Rupert Hughes

“ These things Sousa embodies in his music as no other music writer ever has. To approach Sousa's work in the right mood, the 118 music critic must leave his stuffy concert hall and his sober black; he must flee from the press, don a uniform, and march. After his legs and spirits have grown aweary under the metronomic tunes of others, let him note the surge of blood in his heart and the rejuvenation of all his muscles when the brasses flare into a barbaric Sousa march. No man that marches can ever feel anything but gratitude and homage for Sousa. ”

“ The best-abused composer in America is doubtless Reginald de Koven. His great popularity has attracted the search-light of minute criticism to him, and his accomplishments are such as do not well endure the fierce white light that beats upon the throne. The sin of over-vivid reminiscence is the one most persistently imputed to him, and not without cause. While I see no reason to accuse him of deliberate imitation, I think he is a little too loth to excise from his music those things of his that prove on consideration to have been said or sung before him. ”

“ It is as if one should write down in a book a number of28 charts, giving every scheme of color and every juxtaposition of values permissible to a painter. The music of certain Oriental nations, in which the religious orders are the art censors, has stuck fast in its rut because of the observance of rules purely arbitrary. Many of the conventions of modern European music are no more scientific or original or consistent; most of them are based upon the principle that the whim of a great dead composer is worthy to be the law of any living composer. ”

“ The "Second Gavotte" is a noble work, the naïve gaiety of classicism being enriched with many of the great, pealing chords the modern piano is so fertile in. I count it as one of the most spontaneous gavottes of modern times, one that is buoyant with the afflation of the olden days. It carries a musette of which old Father Bach need not have felt ashamed,—one of the most ingenious examples of a drone-bass ever written. ”

“ The "Spinning Song" is inexpressibly sad, and such music as women best understand, and therefore ought to make best. But womanliness equally marks "The Grief of Love," which is in every sense big in quality; marks the bitterness of "Oh, What Comes over the Sea," the wailing Gaelic sweetness of the "Irish Love Song," and the fiery passion of "Betrayed," highly dramatic until its rather trite ending. "Nameless Pain" is superb. Her "Lament" I consider one of the greatest of songs, and proof positive of woman's high capabilities for composition. ”

“ It opens with a bright gavotte, in which adherence to the classic spirit compels a certain reminiscence of tone. The second piece, a song, "I' the Wondrous Month o' May," has such a springtide fire and frenzy in the turbulent accompaniment, and such a fervent reiterance, that it becomes, in my opinion, the best of all the settings of this poem of Heine's, not excluding even Schumann's or that of Franz. The "Love Song," though a piano solo, is in reality a duet between two lovers. ”

“ 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 world has 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. ”

“ In his compositions in Grieg-ton Smith has seized the fascinating looseness of the Griegorian tonality and its whimsicality. The "Humoresque" is a bit of titanic merriment; the "Mazurka" is most deftly built and is full of dance-fire; the "Arietta" is highly original, and the "Capricietto" shows such ingenious management of triplets, and has altogether such a crisp, brisk flavor, that it reminds one of Lamb's rhapsody on roast pig, where he exclaims, "I tasted crackling!" The "Romance," superb in gloom and largeness of treatment, is worthy of the composer of "The Death of Asra." ”

“ Assuming then, for the nonce, the birth—we are too new a country to speak of a Renascence—of a large interest in national music, there is large disappointment in many quarters, because our American music is not more American. I have argued above that a race transplanted from other soils must still retain most of the old modes of expression, or, varying them, change slowly. But many who excuse us for the present lack of a natural nationalism, are so eager for such a differentiation that they would have us borrow what we cannot breed. ”

“ Of all the arts, music doubtless gets her highest favor.
The aid Boston has been to American music is vital, and far outweighs that of any other city. That so magnificent an organization as its Symphony Orchestra could be so popular, shows the solidity of its general art appreciations. The orchestra has been remarkably willing, too, to give the American 270 composer a chance to be heard. Boston has been not only the promulgator, but in a great measure the tutor, of American music.
In Boston-town, folk take things seriously and studiously. In New York they take them fiercely, whimsically. ”

“ The opportunities before the American composer are enormous, and only half appreciated. Whereas, in other arts, the text-book claims only to be a chronicle of what has been done before, in music the text-book is set up as the very gospel and decalogue of the art. The theorists have so thoroughly mapped out the legitimate resources of the composer, and have so prescribed his course in nearly every possible position, that music is made almost more of a mathematical problem than the free expression of emotions and æsthetics. ”

“ He asserts that the Indian music is preferable to the Ethiopian, because its sturdiness and force are more congenial with the national mood.
But the true hope for a national spirit in American music surely lies, not in the arbitrary seizure of some musical dialect, but in the development of just such a quality as gives us an individuality among the nations of the world in respect to our character as a people; and that is a Cosmopolitanism made up of elements from all the world, and yet, in its unified qualities, unlike any one element. ”

“ The music is an outburst of sheer genius. It is overpowering, frightening. The postlude is orchestral, with the chorus speaking above the music. Jocasta has hanged herself, Œdipus has torn out his own eyes with her brooch. The music is a fitting reverie on the great play, and after a wild tumult it subsides in a resigned quietude. ”

“ Having learned the habit of modesty, it has clung to us even now, when some of the foremost artists in the world are Americans.
Modesty, is, of course, one of the most beautiful of the virtues, but excess is possible31 and dangerous. As Shakespeare's Florio's Montaigne has it: "We may so seize on vertue, that if we embrace it with an over-greedy and violent desire, it may become vitious." In the case of the American composer it is certainly true that we "excessively demeane ourselves in a good action." ”

“ His three songs, "When You Become a Nun, Dear," "The Road to Kew," and "Ho, Pretty Page!" written by modern poets in a half-archaic way, display a most delicious fund of subtile and ironic musical humor. "The Hawthorn Wins the Damask Rose" shows how really fine a well conducted English ballad can be. Among his sadder songs, the "Irish Folksong," "I'm Wearing Awa'," and the weird "In a Bower" are heavy with deepest pathos, while "Sweet Is True Love" is as wildly intense and as haunting in its woe as the fate of the poor Elaine, whose despair it sings. ”

“ It needs no very intimate acquaintance with Nevin's music to see that it is not based on an adoration for counterpoint as an end. He believes that true music must come from the emotions—the intelligent emotions—and that when it cannot appeal to the emotions it has lost its power. He says: "Above everything we need melody—melody and rhythm. Rhythm is the great thing. We have it in Nature. The trees sway, and our steps keep time, and our very souls respond." In Wagner's "Meistersinger," which he calls "a symphonic poem with action," Nevin finds his musical creed and his model. ”

“ In the struggle between modernity and classicism that always rages when music is in vitality, one always finds certain ardent spirits who endeavor to reconcile the conflicting theories of the different schools, and to materialize the reconciliation in their own work. An interesting example of this is to be found in the anatomical construction of one of the best American piano compositions, the fantasy for piano and orchestra by Arthur Whiting. ”

“ By all odds the most important, and a genuinely improved composition is the aria for soprano and orchestra, "The Death of Cleopatra." The words are taken from Shakespeare's play and make use of the great lines given to the dying Egypt, "Give me my robe, put on my crown, I have immortal longings in me," and the rest. The music not only pays all due reverence to the sacred text, but is inspired by it, and reaches great heights of fervor and tragedy. From Shakespeare, Huss drew the afflation for another aria of great interest, a setting for barytone voice of the "Seven Ages of Man." ”

“ Through such instrumentality much of Wagner is as truly popular as any music played. The active agents of such a result should receive the heartiest support from every one sincerely interested in turning the people toward the best things in music. Incidentally, it is well to admit that while a cheap march-tune is almost as trashy as an uninspired symphony, a good march-tune is one of the best things in the best music.
Though chiefly known as a writer of marches, in which he has won glory enough for the average human ambition, Sousa has also taken a large place in American comic opera. ”

“ There is, unfortunately, no such place to focus the attention of the world on a musician. Yet, through the success of American musical students among their rivals abroad; through the concerts they are giving more and more frequently in foreign countries; through the fact that a number of European music houses are publishing increasing quantities of American compositions, he is making his way to foreign esteem almost more rapidly than at home.
A prominent German critic, indeed, has recently put himself on record as accepting the founding of an American school of music as a fait accompli. ”

“ Through53out, the grief is the grief of a strong soul; it never degenerates into whine. Its largo is like the tread of an Æschylean choros, its allegro movements are wild with anguish, and the occasional uplifting into the major only emphasizes the sombre whole, like the little rifts of clearer harmony in Beethoven's "Funeral March on the Death of a Hero." ”

“ The glory of Sousa is that he was the first to write in this style; that he has made himself a style; that he has so stirred the musical world that countless imitations have sprung up after him.
The individuality of the Sousa march is this, that, unlike most of the other influential 117 marches, it is not so much a musical exhortation from without, as a distillation of the essences of soldiering from within. Sousa's marches are not based upon music-room enthusiasms, but on his own wide experiences of the feelings of men who march together in the open field. ”

“ Even dissonances are used, sparingly but bravely enough to give an idea of the different elements that make music something more than a sweetish impotence. They are vastly different from the horrible trash children are usually brought up on, especially in our American schools, to the almost incurable 316 perversion of their musical tastes. They are also so full of refinement, and of that humor without which children cannot long be held, that they are of complete interest also to "grown-ups," to whom alone the real artistic value of these songs can entirely transpire. ”