The art of music, Vol. 04 (of 14) — Text and Context

I. OUR ENGLISH INHERITANCE 1

The foundation of American musical culture--State of English musical culture in the seventeenth century--The Virginia colonists--The Puritans in England and in America; New England psalmody.

II. BEGINNINGS OF MUSICAL CULTURE IN AMERICA 22

The foundations of American music--New England's musical awakening; early publications of psalm-tunes; reform of church singing--Early concerts in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, the South--The American attitude toward music--The beginnings of American music: Hopkinson; Lyon; Billings and their contemporaries.

III. EARLY CONCERT LIFE 55

Sources of information--Boston Concerts of the eighteenth century; New England outside of Boston--Concerts in New York--Concerts in Philadelphia; open-air concerts--Concert life of the South; Charleston, Baltimore, etc.; Conclusion.

PART II. ORGANIZATION

IV. EARLY MUSICAL ORGANIZATIONS 84

Origin of musical societies--The South; The St. Cecilia of Charleston; Philadelphia and New York in the eighteenth century--The Euterpean Society; the New York Choral Society; Sacred Music Society; other New York Societies--New England in the eighteenth century; the Stoughton Musical Society of Boston; other societies in Boston and elsewhere.

V. THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA 104

Scantiness of theatrical performances in America; Charleston and Tony Aston; New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere--The Revolution and after; rivalry between New York and Philadelphia--The New Orleans opera.

VI. OPERA IN THE UNITED STATES. PART I: NEW YORK 117

The New York opera as a factor of musical culture--Manuel García and his troupe; da Ponte's dream--The vicissitudes of the Italian Opera House; Palmo's attempt at 'democratic' opera--The beginnings of 'social' opera: the Academy of Music, German opera, Maretzek to Strakosch--The early years of the Metropolitan--The Grau régime--Conried; Hammerstein; Gatti-Casazza; Opera in English--The Century Opera Company.

VII. OPERA IN THE UNITED STATES. PART II 158

San Francisco's operatic experiences--New Orleans and its opera house--Philadelphia; influence of New Orleans, New York, etc.; The Academy of Music--Chicago's early operatic history; the Chicago-Philadelphia company; Boston--Comic opera in New York and elsewhere.

VIII. INSTRUMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES 181

The New York Philharmonic Society and other New York orchestras--Orchestral organizations in Boston--The Theodore Thomas orchestra of Chicago--Orchestral music in Cincinnati--The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra--Orchestral music in the West; the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra--Chamber music ensembles--Visiting orchestras.

IX. CHORAL ORGANIZATIONS AND MUSIC FESTIVALS 206

The Handel and Haydn and other Boston societies--Choral organizations in New York, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere--Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Chicago and the Far West--Music festivals.

X. MUSICAL EDUCATION IN AMERICA 230

Early singing teachers and schools--Music societies in colleges--Introduction of music into the public schools--Juvenile music--Conservatories--Musical courses in colleges and universities--Community music--Present state of public school music--Municipal music.

XI. THE FOLK-ELEMENT IN AMERICAN MUSIC 277

Nationalism in music--Sources of American folk-song; classification of folk-songs--General characteristics of the negro folk-song--The negro folk-song and its makers--Other American folk-songs--The negro minstrel tunes; Stephen Foster, etc.--Patriotic and national songs.

XII. THE CLASSIC PERIOD OF AMERICAN COMPOSITION 331

Pioneers in American Composition: Fry, Emery, Gottschalk--The Boston group of 'classicists': Chadwick, Foote, Parker, and others--Other exponents of the 'Classical': William Mason, Dudley Buck, Arthur Whiting, and others--The lyricists: Ethelbert Nevin; American song-writers--Composers of church music.

XIII. ROMANTICISTS AND NEO-CLASSICISTS 360

Influences and conditions of the period--Edward MacDowell--Edgar Stillman-Kelley--Arne Oldberg; Henry Hadley; F. S. Converse--E. R. Kroeger; Rubin Goldmark; Howard Brockway; Homer N. Bartlett--Daniel Gregory Mason; David Stanley Smith; Edward Burlingame Hill--The younger men: Philip Greeley Clapp; Arthur Bergh; Joseph Henius; Carl Busch--The San Francisco Group; Miscellany--Women Composers.

XIV. NATIONALISTS, ECLECTICS AND ULTRA-MODERNS 407

The new spirit and its various manifestations--Henry F. Gilbert, Arthur Farwell, Harvey W. Loomis--Frederic Ayres, Arthur Shepherd, Noble Kreider, Benjamin Lambord--Campbell-Tipton; Arthur Nevin; C. W. Cadman; J. A. Carpenter; T. C. Whitmer--W. H. Humiston, John Powell, Blair Fairchild, Maurice Arnold--Sidney Homer; Clough-Leighter and others--Charles M. Loeffler and other Americans of foreign birth or residence.

XV. THE LIGHTER VEIN 451

Sources of American popular music--Its past and present phases--American comic opera: Reginald de Koven; Victor Herbert; John Philip Sousa; other writers of light opera--The decline of light opera and the present state of theatrical music.

CHAPTER I OUR ENGLISH INHERITANCE

The foundation of American musical culture--State of English musical culture in the seventeenth century--The Virginia colonists--The Puritans in England and in America; New England psalmody.

Whatever else the American music-lover may be, he is decidedly not chauvinistic. Deprecatingly he is wont to speak of native artistic accomplishment, and, however much he may be disposed to vaunt the stellar achievements of our few great opera houses and orchestras, he is content to draw a veil of modest silence over that part of our musical history which precedes the advent of those _de luxe_ organizations. Hence it is, perhaps, that the searchlight of the historian has played but fitfully upon the early musical life of America--for, although popular interest may not inspire the writing of history, it is not without its influence on the publication thereof. Possibly the musical life of pre-Revolutionary America has had little to do with shaping the ultimate artistic destinies of the nation, yet it formed the matrix into which our subsequent musical culture has been embedded and as such it is of both interest and importance to those who would follow a phase of our national development, as yet regrettably neglected.

It is a peculiar tendency of the American historian to lay the foundation of our national history squarely on the Rock of Plymouth. A solid foundation, truly, but not a very broad one. The predominant influence of New England in the industrial and commercial development of the United States can hardly be gainsaid. That its influences on the country's æsthetic development have been equally predominant is questionable. More especially in musical matters are we inclined to call it into dispute. If we might judge from American popular music, we should be disposed to infer that such influences as may have been active in the shaping of it came chiefly from the South. Nor is popular music a negligible criterion in this respect, for in it have always lain the germs of truly national art. Of course, our knowledge of the state of musical culture in the early colonies does not enable us to say definitely and dogmatically just where and how American musical development first began. It will probably appear eventually that the early musical life of the colonies has had very little to do with our musical culture of to-day. But, purely as a matter of historic justice, it might be pointed out that unqualified statements, such as the assertion of Ritter that 'the first steps of American musical development may be traced back to the first establishment of English Puritan colonies in New England,' are, to say the least, somewhat premature.[1]

A consideration of music among the Indians is not germane to our present purpose. As far as we are concerned Indian music is an exotic, and it is only of recent years that American composers have turned to it in a conscious search for national color which is, perhaps, the first real symptom of aspiration toward characteristically national expression. From the point of view of musical history the development of American music must be considered as beginning among the first white settlers on these shores, and it may be said at once that those beginnings, like Guy of Warwick's death, are still 'wrop in mystery.' Regarding musical life in the colonies before the year 1700 our information is so slight as to be negligible. For almost a century preceding that year white men--many of them men of culture--had been settled in America.[2] That these men completely forgot the art in which so many of them found pleasure, and in which at least a few of them must have possessed some skill, is a supposition too absurd to be seriously entertained. As to the nature and proportions of their musical activities we have no exact evidence and, in default of such, it is necessary for us to dip a little into comparative history.

In England the curtain of the seventeenth century rose on a country that as yet knew not cropped heads nor Geneva cloaks nor steeple-crowned hats nor the snuffling drone of Hop-on-High-Bomby mournfully mouthing the sinfulness of the flesh and the menace of the wrath to come. England still deserved its old-time appellation of 'merrie.' It still ate and drank, sang and swore, bussed and wantoned blithely, lustily, as befitted a country with a full purse, a sound constitution, and a healthy indifference to the disturbing subtleties of theology and metaphysics. It was a robust, Falstaffian England, still unregenerate, still addicted to sack and loose company, but with a mind as clearly keen as a Sheffield blade and a heart as soft and impressionable as its own Devonshire butter--'pitiful-hearted butter that melted at the sweet tale of the sun.' In short, a normal, vigorous, able-bodied, human country, not yet soured by the virus of an acidulated Puritanism, nor devitalized by the distemper of a cultivated licentiousness; a country in whose fertile soil the seeds of art might well germinate and flourish apace. And, as a matter of fact, English music, like English drama and poetry, was then approaching the culmination of its golden age. In Italy, Palestrina had just died; Peri and Monteverdi were shaping the beginnings of opera; the madrigal, the mystery, the morality and the masque were the prevailing media of secular musico-literary expression, while popular instrumental music was represented by Pavans, Galliards, Allmains, Courantes, and other courtly-sounding forms. The stern, strict god of polyphony was already stooping to flirt with the light and wayward muse of the people, making the first tentative advances toward a union from which was destined to spring a seductively human art. Never since has England stood so high musically among the nations of Europe. Never since has she produced composers who so closely rivalled the greatest of their contemporaries. There was William Byrd 'a Father of Musicke,' as the Cheque-book of the Chapel Royal has it--one of the most learned contrapuntists of his time and unequalled by any of his contemporaries in compositions for the virginals. There was John Dowland, 'whose heavenly touch upon the lute doth ravish human sense.' There was Orlando Gibbons, one of the greatest composers of his period, who was then in the beginning of his distinguished career. These, and many other English composers of scarcely lesser note, were as highly honored abroad as they were at home. Their influence on the development of German music has been admitted even by German critics.[3] In England the madrigal flourished then as it did nowhere else in Europe and reached a degree of perfection hitherto unattained even by the best madrigalists of Italy and the Netherlands. What Peri and Monteverdi were doing successfully in Italy in the pseudo-Grecian music-drama, the English were attempting to do, more characteristically though less successfully, in the masque. Some of the most famous of English popular songs--like 'The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington,' 'The Three Ravens,' and 'Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes'--have come down to us from that period. Indeed, the musical vitality of the England of that time was truly remarkable, and thousands of madrigals, motets, anthems, ayres, and ballets remain as eloquent witnesses to its teeming fecundity. English instrumentalists were then rated the best in Europe and were as commonly employed in the courts of Germany as German instrumentalists are now employed in the restaurants of London.

Nor was this noteworthy musical activity confined to the small class of professional musicians. If we may believe Morley,[4] and read aright the references of Shakespeare and other contemporary writers, music was sedulously practised by all classes in England, from the sovereign to the beggar. Queen Elizabeth, we find, played excellently on the virginals and the poliphant, though it does not appear that her dour successor took very kindly to such exercises. It seems to have been a matter of course that every well-reared girl should sing at sight and play acceptably on the virginals, the flute, and the cittern. Sight-reading--alas for our degenerate days--was apparently a universal accomplishment, at least among people of the better classes. After viols were introduced, every gentleman's house contained a chest of them and the chance visitor was expected to take his part at sight in the impromptu concerts which were a favorite form of social diversion. 'Tinkers sang catches,' says Chappell, 'milkmaids sang ballads; carters whistled; each trade, and even the beggars had their special songs; the bass-viol hung in the drawing-room for the amusement of waiting visitors; and the lute, cittern, and virginals, for the amusement of waiting customers, were the necessary furniture of the barber-shop. They had music at dinner; music at supper; music at weddings; music at funerals; music at night, music at dawn; music at work; music at play.'

From this intensely musical England came the band of colonists who landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. About half of them were 'gentlemen' and the remainder were soldiers and servants. The proportion of gentlemen--'unruly gallants,' as Capt. John Smith calls them--was less in later emigrations, though it was always comparatively high. Many soldiers came, and some convicts and young vagrants picked up in the streets of London were sent out as servants. Starvation, disease, and the attacks of Indians left very few survivors among those who came to Virginia during the first ten years. Afterward the population grew very rapidly and contained, on the whole, representative elements of all classes in England, with a comparatively large proportion of the upper classes. In 1619, as we learn from a statement of John Rolfe, quoted in John Smith's 'Generali Historie,' the first negro slaves were introduced into Virginia. A description in the 'Briefe Declaration' shows Virginia about two years later as a country already in the enjoyment of peace and prosperity. 'The plenty of these times,' says the writer, 'unlike the old days of death and confusion, was such that every man gave free entertainment to friends and strangers.' About that time land was laid out for a free school at Charles City and for a university and college at Henrico, but the project was not then carried through. As yet, however, there was not any pressing demand for public educational advantages, as the proportion of children was still very small. Later years saw a great increase in the population, both native and English born. During the Civil War there was a large exodus from England of cavaliers, as well as merchants, yeomen, and other substantial people, who found the troubles at home little to their taste or profit. There must have been little to distinguish the Virginia society about the middle of the seventeenth century from English society of the same period. The colonists lived well; they were prosperous; they had good, substantial houses equipped with good, substantial English furniture; they entertained with open-handed freedom and generosity. 'The Virginia planter,' says George Park Fisher, 'was essentially a transplanted Englishman in tastes and convictions and imitated the social amenities and culture of the mother country. Thus in time was formed a society distinguished for its refinement, executive ability and generous hospitality for which the Ancient Dominion is proverbial.'[5]

The population of Virginia always remained largely rural, but nevertheless there was social life aplenty. Education was mainly in the hands of the clergy, who, as a rule, were Englishmen of culture. But steps toward public education were taken at a very early period. The attempt of 1621 failed, as we have noticed, but in 1635--three years before John Harvard made his bequest--Benjamin Syms left an endowment for a free school in Virginia. This, to quote a recent writer, 'was the first legacy by a resident of the American plantations for the promotion of education.' Another free school was established in 1655 by Captain Henry King, and two in 1659 by Thomas Eaton and Captain William Whittingdon. In 1670, according to a report from Sir William Berkeley to the Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, the population of Virginia consisted of 40,000 persons, of whom 2,000 were negro slaves and 5,000 white servants. The 2,000 negro slaves probably included a number of mulattoes, for even then there must have been traffic between white men and negro women, as we may infer from the law which gave to a child the status of its mother. The remainder of the population was almost exclusively English. What we have said of Virginia in the seventeenth century applies also in a general way to Maryland and Carolina, both as to population and conditions, though the Huguenot emigration to Carolina in 1685 made a decided difference in the character of the population there subsequent to that date.

This brief incursion into general history has been made, not to prove anything, but to bring forward a few facts which may be found suggestive. The Southern colonists during the seventeenth century were predominantly English people of the first and second generations. They were fairly representative of contemporary English society, though the proportion of 'gentlemen' was higher among them than at home. They came, as we have seen, from a country where music was practised enthusiastically by all classes. It is preposterous to think that in the new country they discarded their musical tastes like a worn-out garment. There is no reason why they should have done so. After the first years of famine and turmoil and death they were comparatively peaceful and prosperous. There were among them, it is true, a certain number of stern-faced Puritans, melancholy preachers of the sinfulness of pleasure; but on the whole the attitude of the Southern colonists toward life was that of the gay, gallant, laughter-loving cavaliers. There is little doubt that these same gallant gentlemen kept up in the colonies that devotion to the _joyeuse science_ for which they had been famed since the days of Cœur de Lion. In the announcements of the early concerts at Charleston in the first half of the eighteenth century we find that the orchestra was often composed in part of neighboring gentlemen, who were good enough to lend their services for the occasion, or sometimes that certain gentlemen, of their courtesy, obliged with instrumental or vocal selections. Whence we may infer that the custom of keeping a chest of viols in his house for the use of his family and his guests, so generally observed by the English gentleman at the beginning of the seventeenth century, was still honored by the colonial gentleman at the beginning of the eighteenth.

The cultured colonists followed English fashions very closely in all things, and the music they played was doubtless the music in vogue in London drawing-rooms and concert halls. The humble colonists, presumably, were less concerned with the mode, and sang and played the old English tunes which they and their fathers and their grandfathers had brought across the sea. American historians have taken for granted, with a good deal of smug complacency, that there was no real musical life among these people. The assumption seems to be based--if it has any basis--on the fact that the population of the South was preëminently rural. But that there was little urban life does not mean that there was little community life. On the contrary, life in the South was much more intimately gregarious than is usual in towns and cities, and it is in hospitable social gatherings rather than in stiff-backed attendance at concerts and operas that the musical soul of a people finds real expression. Furthermore, the Southern colonists had a communal consciousness, as we may see from their early essays in public education, and it is probable that this consciousness expressed itself in other ways of which we have no evidence. The churches brought them together, also, perhaps for social as well as religious gatherings. It is, indeed, a plausible surmise that musical reunions of some sort, apart from purely private entertainments, were not unknown to them.

The music of the colonial proletariat was English, that of the gentlefolk largely so. Among the common people this music may have undergone some alteration in the course of time, and certain gifted ones among them may have made original music of their own. We can conceive that the gentlefolk occasionally occupied themselves with musical composition, and some of their efforts, perchance, percolated through the classes and became the property of all the people. We cannot say, but it is possible; it is even probable. If English music did not undergo a change in Virginia and Maryland and Carolina, we can be sure that it altered somewhat in the hands of the pioneers who carried it to Kentucky, to Missouri, to Texas. One hears in the Southwest many quaint, characteristic old songs and tunes of unmistakably English origin. We can safely assume that by the time they reached Missouri and Texas from England they had absorbed quite a little local color.