Chapter XIII: Romanticists and Neo-Classicists (1)

Influences and conditions of the period--Edward
MacDowell--Edgar Stillman Kelley--Arne Oldberg; Henry
Hadley; F. S. Converse--E. R. Kroeger; Rubin Goldmark;
Brockway; H. N. Bartlett; R. G. Cole--Daniel Gregory
Mason; David Stanley Smith; Edward Burlingame Hill--Philip
G. Clapp; John Beach; Arthur Bergh; Joseph Henius; F. E.
Ward; Carl Busch; Walter Damrosch--The San Francisco Group;
Miscellany--Women Composers.

Between the founders of musical composition in America, who felt chiefly the influence of that musical world of which Beethoven was the great central figure, and those who have looked to aboriginal and other native sources for inspiration on the one hand, or European ultra-modern tendencies on the other, there exists a large and important group of American composers whose artistic origin is to be associated with the so-called 'romantic' school, of which Schumann is the generally accepted protagonist. Proudly as the dramatic phase of the romantic movement shone forth at the same time in the genius of Richard Wagner, it was left with the non-dramatic wing of the romantic school to establish the ideals which should dominate and direct the romantic movement which was subsequently to arise in America. There are a number of reasons why this should have been the case, as there are also reasons to believe that the full influence of Wagner's ideas has not yet been felt in America. In the first place, it was during the epoch of the romantic movement that the German musician and music teacher first began to look to the new world as a field for the broad extension of his labors. Every city and town of America came to have its German music teachers; they were accepted everywhere as representatives of the highest musical civilization of the world, and it is, in fact, to this early German musical emigration that the substantial foundations of our American musical education are due. As qualifying factors, however, in the influence which he was to exert upon the future, there were two facts in general which characterized him: his profession, which was usually that of pianist and piano teacher, and his anathematization of Wagner. While Beethoven was his musical god, in his capacity of pianist he also spread the influence of that side of the romantic movement which perpetuated, and developed, the tradition of piano music. Thus Schumann and Chopin, and their contemporaries, came to a measurable fullness of appreciation in America at a time when Wagner was held to be a mad and dangerous musical anarchist.

Quite aside from this group of circumstances, it was also true that nothing could be more remote from the American civilization of the time than the possibility of any semblance of the realization of Wagner's ideals. Opera was the most fitful and exotic of institutions, and the theatre in general, except for such occasional meteoric apparitions as Edwin Booth, was in a condition of the greatest crudity, as well as being under the ban of a puritanism which, fortunately, in these latter days, is beginning somewhat to relax its tenacity. Because of the unripeness of American life for a creative art of music, the influence of the early German invasion did not produce many composers. It had, however, implanted ideals which were to assume the greatest importance in the future. When the overwhelming Wagnerian flood at last arrived, in the splendid productions of the music-dramas under the direction of Seidl and the Damrosches, it found the ideals of the classical and romantic schools already well implanted; more than that, it found a rapidly increasing group of young composers who had arisen under the influence of those ideals. The result was that these composers, who did not share the prejudices of their Teutonic musical forbears, drank in with avidity the wonderful new harmonies of Wagner, and set about incorporating them, not in music-dramas, but in the sonatas and symphonies arising from the classical tradition, and all manner of free forms to which the romantic school had given birth. The Wagnerian harmonies were accepted, but the forms of the earlier movements were retained, except where the followers of Liszt ventured forth on scantily charted seas of formal emancipation. Similarly other new influences began to be felt, and Tschaikowsky, in a new symphonic emotionalism, and Brahms, in a new flowering of thematic development, gave encouragement in the retaining of earlier forms. The dual product of these various influences was, on the one hand, a romanticism which claimed both harmonic and formal freedom, and a neo-classicism which welcomed the new harmonic world opened up by Wagner, but inclined to cling to the forms of the classical epoch.

I

As the first modern American composer to step forth with a highly characterized poetic individuality, Edward Alexander MacDowell (b. 1861, d. 1908) quickly took, and his work has held, since his untimely death in 1908, a unique and preëminent place in American music. As the first great pioneer of the romantic school in America his place is certainly assured, and, while the perspective thus far gained upon his work has by no means led to a unanimity of opinion concerning it, the dignity, charm, and poetic fancy of a great part of it must assuredly give it an enduring position in the musical world. All barriers of adverse criticism and opinion fall before creativeness, to the extent to which it is truly creative, and it is the creative character of MacDowell's music that insures its persistence. Noteworthy is it also that it is through his greatest works, such as the second piano concerto and the Celtic Sonata, that his fame chiefly endures, a convincing evidence that his highest aspirations did not strike wide of their mark.

An inquiry into the nature of MacDowell's genius must perforce lead us to a recognition of his Celtic antecedents and sympathies; for with all his early German experience and training, with all his substantial Teutonic technical foundation gained thereby, he was first and last a Celt in spirit. Over the heavy bog of German harmony and counterpoint his sensitive fancy danced like restless thistledown, following the lightest whimsey of the breeze and the most tremulous maneuverings of shadow-play. In his more powerful tone painting it is the elements, rather than the passions, that command him. The old nature-worship which is so ineradicable an element of the psychic constitution of the Celt, and which leads him to commune with the innumerable and elusive hosts of the land of faery, never forsook the soul of MacDowell, or ceased to direct the course of his genius. Impatient of the restraints of the outer world, and of its weight of poetry-quenching affairs and transactions, his spirit hurried ever to a communion with the moods and mysteries of nature, and to that corresponding dream-world of intensified nature-perceptions within the soul to which these are the appointed and the alluring gateway. MacDowell's dream-world was directly conjoined with that of 'Fiona Macleod,' whose subjective nature-pictures offer a close literary parallel to the tone-pictures of the composer. These two traversed the same region, which is that of the psychic perceptions, but the account of it brought back by MacDowell presents one striking fundamental difference from all accounts rendered by poetry-making Celts who have remained upon their native soil. In the American the soul no longer cries out from under an age-long burden of poverty and oppression; the heartache and the world-weariness have been sloughed off in the new-world birth. No outcry of the heart is the music of MacDowell, but an eager self-surrendering to the interpretation of the facts and moods of nature, the rocking of a lily-pad on cool waters, the lonely drift of an iridescent iceberg, the mad sudden impact of a hurrying gust. Often are these interpretations of an almost uncanny intimacy, so subtle and sensitive is their touch.

In one very important respect the personal analogy between MacDowell and William Sharp breaks down. The creator of 'Fiona Macleod' gained the freedom of the psychic world only at the expense of his virility. The _man_, Sharp, was left behind, when 'Fiona's' turn came, a fact attested by the writings of the latter at every point. MacDowell found no need for the splitting up of his personality into its masculine and feminine elements; he carried his manhood with him into the sphere of the psychic and brought forth not artistic shadowings merely, but also, especially in his heroic moments, solid structures. For all his instinctive abhorrence of the ponderousness often associated with the expression of the Teutonic spirit, his severe Frankfort training often served him in good stead; it may, indeed, have been the balance-wheel of his entire artistic life.

Too much the child of nature's dream-world to sound the depths of passion, too restless with the joy of nature's kaleidoscopic shift and play to touch the spiritual heights of peace, well severed from the material world, but not yet united with the spiritual, MacDowell hovered in the mid-region of the psychic, happily lost in its shadowy wonderworld of dissolving forms and elusive beauty. This was at once the limitation and tragedy, as well as the genius, of MacDowell's life and art. He remained a wanderer on the borderlands of spirit, never coming to his spiritual home, and at the end his mind itself wandered never to return in this life. But he had struck a telling blow for American musical art, and placed the nation upon a new musical footing.

MacDowell was a nationalist only by virtue of his instinctive sensitiveness to his environment. As the English critic, Ashton-Johnson, has pointed out, his autumn scenes spontaneously portray not the mere brown decay of the European "fall," but the golden splendor of the American autumn. The Indian and the negro find their way into his works here and there in delicate touches, because the tradition of them is in the American air and scarcely to be avoided.

MacDowell's teachers in theory were Savard, at the Paris Conservatoire, and Joachim Raff, in Frankfurt, and in piano, at these places respectively, Marmontel and Heyman. An interim was spent with Ehlert in Wiesbaden. Franz Liszt was MacDowell's friend and helped him to recognition in Germany. No American composer has been so prominent as MacDowell as a concert pianist. His sensitive performances of his own works served to make them broadly known and to establish the traditions of their interpretation. The composer took up his residence in America again in 1888, after twelve years of absence, first in Boston, and later in New York, where, until his unfortunate friction with the academic authorities, he exerted a wide influence as professor of music at Columbia University. The malady which alienated him from his powers in his last years, and which finally brought about his end, called universal attention to America's musical awakening and prowess by the same stroke in which it removed the nation's musical leader.

MacDowell attained his chief critical recognition through his two concertos and four sonatas for piano. The second concerto, in D minor, with its alternate phases of nobility and charm, stands as a monument to the composer's highest powers, with regard both to pianistic and orchestral mediums of expression. The composer's harmonic warmth and individuality, his freshness of melodic inspiration, his marked capacity for skillful and colorful orchestration, his eager and highly pitched temperament, are all manifest throughout the work. Of the four sonatas, the 'Tragica,' 'Eroica,' 'Norse,' and 'Keltic,' the last has been universally judged the greatest, and one of his greatest works. Lawrence Gilman calls it his 'masterpiece.' As their titles indicate, these works are all programmatic, though not slavishly so, and romantic in the highest degree. Their material, derived from the rich storehouse of Gaelic legend, finds the composer on his native spiritual heath, and in them he speaks with an authority not surpassed, perhaps not equalled, in the whole range of his work beside.

The 'Indian Suite' (opus 48) has been the most frequently heard of MacDowell's orchestral works, which have, as a class, been somewhat overshadowed by the piano compositions. In it the composer has touched but lightly upon his Indian thematic sources, building from his own fertile imagination a work of substantial character in five movements, depicting his conception of various phases of Indian life. The fourth movement, a dirge, has won great favor through its sheer imaginative beauty, but the work as a whole has not proved wholly convincing, and is far less true to the Indian than the sonatas are to the Gaelic genius. It represents, however, a matured mastery of orchestration and the formal presentation of ideas. An earlier orchestral suite (opus 42) is a less notable work, reflecting the influence of Raff, and is seldom heard. 'The Saracens' and 'The Lovely Alda,' two colorful orchestral fragments from a once-projected 'Roland' symphony, are not infrequently heard, and with pleasure, but, while characteristic of the composer's genius, are scarcely representative of it. An earlier 'Hamlet and Ophelia' overture has fared rather less well.

In a great number of little piano compositions, grouped under various titles, MacDowell has left an exquisite and extensive legacy of works which mirror forth the world of multitudinous fancy which he delighted to haunt. Not conceived with the view of displaying modern concert technique, but in a vein of sincere and intimate poetic expression, these works have been cherished and enjoyed wherever the piano is played. Reflecting more particularly the earlier phases of the composer's artistic sympathies are two suites (opera 10 and 14), 'Forest Idyls' (opus 19), 'Six Idyls' (opus 28), 'Four Little Poems' (opus 32), 'Marionettes' (opus 38), and 'Twelve Studies' (opus 39). The works in this form by which MacDowell has chiefly endeared himself to the rank and file of American music-lovers, are 'Woodland Sketches' (opus 51), containing 'To a Wild Rose' and 'To a Water Lily;' 'Sea Pieces' (opus 55); 'Fireside Tales' (opus 61), and 'New England Idyls' (opus 62), the last work of the composer.

By no means the least of MacDowell's contributions to musical literature, either in quantity or quality, are his songs, of which there are some ten groups for solo voice, and various part songs, chiefly for male voices. In the spheres of charm, fancy, and 'atmospheric' intuition these undoubtedly hold a very high place, though in respect to passion and imaginative vigor the same can scarcely be said, despite the claims of Henry T. Finck, who places MacDowell with the highest rank of the world's song-writers. The highest type of song-writing would seem to demand not so much a passion for beauty as a passion for passion itself, either physical or spiritual, and such a quality, while not absent from it, was not central to the ethereal character of MacDowell's genius.

Lawrence Gilman's 'Edward MacDowell' presents a sympathetic and illuminating study of the composer and his work.

II

One of the rocks upon which the high character of modern American music is founded is the art-activity of Edgar Stillman-Kelley (b. April 14, 1857). While he has not given forth his compositions in rapid succession or in great quantity, he has, nevertheless, struck a series of telling blows for the honor and dignity of creative musical art in America. Especially is this true in view of the fact that he has formulated, maintained and promulgated definite ideals of music throughout a period which has been characterized mainly, in this respect, by confusion and groping, and, too frequently, even by grovelling. In a post-Wagnerian period in which vacillation, obscurity, and disorder have reigned throughout a large part of the musical world, he has steadily advanced the standard of lucidity, order, and faith. Lofty in imagination, of a high sense of beauty, and at the same time exceptional in scholarship and breadth of intellectual vision, he combines qualities which must necessarily single him out as a leader of importance in the musical movement to which America has given birth. The same qualities have also fitted him to exercise a beneficent influence, in certain directions, upon more recent and newly appearing phases of native musical evolution. It has been Stillman-Kelley's fate that both his name and his influence have outdistanced the general knowledge of his works. Two circumstances may be held accountable for this: the fact that he has given out no quantity of works in small forms through which his music might become accessible to music-lovers everywhere through the universal medium of the piano, and the further fact that it is particularly in just such forms as Stillman-Kelley has produced that, as a nation, we are slow in giving our own composers a wide hearing. The American symphony, on American programs, must wait, first, and perhaps rightfully, upon the classics, and, second, and often with bitter wrong, upon the sensational European novelties of the hour.

So independent and individual a thinker is Stillman-Kelley, so _sui generis_ his work, that it can be explained by no theory of particular or individual influences, but only by a knowledge of the composer's broad survey of the modern field, with emphasis, to be sure, upon the greatest in Germanic tradition. The fundamentals of that tradition one feels the composer to have grasped, but of the principles thus deeply assimilated he makes his own use. In short, he follows principles, and not men, and for this reason the Wagnerian 'passage,' the Tschaikowskian phrase, which drip so easily from the pen of many latter-day composers, are never to be encountered in Stillman-Kelley's music. Into this technique, acquired through close observation and analysis of the works of the masters, the composer imports his own spirit; he has his own story to tell and is very certain of the manner in which he wishes to tell it. The superficial criticism of the day, which looks for raw and sensational departures from the pre-Debussyian musical scheme, will find Stillman-Kelley conservative, at moments even downright Teutonic; but the gulf which separates him, in spirit and message, from both his precursors and contemporaries, European and American, must be plain to every observant person. In this rapid age people are, however, not apt to be closely observant, and it appears that there will still be a considerable interval before Stillman-Kelley's true artistic and intellectual stature will be recognized.

To grasp the nature of the high distinction which must be accorded him, it must be understood that Stillman-Kelley's formative period was that very epoch of the Wagnerian cataclysm which blasted the individuality of composers as the cyclone devastates the forest. So surcharged with the dominating personality of Wagner was this epoch that it seemed no composer sympathetic to that personality could breathe the air of its period and retain his musical individuality. Futile blotches of misunderstood Wagnerian harmony took the place of compositions. This was the tide that Stillman-Kelley stemmed, and his position takes on the aspect of solitary grandeur when it is perceived that he is the only composer in the contemporary American ranks, receptive to the changing order, who can be said to have come through wholly unscathed. While guided primarily by a sense of the beautiful, it was through sheer force of mentality, and standing alone, that the composer achieved this feat and preserved for his nation a straight path for the classical tradition and ideal without relinquishing that freedom of mind which alone can secure the growth of the individual through the apprehension and application of contemporary thought.

The thought can almost be ventured that Stillman-Kelley was the first composer to use the post-Wagnerian harmonic vocabulary without the result sounding like Wagner. If a heroic instinct for thematic development in the face of the harmonic orgies of the time contributed to this achievement, it was secondary to a contribution of even greater distinction. This more original contribution may be termed the application of a geometrical poetic sense to the new harmony. Of the tyrant that enslaved the composers of the time Stillman-Kelley promptly made himself the master. Out of the new material he generated for his use _harmonic motives_, symmetrical blocks of harmony, bearing a particular relation to his thematic material, and, by the application of these well-defined and well-rounded harmonic motives to his formal structure, he attained, at a stroke, the employment of the new medium, the preservation of clarity and order, and thereto a new musical personality. He did not recede to an archaic classical purism and offer the familiar excuse of those who found in Wagner the ruination of pure music. He advanced bravely on to the dangerous ground of the new territory and made it his own without sacrificing the fundamental classical character of his ideals and without losing his wits.

Both in spirit and technique Stillman-Kelley's artistic personality may be seen in microcosmic scope, as it were, in his highly individual song, 'Israfel' to the poem of Edgar Allan Poe. Here are the serene beauty, the highly imaginative harmonic tinting, the touch of the fantastic, the formal amplitude and symmetry, the predominance of phantasy over passion, which characterize all of the composer's work. The companion song, 'Eldorado,' on Poe's poem of that name, is equally typical of the composer's genius, though strongly contrasted with 'Israfel' in subject.

Stillman-Kelley first became known through his intensely characteristic and 'atmospheric' music for 'Macbeth,' dating from early days in San Francisco. This he has in later years revised and cast in the form of an orchestral suite, composing for the play a wholly new overture of momentous proportions. This is a massive and sombre work, dealing with the conflict of conscience and evil ambition, its murky content being relieved only by the introduction of a theme of the joys of Gaelic royalty, which later on assumes a grim aspect, being stated in conjunction with the theme of ambition.

The 'Aladdin' suite has perhaps been less infrequently heard than Stillman-Kelley's other orchestral works. In this work the composer availed himself of certain Chinese themes, of which he made a characteristically thorough study while in San Francisco (and which resulted also in his widely known song 'The Lady Picking Mulberries'). This suite is in the composer's most genial vein and is a _tour de force_ of piquant orchestration. Its movements depict 'The Wedding of Aladdin and the Princess,' 'A Serenade in the Royal Pear Garden,' 'Flight of the Genie with the Palace,' and 'The Return and Feast of the Lanterns.'

Stillman-Kelley's greatest recent offering is his 'New England' symphony, in B minor, produced by the Litchfield County Choral Union, at Norfolk, Conn., June 3, 1913. In it the composer has sought to embody 'something of the experiences, ambitions, and aspirations of our Puritan ancestors.' It was greeted as a work of large importance, needing further hearing for its full appreciation. The composer has completed sketches of a 'Gulliver' symphony and an 'Alice in Wonderland' suite, the subjects of both of which attest his love of the fantastic and call attention to his equal devotion to the element of humor. There is an orchestral score of 'Israfel.'

In chamber music form he has produced a quintet for strings and piano which has had much success on both sides of the Atlantic, and a less well-known string quartet in variation form. There are also a few early songs and piano compositions. Mention should be made of the composer's very successful and famous music for the dramatic presentation of 'Ben Hur,' and the exquisite 'Song of Iras' taken from it.

Born in Wisconsin, Mr. Stillman-Kelley has lived successively in Stuttgart, San Francisco, New York, New Haven (where he occupied the chair of music at Yale University during a year's absence of Horatio Parker), and Berlin. He now (1914) holds a 'composer's fellowship' at Western College, Oxford, Ohio, giving lectures there and at the Cincinnati conservatory. His chief teacher in theory was Seifriz, in Stuttgart.

III

Among the most earnest and advanced leaders of American music stands Arne Oldberg (b. 1874), a musical personality of the highest nobility and idealism, and a consummate master of his art. Unquestionably as fully equipped master of thematic development in the cyclic forms as America has produced, his loftily conceived chamber music and orchestral works present themselves in a spiritual and technical serenity, artistic authenticity and completeness, which baffle the critical beholder. Indeed, it is with the music-makers who wrote before relentless Beethoven forced the skyey goddess down into the world-struggle that Oldberg has the closest spiritual kinship. Never since Mozart has music been more bafflingly 'absolute' than in the bulk of his works in orchestral and chamber music, and piano forms. The appearance of these works, so modern from the standpoint of thematic and formal development in this epoch, seems to call for a revision of modern musical psychology and philosophy. Much of modern 'pure' music is too dramatic to endure a comparison in this respect, or else too philosophical and too deeply involved in the world-problem. To Brahms' technical system that of Oldberg more nearly corresponds than to any other.

In this music, at the same time, there is no reversion to the style of an earlier day; it carries no slogan of 'back to Mozart.' Trained as he was in the severe school of Joseph Rheinberger, to Oldberg, to be sure, the modern French school does not exist, but neither, for that matter, does the traditional shadow of turgidity and heaviness which hangs about the Teutonic genius even at its most idealistic. Those who think to perceive a measure of old-fashionedness in his music are looking at the letter rather than the spirit, which is ever onward and creative, though in its own way, and without admitting that modern progress lies only in the adoption of the Gallic idiom. It is the music of spiritual upliftment and refreshment, waiting its day until sensationalism and mere color-riot shall have lost their power to appeal.

The two quintets for piano and strings (opera 16 and 24) present a joyous and upspringing lyricism all but unknown to the music of the day, together, especially in the latter and more mature work, with a thematic involution that would be appalling were it not for the exuberant spontaneity of their inspiration. A string quartet in C minor (opus 15) is a less complete revelation of the composer's powers. A woodwind quintet in E flat major (opus 18), on the other hand, is a miracle of gladness and of grave and haunting loveliness.

A symphony in F (opus 23), twice rewritten but not yet performed, contains a slow movement that represents the composer at his highest level of contemplative beauty. The overture 'Paolo and Francesca' (opus 21) marks a departure from his usual absolutism; it is a work of large dimensions and great warmth of feeling, and made a deep impression upon the listeners when performed by the Theodore Thomas Orchestra on January 17-18, 1908. The same orchestra has given performances of Oldberg's 'Academic Overture,' written for the Northwest University at Evanston, Ill., a 'Theme and Variations' (opus 19), and a set of 'Symphonic Variations,' for organ and orchestra (opus 35), the variation form being one in the possibilities of which Oldberg has great faith. An almost uniform success has followed these various performances. A second symphony, in C minor (opus 34) has followed the first in F, and there is a recent 'Orchestral Rhapsody' (opus 36). An 'Arabesque' for piano (opus 31) shows the composer in a new vein. The admirable 'Symphonic' concerto for piano and orchestra (opus 17), and the horn concerto (opus 20), are almost entirely unknown. There are besides these works a considerable number of piano works, a sonata (opus 28) of great lyrical charm, a very extraordinary set of 'Thematic Variations,' a poetic and stirring 'Legend,' a set of three beautiful and highly interesting 'Miniatures,' and various other works.

Mr. Oldberg was born at Youngstown, Ohio, in 1874. He is of Norse extraction, being of the third generation on American soil, and holds the chair of music at the Northwestern University.

* * * * *

Much space would be required in which to give an adequate account of the creative activities of Henry Hadley (b. 1871), one of the most spontaneous and prolific of American composers, and one of the best known, at home and abroad.

By temperament and choice of subject matter Hadley places himself in the ranks of the romanticists, but his tenacious loyalty to the symphonic form, among a wide variety of other forms, bespeaks a neo-classical leaning and is scarcely to be explained by a mere desire to essay expression in all forms. Moreover, while in orchestral technique Hadley is a student and, in some sort, a disciple of Richard Strauss, unlike that composer he inclines, in his orchestral works other than symphonic, to the overture form rather than the less closely knit 'tone-poem.' In orchestral realism he follows Strauss but a short way, eschewing violence and holding a rather unique middle course between realism and impressionism; something more than impressionist merely, a _suggestive realist_ he might be termed.

Everywhere in Hadley's music is energy, fancy, the spirit of youth. It bubbles and glints, running an inexhaustible gamut of varying tints and ingenious and poetic tonal designs. It is the music of immense enjoyment of objective life, of actions, sights, emotions. Too eager and full of action to be deeply reflective, too happy to be philosophic, it is the part of Hadley's music to quicken the sense of life and of delight in the teeming visible world about us. Sombre, pensive, or bleak it may be at times, according to the composer's expressive need, but it is the tone-poet's fancy that decrees it, never a confession of _Weltschmerz_ on the composer's part.

The first symphony, 'Youth and Life' (opus 25), is highly characteristic of the buoyancy, the nervous energy, and the imaginative fertility of the composer. The second, 'The Four Seasons' (opus 30), is a delicate balance, within the classical form, of romanticism, impressionism, and symbolism. It is romanticism that predominates, however, although such distinct impressions as those of wintry blasts and falling autumn leaves are happy and noteworthy features of the work. The languor and sun-warmed luxuriance of mid-summer finds poignant and beautiful expression. The third symphony, in B minor (opus 60), seems to be less well known than the others. The fourth symphony, 'North, East, South, West' (opus 64), was received with enthusiasm when produced under the direction of the composer at a meeting of the Litchfield County Choral Union, on June 6, 1911. Hadley indulges in a little aboriginal Americanism in the 'South' and 'West' movements, though his only definitely discernible 'nationalism' lies in his inherent temperamental character. The four symphonies reveal a constantly progressive growth in modern harmonic vision and in orchestral mastery. The only American composer to enter the field of symphonic conducting as a profession, Hadley, in his technical development, has made the most of his contact with the orchestra.

There are three overtures, 'Hector and Andromache,' the jubilant 'In Bohemia,' and one of sombre character to Stephen Phillips' 'Herod.' A tone-poem, 'Salome,' finds him at his nearest to Strauss in ideals, even if not in style. His most recent orchestral work, produced in 1914, is entitled 'Lucifer.' From earlier days are several 'Ballet Suites,' an 'Oriental Suite' and a 'Symphonic Fantasie.' The still more recent 'Culprit Fay,' after Rodman Drake's poem, has won various and deserved honors. Hadley's one grand opera, 'Safie,' dating from his incumbency as opera conductor in Mainz, Germany, was produced there on April 4, 1909, but has not been heard in America. There are songs in great number and variety, several cantatas, a number of works in different small forms, and considerable church music.

Hadley is a native of Massachusetts, and comes of a musical family. Among his teachers are, first, his father, and later Chadwick in Boston and Mandyczewski in Vienna. He has several times been a prize-winner with his compositions, the second symphony winning the Paderewski Prize and one offered by the New England Conservatory, both in 1901, and the 'Culprit Fay' winning the National Federation of Musical Clubs' Prize in 1909. Mr. Hadley became conductor of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 1909 and the San Francisco Orchestra in 1911, which latter post he still holds.

* * * * *

One of the sturdiest musical figures in the ranks of American _arrivés_ is Frederick Shepherd Converse (b. 1871), artistically of strong romantic leanings, although brought up under the classic influences of the widely influential course in theory conducted by the late James K. Paine at Harvard University. A taker of honors here, as well as at Munich under Rheinberger, where he went after a period of study with Chadwick in Boston, Converse has realized a degree of scholarship seldom attained or even aspired to in America. He is typically representative of what might be called the second generation of modern American composers, the one following immediately upon that of Foote, Chadwick, and their colleagues. Like all the active minds of his generation, he exhibits the tendency to break the shackles of classical tradition while still preserving reverence for its ideals. With the exception of one retrospective inspiration, the string quartet (opus 18), he appears to be done with the sonata form at about the eighth opus number. Previous to that he had produced a symphony in D minor (opus 7), a sonata for violin (opus 1), a string quartet, and an overture. The later string quartet has qualities of admirable lyrical beauty.

It is in his large romantic outreachings that Converse is best and most favorably known. Indeed, the composer himself styles his first orchestral tone-poem, the 'Festival of Pan,' a 'romance.' Subsequent orchestral works in so-called 'free' form (an absurd term, since every authentic form gains its strength through conformity to some law, even if not a familiar one) are 'Endymion's Vision,' a bit too 'free' in form but of rich and imaginative orchestral color, and, better known and more highly appraised, 'The Mystic Trumpeter,' after Walt Whitman. 'Night' and 'Day,' two poems for piano and orchestra, and _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_, ballade for baritone and orchestra, as well as the orchestral works mentioned, have all been produced by orchestras and artists of the first prominence and with marked success.

Mr. Converse has made two heroic ventures onto the still unwon but yielding field of American grand opera. 'The Pipe of Desire,' with text by George E. Barton, a one-act opera, is in mood a reflection from the poets of the Celtic twilight. It was given a special production of three performances in Boston, in 1906, and experienced a brief revival, in March, 1910, at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and in the following January in Boston. A second opera, in three acts, 'The Sacrifice,' dealing with a romantic Spanish-Californian subject, is regarded as showing a marked advance in operatic style. It was produced by the Boston Opera Company in March, 1911, with a measure of success, but the scope of its bearings has not yet been extended. Mr. Converse's most recent large work was the composition of the music for the 'Pageant and Masque of St. Louis,' May 28-31, 1914, a broad and vigorous piece of writing. In general, his music is of strong fibre, harmoniously and melodically and warm in color, though his style has not yet broken wholly away from its academic moorings. For several years after 1902 he served as instructor and professor in the musical department of Harvard University.

IV

A very substantial and influential personality in American musical life is that of Ernest R. Kroeger, who was born in St. Louis, Mo., August 10, 1862, and whose activities have ever since been identified with that city. The list of his published compositions is enormous and comprises works in many forms. As is the case with most American composers, his orchestral and chamber music works remain in manuscript, and consist of three 'symphonic overtures,' 'Sardanapalus,' 'Hiawatha,' and 'Atala,' the first Oriental in character, the two latter Indian, overtures on the subjects of 'Thanatopsis' and 'Endymion,' a 'Lalla Rookh' suite, two string quartets, and, for piano with strings, a trio, quartet, and quintet.

Despite Kroeger's scholarly handling of the sonata and fugue forms his tendency is strongly romantic, as is indicated by the subjects not only of his overtures but of the great number of his piano works, which touch a whole world of romance from Greek mythology to Indian and negro folk-lore. Among his more representative piano works are '12 Concert Études' (opus 30), a suite (opus 33), four 'sonnets' (opus 36), Sonata in D flat (opus 40), Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor (opus 41), 'Mythological Scenes' (opus 46), ten 'American Character Sketches' (opus 53), and twenty 'Moods' (opus 60). Widely known as a writer of songs of much poetic charm and appeal, his best works in this form are the 'Persian Love Song' (from opus 43), the famous 'Bend Low, O Dusky Night' (from opus 48), Ten Songs (opus 65), and a song cycle, 'Memory' (opus 66). He has written much for the organ, and there is a sonata for violin and piano (opus 32), also a recent large work for recitation or action, 'The Masque of Dead Florentines' (opus 75), on Maurice Hewlett's poem. In style Kroeger leans strongly upon the German tradition, but is fond of writing in an Oriental vein. He has held many positions of responsibility, among them being the presidency of the Music Teachers' National Association, and the important post of Master of Programs at the St. Louis World's Fair, which service won him an office in the French Academy. His influence has been far-reaching in the musical upbuilding of the Middle West.

Leaning somewhat more heavily upon the classic than the romantic aspects of German tradition, the work of Rubin Goldmark (b. 1872) makes serious claim to a place of high regard in the field of American music. While having had the advantages of European study, Goldmark also reflects a measure of the considerable influence exerted by Dvořák upon composition in America, having been one of those under the guidance of the Bohemian composer during his period of teaching in New York. In so far as this influence is discernible in one of Goldmark's well-defined musical personality, it is to be sought in the general nature of his musical ideals, and only very slightly in the specific Americanism encouraged by Dvořák (1841-1904). A firm emotional texture, gained by warmth of both harmony and melody, and a virility arising from a marked rhythmic sense characterize Goldmark's music. His creative impulse is guided more by emotional sincerity and verity than by the element of charm, though it is not without moments of tender and limpid beauty.

His trio for piano, violin and 'cello is an exceptionally substantial opus 1, and his 'Hiawatha' overture won enthusiastic praise from no less discerning a critic than James Huneker. Among his earlier works are a sonata for piano and violin, a 'Romanza' for 'cello, and a number of piano compositions and songs, the latter especially revealing an imagination of distinctive character. An 'Ode to Colorado' for mixed voices issues from the composer's occasional residence in Colorado Springs, as also four 'Prairie Idylls' for piano. From Goldmark's maturer powers springs the quartet in A major, for piano and strings, which, in its class, won the Paderewski Prize in 1909, the poetic merits of the work being revealed in a subsequent performance by the Kneisel Quartet. The impressive and highly-appraised tone-poem 'Samson' was produced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March, 1914.

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One of the first of the post-Chadwickian generation of American composers to step into prominence was Howard Brockway (b. 1870), who received a very thorough training under the American O. B. Boise in Berlin. He brought back, among other large works, a symphony which he had composed at the age of twenty-four and which had called much attention to his gifts and potential career when performed at a concert of his works in Berlin. Walter Damrosch once said, 'The trouble with American composers is they write one symphony when they come back from Europe and then do nothing more.' A significant half-truth is contained in the remark. The classical musical education requires, tacitly or otherwise, the symphonic effort. Then come the American environment and the dampening absence of a market for symphonies by Young (and Old) America; then the writing of songs in order to find a way to a hearing; and _then_, if the composer is to belie the Damroschian dictum, a gradual artistic resurrection harmonious with American institutions, purposes, and ideals.

Brockway did, in fact, give out a quantity of small works, songs and piano compositions, on his return to America, all of which, it may be said, reveal a sensitive and truly poetic musical nature, capable of lifting itself well up through the dense and earthy atmosphere of technique into the realm of poetic perception and expression. The outcome of his return to large forms it is a bit early to predict. The knowledge of a manuscript quintet for strings and piano, and a piano concerto, under his highest opus numbers, 36 and 37, adumbrates an auspicious future for his expression in large forms. Meanwhile a suite for 'cello and piano (opus 35) has been given out, and an admirable cantata, 'Sir Olaf,' has been heard. From his earlier portfolio credit is to be given him for the beautiful violin sonata (opus 9) and the significant 'Ballade' and 'Sylvan Suite' (op. 11 and 19), both for orchestra.

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An extraordinarily prolific composer is Homer N. Bartlett (1845-1911), the separation of whose more distinguished works from the mass that he has written will be effected only by the sifting process of time. From the _Salonstück_ period of his 'outrageously' popular 'Grand Polka de Concert' (opus 1), through the ambitious violin concerto (opus 109), which was entirely rewritten in 1908, and the symphonic poem 'Apollo' from the same period, to the works bearing the Himalayan opus numbers 215 and 220, a 'Meditation' and an _Air à la Bourrée_ for violin, is a far cry. In providing a list of his works the composer writes at the end, 'opus numbers here increase to 231, although I am striving to keep them down.' This great output shows a steady increase in distinction, and covers a wide range of tendencies, almost wholly in the direction of romanticism.

'Khamsin,' which Hughes refers to as a fragment of a cantata, was rewritten in 1908 as an extended dramatic aria for tenor solo, in three connected parts. In its earlier form it was heard at a New York Manuscript Society concert, and is regarded as representative of the best and most dramatically inspired of Bartlett's work. Two movements of an ingeniously exotic 'Japanese Suite' for orchestra were heard at the Central Park orchestral concerts in 1910 and revealed a good control of orchestral resource. There are also clever piano compositions on Japanese themes, a Japanese 'Revery' and 'Romance' (opus 221), and 'Kuma Saka' (opus 218) for four hands. There are also an opera, 'La Vallière,' written in 1887, an operetta, 'Magic Hours' (opus 225), and many choruses, songs, piano compositions, including a prize-winning nocturne ('Kranbach' prize), violin compositions, organ works, and songs. Bartlett was born in 1846 at Olive, N. Y., and has been active as a teacher and organist in New York City.

Mr. Rossetter G. Cole is best known as the composer of the melodrama 'King Robert of Sicily' (op. 22), to which David Bispham's stirring interpretation has brought great popularity. This work contains some of Mr. Cole's best inspirations; while adhering to idioms that are conventional, there is an admirable following of the dramatic line and a real atmospheric descriptiveness. It is harmonically conventional, at times markedly Wagnerian, and there are some excellent effects in ecclesiastical harmonies. In an earlier melodrama, 'Hiawatha's Wooing,' op. 20, Indian themes are utilized, though but slightly. Still earlier published works are 'The Passing of Summer,' a 'lyrical idyll' for soli, chorus and orchestra, while still in manuscript there is a sonata for violin and piano (op. 8), works which placed by the side of Mr. Cole's later compositions become comparatively unimportant. Of recent publication a 'Ballade' for cello and orchestra (op. 25) and two organ pieces, 'Fantasie Symphonique' (op. 28) and 'Rhapsody' (op. 30), are written for their respective instruments with a well-calculated effectiveness. One of Mr. Cole's recent compositions is a bit of descriptive piano writing entitled 'Sunset in the Hills.' This shows a considerably more advanced harmonic scheme and one much richer in color, which now fade into the more delicate tints of an idyllic MacDowell-like mood.

V

Generations of composers succeed each other quickly in America with, however, but the flimsiest of boundaries, chronological and artistic. We now come to a group of composers, in general slightly younger than those already considered, who in the romantic and neo-classical fields may be regarded as 'runners up,' whose 'arrival' is well under way and who press hard for the highest rank and honors in their field in the national and even in the international musical life. No order of precedence will be attempted in making note of their achievements, as none has been made hitherto with a few exceptions in favor of seniority and fame.

One of the staunchest and most uncompromising upholders of a severe classical ideal is Daniel Gregory Mason (b. 1873). With sureness, if not over-rapidly, he has developed a mode of expression singularly lucid, symmetrical and thorough in its formal unfoldment. Thoughtful in the extreme, modest in the nature and statement of his themes, he seeks the source of power in completeness and symmetry of outline, in the bringing of his themes to the fullest and most rounded development, and in clarity of harmonic structure. Not even the strictest of classicists, in these days, can wholly escape the influence of the romantic epoch, and if a sympathy with the ideals of Schumann has in a measure qualified Mason's musical outlook in the first instance, it has yielded to a stronger leaning to the artistic creed of Brahms. Some of the composer's pages bear a marked Brahms-like aspect. These earlier influences have been broadened and enriched in Mason's later work by a studious devotion to the music of César Franck and of Vincent d'Indy, the composer having studied with the latter in 1902 and later. These latter influences have produced a very evident effect upon his harmonic scheme, which presents a conservative use and treatment of thoroughly modern resources, though with a characteristic avoidance of anything approaching to the harmonic sensationalism of much latter day music. In all ways, in fact, Mason's music is a protest against the sensational tendency of the time.

The composer's most ambitious work is a symphony for grand orchestra (opus 11), in C minor, written in 1913-14. It is in four movements, the last two connected, without program, and is 'cyclic' in construction. Another important work is a quartet in A major (opus 7). The sonata for violin and piano (opus 5), in G minor, which has been widely performed, is thoroughly representative of the composer's ideals. The first movement, suave and musical, though not particularly striking in its themes, is in an extended sonata form, rather highly modernized with respect to secondary themes and transitional passages, and reveals much ingenuity in thematic variation and transformation. The warm melody of the second movement, andante tranquillo, is of memorable beauty. The last movement is in the nature of a spirited tarantella, with an admirably contrasted theme of choral-like character, an effect one may fancy to bear a slight analogy to the _finale_ of Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata.

An 'Elegy' (opus 2), in variation form, is wrought with technical nicety, but leans dubiously upon an ultra-conservative treatment. 'Country Pictures' (opus 9), six pieces for pianoforte, show much fancy and charm. No. 1, 'Cloud Pageant,' is colorful and pictorially suggestive, interesting in its thematic inversions, and develops massively. No. 2, 'Chimney Swallows,' is clever in motion, and particularly in its insistence on the interval of the 'second.' No. 4, 'The Whippoorwill,' is a charming piece of classical realism, and No. 5, 'The Quiet Hour,' comes as near to ultra-modernism as the composer ventures. Other works are: 'Five Children's Songs' (opus 1), with texts from Stevenson; 'Romance' and 'Impromptu' (opus 3), for pianoforte; a whimsical set of 'Variations on Yankee Doodle in the Styles of Various Composers'; 'Pastorale' for violin, clarinet and piano (opus 8); and 'Passacaglia' (opus 10), for organ.

Mr. Mason is a native of Boston and a member of a famous family of musicians, being a grandson of Lowell Mason, and a nephew of Dr. William Mason. He is a graduate of Harvard, where some of his early musical studies were pursued under Paine. Since 19 he has held the associate professorship of music in Columbia University, and he has done much by lectures and literary work to promote musical appreciation. His 'From Grieg to Brahms' (1902) and its sequels have exerted a wide influence.

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Emanating from strongly academic influences, David Stanley Smith (b. 1877), who has for a number of years been associated as assistant professor with the musical department of Yale University, exhibits a marked romantic tendency of imagination, albeit one exceptionally well guarded by a devotion to the structural ideals of the classic writers. The distinguished character of his talent has brought him rapidly to the front, and none of his more important works have had to wait long for a hearing. Smith places a strong insistence upon coherence in thematic development and tonality as the only basis upon which to found a musical work, and, while partial to high harmonic color and ready to depart from the text-books in harmonic usage, he is unwilling to allow color effect to usurp the place of structural continuity. Desirous and capable as he is of advancing upon the debatable borders of modern harmonic resource, he does not burn the bridges of conservatism behind him. His music bespeaks a sensitively poetic nature, sentiment, color and emotion rising easily through the foundational stratum of a thorough but not overweighted technique.

His symphony in F minor was performed by the Chicago Orchestra under Stock in December, 1912, and was well received. It is thoroughly representative of the composer's blending of modern and classic ideals and methods. The quartet in E minor (opus 19), departing from earlier styles chiefly in rhythmic intricacy, has been played by the Kneisels in many cities. An 'Overture Joyeuse' (opus 11) was conducted by the composer at one of the Chickering production concerts in 1904; it finds the composer scarcely emancipated from academic trammels. This and a much later 'symphonic sketch,' 'Prince Hal,' have both been conducted by the composer with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. A 'Symphonic Ballad' (opus 24) has been given with this orchestra, and also at the concerts of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. 'Pan,' a chorus for women's voices, on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem, with orchestra and Pan-pipe obbligato inevitably assigned to the oboe, has been widely heard, and is a work brimming with color and rhythm. 'The Wind-Swept Wheat' and 'The Dark' are also for women's chorus with orchestra. A mixed chorus with orchestra, 'The Fallen Star,' won the Paderewski Prize in 1909. A trio in G major (opus 16) and an orchestral 'Allegro Giocoso' have, like all the foregoing works, been publicly performed, as well as numerous anthems and songs. Smith was born in Ann Arbor, Mich., and educated at Yale.

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