waldes Kapellmeister" has been made into a most hilarious humoresque.

"Bergerie" is a dozen of Norman Gale's lyrics. "Andalusia" is a flamboyant duet.

In Scotch songs there is a positive embarrassment of riches, Loomis' fancies finding especial food and freedom in this school. I find in these settings far more art and grace than I see even in Schumann's many Scotch songs, or those of any other of the Germans. "Oh, for Ane and Twenty" has bagpipe effects. Such flights of ecstasy as "My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing," and "Bonnie Wee Thing," are simply tyrannical in their appeal. Then there is an irresistible "Polly Stewart;" and "My Peggy's Heart" is fairly ambrosial. These and several others, like "There Was a Bonnie Lass," could be made into an album of songs that would delight a whole suite of generations.

A number of his songs are published: they include a "John Anderson, My Jo," that has no particular right to live; a ballad, "Molly," with a touch of art tucked into it; the beautiful "Sylvan Slumbers," and the quaint and fascinating "Dutch Garden."

Aside from an occasional song like "Thistledown," with its brilliantly fleecy accompaniment, and the setting of Browning's famous "The Year' at the Spring," for which Loomis has struck out a superb frenzy, and a group of songs by John Vance Cheney, Loomis has found some of his most powerful inspirations in the work of our lyrist, Aldrich,—such as the rich carillon of "Wedded," and his "Discipline," one of the best of all humorous songs, a gruesome scherzo all about dead monks, in which the music furnishes out the grim irreverence of the words with the utmost waggery.

Chief among the lyrics by Cheney are three "Spring Songs," in which Loomis has caught the zest of spring with such rapture that, once they are heard, the world seems poor without them in print. Loomis' literary culture is shown in the sure taste of his selection of lyrics for his music. He has marked aptitudes, too, in creative literature, and has an excellent idea of the arts kindred to his own, particularly architecture.

Like Chopin, Loomis is largely occupied in mixing rich new colors on the inexhaustible palette of the piano. Like Chopin, he is not especially called to the orchestra. What the future may hold for him in this field (by no means so indispensable to classic repute as certain pedants assume) it is impossible to say. In the meantime he is giving most of his time to work in larger forms.

If in his restless hunt for novelty, always novelty, he grows too original, too unconventional, this sin is unusual enough to approach the estate of a virtue. But his oddity is not mere sensation-mongering. It is his individuality. He could make the same reply to such criticism that Schumann made; he thinks in strange rhythms and hunts curious effects, because his tastes are irrevocably so ordained.

But we ought to show a new genius the same generosity toward flaws that we extend toward the masters whose fame is won beyond the patronage of our petty forgiveness. And, all in all, I am impelled to prophesy to Loomis a place very high among the inspired makers of new music. His harmonies, so indefatigably searched out and polished to splendor, so potent in enlarging the color-scale of the piano; his patient building up, through long neglect and through long silence, of a monumental group of works and of a distinct individuality, must prove at some late day a source of lasting pride to his country, neglectful now in spite of itself. But better than his patience, than his courage, than his sincerity, better than that insufficient definition of genius,—the capacity for taking infinite pains,—is his inspired felicity. His genius is the very essence of felicity.

Ethelbert Nevin.

It is refreshing to be able to chronicle the achievements of a composer who has become financially successful without destroying his claim on the respect of the learned and severe, or sacrificing his own artistic conscience and individuality. Such a composer is Ethelbert Nevin.

ETHELBERT NEVIN.

His published writings have been altogether along the smaller lines of composition, and he has won an enviable place as a fervent worker in diamonds. None of his gems are paste, and a few have a perfection, a solidity, and a fire that fit them for a place in that coronet one might fancy made up of the richest of the jewels of the world's music-makers, and fashioned for the very brows of the Muse herself.

Autograph of Ethelbert Nevin

Nevin was born in 1862, at Vineacre, on the banks of the Ohio, a few miles from Pittsburgh. There he spent the first sixteen years of his life, and received all his schooling, most of it from his father, Robert P. Nevin, editor and proprietor of a Pittsburgh newspaper, and a contributor to many magazines. It is interesting to note that he also composed several campaign songs, among them the popular "Our Nominee," used in the day of James K. Polk's candidacy. The first grand piano ever taken across the Allegheny Mountains was carted over for Nevin's mother.

From his earliest infancy Nevin was musically inclined, and, at the age of four, was often taken from his cradle to play for admiring visitors. To make up for the deficiency of his little legs, he used to pile cushions on the pedals so that he might manipulate them from afar.

Nevin's father provided for his son both vocal and instrumental instruction, even taking him abroad for two years of travel and music study in Dresden under Von BÖhme. Later he studied the piano for two years at Boston, under B.J. Lang, and composition under Stephen A. Emery, whose little primer on harmony has been to American music almost what Webster's spelling-book was to our letters.

At the end of two years he went to Pittsburgh, where he gave lessons, and saved money enough to take him to Berlin. There he spent the years 1884, 1885, and 1886, placing himself in the hands of Karl Klindworth. Of him Nevin says: "To Herr Klindworth I owe everything that has come to me in my musical life. He was a devoted teacher, and his patience was tireless. His endeavor was not only to develop the student from a musical standpoint, but to enlarge his soul in every way. To do this, he tried to teach one to appreciate and to feel the influence of such great minds of literature as Goethe, Schiller, and Shakespeare. He used to insist that a man does not become a musician by practising so many hours a day at the piano, but by absorbing an influence from all the arts and all the interests of life, from architecture, painting, and even politics."

The effect of such broad training—enjoyed rarely enough by music students—is very evident in Nevin's compositions. They are never narrow or provincial. They are the outpourings of a soul that is not only intense in its activities, but is refined and cultivated in its expressions. This effect is seen, too, in the poems Nevin chooses to set to music,—they are almost without exception verses of literary finish and value. His cosmopolitanism is also remarkable, his songs in French, German, and Italian having no trace of Yankee accent and a great fidelity to their several races.

In 1885, Hans von BÜlow incorporated the best four pupils of his friend, Klindworth, into an artist class, which he drilled personally. Nevin was one of the honored four, and appeared at the unique public ZuhÖren of that year, devoted exclusively to the works of Brahms, Liszt, and Raff. Among the forty or fifty studious listeners at these recitals, Frau Cosima Wagner, the violinist Joachim, and many other celebrities were frequently present.

Nevin returned to America in 1887, and took up his residence in Boston, where he taught and played at occasional concerts.

Eighteen hundred and ninety-two found him in Paris, where he taught, winning more pupils than here. He was especially happy in imparting to singers the proper Auffassung (grasp, interpretation, finish) of songs, and coached many American and French artists for the operatic stage. In 1893 the restless troubadour moved on to Berlin, where he devoted himself so ardently to composition that his health collapsed, and he was exiled a year to Algiers. The early months of 1895 he spent in concert tours through this country. As Klindworth said of him, "he has a touch that brings tears," and it is in interpretation rather than in bravura that he excels. He plays with that unusual combination of elegance and fervor that so individualizes his composition.

Desirous of finding solitude and atmosphere for composition, he took up his residence in Florence, where he composed his suite, "May in Tuscany" (op. 21). The "Arlecchino" of this work has much sprightliness, and shows the influence of Schumann, who made the harlequin particularly his own; but there is none of Chopin's nocturnity in the "Notturno," which presents the sussurus and the moonlit, amorous company of "Boccaccio's Villa." The suite includes a "Misericordia" depicting a midnight cortÈge along the Arno, and modelled on Chopin's funeral march in structure with its hoarse dirge and its rich cantilena. The best number of the suite is surely the "Rusignuolo," an exceedingly fluty bird-song.

From Florence, Nevin went to Venice, where he lived in an old casa on the Grand Canal, opposite the Browning palazzo, and near the house where Wagner wrote "Tristan und Isolde." One day his man, Guido, took a day off, and brought to Venice an Italian sweetheart, who had lived a few miles from the old dream-city and had never visited it. The day these two spent gondoliering through the waterways, where romance hides in every nook, is imaginatively narrated in tone in Nevin's suite, "Un Giorno in Venezia," a book more handsomely published even than the others of his works, which have been among the earliest to throw off the disgraceful weeds of type and design formerly worn by native compositions.

The Venetian suite gains a distinctly Italian color from its ingenuously sweet harmonies in thirds and sixths, and its frankly lyric nature, and "The Day in Venice" begins logically with the dawn, which is ushered in with pink and stealthy harmonies, then "The Gondoliers" have a morning mood of gaiety that makes a charming composition. There is a "Canzone Amorosa" of deep fervor, with interjections of "Io t'amo!" and "Amore" (which has the excellent authority of Beethoven's Sonata, op. 81, with its "Lebe wohl"). The suite ends deliciously with a night scene in Venice, beginning with a choral "Ave Maria," and ending with a campanella of the utmost delicacy.

After a year in Venice Nevin made Paris his home for a year, returning to America then, where he has since remained.

Though he has dabbled somewhat in orchestration, he has been wisely devoting his genius, with an almost Chopin-like singleness of mind, to songs and piano pieces. His piano works are what would be called morceaux. He has never written a sonata, or anything approaching the classical forms, nearer than a gavotte or two. He is very modern in his harmonies, the favorite colors on his palette being the warmer keys, which are constantly blended enharmonically. He "swims in a sea of tone," being particularly fond of those suspensions and inversions in which the intervals of the second clash passionately, strongly compelling resolution. For all his gracefulness and lyricism, he makes a sturdy and constant use of dissonance; in his song "HerbstgefÜhl" the dissonance is fearlessly defiant of conventions.

[Listen]

music

Copyright, 1889, by G. Schirmer, Jr.

A FRAGMENT FROM "HERBSTGEFÜHL."