Part 10 (2/2)
This blemish is lacking in ”The Farewell of Hiawatha,” which is written for men's voices. Though it, too, is of a sad tone, its sombre hues are rich and varied as a tapestry. Its effects, though potent, seem more sincere and less labored. It is altogether n.o.ble.
A larger body of sacred music for mixed voices than many other Americans can boast, also swells Foote's opus-score. Here he shows the same facility with the quartette as in his other works. In fact, I think the effect of glee-club training on his young mind has strongly influenced his whole life-work. And, by the way, the most talented of all the great Sebastian Bach's twenty-one children--every one a musical opus, too--was diverted from the philosopher's career for which he was intended, and into professional musicians.h.i.+p, by just such a glee-club training in the universities at Leipzig and Frankfort.
Almost all of Foote's compositions are written in the close harmony and limited range of vocal music, and he very rarely sweeps the keyboard in his piano compositions, or hunts out startling novelties in strictly pianistic effect. He is not fond of the cloudy regions of the upper notes, and though he may dart brilliantly skyward now and then just to show that his wings are good for lighter air, he is soon back again, drifting along the middle ether.
He has won his high place by faithful adherence to his own sober, serene ideals, and by his genuine culture and seriousness. He is thoroughly American by birth and training, though his direct English descent accounts for his decided leaning toward the better impulses of the English school of music. He was born at Salem, Ma.s.s., March 5, 1853, and though he played the piano a good deal as a boy, and made a beginning in the study of composition with Emery, he did not study seriously until he graduated from Harvard in 1874. He then took up the higher branches of composition under the tuition of John Knowles Paine, and obtained in 1875 the degree of A.M. in the special department of music. He also studied the organ and the piano with B.J.
Lang at Boston, and has since made that city his home, teaching and playing the organ.
His overture, ”In the Mountains,” has been much played from the ma.n.u.script by orchestras, among them the Boston Symphony. Besides a considerable amount of highly valuable contributions to American chamber-music, and two fine piano suites, he has written a great many piano pieces and songs which deserve even greater popularity than they have won, because, while not bristling with technical difficulties, they are yet of permanent worth.
I know of no modern composer who has come nearer to relighting the fires that beam in the old gavottes and fugues and preludes. His two gavottes are to me among the best since Bach. They are an example of what it is to be academic without being only a-rattle with dry bones.
He has written a Nocturne that gets farther from being a mere imitation of Chopin than almost any night-piece written since the Pole appropriated that form bodily from John Field and made it his own.
One of his most original pieces is the Capriccio of his D minor Suite, which is also unusually brilliant in color at times; and he has an Allegretto that is a scherzo of the good old whole-souled humor.
Foote, in fact, is never sickly in sentiment.
Of his rather numerous songs, the older English poets, like Marlowe, Sidney, Shakespeare, Suckling, and Herrick, have given him much inspiration. The song ”It Was a Lover and his La.s.s” is especially taking. 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. This I count one of the most appealing of modern songs.
[Music: IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS La.s.s
ARTHUR FOOTE, Op. 10, No. 1.
1. It was a lover and his la.s.s, With a hey and a ho, With a hey and a ho, and a hey, and a hey non-i-no!
That o'er the green cornfield did pa.s.s, In the springtime, the springtime, The only pretty ring-time, When birds do sing hey ding a ding!
Sweet lovers love the spring.
2. And therefore take the present time, With a hey and a ho, With a hey and a ho, and a hey, and a hey non-i-no!
For love is crowned with the prime, In the springtime, the springtime, The only pretty ring-time, When birds do sing hey ding a ding!
Sweet lovers love the Spring. (_Shakespeare._)
Copyright, 1886, by Arthur P. Schmidt & Co.]
His greatest work is undoubtedly his symphonic prologue to Dante's story of ”Francesca da Rimini,” for full orchestra. Without being informed upon the subject, I fancy a certain programmism in the prologue that is not indicated in the quotation at the beginning of the work:
”Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria.”
The prologue, however, seems to me to contain more than the psychological content of these lines from the fifth canto of the ”Inferno.”
The slow introduction in C minor begins with a long, deep sigh, followed by a downward pa.s.sage in the violas and 'cellos that seems to indicate the steps that bring Dante and Vergil down to the edge of the precipice past which the cyclone of the d.a.m.ned rolls eternally. There is some shrieking and shuddering, and ominous thudding of the tympani (which are tuned to unusual notes), then follows a short recitative which might represent Dante's query to Francesca how she came to yield to love. Suddenly out of the swirling strings the first subject is caught up; it is a frenzy pa.s.sionately sung by the first violins, reenforced by the flutes at the crises. The second subject appears after a sudden prelude by the bra.s.s; it is a very lyric waltz-tune in the relative major, and doubtless depicts the joy recalled in sorrow. The conclusion is quite lengthy; it is also in waltz form, and is first announced by a single flute over the violins and violas, the first violins keeping to the gloomy G string. This air is now given to a solo horn, and a fierce and irresistible dance fervor is worked up. The elaboration begins with the first subject in F sharp minor, caught up fiercely from a downward rush. The reprise is not long delayed, and the second subject appears, contrary to custom, in the tonic major instead of the tonic minor. The coda is deliciously tender and beautiful, possibly because, being a prologue, the work must prepare for a drama that begins cheerfully; possibly because after all there is comfort in bliss remembered in sorrow.
Tschakowski has written a symphonic poem on the same subject, which has been also the inspiration of numberless dramas, and is one of the most pathetic pages in all literature; even the stern old Dante says that when he heard Francesca tell her story he almost died of pity, and fell to the ground as one dead.
A Serenade for string orchestra (op. 25) contains a Prelude, a tender Air, a luscious Intermezzo in the rich key of B major with soli for violin and 'cello, a Romance with a good climax, and a gallant Gavotte with special attention to the too much slighted violas.
Opus 36 is a suite for full orchestra. It has been played by the Boston Symphony, and consists of a brilliant Allegro; an Adagio of deep sincerity and beautifully varied color, a period wherein the bra.s.s choir, heavily scored, chants alone, and the division of the theme among the wood-wind over the rus.h.i.+ng strings is especially effective; a very whimsical Andante with frequent changes of tempo, and soli for the English horn in antiphony with the first oboe; and a madcap Presto that whisks itself out in the first violins.
Two other published works are a string quartette (op. 4) and a quintette for piano and strings (op. 36). This begins in A minor with a well woven and well derived set of themes, and ends in a scherzo in A major with spinning-song characteristics. Between these two movements comes an intermezzo of strongly marked Scotch tone. This has been performed by the Kneisel Quartette.
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