Contemporary American Composers - Being a Study of the Music of This Country, Its Present - Conditions and Its Future, with Critical Estimates and - Biographies of the Principal Living Composers; and an - Abundance of Portraits, Fac-simile Musical Autographs, and - Compositions

Rupert Hughes

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• Publié par: musheng
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 39
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's Contemporary American
Composers, by Rupert Hughes
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Title: Contemporary American Composers
Being a Study of the Music of This Country, Its
Present
Conditions and Its Future, with Critical Estimates and
Biographies of the Principal Living Composers; and an
Abundance of Portraits, Fac-simile Musical
Autographs, and
Compositions
Author: Rupert Hughes
Release Date: December 10, 2007 [EBook #23800]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN COMPOSERS ***Produced by David Newman, Jeffrey Johnson,
Suzanne Lybarger,
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Transcriber's Notes
Printer errors have been corrected.
Full-page illustrations have been moved so as not to
interrupt the flow of the text; some page numbers are
skipped as a result.
Midi files have been provided for all music illustrations
except autographs and the handwritten manuscript
score of Salammbô. Click on the [Listen] link to hear
the music. Lyrics within the music illustrations have
been transcribed and placed below the notation image.
Contemporary
American ComposersBEING A STUDY OF THE MUSIC OF THIS
COUNTRY, ITS PRESENT CONDITIONS AND ITS
FUTURE, WITH CRITICAL ESTIMATES AND
BIOGRAPHIES OF THE PRINCIPAL LIVING
COMPOSERS; AND AN ABUNDANCE OF
PORTRAITS, FAC-SIMILE MUSICAL
AUTOGRAPHS, AND COMPOSITIONS
By
Rupert Hughes, M.A.
Contents
List of Music
List of Illustrations
ILLUSTRATED
logo
Boston
L.C. Page and Company
(Incorporated)
1900
Copyright, 1900
By L.C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)All rights reserved
Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C.H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U.S.A.
frontispiece
Edward MacDowell.
TO
James Huneker
MUSICIAN TO THE TIP OF HIS PEN
FOREWORD.
One day there came into Robert Schumann's ken the
work of a young fellow named Brahms, and the
master cried aloud in the wilderness, "Behold, the new
Messiah of music!" Many have refused to accept
Brahms at this rating, and I confess to being one of
the unregenerate, but the spirit that kept Schumann's
heart open to the appeal of any stranger, that led him
into instant enthusiasms of which he was neither afraid
nor ashamed, enthusiasms in which the whole worldhas generally followed his leading—that spirit it is that
proves his true musicianship, and makes him a place
forever among the great critics of music,—a small,
small crowd they are, too.
It is inevitable that a pioneer like Schumann should
make many mistakes, but he escaped the one great
fatal mistake of those who are not open to conviction,
nor alert for new beauty and fresh truth, who are
willing to take art to their affections or respect only
when it has lost its bloom and has been duly appraised
and ticketed by other generations or foreign scholars.
And yet, even worse than this languorous inanition is
the active policy of those who despise everything
contemporary or native, and substitute sciolism for
catholicity, contempt for analysis.
While the greater part of the world has stayed aloof,
the problem of a national American music has been
solving itself. Aside from occasional attentions evoked
by chance performances, it may be said in general
that the growth of our music has been unloved and
unheeded by anybody except a few plodding
composers, their wives, and a retainer or two. The
only thing that inclines me to invade the privacy of the
American composer and publish his secrets, is my
hearty belief, lo, these many years! that some of the
best music in the world is being written here at home,
and that it only needs the light to win its meed of
praise.
Owing to the scarcity of printed matter relating to
native composers, and the utter incompleteness and
bias of what exists, I have based this book almostaltogether on my own research. I studied the
catalogues of all the respectable music publishers, and
selected such composers as seemed to have any
serious intentions. When I heard of a composer whose
work, though earnest, had not been able to find a
publisher, I sought him out and read his manuscripts
(a hideous task which might be substituted for the
comparative pastime of breaking rocks, as punishment
for misdemeanors). In every case I secured as many
of each composer's works as could be had in print or
in manuscript, and endeavored to digest them.
Thousands of pieces of music, from short songs to
operatic and orchestral scores, I studied with all
available conscience. The fact that after going through
at least a ton of American compositions, I am still an
enthusiast, is surely a proof of some virtue in native
music.
A portion of the result of this study was published au
courant in a magazine, awakening so much attention
that I have at length decided to yield to constant
requests and publish the articles in more accessible
form. The necessity for revising many of the opinions
formed hastily and published immediately, the
possibility now of taking the work of our musicians in
some perspective, and the opportunity of bringing my
information up to date, have meant so much revision,
excision, and addition, that this book is really a new
work.
The biographical data have been furnished in
practically every case by the composers themselves,
and are, therefore, reliable in everything except
possibly the date of birth. The critical opinions gaintheir possibly dogmatic tone rather from a desire for
brevity than from any hope—or wish—that they should
be swallowed whole. No attempt to set up a standard
of comparative merit or precedence has been made,
though it is inevitable that certain music-makers
should interest one more than certain others even
more worthy in the eyes of eminent judges.
It may be that some inspectors of this book will
complain of the omission of names they had expected
to find here. Others will feel a sense of disproportion.
To them there is no reply but a pathetic allusion to the
inevitable incompleteness and asymmetry of all things
human.
Many will look with skepticism at the large number of
composers I have thought worthy of inclusion. I can
only say that the fact that an artist has created one
work of high merit makes him a good composer in my
opinion, whether or no he has ever written another,
and whether or no he has afterward fallen into the
sere and yellow school of trash. So Gray's fame is
perennial,—one poem among many banalities.
Besides, I do not concur in that most commonplace
fallacy of criticism, the belief that not more than one
genius is vouchsafed to any one period of an art,
though this opinion can be justified, of course, by a
very exclusive definition of the word genius. To the
average mind, for instance, the whole literary
achievement of the Elizabethan era is condensed into
the name of Shakespeare. Contemporary with him,
however, there were, of course, thirty or forty writers
whose best works the scholar would be most unwillingto let die. There were, for instance, a dozen
playwrights, like Jonson, Fletcher, Ford, Marlowe, and
Greene, in whose works can be found literary and
dramatic touches of the very highest order. There
were poets less prolific than Spenser, and yet to be
credited with a few works of the utmost beauty, minor
geniuses like Ralegh, Sidney, Lodge, Shirley, Lyly,
Wotton, Wither, John Donne, Bishop Hall, Drayton,
Drummond, Herbert, Carew, Herrick, Breton, Allison,
Byrd, Dowland, Campion—so one might run on
without naming one man who had not written
something the world was better for.
All periods of great art activity are similarly marked by
a large number of geniuses whose ability is not
disproved, because overshadowed by the presence of
some titanic contemporary. It would be a mere
impertinence to state such an axiom of art as this,
were it not the plain truth that almost all criticism of
contemporaries is based upon an arrant neglect of it;
and if it were not for the fact that I am about to string
out a long, long list of American music-makers whose
ability I think noteworthy,—a list whose length may
lead many a wiseacre to pull a longer face.
Parts of this book have been reprinted from Godey's
Magazine, the Century Magazine, and the Criterion, to
whose publishers I am indebted for permission. For
the music reproduced here I have to thank the
publishers whose copyrights were loaned for the
occasion.
If the book shall only succeed in arousing in some
minds an interest or a curiosity that shall set them tothe study of American music (as I have studied it, with
infinite pleasure), then this fine white paper and this
beautiful black ink will not have been wasted.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Foreword vii
A General Survey 11
The Innovators 34
The Academics 145
The Colonists 267
The Women