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

Page 12 text:

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

Page 11 text:

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

Page 13 text:

change, means chaos, tearing apart, disorder, death. So while almost certainly some of this music will last, and the pioneer spirit inherent in radicalism is neces- sary as a continual gadfly to rout and torment the timid, the conservative and the philistine, one must avoid assuming that radicalism is infallibly right or inevitably wrong. Another group of contemporary composers, who are certainly not conservatives or radicals, deserve perhaps the name of the liberal group. They are not con- cerned with the extremes of conventionality and conformism or the merely bizarre and grotesquely experimental. They aspire to express as much as they can grasp of life and the universe in terms of beauty and clarity using whatever means, moderate or extreme, may best accomplish each special task. Prominent repre- sentatives of this school are Robert Russell Bennett, John Alden Carpenter, Herbert Elwell, Charles Griffes, Howard Hanson, Werner Janssen, Douglas Moore, Bernard Rogers, Edward Royce, Leo Sowerby, Timothy Mather Spelman, William Grant Still, Deems Taylor, Randall Thompson, and Mark Wessel. Bennett and Janssen in a sense might be classed with Gershwin, as they have had much experience with jazz, musical comedy and the radio. Their music is, however, far more serious and more solidly constructed as well as less immediately popular. Bennett's Endimion, a ballet-opera, performed in Rochester, is akin to the modern French style, with an added vigor distinctively American. Janssen's most famous piece, New Year's Eve in New York, does for that city all that Schumann's, Johann Strauss's or Schubert's music did for Vienna,-brings its unique Havor to life in tones. John Alden Carpenter after writing varied and brilliant music of French, Spanish, and generally cosmopolitan character has recently produced a tone-poem, The Sea, to parallel words of Walt Whitman. It is the best thing he has done-immense, vibrant, mournful, profound. Herbert Elwell is known for his amusing and impish ballet, The Happy Hypocrite, which has great originality and charm. Griffes, whose untimely death is a great loss to us, is remembered especially by The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan, a rich and exotic tone-poem, and a masterly piano sonata. Hanson, considered by many to be the most important America composer, has given us Beowulf, a choral work, and the Nordic Symphony, both of tremendous rugged power and uniquely personal character, the beautiful Romantic Symphony and the im- passioned cavalier-puritan opera Merry Mount, recently put on by the Metro- politan in New York. His music has nobility and fervor as well as a technical grasp of every resource of the orchestra and of modern harmony. Douglas Moore's best known work is his suite UP. T. Barnum, depicting with bold comic strokes the life of a showman. It is as authentically American as Mark Twain or Coney Island. Edward Royce's Far Ocean, a tone poem, attempts an unusually in- timate union of musical form with orchestral color. Royce has also done a great deal more in the field of piano music than most of his colleagues. His two sets of variations, one for piano and one for organ, have achieved success. Bernard Rogers has written two splendid cantatas, Lazrus and Exodus, whose powerful climaxes, proudly heraldic orchestral coloring, and opulent counterpoint 13