Part 18 (1/2)
W.H. Neidlinger's first three songs were kept in his desk for a year and then kept by a publisher for a year longer, and finally brought out in 1889. To his great surprise, the ”Serenade,” which he calls ”just a little bit of commonplace melody,” had an immense sale and created a demand for more of his work. The absolute simplicity of this exquisite gem is misleading. It is not cheap in its lack of ornament, but it eminently deserves that high-praising epithet (so pitilessly abused), ”chaste.” It has the daintiness and minute completeness of a Tanagra figurine.
Mr. Neidlinger was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1863, and was compelled to earn the money for his own education and for his musical studies.
From Dudley Buck and, later, C.C. Muller, of New York, he has had his only musical instruction. He lived abroad for some time, teaching the voice in Paris, then returned to live in Chicago. He has written two operas, one of them having been produced by the Bostonians.
Mr. Neidlinger builds his songs upon one guiding principle, that is, faithfulness to elocutionary accent and intonation. As he neatly phrases it, his songs are ”colored sketches on a poet's engravings.”
The usual simplicity of Mr. Neidlinger's songs does not forbid a dramatic outburst at the proper time, as in the fine mood, ”A Leaf;”
or the sombre depth of ”Night,” ”Nocturne,” and ”Solitude;” or yet the sustainedly poignant anguish of ”The Pine-tree.” Occasionally the accompaniment is developed with elaborateness, as in the bird-flutings of ”The Robin,” and ”Memories,” an extremely rich work, with its mellow brook-music and a hint of nightingale complaint in the minor.
”Evening Song,” a bit of inspired tenderness, is one of Mr.
Neidlinger's best works. Almost better is ”Suns.h.i.+ne,” a streak of brilliant fire quenched with a sudden cloud at the end. Other valuable works are ”Messages,” the happy little Scotch song, ”Laddie,” and ”Dreaming,” which is now sombre, now fierce with outbursts of agony, but always a melody, always ariose.
Mr. Neidlinger has made a special study of music for children, his book, ”Small Songs for Small Children,” being much used in kindergarten work. A book of his, devoted to a synthetic philosophy of song, is completed for publication; he calls it ”Spenser, Darwin, Tyndall, etc., in sugar-coated pills; geography, electricity, and hundreds of other things in song.”
_The Cleveland Colony._
The city of Cleveland contains a musical colony which is certainly more important than that of any town of its size. About the tenth of our cities in population, it is at least fourth, and possibly third, in productiveness in valuable composition.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WILSON G. SMITH.]
The most widely known of Cleveland composers is Wilson G. Smith. He has been especially fortunate in hitting the golden mean between forbidding abstruseness and trivial popularity, and consequently enjoys the esteem of those learned in music as well as of those merely happy in it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of Wilson G. Smith]
His erudition has persuaded him to a large simplicity; his nature turns him to a musical optimism that gives many of his works a Mozartian cheer. Graciousness is his key.
He was born in Elyria, O., and educated in the public schools of Cleveland, where he graduated. Prevented by delicate health from a college education, he has nevertheless, by wide reading, broadened himself into culture, and is an essayist of much skill. His musical education began in 1876, at Cincinnati, where his teacher, Otto Singer, encouraged him to make music his profession. In 1880 he was in Berlin, where he studied for several years under Kiel, Scharwenka, Moskowski, and Oscar Raif. He then returned to Cleveland, where he took up the teaching of organ, piano, voice, and composition.
The most important of Smith's earlier works was a series of five pieces called ”Hommage a Edvard Grieg,” which brought warmest commendation from the Scandinavian master. One of the most striking characteristics of Smith's genius is his ability to catch the exact spirit of other composers. He has paid ”homage” to Schumann, Chopin, Schubert, and Grieg, and in all he has achieved remarkable success, for he has done more than copy their little tricks of expression, oddities of manner, and pet weaknesses. He has caught the individuality and the spirit of each man.
In his compositions in Grieg-ton Smith has seized the fascinating looseness of the Griegorian tonality and its whimsicality. The ”Humoresque” is a bit of t.i.tanic merriment; the ”Mazurka” is most deftly built and is full of dance-fire; the ”Arietta” is highly original, and the ”Capricietto” shows such ingenious management of triplets, and has altogether such a crisp, brisk flavor, that it reminds one of Lamb's rhapsody on roast pig, where he exclaims, ”I tasted _crackling_!” The ”Romance,” superb in gloom and largeness of treatment, is worthy of the composer of ”The Death of Asra.” A later work, ”Caprice Norwegienne,” is also a strong brew of Scandinavian essence.
A ”Schumannesque” is written closely on the lines of Schumann's ”Arabesque.” A later ”Hommage a Schumann” is equally faithful to another style of the master, and dashes forth with characteristic and un-nave gaiety and challenging thinness of harmony, occasionally bursting out into great rare chords, just to show what can be done when one tries.
The man that could write both this work and the highly faithful ”Hommage a Schubert,” and then whirl forth the rich-colored, sensuous fall and purr of the ”Hommage a Chopin,” must be granted at least an unusual command over pianistic materials, and a most unusual acuteness of observation.
He can write _a la_ Smith, too, and has a vein quite his own, even though he prefers to build his work on well-established lines, and fit his palette with colors well tempered and toned by the masters.
In this line is opus 21, a group of four pieces called ”Echoes of Ye Olden Time.” The ”Pastorale” is rather Smithian than olden, with its mellow harmony, but the ”Minuetto” is the perfection of chivalric foppery and pompous gaiety. The ”Gavotte” suggests the contagious good humor of Bach, and the ”Minuetto Grazioso,” the best of the series, has a touch of the goodly old intervals, tenths and sixths, that taste like a draught of spring water in the midst of our modern liqueurs.
The musical world in convention a.s.sembled has covenanted that certain harmonies shall be set apart for pasturage. Just why these arbitrary pastorales should suggest meads and syrinxes, and dancing shepherds, it would be hard to tell. But this effect they certainly have, and a good pastorale is a better antidote for the blues and other civic ills than anything I know, except the actual green and blue of fields and skies. Among the best of the best pastoral music, I should place Smith's ”Gavotte Pastorale.” It is one of the five pieces in his book of ”Romantic Studies” (op. 57).
This same volume contains a ”Scherzo alla Tarantella,” which is full of reckless wit. But the _abandon_ is so happy as to seem misplaced in a tarantella, that dance whose traditional origin is the maniacal frenzy produced by the bite of the tarantula. An earlier Tarantella (op. 34) is far truer to the meaning of the dance, and fairly raves with shrieking fury and shuddering horror. This is better, to me, than h.e.l.ler's familiar piece.
The ”Second Gavotte” is a n.o.ble work, the nave gaiety of cla.s.sicism being enriched with many of the great, pealing chords the modern piano is so fertile in. I count it as one of the most spontaneous gavottes of modern times, one that is buoyant with the afflation of the olden days. It carries a musette of which old Father Bach need not have felt ashamed,--one of the most ingenious examples of a drone-ba.s.s ever written.
The ”Menuet Moderne” is musical champagne. A very neat series of little variations is sheafed together, and called ”Mosaics.” Mr. Smith has written two pieces well styled ”Mazurka Poetique;” the later (opus 48) is the more original, but the sweet geniality and rapturously beautiful ending of opus 38 is purer music. ”Les Papillons” is marked with a strange touch of negro color; it is, as it were, an Ethiopiano piece. Its best point is its cadenza. Smith has a great fondness for these brilliant precipitations. They not only give further evidence of his fondness for older schools, but they also partially explain the fondness of concert performers for his works. His fervid ”Love Sonnet,” his ”Polonaise de Concert,” full of virility as well as virtuosity, and his delicious ”Mill-wheel Song,” and a late composition, a brilliant ”Papillon,” rich as a b.u.t.terfly's wing, are notable among his numerous works. Possibly his largest achievement is the three concert-transcriptions for two pianos. He has taken pieces by Grieg, Raff, and Bachmann, and enlarged, enforced, decorated, and in every way enn.o.bled them. But to me his most fascinatingly original work is his ”Arabesque,” an entirely unhackneyed and memorable composition.
Smith's experience in teaching has crystallized into several pedagogic works. His ”Scale Playing with particular reference to the development of the third, fourth, and fifth fingers of each hand;” his ”Eight Measure,” ”Octave,” and ”Five Minute” studies, have brought the most unreserved commendation from the most important of our teachers.
A late and most happy scheme has been the use of a set of variations for technical and interpretative instruction. For this purpose he wrote his ”Themes Arabesques,” of which numbers one and eighteen not only have emotional and artistic interest, but lie in the fingers in a strangely tickling way.