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

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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

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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

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make them most impressive. The incisive and wierd orchestral coloring of his Japanese Sketches and fairy-tale suite Once Upon a Time are original and surpassingly adroit. Timothy Mather Spelman's choral work Pervigilium Veneris uses the old modes and the most modern poly-harmony to produce the bacchanalian atmosphere of a solemn pagan festival. Randall Thompson has written two symphonies, one of which, glowingly orchestrated with organ obligato, is very rhapsodicg the other has all the formal perfection of a classic and the vivacity of jazz. This second symphony, moreoever, has strength and sincerity and is as unquestionably worthy of a permanent place as the works of Hanson or Sowerby. Leo Sowerby, the Chicago composer and organist has made many fine things, including the reverent and mystical Mediaeval Poem for organ and orchestra, a cantata, The Vision' of Sir Launfal, which reinvokes the religious aspect of chivalry, a tone poem, The Prairie which, with other shorter sketches, springs from the honest soil of the Middle West and sings of a jovially exuberant New World. Mark Wessel, also of Chicago, is intensely original and natively, almost rurally American. His concerto for horn, piano and orchestra is one of the most brilliant and one of the finest pieces of its worth ever brought forth. William Grant Still, the colored composer of New York has written a ballet, Sahdji, on a native African subject, another, La Giablossef' concerning West Indian Negroes and other larger and smaller works. His orchestration, like his music, is strange, but its novelty is always sure and masterly in touch. He expresses all the gaiety, the amiability and the nobly tragic pathos of himself and of his people. Deems Taylor, a largely self-taught composer, wrote a suite, Alice Through the Looking Glass, after Carroll's great children's classic. Another work, The Circus, is much more interesting, depicting in flamboyant colors the gusto, grotesqueness and garishness of its subject. His opera, Peter Ibbetson, is tender, romantic, nostalgic and beautiful without being falsely or mawkishly sentimental. It is his best work thus far made public. It was performed at the Metropolitan. Among the younger composers worthy of mention are Martha Alter, Herbert Inch, Hunter Johnson, Irving McHose, Burill Phillips and Gustav Soderlund. Miss Alter, in the present writer's opinion, is the most talented woman composer ever heard of. Her work is incisive, strong, and extraordinarily individual. Her song with orchestra, Bill George, and her ballet, Anthony Comstock, a satire on the famous fin-de-siecle Puritan, show great modernism and a sense of the antique-a surprising combination. Her power to depict human nature in tones is unique. Herbert Inch has a most individual style. His harmony is modern but his extraordinary grasp of counterpoint, canon and fugue give his voice-leading great fluidity and distinctness. His texture is unduly complex at times and his orchestration rather dark in color. He is a line scholar and a winner of the Prix de Rome. McHose has written a delightful oboe concerto and an interesting violin sonata. Burill Phillips has written a series of orchestra pieces called Selec- tions from McGuffy's Reader, in which the One Hoss Shay, Miles Standish, and Paul Revere are memorialized with great sureness and a vivacity as native 14