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

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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

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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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and Thurlow Lieurance. They may be classed together in that their appeal is popular and not especially profound. Nevin wrote, in small forms, neo-romantic music which was pretty rather than beautiful but had the virtues of sincerity and charm. Cadman and Lieurance are both interested in the music of the Indians, and have done attractive and pleasing things, not, we must admit, as great as their subject. Gershwin is the most widely known American since Mac- Dowell though not the most important. His Rhapsody in Blue has a very fine theme, and its application of piano-writing to jazz is magnificently original. Its form is not so successful. In the field of musical comedy, however, the modern equivalent of the English Gilbert and Sullivan's Pinafore and Mikado, Gershwin has been approached but not equalled. The so-called radical group of composers centers mainly about New York City. It includes George Antheli, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, Charles Ives, Walter Piston, Wallingford Riegger, Carl Ruggles, Virgil Thomson, Edgar Varese and others. Their aim is the utmost novelty, originality, subtlety and variety possible through the medium of sound. They desire to interest and to startle the listener but not to create beauty in any hitherto accepted sense. Thus Antheil has written for orchestras that include riveting-machines, airplane- propellers, sixteen mechanical pianos and the like. He has an interesting sense of color and much satirical power. Strauss wrote about Till Eulenspiegelg Antheil is Till Eulenspiegel. Again, Copland writes with acrid dissonances and rhythms derived from jazz a music that makes living the exuberance and grotesquery of a gargoyle. His Music for the Theater, however, must be praised for for accused oflj a distant element of romantic beauty. Henry Cowell, with his elbows, plays series of ''tone-clusters''-cacophonously magnified one-voice melodies-while the other hand, if at liberty, supplies a more or less harmonic accompaniment. He uses similar methods in his orchestral writing. Roy Harris, a Californian, writes more melodically and wishes to be regarded as definitely American in style and atmosphere. His personality is as ruggedly native as that of Walt Whitman. His music is formidably difficult. Charles Ives, inspired by out-of-tune bands, several bands playing at once in parks or parades and the like, produces results which must seem to many somewhat chaotic. His work is seldom heard. Somewhat better known is Wallingford Riegger, whose Study in Sonority for 32 violins has been played several times, receiving considerable publicity. To the present writer it is ugly, formless, and meaningless except as ugliness and formlessness may have a meaning. Ruggles and Varese are apparently more interested in rhythm and color than in harmony or melody. Virgil Thomson, on the other hand, strives for simplicity and clarity, an almost precious archaism like that of Satie. His opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, to Gertrude Stein's utterly meaningless text, is said to be enthralling. To those who prefer opera in a language they do not speak, it must be. In appraising the work of these ultramoderns one must remember first that without change and adventure there is no life. All good music was modern when first performed. Much of it was hated. But too much change, or the wrong 12