Eastman School of Music - Score Yearbook (Rochester, NY)

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EEATURES ANR ADVERTISE CONTENTS AMERIEAN CUMPUSERS ARMINISTRATIUN ARTISTS SENIURS JUNIRRS SRPHRMRRES ERESHMEN RRARUATE DEPARTMENT RREANIZATIRNS ERATERNITIES AETIVHTES M

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ADELIN FERMIN To Daddy, whose greatest creed was giving happiness! How well you have succeeded, and how beloved to us you have become! We are happy for the privilege of dedicating this book to you, and in having shared with you so much joy, not only as our teacher, but most of all as our friend! DEDICATIO

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Orchestras, professional, student and amateur, symphonic and popular, choral societies, conservatories, university music departments, prizes, fellowships, sum- mer colonies, leagues and societies for performance or publication of new music,- all these agencies and more show clearly the will of our people to leave nothing undone for musical progress of the best sort. This kind of thing, if intelligently done, is a real help. It must, however, secure not merely encouragement but a livelihood for our composers, players and teachers or it is a lost effort. These things are a means to an end, to regard them as all-important is putting the cart before the horse, or even providing carts, hay and stables, but no horses. The most interesting, the most important questions that may be asked about the music of any country are: Who and what are her composers? What music have they written? What is the value of that music? To give a clear answer we may consider first the older men, the veterans, next, the composers of a popular type, then the radicals, then those whose. aim is to mould the musical language of today into beauty, and finally the younger ones who give hope of a rich ma- turity. Further one must attempt some sort of judgment, which cannot of course control, but should contribute to, future opinions. Above all let us avoid the error of Brahms, who told Mahler that all the good music had been written. To which Mahler replied, pointing from the bridge they were crossing, Look at the water, Mr. Brahms. I have just seen the last ripple. The first American composer who attained international fame as a writer of large works was MacDowell. His Indian Suites, Concerto in D Minor, and Sonatas for Piano have breadth, nobility and brilliancy. His studies of Indian music and of the melodies of Foster, as well as his love of the New England countryside, give his music an authentically native feeling. George Chadwick, of Boston, was a finely serious writer whose music strikes a robustly democratic note. He was perhaps the earliest composer to write symphonic music with the syncopation now so characteristic of 'our works: some in fact claim him as the inventor of jazz. His modesty and humor were charmingg he once said two things had been named after him-a choral society and a dog. Charles Martin Loeffier writes larger works for orchestra, somewhat in the more recent French idiom. He differs, however, more from Debussy and Ravel than they from each other. His music is extremely polyphonic. His mastery of the orchestra is supreme- greater than that of Wagner and equal to Rimsky-Korsakoff. Frederick Converse, whose music has technical mastery and both French and American influences, and Edward Burlingame Hill of whom the same may be said,'are other well-known Boston composers. Philip Clapp, for many years director at Iowa State Univer- sity, Writes in a style derived from German inliuences, mainly Strauss and Mahler. While not the finest composer in America, he is undoubtedly one of the best musicians his country has yet produced. His facility, technique and learning in composition, in theory, in score-reading, and in mastery of several instruments is so complete as to cause unbounded admiration in some and rage in others. Four composers who are Widely known and as widely dissimilar are Ethelbert Nevin Know many years deadj, Charles Wakefield Cadman, George Gershwin, 11