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

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as a bucking broncho. Gustav Soderlund has written a serenade and a symphony which show line workmanship and the brooding mysticism of his Nordic ancestors. Let us now consider briefly what America is doing for her composers. One scarcely knows where to begin. The Prix de Rome offers an adequate income for a three years' stay in Rome and an allowance for some European travel. It is not given for the purpose of work under a teacher. A mature technique and previous achievement are essential. Similar conditions are true of the Guggenheim and Pulitzer travelling fellowships awarded for periods of a year or more. Another means afforded the artist to escape the manifold distractions of daily life and concentrate on his main work is furnished by summer camps. The first of these, the'MacDowell colony in New Hampshire, was founded by the great composer's widow. Another well-known location with similar aims is Yaddo in the ,Catskill Mountains. The same idea, furthermore, has been applied to student orchestras at Interlochen, Michigan and elsewhere. As regards student symphony orchestras our country has developed unboundedly in the last ten years. The New York League of Composers is another powerful agency working for the advancement of our music. They are a branch of the International League. With them are affiliated many of the radical group of composers mentioned above. Their sympathies are international rather than national. They are rather out of touch, it would seem, with music arising from points west of the Atlantic seaboard. Without any question the most many-sided and powerful effort on behalf of American music originated from the Eastman School of Music. For ten years past Howard Hanson has conducted about live programs annually, devoted entirely to American music of every type and locality. For some years the culmi- nating point of this activity has been a spring festival, lasting a week. The student composition department, begun by Sinding and Palmgren, is nevertheless mainly the work of Royce, Hanson, and Rogers. The Prix de Rome, awarded Doctor Hanson before he assumed directorship of the Eastman School, has since been granted to two students of that school. In a recent national contest Eastman students won all five prizes in composition. At the end of each year three or four programs of two hours each in length are devoted entirely to orchestral as well as chamber music written by the students. The student orchestra is one of the two best in the country. The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, connected with the school is one of the major symphony orchestras in America. If one grants the reliability of some or all of the foregoing statements one will certainly admit that America is in many ways a musical nation. The question may still be asked whether we are musically mature. Opera in English, which will be tried at the Metropolitan next year, will be a step in advance. Let us hope that eventually we shall have many opera houses with native singers and direction. And may there be American assistant-conductors, who as they mature take the place of foreign-born conductors in our opera and symphony orchestras upon eventual retirement of the latter. Foreign guest artists should of course continue to be at least as welcome to us as to all other countries. But surely not to the 15

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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

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'f-iF. . ' 7 'W complete and permanent exclusion of our own. Even a Toscanini, had fate denied him the chance of attempting to mature, would have failed. Further, let our orchestras offer prizes, and better, commissions or liberal performing fees for worthy compositions by native talent. Their expenses are already burdensome. But these expenses are incurred through playing music. And composing is music. A composer, be he great, good, bad or indifferent, is at least as useful as the corresponding class of conductor or player. In fact we may ask, What conductor, no matter how great, has ever been as necessary as Beethoven? An absurd com- parison? There have been no American Beethovens? There never will be Am- erican Beethovens? You may be right, but it is not certain. And the answer to these questions, whatever it is, may be different a year from today. But, of course if, by mere indifference or active opposition we can prevent even good native music from obtaining a hearing, we can forever make the Great American Symphony impossible. And what will that gain us? One more word, and this to the composers themselves. Most Americans who write line symphonies do not write good short piano pieces and vice versa. Let us neither humbly Cnor arrogantlyl emulate the example of the masters who wrote works of every size, every form and for every combination of instruments, and made or had made piano arrangements of their larger works. Why? So that those who want to know the music can know it. Last but not least, do not scorn the radio and the phonograph. The composer is too often discouraged by his enemies, let him, then, not discourage his friends. Z3