Part 13 (1/2)

Whiting was born in Cambridge, Ma.s.s., June 20, 1861. He studied the piano with William H. Sherwood, and has made a successful career in concert playing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Kneisel Quartette, both of which organizations have performed works of his. In 1883 he went to Munich for two years, where he studied counterpoint and composition with Rheinberger. He is now living in New York as a concert pianist and teacher.

[Music: Idylle.

Arthur Whiting.

Copyright, 1895, by G. Schirmer.

A FRAGMENT.]

Four works of his for the piano are: ”Six Bagatelles,” of which the ”Caprice” has a charming infectious coda, while the ”Humoreske” is less simple, and also less amusing. The ”Alb.u.m Leaf” is a pleasing whimsy, and the ”Idylle” is as delicate as fleece. Of the three ”Characteristic Waltzes,” the ”Valse Sentimentale” is by far the most interesting. It manages to develop a sort of harmonic haze that is very romantic.

For the voice, Whiting has written little. Church music interests him greatly, and he has written various anthems, a morning and evening service, which keeps largely to the traditional colors of the Episcopal ecclesiastical manner, yet manages to be fervent without being theatrical. A trio, a violin sonata, and a piano quintette, a suite for strings, and a concert overture for orchestra complete the list of his writings.

On the occasion of a performance of Whiting's ”Fantasy,” Philip Hale thus picturesquely summed him up:

”In times past I have been inclined to the opinion that when Mr. Whiting first pondered the question of a calling he must have hesitated between chess and music. His music seemed to me full of openings and gambits and queer things contrived as in a game. He was the player, and the audience was his antagonist. Mr. Whiting was generally the easy conqueror. The audience gave up the contest and admired the skill of the musician.

”You respected the music of Mr. Whiting, but you did not feel for it any personal affection. The music lacked humanity. Mr.

Whiting had, and no doubt has, high ideals. Sensuousness in music seemed to him as something intolerable, something against public morals, something that should be suppressed by the selectmen. Perhaps he never went so far as to pet.i.tion for an injunction against s.e.x in music; but rigorous intellectuality was his one aim. He might have written A Serious Call to Devout and Holy Composition, or A Practical Treatise upon Musical Perfection, to which is now added, by the same author, The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Entertainment Fully Demonstrated.

”There was almost intolerance in Mr. Whiting's musical att.i.tude. He himself is a man of wit rather than humor, a man with a very pretty knack at sarcasm. He is industrious, fastidious, a severe judge of his own works. As a musician he was even in his dryest days worthy of sincere respect.

”Now this fantasia is the outward and sure expression of a change in Mr. Whiting's way of musical thinking, and the change is decidedly for the better. There is still a display of pure intellectuality; there is still a solving of self-imposed problems; but Mr. Whiting's musical enjoyment is no longer strictly selfish. Here is a fantasia in the true sense of the term; form is here subservient to fancy. The first movement, if you wish to observe traditional terminology, is conspicuous chiefly for the skill, yes, fancy, with which thematic material of no marked apparent inherent value is treated. The pastorale is fresh and suggestive. The ordinary pastorale is a bore. There is the familiar recipe: take an oboe the size of an egg, stir it with a flute, add a little piano, throw in a handful of muted strings, and let the whole gently simmer in a 9-8 stew-pan. But Mr. Whiting has treated his landscape and animal kingdom with rare discretion. The music gave pleasure; it soothed by its quiet untortured beauty, its simplicity, its discretion. And in like manner, without receiving or desiring to receive any definite, precise impression, the finale interested because it was not a hackneyed form of brilliant talk. The finale is something more than clever, to use a hideous term that I heard applied to it. It is individual, and this praise may be awarded the whole work.

Remember, too, that although this is a fantasia, there is not merely a succession of unregulated, uncontrolled, incoherent sleep-chasings.

”In this work there is a warmer spirit than that which animated or kept alive Mr. Whiting's former creations. There is no deep emotion, there is no sensuousness, there is no glowing color, no 'color of deciduous days.' These might be incongruous in the present scheme. But there is a more p.r.o.nounced vitality, there is a more decided sympathy with the world and men and women; there is more humanity.

”The piano is here an orchestral instrument, and as such it was played admirably by Mr. Whiting. His style of playing is his own, even his tone seems peculiarly his own, with a crispness that is not metallic, with a quality that deceives at first in its carrying power. His performance was singularly clean and elastic, its personality was refres.h.i.+ng.

He played the thoughts of Mr. Whiting in Mr. Whiting's way.

And thus by piece and performance did he win a legitimate success.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY HOLDEN HUSS.]

Many American composers have had their first tuition from their mothers; few from their fathers. Mr. Huss is one of the latter few.

The solidity of his musical foundation bespeaks a very correct beginning. He was born in Newark, N.J., June 21, 1862. His first teacher in the theory of music was Otis B. Boise, who has been for the last twenty years a teacher of theory in Berlin, though he was born in this country. Huss went to Munich in 1883 and remained three years. He studied counterpoint under Rheinberger, and won public mention for proficiency. At his second examination his idyl for small orchestra, ”In the Forest,” was produced; and at his graduation he performed his ”Rhapsody” in C major for piano and orchestra. A year after his return to America this work was given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A year later Van der Stucken gave it at the first of his concerts of American compositions. The next year Huss' ”Ave Maria,” for women's voices, string orchestra, harp, and organ, was given a public hearing.

The next year he gave a concert of his own works, and the same year, 1889, Van der Stucken produced his violin romance and polonaise for violin and orchestra at the Paris Exposition.

His piano concerto for piano and orchestra he played first with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1894, and has given it on numerous occasions since.

Other works, most of which have also been published, are: ”The Fountain,” for women's voices a cappella; a festival ”Sanctus,” for chorus and orchestra; an ”Easter Theme,” for chorus, organ, and orchestra; ”The Winds,” for chorus and orchestra, with soprano and alto solos; a ”Festival March,” for organ and orchestra; a concerto for violin, and orchestra; a trio for piano, violin, and 'cello; a ”Prelude Appa.s.sionata,” for the piano, dedicated to and played by Miss Adele aus der Ohe, to whom the concerto is also dedicated.

This concerto, which is in D major, is a good example of the completeness of Huss' armory of resources. The first movement has the martial pomp and hauteur and the Sardanapalian opulence and color that mark a barbaric triumph. Chopin has been the evident model, and the result is always pianistic even at its most riotous point. Huss has ransacked the piano and pillaged almost every imaginable fabric of high color. The great technical difficulties of the work are entirely incidental to the desire for splendor. The result is gorgeous and purple. The andante is hardly less elaborate than the first movement, but in the finale there is some laying off of the _impedimenta_ of the pageant, as if the paraders had put aside the magnificence for a period of more informal festivity. The spirit is that of the scherzo, and the main theme is the catchiest imaginable, the rhythm curious and irresistible, and the entire mood saturnalian. In the coda there is a reminder of the first movement, and the whole thing ends in a blaze of fireworks.

On the occasion of its first performance in Cincinnati, in 1889, Robert I. Carter wrote:

”It is preeminently a symphonic work, in which the piano is used as a voice in the orchestra, and used with consummate skill. The charm of the work lies in its simplicity. The pianist will tell you at once that it is essentially pianistic, a term that is much abused and means little. The traditional cadenza is there, but it is not allowed to step out of the frame, and so perfect is the relation to what precedes and follows, that the average listener might claim that it does not exist. Without wis.h.i.+ng to venture upon any odious grounds of comparison, I want to state frankly that it is, to me, emphatically the best American concerto.”

Huss is essentially a dramatic and lyric composer, though he seems to be determined to show himself also a thematic composer of the old school. In his trio, which I heard played by the Kaltenborn Quartette, both phases of his activity were seen. There was much odor of the lamp about the greater part of the trio, which seemed generally lacking that necessary capillarity of energy which sometimes saturates with life-sap the most formal and elaborate counterpoint of the pre-romantic strata. The andante of the trio, however, displayed Huss'

singularly appealing gift of song. It abounded in emotion, and was--to use the impossible word Keats coined--”yearnful.” Huss should write more of this sort of music. We need its rare spontaneity and truth, as we do not need the all too frequent mathematics of those who compose, as Tybalt fought, ”by the book.”