American composer

“ The lyrical spirit which they have expressed verbally will surely be imbued in the music of American composers. The opportunity is already here. Americans demand the best the world can produce. It makes no difference what the nationality of the composer. However, Americans are first of all patriotic; and the composer who produces real lyric masterpieces is not likely to be asked to wait for fame and competence, as did Schubert and Schumann. ”

“ The [Pg 175] real task of the American composer is basically simple: it is that of winning for himself the means of bringing to life the music to which he listens within himself. This is identical with the task that has confronted all composers at all times, and in our age it involves, everywhere and in like manner, facing in our own way the problems of American music with single-mindedness and genuine dedication. Naturally, it obligates us to absorb the music culture not just of this or that country, but to seek large horizons and to explore indefatigably from a point of vantage. ”

“ Meanwhile the American composer has, with a few lonely exceptions, obstinately refused to produce anything above the level of what it would be flattering to call mediocrity.
No. If he is not heard oftener in concert halls and upon recital platforms, it is because he is not good enough. There is, in the music of even the second-rate Continental composers, a surety of touch, a quality of evident confidence in their material and ease in its handling that is rarely present in the work of Americans. Most American symphonic and chamber music lacks structure and clarity. ”

“ Finally, however, inspiring as are the hopes these words suggest, the American composer need not await their realization before putting forth those individual efforts without the aid of which, after all, they can never attain it. Music, like society, has reached its present [289] state only through the struggles, against immense odds, of its martyrs and its heroes: not only of Bach, of Mozart, of Beethoven, of Schubert, of Wagner, of Brahms, but of countless others who have wrought and suffered in obscurity and with a consecration of their more limited powers to the great cause of beauty. ”

“ Like the lady who so earnestly advised us to study the oboe or the trombone, most Americans, even those possessed of a knowledge of the music world, were, on the whole, inclined to discount the possibility that a composer of American origin could produce anything of importance. The young composers of that period had to look to their European elders not only for the means of learning their craft, but also for an awareness of what constitutes the craft of composition. ”

“ He has the further distinction of being the only American composer, of first rank at least, who has found the complete expression of his personality and ideals through the medium of the piano, and who, as an inevitable corollary of this circumstance, has more intimately and sympathetically than any other made the piano speak its own proper language. American composers write seriously, and sometimes admirably, for the piano now and then ”

“ But since then the Englishman has asserted his personality; and to-day [Pg 412] there is scarcely a foreigner in any first-class English orchestra. Again, read through the synopses of novelties in any season's concert programs here. How many are American? Almost none. A hundred million people owning half a continent with vast waterways, prairies, and mountain ranges—yet musically nearly inarticulate! There must be something wrong here.
Let us hasten to add that the brain-stuff of the American composer is just as good as the brain-stuff of any other composer. ”

“ With this widened horizon, the true creative epoch of American music has only now begun. The handful of American composers of serious ideals and noteworthy ability who could be named a few years ago has increased to scores, and new names appear in such rapid succession that the fairly definite knowledge which America had of its chief composers of the 'classical' and 'romantic' epochs can give only the feeblest conception of the present condition of composition in America. ”

“ For it is indeed the peculiar good fortune of the young American composer that he finds spread out before him, as the models through the study of which he is to acquire an important part of his technical equipment and of his general attitude towards art, the masterpieces of the various European countries, among which he may pick and choose as his individual taste directs, and without being hampered by those annoying racial and national [272] jealousies from which the most intelligent European cannot quite free himself. ”

“ If a composer writes empty stuff in the latest styles, he is one degree better than the purveyor of trite stuff in the old styles; but he is nobody before the high thinker who finds himself suited by the general methods of the classic writers.
The most classic of our composers is their venerable dean, John Knowles Paine. It is an interesting proof of the youth of our native school of music, that the principal symphony, "Spring," of our first composer of importance, was written only twenty-one years ago. ”

“ In the literary field in Elizabethan times it would be difficult to find a play the fundamental material of which was not drawn from already existing sources. The word composer literally means the one who puts together a piece. The material of this piece may, or may not, be invented by such composer. These reflections would seem to explain and to justify the modest claims of the American singing-school book compilers to authorship of songs, and such thoughts should make us approach their labors, not with caviling, but with gratefulness for their invaluable service to American traditional song. ”

“ The last and greatest of these changes is that one which has withdrawn attention from the composer as an abstract phenomenon, and from fruitless theories of American music, and has centered it upon the immediate service which music can render to the people of our nation. In the long run, the nation cannot go one way and its music another. ”

“ II.—COMMUNITY MUSIC AND THE COMPOSER
By Arthur Farwell
The birth of our national self-consciousness in music, from the creative standpoint, occurred less than twenty years ago. Not until the last two decades did the prodigious musical studies of our young people at home and abroad produce composers in sufficient quantity to make American music, its character and potentialities, a national question. ”

“ Upon the horizon of this gloom, however, there is a tremor of a dawning interest in national music. Large vocal societies are 20giving an increasing number of native part songs and cantatas; prizes are being awarded in various places, and composers find some financial encouragement for appearing in concerts of their own work. Manuscript societies are organized in many of the larger cities, and these clubs offer hearing to novelty. There have latterly appeared, from various publishers, special catalogues vaunting the large number of American composers represented on their lists. ”

“ Whatever influence they may have had on the conditions of their day, our present day musical life has been unaffected by them. For the establishment of that which, for lack of better name, we call the American school of composers we again look to New England. Through the few composers known as the Boston group America first assimilated into its musical life the best traditions of European musical culture and in the labors of these men the American community was taught in some degree to look seriously upon the native composer and his achievement. ”

“ American Music Still Young.—Musical composition in the United States is still too young in comparison with the work of European composers to have made marked impress on history. American composers owe their training largely to European teachers, the models upon which they have based their work come from European art, and the principles of construction were developed by the European masters. ”

“ In addition, African-American composers have thrived in traditional genres such as musical theater, opera, classical symphony, and choral music, providing their unique imprint and creatively growing these forms of music. All of these contributions are treasured across America and the world. During African-American Music Appreciation Month, we recall the known and unknown musicians who helped create this musical history. Their contributions help illuminate the human experience and spirit, and they help us reflect on our Nation's ongoing narrative. ”

“ Minor traits of individuality and differences of imaginative scope are noticeable and afford marks of distinction; but, essentially considered, there has been very little music composed in this country which is at the same time good and so characteristically American that it could not have been produced under any other circumstances. Nevertheless, there have been at least two American composers who are characteristically American and who could not have been produced under any different circumstances; and a number of others in whom the American traits are well defined. ”

“ Many American composers have, since these lines were written, acted upon the suggestion contained in them. We need but mention George W. Chadwick, Henry Schoenefeld, E. R. Kroeger, Henry F. Gilbert, Arthur Farwell, and W. H. Humiston among those who have drawn upon this fertile treasure of thematic material. It is but the beginning, however. American music is becoming more and more distinctive. Whether intentionally or spontaneously, our musical literature is bound to absorb some of the color of so potent an element of national lore. ”

“ And a patriotic wag might, perhaps, be allowed to maintain that, as America has more pretty girls than any other country in the world, it is easier to fall in love here than elsewhere, and that there is, therefore, no excuse whatever for American composers if they do not soon lead the world in musical inspiration. ”

“ That only a certain proportion of composers in America would respond to these influences was soon perceived, and with the readiness of the people to accept this kind of work, it became merely a question of the proportion of American musical art which should exhibit these tendencies. ”

“ In their still world of dreams, what miracles did the power of art work out from their intense conceptions what skilful choice and marshalling of means for producing their intended effects ! and what patient and intense labor at composition !
The lives of these men are like insulated points in history, only to be well comprehended by those who are somewhat similarly organized. But their influence is wider than we can imagine. A great musical composer is a central power, who radiates a finer sense of beauty, by little and little, into the outmost and least-delicately organized souls. ”

“ Learned in various branches of knowledge, and personally a man of unusual accomplishments, his career was full of manly energy, enlightened enthusiasm, and severe devotion to the highest forms of the art of music. Not only his great oratorios, “St. Paul” and “Elijah,” but his music for the piano, including the “Songs without Words,” sonatas, and many occasional pieces, have won him a high place among his musical brethren. As an orchestral composer, his overtures are filled with strikingly original thoughts and elevated conceptions, expressed with much delicacy of instrumental colouring. ”

“ We have more great composers in this country right now than any other country in the word, and the United States supports its composers less than any other country. ... They want so desperately to perform their music. A composer does a piece and gets a performance in New York, and that may be the last performance it ever gets. ”

“ It will now have become clear, what according to the view of music that I have endeavoured to explain, is the task of a song composer. He has far more to do than to express again in tones the feeling of the song. He has to furnish a composition that, in the first place, has life; and, in the domain of art, to have life is to have beauty. ”

“ Contrasts of timbre and tone are at least as various as contrasts of colour: the complexity of musical rhythm is far beyond anything that language can achieve; while, in the devices of harmony, and still more of polyphony and counterpoint, the composer occupies a position which is virtually unique in human experience. ”

“ In the invaluable privilege of writing for a moderate compass, a song-composer, almost alone of all composers, is provided with a means of reacting gradually upon instrumental music and of tuning anew the ear of our generation, so that it shall no longer find satisfaction in the shrill tones of extreme voice registers and the euphony of strong, easily and comfortably attained middle tones shall again be universally perceived. At the present moment our instrumental art has, in this particular, fallen under the tyranny of piano manufacturers and makers of wind instruments. ”

“ To call this a tune would be straining language, but none the less if a composer be possessed of what we call genius, such phrases will (as this does) produce on the mind of the listener an effect in all respects as vivid as that which the most fully developed melody produces under other musical conditions. The idea of a true composer is strong, and therefore it succeeds. ”