Part 8 (1/2)

This enthusiasm is not lacking however from his ”Impromptu,” and it makes his ”Elegie” a masterly work, possibly his best in the smaller lines. This piece is altogether elegiac in spirit, intense in its sombrest depths, impatient with wild outcries,--like Chopin's ”Funeral March,”--and working up to an immense pa.s.sion at the end. This subsides in ravis.h.i.+ngly liquid arpeggios,--”melodious tears”?--which obtain the kindred effect of Chopin's tinkling ”Berceuse” in a slightly different way. This notable work is marred by an interlude in which the left hand mumbles harshness in the ba.s.s, while the right hand is busy with airy fioriture. It is too close a copy of the finish of the first movement of Beethoven's ”Moonlight” sonata. The lengthening skips of the left hand are also Beethovenesque trademarks.

Parker is rather old-fas.h.i.+oned in his forms of musical speech. That is, he has what you might call the narrative style. He follows his theme as an absorbing plot, engaging enough in itself, without gorgeous digressions and pendent pictures. His work has something of the Italian method. A melody or a theme, he seems to think, is only marred by abstruse harmony, and is endangered by diversions. One might almost say that a uniform lack of attention to color-possibilities and a monotonous fidelity to a cool, gray tone characterize him. His fondness for the plain, cold octave is notable. It is emphasized by the ill-success of his ”Six Lyrics for Piano, without octaves.” They are all of thin value, and the ”Novelette” is dangerously Schumannesque.

The ”Three Love Songs” are happy, ”Love's Chase” keeping up the arch raillery and whim of Beddoe's verse. ”Orsame's Song” is smooth and graceful, ending with a well-blurted, abrupt ”The devil take her!” The ”Night-piece to Julia” is notable. We have no poet whose lyrics are harder to set to music than good Robin Herrick's. They have a lilt of their own that is incompatible with ordinary music. Parker has, however, been completely successful in this instance. A mysterious, night-like carillon accompaniment, delicate as harebells, gives sudden way to a superb support of a powerful outburst at the end of the song.

[Music:

The stars of the night Will lend thee their light, Like tapers without number.

Then, Julia let me woo thee, Thus to come unto me; And when I shall meet Thy silvery feet My soul I'll pour into thee, My soul I'll pour into thee, into thee.

Copyright, 1886, by Arthur P. Schmidt & Co.

FRAGMENT OF MR. PARKER'S SONG, ”NIGHT-PIECE TO JULIA.”]

The ”Six Songs” show not a little of that modernity and opulent color I have denied to the most of Mr. Parker's work. ”Oh, Ask Me Not” is nothing less than inspiration, rapturously beautiful, with a rich use of unexpected intervals. The ”Egyptian Serenade” is both novel and beautiful. The other songs are good; even the comic-operatic flavor of the ”Cavalry Song” is redeemed by its catchy sweep.

Among a large number of works for the pipe-organ, few are so marked by that purposeless rambling organists are so p.r.o.ne to, as the ”Fantaisie.” The ”Melody and Intermezzo” of opus 20 makes a sprightly humoresque. The ”Andante Religioso” of opus 17 has really an allegretto effect, and is much better as a gay pastorale than as a devotional exercise. It is much more shepherdly than the avowed ”Pastorale” (opus 20), and almost as much so as the ”Eclogue,”

delicious with the organ's possibilities for reed and pipe effects.

The ”Romanza” is a gem of the first water. A charming quaint effect is got by the accompaniment of the air, played legato on the swell, with an echo, staccato, of its own chords on the great. The interlude is a tender melody, beautifully managed. The two ”Concert Pieces” are marked by a large simplicity in treatment, and have this rare merit, that they are less gymnastic exercises than expressions of feeling. A fiery ”Triumphal March,” a delightful ”Canzonetta,” and a n.o.ble ”Larghetto,” of sombre, yet rich and well-modulated, colors, complete the list of his works for the organ. None of these are registered with over-elaboration.

To sacred music Parker has made important contributions. Besides a dignified, yet impa.s.sioned, complete ”Morning and Evening Service for the Holy Communion,” he has written several single songs and anthems.

It is the masterwork, ”Hora Novissima,” however, which lifts him above golden mediocrity. From the three thousand lines of Bernard of Cluny's poem, ”De Contemptu Mundi,” famous since the twelfth century, and made music with the mellowness of its own Latin rhyme, Mrs. Isabella G.

Parker, the composer's mother, has translated 210 lines. The English is hardly more than a loose paraphrase, as this random parallel proves:

Pars mea, Rex meus, Most Mighty, most Holy, In proprio Deus, How great is the glory, Ipse decore. Thy throne enfolding.

Or this skilful evasion:

Tunc Jacob, Israel, All the long history, Et Lia, tunc Rachel All the deep mystery Efficietur. Through ages hidden.

But it is perhaps better for avoiding the Charybdis of literalness.

Those who accuse Rossini's ”Stabat Mater” of a fervor more theatric than religious, will find the same faults in Parker's work, along with much that is purely ecclesiastical. Though his sorrow is apt to become petulance, there is much that is as big in spirit as in handling. The work is frequently Mendelssohnian in treatment. An archaism that might have been spared, since so little of the poem was retained, is the sad old Handelian style of repeating the same words indefinitely, to all neglect of emptiness of meaning and triteness. Thus the words ”_Pars mea, Rex meus_” are repeated by the alto exactly thirteen times!

which, any one will admit, is an unlucky number, especially since the other voices keep tossing the same unlucky words in a musical battledore.

The especially good numbers of the work (which was composed in 1892, and first produced, with almost sensational success, in 1893) are: the magnificent opening chorus; the solo for the soprano; the large and fiery finale to Part I.; the superb tenor solo, ”Golden Jerusalem,”

which is possibly the most original and thrilling of all the numbers, is, in every way, well varied, elaborated, and intensified, and prepares well for the ma.s.sive and effective double chorus, ”Stant Syon Atria,” an imposing structure whose ambition found skill sufficing; an alto solo of original qualities; and a finale, tremendous, though somewhat long drawn out. Of this work, so careful a critic as W.J.

Henderson was moved to write:

”His melodic ideas are not only plentiful, but they are beautiful, ... graceful and sometimes splendidly vigorous....

There is an a cappella chorus which is one of the finest specimens of pure church polyphony that has been produced in recent years.... It might have been written by Hobrecht, Brumel, or even Josquin des Pres. It is impossible to write higher praise than this.... The orchestration is extraordinarily ... rich. As a whole ... the composition ... may be set down as one of the finest achievements of the present day.”

And Philip Hale, a most discriminant musical enthusiast, described the chorus ”Pars Mea” as:

”A masterpiece, true music of the church,” to which ”any acknowledged master of composition in Europe would gladly sign his name.... For the a cappella chorus there is nothing but unbounded praise.... Weighing words as counters, I do not hesitate to say that I know of no one in the country or in England who could by nature and by student's sweat have written those eleven pages.... I have spoken of Mr. Parker's quasi-operatic tendency. Now he is a modern. He has shown in this very work his appreciation and his mastery of antique religious musical art. But as a modern he is compelled to feel the force of the dramatic in religious music.... But his most far-reaching, his most exalted and rapt conception of the bliss beyond compare is expressed in the language of Palestrina and Bach.”

In September, 1899, the work was produced with decisive success in London, Parker conducting.