Chapter VIII: Part 8

George Kleinsinger was born in San Bernardino, California, on February 13, 1914, and came to New York City in his sixth year. He was trained for dentistry, and only after he had left dental school did he concentrate on music. His first intensive period of music study took place with Philip James and Marion Bauer at New York University where he wrote an excellent cantata, _I Hear America Singing_, performed publicly and on records by John Charles Thomas. Kleinsinger then attended the Juilliard Graduate School on a composition fellowship. In 1946 he scored a major success with _Tubby the Tuba_. He later wrote several other works with humorous or satiric content, often filled with unusual instrumental effects. Among these are his _Brooklyn Baseball Cantata_; a concerto for harmonica and orchestra; and the musical, _Archy and Mehitabel_ (_Shinbone Alley_), which was produced for records, on Broadway and over television. In a more serious vein are a symphony and several concertos.

_Tubby the Tuba_, for narrator and orchestra (1942) belongs in the class of Prokofiev’s _Peter and the Wolf_. It serves to familiarize children with the instruments of the orchestra, but because of its wit and simple melodies it also makes for wonderful entertainment. It tells the story of a frustrated tuba who complains that he must always play uninteresting “oompahs oompahs” while the violins are always assigned the most beautiful tunes. In the end Tubby happily gets a wonderful melody of his own to enjoy and play. All the characters in this tale are instruments of the orchestra. In 1946 a recording of _Tubby the Tuba_ sold over a quarter of a million albums. Paramount made a movie of it, and major orchestras throughout the country presented it both at children’s concerts and in its regularly symphonic repertory.

Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler, one of the greatest violin virtuosos of his generation, was born in Vienna, Austria, on February 2, 1875. He was a child prodigy at the violin. From 1882 to 1885 he attended the Vienna Conservatory, a pupil of Leopold Auer, winning the gold medal for violin playing. In 1887, as a pupil of Massart at the Paris Conservatory, he was recipient of the Grand Prix. In 1888, he toured the United States in joint concerts with the pianist, Moriz Rosenthal, making his American debut in Boston on November 9. Upon returning to Vienna, he suddenly decided to abandon music. For a while he studied medicine at the Vienna Academy. After that he entered military service as an officer in a Uhlan Regiment. The decision to return to the violin led to a new period of intensive training from which he emerged in March 1899 with a recital in Berlin. From 1901 on until his retirement during World War II he occupied a magistral place among the concert artists of his time.

As a composer, Kreisler produced a violin concerto and a string quartet. But his fame rests securely on an entire library of pieces for the violin now basic to that repertory and which are equally well loved in transcriptions for orchestra. The curious thing about many of these compositions is that for many years Kreisler presented them as the genuine works of the old masters, works which he said he had discovered in European libraries and monasteries, and which he had merely adapted for the violin. He had recourse to this deception early in 1900 as the expedient by which a still young and unknown violinist could get his own music played more frequently, besides extending for his own concerts the more or less limited territory of the existing violin repertory. His deception proved much more successful than he had dared to hope. Violinists everywhere asked him for copies of these pieces for their own concerts. Publishers in Germany and New York sold these “transcriptions” by the thousands. As the years passed it became increasingly difficult for Kreisler to confess to the world that he had all the while been palming off a colossal fraud. Then, in 1935, Olin Downes, the music critic of the _New York Times_, tried to trace the source of one of these compositions—Pugnani’s _Praeludium and Allegro_—now a worldwide favorite with violinists. Downes first communicated with Kreisler’s New York publishers who were suspiciously evasive. After that Downes cabled Kreisler, then in Europe. It was only then that the violinist revealed that this piece was entirely his, and so were many others which he had been presenting so long as the music of Vivaldi, Martini, Couperin, and Francoeur among others.

It was to be expected that musicians and critics should meet such a confession with anger and denunciation. “We wish to apply the term discreditable to the whole transaction from start to finish,” one American music journal said editorially. In England, Ernest Newman was also devastating in his attack. “It is as though Mr. Yeats published poems under the name of Herrick or Spenser,” he said.

Yet, in retrospect, it is possible to suggest that musicians and critics should not have been taken altogether by surprise. For one thing, as Kreisler pointed out, numerous progressions and passages in all of these compositions were in a style of a period much later than that of the accredited composers, a fact that should have inspired at least a certain amount of suspicion. Also, when Kreisler presented his own _Liebesfreud_, _Liebesleid_, and _Schoen Rosmarin_ as transcriptions of posthumous pieces by Joseph Lanner in a Berlin recital, and was vigorously assailed by a Berlin critic for daring to include such gems with “tripe” like Kreisler’s own _Caprice Viennois_, Kreisler replied with a widely published statement that those pieces of Lanner were of his own composition. The reasonable question should then have arisen that if the three supposedly Lanner items were by Kreisler, how authentic were the other pieces of old masters played by the virtuoso?

Besides all this, Kreisler himself provided a strong clue to the correct authorship in the frontispiece of his published transcriptions. It read: “The original manuscripts used for these transcriptions are the private property of Mr. Fritz Kreisler and are now published for the first time; they are, moreover, so freely treated that they constitute, in fact, original works.”

The furor and commotion caused by the uncovering of this fraud has long since died down. It has had no visible effect on Kreisler’s immense popularity either as a violinist or composer. Since then, all this music has been published and performed as Kreisler’s without losing any of its worldwide appeal.

Among the compositions by Kreisler which he originally ascribed to other masters in imitation of their styles were: _Andantino_ (Martini); _Aubade provençale_ (Couperin); _Chanson Louis XIII et Pavane_ (Couperin); _Minuet_ (Porpora); _Praeludium and Allegro_ (Pugnani); _La Précieuse_ (Couperin); _Scherzo_ (Dittersdorf), _Sicilienne et Rigaudon_ (Francoeur); _Tempo di minuetto_ (Pugnani).

Perhaps the best loved pieces by Kreisler are those in the style of Viennese folk songs and dances in which are caught all the grace and Gemuetlichkeit of Viennese life and backgrounds. Some he originally tried to pass off as the works of other composers, as was the case with the already-mentioned _Liebesfreud_, _Liebesleid_, and _Schoen Rosmarin_, attributed to Lanner. Some were outright transcriptions. _The Old Refrain_ is an adaptation of a song “_Du alter Stefanturm_” by Joseph Brandl taken from his operetta, _Der liebe Augustin_, produced in Vienna in 1887. Still others were always offered as Kreisler’s own compositions and are completely original with him: _Caprice Viennois_, for example, and the _Marche miniature viennoise_.

Among other original Kreisler compositions which he always presented as his own are the following: _La Gitana_, which simulates an Arabian-Spanish song; _Polichinelle_, a serenade; _Rondino_, based on a theme of Beethoven; _Shepherd’s Madrigal_; _Slavonic Fantasia_, based on melodies of Dvořák; _Tambourin Chinois_; and _Toy Soldiers’ March_.

Édouard Lalo

Édouard Lalo was born in Lille, France, on January 27, 1823. After receiving his musical training at Conservatories in Lille and Paris, he became a member of the Armingaud-Jacquard Quartet, a renowned French chamber-music ensemble. In 1848-1849 he published some songs; in 1867 he received third prize in a national contest for his opera, _Fiesque_; and in 1872 he was acclaimed for his _Divertimento_, for orchestra, introduced in Paris. Two major works written for the noted Spanish violinist, Pablo de Sarasate, added considerably to his reputation: a violin concerto in 1872, and the celebrated _Symphonic espagnole_, for violin and orchestra, two years after that. One of his last major works was the opera, _Le Roi d’Ys_, introduced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on May 7, 1888. In that same year he was made Officer of the Legion of Honor and sometime later he received the Prix Monbinne from the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In the last years of his life he was a victim of paralysis. He died in Paris on April 22, 1892.

A composer of the highest principles and aristocratic style, Lalo is essentially a composer for cultivated tastes. One of his works, however, makes for easy listening. It is the _Norwegian Rhapsody_ (_Rapsodie norvégienne_), for orchestra (1875). There are two sections. The first begins slowly and sedately, its main melody appearing in the strings. Here the tempo soon quickens and a sprightly passage ensues. The second part of the rhapsody, ushered in by a stout theme for trumpets, is vigorous music throughout.

Josef Lanner

Josef Lanner, the first of the great waltz kings of Vienna, was born in the Austrian capital on April 12, 1801. When he was twelve he played the violin in the band of Michael Pamer, a popular Viennese composer of that day. In 1818 Lanner formed a trio which played in smaller cafés and at the Prater. In 1819 the trio grew into a quartet with the addition of the older Johann Strauss (father of the composer of _The Blue Danube_), then only fifteen years old. Soon afterwards, the quartet was expanded into a quintet. By 1824, Lanner’s ensemble was a full-sized orchestra popular throughout Vienna, heard in such famous café houses as the _Goldenen Rebbuhn_, and the _Gruenen Jager_, as well as at leading balls and other gala social events in Vienna. The call for Lanner’s music was so insistent that to meet the demand it soon became necessary to create two orchestras; one led by Lanner, and the other by the elder Strauss. Lanner remained an idol of Vienna until his death, which took place in Oberdoebling, near Vienna, on April 14, 1843.

For his various ensembles and orchestras Lanner produced a wealth of popular Viennese music: quadrilles, polkas, galops, marches, and more than a hundred waltzes. It is in the last department that Lanner was most important, for he was one of the first composers to carry the waltz to its artistic fulfillment. With composers from Mozart to Schubert, the waltz was only a three-part song form with a trio. Johann Hummel and Karl Maria von Weber suggested a more spacious design by assembling several different waltz tunes into a single integrated composition. Lanner extended this form further. He prefaced each series of waltzes with an introduction in which the theme of the main melody was often suggested; after the waltz melodies had been presented, Lanner brought his composition to completion with a coda which served as a kind of summation of some of the ideas previously stated. Between the introduction and the coda came the succession of lilting, lovable, heart-warming waltz-melodies so remarkable for their grace, elegance, freshness and poignancy that Lanner has sometimes been described as “the Mozart of the dance.” Nevertheless, Lanner always emphasized soaring lyricism where the elder Strauss was more partial to rhythm. The Viennese used to say: “With Lanner, it’s ‘Pray dance, I beg you.’ With Strauss it’s ‘You must dance, I command you!’”

The form which Lanner finally crystallized, and the style with which his waltz music unfolded, were adopted by the two Johann Strausses, father and son, who were destined to bring this type of Viennese music to its ultimate development. Thus Lanner was the opening chapter of a musical epoch. He was the dawn of Vienna’s golden age of waltz music.

Lanner’s most famous waltz is _Die Schoenbrunner_, op. 200, his swan song. Other outstanding Lanner waltzes are: _Die Pesther_, op. 93, _Die Werber_, op. 103, _Hofballtaenze_, op. 161, _Die Romantiker_, op. 167, and _Abendsterne_, op. 180. “With Lanner,” wrote H. E. Jacob, “the romantic epoch began for the waltz, and the flower-gardens and green leaves of Spring penetrated into the ballroom. Lanner’s compositions are unsophisticated and unpretentious, but his waltzes could no more be commonplace than could a flower.”

Charles Lecocq

Charles Lecocq was born in Paris on June 3, 1832. For four years he attended the Paris Conservatory where, as a pupil of Bazin and Halévy, he received prizes in harmony and fugue. For a while he earned his living teaching the piano and writing church music. In 1857 he shared with Bizet the first prize in a competition for one-act operettas sponsored by Offenbach. This winning work, _Le Docteur miracle_, was successfully introduced in Paris that year. After that Lecocq wrote several light operas which were failures, before he enjoyed a major success with _Fleur de thé_ in 1868, first in Paris and subsequently in England and Germany. His greatest successes came with two crowning works in the French light-opera repertory: _La Fille de_ _Mme. Angot_ in 1872, and _Giroflé-Girofla_, in 1874. Between 1874 and 1900 he wrote over thirty more operettas. He died in Paris on October 24, 1918 after enjoying for almost half a century a place of signal honor among France’s composers for the popular theater.

Lecocq is remembered today mainly for _La Fille de Mme. Angot_ and _Giroflé-Girofla_. The first of these was introduced in Brussels on December 4, 1872. In Paris, where it was given on February 23, 1873, it enjoyed the formidable run of more than five hundred consecutive performances. The book—by Siraudin, Clairville and Koning—was set in Paris during the French Revolution. Clairette, daughter of Mme. Angot, must marry the barber Pomponnet even though she loves the poet, Pitou. To avoid an undesirable marriage, even at the risk of arrest, Clairette sings a daring song by Pitou about an illicit affair between Mlle. Lange (reputed a favorite of Barras, head of the Directory) and a young lover. When Pitou proves fickle, and is discovered in the boudoir of Mlle. Lange, Clairette stands ready to forget him completely and to take Pomponnet as her husband.

The sprightly overture, filled with vivacious tunes and dramatized by energetic rhythms, is a favorite of semi-classical orchestras. So are several dances from the operetta, including an electrifying Can-Can, and a sweeping _Grand Valse_ with which the second act comes to an exciting close. The main vocal excerpts are Pomponnet’s passionate avowal of Clairette’s innocence, “_Elle est tellement innocente_” and the duet of Mlle. Lange and Clairette, “_Jours fortunés de notre enfance_” both from Act 2.

_Giroflé-Girofla_—book by Vanloo and Leterrier—was introduced in Brussels on March 21, 1874. Giroflé and Girofla are twin sisters. Giroflé is pressured by her parents to marry the banker, Marasquin; Girofla is in love with an impoverished fire-eating Moor, Mourzouk. When Girofla is secretly abducted by pirates, the Moor comes to her home demanding to see her, only to mistake Giroflé for Girofla. The complicated situation ensuing becomes resolved only after Girofla is rescued and brought back home.

The most frequently heard excerpts from this gay score are the Pirates’ Chorus, “_Parmi les choses_”; the rousing drinking song, “_Le Punche scintille_”; the ballad, “_Lorsque la journée est finie_”; and the love duet, “_O Ciel!_”

Ernesto Lecuona

Ernesto Lecuona was born in Havana, Cuba, on August 7, 1896. As a boy of eleven he published his first piece of music—an American two step still popular with some Cuban bands. While attending the National Conservatory in Cuba, from which he was graduated in 1911 with a gold medal in piano playing, he earned his living as a pianist in cafés and movie theaters. In 1917 he paid the first of several visits to the United States, at that time making some records and giving a piano recital. He then made concert tours throughout America and Europe playing the piano and conducting semi-classical and popular orchestras. His performances were largely responsible for popularizing in America both the conga and the rumba in the 1920’s. He also made some successful appearances at the Capitol Theater, in New York, where he introduced his own music, including such outstanding successes as _Malagueña_, _Andalucía_, and _Siboney_ (the last originally entitled _Canto Siboney_, which became an American popular-song hit in 1929). These and similar pieces made Lecuona one of the most successful exponents of Latin-American melodies and dance rhythms in the United States. Lecuona has written over five hundred songs, forty operettas, and numerous compositions both for orchestra and for piano solo.

From a piano suite entitled _Andalucía_ come two of Lecuona’s best known instrumental compositions. The first is also called _Andalucía_, a haunting South American melody set against a compulsive rhythm. It was made into an American popular song in 1955.

Another movement from _Andalucía_ is even more familiar: the _Malagueña_. Since its publication as a piano solo in 1929, _Malagueña_ has sold annually over a hundred thousand copies of sheet music each year; it has become a favorite of concert pianists; it is also often performed by salon and pop orchestras everywhere in orchestral transcriptions; and it has been adapted into a popular song, “At the Crossroads.” It is in three sections, the first being in the malagueña rhythm dynamically projected in slowing expanding sonorities; a contrast comes in the middle part with a poignant Latin-American melody.

_Andalucía_, the single movement and not the suite as a whole, has been given a brilliant orchestral dress by Morton Gould who has also orchestrated two outstandingly popular Lecuona songs. One is “La Comparasa,” a picture of a traditional parade during the Carnival season in which Negroes and muleteers play their native instruments and sing their sensual songs. The other is “Gitanerias,” haunting gypsy music.

Franz Lehár

Franz Lehár was born in Komorn, Hungary, on April 30, 1870. His father, a bandmaster, was his first music teacher. When Franz was twelve, he entered the Prague Conservatory where he remained six years specializing in the violin with Bennewitz and theory with Foerster. His studies were completed in 1888, after which he played the violin in the orchestra of the Eberfeld Opera. He subsequently became an assistant bandleader of his father’s ensemble and a director of Austria’s foremost Marine bands. In 1896 he realized his first success as a composer of operettas with _Kukuschka_, produced in Leipzig. In 1902 he became conductor of the Theater-an-der-Wien, in Vienna, home of operettas. There, in the same year, he had produced _Viennese Women_ (_Wiener Frauen_). The operetta after that was _The Gypsy_ (_Der Rastelbinder_), seen in 1902 in one of Vienna’s other theaters. With _The Merry Widow_ (_Die lustige Witwe_), seen in 1905, Lehár achieved a triumph of such magnitude that from then on he was one of Austria’s most celebrated operetta composers (and one of the wealthiest) since Johann Strauss II. He wrote about thirty more operettas (three of them in the single year of 1909-1910). The most famous were _The Count of Luxembourg_ (_Der Graf von Luxemburg_) in 1909; _Gypsy Love_ (_Zigeunerliebe_) in 1910; _Frasquita_ in 1922; _Paganini_ in 1925; _The Tsarevitch_ (_Der Zarewitsch_) in 1927; and _The Land of Smiles_ (_Das Land des Laechelns_) in 1929. During World War II Lehár lived in seclusion at his villa in Bad Ischl, Austria. After the war he became embittered by the widely publicized accusation that he had been pro Nazi, arising no doubt from the well-known fact that _The Merry Widow_ was Hitler’s favorite operetta. What was forgotten in this attack against Lehár was the fact that his wife had been classified by Nazis as non-Aryan and that on one occasion both and he and his wife were subjected by the Gestapo to house arrest. Lehár died in Bad Ischl, Austria, on October 24, 1948. He is one of the few composers to outlive the copyrights of some of his most famous works.

Lehár’s popularity in the early part of this century gave the Viennese operetta a new lease on life at a time when its heyday was believed over. It was through the influence of Lehár’s immense popularity and success that composers like Oscar Straus, Emmerich Kálmán, and Leo Fall began writing their own operettas. Lehár’s best stage works have been described as “dance operettas” because of the emphasis placed on dance music, the waltz specifically. The dance usually becomes the climax, the focal point, of the production. Stan Czech further points out that Lehár’s waltzes are “slower and sweeter than those of Johann Strauss, were definite prototypes of the modern slow waltz, and their Slav atmosphere gave them an exciting and individual character.”

_The Count of Luxembourg_ (_Der Graf von Luxemburg_)—text by Willner and Robert Bodanzky—was first given in Vienna on November 12, 1909. This operetta opens in an artist’s studio in Paris where René, the impoverished Count of Luxembourg, is offered five hundred thousand francs by Prince Basil if René is willing to marry the singer Angele and let her share his title. The reason for this peculiar arrangement is that the Prince is himself in love with Angele, wants to marry her, but prefers that his wife have a title. After they get married, René and Angele discover they are in love with each other, a fact which eventually the Prince is willing to accept since he is ordered by the Czar to marry a legitimate Countess. As in most Lehár’s operettas, the high musical moment comes with a waltz—the infectious duet of René and Angele, “_Bist du’s, lachendes Glueck_,” which is also extremely popular in orchestral adaptations. Other appealing numbers are the second act duet, “_Lieber Freund, man greift nicht_” and the tenor aria, “_Maedel klein, Maedel fein_.”

_Frasquita_, produced in Vienna on May 12, 1922, is remembered most often for one of Lehár’s most beautiful vocal numbers, the nostalgic and romantic _Frasquita Serenade_, “_Hab ein blaues Himmelbett_.” Fritz Kreisler made a fine transcription for violin and piano, and Sigmund Spaeth provided the melody with American lyrics.

_Gypsy Love_ (_Zigeunerliebe_), had its world première in Vienna on January 8, 1910. The librettists (Willner and Bodanzky) provided a romantic storybook setting of Rumania, and a romantic central character in the form of the gypsy violinist, Jozsi. Zorika is ineluctably drawn to Jozsi though she is actually betrothed to his half-brother, Jonel. In a dream, she gets a foretaste of what her life would be with one so irresponsible and fickle as a gypsy violinist, with the result that she is more than happy to marry Jonel. The main waltz melody (one of Lehár’s greatest) is “_Nur der Liebe macht uns jung_” and the most infectious Hungarian tune is Jozsi’s soaring entrance gypsy melody to the accompaniment of his violin, “_Ich bin ein Zigeunerkind_.”

From _The Land of Smiles_ (_Das Land des Laechelns_) comes what is probably the best loved and most widely sung of all of Lehár’s vocal numbers, “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz” (“Thine Is My Heart Alone”) which opened not in Vienna but in Berlin, on October 10, 1929. This was actually a new version of an old Lehár operetta, originally called _The Yellow Jacket_ (_Die gelbe Jacke_) which had been introduced in Vienna in 1923. The romantic plot of both operettas involved a Chinese diplomat, Prince Sou-Chong, and Lisa, daughter of an Austrian Count. They marry and settle in Peking in whose strange setting, Lisa’s love for the Prince soon turns to hate. With great magnanimity—even though this is in violation of ancient Chinese traditions and customs—he allows Lisa to leave him and return home.

In _The Yellow Jacket_, “Thine Is My Heart Alone” is sung by Lisa, and at that time this number made little impression. The famous tenor, Richard Tauber, fell in love with it, and performed it so extensively in his recitals everywhere that he and the song became inextricably identified. When Lehár revised his operetta and renamed it _The Land of Smiles_, he cast the song “Thine Is My Heart Alone” as a major second-act aria for Prince Sou-Chong, Richard Tauber playing the part of the Prince. _The Land of Smiles_ was a personal triumph for Tauber who appeared in it over 2,500 times all over the world. “Thine Is My Heart Alone” became with him something of a theme song. He rarely gave a concert anywhere without singing it either on the program itself or as an encore. When _The Land of Smiles_ was given in New York City in 1946, with Tauber as the star, the operetta was renamed _Yours Is My Heart_; in this production Tauber sang the song four times in four different languages, French, Italian, German, and English.

There can be little question but that _The Merry Widow_ (_Die lustige Witwe_) is one of the most famous operettas ever written. It was a sensation when first performed, in Vienna on December 28, 1905. It came both to London and New York in 1907, a major success in both places. In Buenos Aires it was performed simultaneously in five theaters in five different languages. Since 1907 there was hardly a time when _The Merry Widow_ was not being performed in some part of the world. It has enjoyed in excess of six thousand performances, a thousand of these in Vienna alone. On several occasions it has been adapted for the screen.

Victor Léon and Leo Stein wrote the text. This is the usual operetta material involving a beautiful heiress from a mythical kingdom. She is Sonia from Marsovia, who is leading a gay life in Paris. Beautiful and wealthy, she is inevitably sought out by the most handsome men of Paris. The government of Marsovia is eager to get her to marry one of its native sons, the dashing Prince Danilo, thereby keeping her fortune at home. As she conducts her vivacious night life she is zealously watched over by the Marsovian Ambassador, Baron Popoff, who never loses an opportunity to further the interests of Danilo. Eventually, Sonia has had her fling and is ready to settle down with the Prince.

The _Merry Widow Waltz_, “_S’fluestern Geigen, Lippen schweigen_,” an eye-filling climax to the third act, is not only the most popular excerpt from this operetta but also one of the most celebrated waltzes ever written. A secondary waltz, “Vilia” is also highly beguiling, while a third musical favorite from this score is “_Da geh’ ich zu Maxim_” (“_The Girl at Maxim’s_”).

What is one of Lehár’s best waltzes, second in popularity only to that of _The Merry Widow_, does not come from any operetta. It is the _Gold and Silver Waltzes_ (_Gold und Silber Waelzer_), op. 79 which he wrote as a concert number.

Ruggiero Leoncavallo

Ruggiero Leoncavallo was born in Naples, Italy, on March 8, 1858. He was graduated from the Bologna Conservatory, then spent several years traveling. He finally came to Paris where he earned his living playing the piano, singing, and writing music-hall songs. The powerful Italian publisher, Ricordi, commissioned him to write a trilogy of operas set in the Renaissance. Leoncavallo completed the first of these operas, _I Medici_, but it proved too expensive to mount and was shelved. This experience convinced him that he ought to write an opera of slighter dimensions, one which would not cost too much to produce, and which would be in the realistic style (“_Verismo_”) just made so popular by Mascagni’s _Cavalleria Rusticana_. In four months’ time, Leoncavallo completed _Pagliacci_, the opera through which his name survives. It received a triumphant première in Milan in 1892, with Toscanini conducting. Though Leoncavallo wrote many operas after that he never wrote one as good or as popular as the one that made him world famous. Only one of these later operas has retained interest, _Zaza_, introduced in 1900. A third opera, _La Bohème_, was well received when introduced in Venice in 1897, but was soon thrown into complete obscurity by a rival opera on the same subject, that of Puccini. In 1906 Leoncavallo toured the United States in performances of _Pagliacci_. The failures of his last operas made him a bitter, broken man in the last years of his life. He died in Montecatini, Italy, on August 9, 1919.

The composer prepared his own libretto for _Pagliacci_, a play within a play. A troupe of strolling players headed by Canio arrives for performances in a Calabrian village. Canio’s wife, Nedda, falls in love with Silvio, one of the villagers, and she in turn is being pursued by the pathetic clown of the troupe, Tonio. Through Tonio, Canio discovers his wife has been unfaithful to him, but fails to learn the identity of his rival. At the troupe’s evening performance—and in a play that closely resembles the actual happenings within the company—Canio kills Nedda when she fails to tell him who her lover is. But Silvio, in the audience, reveals himself by rushing on the stage to help Nedda. There Canio kills him.

Many of the selections from this opera are famous, but the most famous of all is the tenor aria, in which Canio speaks his immense grief on discovering that his wife has a lover, “_Vesti la giubba_.”

The other familiar excerpts include the baritone prologue, “_Si può_,” in which Tonio explains to his audience that the incidents in the play about to be presented are true to life and that the players are not performers but human beings; Nedda’s delightful ballatella, “The Bird Song” (“_Stridono lassù_”) where she tries to forget about Tonio’s initial response of jealousy by watching and describing the casual and carefree flight of birds overhead; the “Harlequin’s Serenade” in the play within the play sequence in the second act, “_O Columbina!_”; and a melodious orchestral Intermezzo which separates the first and second acts, music which hints darkly at impending tragedy through a poignant recall of Tonio’s prologue.

Anatol Liadov

Anatol Liadov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on May 10, 1855, the son and grandson of eminent Russian conductors. He was a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, but was so derelict about attending classes that in 1876 he was expelled. Reinstated two years later he now became fired with both ambition and industry, proved a brilliant student, and was graduated with highest honors. He was then appointed teacher of theory there, eventually becoming a renowned professor, a post he retained until the end of his life. He died in Novgorod, Russia, on August 28, 1914.

Liadov was at his best in his fairy tales for orchestra (_The Enchanted Lake_, _Baba Yaga_ and _Kikimora_); in songs; and in smaller pieces for the piano. He was a student of Russian folk music of which he made numerous adaptations, and whose styles and idioms percolated into many of his compositions.

The _Eight Russian Folksongs_, a suite for orchestra, op. 58 (1906) is one of Liadov’s adaptations. There are eight movements. In the first, “Religious Chant,” the main song is that chanted by children in religious processions; it is heard in English horn and bassoons. This is followed by “Christmas Carol,” its main theme presented by oboes and clarinets. “Plaintive Melody” is a village song, and “I Danced With a Mosquito,” a humorous scherzo in which muted strings simulated buzzing mosquitoes. The fifth movement is “Legend of the Birds” where the bird song is presented by the woodwind. “Cradle Song” is a tender melody for strings. This is followed by a lively rhythmic section, “Round Dance.” The suite ends with the “Village Dance Song,” music that usually accompanies the crowning of the May Queen.

Liadov is also the composer of a delightful trifle called _The Music Box_ in which the delicate little tune is the kind that lends itself gratefully to the tinkle of a music box. Liadov wrote this piece for the piano, op. 32, but it is better known in orchestral transcriptions.

Paul Lincke

Paul Lincke was born in Berlin, Germany, on November 7, 1866. After completing his music study he played the violin and bassoon in numerous theater orchestras. He later distinguished himself as a theater conductor. In 1897 he had his first operetta produced in Berlin. Thereafter he wrote many operettas, all originally given in Berlin; he became one of the foremost exponents of the light musical theater in Germany of his time. The most famous were _Frau Luna_ (1899), _Fraeulein Loreley_ (1900), _Lysistrata_ (1902), _Prinzessin Rosine_ (1905), and _Casanova_ (1914). His last operetta was _Ein Liebestraum_, produced in Hamburg in 1940. From 1918 to 1920 he was conductor at the Folies-Bergère in Paris. He died in Klausthal-Zellernfeld, Germany, on September 3, 1946.

His most famous composition is a song from _Lysistrata_ (1902): “The Glow Worm” (“_Gluehwuermchen_”), which achieved phenomenal popularity throughout the world independent of the operetta. It is still famous both as a vocal composition and in orchestral transcriptions. A new vocal version, with amusing lyrics by Johnny Mercer, was published and popularized in the United States in 1952.

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt was born in Raiding, Hungary, on October 22, 1811. A prodigy pianist who made an impressive debut in Hungary when he was nine, Liszt was financed by several Hungarian noblemen to study the piano with Czerny in Vienna. In 1822, Liszt made a sensational debut in that city, and in 1824, after a period of additional study in Paris, an equally momentous appearance in the French capital. For the next three years Liszt concertized throughout Europe, becoming an idol of music audiences everywhere. Then, in 1827, he decided to abandon music for what he regarded as nobler pursuits. He devoted himself in turn to religion, politics, literature, and philosophy without finding the satisfaction he sought. Then, in 1830, he went back to music. For about two years he worked industriously on his piano technique, reassuming an imperial position among the virtuosos of his generation beginning with 1833. He combined profound musicianship and a phenomenal technique with such a flair for showmanship and self-aggrandizement, that it can be said that the modern piano virtuoso (both in the best and worst sense of that term) was born with him.

In 1848, Liszt came to Weimar to fulfill duties as Kapellmeister to the Grand Duke. The eleven-year period of this office represented music-making of the highest order, as Liszt devoted himself to presenting the foremost operatic and symphonic music in the best possible performances. He was indefatigable in propagandizing the music of the avant-garde composers of his day, reviving Wagner’s _Tannhaeuser_ and presenting the world première of that master’s _Lohengrin_ at a time when Wagner was in disrepute in Germany because of his revolutionary activities.

Finding himself incapable of maintaining the high standards he had set, and disturbed by the prevailing antagonism to his espousal of new music, Liszt left Weimar in 1859. Once again he sought refuge in a career outside music. In 1865 he submitted to the tonsure and entered the Third Order of St. Francis of Assisi as abbé. But music was not abandoned. He taught the piano to gifted pupils who came to him from all parts of the world; and he wrote an abundant amount of music, mainly for the piano. He died in Bayreuth, Bavaria, on July 31, 1886, still at the height of his powers and fame as composer, pianist and teacher.

Liszt left a vast repertory of music, including tone poems, symphonies, piano concertos, songs, and a library of works for the piano. At his best he was a great innovator, and a creator of vast dramatic and poetic concepts. At worst, he was a showman shamelessly wooing his public with superficial effects and trivial material. Most of his works belong to the concert hall, but some of it has enormous popular appeal as salon music.

The most famous of the latter is the _Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2_ in C-sharp minor (1847), originally for piano solo but subsequently orchestrated by the composer himself. This was one of nineteen compositions in which Liszt developed the form of the rhapsody and helped to make it popular; which he filled with strong national feelings and the individual traits of Hungarian folk music. One of the features of all these rhapsodies is their dynamic alternation of slow and sensual music (called _lassan_) with fast, dramatic, exciting passages (called _friskan_). The second _Hungarian Rhapsody_ opens with a _lassan_, a slow, stately declamation. Then, after a clarinet cadenza, the _friskan_ appears, a spirited melody for violins and woodwind. After that fast and slow passages, soft and loud dynamics, and rapidly changing meters and rhythm help to generate excitement and create drama. The drama and the excitement of this music never seem to lose their impact however many times this rhapsody is listened to.

Of Liszt’s twelve tone poems for orchestra the most famous is _Les Préludes_ (1850). The tone poem, or symphonic poem, is Liszt’s creation in an attempt to bring to orchestral music the pictorial, dramatic and programmatic qualities of Wagner’s music dramas. Thus Liszt conceived a one-movement composition, flexible in form, in which a story is told, picture described, or poem interpreted. The inspiration for _Les Préludes_ is the _Méditations poétiques_ of Lamartine, from which several lines are quoted in the published score to provide the music with its program:

“What is life but a series of Preludes to that unknown song of which death strikes the first solemn note? Love is the magic dawn of every existence; but where is the life in which the first enjoyment of bliss is not dispelled by some tempest; its illusions scattered by some fatal breath; its altar consumed as by a thunderbolt? What soul, this cruelly hurt, but seeks to repose with its memories in the sweet calm of pastoral life? Yet no man is content to resign himself for long to the mild, beneficent charms of Nature, and when the trumpet gives the alarm he hastens to the post of danger, on whatever field he may be called to fight, so that once more he may find in action full consciousness of himself and the possession of all his powers.”

_Les Préludes_ opens with a dignified subject in the basses which is subjected to considerable change and amplification before the main melody is introduced. This melody is an elegiac song expressing the happiness of love; its first entrance comes in four horns, strings, and harp. The music is carried to a climactic point, after which a frenetic mood is projected. Plaintively the oboe recalls the main melody; a country dance tune is offered by the horn; and the main melody reappears with opulent treatment. Another section of storm and stress follows before the final majestic statement of the main melody.

Of Liszt’s voluminous writings for the piano, one composition above all others has won favor throughout the music world as a tender, and sentimental expression of love. It is the _Liebestraum_, “Love’s Dream.” Liszt actually wrote three _Liebesträume_, but it is the third of this set—in A-flat major (1850)—which is considered when we speak or hear of the _Liebestraum_. All of these three piano compositions are adaptations of songs by the same composer; the third _Liebestraum_ originated as “_O Lieb’, so lang du lieben kannst_,” words by Freiligrath.

Frederick Loewe

Frederick Loewe was born in Vienna, Austria, on June 10, 1904. A musical prodigy, he began to study the piano when he was five; started composition at seven; at thirteen made a successful appearance as pianist with the Berlin Symphony; and at fifteen was the composer of a hit song, “Katrina,” that sold over a million copies of sheet music in Europe. He received a thorough musical training from Busoni, Eugène d’Albert, and Emil Nikolaus Rezniček, winning the Hollander Medal for piano playing in 1923. One year after that he came to the United States. Unable to make any progress in his musical career, he spent the next decade traveling around the country and filling all sorts of odd jobs. He punched cattle, mined gold, served as a riding instructor, and even boxed professionally. Eventually he came back to New York where he found a job in a Greenwich Village café playing the piano. In 1938 four of his songs were heard in a Broadway musical, _Great Lady_, a failure. A meeting with Alan Jay Lerner, a young lyricist and librettist, brought him a gifted collaborator. They wrote a musical comedy that was produced by a stock company in Detroit, and another called _What’s Up_ that was seen on Broadway. Their first major success came with the Broadway musical, _Brigadoon_, in 1947. _My Fair Lady_, in 1956, was one of the greatest successes of the Broadway theater. They also helped make entertainment history further by writing songs for the motion picture musical, _Gigi_, the first to win nine Academy Awards, including one for Lerner and Loewe for the title song. In 1960, Lerner and Loewe wrote the Broadway musical _Camelot_ based on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

_Brigadoon_ was a whimsical Scottish fantasy which came to Broadway on March 13, 1947, book and lyrics by Lerner. Brigadoon is a mythical town in Scotland which comes to life for a single day once every hundred years. Two American tourists happen to come to Brigadoon during its one day of existence. They become a part of its quaint life, and one of them falls in love with a Scottish lass. The musical highlights include a song that became a hit in 1947, “Almost Like Being In Love,” and several that have a charming Scottish flavor, including “Come to Me, Bend to Me,” “The Heather on the Hill,” and “I’ll Come Home With Bonnie Jean.”

_My Fair Lady_, produced on March 15, 1956, was Lerner’s adaptation for the popular musical theater of Bernard Shaw’s _Pygmalion_. Eliza Doolittle, an ignorant flower girl and daughter of a cockney, is transformed by the phonetician, Professor Henry Higgins, into a cultivated lady who is successfully palmed off upon high English society as a duchess. Higgins falls in love with her and, though a long confirmed bachelor, finds he can no longer live without her. _My Fair Lady_ became one of the most highly acclaimed musical productions of recent memory; Brooks Atkinson called it “one of the best musicals of the century.” It achieved a fabulous Broadway run and was brought by many touring countries to all parts of the civilized world, including the Soviet Union. It captured one third of the honors annually conferred on the theater by the Antoinette Perry Awards. The original-cast recording sold over three million discs. The principal numbers from Loewe’s captivating score include three romantic songs, two of the Hit Parade variety (“I Could Have Danced All Night” and “On the Street Where You Live”) and the third, “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”; two atmospheric numbers that evoke musically the place and setting of the play, “The Ascot Gavotte” and “The Embassy Waltz”; and the two cockney ditties of Eliza’s father, “Get Me to the Church On Time” and “With a Little Bit of Luck.”

Albert Lortzing

Gustav Albert Lortzing was born in Berlin on October 23, 1801. His parents were actors compelled to lead an itinerant life which made it impossible for Albert to obtain any systematic education. His mother taught him music, the study of which he later continued briefly in Berlin with Rungenhagen. His first effort at composition consisted of some songs, but in 1824 he completed his first opera, _Ali Pascha von Janina_. From 1833 to 1844 he was employed as a tenor at the Municipal Theater in Leipzig, for which he wrote the comic opera _Die beiden Schuetzen_, successfully produced in 1837. He achieved his greatest success the same year with the comic opera, _Zar und Zimmermann_, which within a few years’ time became a favorite among theater audiences throughout Europe. His later operettas included _Der Wildschuetz_ (_The Poacher_) in 1842 and _Der Waffenschmied_ (_The Armourer_) in 1846, while one of his finest romantic operas was _Undine_ in 1845. Lortzing also filled several engagements as conductor of operas and operettas in Leipzig, Vienna and Berlin, and as an opera impresario. He died in Berlin on January 21, 1851, one day after his last opera, _Die Opernprobe_ (_The Opera Rehearsal_) was introduced in Frankfort.

Lortzing was one of the earliest and most successful exponents of German national comic opera; and _Czar and the Carpenter_ (_Zar und Zimmermann_) was his masterwork. It was first produced in Leipzig on December 22, 1837. The music is consistently light and tuneful, frequently in the style of German folk songs. The libretto, by the composer, is a delightful comedy based on an actual historic episode: the escapade of Peter the Great of Russia in Holland where he worked as a carpenter. In the Lortzing comic opera, Peter the Great is a carpenter on a ship at Saardam where he meets a compatriot, also named Peter, who is a deserter. Temporarily they become rivals for the affection of Mary. After the arrival of the Ambassadors from France and England to seek out the Emperor, the latter quietly departs for his homeland, leaving behind him both money and an official pardon for the other Peter. The gay spirit of the comic opera as a whole is magically caught not only in its vivacious overture, but in several familiar excerpts. The most notable are: the Burgomaster’s comic entrance song, “_O sancta justa_”; in the second act, the Wedding Chorus, and the French Ambassador’s beautiful air, “_Lebe wohl, mein flandrisch’ Maedchen_”; in the third act the vigorous _Clog Dance_ (_Holzschutanz_), and the very famous air of Czar Peter, “_Sonst spielt’ ich mit Zepter_.”

Alexandre Luigini

Alexandre Luigini was born in Lyons, France, on March 9, 1850. He was the son of the distinguished conductor of the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. After attending the Paris Conservatory—where he was a pupil of Massenet and Massart among others—the younger Luigini played the violin in his father’s orchestra. In 1870 he began a successful career as ballet composer with _Le Rêve de Nicette_, given in Lyons. His greatest success came with the _Ballet Égyptien_, first seen in Lyons in 1875. For twenty years Luigini was the conductor of the Grand Theater in Lyons and professor of harmony at the Lyons Conservatory. Until the end of his life he was the conductor of the Opéra-Comique in Paris. He died in Paris on July 29, 1906.

An orchestral suite derived from some of the most attractive pages of the _Ballet Égyptien_ score is a favorite of bands and salon orchestras everywhere. This is music striking for its Oriental-type melodies and harmonies, and for its colorful orchestral hues. The first two movements are particularly popular. The first begins with a strong and stately theme, but midway comes a gayer section in an exotic Oriental style. The second movement highlights a capricious subject for the woodwind, once again in a recognizable Oriental style.

Hans Christian Lumbye

Hans Christian Lumbye was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on May 2, 1810. As a young man he played in military bands. He then formed an orchestra of his own which achieved extraordinary fame throughout Copenhagen (specifically at the Tivoli) with light musical programs. For these concerts Lumbye produced a library of light music: waltzes, galops, polkas, marches, and so forth. This music is so filled with infectious tunes and pulsating rhythms—and they are so light in heart and spirit—that they have won for their composer the sobriquet of “The Johann Strauss of the North” and the status of Denmark’s foremost creator of semi-classical music. He died in Copenhagen on March 20, 1874.

Lumbye’s dance pieces are played wherever there is a salon, pop or café-house orchestra. Among his best waltzes are _Amelie_, _Hesperus_, and _Sophie_. Other successful Lumbye compositions are the _Columbine Mazurka_, the _Champagne Galop_, _Concert Polka_, _Dream Pictures_, _An_ _Evening at the Tivoli_, _King Frederick VII Homage March_, and the _Railway Galop_.

Edward MacDowell

Edward Alexander Macdowell, one of America’s most significant 19th-century composers, was born in New York City on December 18, 1861. After preliminary music study with private teachers, he attended the Paris Conservatory from 1876 to 1878, and the Frankfort Conservatory in Germany from 1879 to 1881. Maintaining his home in Germany, MacDowell joined the faculty of the Darmstadt Conservatory in 1881, and in 1882 he made an official bow as a composer by introducing his first piano concerto in Zurich, and his _Modern Suite_ for piano in Germany. He returned to the United States in 1888, settling in Boston where a year later the Boston Symphony under Gericke introduced his now-famous Second Piano Concerto, the composer appearing as soloist. From then on, most of his important symphonic works were introduced by the Boston Symphony, placing him in the vanguard of American composers of that period. In 1896 he filled the first chair of music created at Columbia University in New York; at that time he was described as “the greatest musical genius America has produced.” MacDowell resigned in 1904 after sharp differences with the trustees of the University over the way a music department should be run. The bitterness and frustrations suffered by MacDowell during this altercation with the University undermined and finally broke his always delicate health. His brain tissues became affected. From 1905 on he was a victim of insanity, spending his time in an innocent, childlike state, until his death in New York City on January 23, 1908. Shortly after his death the MacDowell Memorial Association was founded to establish a retreat for American creative artists on MacDowell’s summer residence in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which MacDowell’s widow had deeded to the Association.

A composer whose artistic roots lay deep in the soil of German Romanticism, MacDowell was a composer who filled his writing with noble poetic sentiments and the most sensitive emotions. His sense of style and his feeling for structure were the last words in elegance, and his lyricism and harmonic language were ever ingratiatingly inviting to the ear.

The _Indian Suite_, op. 48 (1892) is the second of MacDowell’s suites for orchestra. It is one of several works in which MacDowell uses melodic and rhythmic material of the American Indian, blending this idiom with his usual sensitive and poetic style. This is one of MacDowell’s most popular works for orchestra. The first movement, “Legend,” has a slow introduction in which the main melody is given by three unaccompanied horns in unison. The melody is taken over by other instruments and developed. Here the material comes from a sacred ceremony of Iroquois Indians. The second movement is “Love Song,” whose principal subject is immediately given by the woodwind; this melody is derived from the music of Iowa Indians. “War Time” follows, a movement dominated by a melody to which Indians of the Atlantic Coast ascribed supernatural origin. This melody is heard in the first sixteen measures in two unison unaccompanied flutes. A subsidiary section follows. “Dirge,” the fourth movement, is a woman’s song of mourning for an absent son, come from the Kiowa Indians. The mournful melody is heard in muted violins. The suite ends with “Village Festival,” in which two light and vivacious melodies from the Iroquois Indians are presented; the first is a woman’s dance, and the second a war song.

The most familiar pieces of music written by MacDowell—_To a Water Lily_ and _To a Wild Rose_—come from the _Woodland Sketches_, op. 51 (1896), a suite for solo piano made up of ten sections, each a descriptive poem in tones. In this suite MacDowell became one of the first American composers to interpret the beauty of American scenes and countrysides in delicate melodies. Both _To a Water Lily_ and _To a Wild Rose_ are exquisite tone pictures of Nature, and both have enjoyed numerous transcriptions. The other eight movements of the _Woodland Sketches_ are: _Will o’ the Wisp_, _At an Old Trysting Place_, _In Autumn_, _From an Old Indian Lodge_, _From Uncle Remus_, _A Deserted Farm_, _By a Meadow Brook_, and _Told at Sunset_.

Albert Hay Malotte

Albert Hay Malotte was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 19, 1895. The son of a choirmaster, he himself was a boy chorister, at the St. James Episcopal Church in his native city. After his music studies were completed in Paris and London, he served as organist in Chicago and London. In 1927 he opened a school for organists in Los Angeles, but when sound came to the screen he gave up the school to write music for the films. He subsequently joined the music staff at the Walt Disney studio, creating music for several of Disney’s animated cartoons, including _Ferdinand the Bull_. He has written ballets, choral music, and songs, besides scores for motion pictures, having received early in his career as composer important advice, guidance and encouragement from Victor Herbert.

Malotte is most famous for his song, “The Lord’s Prayer,” published in 1935, and since become a favorite of concert singers everywhere. Its deep religious sentiment, and the exciting dramatic thrust of its concluding measures, have an inescapable impact on audiences.

Gabriel Marie

Gabriel Marie was born in Paris, France, on January 8, 1852. After completing his music study at the Paris Conservatory he served for six years as chorusmaster of the Lamoureux Orchestra. Between 1887 and 1894 he conducted the concerts of the Société nationale de musique. He later led the orchestral performances in Bordeaux and Marseilles, and during the summers at the Vichy Casino. He was traveling in Spain when he died there suddenly on August 29, 1928.