Chapter II: The Innovators (2)

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 "Herbstgefuehl" the dissonance is fearlessly defiant of conventions.

[Music:

... Rose
Loeset lebenssatt.
Sich, das letzte lose,
Bleiche Blumenblatt.
Goldenes entfaerben,
Schleicht sich durch den Hain,
Auch vergeh'n und sterben,
Daeucht mir suess zu sein.

... failing,
From the rose unbound,
Falls, its life exhaling,
Dead upon the ground.
Golden colors flying,
Slant from tree to tree;
Such release and dying,
Sweet would seem to me.

Copyright, 1889, by G. Schirmer, Jr.

A FRAGMENT FROM "HERBSTGEFUeHL."]

Nevin's songs, whose only littleness is in their length, though treated with notable individuality, are founded in principle on the _Lieder_ of Schumann and Franz. That is to say, they are written with a high poetical feeling inspired by the verses they sing, and, while melodious enough to justify them as lyrics, yet are near enough to impassioned recitative to do justice to the words on which they are built. Nevin is also an enthusiastic devotee of the position these masters, after Schubert, took on the question of the accompaniment. This is no longer a slavish thumping of a few chords, now and then, to keep the voice on the key, with outbursts of real expression only at the interludes; but it is a free instrumental composition with a meaning of its own and an integral value, truly accompanying, not merely supporting and serving, the voice. Indeed, one of Nevin's best songs,--"Lehn deine Wang an meine Wang,"--is actually little more than a vocal accompaniment to a piano solo. His accompaniments are always richly colored and generally individualized with a strong contramelody, a descending chromatic scale in octaves making an especially frequent appearance. Design, though not classical, is always present and distinct.

Nevin's first published work was a modest "Serenade," with a neat touch of syncopation, which he wrote at the age of eighteen. His "Sketch-Book," a collection of thirteen songs and piano pieces found an immediate and remarkable sale that has removed the ban formerly existing over books of native compositions.

The contents of the "Sketch-Book" display unusual versatility. It opens with a bright gavotte, in which adherence to the classic spirit compels a certain reminiscence of tone. The second piece, a song, "I' the Wondrous Month o' May," has such a springtide fire and frenzy in the turbulent accompaniment, and such a fervent reiterance, that it becomes, in my opinion, the best of all the settings of this poem of Heine's, not excluding even Schumann's or that of Franz. The "Love Song," though a piano solo, is in reality a duet between two lovers. It is to me finer than Henselt's perfect "Liebeslied," possibly because the ravishing sweetness of the woman's voice answering the sombre plea of the man gives it a double claim on the heart. The setting of "Du bist wie eine Blume," however, hardly does justice either to Heine's poem, or to Nevin's art. The "Serenade" is an original bit of work, but the song, "Oh, that We Two were Maying!" with a voice in the accompaniment making it the duet it should be,--that song can have no higher praise than this, that it is the complete, the final musical fulfilment of one of the rarest lyrics in our language. A striking contrast to the keen white regret of this song is the setting of a group of "Children's Songs," by Robert Louis Stevenson. Nevin's child-songs have a peculiar and charming place. He has not been stingy of either his abundant art or his abundant humanity in writing them. They include four of Stevenson's, the best being the captivating "In Winter I get up at Night," and a setting of Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue," in which a trumpet figure is used with delicate pathos.

Nevin's third opus included three exquisite songs of a pastoral nature, Goethe's rollicking "One Spring Morning" having an immense sale. Opus 5 contained five songs, of which the ecstatic "'Twas April" reached the largest popularity. Possibly the smallest sale was enjoyed by "Herbstgefuehl." Many years have not availed to shake my allegiance to this song, as one of the noblest songs in the world's music. It is to me, in all soberness, as great as the greatest of the _Lieder_ of Schubert, Schumann or Franz. In "Herbstgefuehl" (or "Autumn-mood") Gerok's superb poem bewails the death of the leaves and the failing of the year, and cries out in sympathy:

"Such release and dying
Sweet would seem to me!"

Deeper passion and wilder despair could not be crowded into so short a song, and the whole brief tragedy is wrought with a grandeur and climax positively epic. It is a flash of sheer genius.

Three piano duets make up opus 6; and other charming works, songs, piano pieces, and violin solos, kept pouring from a pen whose apparent ease concealed a vast deal of studious labor, until the lucky 13, the opus-number of a bundle of "Water Scenes," brought Nevin the greatest popularity of all, thanks largely to "Narcissus," which has been as much thrummed and whistled as any topical song.

Of the other "Water Scenes," there is a shimmering "Dragon Fly," a monody, "Ophelia," with a pedal-point of two periods on the tonic, and a fluent "Barcarolle" with a deal of high-colored virtuosity.

His book "In Arcady" (1892) contains pastoral scenes, notably an infectious romp that deserves its legend, "They danced as though they never would grow old." The next year his opus 20, "A Book of Songs," was published. It contains, among other things of merit, a lullaby, called "Sleep, Little Tulip," with a remarkably artistic and effective pedal-point on two notes (the submediant and the dominant) sustained through the entire song with a fine fidelity to the words and the lullaby spirit; a "Nocturne" in which Nevin has revealed an unsuspected voluptuousness in Mr. Aldrich' little lyric, and has written a song of irresistible climaxes. The two songs, "Dites-Moi" and "In der Nacht," each so completely true to the idiom of the language of its poem, are typical of Nevin's cosmopolitanism, referred to before. This same unusual ability is seen in his piano pieces as well as in his songs. He knows the difference between a _chanson_ and a _Lied_, and in "Rechte Zeit" has written with truth to German soldierliness as he has been sympathetic with French nuance in "Le Vase Brise," the effective song "Mon Desire," which in profile suggests Saint-Saens' familiar Delilah-song, the striking "Chanson des Lavandieres" and "Rapelle-Toi," one of Nevin's most elaborate works, in which Alfred De Musset's verse is splendidly set with much enharmonious color. Very Italian, too, is the "Serenade" with accompaniment a la mandolin, which is the most fetching number in the suite "Captive Memories," published in 1899.

Nevin has also put many an English song to music, notably the deeply sincere "At Twilight," the strenuous lilt "In a Bower," Bourdillon's beautiful lyric, "Before the Daybreak," the smooth and unhackneyed treatment of the difficult stanza of "'Twas April," that popular song, "One Spring Morning," which has not yet had all the charm sung out of it, and two songs with obbligati for violin and 'cello, "Deep in the Rose's Glowing Heart" and "Doris," a song with a finely studied accompaniment and an aroma of Theokritos.

A suite for the piano is "En Passant," published in 1899; it ranges from a stately old dance, "At Fontainebleau," to "Napoli," a furious tarantelle with effective _glissandi_; "In Dreamland" is a most delicious revery with an odd repetition that is not preludatory, but thematic. The suite ends with the most poetic scene of all, "At Home," which makes a tone poem of Richard Hovey's word-picture of a June night in Washington. The depicting of the Southern moonlight-balm, with its interlude of a distant and drowsy negro quartette, reminds one pleasantly of Chopin's Nocturne (op. 37, No. 1), with its intermezzo of choric monks, though the composition is Nevin's very own in spirit and treatment.

In addition to the works catalogued, Nevin has written a pantomime for piano and orchestra to the libretto of that virtuoso in English, Vance Thompson; it was called "Lady Floriane's Dream," and was given in New York in 1898. Nevin has also a cantata in making.

It needs no very intimate acquaintance with Nevin's music to see that it is not based on an adoration for counterpoint as an end. He believes that true music must come from the emotions--the intelligent emotions--and that when it cannot appeal to the emotions it has lost its power. He says: "Above everything we need melody--melody and rhythm. Rhythm is the great thing. We have it in Nature. The trees sway, and our steps keep time, and our very souls respond." In Wagner's "Meistersinger," which he calls "a symphonic poem with action," Nevin finds his musical creed and his model.

And now, if authority is needed for all this frankly enthusiastic admiration, let it be found in and echoed from Karl Klindworth, who said of Nevin: "His talent is _ungeheures_ [one of the strongest adjectives in the German language]. If he works hard and is conscientious, he can say for the musical world something that no one else can say."

_John Philip Sousa._

In common with most of those that pretend to love serious music, a certain person was for long guilty of the pitiful snobbery of rating march-tunes as the lowest form of the art. But one day he joined a National Guard regiment, and his first long march was that heart-breaking dress-parade of about fifteen miles through the wind and dust of the day Grant's monument was dedicated. Most of the music played by the band was merely rhythmical embroidery, chiefly in bugle figures, as helpful as a Clementi sonatina; but now and then there would break forth a magic elixir of tune that fairly plucked his feet up for him, put marrow in unwilling bones, and replaced the dreary doggedness of the heart with a great zest for progress, a stout martial fire, and a fierce _esprit de corps_; with patriotism indeed. In almost every case, that march belonged to one John Philip Sousa.

It came upon this wretch then, that, if it is a worthy ambition in a composer to give voice to passionate love-ditties, or vague contemplation, or the deep despair of a funeral cortege, it is also a very great thing to instil courage, and furnish an inspiration that will send men gladly, proudly, and gloriously through hardships into battle and death. This last has been the office of the march-tune, and it is as susceptible of structural logic or embellishments as the fugue, rondo, or what not. These architectural qualities Sousa's marches have in high degree, as any one will find that examines their scores or listens analytically. They have the further merit of distinct individuality, and the supreme merit of founding a school.

It is only the plain truth to say that Sousa's marches have founded a school; that he has indeed revolutionized march-music. His career resembles that of Johann Strauss in many ways. A certain body of old fogies has always presumed to deride the rapturous waltzes of Strauss, though they have won enthusiastic praise from even the esoteric Brahms, and gained from Wagner such words as these: "One Strauss waltz overshadows, in respect to animation, finesse, and real musical worth, most of the mechanical, borrowed, factory-made products of the present time." The same words might be applied to Sousa's marches with equal justice. They have served also for dance music, and the two-step, borne into vogue by Sousa's music, has driven the waltz almost into desuetude.

There is probably no composer in the world with a popularity equal to that of Sousa. Though he sold his "Washington Post" march outright for $35, his "Liberty Bell" march is said to have brought him $35,000. It is found that his music has been sold to eighteen thousand bands in the United States alone. The amazing thing is to learn that there are so many bands in the country. Sousa's marches have appeared on programs in all parts of the civilized world. At the Queen's Jubilee, when the Queen stepped forward to begin the grand review of the troops, the combined bands of the household brigade struck up the "Washington Post." On other important occasions it appeared constantly as the chief march of the week. General Miles heard the marches played in Turkey by the military bands in the reviews.

The reason for this overwhelming appeal to the hearts of a planet is not far to seek. The music is conceived in a spirit of high martial zest. It is proud and gay and fierce, thrilled and thrilling with triumph. Like all great music it is made up of simple elements, woven together by a strong personality. It is not difficult now to write something that sounds more or less like a Sousa march, any more than it is difficult to write parodies, serious or otherwise, on Beethoven, Mozart, or Chopin. The glory of Sousa is that he was the first to write in this style; that he has made himself a style; that he has so stirred the musical world that countless imitations have sprung up after him.

The individuality of the Sousa march is this, that, unlike most of the other influential marches, it is not so much a musical exhortation from without, as a distillation of the essences of soldiering from within. Sousa's marches are not based upon music-room enthusiasms, but on his own wide experiences of the feelings of men who march together in the open field.

And so his band music expresses all the nuances of the military psychology: the exhilaration of the long unisonal stride, the grip on the musket, the pride in the regimentals and the regiment,--_esprit de corps_. He expresses the inevitable foppery of the severest soldier, the tease and the taunt of the evolutions, the fierce wish that all this ploying and deploying were in the face of an actual enemy, the mania to reek upon a tangible foe all the joyous energy, the blood-thirst of the warrior.

These things Sousa embodies in his music as no other music writer ever has. To approach Sousa's work in the right mood, the music critic must leave his stuffy concert hall and his sober black; he must flee from the press, don a uniform, and march. After his legs and spirits have grown aweary under the metronomic tunes of others, let him note the surge of blood in his heart and the rejuvenation of all his muscles when the brasses flare into a barbaric Sousa march. No man that marches can ever feel anything but gratitude and homage for Sousa.

Of course he is a trickster at times; admitted that he stoops to conquer at times, yet in his field he is supreme. He is worthy of serious consideration, because his thematic material is almost always novel and forceful, and his instrumentation full of contrast and climax. He is not to be judged by the piano versions of his works, because they are abominably thin and inadequate, and they are not _klaviermaessig_. There should be a Liszt or a Taussig to transcribe him.

When all's said and done, Sousa is the pulse of the nation, and in war of more inspiration and power to our armies than ten colonels with ten braw regiments behind them.

Like Strauss', Mr. Sousa's father was a musician who forbade his son to devote himself to dance music. As Strauss' mother enabled him secretly to work out his own salvation, so did Sousa's mother help him. Sousa's father was a political exile from Spain, and earned a precarious livelihood by playing a trombone in the very band at Washington which later became his son's stepping-stone to fame. Sousa was born at Washington in 1859. His mother is German, and Sousa's music shows the effect of Spanish yeast in sturdy German rye bread. Sousa's teachers were John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. The latter Mr. Sousa considers one of the most complete musicians this country has ever known. He put him through such a thorough theoretical training, that at fifteen Sousa was teaching harmony. At eight he had begun to earn his own living as a violin player at a dancing-school, and at ten he was a public soloist. At sixteen he was the conductor of an orchestra in a variety theatre. Two years later he was musical director of a travelling company in Mr. Milton Nobles' well-known play, "The Phoenix," for which he composed the incidental music. Among other incidents in a career of growing importance was a position in the orchestra with which Offenbach toured this country. At the age of twenty-six, after having played, with face blacked, as a negro minstrel, after travelling with the late Matt Morgan's Living Picture Company, and working his way through and above other such experiences in the struggle for life, Sousa became the leader of the United States Marine Band. In the twelve years of his leadership he developed this unimportant organization into one of the best military bands in the world.

In 1892 his leadership had given him such fame that he withdrew from the government service to take the leadership of the band carrying his own name.

A work of enormous industry was his collection and arrangement, by governmental order, of the national and typical tunes of all nations into one volume, an invaluable book of reference.

Out of the more than two hundred published compositions by Sousa, it is not possible to mention many here. Though some of the names are not happily chosen, they call up many episodes of parade gaiety and jauntiness, or warlike fire. The "Liberty Bell," "Directorate," "High School Cadets," "King Cotton," "Manhattan Beach," "'Sound Off!'" "Washington Post," "Picador," and others, are all stirring works; his best, I think, is a deeply patriotic march, "The Stars and Stripes Forever." The second part of this has some brass work of particular originality and vim.

In manuscript are a few works of larger form: a symphonic poem, "The Chariot Race," an historical scene, "Sheridan's Ride," and two suites, "Three Quotations" and "The Last Days of Pompeii."

The "Three Quotations" are:

(_a_) "The King of France, with twenty thousand men,
Marched up a hill and then marched down again,"

which is the motive for a delightful scherzo-march of much humor in instrumentation;

(_b_) "And I, too, was born in Arcadia,"

which is a pastorale with delicious touches of extreme delicacy;

(_c_) "In Darkest Africa,"

which has a stunning beginning and is a stirring grotesque in the negro manner Dvorak advised Americans to cultivate. All three are well arranged for the piano.

The second suite is based on "The Last Days of Pompeii." It opens with a drunken revel, "In the House of Burbo and Stratonice;" the bulky brutishness of the gladiators clamoring for wine, a jolly drinking-song, and a dance by a jingling clown make up a superbly written number. The second movement is named "Nydia," and represents the pathetic reveries of the blind girl; it is tender and quiet throughout.

The third movement is at once daring and masterly. It boldly attacks "The Destruction," and attains real heights of graphic suggestion. A long, almost inaudible roll on the drums, with occasional thuds, heralds the coming of the earthquake; subterranean rumblings, sharp rushes of tremor, toppling stones, and wild panic are insinuated vividly, with no cheap attempts at actual imitation. The roaring of the terrified lion is heard, and, best touch of all, under the fury of the scene persists the calm chant of the Nazarenes, written in one of the ancient modes. The rout gives way to the sea-voyage of Glaucus and Ione, and Nydia's swan-song dies away in the gentle splash of ripples. The work is altogether one of superb imagination and scholarly achievement.

Sousa, appealing as he does to an audience chiefly of the popular sort, makes frequent use of devices shocking to the conventional. But even in this he is impelled by the enthusiasm of an experimenter and a developer. Almost every unconventional novelty is hooted at in the arts. But the sensationalism of to-day is the conservatism of to-morrow, and the chief difference between a touch of high art and a trick is that the former succeeds and the latter does not. Both are likely to have a common origin.

The good thing is that Sousa is actuated by the spirit of progress and experiment, and has carried on the development of the military band begun by the late Patrick S. Gilmore. Sousa's concert programs devote what is in fact the greater part of their space to music by the very best composers. These, of course, lose something in being translated over to the military band, but their effect in raising the popular standard of musical culture cannot but be immense. Through such instrumentality much of Wagner is as truly popular as any music played. The active agents of such a result should receive the heartiest support from every one sincerely interested in turning the people toward the best things in music. Incidentally, it is well to admit that while a cheap march-tune is almost as trashy as an uninspired symphony, a good march-tune is one of the best things in the best music.

Though chiefly known as a writer of marches, in which he has won glory enough for the average human ambition, Sousa has also taken a large place in American comic opera. His first piece, "The Smugglers," was produced in 1879, and scored the usual failure of a first work. His "Katherine" was never produced, his "Desiree" was brought out in 1884 by the McCaull Opera Company, and his "Queen of Hearts," a one-act piece, was given two years later. He forsook opera then for ten years; but in 1896 De Wolf Hopper produced his "El Capitan" with great success.

The chief tune of the piece was a march used with Meyerbeerian effectiveness to bring down the curtain. The stout verve of this "El Capitan" march gave it a large vogue outside the opera. Hopper next produced "The Charlatan," a work bordering upon opera comique in its first version. Both of these works scored even larger success in London than at home.

[Music: Used by permission of the John Church Company, owners of the copyright.

A PAGE FROM "EL CAPITAN," BY JOHN PHILIP SOUSA.]

In "The Bride Elect," Sousa wrote his own libretto, and while there was the usual stirring march as the piece de resistance, the work as a whole was less clangorous of the cymbal than the operas of many a tamer composer. In "Chris and the Wonderful Lamp," an extravaganza, the chief ensemble was worked up from a previous march, "Hands Across the Sea."

But Sousa can write other things than marches, and his scoring is full of variety, freedom, and contrapuntal brilliance.

_Henry Schoenefeld._

Long before Dvorak discovered America, we aboriginals had been trying to invent a national musical dialect which should identify us as completely to the foreigner as our nasal intonation and our fondness for the correct and venerable use of the word "guess." But Dvorak is to credit for taking the problem off the shelf, and persuading our composers to think. I cannot coax myself into the enthusiasm some have felt for Dvorak's own explorations in darkest Africa. His quartette (op. 96) and his "New World" symphony are about as full of accent and infidelity as Mlle. Yvette Guilbert's picturesque efforts to sing in English. But almost anything is better than the phlegm that says, "The old ways are good enough for all time;" and the Bohemian missionary must always hold a place in the chronicle of American music.

A disciple of Dvorak's, both in advance and in retrospect, is Henry Schoenefeld, who wrote a characteristic suite (op. 15) before the Dvorakian invasion, and an overture, "In the Sunny South," afterward. The suite, which has been played frequently abroad, winning the praises of Hanslick, Nicode, and Rubinstein, is scored for string orchestra. It opens with an overly reminiscent waltz-tune, and ends conventionally, but it contains a movement in negro-tone that gives it importance. In this the strings are abetted by a tambourine, a triangle, and a gong. It is in march-time, and, after a staccato prelude, begins with a catchy air taken by the second violins, while the firsts, divided, fill up the chords. A slower theme follows in the tonic major; it is a jollificational air, dancing from the first violins with a bright use of harmonics. Two periods of loud chorale appear with the gong clanging (to hint a church-bell, perhaps). The first two themes return and end the picture.

The overture (op. 22) has won the high esteem of A.J. Goodrich, and it seems to me to be one of the most important of native works, not because of its nigrescence, but because of its spontaneity therein. It adds to the usual instruments only the piccolo, the English horn, the tambourine, and triangle and cymbals. The slow introduction gives forth an original theme in the most approved and most fetching darky pattern. The strings announce it, and the wood replies. The flutes and clarinets toss it in a blanket furnished by an interesting passage in the 'cellos and contrabasses. There is a choral moment from the English horn, the bassoons, and a clarinet. This solemn thought keeps recurring parenthetically through the general gaiety. The first subject clatters in, the second is even more jubilant. In the development a dance _misterioso_ is used with faithful screaming repetitions, and the work ends regularly and brilliantly. There is much syncopation, though nothing that is strictly in "rag-time;" banjo-figurations are freely and ingeniously employed, and the whole is a splendid fiction in local color. Schoenefeld's negroes do not speak Bohemian.

His determined nationalism is responsible for his festival overture, "The American Flag," based on his own setting of Rodman Drake's familiar poem. The work opens with the hymn blaring loudly from the antiphonal brass and wood. The subjects are taken from it with much thematic skill, and handled artfully, but the hymn, which appears in full force for coda, is as trite as the most of its kith.

Schoenefeld was born in Milwaukee, in 1857. His father was a musician, and his teacher for some years. At the age of seventeen Schoenefeld went to Leipzig, where he spent three years, studying under Reinecke, Coccius, Papperitz, and Grill. A large choral and orchestral work was awarded a prize over many competitors, and performed at the Gewandhaus concerts, the composer conducting. Thereafter he went to Weimar, where he studied under Edward Lassen.

In 1879 he came back to America, and took up his residence in Chicago, where he has since lived as a teacher, orchestra leader, and composer. He has for many years directed the Germania Maennerchor.

Schoenefeld's "Rural Symphony" was awarded the $500 prize offered by the National Conservatory. Dvorak was the chairman of the Committee on Award, and gave Schoenefeld hearty compliments. Later works are: "Die drei Indianer," an ode for male chorus, solo, and orchestra; a most beautiful "Air" for orchestra (the air being taken by most of the strings,--the first violins haunting the G string,--while a harp and three flutes carry the burden of the accompaniment gracefully); a pleasant "Reverie" for string orchestra, harp, and organ; and two impromptus for string orchestra, a "Meditation" representing Cordelia brooding tenderly over the slumbering King Lear,--art ministering very tenderly to the mood,--and a cleverly woven "Valse Noble."

Only a few of Schoenefeld's works are published, all of them piano pieces. It is no slur upon his orchestral glory to say that these are for the most part unimportant, except the excellent "Impromptu" and "Prelude." Of the eight numbers in "The Festival," for children, only the "Mazurka" is likely to make even the smallest child think. The "Kleine Tanz Suite" is better. The six children's pieces of opus 41, "Mysteries of the Wood," make considerable appeal to the fancy and imagination, and are highly interesting. They show Grieg's influence very plainly, and are quite worth recommending. This cannot be said of his most inelegant "Valse Elegante," or of his numerous dances, except, perhaps, his "Valse Caprice."

He won in July, 1899, the prize offered to American composers by Henri Marteau, for a sonata for violin and piano. The jury was composed of such men as Dubois, Pierne, Diemer, and Pugno. The sonata is _quasi fantasia_, and begins strongly with an evident intention to make use of negro-tone. The first subject is so vigorously declared that one is surprised to find that it is elastic enough to express a sweet pathos and a deep gloom. It is rather fully developed before the second subject enters; this, on the other hand, is hardly insinuated in its relative major before the rather inelaborate elaboration begins. In the romanza, syncopation and imitation are much relied on, though the general atmosphere is that of a nocturne, a trio of dance-like manner breaking in. The final rondo combines a clog with a choral intermezzo. The work is noteworthy for its deep sincerity and great lyric beauty.

_Maurice Arnold._

The plantation dances of Maurice Arnold have an intrinsic interest quite aside from their intrinsic value. Arnold, whose full name is Maurice Arnold-Strothotte, was born in St. Louis in 1865. His mother was a prominent pianist and gave him his first lessons in music. At the age of fifteen he went to Cincinnati, studying at the College of Music for three years. In 1883 he went to Germany to study counterpoint and composition with Vierling and Urban in Berlin. The latter discouraged him when he attempted to imbue a suite with a negro plantation spirit.

Arnold now went upon a tramping tour in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Some of his compositions show the influence of his journey. He then entered the Cologne Conservatory, studying under Wuellner, Neitzel, and G. Jensen. His first piano sonata was performed there at a public concert. He next went to Breslau, where, under the instruction of Max Bruch, he wrote his cantata, "The Wild Chase," and gave public performance to other orchestral work. Returning now to St. Louis, he busied himself as solo violinist and teacher, travelling also as a conductor of opera companies. When Dvorak came here Arnold wrote his "Plantation Dances," which were produced in a concert under the auspices of the Bohemian composer. Arnold was instructor of harmony at the National Conservatory under Dvorak.

The "Plantation Dances" are Arnold's thirty-third opus, and they have been much played by orchestras; they are also published as a piano duet; the second dance also as a solo. Arnold has not made direct use of Ethiopian themes, but has sought the African spirit. The first of the dances is very nigresque; the second hardly at all, though it is a delicious piece of music; the third dance uses banjo figures and realizes darky hilarity in fine style; the fourth is a cake walk and hits off the droll humor of that pompous ceremony fascinatingly.

Arnold's "Dramatic Overture" shows a fire and rush very characteristic of him and likely to be kept up without sufficient contrast. So also does his cantata, "The Wild Chase." Arnold has written two comic operas. I have heard parts of the first and noted moments of much beauty and humor. The Aragonaise, which opens the third act, is particularly delightful. The orchestration throughout displays Arnold's characteristic studiousness in picturesque effect.

For piano there is a czardas, and a "Valse Elegante" for eight hands; it is more Viennese than Chopinesque. It might indeed be called a practicable waltz lavishly adorned. The fruits of Arnold's Oriental journey are seen in his impressionistic "Danse de la Midway Plaisance;" a very clever reminiscence of a Turkish minstrel; and a Turkish march, which has been played by many German orchestras. There is a "Caprice Espagnol," which is delightful, and a "Banjoenne," which treats banjo music so captivatingly that Arnold may be said to have invented a new and fertile and musical form. Besides these there are a fugue for eight hands, a "Minstrel Serenade" for violin and piano, and six duets for violin and viola.

There are also a few part songs and some solos, among which mention should be made of "Ein Maerlein," in the old German style, an exquisitely tender "Barcarolle," and a setting of the poem, "I Think of Thee in Silent Night," which makes use of a particularly beautiful phrase for pre-, inter-, and postlude. Arnold has also written some ballet music, a tarantelle for string orchestra, and is at work upon a symphony, and a book, "Some Points in Modern Orchestration." His violin sonata (now in MS.) shows his original talent at its best. In the first movement, the first subject is a snappy and taking example of negro-tone, the second has the perfume of moonlit magnolia in its lyricism. (In the reprise this subject, which had originally appeared in the dominant major, recurs in the tonic major, the key of the sonata being E minor.) The second movement is also in the darky spirit, but full of melancholy. For finale the composer has flown to Ireland and written a bully jig full of dash and spirit.

_N. Clifford Page._

The influence of Japanese and Chinese art upon our world of decoration has long been realized. After considering the amount of interest shown in the Celestial music by American composers, one is tempted to prophesy a decided influence in this line, and a considerable spread of Japanese influence in the world of music also. Japanese music has a decorative effect that is sometimes almost as captivating as in painting.

The city of San Francisco is the natural gateway for any such impulse, and not a little of it has already passed the custom house. In this field Edgar S. Kelley's influence is predominating, and it is not surprising that he should pass the contagion on to his pupil, Nathaniel Clifford Page, who was born in San Francisco, October 26, 1866. His ancestors were American for many years prior to the Revolution. He composed operas at the age of twelve, and has used many of these immature ideas with advantage in the later years. He began the serious study of music at the age of sixteen, Kelley being his principal teacher. His first opera, composed and orchestrated before he became of age, was entitled "The First Lieutenant." It was produced in 1889 at the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco, where most of the critics spoke highly of its instrumental and Oriental color, some of the scenes being laid in Morocco.

In instrumentation, which is considered Page's forte, he has never had any instruction further than his own reading and investigation. He began to conduct in opera and concert early in life, and has had much experience. He has also been active as a teacher in harmony and orchestration.

An important phase of Page's writing has been incidental music for plays, his greatest success having been achieved by the music for the "Moonlight Blossom," a play based upon Japanese life and produced in London in 1898. The overture was written entirely on actual Japanese themes, including the national anthem of Japan. Page was three weeks writing these twelve measures. He had a Japanese fiddle arranged with a violin finger-board, but thanks to the highly characteristic stubbornness of orchestral players, he was compelled to have this part played by a mandolin. Two Japanese drums, a whistle used by a Japanese shampooer, and a Japanese guitar were somehow permitted to add their accent. The national air is used in augmentation later as the bass for a Japanese song called "K Honen." The fidelity of the music is proved by the fact that Sir Edwin Arnold's Japanese wife recognized the various airs and was carried away by the national anthem.

Although the play was not a success, the music was given a cordial reception, and brought Page contracts for other work in England, including a play of Indian life by Mrs. Flora Annie Steel.

Previously to the writing of the "Moonlight Blossom" music, Page had arranged the incidental music for the same author's play, "The Cat and the Cherub." Edgar S. Kelley's "Aladdin" music was the source from which most of the incidental music was drawn; but Page added some things of his own, among them being one of the most effective and unexpected devices for producing a sense of horror and dread I have ever listened to: simply the sounding at long intervals of two gruff single tones in the extreme low register of the double basses and bassoons. The grimness of this effect is indescribable.

An unnamed Oriental opera, and an opera called "Villiers," in which old English color is employed (including a grotesque dance of the clumsy Ironsides), show the cosmopolitan restlessness of Page's muse. An appalling scheme of self-amusement is seen in his "Caprice," in which a theme of eight measures' length is instrumented with almost every contrapuntal device known, and with psychological variety that runs through five movements, scherzando, vigoroso, con sentimento, religioso, and a marcia fantastico. The suite called "Village Fete" is an experiment in French local color. It contains five scenes: The Peasants Going to Chapel; The Flower Girls; The Vagabonds; The Tryst; The Sabot Dance; and the Entrance of the Mayor, which is a pompous march.

On the occasion of a performance of this, Louis Arthur Russell wrote: "His orchestra is surely French, and as modern as you please. The idiom is Berlioz's rather than Wagner's."