Part 6 (1/2)
Arnold now went upon a tramping tour in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
Some of his compositions show the influence of his journey. He then entered the Cologne Conservatory, studying under Wuellner, Neitzel, and G. Jensen. His first piano sonata was performed there at a public concert. He next went to Breslau, where, under the instruction of Max Bruch, he wrote his cantata, ”The Wild Chase,” and gave public performance to other orchestral work. Returning now to St. Louis, he busied himself as solo violinist and teacher, travelling also as a conductor of opera companies. When Dvorak came here Arnold wrote his ”Plantation Dances,” which were produced in a concert under the auspices of the Bohemian composer. Arnold was instructor of harmony at the National Conservatory under Dvorak.
The ”Plantation Dances” are Arnold's thirty-third opus, and they have been much played by orchestras; they are also published as a piano duet; the second dance also as a solo. Arnold has not made direct use of Ethiopian themes, but has sought the African spirit. The first of the dances is very nigresque; the second hardly at all, though it is a delicious piece of music; the third dance uses banjo figures and realizes darky hilarity in fine style; the fourth is a cake walk and hits off the droll humor of that pompous ceremony fascinatingly.
Arnold's ”Dramatic Overture” shows a fire and rush very characteristic of him and likely to be kept up without sufficient contrast. So also does his cantata, ”The Wild Chase.” Arnold has written two comic operas. I have heard parts of the first and noted moments of much beauty and humor. The Aragonaise, which opens the third act, is particularly delightful. The orchestration throughout displays Arnold's characteristic studiousness in picturesque effect.
For piano there is a czardas, and a ”Valse elegante” for eight hands; it is more Viennese than Chopinesque. It might indeed be called a practicable waltz lavishly adorned. The fruits of Arnold's Oriental journey are seen in his impressionistic ”Danse de la Midway Plaisance;” a very clever reminiscence of a Turkish minstrel; and a Turkish march, which has been played by many German orchestras. There is a ”Caprice Espagnol,” which is delightful, and a ”Banjoenne,” which treats banjo music so captivatingly that Arnold may be said to have invented a new and fertile and musical form. Besides these there are a fugue for eight hands, a ”Minstrel Serenade” for violin and piano, and six duets for violin and viola.
There are also a few part songs and some solos, among which mention should be made of ”Ein Marlein,” in the old German style, an exquisitely tender ”Barcarolle,” and a setting of the poem, ”I Think of Thee in Silent Night,” which makes use of a particularly beautiful phrase for pre-, inter-, and postlude. Arnold has also written some ballet music, a tarantelle for string orchestra, and is at work upon a symphony, and a book, ”Some Points in Modern Orchestration.” His violin sonata (now in MS.) shows his original talent at its best. In the first movement, the first subject is a snappy and taking example of negro-tone, the second has the perfume of moonlit magnolia in its lyricism. (In the reprise this subject, which had originally appeared in the dominant major, recurs in the tonic major, the key of the sonata being E minor.) The second movement is also in the darky spirit, but full of melancholy. For finale the composer has flown to Ireland and written a bully jig full of dash and spirit.
_N. Clifford Page._
The influence of j.a.panese and Chinese art upon our world of decoration has long been realized. After considering the amount of interest shown in the Celestial music by American composers, one is tempted to prophesy a decided influence in this line, and a considerable spread of j.a.panese influence in the world of music also. j.a.panese music has a decorative effect that is sometimes almost as captivating as in painting.
The city of San Francisco is the natural gateway for any such impulse, and not a little of it has already pa.s.sed the custom house. In this field Edgar S. Kelley's influence is predominating, and it is not surprising that he should pa.s.s the contagion on to his pupil, Nathaniel Clifford Page, who was born in San Francisco, October 26, 1866. His ancestors were American for many years prior to the Revolution. He composed operas at the age of twelve, and has used many of these immature ideas with advantage in the later years. He began the serious study of music at the age of sixteen, Kelley being his princ.i.p.al teacher. His first opera, composed and orchestrated before he became of age, was ent.i.tled ”The First Lieutenant.” It was produced in 1889 at the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco, where most of the critics spoke highly of its instrumental and Oriental color, some of the scenes being laid in Morocco.
In instrumentation, which is considered Page's forte, he has never had any instruction further than his own reading and investigation. He began to conduct in opera and concert early in life, and has had much experience. He has also been active as a teacher in harmony and orchestration.
An important phase of Page's writing has been incidental music for plays, his greatest success having been achieved by the music for the ”Moonlight Blossom,” a play based upon j.a.panese life and produced in London in 1898. The overture was written entirely on actual j.a.panese themes, including the national anthem of j.a.pan. Page was three weeks writing these twelve measures. He had a j.a.panese fiddle arranged with a violin finger-board, but thanks to the highly characteristic stubbornness of orchestral players, he was compelled to have this part played by a mandolin. Two j.a.panese drums, a whistle used by a j.a.panese shampooer, and a j.a.panese guitar were somehow permitted to add their accent. The national air is used in augmentation later as the ba.s.s for a j.a.panese song called ”K Honen.” The fidelity of the music is proved by the fact that Sir Edwin Arnold's j.a.panese wife recognized the various airs and was carried away by the national anthem.
Although the play was not a success, the music was given a cordial reception, and brought Page contracts for other work in England, including a play of Indian life by Mrs. Flora Annie Steel.
Previously to the writing of the ”Moonlight Blossom” music, Page had arranged the incidental music for the same author's play, ”The Cat and the Cherub.” Edgar S. Kelley's ”Aladdin” music was the source from which most of the incidental music was drawn; but Page added some things of his own, among them being one of the most effective and unexpected devices for producing a sense of horror and dread I have ever listened to: simply the sounding at long intervals of two gruff single tones in the extreme low register of the double ba.s.ses and ba.s.soons. The grimness of this effect is indescribable.
An unnamed Oriental opera, and an opera called ”Villiers,” in which old English color is employed (including a grotesque dance of the clumsy Ironsides), show the cosmopolitan restlessness of Page's muse.
An appalling scheme of self-amus.e.m.e.nt is seen in his ”Caprice,” in which a theme of eight measures' length is instrumented with almost every contrapuntal device known, and with psychological variety that runs through five movements, scherzando, vigoroso, con sentimento, religioso, and a marcia fantastico. The suite called ”Village Fete” is an experiment in French local color. It contains five scenes: The Peasants Going to Chapel; The Flower Girls; The Vagabonds; The Tryst; The Sabot Dance; and the Entrance of the Mayor, which is a pompous march.
On the occasion of a performance of this, Louis Arthur Russell wrote: ”His orchestra is surely French, and as modern as you please. The idiom is Berlioz's rather than Wagner's.”
CHAPTER III.
THE ACADEMICS.
_John Knowles Paine._
[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN KNOWLES PAINE.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of John K. Paine]
There is one thing better than modernity,--it is immortality. So while I am a most ardent devotee of modern movements, because they are at worst experiments, and motion is necessary to life, I fail to see why it is necessary in picking up something new always to drop something old, as if one were an awkward, b.u.t.ter-fingered parcel-carrier.
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 n.o.body before the high thinker who finds himself suited by the general methods of the cla.s.sic writers.
The most cla.s.sic 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 princ.i.p.al symphony, ”Spring,” of our first composer of importance, was written only twenty-one years ago. Before Mr. Paine there had never been an American music writer worthy of serious consideration in the larger forms.
By a mere coincidence Joachim Raff had written a symphony called ”Spring” in 1878, just a year before Paine finished his in America.
The first movement in both is called ”Nature's Awakening;” such an idea is inevitable in any spring composition, from poetry up--or down.
For a second movement Raff has a wild ”Walpurgis Night Revel,” while Paine has a scherzo called ”May Night Fantasy.” Where Raff is uncanny and fiendish, Paine is cheerful and elfin. The third movement of Raff's symphony is called ”First Blossoms of Spring,” and the last is called ”The Joys of Wandering.” The latter two movements of Mr.
Paine's symphony are ”A Promise of Spring” and ”The Glory of Nature.”