Chapter XIV: Nationalists, Eclectics, and Ultra-Moderns (2)

Almost exclusively devoted to vocal writing is Henry Clough-Leighter, who has over one hundred published songs and nearly an equal number of choral works, including settings of the Anglican Service. Exceptions are in the form of duets and studies for piano. In the classification somewhat loosely undertaken in the present chapter Clough-Leighter would be regarded as an eclectic. His work shows the influence of the various modern schools without leaning overheavily upon the individuality of any one of them, albeit there is evidence of a considerable influence from the Germany of Richard Strauss. He lays tumultuous siege to the strongholds of modern harmony and especially modulation, in which latter respect he is bold sometimes to a fault, inclining to a tonal restlessness that will not bear too much insistence. His harmonic fluency is unusual, and his workmanship immaculate. Among Clough-Leighter's most important choral works are: 'The Righteous Branch' (opus 32), 'Christ Triumphant' (opus 35), and 'Psalm of Trust,' all contrapuntal in treatment and requiring a large chorus of skilled voices. There are a number of song cycles, including 'Youth and Spring' (opus 5), 'Rossetti-Lyrics' (opus 58), 'Two Lyrics' of Victor Hugo (opus 53), all with piano accompaniment; 'Love-Sorrow' (opus 44) with accompaniment of violin, 'cello, and piano, and 'The Day of Beauty' (opus 48), for high voice, string quartet, and piano. 'Lasca,' a symphonic ballad for tenor and orchestra, is one of the best and most dramatic of the composer's works. 'Seven Songs' (opus 57) show a wealth of emotion and fancy, _Requiescat_ (Oscar Wilde) attaining a considerable distinction of mood. Clough-Leighter is a native of Washington, D. C. (b. 1874), and held organists' posts there and in Providence. Latterly he has been head of the editorial department of the Boston Music Company, and has made Boston his home.

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Marshall Kernochan, though his output has not been large, has written a number of songs possessing qualities of distinction. He is among those brave souls who have essayed Walt Whitman and in his two Whitman settings, indeed, he has come off with an unusual measure of success. These are: 'Out of the rolling ocean the crowd' and 'We two together.' While neither of these songs reveals striking originality or more than a mild modernism so far as harmony goes, they are conceived with a breadth and carried through with a power that lift them out of the usual run of contemporary native songs. The composer has made the most of the lyrical possibilities of the lines, and has done well with the less singable phrases by a careful attention to syllabic accent and duration. 'We Two Together' has an exquisite middle section and a very powerful climax, and will require a singer of heroic mold. 'Lilacs' (Armitage Livingston) is a little work of true delicacy and possesses style, and its companion, 'A Child's Song' (Richard Hovey), treats sympathetically a little masterpiece of childhood poetry. Among the composer's other songs are four on poems by Browning, 'A Serenade at the Villa,' 'Round Us the Wild Creatures,' from 'Ferishta's Fancies,' 'At the Window,' and 'Give a Rouse.'

Homer Norris has not been without an influence upon the development of ultra-modernism in America by virtue of being one of the first teachers of theory in this country to receive his training in Paris. Moreover, he was writing songs revealing modern French influence at a time when probably Loeffler and Gilbert were the only others in America who knew what was happening to musical evolution in France. His richly harmonized 'Twilight' is a song of much beauty, and more daring than successful, probably, is 'Peace' (Sill), the accompaniment of which consists of nothing but slow descending scales of C. Interesting, also, as a bit of early French influence is the Maeterlinck _Et s'il revenait un jour?_ of delicate mood. Norris has also a sacred cantata, 'Nain,' and a cycle for vocal quartet on words chosen from Whitman and entitled 'The Flight of the Eagle.'

Gena Branscombe is one of the very few women composers of America who have established for themselves a genuine creative musical individuality. Even among this few Miss Branscombe holds a position of distinction, partly through the intensity of her personality and partly through her approach to harmonic ultra-modernism, a field to which most women composers, being only melodists, are strangers. There would be no occasion to refer to the question of sex in the present instance except that when it is stated to be feminine it commonly implies an inevitable discount upon attainment and is urged as an excuse for feeble work, which circumstance entitles a woman composer for whom such excuse need not be made, as in the case of Miss Branscombe, to a measure of corrective credit. Inexhaustible buoyancy, a superlative emotional wealth, and a wholly singular gift of musical intuition are the qualities which have shaped the composer's musical personality. Being a woman, it may be said at once that structural ideals do not interest her. Her work is an outpouring of moods, moods of an intensity and richness which demand a high musical color scheme. This, not science--though Miss Branscombe is well grounded in theory--but a startling character of intuition, provides her withal. Her impatient melodies leap and dash with youthful life, while her accompaniments abound in harmonic hair-breadth escapes. No considered harmonic or modularity scheme gives her music its richness of color; she continually leaps into apparently remote progressions without looking before, and the same intuition which suggested the hazard suggests also the way out, which comes with surprising facility. She is best known for her many songs, among them the dreamful and haunting 'Krischna' and 'Dear Little Hut by the Rice Fields,' both Laurence Hope's poems, also Hope's 'Just in the Hush,' 'The Deserted Gypsy,' and the stirring 'Dear Is My Inlaid Sword'; the rich and impassioned Browning settings, 'There's a Woman Like a Dewdrop,' 'Serenade,' from 'In a Gondola,' 'Boot and Saddle,' etc.; the sombre 'Sleep, Then, Ah, Sleep!' (Le Gallienne); the fanciful and exotic little cycle 'A Lute of Jade' (Crammer-Byng), and many others. Miss Branscombe has written a very spirited 'Festival March' for orchestra, which was produced at the Peterboro Festival in 1914; an extended _Concertstück_ for piano and orchestra; part-songs for women's voices; and a number of compositions for violin and piano. Miss Branscombe is Canadian by birth.

Alexander Russell is the composer of a number of songs of strong emotional appeal. He first became known for his setting of Lanier's 'Sunset,' a warmly colored work, but somewhat over-Wagnerized. 'My Heaven' (Harry S. Lee) also has lyrical intensity and bears out the chromatic scheme of the other. 'The Sacred Fire' (Alice Duer Miller) has more distinction of mood as well as greater unity of design, and 'Expectation' (John Hay) also shows an advance in style and individuality. 'In Fountain Court' (Arthur Symons) is perhaps his most mature and characteristic expression. Among other songs are 'Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog' (Goldsmith), 'The Prayer Perfect' (Riley), 'My True Love Lies Asleep' (Lizette Reese), and 'A Gypsy Song' (Braley). Russell's work shows chiefly the influence of the modern German school.

James Philip Dunn is a militant ultra-modern realist. He was first known by an extremely vigorous quintet for pianoforte and strings, in G minor, which was heard at one of the concerts of the New York Manuscript Society. It is of considerable thematic, and particularly of dramatic, interest, though scarcely revealing a settled style. Strauss, Wagner, Tschaikowsky, and Puccini have all influenced him strongly, with Strauss leading, but what ultimate personality will issue from this strenuously boiling melting-pot it is too early to say. The far from bashful realism of Dunn's setting of Poe's 'Annabel Lee,' for voice and orchestra, which was sung by Frank Ormsby at a People's Symphony Concert in the season of 1913-14, somewhat shocked the sensibilities of the critics, for futurism was still merely a name (Schoenberg's quartet not yet having arrived on the scene) and realism could still hold terrors for the sensitive. The goal of realism is the stage, and so in fact Dunn's latest works are designed for the theatre. They are called 'Lyric Scenes' and consist of two short and superlatively intense musical stage episodes, 'The Fountain,' after Charles McMillan, and the grewsome 'A Kiss in the Dark,' after Maurice Lavelle. They are truly amazing in musical structure and emotional content and may well be considered to represent the _dernier cri_ in realism, after which can come only the deluge--or futurism. The composer has also a sonata for violin and piano in G major and a piano tarantella and minuet.

Alexander Hull, whose great quantity of work is accessible as yet only through one book of ten songs, is a composer who is likely to be heard more of in the future. These songs reveal influences ranging from Schubert to Hugo Wolf, but, of much greater importance, they reveal also a richly endowed creative musical personality, even if one that has only begun to find itself in terms of a matured art. One will look far for a clearer spiritual beauty than that of the 'Wanderer's Night Song' (Goethe), or for a fleeting spontaneity and dissolving charm surpassing that of the little 'Blue, Blue, Floweret Mine.' 'My Love Is Lovelier than the Sprays' (Ezra Pound) has moments of magical and haunting beauty, though it runs the risk that Hull not infrequently takes of sacrificing simplicity and clarity of the voice part to harmonic interest in the accompaniment. 'Within the Convent Close' (Wilbur Underwood) reveals the composer's power to establish and maintain a mood and it also hints at the unexploited possibilities of the secondary seventh chords. Hull experiments; he is quite willing to be unsuccessful, but he insists upon the essay and is thus strongly creative. He admits many influences, and therefore will find his own mature style tardily. He has written over one hundred songs, a symphony, a suite for string orchestra, a fantasia for orchestra with piano, violin compositions, a suite for piano, a piano sonata, choral, and other works.

A. Walter Kramer has put out a considerable number of works in small forms, ranging in tendency from the earlier to the later German and deriving influence occasionally from French sources. He is an eclectic, but from the German standpoint. His works are chiefly songs and string pieces. Among the former are: 'I Dreamed and Wept a-Dreaming' (Heine), very German in scheme, albeit sufficiently modern; 'In Dreams' (Prudhomme), a work of ultra-modern tendencies which follows its title well and successfully establishes its mood; 'Come to Me' (Christina Rossetti), a mood of spiritual exaltation, which presents an avoidance of traditional harmonic formulæ not always to be found in Kramer's music; the languorous and somewhat Debussyish 'A Nocturne,' and 'Bes' ob All,' a song in negro character based upon a melody originally composed for violin, which suggests MacDowell in mood-quality. For violin and piano is the characteristic _Intermède Arabe_, a fervent 'Elegy' of melodic warmth and breadth, and other works. Beyond these are works for piano, 'cello and piano, string orchestra, organ, and a number of part-songs.

So rapidly and in such numbers do new American composers appear in these days that both omission and disproportion must occur in dealing with the coming generation in any such chapter as the present. A few names may be mentioned, however, of composers who have given indications of having serious aims. Francis Hendricks has written piano compositions that are not without charm and modernity of style, as well as songs. Charles T. Griffes, in songs and piano pieces, has shown a refined appreciation of modern ideals. Deems Taylor was heard at the MacDowell Festival in 1914, with an admirable ballad, 'The Highwayman,' for solo baritone, women's chorus, and orchestra. At the same festival was heard a prelude by Edward Ballantine to Herman Hagedorn's play 'The Delectable Forest,' a work regarded as subtle and imaginative, and two movements of Lewis M. Isaacs' ballet suite, 'Atalanta.' Chalmers Clifton's suite for trumpet and orchestra has been heard at a MacDowell Festival. Leo Ornstein, in his 'Preludes' and 'Impressions of Notre Dame,' for piano, has out-moded Schoenberg and Stravinsky and inaugurated the school of post-futurism.

American nationalists are not to be sought exclusively among the native-born, as the example of Dvořák shows. Carlos Troyer, an Alsatian of long residence in America, has made a significant contribution to the nationalistic phase of native music in his songs of the Zuñi Indians, collected during his sojourns with that extraordinary tribe. Among them are the 'Zuñian Lullaby,' 'Sunrise Call of the Zuñis,' 'The Coming of Montezuma,' 'Great Rain Dance of the Zuñis,' 'Festive Sun Dance,' and 'Hymn to the Sun.' If Troyer has not escaped Germanizing the accompaniments of these songs, neither has he obscured their essential character.

On the side of negro music contributions of great value have been made by two gifted representatives of the race, Harry Burleigh and Will Marion Cook. Burleigh is known by a number of original songs, sincere in their feeling and of much melodic and harmonic appeal, among them the favorite 'Jean' and the very passionate 'Elysium.' In 'Plantation Melodies Old and New' he has given excellent settings to seven highly characteristic negro songs, two of them, 'My Merlindy Brown' and 'Negro Lullaby,' being original, poems for the group being provided by R. E. Phillips, J. E. Campbell, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Of much original poetic fancy, as well as valuable in its presentation of various negro motives in effective development, is his piano suite, 'In the Southland,' which has MacDowellish touches about it. There are also 'Saracen Songs,' 'Five Songs of Lawrence Hope,' and arrangements of songs in H. E. Krehbiel's book, 'Afro-American Folk Songs.'

The work of Will Marion Cook presents some quite extraordinary qualities and in part deals with characteristics of the negro which have hitherto found little or no expression in terms of modern musical art. Such a thing as his song, 'A Negro Sermon,' was certainly never set forth in print before. It reflects the quintessence of the drollery and humor of the primitive negro in religion, and follows with prodigious alertness his swift and erratic, though deeply sincere, zig-zaggings of thought and mood. It is an altogether amazing production, a psychological musical achievement. The same is to be said of 'An Explanation,' a negro court scene in the form of a song. From such unusual works as these to straightforward ragtime Cook's songs cover a wide range of style. The 'Rain Song' is whimsical and forceful, with elemental emotion and impulse, and 'Swim Along' is full of instinctive joy of life.

VI

No composer in America has so completely arrived at an authentic and mature musical individuality along the line of ultra-modern European developments as Charles Martin Loeffler. Though of Alsatian birth, his long residence in this country has identified him with American musical life. Too much the artist to theorize about his art, he has enunciated no creed, although he has been known to suggest the idea that the composer's musical personality is largely constituted by the assimilation of all that is sympathetic to him in the range of his musical observation. Applying this principle to his own work, it is plain that his closest affiliation is with the school of modern France, although the work of no American composer is less closely identified than his with that of any one individual of the modern French group. There speaks through Loeffler's music a distinct personality, one that lives upon a high plane of poetic imagination, and whose intuitions are subtle and refined in a wholly extraordinary degree. Here is no convenient falling back upon modish scale effects or generic modern harmonies, but a pressing forward to the keenest and most poignant individualism. If it is an individuality that insists upon a veritable aristocracy of emotional and psychological subtlety, a total repudiation of the primitive passions which bind certain great composers to mother earth and lead them to brave the charge of occasional banality, on the other hand, it is one which gives an intense and unvitiated delight to those minds which are able to follow its excursions into the remote and unwonted regions of the soul. 'Tuneful' Loeffler's music cannot be called, but it sings constantly in its own preordained and peculiar way, and its motives are often haunting and always distinguished. Loeffler's literary researches are incredible in extent and singularity, and have undoubtedly had a far-reaching effect upon the character of his genius, as has also his intimate knowledge of and devotion to the Gregorian chant, of the austere arcanum of which he is a supreme master. He is a consummate master of orchestration and his orchestral works have been heard with most of the great orchestras of the world.

His serious claims as a composer were first made known through his _Veillées de l'Ukraine_, for violin and orchestra, a suite based upon tales by Gogol, which was heard in Boston, with the composer as soloist, in 1891, although an earlier string quartet in A minor had been previously heard in Philadelphia. A sextet for two violins, two violas, and two 'cellos next came into notice, and after that a 'Fantastic' concerto for 'cello and orchestra. The 'Divertimento in A Minor,' for violin and orchestra, the composer played at a Boston symphony concert in 1895. Loeffler's fame has rested chiefly upon his remarkably imaginative tone-poems, _La Mort de Tintagiles_, after Maeterlinck, _La Bonne Chanson_ and _La Villanelle du Diable_, after Verlaine and Rollinat, respectively, and the 'Pagan Poem,' after Virgil, which includes a piano and three trumpets behind the scenes. The songs are exquisite reflections of the composer's subtle imagination; among them are: _Harmonies du Soir_, _Dansons la Gigue_, _La Cloche fêlée_, _Timbres Oubliés_, 'The Hosting of the Sidhe,' 'The Host of the Air,' and 'To Helen.' There are also an octet for strings, clarinets, and harp; a quintet for three violins, viola, and 'cello; two rhapsodies for oboe, viola, and piano; 'By the Waters of Babylon,' for women's chorus, two flutes, 'cello, harp, and organ; and other works. The composer was for many years second concert master of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and makes his home in Boston and Medfield, Mass.

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Extreme ultra-modernism, stopping, however, on the hither side of futurism, has not been pushed farther in America than in the very remarkable work of Carl Engel. Except that he is himself, he might be regarded as a disciple of Loeffler. His published work consists of several groups of songs, in which the voice is treated in the modern French mode of lyrical declamation over an accompanying tone-poem of high refinement of mood, a positively diabolical ingenuity and subtlety of invention, and impeccable technical finish. In this scheme--determined by the most recent Gallic influences--Engel goes his individual way, producing work that is always interesting and often unusual in both originality and beauty. Of the six _Chansons intimes_, on poems by Jean Moréas, one is struck particularly by _A l'Océan_, which is extraordinarily bold in its assertion of tragic oceanic emotion. _Rions_ is a fine piece of bitter ultra-modern irony--a companion piece to Loeffler's _Dansons la Gigue_. _Trois Epigrammes_, on poems by Paul Mariéton, have much of poignancy and eloquence and weave a dizzying web of ingenious ultra-modernism. One thinks--how far from Americanism is this remarkable work! Of 'Two Lyrics,' poems by Amy Lowell, 'The Sea Shell' is of most ingratiating charm, particularly with respect to its lilting motion; and here the composer has allowed himself to write a _tune_! 'Three Sonnets' present _Lecture du Soir_ (Chantavoine), an excellent example of Engel's capacity for originality, _Dors, ma Belle_ (Marsolleau), and _En Voiture_ (Ajalbert), all of recent date. 'Four Lyrics' (poems by Cora Fabbri) are earlier songs and show the composer's point of departure.

Another extreme ultra-modern of Gallic musical sympathies is Henry Eichheim, who is known by a group of 'Seven Songs,' a showing not great in quantity but of a quality revealing at once a convincing distinction of achievement. It is not, however, the emotional refinements of the French poets to which Eichheim responds, but to the alluring and shadowy tints of the 'Celtic Twilight.' From Yeats he has chosen 'The Heart of the Woman' and 'Aedh Wishes His Beloved were Dead'; from Fiona Macleod, 'When the Dew is Falling,' 'The Undersong,' 'Across the Silent Stream,' and 'The Lament of Ian the Proud'; while he has made a single departure in the 'Autumn Song' of Rossetti. Individual and subtly felt as these songs are, Eichheim is concerned not so much with sheer or extreme ingenuity of means as with the attainment of the expression of deep and dreamful moods, modern in poetic expression, and hence demanding an equally modern musical treatment. This the composer gives them, finding a deeply sincere expression through the highly modern means employed. Perhaps the most eloquent of the 'Seven Songs' is 'Aedh Wishes His Beloved were Dead,' its solemn march of rich harmonic progressions conveying an emotion of singular depth and beauty. Eichheim has also written three symphonic poems.

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Victor Herbert has made departures into the realms of serious music, notably of late years, in two grand operas, 'Natoma,' in three acts, and 'Madeleine.' 'Natoma,' the text of which is by Joseph D. Redding, was first produced on February 23, 1911, in Philadelphia and subsequently in New York and Chicago. It deals with a story of Spanish and Indian life in California in the early part of the last century. The opera has had a very considerable measure of success and reveals Herbert's skillful handling of the orchestra, his power in broad concerted forms, and his unsuspected knowledge of Indian music. 'Madeleine,' produced at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in the season of 1913-14, was not regarded with an equal favor.

Besides some already included in this chapter there are other composers of foreign birth who either live or have sojourned here, as well as American composers who have preferred to live chiefly abroad.

Walter Morse Rummel, who makes his home in Berlin and Paris, has made for himself an individual and significant place in modern music. The tonal emancipation which Debussy gained through a basic devotion to the Gregorian chant, Rummel with increasing success seeks and finds in certain mediæval songs of the folk, in particular those of the troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. His earlier works, for example the 'Five Songs,' dating from 1906, seem conventional in scheme, although one notes their essential refinement and _esprit_. The 'Ten Songs for Children, Young and Old,' are of another stamp. Innocently simple in appearance, they reveal on closer observation all the sophistication of a profound devotee of the ecclesiastical modes, or, it may be, the spontaneous utterance of one with whom these have become 'second nature.' Like 'Alice in Wonderland,' they will speak with equal pertinence to children and grown-ups. 'A Fairy Suite,' for piano, being 'Five Short Stories Preceded by a Prologue and Followed by a Moral,' are an achievement of similar intent, scintillating with fancy, charm, humor, and modern interest. As the 'Prologue' and 'Moral' are practically identical, the purpose of the latter would seem to be to exhort us always, in art, to return to our main subject.

'Hesternæ Rosæ' consists of a collection of troubadour and other mediæval songs, rhythmically reconstructed from the original neumes, and hence hypothetical. They are profoundly interesting and merit close study. Rummel has composed also a quartet for strings, a violin sonata, for piano a 'Prelude,' 'Sea Voices,' and 'Seven Little Impressions for a Simple Mind,' and many songs.

Hugo Kaun, an American resident of Berlin, has been a prodigious producer, his work being in keeping with the modern German musical scheme. He has much structural power, a fertile imagination, and a considerable sense of beauty. His chief works are three symphonies, a piano concerto, a violin concerto, a _Fantasiestück_ for violin, eight chamber music works, five symphonic poems, and an enormous quantity of songs, the best known, perhaps, being 'My Native Land,' and many short piano pieces. He has also written two oratorios, the most important being 'Mother Earth.'

Paul Allen, of Boston, has lived chiefly in Italy, where, as one would expect, he has produced operas. Two of these are 'The Philtre' and 'Milda,' each in one act. They follow the modern Italian operatic scheme and show the composer's close sympathy with the spirit of modern Italian stage music. He has written extensively for the piano also, among his writings in this form being an _Alla Tarantella_, an excellent and refined little work, sensitive to the genius of Italian folk-music, and a 'Meditation' having remarkable depth of feeling, a work emerging from a real emotion and expressed in unusually beautiful terms.

Kurt Schindler, of German birth, and latterly a resident of New York, has put out about twenty-five songs possessing charm and simplicity, though not of a very strong modernity. One of the best, and a work of true beauty, is the 'Faery Song' on Keats' poem. 'Adoration' is another of the Keats group, and in another group the composer has set poems of Wilde, Swinburne, and--a strange third to companion such a pair--Meredith. He has also 'Five Folk-Song Paraphrases,' the originals drawn from Italy, Russia, and France.

Platon Brounoff, a Russian living in New York, has composed, among other works, an overture, 'Russia,' which has been performed at the Central Park concerts under Arnold Volpe's direction, and a characteristic piano suite, 'In the Village.'

The _Suite Fantastique_ for piano and orchestra by the pianist Ernest Schelling has been heard in New York. It is a clever and brilliant work, and makes ingenious use of 'Yankee Doodle,' 'Dixie,' and the 'Swanee River.'

Arthur Fickenscher, at present living in Berlin, has developed a highly refined and highly modernized art of which more is likely to be heard later. One of his most important works is a setting of Rossetti's 'Willowwood' for chorus and orchestra.

A. F.