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This book should be returned on or before the date last marked below.
America's music
This edition has been specially printed for the
use of students of American civilization outside
the United States and is not for sale.
McGRAW-HILL SERIES IN MUSIC
Douglas Moore, CONSULTING EDITOR
Chase: AMERICA'S MUSIC
(Other titles in preparation)
America's music
From the Pilgrims to the present
GILBERT CHASE
Author of The Music of Spain and A Guide to Latin American Music
Formerly Lecturer on American Music at Columbia University
McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC.
New York, Toronto, London
AMERICA'S MUSIC, Copyright, 1955, by Gilbert Chase. All lights
in this book are reserved. It may not be used for dramatic, motion-,
or talking-picture purposes without written authorization from the
holder of these rights. Nor may the book or parts thereof be repro-
duced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing, ex-
cept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and
reviews. For information, address the McGraw-Hill Book Company,
Inc., Trade Department, 330 West 4id Street, New York 36, New
York.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-9707
Published by the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
This book is dedicated to my sons:
Paul, Peter, John
a 5 V alxudurirown pc&rcpot, oc rep tpeto
€7<fca<rt irtiroWaalv rt &lv\<t>w.
HOMER, ILIAD, IV, 324
tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito
qua tua te fortuna sfnet.
VIRGIL, AENEID, VI, 95
I' mi son un, che quando
Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo
chV ditta dentro vo significando.
DANTE, PURGATORIO, XXIV, 52
Foreword
serious study of American music is arrestingly important at this
time. Music has become one of our leading industries; our performing
standards are probably now higher than anywhere else in the world,
and we are making rapid strides in music education. How large a part
in all this activity is our own music to play? How good is it? How
does it differ from European music?
There are many signs of an awakened interest in American com-
position. More of it is being performed, published, and recorded than
ever before. This interest is not confined to the United States alone.
During the past few years Europeans who have always liked our pop-
ular music have discovered that we have several composers in the
serious field well worth their attention. As for the foundations, for-
tunes are being spent to discover, to train, and to encourage our na-
tive talent.
In America's Music Gilbert Chase, a musician and scholar who
understands and enjoys all kinds of music, has collected all the strands
that have gone into the fabric of our musical speech— and a fascinating
web of incompatibles they turn out to be. Who could imagine a pat-
tern which would include Billings, Foster, Gottschalk, Chadwick, and
Gershwin? Each of them contributed substantially to our musical tra-
dition, and when we can grasp their interrelationship we perceive that
there is indeed an American music, a hardy one just beginning to feel
its strength and destined to stand beside our other contributions to
world culture.
There have been many problems, but apparently lack of public
appreciation has not been one of them. From the time of the Pilgrims
our people have liked music and made it a part of their lives. They
have played and sung and fashioned their own songs for aU occasions.
There were, however, no European courts for the cultivation of art
viii | America's music
music and opportunities were rare for the training and development
of individual talents. When sufficient numbers of professional musi-
cians had arrived to establish centers of serious musical culture our
role as a backward province of European music was firmly established.
It was only natural that the imported arbiters of taste would regard
any deviation from European musical thinking as deplorable savagery
to be resolutely put down. Our emerging talent was packed off to
Europe to learn civilized ways. Our wealthy patrons, as they invari-
ably do in a frontier society, regarded the European label as the only
sure means of achieving cultural prestige.
Small wonder, then, that a serious dichotomy developed in the
field of American composition. Our educated young people, fresh
from German or French influences, did their loyal best to write good
German or French music. For subject matter they turned to "remote
legends and misty myths" guaranteed to keep them from thinking
about the crudities of the land which they found so excruciating upon
their return from abroad. They did, however, bring back with them a
professional competence which was to be their significant contribu-
tion to the American scene.
Meanwhile the uneducated creator, finding good stuff about him,
carried on a rapidly developing music speech which was a blend of
European folk music, African rhythm, and regional color, and dis-
covered that the public liked his music and was ready to pay for it
handsomely. As a result via the minstrel ballad, through ragtime into
jazz, a genuine popular American music made its appearance and was
given every encouragement by the entertainment industry. European
musicians were quick to recognize the originality and value of this
music and, beginning with Debussy, accepted it as a new resource.
The American serious group, however, anxious to preserve their
new-found dignity, nervously dismissed this music as purely commer-
cial (a lot of it was and is), and until it was made respectable by the
attention paid to it by Ravel and Stravinsky there were only occasional
attempts to borrow from its rhythms and melodies. The highly suc-
cessful popular group, on the other hand, has developed the notion
that the technique of composition is not only unnecessary but an af-
fectation. Such needs as may arise for their concerted numbers, bal-
lets, and orchestrations they can well afford to pay for from the hacks
(the underprivileged literate musicians). Gershwin's contribution to
the American scent is significant beyond his music itself in that he
FOREWORD IX
was able to reconcile the two points of view and achieve popular
music in the large traditional forms.
America's Music for perhaps the first time attaches importance im-
partially to all the currents of musical thinking which have influenced
our development. We are ex-Europeans, to be sure, and as such have
responsibilities to the preservation and continuance of European cul-
ture, but we are also a race— and a vigorous one— and it is increasingly
evident that we are capable of developing cultural traditions of our
own.
Douglas Moore
Acknowledgments
In all places where I worked on this book I had occasion to appre-
ciate the combination of friendliness and efficiency that characterizes
the American librarian. So it is with pleasurable recollection of their
helpful kindness that I extend my thanks to Dr. Carleton Sprague Smith
and .the staff of the Music Division of the New York Public Library;
to Miss Gladys Chamberlain of the 5 8th Street Music Library in New
York; to Mr. Arthur Cohn and the staff of the Music Division of the
Free Library of Philadelphia; to Dr. Glen Haydon and the staff of the
Music Department of the University of North Carolina; to the Di-
rector and the staff of the General Library of the same University;
to Dr. Harold Spivacke and the staff of the Music Division of the
Library of Congress, in particular Mr. Richard S. Hill, Mr, William
Lichtenwanger, and Mr. Edward N. Waters.
I am especially grateful to those friends and colleagues who gave
generously of their time to read the typescript of my book, in whole
or in part, and to make valuable comments thereon. They are Dr. Glen
Haydon, Dr. Douglas Moore, Dr. Hans Nathan, Dr. William S. New-
man, Dr. Richard A. Waterman. Mr. John Kirkpatrick was kind
enough to share with me his intimate knowledge of Gottschalk's music.
Dr. Otto E. Deutsch helpfully tracked down for me a copy of Cam-
idge's Psalmody that I had almost despaired of finding.
My thanks also go to Mr. Milo Sutliff of the American Recording
Society and to Mr. Moses Asch of Folkways Records; the former
placed at my disposal the comprehensive series of recordings of Amer-
ican compositions issued by ARS, and the latter made available to
me the valuable Folkways Anthologies of Jazz and of American Folk
Music.
My warmest gratitude is reserved for my editor, Mr. C. Gibson
Scheaffer, whose constant encouragement, patience, helpfulness, and
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI
good judgment have put me greatly in his debt. He has proved, for
me, to be the ideal editor. The fact that we have been separated by
five thousand miles during the final stages of revision, editing, and
proofreading has multiplied the difficulties of his task without in the
least diminishing his friendly efficiency.
In the course of a historical work of such scope as the present
one, an author inevitably accumulates many obligations to the schol-
arly writers who have preceded him. Specific acknowledgments of
sources are made elsewhere in this book. But I wish here to pay trib-
ute to the memory of such men as Oscar G. Sonneck, Waldo Selden
Pratt, and George Pullen Jackson, who dedicated their industry, their
talent, and their enthusiasm to exploring virtually unknown .tracts of
America's musical history. And it is impossible to handle such an im-
pressive work of imaginative scholarship as Benson's The English
Hymn without profound admiration and respect. Here, too, I should
like to mention the admirable writings of Constance Rourke, espe-
cially The Roots of American Culture and American Humor, which,
it seems to me, must always remain a source of inspiration to anyone
trying to grasp what is really native and traditional In our culture. In
.a more specialized field, Percy Scholes, in his work on The Puritans
and Music in England and New England, has made a valuable contri-
bution, by which I have fully profited.
Finally, my thanks are due to those authors and publishers who
have permitted me to quote from their books and compositions, as
indicated by the appropriate credit lines in the text.
Contents
Foreword by Douglas Moore vii
Acknowledgments x
Introduction xv
one | Preparation
chapter i. Puritan psalm singers 3
2. New England reformers 22
3. Singing dissenters 41
4. African exiles 65
5. Gentlemen amateurs 84
6. Professional emigrants 106
7. Native pioneers 123
two | Expansion
chapter 8. Progress and profit 149
9. The genteel tradition 164
10. The fasola folk 183
u. Revivals and camp meetings 207
12. The Negro spirituals 232
13. The Ethiopian business 259
14. America's minstrel 283
15. The exotic periphery 301
1 6. Europe versus America 324
17. A romantic bard 346
1 8. The Boston classicists 365
three \ Fulfillment
chapter 19. Nationalism and folklore 385
20. Indian tribal music 403
21. The rise of ragtime 433
22. Singin' the blues 452
23. The growth of jazz 468
24. The Americanists 488
25. The eclectics 516
26. The traditionalists 548
27. The experimentalists 571
28. Twelve-tone composers 597
29. In the orbit of Broadway 617
30. Toward an American opera 634
31. Composer from Connecticut 653
Bibliography 679
A note on recordings 707
Index 711
Introduction
What a new world, with new processes and new ideals, will do with the
tractable and still unformed art of music; what will arise from the contact
of this art with our unprecedented democracy — these are the questions of
deepest import in our musical life in the United States.
ARTHUR FARWELL, MUSIC IN AMERICA, INTRODUCTION (AUGUST, 1914).
Writing forty years ago, Arthur Farwell— himself one of the forma-
tive spirits that helped to shape America's music— could rightly speak
of the "still unformed art of music" in the United States, and thus
justify his dictum that "prophecy, not history, is the most important
concern of music in America." Since those words were written, so
much has happened in American music, there has been such an ac-
cumulation of accomplishments, that history and prophecy may now
be said to hold a more equal balance in pur concern. We have, to be
sure, every reason to believe that our future will outweigh our past.
By and large, our past has been a formative period: this is indicated
by the subtitles given, respectively, to Parts I and II of this book:
Preparation and Expansion. The confidence— certainly not compla-
cence—displayed in the heading of Part III, Fulfillment, is based
mainly on the achievements of the last two or three decades; but it also
leans somewhat on prophecy, venturing to predict and anticipate what
the second half of the twentieth century will bring. Beyond that, my
crystal ball ceases to function, save that it clearly reveals there will
be a great deal more musical history to concern ourselves with in
America by that time. Meanwhile, my present concern in this book
must be with that portion of America's music that has already be-
come history at the moment when we find ourselves entering the sec-
ond half of our confused but dynamic century.
Naturally, others before me have undertaken to write the history
xvi | America's music
of American music or of music in America— we must suppose there is
a difference of meaning or implication in those terms. Some seventy
years ago, Fr6d6ric Louis Ritter (1834-1891), an Alsatian musician
who came to America in 1856, published the first comprehensive his-
tory of music in the United States, titled Music in America (New
York, 1883). Divided into six "periods," it began with the "low state
of musical culture" in New England, devoted much attention to the
establishment of musical societies and orchestras, the rise of oratorio
and opera, and "progress of vocal and instrumental music" in the
large cities. In his last chapter, Ritter dealt with "The Cultivation
of Popular Music." He stated roundly that "the people's song . . .
is not to be found among the American people." And he asked rhetor-
ically, "How are we to account for this utter absence of national
people's music and poetry in America?" He accounted for it by the
Puritanical "repression" of early New England. "From the hearts of
such people, in whose eyes an innocent smile, a merry laugh, was con-
sidered a sin, no na'ive, cheerful, sweet melody could spring. His [the
American colonist's] emotional life was stifled and suppressed: there-
fore there are no folk-poetry and no folk-songs in America." The only
concession that Ritter would make to "a pedple's song" in the United
States was to acknowledge the existence and the merit of "the songs
of the colored race."
The History of American Music by Louis C. Elson appeared in
1904 and gave relatively more attention to composers than to musical
institutions. It bestowed a condescending chapter on "the folk-music
of America," made a gallant bow to "American women in music," and
concluded with an appraisal of the "qualities and defects of American
music"— a procedure that might be described as a prenatal post-mortem.
Out of the 423 pages of his book, Elson devoted sixteen to "The
Folk Music of America," declaring, "It must be admitted that in this
field America is rather barren." Six pages of this chapter dealt with
Stephen Foster as "the folk song genius of America," and eight pages
with Indian music. Elson concluded that "American folk song in its
true sense can only be derived from Indian or plantation life."
Music in America, compiled by Arthur Farwell and W. Dermot
Derby, was published in 1915 as volume four of a composite work
called The An of Music. A critical and interpretative study, it was
the best treatment of the subject up to that time and the first work
INTRODUCTION
to show a grasp of the cultural foundations and creative trends of
American music. In his introduction to this work, Farwell wrote:
The chief danger which threatens the American composer is the
tendency to accept and conform to the standards of the centers of
conventional and fashionable musical culture . . . and to fail to
study out the real nature and musical needs of the American people.
This danger still exists, perhaps will always exist; but it is less of a
threat to the creative vitality of American music today than it was
forty years ago, because the deep currents of American folk and popu-
lar music have been so powerfully set in motion that they can counter-
act the tendency toward conventional stagnation. Speaking of these
vital currents in America's music, Farwell concluded:
The new movement will call forth new and larger efforts on the
part of American composers, who, with their present thorough as-
similation of the various musical influences of the world, will lead
the nation into a new and mature creative epoch.
In this passage Farwell proved that he was a true prophet as well as
a perceptive critic.
In 1931 John Tasker Howard brought out his book Our American
Music, in which, out of eighteen chapters, one was assigned to "Our
Folk-Music," including the music of the North American Indian
(which, strictly speaking, is not folk music) and a section on "Com-
posers Who Have Used Our Folk-Songs." The character of this work
was aptly summed up by Dr. Carleton Sprague Smith, who remarked
of the author, "His approach is highly respectable, and implies that
we have made aesthetic progress." As evidence of his highly respect-
able approach, we may take Mr. Howard's remarks on the "gospel
hymn" as being a "cheap and tawdry" type of music "that appeals
only to the emotions." On the other hand, he can solemnly declare
that Ethelbert Nevin "represents one of the summits of American
music" and that "The Rosary" is "an almost perfect work of art."
Thus he exalts the genteel tradition, which prefers what is polite and
pretty to what is vulgar but vital.
My own approach to America's music is not at all respectable—my
bite noire is the genteel tradition, and I take my stand with that Con-
necticut Yankee, Charles Ivcs, whose most damning adjective is said
to be "nice."
xviii | America's music
As for the doctrine of aesthetic progress, which, in the guise of a
firm belief in "progressive improvement" has hitherto dominated the
historical criticism of American music, I hold it to be fallacious. Ac-
cording to this doctrine, the music of one period—let us say the
"fuguing tunes" of the eighteenth century— was surpassed and made
obsolete by the "improved" products of the next age— let us say the
hymns of Lowell Mason. And we can observe the implications of this
doctrine at work in many other directions. For example, in the belief
that the smoothly mechanized performances of the big "name bands"
were an improvement over the small-band improvisations of early
New Orleans jazz. The important thing, it seems to me, is to be
aware, as T. S. Eliot says, "of the obvious fact that art never im-
proves, but that the material of art is never quite the same." l Or, as
stated by Wilhelm Worringer: "The stylistic peculiarities of past
epochs are not to be explained by lack of ability, but by a differently
directed volition." 2 To study objectively the peculiarities of style in
a given phase of America's musical past— as Mr. Charles Seeger has
done so perceptively in his study of "Contrapuntal Style in the Three-
voice Shape-note Hymns" 8— is to discover not merely a deficiency in
knowledge (as might be supposed from the persistent use of "incor-
rect" progressions), or a product which should be either discarded
as obsolete or improved by correction, but rather an authentic and
traditional American musical style, with "a rigorous, spare, disciplined
beauty" of its own. To discoveries, perceptions, and appreciations of
this kind, reaching into the very core of America's music, the present
work is chiefly dedicated.
Art changes, and it is the business of the historian to record those
changes, to understand them if he can, to accept them whether or not
he understands them, and not to presume to establish the pattern of
his prejudices as objective truth. I have my definite likes and dislikes
in music, as in everything else. I never try to admire what it is merely
respectable to admire. I prefer "Beale Street Blues" to Hora Novis-
sma. I do not think I am prejudiced in favor of our folk-popular
music simply because I believe it has been the most important phase
* In 'Tradition and the Individual Talent," Selected Essays, 1917-193*.
»In Abstraction and Empathy (1908). English translation by Michael Bullock
(London, 1953), p. 9.
* In the Musical Quarterly, October, 1940.
INTRODUCTION XIX
of America's music. And if you ask what do I mean by "important," I
will answer, in this case, "different from European music." And if we
are now beginning to sense that difference in American art-music
also, that is because of the subtle but pervasive influence of our folk-
popular idioms; the American musical vernacular has been on the
march through all these generations, and even our most academic
composers are catching up with it, or being caught up by it.
In this book, some sixteen chapters deal, in whole or in part, with
various phases of American folk, primitive, and popular music. This
is in line with Charles Seeger's dictum that "when the history of
music in the New World is written, it will be found that the main
concern has been with folk and popular music." And this dictum, in
turn, implies the recognition of historical and cultural factors that are
discussed later in this Introduction. I make no apology for devoting
much attention to types of music, such as the revival hymn and rag-
time, that have hitherto not been regarded as "important" or worth the
serious attention of the musical historian. What seemed "cheap and
tawdry" to a writer yesterday may serve as material for some of the
"best" music of today— as witness the skillfully creative use of gospel-
hymn tunes by such composers as Ives, Cowell, and Thomson. A pas-
sage from the autobiography of the composer Nicolas Nabokov seems
to me to express, better than anything else I have seen, the importance
of exploring all kinds of music in a historical work that aspires to
approximate the complexity and the movement of human life:
... It seems to me that music came into my life in the way it
came to the lives of most composers; through the illicit communica-
tion with that fertile subsoil, that vast underground of life where mu-
sical matter of all degrees of beauty and ugliness lives freely and is
constantly being reinvented, rearranged, transformed and infused
with new meaning by a universe of memories and imaginations.4
Perhaps I should attempt to explain how I came to write a book
about America's music. As far as I can trace the circumstances that
led me to the undertaking, the process was somewhat as follows. The
first step was probably my appointment to the staff of the Music Di-
vision of the Library of Congress in 1940. My desk happened to face
a portrait of Oscar G. Sonneck, the Division's former chief and pio-
4 Old Friends and New Music, by Nicolas Nabokov. Copyright 1951 by Little,
Brown & Company, Boston, Mass.
xx I America's music
neer scholar, in the field of early American musical history. It was he
who painstakingly unearthed, from old newspaper files and other docu-
ments, the data that enabled him to reconstruct the musical life of
the United States and of the thirteen colonies prior to 1800. The
example of his industry, erudition, and enthusiasm could not fail
to impress me profoundly, even though as yet I had no definite inten-
tion of following along the path that he had cleared.
Another influential factor that stemmed from my association with
the Library of Congress was the stimulation of my interest in Amer-
ican folk music through contact with the library's Archive of Amer-
ican Folk Song. This archive housed a collection of tens of thousands
of American folk tunes of all kinds. Many of these I had an oppor-
tunity to hear and to discuss with the folklorists and folk singers who
visited the Library frequently. At that time the Library of Congress
was also beginning to acquire recordings of folk music from Latin
America, which was then my area of specialization, including notable
examples of Afro-American music from Haiti and Brazil. It was thus
that I acquired the hemispheric approach to Afro-American music
and was led to recognize the underlying unity of Negro music in the
New World. As a result of all this, I became definitely absorbed by
the whole fascinating process of the development of musical culture
in the Americas.
At this point I was invited ro join the staff of the National Broad-
casting Company's recently created "Inter- American University of the
Air," of which Sterling Fisher was director. Consequently, in the
summer of 1943, I went to New York to undertake the challenging
task of putting America's music on the air. With the valuable assist-
ance of Ernest La Prade, I planned the educational broadcast series
known as "Music of the New World," for which I also wrote the
scripts and accompanying handbooks. The resources that I had dis-
covered in the Library of Congress, as well as my researches in the
field of Latin American music, were tapped to provide a series of
coordinated programs related to the backgrounds of American history
and American folkways, with much music of the Americas that had
hitherto been unheard or little known. The handbooks for "Music of
the New World," though extremely concise and rapidly written, as
everything for radio had to be, may be regarded as the seed that even-
tually produced the present work.
While I was on the staff of the NBC University of the Air, Dr.
INTRODUCTION XXi
Douglas Moore suggested that I give two courses at Columbia Uni-
versity, one on music of Latin America, the other on music of the
United States. Now deeply committed to both of these subjects, I
readily agreed to give the courses. My Guide to Latin American Music,
published by the Library of Congress in 1945, served well enough as a
textbook for the course on Latin American music. But when it came
to a text on music in the United States, I found none that satisfied
me completely, for reasons that have been largely explained earlier in
this Introduction. I had reached the conviction that, for obvious his-
torical and cultural reasons, the main emphasis in American music nec-
essarily rested upon folk and popular idioms. There were specialized
books on American folk and popular music; there was none that re-
lated these idioms to one another and to the whole cultural develop-
ment of the United States from the earliest times to the present. This
then, was the immediate incentive and raison d'etre of the book that,
after seven years of labor, I now offer to the reader.
It will be noticed that I do not call the book either a history of
American music or of music in America, but simply America's Music.
By America's Music I mean the music made or continuously used by
the people of the United States, people who have come from many
parts of the earth to build a new civilization and to create a new so-
ciety in a new world, guided by ideals of human dignity, freedom,
and justice. It takes all kinds of music to make America's music, just
as it takes all kinds of people to make America's world. In these pages
I have tried to depict the diversified world of America's music, rich
in human and universal values. While trying to reveal this diversity
by continually shifting from one phase to another of our musical cul-
ture, I have also attempted to demonstrate some basic relationships
that give a large measure of organic unity to our music.
This work is not a conventional history, though it is based on
historical principles. It is not a book about the performance of music
or about musical institutions, though these matters may be touched
upon incidentally. It is above all an attempt to understand, to describe,
to illuminate, and to evaluate, the vital processes and factors that have
gone into the making of America's music. When I say that it is
based on historical principles, I mean that its form and content, the
order and organization of its material, follow and are dependent upon
the historical processes that determined the growth and direction of
musical culture in the United States. This means, for example, that the
xxii | America's music
first part of the book, and the earlier sections of Part II, are con-
cerned largely with the various religious trends and impulses that
dominated our musical expression for over two centuries and that
continued to be powerfully felt even after the rise of secular music
in the second half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, until the
closing decades of the nineteenth century, the overwhelming emphasis
in America's music was upon song, upon vocal music in its simpler
and more popular manifestations, rather than upon instrumental music;
and this emphasis, too, is reflected in the book.
The twentieth century is characterized primarily by the rapid de-
velopment of instrumental music, both in the popular and "serious"
fields. It is, indeed, extremely interesting to observe the rise of rag-
time, jazz, and the popular "name bands," paralleling that of our in-
strumental art music in both the smaller and larger forms, ranging from
the piano sonata to the symphony. If jazz may be regarded as our
most original and far-reaching contribution to the world's music, this
should not blind us to the fact that our "serious" or fine-art music is
at present capable of holding its own with most of the contemporary
music that is being composed anywhere. And if the influence of jazz
has succeeded in making some of our art music a little less "serious,"
that is all to the good. Certainly, we have not relinquished our search
for the sublime in music; but we no longer consider it necessary to
be completely solemn about the matter. And that, perhaps, is an
encouraging sign of our musical maturity.
In the title of my book I have used the term "America" to desig-
nate the United States of America, while fully aware that the term
is more properly applicable to the Western Hemisphere as a whole.
Having worked for fifteen years in the field of inter-American rela-
tions, I could not fail to be aware of the larger sense that we of this
hemisphere are bound to give to the term "America" as the symbolic
name that binds us all to common ideals of peace, friendship, and
cooperation. For my restricted use of the term in this case, I plead
the needs of euphony and convenience, supported by a literary tradi-
tion that has ample precedent.
There are many aspects of America's music that I should like to
explore further; and I hope that the reader, after finishing these pages,
will also feel the urge to further exploration in this vast and fas-
cinating field. I do not claim that this work is either perfect or com-
INTRODUCTION XX111
plete (no book oil American music will ever achieve completeness;
the subject is too large and diversified), but in it I have sincerely en-
deavored to present my vision and my understanding of the growth of
America's music. I trust that the reading of this book will prove to
be an adventure less arduous, but no less stimulating and rewarding,
than was the writing of it.
Gilbert Chase
one
Preparation
The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the
corner. PSALM 118.
chapter one
Puritan psalm singers
Musick is an Art unsearchable, Divine, and Excellent . , . that re/oyceth
and cheareth the Hearts of Men.
PLAYFORD, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SKILL OF MUSICK, 11TH ED., 1687.
Ihe Puritans who settled New England have been held up to history
as haters of music, so that the story of America's music has always
been darkened at the outset by the shadow of this sinister cloud.
Fitter, in his Music in America, wrote: "The Puritans, who landed in
1620 at Plymouth Rock, brought with them their psalm-tunes and their
hatred of secular music." The first part of this statement is true— the
Puritans were psalm singers by tradition and predilection—but the sec-
ond part is contrary to the facts: love of psalmody did not necessarily
imply hatred of other kinds of music. The average Puritan was by no
means as severe or ascetic as is generally supposed. Enjoyment of fine
clothes, good food, wine, books, sociability, and music, was readily
reconcilable with the Puritan conscience.
In order to clear away some prevalent misconceptions, it would be
well to begin by making the acquaintance of a typical New England
Puritan. We may meet one in the person of Judge Samuel Sewall
(1652-1730), B.A. and M.A. at Harvard College; ordained minister;
justice of the peace; member of the New England Council; member
of the Court of Assistants (hence involved in the Salem witch trials);
Chief Justice of Massachusetts from 1718; and father of fifteen chil-
dren. It is easy for us to become intimately acquainted with Judge
Sewall, to learn of his tastes and occupations and interests, because
throughout nearly the whole of his long and busy life he kept a de-
tailed diary that has come down to us just as he wrote it. From the
pages of this diary emerges, not a Saint-Gaudens statue of gloom-
ridden pride, but the lifelike portrait of a very human person.
3
4 | Preparation
First of all, the Judge— he weighs 193 pounds with his light coat on
—will want good food, and plenty of it. Note with what relish he re-
cords a dinner in Cambridge, England: "Mr. Littel dined with us at
our inn: had a Legg Mutton boiled and Colly-Flower, Garrets, Rosted
Fowls, and a dish of Pease." Back home in New England there was no
lack of good fare, including that famous apple pie, as the diary testi-
fies on October i, 1697: "Had first Butter, Honey, Curds and Cream.
For Diner, very good Rost Lamb, Turkey, Fowls, Aplepy." Once,
when the Judge stayed in the Council Chamber "for fear of the Rain,"
he "din'd alone upon Kilby's Pyes and good Beer." Besides beer, the
Judge enjoys wine (both sack and claret), ale, and a dram or two of
that "Black-Cherry Brandy" that Madam Winthrop gave him when
he was courting her (after the death of his first wife, he courted four
widows in succession, and married two of them). He prefers to dine
and drink with a numerous and convivial company. Witness the diary
for August 25, 1709: "In the even I invited the Govr. and Council to
drink a glass of Wine with me; about 20 came. . . . Gave them va-
riety of good Drink, and at going away a large piece of Cake Wrap'd
in Paper."
Judge Sewall would be pleased to have some books at hand for
leisurely browsing. He writes of a visit to a friend in Narragansett:
"Din'd at Bright 's: while Diner was getting ready I read Ben Jonson,
a Folio." The play from which he read was Jonson's The Poetaster,
and he quotes some lines from it in his diary:
Wake, our Mirth begins to dye,
Quicken it with Tunes and Wine.
Raise your Notes; you'r out, fie, fie,
This drowsiness is an ill sign.
This introduces the subject of music, which was very near to Se wall's
heart. For him, no entertainment was complete without music. Once
he was invited to a Council Dinner, and notes with disappointment:
"Had no musick, though the Lieut. Govr. had promised it." On the
occasion of the dinner in Cambridge, already mentioned, the music did
not fail: "Three Musicians came in, two Harps and a Violin, and
gave us Musick." During a visit to Coventry, on the same English
trip, he notes: "Had three of the City Waits bid me good morrow
with their Wind Musick." While in London he took the opportunity
to attend a public concert: "Mr. Brattle and I went to Covent Garden
PURITAN PSALM SINGERS 5
and heard a Consort of Musick." But the Judge was not content
merely to listen to music: he loved to raise a good tune himself. Re-
ferring to a former classmate at Harvard, he wrote: "We were Fel-
lows together at College and have sung many a tune in Consort,"
which would be the early New England variety of barbershop har-
mony. In later life, Judge Sewall continued to enjoy part singing, as
indicated by an entry in his diary for May u, 1698: "In the new
Room with the widow Galis and her daughter Sparhawk; sung the
ii4th Psalm. Simon catch'd us a base" (i.e., Simon sang the bass part).
The Judge was fond of psalm singing, especially with widows.
Judge Sewall's fondness for psalm singing was shared by his fellow
Puritans, both in old and new England. But here it is necessary to
correct two prevailing misconceptions: one, that Puritans sang only
psalms; two, that only Puritans sang psalms. The singing of metrical
versions of the Psalms of David in the vernacular was a heritage shared
by all Protestants outside of Germany, where the Lutheran chorale
prevailed. Among the French Huguenots, in Switzerland, in the Low
Countries, in Scotland and England, the use of psalmody was wide-
spread. In England psalms were sung by both Puritans and "Cav-
aliers," that is, by nonconformists and by adherents of the established
church. In 1559 Queen Elizabeth granted formal permission for psalms
and spiritual songs to be sung in English churches "for the comfort-
ing of such as delight in music." In the following year appeared an
enlarged edition of a famous English psalter destined to play an im-
portant role in the musical life of New England:
Psalmes of David in Englishe Metre, by Thomas Sternhold and
others: . . . Very mete to be used of all sorts of people privately for
their godly solace & comfort, laying aparte all ungodly songes &
ballades, which tende only to the nourishing of vice, and corrupting
of youth.
Long before this psalter was brought to Massachusetts by the
Puritans, English psalms were heard in America, and in a manner con-
firming that they were indeed "used of all sorts of people." In the year
1577, Sir Francis Drake sailed from England on his celebrated voyage
around the world. In June, 1579, he landed on the coast of northern
California, and lay there for five weeks, while his men camped ashore.
The Indians proved friendly and frequently visited the encampment.
6 j Preparation
This is what we find in an account of the voyage written by Drake's
chaplain, Francis Fletcher:
In the time of which prayers, singing of Psalmes, and reading
of certaine Chapters in the Bible, they sate very attentively: and ob-
serving the end of every pause, with one voice still cried, Oh, as
greatly rejoycing in our exercises. Yea they took such pleasure in
our singing of Psalmes, that whensoever they resorted to us, their
first request was commonly this, Gnadhy by which they intreated
that we would sing.
It has been suggested that the word Gnadh was intended to be an imi-
tation of the English singing through their noses—a habit allegedly
transmitted to New England somewhat later. Be this as it may, the
passage quoted above will serve to dispel the notion that psalm sing-
ing was the exclusive preoccupation of Puritans.
As to whether the Puritans sang secular songs as well as psalms,
that is a question bound up with the Puritan attitude toward music as
a whole, into which we shall now inquire.
"Musick is a good gift of God"
The black legend of the Puritan hatred of music has been strangely
persistent. Here is a sampling of American opinions on this subject
ranging over the past fifty or sixty years: the Puritan looked upon
music as fashioned by the evil designs of the Tempter; the Plymouth
Pilgrims brought with them a hatred of music unparalleled in history;
in the early days in New England, instrumental music was looked
upon as a snare of the devil; secular music of all kinds was sternly
interdicted as a menace to the salvation of souls; the Puritans were
forbidden to invent new tunes; in the early days of the New England
colonies psalm singing was the only note of music heard. And so on-
one might fill several pages with similar excerpts. It would be nearer
the truth to say that music as an art was cherished by the Puritans,
but its abuse was not tolerated, and it was regarded as having its high-
est use as an aid to worship.
In other words, the Puritan attitude toward music was not antag-
onistic or intolerant, but it 'was moralistic. That is, they judged music
according to the way it was used. They considered it wrong to sing
PURITAN PSALM SINGERS 7
bawdy or obscene songs-and a great many of these circulated in those
times— and they objected to music as an incentive to wanton or las-
civious dancing, of which there was also a great deal in those times.
Their objection to instrumental music in churches was based on reli-
gious grounds: it smacked of the "ceremonial worship" and "popery"
against which they stood. To the use of instrumental' music on social
occasions, or in the home, they did not object. To mention only a
few prominent cases, John Milton was an amateur organist, Cromwell
had a private organ and engaged a large band of musicians for his
daughter's wedding, and John Bunyan had a "chest of viols" for his
recreation.
Now, the judging of music according to its uses was by no means
peculiar to the Puritans. This was the view held, for example, by the
noted music publisher, composer, and theorist, John Playford, who
brought out numerous widely used collections of secular music,, both
vocal and instrumental, including the often-reprinted English Dancing
Master and Hilton's Catch that Catch Can. In his Introduction to the
Skill of Mustek (London, 1655), Playford writes:
The first and chief Use of Musick is for the Service and Praise
of God, whose gift it is. The second Use is for the Solace of Men,
which as it is agreeable unto Nature, so it is allowed by God, as a
temporal Blessing to recreate and cheer men after long study and
weary labor in their Vocations.
After lamenting that "our late and solemn Musick, both Vocal and
Instrumental, is now justl'd out of Esteem by the new Corants and
Jiggs of Foreigners" (a theme upon which every age makes its own
variations), Playford concludes by saying, "I believe it [music] is an
helper both to good and evil, and will therefore honour it when it
moves to Vertue, and shall beware of it when it would flatter into
Vice."
No better statement of the Puritan attitude toward music could be
found; yet it was stated by a man who was not himself a Puritan,
though his publications, including the one from which we have just
quoted, were well known and highly esteemed by the Puritans, in-
cluding those of New England. Philip Stubbs, a writer often cited as
holding "puritanical" views, in his Anatomic of Abuses (1583), warns
that music "allureth to vanitie," yet adds:
8 | Preparation
I grant that Musick is a good gift of God, and that it delighteth
bothc man and beast, reviveth the spirits, conforteth the heart and
maketh it redyer to serve God; and therefor did David bothe use
Musick himselfe, and also commend the use of it to his posteritie,
and being used to that end, for man's privat recreation, Musick is
very laudable.
One of the most rabid ranters against worldly amusements, William
Prynne, in his Histrio-Mastix (1633), affirms that "Musicke of itself
is lawfull, and usefull and commendable."
In New England, we find the Rev. Increase Mather, in his Remark-
able Providences (1684), praising "the sweetness and delightfulness of
Musick" for its natural power to soothe "melancholy passions." In the
poems of Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), the most notable New Eng-
land poet of the early colonial period, we find numerous references
to music, mentioned in such a way as to make it obvious that this
Puritan bluestocking had both an understanding and a love of musical
art. Here is an example:
I heard the merry grasshopper then sing,
The black glad Cricket bear a second part,
They kept one tune, and plaid on the same string,
Seeming to glory in their little art.
Music was loved and skillfully practiced by that band of Separatists
whom we call "Pilgrims." The founder of the Separatists was a cer-
tain Robert Browne, known to be very fond of music and reputed to
be "a singular good lutenist." One of the Pilgrim Fathers, Edward
Winslow, has left us an account of their departure from Holland,
when they took leave of their exiled brethren:
They that stayed at Leyden feasted us that were to go, at our
pastor's house, being large; where we refreshed ourselves, after tears,
with singing of psalms, making joyful melody in our hearts, as well
as with the voice, there being many of our congregation very expert
in music; and indeed it was the sweetest melody that ever mine ears
heard.1
We may conclude, then, that among the New England settlers
there were as many music lovers as one finds in the average group of
1 Winslow, Hypocrasie Unmasked (1646), quoted in Pratt, The Music of tb*
Pilgrims. (Italics added.)
PURITAN PSALM SINGERS 9
normal human beings; and that, while they had a predilection for psalm
singing, they cultivated other types of music as far as circumstances
permitted. Instrumental music and secular songs were by no means un-
known to them.
Black legends and blue laws
Contrary to popular belief, instrumental music was not anathema
to the Puritans, nor did they ever pass any laws, in Connecticut or
elsewhere, forbidding the use of certain instruments. Instrumental
music in religious worship was frowned upon because it smacked of
"popery," but, as stated by the Rev. John Cotton in his Singing of
Psalms a Gospel Ordinance (1647), "^ private use of any Instrument
of musick" was not forbidden. Specific references to musical instru-
ments in New England before 1700 are rare, yet they are mentioned
several times. The will of Mr. Nathaniell Rogers, of Rowley, Massa-
chusetts, dated 1664, mentions "A treble viall" (viol), valued at ten
shillings. The Rev. Edmund Browne, of Sudbury, at his death in
1678, left a "bass Vyol" and several music books. The Boston printer
and engraver John Foster, a graduate of Harvard (1667), owned a
guitar and a viol. On December i, 1699, Judge Samuel Sewall noted
in his diary, "Was at Mr. Killer's to enquire for my wife's virginal."
The virginal (or virginals) was a fashionable keyboard instrument, of
those times, and this Mr. Hiller must have been a tuner and repairer
of musical instruments. It is unlikely that he would have long remained
in business had Mrs. Sewall been his only client.
The alleged enactment of 1675 "that no one should play on any
kind of music except the drum, the trumpet and the jewsharp," is, like
many of the so-called "blue laws," a pure fabrication concocted by
the Rev. Samuel Peters and originally published in his General His-
tory of Connecticut (1781), a work as fanciful as it is malicious.2 The
reason Peters exempted the drum, the trumpet, and the jew's-harp
from the imaginary ban was that these instruments were so widely
known and used in New England. Drums and trumpets were used for
military and civil purposes, and the jew's-harp was a favorite item
of barter with the Indians. The jew's-harp may also have served as
"the poor man's viol," for it was inexpensive and easily carried about.
•Sec Scholes, The Puritans and Music, pp. 370-373.
io I Preparation
Although anrimusical laws never actually existed in New Eng-
land, there are instances when music and dancing figure in court pro-
ceedings of that period. In such cases, however, the music is only in-
cidental to what we would call "disorderly conduct," generally com-
bined with drunkenness. Here are a few typical examples. In Salem,
Massachusetts, in 1653, one Thomas Wheeler was "fined for profane
and foolish dancing, singing and wanton speeches, probably being
drunk." In July, 1678, Josiah Bridges deposed that he saw "an Indian
drunk on brandy and cider" in Mr. Crod's house, and that "one night
while he was there, there was music and dancing when it was pretty
late." In 1679, also in Salem, Mary Indicott deposed that "she saw
fiddling and dancing in John Wilkinson's house and Hue drinking
liquor there." For one such case that came to the attention of the au-
thorities, there were doubtless dozens or even hundreds that went un-
noticed. Hence these court records testify that there was fiddling and
dancing and profane singing among the common people of New Eng-
land in early colonial times.
If we wish to know what kind of music they played and danced
to, we have only to look into Playford's The English Dancing Master
(1651; many later editions), a collection of the favorite popular tunes
of that time, including such famous ones as "Sellinger's Round,"
"Trenchmore" and "Green-sleeves." Thfcse were tunes that circulated
in oral tradition long before they got into print: we can be certain
that the people of all the American colonies knew them well.
The Puritan attitude toward dancing was not sweepingly con-
demnatory. The Rev. John Cotton, very influential in New England,
wrote in 1625: "Dancing (yea though mixt) I would not simply con-
demn. . . . Only lascivious dancing to wanton ditties and in amorous
gestures and wanton dalliances, especially after great feasts, I would
bear witness against, as great flabella libidinis" The Puritans' dislike
of May Day celebrations was due not only to the fact that these were
of pagan origin, being survivals of the Saturnalia of the ancients, but
also to the fact that the Maypole dancings frequently led to sexual
excesses of the most licentious character. (The Maypole itself is of
phallic origin.) Romantic sentimentalism has made the Maypole a sym-
bol of innocent merriment, but contemporary accounts give a more
realistic picture. This point is mentioned here because of the widely
diffused legend of "Merry Mount," the name given to Thomas Mor-
ton's settlement at Mount Wollaston (now Braintree, Massachusetts),
PURITAN PSALM SINGERS 11
which has been held up as a bright example of Cavalier freedom and
gaiety contrasted with Puritan severity and gloom. In his tale The
Maypole of Merry Mount, Hawthorne describes the May Day festivi-
ties at Merry Mount in the most glowing colors, and then goes on to
say: "Unfortunately, there were men in the new world, of a sterner
faith than these Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was
a settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers
before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the cornfield, till
evening made it prayer time again." Unfortunate indeed that our coun-
try was settled by dismal wretches who believed in prayer and hard
work!
William Bradford, in his Of Plimmoth Plantation, set forth some of
the complaints of the Plymouth colonists against the settlement at
Mount Wollaston:
They also set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it
many days together, inviting the Indean women, for their consorts,
dancing and frisking togither (like so many fairies, or furies rather),
and worse practises. . . . Morton likewise (to shew his poetrie)
composed sundry rimes and verses, some tending to lascivious-
ness. . . .»
One of the songs used in the revels at Merry Mount has been
preserved by Thomas Morton himself, in his New English Canaan,
where he also tells us in what manner it was sung:
There was likewise a merry song made, which, (to make their
Revells more fashionable,) was sung with a Corus, every man bear-
ing his part; which they performed in a daunce, hand in hand about
the Maypole, whiles one of the Company sung and filled out the
good liquor, like gammedes and lupiter.
The Songe
Drinke and be merry, merry, merry boyes;
Let all your delight be in Hymens ioyes;
Jo to Hymen now the day is come,
About the merry Maypole take a Roome.
Make greene garlons, bring bottles out
And fill sweet nectar, freely about,
8 Bradford, Of Plimmotb Plantation, ed. by W. C. Ford (Boston, 1912), vol. II,
pp. 48-49.
12 | Preparation
Vncovcr thy head, and feare no harme,
For hers good liquor to keep it warme.
Then drink and be merry, etc.
lo to Hymen, etc.4
This conventional drinking ditty may well have come under the
heading of "harmless mirth," as Morton claimed, but all was not harm-
less at Merry Mount, either morally or politically. The Puritans un-
doubtedly had ample reason for disapproving of the immoral condi-
tions at Merry Mount; yet their main grievance against Morton was
that he sold firearms to the Indians and instructed them in their use,
thus creating a serious threat to the very existence of the newly estab-
lished colonies. This was a grave crime that fully justified Morton's
arrest and deportation.
Another phase of the anti-Puritan black legend is that these "dismal
wretches" had no interest in artistic or intellectual matters, apart from
theology. Yet the Mayflower, on its voyage to America, was well
stocked with books, and not all of them were religious tracts. History,
philosophy, travel, poetry, and music were all represented. Among
the three hundred volumes in the personal library of William Brew-
ster, one of the original Pilgrim Fathers, was a celebrated musical
work by one of the most notable composers of the Elizabethan period,
Richard Allison (or Alison). The title is worth quoting in full:
The Psalmes of David in Metre, the plame song beeing the com-
mon tunne to be sung and plaide upon the Lute, Orpharyon, Citterne
or Base Violl, severally or altogether, the singing pan to be either
Tenor or Treble of the instrument, according to the nature of the
voyce, or for foure voyces. With tenne short Twmes in the end, to
which for the most part all the Psalmes may be usually sung, for
the use of such as are of mean skill, and whose leisure least serve tb
to practize. . . . (London, if??).
This title is in itself an informative commentary on the musical prac-
tice of those days, and it indicates that Allison's book could be used
for a wide variety of musical purposes, ranging from concerted vocal
and instrumental performance to the simplest psalmody. Although the
Plymouth settlers were certainly among those "whose leisure least
« Morton, New English Canaan, ed. by C F. Adams (Boston, 1883), pp. 279-
280.
PURITAN PSALM SINGERS 13
scrveth to practize," we know from Winslow's testimony that they
were not among "such as arc of mean skill." Whatever use Brewster
and his companions may have made of Allison's volume, it unques-
tionably forms a direct link between them and the finest contrapuntal
art of Elizabethan England.
The lute, orpharion, and cittern mentioned by Allison were elab-
orate, delicate, and costly stringed instruments scarcely practical for
use in a frontier community. By the beginning of the eighteenth cen-
tury, such wind instruments as the flute, flageolet, and oboe (then
spelled haut-boy) came into general use, along with the violin, and
were soon imported by the American colonies. In 1716, an advertise-
ment in the Boston News announced the arrival of a shipment of in-
struments from London, consisting of "Flageolets, Flutes, Haut-boys,
Bass-viols, Violins, bows, strings, reeds for haut-boys, books of in-
struction for all these instruments, books of Ruled Paper To be sold
at the Dancing School of Mr. Enstone in Sudbury Street near the
Orange Tree, Boston. n So by this time Boston had a fully equipped
music store, and located in a Dancing School at that! The mention
of ruled paper raises a question in my mind. Ruled paper is for writ-
ing music. If the paper was advertized it was probably sold, and if
it was sold it was probably used. By whom and for what? Amateurs
who studied instruction books for various instruments would perhaps
carry their interest a step further and begin writing "Lessons" or other
pieces for their favorite instrument. This supposition is strengthened
by the fact that treatises on musical composition were available, and
were used in New England, from the earliest times.
In 1720 the Rev. Thomas Symmes, of Bradford, Massachusetts,
published an essay, The Reasonableness of Regular Singing, or Singing
by Note, in which he writes, among other things, of music at Har-
vard (founded in 1636). Speaking of what he calls "Regular Singing/'
Symmes says:
It was studied, known and approved of in our College, for many
years after its first founding. This is evident from the Musical
Theses which were formerly printed, and from some writings con-
taining some tunes, with directions for singing by note, as they are
now sung; and these are yet in being, though of more than sixty
years standing; besides no man that studied music, as it is treated of
by Alstead, Play ford and others^ could be ignorant of it.
14 | Preparation
The musical theses and writings to which Symmes refers were subse-
quently destroyed when the library of Harvard College burned. The
passage I have italicized is what concerns us particularly, for Symmes
dearly takes it for granted that educated men in New England would
be familiar with the theoretical works on music that he mentions. The
author whom he calls "Alstead" was Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588-
1638), and the work in question is undoubtedly his Templum Musi-
cum: or, The Musical Synopsis, of the learned and famous J.H.A., be-
ing a compendium of the rudiments both of the mathematical and
practical part of musick, of which subject not any book is extant in
our English tongue. Faithfully translated out of Latin by J. Birchensha
. . . London, 1663.
In spite of this title blurb, Playford's book, An Introduction to the
Skill of Musickj had been in print since 1654, and new editions ap-
peared at frequent intervals until 1730. It included a section on com-
posing music in parts, to which, after 1683, Henry Purcell contrib-
uted. The high standing enjoyed by Playford's book in New England
is attested to by the fact that when, in 1 698, music came to be included
in the Bay Psalm Book, the tunes were taken from the eleventh edi-
tion of Playford's standard work, which was one of the best books of
its kind ever written.
"Vayne and triflying ballades"
"Honest John" Playford was the leading English music publisher
of his time, and we can safely assume that his numerous collections
of vocal and instrumental music were well known in New England.
There is ample evidence that secular songs circulated widely in New
England, and the fact that most of the evidence is indirect does not
make it any less valid. First of all, let us take an instance that rests
upon direct evidence. The Rev. John Cotton had a son who was born
at sea on the voyage to America. This son, aptly named Seaborn Cot-
ton, in due course became a student at Harvard and, while there, found
time to copy out in his "commonplace book" the words of several
English ballads, which were currently sung to popular tunes of the
day. Among these ballads are "The Lovesick Maid, or Cordelia's
Lamentation for the Absence of Her Gerhard," "The Last Lamentation
of the Languishing Squire, or Love Overcomes All Things," and "The
Two Faithful Lovers." It is obvious that even in seventeenth-century
New England, a young man's fancy turned to thoughts of love, and
PURITAN PSALM SINGERS 15
that even a divinity student at Harvard could find relaxation in senti-
mental "tear-jerkers." The ballad of "The Two Faithful Lovers,1 ' sung
to the tune of "Franklin Is Fled Away," is a stilted tale of woe, in
dialogue form, which tells of a lover who had to flee from England.
Refusing to be parted from him, his sweetheart dresses as a man and
goes on board; during the voyage to Venice the ship is wrecked and
the girl is drowned. Whereupon the lover laments:
You loyal lovers all
that hear this ditty,
Sigh and lament my fall,
let's move you to pity:
She lies now in the deep,
In everlasting sleep,
And left me here to weep
in great distress.
This is pretty poor poetry, evidently the work of some hack, and can-
not compare with the magnificent old traditional ballads that un-
doubtedly circulated through oral tradition in New England. Benja-
min Franklin, in a letter to his brother Peter, refers to "some country
girl in the heart of Massachusetts, who has never heard any other than
psalm tunes or 'Chevy Chase,7 the 'Children in the Woods/ the 'Span-
ish Lady/ and such old, simple ditties"— mentioning in a breath three
of the most famous English ballads. Franklin, it is true, was writing
around the middle of the eighteenth century; but his remark indicates
that ballad singing and psalm singing went hand-in-hand in New Eng-
land. And if a country girl of his generation knew these ballads, we
can be sure that her parents and grandparents sang them before her,
because that is how they were handed down.
The Rev. Thomas Symmes, advocating the establishment of regu-
lar singing schools in 1720, argued that these would have "a tendency
to divert young people . . . from learning idle, foolish, yea, perni-
cious songs and ballads, and banish all such trash from their minds."
How often, in our own times, have the comics been denounced as
trash and all kinds of alternatives been proposed for substituting more
edifying reading matter for our youngsters. Yet the vogue of the
comics continues unabated; and so, no doubt, it was in early New
England with those "idle, foolish, yea, pernicious songs and ballads"
which Reverend Symmes was so anxious to prevent young people
from learning. *
16 | Preparation
Geneva jigs and Puritan hornpipes
Although young people might naturally prefer a little more variety
and spice in their vocal diet, the singing of psalms was by no means
such a dull and solemn business as is generally supposed. In its hey-
day it was done with much verve and gusto. Shakespeare, in The
Winter's Tale, has a character say, "But one Puritan amongst them,
and he sings psalms to hornpipes." Now, the hornpipe was a lively
dance, and the singing of a psalm to it would make it no less lively.
Even if we are not to take Shakespeare's quip literally, the point re-
mains that early Puritan psalm singing gave an impression of liveli-
ness and vigor, which was turned to scorn and ridicule by the ene-
mies of Puritanism. This is confirmed by a passage in John Cotton's
treatise, Singing of Psalms a Gospel Ordinance, in which he answers
objections to psalm singing raised by those who considered the melo-
dies were made by "sinful men." Cotton writes:
For neither the man of sinne . . . nor any Antichristian Church
have had any hand in turning Davids Psalms into English Songs and
Tunes, or are wont to make any Melody in Singing them; yea, they
reject them as Genevah Gigs; and there be Cathedrall Priests of an
Antichristian spirit, that have scoffed at Puritan-Ministers, as calling
the people to sing one of Hopkins Jigs, and so hop into the pulpit.
Let us look more closely at some of the "Genevah Gigs," to see
what truth may lie behind these gibing jests.
The Plymouth Pilgrims used a psalm book prepared especially for
the Separatist congregation in Holland by Henry Ainsworth and first
printed at Amsterdam in 1612 (five other editions followed, the last
in 1690). This is the book that Longfellow describes in "The Court-
ship of Miles Standish," when he pictures Priscilla singing at home:
Open wide in her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth,
Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together,
Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall of a churchyard,
Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses.
The melodies are for one voice only, printed in the customary dia-
mond-shaped notes of the period, and without bar lines. There are
thirty-nine different tunes. Concerning the origin of the melodies,
Ainsworth writes:
PURITAN PSALM SINGERS 17
Tunes for the Psalms I find none set of God; so that each people
is to use the most grave, decent and comfortable manner of singing
that they know. . . . The singing-notes, therefore, I have most taken
from our former Englished Psalms, when they will fit the measure
of the verse. And for the other long verses I have also taken (for the
most part) the gravest and easiest tunes of the French and Dutch
Psalmes.
By "our former Englished Psalms," Ainsworth meant the Sternhold
and Hopkins version, which had been completed in 1562. Several years
earlier an edition of "Sternhold and Hopkins" had been printed in
Geneva for the use of English Protestants who had taken refuge in
Switzerland; several of the tunes in this edition were taken from the
French psalter, for which the music had been composed or arranged
by Louis Bourgeois. Subsequent editions of "Sternhold and Hopkins'*
continued these borrowings from French sources, so that Ainsworth's
psalter actually contained even more tunes of French origin than he
suspected. To take one example, the tune for the looth Psalm, as it
appears in both "Sternhold and Hopkins" and "Ainsworth," is de-
rived from the French setting of the i34th Psalm. And this, in turn,
bears a striking resemblance to a French secular chanson of the six-
teenth century, "II n'a icy celuy qui n'ait sa belle" ("There Is None
Here without His Fair One"). A number of other tunes in the French
psalter, which eventually found their way, more or less altered, into
English psalmbooks, appear to have had a similar origin.
Musically, the Ainsworth Psalter is of great interest. The tunes
have considerable metrical variety and rhythmic freedom. Only a few
of the psalms in Ainsworth's version use the four-line ballad stanza
(so-called "common meter") that later became so tiresomely prevalent
in English psalmody. Stanzas of five, six, eight, and twelve lines are
frequently used by Ainsworth, and he has no less than eight different
rhythms for the six-syllable line alone. In the words of Waldo Selden
Pratt: "This music represents the folk-song style, with its symmetrical
and echoing lines, each with a definite unity and all fused into a total
enveloping unity. But it is folk song that has retained great freedom
of inner structure. It may be that these thirty-nine melodies illustrate
more than one strain of folk-song tradition." 8 Here, then, is a docu-
ment fully worthy to be the cornerstone of America's music: stem-
6 Pratt, The Music of the Pilgrims.
18 | Preparation
ming from folk traditions, international in background, marked by
melodic freedom and rhythmic variety— qualities that will repay a
careful study of the modest little psalter that the Pilgrims brought
with them to Plymouth.
Below is a verse from the looth Psalm, in Ainsworth's translation,
together with the tune as he printed it:
Showt to Jehovah, al the earth;
Serv ye Jehovah with gladness;
Before Him come with singing mirth;
Know that Jehovah He God is.
J J J J J J rl M J J J J J J J =
I
This stirring tune, sung in a lively and jubilant spirit, became a fa-
vorite with the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England. "Jehovah," in-
cidentally, was pronounced Jehovay. Nicknamed "Old Hundredth,"
the tune appears in modern hymnals as a setting for the Doxology,
but in an altered form that causes the tempo to drag.
Another tune from the Ainrworth Psalter, known as "Old 124" or
"Toulon," which is still used in truncated form in modern hymnals,
demonstrates the type of melody used for the psalms with five lines
and ten syllables to the line, as in this version of Psalm 124:
Our sowl is as a bird escaped free
From out of the intangling fowler's snare.
The snare is broke and we escaped are.
Our succour in Jehovah's name shal bee,
That of the heav'ns and earth is the maker.
r rr r
f-
1 _ — p ._ —
r> 1 P [•
— \ —
4- — I f ^M
FT r -f
— 1 1 —
$ fr i* rrrr fr i»rr
PURITAN PSALM SINGERS 1Q
This tune was taken from the Geneva Psalter of 1560, and it appears
as the "proper" tune for Psalm 1 24 in "Sternhold and Hopkins."
The early New England settlers really believed in coming before
Him "with singing mirth." With St. James they said, "If any be merry,
let him sing psalms." If jigs and hornpipes could be turned to the
service of God, so much the better. They enjoyed psalm singing not
only because it was edifying but also because it was fun.
The Bay Psalm Book
The Plymouth colonists continued to use the Ainrworth Psalter
until 1692, a year after their merger with the larger and more power-
ful Massachusetts Bay Colony. They apparently found it increasingly
difficult to cope with the long and varied melodies of Ainsworth. The
prevailing trend was toward the jog-trot ballad stanza of common
meter, with alternating lines of eight and six syllables, as illustrated in
this translation of the 23d Psalm from the Bay Psalm Book:
The Lord to mee a shepheard is,
want therefore shall not I.
He in the folds of tender grasse,
doth cause me downe to lie.
The Massachusetts Bay colonists at first used the Sternhold and
Hopkins Psalter, but they became dissatisfied with the translations, as
not being sufficiently faithful to the original. For this reason a group
of New England divines prepared a new version, which was printed
at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1 640, as The Whole Booke of Psalmes
Faithfully Translated into English Metre. Commonly known as the
Bay Psalm Book, it was the first book printed in the English colonies
of North America and held sway in New England for several genera-
tions (the twenty-sixth edition appeared at Boston in 1744). Numer-
ous editions were also printed in England and Scotland. A copy of
the first edition was sold at auction in New York in 1947 for $151,000,
said to be the highest price ever paid for any book, including the
Gutenberg Bible.8
No music was included in early editions of the Bay Psalm Booky
but an "Admonition to the Reader" contained detailed instructions re-
garding the tunes to which psalms in various meters might be sung.
6 The New York Times, Jan. 29, 1947.
20 | Preparation
For example, "The verses of these psalmes may be reduced to six
kindes, the first whereof may be sung in very neere fourty common
tunes; as they are collected out of our chief musicians by Thomas
Ravenscroft." The reference to Ravenscroft is significant, for it shows
that the New England Puritans were acquainted with the best musi-
cal publications of that time. Ravenscroft's psalter had been printed at
London in 1621, with the title: The Whole Eooke of Psalmes, with the
Hymnes Evangelicall and Songs SpiritualL . . . Newly corrected and
enlarged by Thomas Ravenscroft^ Bachelar of Musicke. This notable
collection contains four-part settings by many of the most prominent
English composers of the period, including Thomas Morley, Thomas
Tallis, Giles Farnaby, John Dowland, John Farmer, Michael Caven-
dish, Richard Allison, and Ravenscroft himself —a total of 105 compo-
sitions. Note that the compilers of the Bay Psalm Book take pains to
mention that Ravenscroft's collection enjoyed the collaboration of
"our chief musicians," which would have been a matter of indiffer-
ence to them had they lacked artistic appreciation.
By the time the ninth edition of the Bay Psalm Book was ready
to appear, the editors had decided that it should be provided with a
selection of the tunes most frequently used. Thus, music was included
for the first time in the revised and enlarged edition printed at Boston
in 1698, under the title:
The Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, of the Old and New
Testament. . . . For the use, Edification and Comfort of the Saints
in publick and private, especially in New-England. The Ninth Edi-
tion.
The music, in two parts (soprano and bass), with solmization syllables,
is printed in five pages near the end of the book. The tunes are those
known as "Oxford," "Litchfield," "Low-Dutch," "York," "Windsor,"
"Cambridge," "St. David's," "Martyrs," "Hackney," "n9th Psalm
Tune," "looth Psalm Tune," "n5th Psalm Tune," and "i48th Psalm
Tune." For these tunes, the compilers of the Bay Psalm Book turned
once more to an excellent English source, Playford's Introduction to
the Skill of Mustek, of which the eleventh edition had been published
in London in 1687. The thirteen tunes included in the Bay Psalm Book
are identical, save for two slight misprints, with those printed in this
edition of Playford's famous work.7 The instructions for singing the
7 1 am indebted to Dr. Carleton Spraguc Smith for this identification.
PURITAN PSALM SINGERS 21
psalms, with the classification in various meters, are also taken from
Playford's book. No better guide than Playford could have been
chosen.
In contrast to the metrical variety displayed in the melodies of the
Ainswonh Psalter, nearly all the tunes printed in the Bay Psalm Book
were in common meter. This was indicative of the trend toward regu-
larity and standardization that made itself increasingly felt in New
England psalmody and hymnody during the eighteenth century. But
along with this trend toward standardization, as manifested in the
movement for "Regular Singing," there was a countercurrent, stem-
ming from the folk, that opposed the imposition of regular rules
and standardized procedures in singing. Thus, near the very begin-
ning of America's musical history, we encounter one of those clashes
of conflicting cultural traditions that dramatize the creation of a
people's music.
chapter two
New England reformers
They use many Quavers and Semiquavers, &c. And on this very account
it is they are pleased with it, and so very loath to part with it.
REV. NATHANIEL CHAUNCEY, REGULAR SINGING DEFENDED, NEW LONDON, 1728.
It is important to understand the conditions under which psalmody
and hymnody developed in New England during the eighteenth
century and to comprehend, in particular, the nature of the divergent
and conflicting cultural trends that made New England a virtual
battleground between the zealous reformers who advocated and tried
to impose "Regular Singing," and the common folk who preferred
their own way of singing, handed down by oral tradition. The
reformers, most of whom were clergymen educated at Harvard, held
that "the usual way of singing" practiced by the people was an abomi-
nation and an offense against good taste. But many of the people clung
tenaciously to their own way, for they thoroughly enjoyed it and
were therefore "so very loath to part with it," as the Rev. Nathaniel
Chauncey wrote. A typical argument of the opponents of the folk
style of psalm singing is the following, which appeared in a pamphlet
published by Chauncey: "It looks very unlikely to be the right way,
because that young people fall in with it; they are not wont to be so
forward for anything that is good." * This indicates, among other
things, that the folk way of singing was not cherished only by die-
hard oldsters, but that it also appealed to the younger generation.
The reformers referred to the style of singing to which they were
opposed as "the usual way" or "the common way" of singing. The
style of singing that they advocated they called "Regular Singing" or
"Singing by Note." Each camp was evidently thoroughly convinced
of the superior merits of its own kind of singing. There is no indica-
1 Chauncey, Regular Singing Defended.
22
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS 23
tion, however, that those who practiced "the common way" of sing-
ing endeavored to impose their convictions or their methods upon
others. They simply wished to be left alone to sing as they pleased.
It was the reformers, with their righteous zeal, who wanted to impose
their standards on everyone else. The title of a pamphlet written by
the Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey, of Durham, Connecticut, is revealing
in this respect: Regular Singing Defended and proved to be the only
true way of singing the songs of the Lord. . . . New London, 1728.
"The ONLY TRUE WAY!"
In his pamphlet, Chauncey employs the method of "Objection"
and "Answer." The arguments advanced in favor of "the common
way" are listed as "Objections." Each objection is followed by an an-
swer intended to refute the argument. For example:
Objection. This way of singing we use in the country is more
solemn, and therefore much more suitable and becoming.
Answer. But suppose by solemn you mean grave and serious.
Nothing makes more against the common way; for they will readily
grant that they use many Quavers and Semiquavers, &c. And on this
very account it is they are pleased with it, and so very loath to part
with it; neither do we own or allow any of them [i.e., "quavers, semi-
quavers, &c."] in the songs of the Lord. Judge then which is most
solemn.
Notice that in the Objection "the common way" of singing is re-
ferred to as the way of singing used in the country, which defines it
as a rural folk tradition. As for the use of "many Quavers and Semi-
quavers, &c.," we shall deal with that presently when we undertake
to describe the characteristics of the two opposed styles of singing,
one upheld by the common folk, the other by the educated clergy.
The printed accounts of early New England psalm singing that
have come down to us were all written by the advocates of Regular
Singing. The common people sang but did not write. Hence the
written accounts are definitely one-sided. It is upon these one-sided
accounts, polemical and prejudiced as they are, that historians have
based their descriptions of early New England psalmody. For exam-
ple, in 1721 Cotton Mather wrote: "It has been found ... in some of
our congregations, that in length of time, their singing has degener-
ated into an odd noise, that has more of what we want a name for,
24 I Preparation
than any Regular Singing in it." 2 In the same year, Thomas Walter
wrote: "I have observed in many places, one man is upon this note
while another is upon the note before him, which produces some-
thing so hideous and disorderly as is beyond expression bad." Seizing
upon such expressions as "an odd noise" and "hideous and disorderly,"
modern writers have not hesitated to make sweeping generalizations
regarding the manner of singing in New England, and have been con-
tent to dismiss it as deplorable. They have repeated as objective truth
the words of men who were attacking something they did not like,
something that was contrary to their own interests and inclinations,
The procedure is about the same as that of a writer who would base
a biography of a public man on material contained in the campaign
speeches of his political opponents.
Once we accept the premise that the advocates of Regular Singing
are polemical writers, that they are prejudiced and one-sided, we arc
in a position to use their writings more intelligently and more fruit-
fully. We may begin by discounting all that comes under the head-
ing of sheer name-calling, which includes such expressions as "an odd
noise," and such adjectives as "hideous," "disorderly," and "bad." The
same expressions have always been applied to music by people who
do not like it.8 Their only objective value is to indicate that the music
to which such terms are applied is different from the kind of music
to which the name-callers are accustomed or which they regard as
"the right thing." These abusive terms, then, serve to confirm the exist-
ence of a type of singing that was not "regular," that was not con-
ventional or correct according to educated opinion in early New
England.
The next question that we ask is: what were the characteristics oi
that "common way of singing" to which the reformers were so
strongly opposed? Since the writings of the reformers are the only
sources of written documentation that we possess, we must extract
our information from them. But we must look for whatever objective
information may be imbedded in the polemical verbiage. Chaunccy's
2 Mather, The Accomplished Singer, published in 1721 and "Intended for the
assistance of all that sing psalms with grace in their hearts: but more particu-
larly to accompany the laudable endeavours of those who are learning to sing
by Rule, and seeking to preserve a REGULAR SINGING in the Assemblies oi
the Faithful."
* For a thorough (and entertaining) documentation of this statement, consult
the Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicolas Slonimsky (New York, 1953).
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS 2$
statement regarding the "use of many Quavers and Semiquavers, &c."
(that etcetera is very important) is an example of objective informa-
tion that may be extracted from a polemical context. This written
documentation can be supplemented by the evidence of folklore,
which, being a survival of archaic practices, is a valuable adjunct to
cultural history. The evidence furnished by folklore will be discussed
later in this chapter.
The reformers
The leaders of the reform movement in New England's singing
methods were the Rev. Thomas Symmes (1677-1725), the Rev. John
Tufts (1689-1750), and the Rev. Thomas Walter (1696-1725), sup-
ported by a number of other clergymen, such as the Rev. Cotton
Mather and the Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey, who preached and wrote
in favor of "Regular Singing" or "Singing by Note." The Rev. John
Tufts, a graduate of Harvard, published a little work called A Very
Plain and Easy Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes, which
may have been issued around 1714, though no edition earlier than the
fifth (Boston, 1726) has been located. This went through eleven edi-
tions up to 1 744. It was a modest pamphlet of only twelve pages, con-
taining thirty-seven tunes set in three parts, with instructions for
singing adapted from Ravenscroft and Playford. Instead of musical
notation, Tufts used letters to indicate the notes of the scale, accord-
ing to the system of solmization then prevalent: F (fa), S (sol), L
(la), M (mi). The time value of the notes was indicated by a system
of punctuation. A letter standing alone was equal to a quarter note; a
letter followed by a period was equal to a half note; and one followed
by a colon, to a whole note. Tufts thought he had introduced an
"easy method of singing by letters instead of notes," but his system
was not widely adopted.
The Rev. Thomas Walter of Roxbury was also a graduate of Har-
vard, though during his student days he thought more of social pleas-
ure than of application to his studies. Fortunately he had a good mem-
ory and supplemented his education by listening to the remarkable
conversation of his learned uncle, Cotton Mather. In 1721, Walter
brought out The Grounds and Rules of Mustek Explained, or An
Introduction to the Art of Singing by Note. . . . Boston, Printed by
J. Franklin (who, by the way, was James Franklin, older brother of
26 I Preparation
Benjamin, who was then an apprentice in the shop). Walter's book
went through at least eight editions, the last in 1764. It was highly
regarded and exerted wide influence for upwards of forty years. It
was the first music book to be printed with bar lines in the North
American colonies.
The alternate title of Thomas Walter's book, An Introduction to
the Art of Singing by Note, claims closer attention at this point. As
we observed above, "singing by note" was one of the terms used by
the musical reformers to designate the "correct" or "regular" way of
singing that they advocated, which in effect meant singing the notes as
written or printed, without alterations, additions, or embellishments,
and in strict time and pitch. In his preface, Walter asserts that he was
thoroughly familiar with the common or country way of singing,
and speaks of himself as one "who can sing all the various Twistings
of the old Way, and that too according to the genius of most of the
Congregations." By the latter statement he meant that each congre-
gation had its own special manner of singing within the style of the
old or common way. It was only natural that Walter should be fa-
miliar with this manner of singing, since it was the way practiced
by most people. But as a college graduate, and an up-to-date, pro-
gressive young clergyman, he repudiated the old,- common way of
singing, and denounced it in the strongest terms. He writes of tunes
which
... are now miserably tortured, and twisted, and quavered, in some
churches, into an horrid Medley of confused and disorderly Noises.
. . . Our tunes are, for Want of a Standard to appeal to in all our
Singing, left to the Mercy of every unskilful Throat to chop and
alter, twist and change, according to their infinitely divers and no
less odd Humours and Fancies. . . .
And he sadly concludes: "Our Tunes have passed through strange
Metamorphoses . . . since their first introduction into the World."
Metamorphosis, or change, is the fate of all folk music, and constitutes
indeed one of its defining traits. So Walter is simply telling us, indi-
rectly, that these tunes underwent what we would now call a process
of folklorization. (The term "folklore," by the way, did not come into
usage until after 1840.)
In defending the Regular Way of singing psalm tunes, Walter
writes: "And this I am sure of, we sing them as they are prick'd down,
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS 2J
and I am sure the Country People do not." Of course not; they never
do.
The New England Cow ant for March 5, 1722, contains this sig-
nificant item:
On Thursday last in the afternoon, a Lecture was held at the
New Brick Church [Boston], by the Society for Promoting Regular
Singing in the worship of God. The Rev. Thomas Walter of Rox-
bury preach'd an excellent Sermon on that Occasion, The Sweet
Psalmist of Israel. The Singing was performed in Three Parts (ac-
cording to Rule) by about Ninety Persons skuTd in that Science,
to the great Satisfaction of a Numerous Assembly there Present.
This sermon was afterwards printed, also by J. Franklin, under the
following tide: The sweet Psalmist of Israel: A Sermon Preached at
the Lecture held in Boston, by the Society for promoting Regular and
Good Singing, and for reforming the Depravations and Debasement*
our Psalmody labours under, In Order to introduce the proper and
true Old Way of Singing. . . . (Boston, 1722.)
Both of these citations are interesting for several reasons. The first
reveals that there was a Society for Promoting Regular Singing at
Boston in the early 1720$, and that there then existed large choral
groups trained to sing in parts. The second defines the aims of the
reform movement as the correction of the "depravations and debase-
ments" of New England psalmody, and the introduction of "the
proper and true Old Way of Singing." If the reformers stood for new
methods and the correction of existing abuses, why did they speak
of restoring the Old Way of Singing, and why was this the "proper
and true" way? The Rev. Thomas Symmes will help us to answer
these questions.
Symmes's anonymous pamphlet, The Reasonableness of Regular
Singing, or Singing by Note (1720), is subtitled "An Essay to revive
the true and ancient mode of Singing psalm-tunes according to the
pattern of our New-England psalm-books." According to Symmes,
singing by note was "the ancientest way" among the early New Eng-
land settlers. Emphasizing this point, he writes:
There are persons now living, children and grand-children of the
first settlers of New-England, who can very well remember that
their Ancestors sung by note, and they learned to sing of them, and
28 | Preparation
they have more than their bare words to prove that they speak the
truth, for many of them can sing tunes exactly by note which they
learnt of their fathers.
Symmes will also define for us Regular Singing or Singing by Note:
Now singing by note is giving every note its proper pitch, and
turning the voice in its proper place, and giving to every note its
true length and sound. Whereas, the usual way varies much from
this. In it, some notes are sung too high, others too low, and most too
long, and many turnings or flourishings with the voice (as they call
them) are made where they should not be, and some are wanting
where they should have been.
This is an extremely significant passage, for it sums up the two op-
posing styles of singing that were contending for supremacy in New
England. Regular Singing was according to the pattern of the psalm-
books: giving to every note its proper pitch and true length as
"prick'd" in the book, and turning the voice only as required by the
melody. This, according to the reformers, was the proper and true
"Old Way of Singing." How and why, then, was it abandoned and
allowed to undergo "depravations and debasements," to become in-
crusted with what Cotton Mather called "indecencies"? Again, the
obliging Mr. Symmes has an explanation:
The declining from, and getting beside the rule, was gradual and
insensible. Singing Schools and Singing books being laid aside, there
was no way to learn; but only by hearing of tunes sung, or by tak-
ing the run of the tune, as it is phrased. The rules of singing not be-
ing taught or learnt, every one sang as best pleased himself, and
every leading-singer, would take the liberty of raising any note of
the tune, or lowering of it, as best pleased his ear; and add such
turns and flourishes as were grateful to him; and this was done so
gradually, as that but few if any took notice of it. One Clerk or
Chorister would alter the tunes a little in his day, the next a little
in his, and so on one after another, till in fifty or sixty years it
caused a considerable alteration. If the alteration had been made de-
signedly by any Master of Music, it is probable that the variation
from our psalm-books would have been alike in all our congrega-
tions; whereas some vary much more than others, and it is hard to
find two that sing exactly alike. . . . Your usual way of singing is
handed down by tradition only, and whatsoever is only so conveyed
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS 29
down to us, it is a thousand to one if it be not miserably corrupted,
in three or four-score years' time. . . .
The Rev. Thomas Symmes is truly invaluable; what he tells us is
interesting, but what he reveals between the lines is priceless. He docs
not explain why the singing schools and singing books should have
been laid aside by the early colonists, he just assumes that they were.
However, he does trace very revealingly, though with no intention
of doing so, the formation of a folk tradition. Let us note some of
its characteristics: it is handed down by tradition only (that is, by
oral tradition, since books had been set aside); the variation from the
standard norm (that is, from the tunes as printed) is not uniform, but
differs from congregation to congregation, so that hardly any two
sing exactly alike; the singing was not learned by rule or lesson, but
by ear, and everyone sang as best pleased himself; the leading-singer
would raise or lower notes at will, and add such turns and flourishes
as he pleased. In short, we have here the complete description of a
folk tradition in singing. We may therefore call this the Early New
England Folk Style.
Some musical historians account for the "decline" of New Eng-
land psalmody by pointing to the difficult conditions of frontier life,
aggravated by political dissension and military strife. This explanation
falls through when we realize that a similar "decline" took place in
England, which was not precisely a struggling colony. In the preface
to his edition of Psalms and Hymns in solemn music k (1671), Play-
ford vividly describes the sad state of psalm singing in England at
that time, concluding with the assertion that "this part of God's serv-
ice hath been so ridiculously performed in most places, that it is now
brought into scorn and derision by many people." Apparently the
"decline" continued for a long time, because in 1796 a letter in the
Gentleman's Magazine, referring to psalm singing in England, states:
"In some churches one may see the Parish Clerk, after giving out a
couple of staves from Sternhold and Hopkins, with two or three other
poor wights, drawling them out in the most lamentable strains, with
such grimaces, and in such discordant notes, as must shock every
serious person, and afford mirth to the undevout." * We gather from
these quotations that, in every generation, there was a kind of singing
going on, both in old and new England, that offended the taste and
* Quoted by Curwen, Studies in Music Worship, p. 30.
30 | Preparation
provoked the scorn and ridicule of educated persons because it failed
to conform to the culturally dominant standards of "good" singing.
Summarizing the characteristics of the Early New England Folk
Style as described by contemporary writers: the singing is very slow;
many grace notes, passing notes, turns, flourishes and other ornaments
are used; pitch and time values are arbitrarily altered; there is a lack
of synchronization among the voices; everyone sings as best pleases
himself. This is not to be taken as a complete description of the style,
because the reformers were interested only in pointing out what they
considered some of its most prominent faults: they cover up many
details with an "&c." In order to spell out that etcetera we must find
an analogous and more fully documented tradition. It will then be
within the bounds of reasonable conjecture to assume that the New
England Folk Style embodied the traits of the analogous tradition.
The logical place to look for this analogous tradition is in eight-
eenth-century England and Scotland, whence came the early New
England settlers. We may begin by glancing at the old Gaelic psal-
mody of Scotland. Our earliest written documentation on this tradition
dates from the 18405, but its persistence from generation to genera-
tion enables us to reconstruct the eighteenth-century practice with
reasonable fidelity. John Spencer Curwen, the English authority on
congregational singing who wrote at a time when Gaelic psalmody
could still be heard in Highland parishes in much the same manner
as it was sung a hundred years earlier, summarized the main features
of this tradition as follows: "There are five tunes— French, Martyrs,
Stilt (or York), Dundee, and Elgin— which are the traditional melodies
used for the Psalms. These have been handed down from generation
to generation, amplified by endless grace notes, and altered according
to the fancy of every precentor. When used, they are sung so slowly
as to be beyond recognition." And he adds: "Each parish and each
precentor had differences of detail, for the variations were never writ-
ten or printed, but were handed dowfi by tradition." Now, is this not,
in all essential points, an exact counterpart of the description of the
"usual" New England way of psalm singing as contained in the writ-
ings of Symmes and his colleagues?
Note that the traditional repertory consisted of five tunes. Writers
on early New England psalmody have continually harped on the
theme that only five or six tunes seem to have been commonly used
in the Puritan congregations, and they have adduced this as further
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS 3!
evidence of the musical impoverishment of Puritan New England.
When we stop to consider that in England the number of psalm
tunes in common usage in the second half of the seventeenth century
had dwindled down to six or eight, we realize that New England en-
joyed no position of privileged inferiority in this respect. Here, again,
it is necessary to look at the matter from a different point of view,
and to regard this limitation of repertory as characteristic of the folk
tradition with which we are dealing; in England, in Scotland, in Amer-
ica, the same pattern prevails. This small inherited repertory of tunes
provided a firm foundation for the improvisations and embellish-
ments of the folk style. There was a core of unity with scope for
endless variety. (Compare the core of "stock" tunes used in hot jazz
improvisation, as another illustration of the same principle.)
Before going on to see what we can discover in eighteenth-century
England, we may pause to discuss briefly the practice of "lining-
out," a prominent feature of folk psalmody in England, Scotland, and
New England. The nature of lining-out is explained by the ordinances
of the Westminster Assembly of 1644 which recommend the adoption
of the practice in English churches: ". . . for the present, where many
of the congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister,
or some other fit person appointed by him and the other officers,
do read the psalm, line by line, before the singing thereof." The
Rev. John Cotton, in his treatise Singing of Psalms a Gospel Ordinance
(Boston, 1647), granted that "where all have books and can reade, or
else can say the Psalme by heart, it were needless then to reade each
line of the Psalme beforehand in order to singing." But where this is
not the case, he adds, "it will be a necessary helpe, that the lines of the
Psalme, be openly read beforehand, line after line, or two lines to-
gether, that so they who want either books or skill to reade, may
know what is to be sung, and joyne with the rest in the dutie of sing-
ing." The practice of lining-out became fairly widespread in New
England, to judge by a passage in Cotton Mather's Church Discipline;
or Methods and Customs in the Churches in New England (Boston,
1726):
In some [churches], the assembly being furnished with Psalm-
books, they sing without the stop of reading between every line.
But ordinarily the Psalm is read line after line, by him whom the
Pastor desires to do that service; and the people generally sing in
such grave tunes, as are the most usual in the churches of our nation.
32 I Preparation
The practice of lining-out has been deplored, condemned, and
ridiculed hy most writers on early American music. Once again, the
important thing is to understand, not to sneer. Granted that the cus-
tom dwas introduced as a practical and temporary expedient, how
shall we account for its persistence in circumstances where these prac-
tical considerations were not a factor? How shall we account for the
tenaciousness with which the people clung to it, and their resent-
ment of, and determined opposition to, all efforts to abolish the cus-
tom? How shall we account for the fact that it has endured, in one
form or another, for more than three hundred years? John Cotton
admitted— what is in any case quite obvious— that lining-out had no
practical justification where the people knew the psalms by heart.
Yet the custom prevailed even when the repertory of psalms was
limited, orally transmitted, and learned by memory. We must, there-
fore, seek some other raison d'etre for the practice of lining-out.
This will be found if we can locate a tradition in which lining-out
was not an expedient, but an organic element of style. For this we
return momentarily to the Highlands of Scotland.
The Scottish church accepted the custom of lining-out reluctantly,
under a directive from the Westminster Assembly in the middle of the
seventeenth century. Yet, when attempts to abolish it were made a
hundred years later, great resentment arose among the people of
Scotland, and in some parishes the custom was not abandoned until
well into the nineteenth century. As Curwen writes: "Lining-out,
which had at first been resented as a concession to illiterate England,
was clung to as a vital principle." Now, what had happened in the
interval to transform lining-out from a foreign imposition to a "vital
principle" of Scottish popular psalmody? The tradition of Gaelic
psalmody will help us to answer this question. Dr. Joseph Mainzer
published a monograph on Gaelic Psalm-Tunes in 1844, in which he
collected vestiges of the traditional psalmody handed down through
many generations. In these psalms the lining-out becomes an integral
musical factor. The precentor gives out one line at a time, chanting
it on the tonic or dominant, according to the key of the tune. Ac-
cording to Mainzer, the dominant is preferred, but if it is too high
or too low for the voice, the tonic is taken. The recitative is not
always on a monotone: it often touches the tone next above. The
congregation then sings the line with much elaboration of the melody.
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS 33
This shows the process by which an apparently extraneous element
is incorporated into a folk tradition and becomes an organic stylistic
factor. Because of this it is "clung to as a vital principle"— not because
the people prefer what is "bad" in opposition to what the learned
doctors from Oxford or Harvard tell them is "good." We have al-
ready seen that the Gaelic tradition of psalmody had several points
of similarity with the Early New England Folk Style. We should not
jump to the conclusion that the details of lining-out were identical
in the two traditions. It is sufficient to have established, by analogy,
that lining-out was an organic element in the folk tradition of New
England psalmody. It should be pointed out, moreover, that lining-out
constitutes a form of the "call-and-response" pattern that is basic in
certain folk-song traditions, including the Afro-American. Lining-
out still persists in the singing of some Negro congregations.
In 1724 the New England Courant published a curious satirical
letter attacking the so-called defects of popular psalmody, written
by an individual who signed himself "Jeoffrey Chanticleer" and who
may have been James Franklin. Lining-out is the particular target
of his attack, and in describing what he considers the evil results of
this practice he sheds additional light on the Early New England Folk
Style of psalmody. According to "JeofFrey Chanticleer":
. . . the same person who sets the Tune, and guides the Congrega-
tion in Singing, commonly reads the Psalm, which is a task so few
are capable of performing well, that in Singing two or three staves
the Congregation falls from a cheerful Pitch to downright Grum-
bling; and then some to relieve themselves mount an Eighth above
the rest, others perhaps a Fourth or Fifth, by which means the
Singing appears to be rather a confused Noise, made up of Reading,
Squeaking, and Grumbling, than a decent and orderly part of God's
Worship. . . .8
Translating this into unpolemical language, we get an aural image of a
successive lowering of pitch among the main body of the congregation
carrying the tune, while other voices sing above it at intervals of
a fourth, a fifth, or an octave. Compare Curwen's account of "two
old ladies in the North of England who were noted among their
friends for their power of improvising a high part above the melody
of the tune." This custom, he adds, had been common, "and it was
•Quoted by Foote, Three Centuries of American Hymnody, p. 376.
34 | Preparation
always considered a sign of musicianship to be able to sing this part."
This last remark should be emphasized, for it underlines the point we
are trying to establish throughout this chapter: that what is consid-
ered bad taste or "a confused Noise" by conventional standards may
be regarded as a sign of jnusicianship and a source of pride in the folk
tradition.
We must quote another brief passage from the letter of "Jeoffrey
Chanticleer": "The Words are often miirder'd or metamorphosed by
the Tone of the Reader. By this Means it happens in some churches,
that those who neglect to carry Psalm Books with them, only join
in Singing like so many musical Instritmentsy piping out the Tune to
the rest. . . ." (The italics are mine.) Any reader acquainted with
the history of opera will recognize the general trend of these re-
marks as being similar to criticisms leveled at the florid vocal style
of Italian opera and oratorio: that the words could not be understood,
and that the human voice was therefore used merely as an instrument.
Compare, for example, Benjamin Franklin's remark on the vocal style
of Handel and other contemporary composers, in which "the voice
aims to be like an instrument" (see p. 96).
In England, where organs and other instruments were used in the
established church, some observers commented adversely on what
they regarded as the abuse of ornamentation in the organ accom-
paniments. A certain William Riley, who in 1762 published a book
titled Parochial Music Corrected, complained that the parish organists
introduced tedious variations in every line, indulged in ill-timed flour-
ishes, and insisted on putting a "shake" (trill) at the end of every
line. He quotes as an absurd example:
The Lord's commands are righteous and (shake)
Rejoice the heart likewise;
His precepts are most pure and do (shake)
Give light unto the eyes.
Instrumental music was, of course, forbidden in the Puritan churches
of New England, though organs were used in such Episcopalian
churches in America as King's Chapel in Boston (which acquired in
1713 an organ bequeathed by Mr. Thomas Brattle) and Bruton Parish
Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. The reason I have made reference
to organ playing in English parish churches is because of the obvious
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS 35
analogy with New England psalm singing suggested by "Jcoffrcy
Chanticleer's" previousy quoted remark that the people "join in
Singing like so many musical Instruments, piping out the Tune to the
rest." We may conclude that the people of New England, deprived
of musical instruments in church, did their best to supply this lack by
using their voices for the production of those shakes, flourishes, and
variations that so annoyed the worthy Mr. Riley no less than the sar-
castic "Chanticleer."
According to Curwen, congregational singing in English parish
churches during the eighteenth century "was a string of grace-notes,
turns, and other embellishments." This is exactly what Symmes,
Walter, Chauncey, and other contemporary writers tell us about the
popular psalmody of early New England, except that their statements
are surrounded with polemical verbiage, which has to be cleared away
before we can get at the truth. Though Curwen wrote in the 18705,
he interviewed informants whose memory and experience reached
back to the early years of the century, and who spoke of traditional
practices handed down from an earlier generation. One informant
stated that in his early days, when the melody leaped a third, the
women invariably added the intervening note; and if it leaped more
than a third, they glided up or down, portamento, giving the next note
in anticipation. Another informant confirmed the common use of
appoggiaturas and gliding from one note to another. Another told of
men in his congregation who "sing the air through the tune until they
get to the end, and then, if the melody ends low, they will scale up in
falsetto to the higher octave, and thus make harmony at the end." 6
I am not prepared to state categorically that these practices prevailed
in eighteenth-century New England, but there is every reason to
believe that they did, for they evidently belonged to the same tradi-
tion of folk psalmody and would doubtless have contributed to con-
veying an impression of what learned gentlemen like Cotton Mather
called "an odd Noise."
6Curwen's informant also told him that "in the old times the people liked
the tunes pitched high; the women especially enjoyed screaming out high G. It
made the psalmody more brilliant and far-sounding." It should be observed that
in those days it was the men, not the women, who carried the "tune" or princi-
pal air; therefore, the screaming on high notes may have been a compensatory
means of feminine self-assertion.
36 I Preparation
Thus far we have relied upon analogy, conjecture, description,
and tradition for our reconstruction of the Early New England Folk
Style of psalmody. These methods are legitimate; yet it would be
gratifying to be able to reinforce them with an actual musical docu-
ment of the eighteenth century. Such a document exists, though from
a slightly later period than the one we are discussing. Once again I
am indebted to the admirable Curwen for putting me on its track.
Let Curwen tell the story in his own words:
Mr. John Dobson, of Richmond, has shown me an interesting
publication by Matthew Camidge, organist of York Minster, bearing
the date 1789. Camidge discovered in a library same psalm-tunes
composed by Henry Lawes, a musician of the time of Charles I. He
came to the conclusion that these tunes, if amended in accordance
with modern feeling, might be revived for church uses. What did
he mean by this amendment? Simply the addition of passing notes
in the melody, trills, and such like devices. In order to show the
reader how greatly he has improved Henry Lawes, Camidge prints
the original and amended versions side by side throughout the book,
and the result is ludicrous. The taste of today has returned to that
of Lawes' time, but the old-fashioned tricks of vocalisation may still
be heard from old people in remote country places.7
In other words, the once fashionable style of singing lived on as folk-
lore, as an archaic survival, long after it ceased to be part of the domi-
nant cultural pattern: a perfect example of the process of "folklori-
zation." The result of Camidge's "improvement" of Lawes' music
appeared "ludicrous" to Curwen, regarded solely from an aesthetic
or artistic point of view. But from the historical point of view, Cam-
idge's versions throw valuable Light on the tradition of embellished
psalmody in the eighteenth century.
Camidge's volume, entitled Psalmody for a Single Voice, is ex-
tremely rare. No copy exists in the United States, as far as is known,
and until recently there was none in the British Museum in London.
I was able to obtain a microfilm of the copy that is in the National
Library of Scotland. The following musical example, a setting of
Psalm i in the translation of George Sandys, illustrates both the orig-
inal unadorned melody by Lawes and the "Variation" or embellished
version of Camidge:
T Curwen, op. ch-> p. 66.
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS
Original
i.. Or rri°°
Variation
\
That Man is tru - ly blest who. scorns to
j J j |J J j u r r r i
stray By false ad -vice or walk theSin - ners way, Or
irr r»r
i
nl'H -Jij
deigns to_min-gle_ with the«Sons of Pride Who God con -
i i
38 I Preparation
Like most codified and printed versions of music that stems pri-
marily from oral tradition, Camidge's version probably gives a
schematic presentation of the actual traditional practice. Yet it is
revealing as far as it goes.8
It remains to explain how New England psalmody, which among
the original Plymouth Pilgrims and the first Puritan settlers was evi-
dently "regular" (that is, according to the strict notes of the melody,
and sung in a lively tempo), acquired the characteristics of embellished
and slow-paced psalmody that we have been discussing. In the first
place, the Pilgrims or Separatists, who had taken refuge in Holland,
and the early Puritans, many of whom had lived in Geneva, were
strongly influenced by the methods and customs of the French, Swiss,
and Dutch Protestants, among whom the practice of lining-out was
not used in psalm singing. My belief is that regular "singing by note"
and the lively pace called for by the vigorous and varied tunes of the
early psalters prevailed in New England, as in England and Scotland,
until the spread of lining-out opened the door for the introduction of
the florid style. The custom of lining-out in psalmody necessarily in-
terrupted the free flow of the music and caused a slackening of the
pace. To this may be added the natural tendency of some persons in
an untrained and undirected group to sing more slowly than others
—to take, as it were, their own time. This could have the effect of
slowing up the whole group, but it could also have a more important
effect in permitting the more skilled, or the more ambitious, or the
bolder members of the group to indulge in the embellishments to
which we have so often referred. The late G. P. Jackson aptly called
this "a compensatory florid filling in." And why, it may be asked,
did they indulge in these embellishments? Simply because they en-
joyed it, because it was fun. The Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey is explicit
on this point: "They use many Quavers and Semiquavers, &c. And
on this very account it is they are pleased 'with it, and so very loath to
part 'with it"
When Henry W. Foote, in his history of American hymnody,
writes that the old psalm tunes "which had once been sung with vigor
and at reasonable speed, had become flattened with usage into weari-
8 For other examples of the tradition of embellished psalmody and hymnody,
the reader may wish to compare, in the present work, the ornamented versions
of "Ah, Lovely Appearance of Death" (p. 49), "Amazing Grace" (p. 203), "I
Stood Outside de Gate" (p. 250), and "Jordan's Stormy Banks" (p. 456).
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS 39
some and dragging measures which had lost all their freshness and
vitality," he expresses a modern opinion that actually distorts the
whole situation by failing to take into account the values of the tradi-
tion which he is attempting to discuss. If the people who sang in that
manner found it dull and wearisome, they would have sought some
other manner of singing that pleased them better. But they did noth-
ing of the sort. On the contrary, they clung tenaciously to their own
style of singing. They liked it. And who is to say that they should
have preferred something else?
It would be interesting to trace the transition from plain to em-
bellished psalmody that took place in New England during the seven-
teenth century. But the available documentation scarcely permits us
to trace the process in detail. We must not, in any case, assume that
the process was complete and uniform; that is to say, that it occurred
all at once and everywhere at the same time. Cultural processes are
never as simple as that. As an illustration of this particular phase of
cultural dynamics, let us take two representative dates and events.
Symmes tells us that the Plymouth colonists took up the practice of
lining-out at about the same time that they abandoned the Ainsworth
Psalter, around the year 1692. And lining-out, as we have seen, pre-
pared the way for the growth of responsorial, embellished, and im-
provisational psalmody. Now, only a few years later, in 1699, the
practice of lining-out was abolished at the Brattle Square Church in
Boston. In other words, the relatively backward and undeveloped
colony at Plymouth was taking up a traditional practice which the
relatively advanced and progressive city of Boston was on the point of
abandoning. The sophisticated urban congregation was discarding a
custom that already began to be associated with rural crudeness and
backwardness. In the course of time, as urban culture tended to domi-
nate the whole New England area, lining-out disappeared from that
region and took refuge in the relatively undeveloped frontier sections.
The movement for Regular Singing led to the rise of singing
schools. Reverend Symmes was one of the reformers who argued
most persuasively in favor of regular musical instruction to improve
the quality of singing:
Would it not greatly tend to promote singing of psalms if sing-
ing schools were promoted? Would not this be a conforming to
scripture pattern? Have we not as much need of them as God's
4O | Preparation
people of old? Have we any reason to expect to be inspired with the
gift of singing, any more than that of reading? . . . Where would
be the difficulty, or what the disadvantage, if people who want skill
in singing, would procure a skillful person to instruct them, and
meet two or three evenings in the week, from five or six o'clock
to eight, and spend the time in learning to sing? Would not this
be an innocent and profitable recreation, and would it not have a
tendency, if prudently managed, to prevent the unprofitable expense
of time on other occasions? . . . Are they not very unwise who
plead against learning to sing by rule, when they can't learn to
sing at all, unless they learn by rule? 9
As the eighteenth century advanced, more and more people de-
cided that it was a pleasant recreation to come together at certain
rimes to receive instruction in Regular Singing and to sing as a group
the music that they learned. Thus the singing schools prospered and
became an important institution during the second half of the century.
The singing schools had to be provided with instruction books and
collections of tunes. Hence the thriving trade in music books compiled
and issued by the successors of Tufts and Walter. The singing schools
did not exclusively promote the singing of psalms. Hymns, spiritual
songs, and anthems were soon added to the repertory. Then came the
exciting "fuguing tunes," which in turn proved to be the center of
another controversy.
The singing school, as an institution, developed in two directions.
In the cities it prepared the way for the formation of choirs and
choral societies, such as the celebrated Handel and Haydn Society of
Boston, devoted chiefly to the performance of music imported from
Europe. In the rural areas, mainly in the South and Middle West,
it formed the foundation for a homespun hymnody and for a com-
munal type of singing that kept alive many of the old New England
tunes along with the later "revival spirituals" and camp-meeting songs
that were a distinct product of the American frontier.
The rise of evangelical hymnody, largely under the impulse of
Methodism, and the transition from psalmody to hymnody, together
with the musical activities of various dissenting sects and minority
groups, will form the subject matter of the next chapter.
•Synunes, The Reasonableness of Regular Singing.
chapter three
Singing dissenters
Likewise in Amerikay
Shines the glorious Gospel-day.
JOSEPH HUMPHREYS, SACRED HYMNS.
Ihe attitude of nonconformity represented by the Separatists and
other Puritans who first settled in New England continued to manifest
itself in many successive or simultaneous dissenting movements and
groups that spread throughout the American colonies and had, in sev-
eral instances, a lasting influence after the formation of the Republic.
Through the inevitable irony of history, the nonconformists of one
generation became the conformists of the next. Psalmody, which had
been a symbol of Protestant and Puritan dissent, came to be regarded
in the eighteenth century as a sign of adherence to restricted and arbi-
trary forms of worship. The nonconformist English divine, Dr. Isaac
Watts (1674-1748), strongly objected to the old, strict, metrical
psalmody, and even protested, in the preface to his Hymns and Spir-
itual Songs (1707), against the very contents of the psalms:
Some of 'em are almost opposite to the Spirit of the Gospel:
Many of them foreign to the State of the New-Testament, and
widely different from the present Circumstances of Christians. . . .
On the other hand, those who clung to the old metrical psalmody,
as opposed to the new hymns, were convinced that the word of God
was being impiously replaced by "man-made" concoctions. Actually,
a few hymns had been included in the appendixes of the metrical
psalters as early as the sixteenth century. And the first supplement to
Tate and Brady's New Version of the Psalms, issued in 1700, included
three hymns for Holy Communion, two for Easter, and the familiar
Christmas hymn beginning, "While shepherds watched their flocks by
42 I Preparation
night," based on a passage from Luke (2:8-14). In the early years of
the eighteenth century, the hymns of Dr. Watts swept like a flood
over England and the North American colonies.
The influence of Dr. Watts in America was enormous. The first
American edition of his Hymns and Spiritual Songs appeared in 1739,
but his hymns and paraphrases of the psalms were known on this side
of the ocean many years before that. As early as 1711 the Rev. Ben-
jamin Colman of Boston wrote to Cotton Mather, saying: "Mr. Watts
is a great Master in Poetry, and a burning Light and Ornament of the
Age. . . . You will forgive me that I emulate, and have dared to
imitate, his Muse in the Inclosed. . . ." 1
Colman was not the only imitator of Watts in America. There
were many others, among them that precocious literary ornament of
New England, the famous Dr. Mather Byles, hailed by a contemporary
as "Harvard's honour and New England's hope." In his early youth,
Byles addressed the following admiring verses to Dr. Watts:
What Angel strikes the trembling Strings;
And whence the golden Sound!
Or is it Watts— or Gabriel sings
From yon celestial Ground?
Watts did not entirely discard the psalms. He selected those that
he considered most appropriate for Christian worship and paraphrased
them freely. In 1719 he brought out The Psalms of David Imitated,
of which an American edidon was printed at Philadelphia by Benjamin
Franklin ten years later. The "System of Praise" of Dr. Watts con-
tinued to gain favor in America, though eventually the Revolution
made it necessary to emend certain passages in which he alluded to
British sovereignty and the glory of British arms. In 1784 the in-
genious Mr. Joel Barlow of Connecticut was appointed to "accom-
modate" the psalms of Dr. Watts for American usage. Barlow, a poet
of some reputation and one of the group of "Hartford Wits," aroused
some opposition by making too free with Dr. Watts. For this he was
censured by a fellow rhymster:
You've proved yourself a sinful cre'tur;
You've murdered Watts, and spoilt the metre;
1 Cotton Mather, Diary, Dec. 2, 1711. Quoted by Foote, Three Centuries of
American Hymnody, p. 65.
SINGING DISSENTERS 4?
You've tried the Word of God to alter,
And for your pains deserve a halter.
But the alteration of "the word of God" had gone too far to be
halted even by threats of a halter. Paraphrases of the psalms became so
free that they could scarcely be distinguished from the new hymnody
that soon prevailed almost everywhere in the English-speaking world.
Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, paraphrased a portion of
the 1 37th Psalm ("If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand
forget her cunning") and produced what turned out to be a favorite
hymn:
I love thy Kingdom, Lord,
The house of thine abode,
The Church our blest Redeemer saved
With his own precious blood.
The blood of the Redeemer was to be a recurrent theme of evan-
gelical hymnody, and thence of the revival spirituals ("Are you washed
in the blood of the Lamb?").
Later Dwight himself was commissioned to prepare another "ac-
commodation" of Watts's version of the psalms, which he did with a
characteristic combination of poetic and patriotic zeal. There is more
of General Washington than of King David in Dwight's "accommo-
dation" of Watts's paraphrase of the i8th Psalm:
When, nVd to rage, against our nation rose
Chiefs of proud name, and bands of haughty foes,
He trained our hosts to fight, with arms array'd,
With health invigor'd, and with bounty fed,
Gave us his chosen chief our sons to guide,
Heard every prayer, and every want supplied.
He gave their armies captive to our hands,
Or sent them frustrate to their native lands.
Such paraphrases of scripture, sometimes with local or topical allu-
sions inserted, were frequently set to music by New England com-
posers of the eighteenth century. But that is another chapter of our
story; for the present we must return to the spread of evangelical
hymnody, a movement which, receiving its initial impulse from
Isaac Watts, was given an extraordinary impetus through the Work
and influence of the Wesleys, John and Charles,
44 | Preparation
The Wesleys in America
In the year 1735 Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia was in England
seeking ways to strengthen his recently founded colony. Realizing the
importance of religion as a stabilizing factor in a frontier settlement,
he invited a serious-minded young minister named John Wesley to
accompany him to Georgia and preach to the colonists there. John
Wesley and his younger brother Charles were then active in Oxford
as members of a group of religious zealots known variously as the "Holy
Club," the "Bible Moths," and the "Methodists" (because they studied
methodically—a strange innovation at the university). The elder Wes-
ley accepted Oglethorpe's invitation, and Charles decided to go along
with him. Together they embarked on the ship Simmons, bound for
Savannah.
On board the ship was a group of twenty-six Moravian mission-
aries, members of a persecuted German Protestant sect, under the
leadership of Bishop Nitschmann and Peter Boehler. These Moravian
brethren were enthusiastic hymn singers, and their hymnody made a
deep impression upon the Wesleys. The English brothers remembered
one occasion particularly, when, during a severe storm that terrified
most of the passengers, the Moravian missionaries calmly stood on the
deck singing their hymns, entirely unperturbed by the raging storm
and the towering waves. John Wesley began at once to study the
hymnbooks of the Moravians, as attested by an entry in his journal
for October 27, 1735: "Began Gesang Buch," referring to Das Gesang-
Euch der Gemeine in Herrnhut, the principal hymnal of the Moravian
brethren in their central community at Herrnhut, Germany.
When their ship sailed into the Savannah River, John Wesley was
agreeably surprised by the sight of "the pines, palms, and cedars run-
ning in rows along the shore," making "an exceedingly beautiful pros-
pect, especially to us who did not expect to see the bloom of spring
in the depths of winter." The admiration was not all one-sided, for
during his sojourn in Savannah, John Wesley apparently made a con-
siderable impression upon a young lady by the name of Sophia Hop-
key, a niece of the chief magistrate of that town. The young Method-
ist, however, balked at matrimony, and departed from the colony a
free man.
Feminine allurements notwithstanding, Wesley's chief concern in
SINGING DISSENTERS 45
the colonies was to spread the Gospel, and also to introduce the rather
radical practice of hymn singing to which he had been converted by
his contact with the Moravians. It will be recalled that during this
period psalmody still held sway in the colonies, though the hymns
of Dr. Watts were beginning to gain favor. In 1737 John Wesley
published in "Charles-Town," South Carolina, A Collection of Psalms
and Hymns, which is highly significant as containing the first of his
translations of German hymns. Half of the seventy items in this book
were by Dr. Watts, and the two Samuel Wesleys each contributed
five hymns. Charles, who returned to England in 1736, was not repre-
sented in this collection. It is interesting to note that on the title page
John Wesley is called "Missioner of Georgia." This octavo volume
of seventy-four pages, printed by L. Timothy, forms a tangible link
between Methodist hymnody and the American colonies, where the
former was to have such far-reaching effects.
After his return to England in 1738, John Wesley frequented the
meetings of the Moravian brethren in London, whose leader was his
former shipmate Peter Boehler. This association Jed to a crucial experi-
ence in Wesley's religious development, namely, his so-called "con-
version." This occurred during a reading of Luther's Preface to the
Epistle of the Romans, as described by Wesley in his journal:
About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change
which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my
heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for
salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away
my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.2
This might be called the basic text, the gospel, as it were, for the
whole movement of evangelical and revivalist hymnody. Note the
emphasis on direct salvation through faith in Christ, the conviction of
salvation coming as an emotional and heartwarming personal experi-
ence, and the feeling of elation resulting from the taking away of sin.
This type of emotional reaction, this attitude toward conversion and
salvation, and this basic imagery of sin and death, are the seeds out of
which grew American folk hymnody, including the Negro spirituals.
Soon after this experience, John Wesley made a visit to the head-
quarters of the Moravians at Herrnhut in Germany, where he met
their patron and protector, Count Zinzendorf, himself a prolific writer
2 John Wesley, Journal, ed. by Curaock, vol. i, pp.
46 I Preparation
of hymn texts (he is credited with over 2,000). The Moravians, offi-
cially known as "Unitas Fratrem," were a Pietist sect, stemming from
the reforms of John Hus in the fifteenth century. After many vicissi-
tudes and persecutions, the church of the "Unitas Fratrem" or the
Moravian Brethren was revived by Count Zinzendorf, a Saxon noble-
man who had been brought up under Pietist influence, and from the
late 17205 its activity spread rapidly, including the establishing of
missions and settlements in the American colonies. Like the Methodist
movement initiated by the Wesleys, the Moravian church represented
a blend of Puritan asceticism with emotional fervor, the latter strik-
ingly expressed in their numerous hymns.
"The great awakening"
As a result of his visit to Herrnhut, John Wesley, upon his return
to England, began with renewed fervor "to declare ... the glad
tidings of salvation" among his countrymen. His voice was also heard,
indirectly, in America, where others were likewise engaged in spread-
ing the glad tidings of salvation, soon to be embodied in a fast-
growing hymnody, made largely by, and wholly for, the people. It
was the time of "The Great Awakening," a popular mass movement
in which the folk took religion into their own hands, though the
initial impulse came from the emotional preaching of such powerful
orators as John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards
of New England, whose sermon on "The Reality of Spiritual Light"
(1734) touched off the rather sensational Northampton revival of
1735. Shortly thereafter, George Whitefield, leader of the Calvinist
Methodists, made the first of his several journeys to America and
aroused tremendous enthusiasm by his preaching. Some idea of his
eloquence and emotional appeal may be gained from the fact that
when speaking in Philadelphia he cast such a spell upon the thrifty
and prudent Franklin that the latter, intending at first to give only
a few coppers to the collection, ended by pouring out all the money
he had with him.
It will not be necessary to consider in detail the doctrinal differ-
ence and the multiple sectarianism that characterized the religious
movements in England and America during the eighteenth century.
Suffice it to say, in the words of Thomas C Hall, that the gospel
of the Wesleys and of Whitefield was in essence "the intensely
SINGING DISSENTERS 47
individualistic proclamation of a way of escape for the soul from
eternal damnation. The test of conversion was an emotional reaction
rather than an intellectual acceptance of a creedal statement." If we
bear in mind this double concept of individual salvation and emo-
tional acceptance, it will provide us with the main thread for follow-
ing the course of musical revivalism in America. We may further
note that this individualism, through what might be called a process
of collective individualism, proliferated into a great number of re-
ligious sects, offshoots of the main dissenting or reforming branches.
Not all the evangelical reformers were dissenters. Wesley himself,
for example, always remained nominally within the Church of Eng-
land. John Wesley wished to reform the Church, not to break with it.
But because his strongest appeal was to the masses, the working
people, the downtrodden and economically distressed, the movement
that he inspired drew further and further away from the established
Church, nearer and nearer to the spirit and form of Dissent, with
which eventually it became fully identified. It was characteristic of
the religious ferment of that period that dissenting groups were con-
tinually breaking off from the main dissenting or reforming bodies
and forming new sects.
Among the principal dissenting groups were the Quakers, the
Moravians, the Baptists, the Presbyterians, and the Congregationalists.
The Baptists split into "New Lights," "Free Willers," and "Sepa-
rates." There were also the "Shakers," the "Shaking Quakers," and
the "Dancing Baptists." The Presbyterians split into "Old Side" and
"New Side," the latter going in strongly for enthusiastic revivalism.
Dissenters were bitterly attacked, though here and there they had a
sturdy champion, of whom the most notable was perhaps the Rev.
Samuel Davies, a staunch upholder of religious toleration whom we
shall later meet as a missionary among the Negroes in Virginia. Some
idea of the prevailing acrimony may be gathered from the following
passage in Davies's Impartial Trial Impartially Tried:
Tho' the pulpits, around me, I am told, ring with exclamatory
harangues, accusations, arguments, railings, warnings, etc., etc., etc.,
against New-Lights, Methodists, Enthusiasts, Deceivers, Itinerants,
Pretenders, etc., etc., etc., yet I never design to prostitute mine to
such mean purpose.8
1 Best, Samuel Domes, p. 185.
48 I Preparation
And Reverend Davies adds: "Satires, etc., are published in the Gazette,
to alarm the world of these dangerous animals." Strange as it may
seem, among all these dissenting sects there was actually one who
called themselves simply "Christians"— and it was founded by two
men named Smith and Jones!
Before attempting to follow the singing dissenters along what one
writer has called "the broad road of revivalism," it would be well to
take a closer look at the development of Wesleyan hymnody in Eng-
land, the indispensable background for musical revivalism in America.
Rise of the evangelical hymn
John Wesley found that the singing of hymns by his congregations
was one of the most effective means for spreading the glad tidings
of salvation. He and his brother Charles wrote the words of a great
many hymns that were published in various collections. The first of
these to include musical notation was A Collection of Hymns . . . as
they are commonly sung at the Foundry (1742), generally known as
"The Foundry Collection." Wesley and his followers had acquired for
their meetings a building formerly used by the government for casting
cannon, hence called "The Foundry." This collection was followed in
1746 by Hymns on the Great Festivals and Other Occasions, contain-
ing twenty-four tunes by a German bassoonist, resident in London,
named John Frederick Lampe. In Hymns on the Great Festivals we
have a fundamental document for the study of the antecedents of
American popular hymnody, as regards both text and music. It con-
tains hymns that have become part of America's folklore and that oral
tradition has kept alive to the present day. The best-known of these
hymns is probably the one that begins with the line "Ah, lovely
Appearance of Death" (Hymn XXII) and is entitled "Over the
Corpse of a Believer." Versions of this are widespread in American
folk tradition.4
Musically, the tunes of John Frederick Lampe are remarkably
interesting for their demonstration of the florid style in evangelical
4 John A. and Alan Lomax, in Our Singing Country, p. 38, print a version of
this hymn as sung for them by a deacon and a deaconess of the Hard-Shell Bap-
tists in Clay County, Kentucky, in 1937. The Lomaxes refer to it as "George
Whiteficld's funeral hymn," and in their head-note they write: "Reverend George
Whitefield . . . ten years before his death wrote this song to be sung at his own
funeral." Whitefield died in 1770. He could not have written "this song" ten
SINGING DISSENTERS 49
hymnody. All the tunes are profusely ornamented, with grace notes,
turns, tolls, appoggiaturas, etc. Thus we can observe in this collection
the extent to which embellished hymnody had gained ground in Eng-
land through the spread of Wesleyan Methodism. Herewith is Lampe's
setting of the hymn, "Ah, Lovely Appearance of Death." 8
Ah! love-ly ap • pear-ance of Death, no sight up -on
Earth is so fair, not all the gay Pag - eants that
breathe, can with a dead Bo • dy corn-pare, with-. Sol emn De-
»T p r i r r r |rl ^]
light I sur - vey, the Corps when the Spir • it is fled, in
.*•
love with the beau - ti - full Clay, and long - ing to
J J
J li-pj J I J
lie in his Stead and long- ing to lie - in his Stead.
In 1753 Thomas Butts, a friend of the Wesley s, published his
Harmonia Sacra, containing a large number of hymns with both words
and tunes, many of the latter in florid style. This collection proved
popular but did not entirely meet with the approval of John Wesley,
who evidently felt that the trend toward embellished hymnody was
getting out of hand. It was not long before Wesley expressly forbade
the use of "vain repetitions" in congregational singing. He also con-
demned florid singing and fuguing tunes as being no better than
years before his death, because it was published in London in 1746. That this
hymn may have been sung at Whitefield's funeral is possible, and there is evi-
dently a tradition that links it with that event. Whitefield died at Newburyport,
Mass., following an attack of asthma.
BFrom Hymns on the Great Festivals and Other Occasions^ p. 56. Courtesy
of the Library of Congress.
50 | Preparation
"Lancashire hornpipes"— a condemnation curiously reminiscent of the
attacks made on Puritan psalm tunes as "Geneva Jigs"! 8 In opposing
the popular trend toward florid singing of hymns, John Wesley, para-
doxically, allied himself with the conservative and "respectable" ele-
ments who advocated a decorous and dignified type of congregational
singing and would not tolerate any liberties taken with the tunes.
In an effort to impose his own standards of hymnody, John
Wesley in 1761 brought out Select Hymns for the Use of Christians,
with a selection of tunes and directions for singing. He gives seven
rules or precepts for the singing of hymns: (i) Learn these tunes
before any others, (2) Sing them exactly as printed, (3) Sing all of
them, (4) Sing lustily, (5) Sing modestly, (6) Sing in tune, (7) Above
all, sing spiritually, with an eye to God in every word. Of these pre-
cepts, the most significant is the second, urging that the tunes be sung
as printed: a clear indication that in practice the people tended to do
just the opposite. The printing of plain tunes was not enough to en-
sure plain singing, which obviously did not appeal to the people as
much as did the florid style.
Thus, in Wesleyan hymnody, as in New England psalmody, we
witness what is essentially another manifestation of the perennial con-
flict between "conservative" and "liberal" elements. John Wesley, at
first considered "radical" because of his leaning toward evangelical
hymnody of the German Pietist type, becomes the upholder, within
his own Methodist movement, of an "authorized" body of hymnody
and an "authorized" style of singing which he seeks to impose upon
his followers but which is rejected or freely altered by the more
radical or less conventional proponents of personal salvation and re-
vivalism. We shall see, very shortly, the results of this conflict on the
American frontier, but for the moment, we must turn our attention
to two other significant figures in English evangelical hymnody: John
Cennick (1718-1755) and John Newton (1725-1807).
John Cennick was a Quaker who became a follower of John
Wesley and later (in 1745) joined the Moravian Brethren. His first
collection of hymns was Hymns for the Children of God (second
edition, London, 1741), and his second, Sacred Hymns for the Use of
Religious Societies, Generally Composed in Dialogues (Bristol, 1743)
The importance of Cennick is, in the words of G. P. Jackson, that he
• Benson, The English Hymn, p. 239.
SINGING DISSENTERS 51
"was destined to become the real founder of folksy religious song in
the rebellious eighteenth century movement." Typical of his style is
the hymn "Jesus My All to Heaven is Gone/' which, again quoting
the same authority, "was to become one of the most widely sung reli-
gious lyrics among the country folk of America during the entire
200 years which have elapsed since it appeared." T This is the highly
characteristic final stanza:
I'll tell to all poor sinners round
What a dear Saviour I have found;
111 point to thy redeeming blood
And say, behold the way to God.
The "dialogues" mentioned in the title of Cennick's second collection
were pieces sung antiphonally by men and women who, at this time
and for about a hundred years thereafter, sat on opposite sides of the
meetinghouse (sometimes they used a "double-deck" meetinghouse,
with the women below and the men above).
John Newton was a rather wild character who went to sea at the
age of eleven, was flogged as a deserter from the Royal Navy, became
servant to a slave dealer in Africa, and before long was in the slav-
ing trade himself. While acting as captain of a slaving ship he was
converted by reading Thomas a Kempis, and soon afterward he came
under the influence of John Wesley and Whitefield, leading to his
ordination as curate of Olney in 1764. Together with his friend, the
unfortunate poet William Cowper, Newton undertook a remarkable
collection of hymns, which was published in three books in 1779 as
Olney Hymns. Cowper, stricken by insanity in 1773, wrote only 68
of the 280 hymns in the collection; the rest were by John Newton.
This "old African blasphemer," as he called himself, drew largely
upon his own experience in wrestling with sin and being snatched
from damnation into eternal salvation. His hymns, like those of
Cowper, are marked by what the critics call "excessive emotionalism"
(as though emotion should be meted out by measure), by "morbidity"
(that is, preoccupation with blood, sacrifice, and death), and by a
perpetual swing from gloom to exultation, corresponding to the basic
antithesis of sin and salvation. Cennick and Newton represent what
might be called the "leftist" or radical tendency in evangelical hymn-
T Jackson, White and Negro Spirituals, p. 20.
52 I Preparation
ody, as compared with the relative conservatism of the Wesleys, and
still more as compared with the "middle-of-the-road" hymnody of
Watts.
This struggle between Wesleyan authority and the popular mass
movement of religious dissent, including complete unrestraint in re-
ligious singing, continued in America, where it found, indeed, its
most dramatic battleground. At a Methodist conference held in Vir-
ginia and in Baltimore in 1784, the fourteenth query on the agenda
was: "How shall we reform our singing?" And the answer was: "Let
all our preachers who have any knowledge in the notes, improve it by
learning to sing true themselves, and keeping close to Mr. Wesley's
tunes and hymns." This is essentially a repetition, or rather a continua-
tion, of the same fundamental conflict that we found in New England
psalm singing fifty or sixty years earlier: the conflict between Regu-
lar Singing and the free style of the folk. The situation has been aptly
summarized by Benson:
The entire course of Methodist Episcopal Hymnody may be
viewed as a continuous effort to keep the Church on a level suffi-
ciently described as Wesleyan, and a failure to cooperate therein
on the part of a considerable section of the people who preferred
the plane of the Revival Hymn and the popular Spiritual Song.8
That, of course, is written from a conservative and institutional
point of view. The masses of people who preferred the lively revival
hymns and the popular spiritual songs that sprang up in the American
camp meetings after 1799 did not merely manifest a lack of coopera-
tion with religious institutionalism: they were all out for freedom
of song, freedom of expression to the utmost limits of the human
spirit and body. And we shall see in a later chapter what were the
results of this wild freedom of emotional expression that produced
the "singing ecstasy" of the great revivals.
The Shakers
In some ways the most remarkable of all the dissenting sects were
the Shakers, who established themselves in America about the time of
the Revolution and grew from a mere handful to a large and flourish-
ing organization with many communities scattered from Maine to
8 Benson, op. cit.t p. 285.
SINGING DISSENTERS 53
Kentucky. The sect originated in England as an offshoot of the
Quakers, and its adherents were at first popularly known as "Shaking
Quakers." Their official designation was United Society of Believers
in Christ's Second Coming. In England the society split into two
groups, one of which came under the leadership of a young woman
of humble origin and forceful character named Ann Lee, soon to be
known to the faithful as "Mother Ann." Ann Lee was illiterate, had
worked in a cotton factory in Lancashire, and had suffered from an
unhappy marriage followed by the death of her four children. It is
no wonder that she looked upon sexual relationships as the root of all
evil, and imposed the rule of celibacy upon her followers. Mother
Ann had the power of being spiritually "possessed" and of seeing
visions. In one of these manifestations she had a vision of America.
"I saw a large tree, every leaf of which shone with such brightness
as made it appear like a burning torch. ... I knew that God had
a chosen people in America; I saw some of them in a vision and when
I met with them in America I knew them. . . ."
To America, accordingly, Mother Ann went, accompanied by
eight of her followers, in the year 1774. It was scarcely a propitious
moment to arrive in America, especially from England. After some
time, Mother Ann's band found their way to a small settlement near
Albany, then called Niskeyuna (later Watervliet), where they suf-
fered much persecution, including imprisonment on a charge of trea-
son. After their release they settled in New Lebanon, New York,
where they built their first meetinghouse. They recruited new mem-
bers from the Baptists, who in 1780 were in the midst of a fervent
revival. In 1784, Mother Ann died, but her work was continued by
James Whitaker and Joseph Meacham, and, from 1796, by another
remarkable woman, Lucy Wright. The Shakers believed in equality
of the sexes and proved it in their leadership. By this time the society
had some dozen communities, in New York, Connecticut, Massachu-
setts, New Hampshire, and Maine. Around 1805 communities were
established in Kentucky and Ohio.
The spirit of Mother Ann continued to exert a strong influence
on the Shakers. They followed her advice: "Put your hands to work
and your hearts to God." They developed handicrafts; they were
thrifty and practical and, as they grew stronger, resisted persecution
and condemnation with vigor and determination. Music was impor-
tant in their culture, not as sensuous delectation but as a means of
54 | Preparation
expressing their faith. From Mother Ann they received a number of
songs that had been revealed to her in visions.9
Mother Ann is also supposed to have revealed by inspiration the
system of musical notation used by the Shakers. This consisted of
designating the notes of the scale by the first seven letters of the
alphabet, beginning with "a" for middle C. Differences in note values
were indicated by different types of letters: roman letters for quarter
notes, italics for eighth notes, and so forth. This was but one of many
systems devised for using letters instead of notes, with some of which
we have already become acquainted.
Singing, dancing, shaking, running, leaping— all these were means
whereby the Shakers expressed the joy of their religious faith and
their victory over the flesh and the devil. Mother Ann believed firmly
in the reality of the devil. "The devil is a real being," she said, "as
real as a bear. I know, for I have seen him and fought with him."
This belief in the corporeal reality of the devil, this expression of faith
and spiritual victory through song and the violence of bodily mo-
tion, found their full manifestation in the nineteenth-century revivals,
where we shall again meet the Shakers and their songs and dances.
Music among minority sects
In addition to the predominantly Anglo-Saxon movements of dis-
sent that made themselves felt in eighteenth-century America, there
were a number of religious sects from continental Europe which estab-
lished settlements in the New World and which gave varying degrees
of importance to music in their worship and recreation. Though they
remained relatively self-contained and isolated from the popular mass
movement of religious dissent, their musical activities are part of the
American experience and deserve, therefore, a place in our narrative.
According to chronological priority, we may mention first the
Mennonites, followers of Menno Simon, who came from Switzerland
and the German Palatinate and who emigrated to the American
colonies from 1683 to 1748. The first small group of Mennonites came
to Pennsylvania via Rotterdam and London in 1683 and settled in
Germantown, near Philadelphia, where in 1708 they built a meeting-
house. Their first pastor in America was Willem Rittinghuyscn,
great-grandfather of the celebrated astronomer and mathematician
•For examples of Shaker songs, see Chapter u.
SINGING DISSENTERS 55
David Rittcnhouse (the name having become thus anglicized). In 1770
they built a new stone church, which is still in use. The Mennonites
used a hymnbook which had originally been printed at Schaffhausen
in 1583 and which was reprinted at Germantown in 1742, under the
title Der Ausbund: Das ist Etliche Schone Christliche Lieder (later
editions in 1751, 1767, and 1785). With regard to religious beliefs,
the Mennonites were related to the Dunkers or German Baptists, but
they practiced baptism by affusion rather than by immersion. They
were opposed to instrumental music in church worship and their
hymnody was not particularly important.
In 1694 a group of German Pietists under the leadership of
Johannes Kelpius came to Pennsylvania and after a brief sojourn in
Germantown settled on the banks of the Wissahickon, not far from
Philadelphia. These Pietists became known as the Hermits or the Mys-
tics of the Wissahickon. Their leader Kelpius, besides being a dabbler
in Oriental lore and cabbalistic philosophy, was somewhat of a musi-
cian and hymn writer. He was only twenty-one when he sailed for
America in 1694 w^h about forty other German Pietists, among whom
there were evidently several musicians. This we gather from a sen-
tence in Kelpius's own account of the voyage: "We had also prayer
meetings and sang hymns of praise and joy, several of us accompany-
ing on instruments that we brought from London." It is believed the
instruments mentioned by Kelpius may have been those used at the
ordination of Justus Falckner in Gloria Dei Church on November
23, 1703. For this occasion the Mystics of the Wissahickon provided
music with viols, hautboys, trumpets, and kettledrums. The church
already had an organ, which had been sent from Germany in response
to a plea from Justus Falckner, written shortly after his arrival in
Pennsylvania in 1700. The text of this letter is worth quoting, in
part, for it shows the importance that Falckner attached to music
and gives us an insight into the reactions of the Indians when ex-
posed to European music. Speaking of the desired organ, he writes:
It would not only attract and civilize the wild Indian, but it
would do much good in spreading the Gospel truths among the
sects and others by attracting them. . . . Thus a well sounding
organ would prove of great profit, to say nothing of the fact that
the Indians would come running from far and near to listen to such
unknown melody, and upon that account might be willing to accept
our language and teaching and remain with people who had such
56 I Preparation
agreeable things: tor they are said to come ever so far to listen to
one who plays even upon a reed pipe; such an extraordinary love
have they for any melodious and ringing sound.
The Gloria Dei Church in Philadelphia, of which Falckner became
pastor, was built by Swedish Lutherans, who had first settled on the
Delaware River in 1638. Falckner himself was a German Lutheran, a
native of Saxony, educated at the universities of Leipzig and Halle.
He wrote several hymns, of which the best known is "Rise, Ye
Children of Salvation," sung to the tune of "Meine Hoffnung."
Magister Johannes Kelpius, leader of the Wissahickon Hermits,
has been put forward by some writers as the first Pennsylvanian com-
poser, a claim based on his supposed authorship of some hymn tunes
contained in a manuscript collection entitled The Lamenting Voice of
the Hidden Love, at the time when She lay in Misery & forsaken; and
of rest by the multitude of Her Enemies. Composed by one in Kumber.
. . . Pennsylvania in America /yoj.10 "Kumber" or "cumber" is an
obsolete English word for "distress." There is a possibility that Kelpius
may have written the text in this manuscript (which is not in his
handwriting), but there is no valid evidence that might substantiate
a claim for him to be regarded as the composer of the music, most
of which is taken from identifiable German sources. The words of the
hymns are in German, with English translations that have been at-
tributed to Dr. Christopher Witt, an Englishman who emigrated to
America in 1704 and joined the Mystics of the Wissahickon. He seems
to have been a musician, a portrait painter, and an amateur organ
builder, for he is believed to have built the pipe organ that he owned
—said to be the first private organ in the North American colonies.
As for The Lamenting Voice of the Hidden Love, it has an anti-
quarian interest as containing, in the words of Albert Hess, "the
earliest known practical example of a continuo realization in mensural
notation." This realization of the figured bass or basso continuo is
found in the hymn titled "Colloquium of the Soul with Itself." n The
realization reveals lack of technical skill, and is characterized by the
prevalence of three-part harmony.
10 A facsimile reproduction of this manuscript will be found in Church Music
and Musical Life m Pennsylvania, vol. i, pp. 21-165.
11 A transcription of this hymn, made by Hess, was printed in the Journal of
the American Musicological Society, vol. 3, p. 221.
SINGING DISSENTERS 57
Francis Daniel Pastorius, who became the leader of a German
Pietist colony in Germantown, Pennsylvania, was * friend of William
Penn, whose liberal laws encouraged so many minority sects to settle
in his colony. The Quakers themselves were generally opposed to
church music, but it is curious to note that George Fox, after attend-
ing a Quaker meeting in 1655, wrote that those present "were much
exercised by ye power of ye Lorde in Songes and Hymns & made
melody and rejoiced." So apparently not all Quakers were antimusical.
Pastorius wrote the words of a love song, "Come, Corinna, let me
kiss thee," which has been given a modern musical setting for male
quartet by Arthur L. Church. John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "The
Pennsylvania Pilgrim" was written around the life and character of
Pastorius.
We turn now to one of the most original of the Pennsylvania reli-
gious sects, the Ephrata Cloister or the Community of the Solitary,
who under the leadership of Conrad Beissel and Peter Miller settled
on the Cocalico River in 1720, in what is now Lancaster County.
They were Seventh-day Baptists who believed strongly in music as an
aid to worship. But instead of drawing upon established musical tra-
ditions, they used their own homespun music, based on principles set
forth by Beissel in his curiously quaint Dissertation on Harmony.
Beissel himself not only composed the hymns for the community, he
also sang and played several instruments, including the violin, and or-
ganized the musical life of the Ephrata Cloister down to the most
minute details. He established choirs and singing schools, and even
prescribed special diets for different types of singers— one diet for
altos, another for basses, and so forth. The singing of the Ephrata
Cloister was usually in four parts, and their repertoire consisted of
nearly a thousand selections. A visitor to the Ephrata Cloister in 1735
wrote "many of the younger sisters are just now constantly employed
in copying musical note books for themselves and the brethren." These
hand-copied songbooks were beautifully illuminated. In addition, the
Ephrata Cloister used printed hymnbooks, of which several were
printed by Benjamin Franklin in the 17305. The main body of Ephrata
hymnody was contained in a work entitled Song of the Lonely and
Forsaken Turtle Dove, the Christian Churchy more conveniently
known as the Turtel-Taube, a manuscript volume with some 750
hymns, compiled in 1746. This unique book was at one rime in the
possession of Benjamin Franklin, who took it with him to England
58 | Preparation
and loaned it to the Lord Mayor of London in 1775. Eventually it
was acquired by the Library of Congress. Beissel's last collection of
hymns, the Paradisiacal Wonder Music, dating from 1754, was P^ty
hand-written and partly printed.
Beissel's musical system was crude but doubtless effective for his
purpose. There is no question that he made the Ephrata Cloister a
community of musical enthusiasts, of whom many were amateur com-
posers and nearly all singers. Beissel divided the notes of the scale into
"masters" and "servants." The notes belonging to the common chord
were the "masters," the others the "servants." In his metrical system
he simply followed the rhythm of the words, the accented syllables
having the longer notes and the unaccented ones the shorter notes. In
setting the texts to music, he provided that the accent should always
fall on a "master" note, while the "servants" took care of the. un-
accented syllables. With the help of chord tables for all the keys, com-
piled by Beissel, the art of musical composition became an easy exer-
cise for the brethren of the Ephrata Cloister. The method thus evolved
had no repercussions in the outside world and did not shake the foun-
dations of established musical theory; but it did produce a remarkable
example of "primitive" art that deserves a special niche among the
curiosities of musical Americana.
From the point of view of musical production and continuous ac-
tivity, the most important of the early religious colonies in Pennsyl-
vania was undoubtedly that of the Moravians or Unitas Fratrem,
about whom something has already been said in connection with their
influence on John Wesley and Methodist hymnody. After the failure
of their first colony in Georgia, the Moravian brethren in America
moved northward to Pennsylvania and«in 1741 established a settlement
on the Lehigh River, which they called Bethlehem. There, under the
personal leadership of Count Zinzendorf, Bishop of the Unitas Fratrem
since 1734, they organized a communal society in which all worked
for the common good and were provided for from a common store
(private property, however, was not abolished, and the colonists were
free to withdraw if they wished). Soon joined by other Moravians
from Europe, the colony prospered, though it was never large.
Music at once assumed an important place in the life of the Mo-
ravians in Bethlehem. By 1743 they had a small orchestra consisting
of violins, viola da gamba, viola da braccio, flutes, French horns, trom-
SINGING DISSENTERS 59
bones, and a spinet. In December, 1 744, they formed a musical society,
or "Collegium Musicum," for the performance of chamber music and
symphonies by such celebrated European composers as Haydn, Mo-
fcart, Johann Christian Bach, and Johann Stamitz. They also performed
oratorios, among them Haydn's Creation, Handel's Messiah, and The
Israelites in the Desert by C. P. E. Bach.
The Moravians were partial to trombones, which they organized
in "choirs" (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), and which they used both
on festive occasions and for the sad duty of announcing the death of
a member of the community. On such occasions it was customary for
the trombone players to station themselves on the roof of one of the
buildings, so that they could be heard far and wide. There is a tradi-
tion that during the French and Indian War a band of Indians was
planning to attack the settlement and for this purpose lay in wait on
Calypso Island until the coming of darkness. Just then the trombones
sounded for the death of one of the brethren, and the Indians, think-
ing this strange noise from above must be the voice of the Great Spirit
warning them away, decided to give up the attack. The story is also
told that a certain Christian Ettwein, player on the bass trombone, on
one Easter morn drank seventeen mugs of mulled wine. The effect
this had on his performance has not been recorded.
Shortly after the founding of Bethlehem, a group of Moravians
went to North Carolina, where they made several settlements, of
which the most important was at Salem (now Winston-Salem). There
they built churches with organs, formed trombone choirs, and con-
tinued their characteristic interest in both vocal and instrumental
music. Typical of their experiences and customs is this passage from
the diary of a Moravian settler in North Carolina, dated November 17,
1753:
We drove three miles further on the new road, then turned to
the left and cut a road for ij4 miles to the little House that the
Brethren found yesterday. . . . We at once made preparations for a
litde Lovefeast, and rejoiced with one another. Brother Gottlob
began singing, with the little verse:
We hold arrival Lovefeast here
In Carolina land,
A company of Brethren true,
A little Pilgrim band,
60 | Preparation
Called by the Lord to be of those
Who through the whole world go
To bear Him witness everywhere
And naught but Jesus know.12
To this day there remain notable examples of Moravian architecture
in the state of North Carolina, as well as in Pennsylvania.
The Moravians were interested in carrying on missionary work
among the Negroes and the Indians, and in 1763 they published a col-
lection of hymns in the language of the Delaware Indians. In 1803 the
Rev. David Zeisberger brought out A Collection of Hymns for the
Use of the Christian Indians of the Mission of the United Brethren in
North America. The Moravians were also a highly international group.
On September 4, 1745, there took place in Bethlehem a remarkable
example of polyglot singing, when the hymn "In Dulce Jubilo" was
sung in thirteen languages simultaneously: Bohemian, Dutch, English,
French, German, Greek Irish, Latin, Mohawk, Mohican, Swedish,
Welsh, and Wendish. A Dane, a Pole, and a Hungarian were also
present but did not join in the singing. Here, surely, is a preview of
the American melting pot.
The Bethlehem colony developed a rather notable group of com-
posers, among whom were John Christopher Pyrlaeus, Christian Fred-
erick Oerter, John Antes, David Moritz Michael (1751-1825), and
John Frederick (Johann Friedrich) Peter (1746-1813), the chief
member of the group. Peter, born in Holland of German parents,
was educated in Holland and Germany, and came to America in 1770,
where he joined the Moravian colony in Bethlehem. There he became
organist of the church, director of music, and secretary of the Breth-
ren's House. He brought to America manuscript copies that he had
made in Germany of compositions by C. F. Abel, Johann Christoph
Friedrich Bach, Johann Stamitz, and other European composers less
known today. Later he copied a number of works by Haydn, who
strongly influenced his own style of composition. In 1786 Peter left
Bethlehem and was active for several years in Salem, North Carolina,
where he married and where he composed the six String Quintets
upon which chiefly rests his reputation as a composer (they are dated
1789). Returning to Bethlehem, he died there suddenly on July 19,
12 Records of the Moravians in North Carolina. Publications of the North
Carolina Historical Commission. Raleigh, N.C., 1922, p. 79.
SINGING DISSENTERS 6 1
1813. He was the teacher of John C. Till and of Peter Wolle, who in
turn handed down the musical tradition of Bethlehem to future gen-
erations. The celebrated Bach Choir of Bethlehem continues to sustain
the community's reputation as a music center.
All but one of Peter's quintets are in three movements. Following
the classical tradition of Haydn and Stamitz, but with considerable
harmonic freedom and boldness in modulation, the String Quintets of
John Frederick Peter are well-written and attractive, and one might
agree with Dr. Hans T. David, leading authority on American Mo-
ravian music, that they are at times "even brilliant." Certainly, when
revived for performance today, they can be heard with pleasure and
not solely for their historical significance. Peter also composed a num-
ber of interesting and effective anthems for chorus with accompani-
ment of organ and strings.
Music of the Catholic Church
The Catholic Church welcomed the aid of music, both vocal and
instrumental, in its religious worship. The less wealthy Catholic
churches in the English colonies could not match the musical cere-
mony in the churches of the Spanish colonies, especially those in the
viceregal cities of Mexico and Lima. But the seduction of music in
the Catholic Church, even in North America during the eighteenth
century, is attested by several entries in the diary of John Adams. On
October 9, 1774, Adams wrote: "Went in the afternoon, to thfe Romish
Chapel [in Philadelphia]. The scenery and the music are so calcu-
lated to take in mankind that I wonder the Reformation ever suc-
ceeded . . . the chanting is exquisitely soft and sweet." On July 4,
1779, the French Ambassador Gerard arranged for a celebration of
the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence
with a ceremony in St. Mary's Church, Philadelphia, which was at-
tended by members of the Congress and other important personages,
and where "the great event was celebrated by a well-adapted dis-
course, pronounced by the Minister's chaplain, and a Te Deum sol-
emnly sung by a number of very good voices, accompanied by the
organ and other kinds of music.*'
The first hymnbook published for the use of Catholics in the
United States was A Compilation of the Litanies and Vesper Hymns
and Anthems as They are Sung in the Catholic Church, Adapted to
62 I Preparation
the Voice or Organ by John Aitken (Philadelphia, 1787). The music
was in two parts (treble and bass); in later editions a third part was
added. Perhaps the most interesting selection in this book is "The
Holy Mass of the Blessed Trinity/' with the plainsong harmonized and
with instrumental interludes (called "symphonies") in typical eight-
eenth-century style, including the standard Albert! bass.
Meanwhile the influence of the Catholic Church, with music al-
ways prominent in its missionary program, was spreading to other
parts of North America then under Spanish domination but later des-
tined to be incorporated in the territory of the United States. The
Spanish missionary Cristobal de Quinones, for example, entered New
Mexico between 1598 and 1604 and was therefore probably "the first
music teacher who worked within the confines of the present United
States" (L. M. Spell).18 Fray Alonso de Benavides, whose Memorial
was written in 1630, states that in New Mexico there existed "schools
of reading and writing, singing, and playing of all instruments." 14
Fray Antonio Margil de Jesus went into Texas in 1716 and taught the
Indians there to sing the Alabados and Alabanzas, simple songs of reli-
gious praise that remained in the musical folklore of the Southwest
long after the end of Spanish control. The Spanish missionaries also
introduced the autos sacrament ales or religious plays with music, which
likewise have survived in the folklore of the region, notably in the
Christmas play Los Pastores, performed annually or at less frequent
intervals in some communities of Texas and New Mexico.
The founding of the famous California missions, from 1769 to
1823, represented another phase of the cultural penetration of Spain
and of Catholic church music within the borders of present-day
United States. Music was a very important feature in the educational,
recreational, and religious life of the missions. The Indians of the re-
gion, most of whom proved docile, were soon taught the rudiments
of music, then formed into choirs and small orchestras, consisting usu-
ally of violins, violas, violoncellos, bass viols, flutes, trumpets, horns,
bandolas (a kind of lute), guitars, drums, and triangles. The orchestra
in the Mission of San Luis Rey consisted of forty players. Many of
the instruments were made by the Indians themselves in the mission
18 "Music Teaching in New Mexico in the iyth Century." In New Mexico
Historical Review, II, i (Jan. 1927).
l* The Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides, translated by Ayer, Chicago
1916.
SINGING DISSENTERS 63
workshops. The most notable musician among the Franciscan mission-
aries in California was Padre Narciso Durdn, choirmaster at the San
Jos6 Mission, where in 1813 he compiled a choir book that constitutes
our most valuable source of information for the study of Spanish mis-
sion music. Padre Duran is believed to be the composer of a Mass,
La MLisa Catalana, discovered at San Juan Capistrano a few years ago.
Among the valued possessions of the Franciscan friars of Mission
San Juan Bautista was an "drgano de tres cilindros" that had been
given to them by the British explorer Vancouver. This was nothing
but an English barrel organ, with three barrels, each of which could
grind out ten tunes. That these tunes were far from sacred in charac-
ter may be judged by the following selections: "Spanish Waltz," "Col-
lege Hornpipe," "Lady Campbell's Reel," and "Go to the Devil!"
This brief glimpse of early Catholic church music in North Amer-
ica has taken us far from the Eastern seaboard, where the principal
forces that shaped the course of American music were developing not
only in New England but also in the South. If the vocal-religious
movement that dominated American music for two hundred years re-
ceived its main impetus from New England, through the singing
schools, the songbooks, and the revival fervor that spread thence to
other sections of the country, the continuing impact of this move-
ment, as the nation consolidated itself and expanded, was to be felt
principally in the South, first along the seaboard, then in the pied-
mont, and later across the first barrier of mountains that marked the
early frontier.
In this chapter we have traced the rise of evangelical hymnody up
to the point where, largely taken over and remade by dissenting groups,
it was ready to enter "the broad road of revivalism." And we have
given some account of various minority sects which, more or less iso-
lated from the predominant mass movements, managed to develop
their own types of music within a limited sphere. Such were the
Shakers, the Mennonites, the Ephrata Cloister, and the Moravians.
These groups came to America of their own accord, though impelled
to a certain extent by circumstances. In the next chapter we shall de-
scribe the backgrounds and the first American experiences of an im-
portant minority group that was brought to the New World against
its will, and that was obliged to adapt itself to the new environment
under the unfavorable conditions of slavery. The importation of Negro
slaves into the North American colonies, and later the United States,
64 I Preparation
has had profound and far-reaching consequences in America's music.
Since the foundations of Afro-American music were laid in the eight-
eenth century, and since it has a direct connection with the spread
of evangelical hymnody and the growth of revivalism, this is the ap-
propriate place to take up the story of the Negroes in Africa and
America.
chapter four
African exiles
Jove fixd it certain, that whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
HOMER, THE ODYSSEY XVII, 233 (QUOTED BY JEFFERSON, NOTES ON VIRGINIA).
JL/utch ships landed a few African slaves in Virginia as early as 1619.
A century later the American slave trade was in full swing. By 1727
there were 75,000 Negroes in the North American colonies, and by
1790 there were more than ten times that number. Ten years later, in
1800, there were over a million Negroes in the United States, of whom
more than 100,000 were free— a significant fact to bear in mind. At
that time the Negroes formed nearly 19 per cent of the population of
this country. Such was the rapid growth of a socioeconomic system
that resulted in the transplanting of a large measure of African culture
on the continents of the New World.
What did enlightened Americans think of the institution of slavery?
Patrick Henry, in a letter to a friend, expressed his views on the sub-
ject: "Every thinking honest man rejects it in Speculation, how few
in practice. Would anyone believe that I am Master of slaves of my
own purchase? I am drawn along by ye general Inconvenience of liv-
ing without them; I will not, I cannot justify it. . . ." Henry's sister
Elizabeth freed her slaves with the declaration that "it is both sinful
and unjust, as they are by nature equally free as myself, to continue
them in slavery." It was Thomas Jefferson who, in 1782, was instru-
mental in getting the Virginia legislature to pass an act making it law-
ful for any person "by last will and testament or other instrument
in writing sealed and witnessed, to emancipate and set free his slaves."
In his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson elaborated a scheme for gradually
emancipating all slaves in Virginia and sending them to be "colonized
to such places as the circumstances of the time should render most
65
66 | Preparation
proper." Jefferson treated his own slaves kindly, but did not hesitate to
sell them on the open market when the need arose.
Jefferson makes an unfavorable comparison between the Negro
and the Indian, claiming that the latter was superior in imagination
and artistic skill. Yet on one point he grants the superiority of the
blacks, not only over the Indians, but over the white man also: "In
music they are more generally gifted than the whites, with accurate ears
for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a
small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more
extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be
proved." This, and a footnote on the "banjar" (which will be quoted
later), is all that Jefferson wrote about the Negroes and music in his
Notes on Virginia. It is just enough to be tantalizing, not enough to
be really enlightening. It corroborates what we already know: that
even in slavery the Negroes cultivated their precious gift of music,
and this with a skill that impressed even such a connoisseur as Jef-
ferson.
Certain it is that the Negroes came from Africa singing, dancing,
and drumming. This in spite of the horrible and cruel conditions under
which they were transported in the slave ships. Harsh as were the
methods of the slaver, it was not to his interest to let his human cargo
pine and die. Music and dancing were used to keep up the morale of
the miserable captives. In 1700 Thomas Starks of London directed
the captain of the Africa to take on a cargo of 450 slaves, and in-
cluded the typical admonition: "Make your Negroes cheerful and
pleasant makeing them dance at the Beating of your Drum, etc." When
weather permitted, it was customary to drive the slaves on deck for
exercise. What better exercise than dancing, which of course had to
be accompanied by drumming (tin pans would do if nothing else)
and usually by singing also? It is said that "slave captains preferred
happy tunes and frequently would resort to whips to exact their
preference." Evidence from a later period, but surely typical of the
whole slaving era, is found in a work titled Captain Canot, or Twenty
Years on an African Slaver (1821-1841): "During afternoons of serene
weather, men, women, girls and boys are allowed while on deck to
unite in African melodies, which they always enhance by an extempo-
raneous tom-tom on the bottom of a tub or tin kettle."
When no other instruments were at hand, a tub or tin kettle would
do: this is characteristic of the Negro's knack for improvised percus-
AFRICAN EXILES 67
sion. He also had a knack for making musical instruments in a simple
manner out of easily available materials. Writing of the Negroes and
music in his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson says, "The instrument proper
to them is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa, and
which is the original of the guitar, its chords [i.e., strings] being pre-
cisely the four lower chords of the guitar." This is the instrument
which came to be known as the banjo. Jefferson is not historically ac-
curate when he says that it was "the original of the guitar,*' for there
is evidence to indicate the contrary: namely, that the West African
bania (as it was called) was a modification of the Arabian guitar (from
which the European guitar is derived). The main point of interest,
however, is that the African slaves brought to America a musical in-
strument that subsequently became so important in our folklore.
It is a pity that Jefferson did not describe the construction of the
"ban jar" as it existed in his time. Very likely it was made in the same
primitive fashion followed by later generations of Negroes. The seeds
were scooped out of a large gourd, and the bowl cut away so as to
be level with the handle attached to it. Over the bowl of the gourd
a tanned coonskin was tightly stretched, forming a drumhead. Four
strings were passed over a bridge placed near the center of the drum
and attached to the neck or handle of the instrument. The strings were
made of any suitable material at hand.
The slaves at work and play
The Negroes were brought from Africa to America for the pur-
pose of working. That truism is stated in order to remind the reader
of an equally obvious fact; namely, that the desire to sing while work-
ing was the prime impulse for the growth of Afro-American folksong.
The emphasis placed upon the "spirituals" has tended to overstress
the religious factor in the origins of American Negro music. It is
true, as we shall soon observe, that exposure to white psalmody and
hymnody had a direct influence on the course of Afro-American folk-
song and determined one direction that it was to take. But this was a
gradual and relatively late development, which did not attain signifi-
cant proportions until the latter part of the eighteenth century. The
Rev. Samuel Davies estimated that in 1750, out of about 120,000 Ne-
groes in Virginia, only 1,000 had been converted and baptized. The
68 | Preparation
Virginia House of Burgesses, toward the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury, declared that religious progress among the Negroes was impos-
sible because of the "Gros Barbarity and Rudeness of their manners,
the variety and strangeness of their languages, and the weakness and
shallowness of their minds. . . ." No wonder that Du Bois speaks of
"the spread of witchcraft and persistence of heathen rites among Negro
slaves."
We know that the Negroes in Africa sang at their work; there
was nothing to prevent them from doing the same in America. Neither
the plantation owner nor the overseer cared whether the slaves sang,
as long as they did their work. If anything, singing might be regarded
with favor, since it tended to lighten the burden and tedium of labor,
and thus might make the slaves more docile and contented; which is
to say, from the owner's point of view, less troublesome. If slave-ship
captains encouraged the Negroes to sing on shipboard, plantation over-
seers would have at least as much reason for doing likewise.
It was difficult enough to get the slaves to do a real day's work un-
der any circumstances. No sooner was the overseer's back turned, than
a slowdown would begin, and not even the most energetic overseer
could be everywhere at once. An American slaveowner stated that
"his Negroes never worked so hard as to tire themselves— always were
lively, and ready to go off on a frolic at night. . . . They could not
be made to work hard: they never would lay out their strength freely,
and it was impossible to make them do it. . . ." *
In general, the slaveowner's attitude toward the singing and other
pastimes of the Negroes was tolerant so long as these did not interfere
with his own peace and comfort. The making of drums was discour-
aged, when not positively forbidden, because drums could be used
as signals for uprisings, of which there was constant fear in the South.
But makeshift drums could be improvised out of boxes, kegs, or ket-
tles; and simple instruments of one kind or another, like the "banjar,"
could be readily made out of available materials. Then the clapping
of hands, the stamping or tapping of feet, and every sort of rhythmic
bodily movement, together with the voice used both melodically and
rhythmically, could reinforce the primitive music-making of the first
Africans who found themselves in a new world not of their choosing.
Although Jefferson recognized the superior musical gifts of the
1 Quoted in Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, p. 102.
AFRICAN EXILES 69
Negroes, he remarked on their alleged inferiority to the Indians in
aits and crafts. In this connection he wrote, "It would be unfair to
follow them to Africa for this investigation." Today our approach is
different. We believe it is both fair and necessary to follow the trail
of the Negro's past into Africa, to learn what we can of his traditional
values and ancestral folkways. We do not look upon the Negro as "a
man without a past." His past is in Africa; it is an ancient past, and
one not without deep influence upon European, and thence American,
culture. Jefferson would have been surprised, for example, if he could
have foreseen the effect of African sculpture upon modern art. Our
next step, therefore, must be to glance at the African backgrounds of
Negro culture in general and of music in particular.
African backgrounds
Although some slaves were taken from East Africa (Mozambique),
from Angola, and from the region of the Congo, the majority of those
shipped to the New World came from the coastal area of West Africa,
along the Gulf of Guinea. The heart of the slave territory lay in
Nigeria, Dahomey, western Congo, and the Gold Coast. This region
is still inhabited, as it was in the time of the slave trade, by the Ashanti,
the Congo, the Dahomeans, the Yoruba, and the Bini. Most of the
African survivals found in the Americas can be traced to these main
cultural-linguistic groups.
Music, dance, and religious beliefs and practices seem to be the
phases of African culture that have left strongest traces in the New
World. Music and dance, indeed, are often closely allied with African
religion; hence an outline of the latter is pertinent to our subject. Per-
sons not disposed to regard such matters objectively have dismissed
African religions as gross superstition, a crude mixture of magic and
idolatry. It is true that magic does play a very important part in
West African beliefs, but it is only one aspect of a complex super-
natural system that implies a definite world view, a profound concep-
tion of man's relation to Fate, and a highly organized relationship be-
tween human beings and the spiritual powers who are conceived as
gods or deities. There is a hierarchy of gods, and the great gods, in the
words of Herskovits, "are grouped in pantheons, which follow the
organization of the social units among men, each member having spe-
yo | Preparation
cific names, tides, functions, and worshipers. The cult groups arc or-
ganized in honor of these deities, and the outstanding religious festivals
arc held for them."
The spirits of ancestors are also worshiped, and those who were
most powerful in life are believed to have retained that power— either
for good or evil— after death. This leads to elaborate funeral rites, for
it is necessary to appease the spirits of the departed and assure their
good will by these observances. The cult of ancestor-spirit worship,
in determining the attitude toward the dead and in setting the pat-
tern for burial customs, has had a marked influence on Negro cus-
toms in the New World.
Something must be said about the fetish in connection with West
African beliefs. Outwardly the fetish is represented by a charm worn
around the neck, or elsewhere on the body, or hung up within a
dwelling. Certain powers and taboos are associated with this charm.
Fetishism is the belief that possession of the charm, and observance of
the rituals and taboos associated with it, can procure the help and
protection of the spirit that it represents. The charm itself, as a ma-
terial object, is simply the symbol of a supernatural power. The fetish
charm, in addition to doing good for its wearer or owner, can also
work harm upon the latter's enemy. Hence it becomes an instrument
of so-called black magic.
The cult of Fate or Destiny is extremely important in relation to
the African world view. Fate rules the universe. Everything is pre-
determined, nothing happens by chance or accident. Nevertheless, the
individual is believed to have a fighting chance to alter the course of
destiny in his own case, provided he can be forewarned in time to
invoke the supernatural intercession of some deity whom he has duly
propitiated. If one is a faithful worshiper and observes all the rites of
the cult, one may perhaps obtain a better deal from Fate. Because of
this belief, the art of divining, or foretelling the future, is of the ut-
most importance. Knowing what lies in store, one can take steps to
meet the situation.
Such, very briefly, are some of the beliefs that determined the
world view, the attitude toward life and death, of those Africans who
were forcibly brought to America as slaves, and which they used to
cope with the new problems of fate and destiny that beset them in a
strange environment. In the course of time we shall see some of these
AFRICAN EXILES 71
ancestral patterns reflected in their folklore and their music. For the
moment, let us glance at the background of music in African life.
Music of West Africa
Song is the characteristic musical expression of Africa. There are
songs for every occasion: for marriages and funerals, for ceremonies
and festivals, for love and for war, for work and for worship. The
African expresses all his feelings in song. He taunts his enemies or
rivals with songs of derision. He propitiates or implores his deities
with an infinite number of sacred melodies. The African sings while
he works: at his labor in the fields, on the rivers, in his household,
and in the communal tasks. The dances of Africa are usually accom-
panied by singing; the sounds of the ubiquitous African drums most
often blend with human voices, providing a strong and complex rhyth-
mical foundation for song.
The alternation between solo and chorus is a fundamental trait of
West African singing. This is the "call-and-response" or antiphonal
type of song that has been carried over into Afro-American folk music.
Richard Waterman makes some highly interesting comments on the
overlapping call-and-response patterns of African song:
While antiphonal song-patterning, whereby a leader sings phrases
which alternate with phrases sung by a chorus, is known all over
the world, nowhere else is this form so important as in Africa,
where almost all songs are constructed in this manner. A peculiarity
of the African call-and-response pattern, found but infrequently
elsewhere, is that the chorus phrase regularly commences while the
soloist is still singing; the leader, on his part, begins his phrase be-
fore the chorus has finished. This phenomenon is quite simply ex-
plained in terms of the African musical tradition of the primacy of
rhythm. The entrance of the solo or the chorus part on the proper
beat of the measure is the important thing, not the effects attained
through antiphony or polyphony. Examples of call-and-response
music in which the solo part, for one reason or another, drops out
for a time, indicate clearly that the chorus part, rhythmical and
repetitive, is the mainstay of the songs and the one really inex-
orable component of their rhythmic structure. The leader, receiv-
ing solid rhythmic support from the metrically accurate, rolling
repetition of phrases by the chorus, is free to embroider as he will.*
•Waterman, African Influence on the Music of the Americas, p. 214.
72 [ Preparation
Contrary to a widespread notion, harmony is not unknown in
African music, although there is no modulation from one key to an-
other, and the feeling for harmony is less developed than in European
music. Apart from the accidental harmony that may result from the
overlapping song patterns described above, singing in parallel thirds,
fourths, sixths, and octaves is common in West African music. The
Babira of the Belgian Congo have been known to use parallel seconds
in their choral singing! Of course, not all African music is uniform.
Practices differ among the various tribes. In Dahomey, use of harmony
is relatively rare, but two-, three-, and four-part harmony is frequent
in the music of the Ashanti of the Gold Coast.
We are apt to think of African music as "weird." This is largely
owing to peculiarities of intonation and to melodic practices to which
we are unaccustomed. W. E. Ward writes illuminatingly on this point:
The "weird" intervals are most noticeable at the beginning and
end of the tune or of a phrase. Now it is at these places that the
African, instead of endeavoring to end or begin with his phrase on
a pure note as any European singer would, allows himself to slide on
to the note or down from it. It seems to be left to the individual to
decide the range of the slide, and whether to approach the note from
above or below. A final note is always quitted in a downward
glide.8
Notice the similarity between this procedure and the "dirty" notes of
American jazz music.
Rejecting the hypothesis of an "African" scale of fractional or
microtonal intervals,4 Ward believes that "African melodies are es-
sentially diatonic in structure, modified by a liberal, and unregulated,
use of portamento" (i.e., sliding from one note to another). Water-
man also asserts the diatonic character of the African scale, a fact
which now seems beyond dispute; and he remarks that "the tendency
toward variable intonation of the third and seventh of the scale has
occasionally been noted in West African music." The diatonic scale
with ambiguous intonation of the third and seventh degrees— usually
somewhat flattened— is the so-called "blues" scale of American popular
music.
3 Ward, Music of the Gold Coast.
* Nicholas Ballanta-Taylor put forth the theory of an African scale based
on a division of the octave into sixteen intervals.
AFRICAN EXILES
73
The African conception of rhythm is more complex than the Eu-
ropean. In European music different rhythms, as a rule, may be em-
ployed successively but not simultaneously; but in African music sev-
eral rhythms go on simultaneously. Every piece of African music has
at least two or three rhythms, sometimes four or five. A frequent com-
bination is to have two percussion parts, one of which may be the
clapping of hands, and one vocal part with its own metrical pattern.
Often there are several metrical patterns in the percussion, played by
drums of different sizes. Confusion is avoided by the presence of a
fundamental underlying beat that never varies. If there are several
drums, this regular beat is played by the largest drum. The diverse
rhythms of all the other instruments must coincide on the first beat
of the fundamental rhythm. Rhythm in African music, therefore, is
conceived as a combination of time patterns that must coincide at a
given moment.
In a recording of Gold Coast drums with gong, the following com-
bination of rhythms appear, with the basic beat of the drum in 3/4
and that of the gong in 6/8 (in the background a second drum is heard
in another rhythm, with what Waterman describes as "a fluttering
beat in 12/8 time"— a rhythmic pattern frequently found in African
music): 5
t||:
j j
:J J>J J>
r j j
r j j
N J =
J J>J J1:
The following example of an African song with accompaniment
of hand clapping will serve to illustrate further some of the varied
rhythmical patterns of this music: e
B In Alberts (cd.), Tribal, Folk and Cafe Music of West Africa, p. 7.
6 From Ballanta-Taylor, St. Helena Island Spirituals, p. 19. Quoted by permis-
sion of Penn Community Services, Inc., Frogmore, S.C.
74 | Preparation
HAND -CLAP
PEOPLE
e we
NYAMSOLO
ya
we ye - etc.
i(l)
HAND -CLAP
t_r
TLT
Commenting on this example, Nicholas Ballanta-Taylor remarks that
the pattern J. JJ J is a rhythmic figure popular among the Afri-
cans, its duple character being suited to their usual dance steps. It is
one of numerous metrical patterns derived from the basic duple
pulse ( J J ) . Some of the more common patterns, together with their
corresponding syncopated effects, are as follows: 7
Fundamental duple vibrations:
Variant Figures
J~J
n n
Syncopated Effect
J. 3 J J
Bftllama-Taylor, he. cit
AFRICAN EXILES 75
These syncopated effects are frequently met with in Afro-American
music.
The "metronome sense" is cited by Waterman as crucial for the
understanding of African music; and, we may add, for the apprecia-
tion of Afro-American music also. In view of its importance, Water-
man's explanation is given herewith:
From the point of view of the listener, it entails habits of con-
ceiving any music as structured along a theoretical framework of
beats regularly spaced in time and of co-operating in terms of overt
or inhibited motor behavior with the pulses of this metric pattern
whether or not the beats are expressed in actual melodic or per-
cussion tones. Essentially, this simply means that African music, with
few exceptions, is to be regarded as music for the dance, although
the "dance" involved may be entirely a mental one. Since this metro-
nome sense is of such basic importance, it is obvious that the music
is conceived and executed in terms of it; it is assumed without ques-
tion or consideration to be part of the conceptual equipment of
both musicians and listeners and is, in the most complete way, taken
for granted. When the beat is actually sounded, it serves as a con-
firmation of this subjective beat.8
A grasp of this fundamental concept underlying the traditional values
of African music enables us to understand readily how and why the
Afro-American influence has had such a tremendous impact on the
dance music of the Western world.
Notwithstanding the differences in the concept of rhythm that
have been pointed out, there is a basis of unity between European
and African music. The diatonic scale is common to both systems
and forms, indeed, the strongest link between them, as well as the
mark that distinguishes them from all other systems. Then there is the
basic concept of harmony that they share. Though the harmonic
sense may be less developed in African music, it exists as a concrete
factor.
These considerations lead us to conclude, with Kolinski and Water-
man, that African and European music have enough basic factors in
common to facilitate the process of musical "syncretism" or blending
when they are brought into contact with each other over a period
of time, as occurred in America. This explains, as Kolinski observes,
the homogeneous character of the American Negro spirituals and of
Waterman, African Influence on the Music of the Americas, p. in.
76 | Preparation
Afro-American music as a whole. We shall now observe some phases,
secular and religious, of this process of musical syncretism.
Negro fiddlers and dances
With that remarkable musical aptitude that Jefferson observed, the
Negroes in America soon learned to play various European musical
instruments. It must be remembered that conditions in which Negroes
lived in the American colonies and the early United States differed
greatly according to circumstances, and accordingly provided differ-
ent kinds and degrees of opportunity for the acquisition and display
of musical skills. In some cases slaves employed as household servants
were encouraged to develop musical skills that might contribute to
the pleasure or social prestige of their masters. In 1753 the Virginia
Gazette carried an advertisement for "an orderly Negro or mulatto
who can play well the violin." The same paper also printed an adver-
tisement offering for sale "A young healthy Negro fellow . . . who
[plays] extremely well on the French horn." Another announcement
requested the return of a runaway slave "who took his fiddle with
him.n Captain Richard Bailey, of Accomac County, Virginia, is re-
ported to have had a Negro servant who fiddled for the whole neigh-
borhood.
An aristocrat among Negro musicians was Sy Gilliat, body servant
to Lord Botecourt, who was the official fiddler at state balls in Wil-
liamsburg. He wore an embroidered silk coat and vest of faded lilac,
silk stockings, and shoes with large buckles. He also wore a powdered
brown wig, and his manners were said to be "as courtly as his dress."
Another Negro musician, known as "London Brigs," who became
Gilliat's assistant after the capital was moved from Williamsburg to
Richmond, was reputed to be equally skillful on the flute and the
clarinet. According to Samuel Mordecai, "To the music of Gilliat's
fiddle and 'London Brigs' flute all sorts of capers were cut. . . . Some-
times a 'congo' was danced and when the music grew fast and furious,
a jig would wind up the evening." This mention of the congo as a
social dance in colonial Richmond arouses a curiosity that the his-
torian finds difficult to satisfy. Unfortunately .this is not a contempo-
rary reference, for Mordecai's book was published in 1860, and his
sources are vague. Nevertheless, the fact that he does mention the
congo provides a clue that may some day lead to interesting data re-
AFRICAN EXILES 77
garding the influence that Negro music and dancing may have had
upon the American upper classes in the eighteenth century.
The congo has been well documented as a Negro dance of the
Antilles, found also in Louisiana (it is not to be confused with the
Cuban conga, of later origin). Lafcadio Hearn, in 1885, described the
congo as he saw it danced by Negroes in New Orleans. He said it was
"as lascivious as is possible." The women "do not take their feet off
the ground/' while the men "dance very differently, like savages leap-
ing in the air." We are not to assume that the ladies and gentlemen
of old Virginia carried on in this uninhibited manner. But the history
of social dancing is full of instances in which a dance existed simul-
taneously on two levels, assuming a decorous form in polite society
and manifesting a licentious character among the populace. It is quite
possible that the congo, a primitive Negro dance of African origin,
flourished in the slave quarters of the plantations, while at the same
time a dance of the same name, though certainly not with the identical
choreography, was admitted to the ballrooms of the ruling class.
In considering the plausibility of this hypothesis, it is important to
bear in mind that in many cases the musicians who played for these
society balls were Negroes. And if the music they played "grew fast
and furious," cannot we suppose that it reverted to some wild and
primitive strain, however modified and restrained by imposed conven-
tions? We know that in Latin America many dances adopted by
polite society had their origin in Negro dances which would be re-
garded as objectionable by the standards of this same society. Albert
Friedenthal, a musician who traveled widely in Latin America during
the nineteenth century, has some interesting comments to make on
the influence that the music and dancing of the Negroes exerted upon
their white masters:
Every day in their hours of rest they [the whites] had opportuni-
ties to see the partly sensual, partly grotesque and wild dances of
their black slaves, and to hear their peculiar songs. . . . Added to
this the strange instruments of percussion which, while marking the
rhythm, exerted an almost uncanny effect.8
Although the slaves in Latin America, on the whole, had wider
opportunities to express themselves musically than those of North
America, the conditions described by Friedenthal are largely applicable
9 Friedenthal, Musik, Tanz und Dtcbtung bei den Kreolen Amerikas, p. 95.
78 j Preparation
also to the United States. The songs and dances of the plantation Ne-
groes provided first a source of amusement for the landowners and
their families; and later, imitated by white entertainers with their
faces blackened, the "coon songs," "plantation melodies," and "cake-
walks" provided amusement for the whole country through the im-
mensely popular minstrel shows. Ragtime, blues, and jazz were other
and still later manifestations of the fascination and influence that Negro
music exerted upon the white population. In another chapter we shall
observe the influx of Latin American songs and dance rhythms from
the Caribbean area, dominated by African influences, into the region
of Louisiana and New Orleans in particular. There, in the nineteenth
century, the Negro folk music of the American South and the Afro-
Hispanic music of the Caribbean were to converge in the creation of
jazz.
After this glimpse into the future, we must return to the Atlantic
seaboard and the plantations of the South in the eighteenth century
to trace the spread of Christianity and of evangelical hymnody among
the Negroes, which provide the background for the development of
that important body of American folk song known as the Negro
spirituals.
The Negroes and the Gospel
In 1675 J°hn Eliott, the Puritan "apostle of the Indians,*' speaking
of the slave trade, said, "to sell souls for money seemeth to me a
dangerous enterprise." He meant, of course, dangerous for one's
spiritual welfare. But the majority of slaveowners were untroubled
by such scruples. A writer in the Athenian Oracle of London, in 1705,
expressed what was probably a prevalent attitude:
Talk to a planter of the soul of a Negro, and he'll be apt to tell
you (or at least his actions speak loudly), that the Body of one of
them may be worth twenty Pounds, but the Souls of an hundred of
them would not yield him one farthing.
A plantation owner of Barbados voiced the opinion that one "might
as well baptize puppies as Negroes." The vested interests of colonial
society, as represented by their official bodies, clothed similar senti-
ments in the more pretentious verbiage of moral self-justification.
Samuel Davies, the eighteenth-century evangelist and champion
AFRICAN EXILES 79
of religious tolerance, deplored "the almost universal neglect of the
many thousands of slaves . . . who generally continue Heathens in a
Christian country." In the course of time these conditions were to
change gradually, thanks to the efforts of many zealous missionaries
and to a more enlightened attitude on the part of the slaveowners.
It is true that some masters insisted upon having their slaves attend
religious services and that special galleries were set apart for this pur-
pose in colonial churches, such as the one in Bruton Parish, Williams-
burg, where, several hundred Negroes were baptized. Yet the formal-
ity of an established religion like the Episcopalian could exert no
strong appeal, nor affirm a deep hold, upon the emotions of the Negro
slaves. Much more effective was the fervor and freedom, the ecstasy
and exuberance, of revivalism as represented by the dissenting sects
and the evangelical denominations. The Methodists and the Baptists,
to say nothing of the numerous minor sects, far outdid in popular
appeal the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, and the Catholics.
The Rev. John Davies of Virginia was one of the most active
preachers of the gospel among the Negroes. John Wesley, the famous
founder of Methodism, tells in his journal of receiving a letter "sent
from a gentleman in Virginia," who was probably Davies, since he is
mentioned later as the writer of a similar letter which Wesley quotes
at length. As these letters are among the very few firsthand accounts
we have of Christianization among the slaves, and as they contain
significant references to music, I quote extensive passages from them.
The first letter runs, in part, as follows:
The poor Negro slaves here never heard of Jesus or his religion
till they arrived at the land of their slavery in America, whom their
masters generally neglect, as though immortality was not the privi-
lege of their souls, in common with their own. These poor Africans
are the principal objects of my compassion, and, I think, the most
proper subject of your charity. . . .
The number of these [Negroes] who attend on my ministry is
uncertain; but I think there are about 300 who give a stated attend-
ance. And never have I been so much struck with the appearance of
an assembly, as when I have glanced on one part of the house, adorned
(so it appeared to me) with so many black countenances, eagerly
attentive to every word they heard, and some of them covered with
tears. ... As they are not sufficiently polished to dissemble with a
good grace, they express the sensations of their hearts so much in
8o | Preparation
the language of simple nature, and with such genuine indications of
artless sincerity, that it is impossible to suspect their professions. . . .
I have supplied them to the utmost of my ability [with books].
They are exceedingly delighted with Watt's [sic] Songs. And I can-
not but observe, that the Negroes, above all of the human species
I ever knew, have the nicest ear for music. They have a kind of
ecstatic delight in psalmody; nor are there any books they so soon
learn, or take so much pleasure in, as those used in that heavenly
part of divine worship.10
This emphatic corroboration of the Negro's musical aptitude is
impressive; and it seems to me that these paragraphs from the pen of
an eyewitness tell us more about the genesis of the Negro spirituals
than any amount of a posteriori theorizing. Our imaginations can easily
reconstruct the atmosphere of emotionalism and fervor, the tears, the
heartfelt outpourings in simple language not devoid of striking im-
agery, the delight in the Hymns and Spiritual Songs of Dr. Watts with
their direct appeal to the common feelings of plain people, the ecstatic
pleasure in the surge of communal song, and the sense of spiritual and
physical satisfaction at expressing themselves freely through an innate
talent that not even- the conditions of slavery could repress.
Further details of the picture may be filled in from another letter
quoted in John Wesley's journal, which he specifically states is "from
the Rev. Mr. Davies, in Virginia":
When the books arrived, I gave public notice after sermon, and
desired such Negroes as could read, and such white people as would
make good use of them ... to come to my house. For some time
after, the poor slaves, whenever they could get an hour's leisure, hur-
ried away to me, and received them with all the genuine indication
of passionate gratitude. All the books were very acceptable, but none
more so, than the Psalms and Hymns, which enabled them to gratify
their peculiar taste for psalmody. Sundry of them lodged all night in
my kitchen; and sometimes when I have awaked at two or three in
the morning, a torrent of sacred psalmody has poured into my
chamber. In this exercise some of them spend the whole night.11
Extremely illuminating, and bearing even richer stuff for the imag-
ination to work on, is this vivid picture of Negroes spending the whole
10 The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, AM.y vol. *, p. 303.
II Ibid., p. 320
AFRICAN EXILES 8l
night in the singing of psalms and hymns, producing a veritable "tor-
rent" of sacred song. Lacking a direct detailed description of this
"torrent of psalmody," we must draw upon analogy and inference. At
this point it will be helpful if the reader goes back to Chapter 2 and
rereads the description of the Early New England Folk Style of psalm-
ody, noting that its main characteristics are singing by ear rather than
by note or "rule"; the raising or ^lowering of notes at will; the adding
of grace notes, turns, and other embellishments; the "sliding" from
one note to another; the adding of parts at the intervals of a fourth, a
fifth, and an octave; and the practice of "lining-out," with the leader
reading or chanting the verses of the psalm, one or two lines at a
time, and the congregation singing them afterward. Now compare the
description of African singing earlier in the present chapter, and ask
whether the two styles do not possess sufficient elements in common
to produce a natural fusion or syncretism. Compare, again, the follow-
ing description of the singing of a so-called "long meter" hymn (also
significantly known as "Doctor Watt") as heard among Southern
Negroes some years ago by George Pullen Jackson:
A deacon or the elder "lines out" a couplet of the text in a sing-
song voice and at a fair speaking pace ending on a definite tone.
This "tones" the tune. The deacon then starts singing, and by the
time he has sung through the elaborately ornamented first syllable
the whole congregation has joined in on the second syllable with a
volume of florid sound which ebbs and flows slowly, powerfully and
at times majestically in successive surges until the lined-out words
have been sung. Without pause the deacon sing-songs the next
couplet, and the second half of the four-line tune is sung in the same
manner. No instrument is ever used. No harmony is indulged in
excepting here and there a bit, hit upon by accident as it would
seem, and sometimes a one-singer attempt at bass. The women and
the men sing, with these exceptions, the same notes an octave apart.12
As this type of singing corresponds in its essential aspects to a well-
established popular tradition of eighteenth-century psalmody, I ven-
ture the hypothesis that something of this sort assailed the ears of the
Rev. Mr. Davies when he awoke in the small hours of the morning and
heard "a torrent of sacred psalmody" pouring from the throats of the
Negroes assembled in his kitchen.
12 Jackson, White and Negro Spmttuds, p. 248.
82 I Preparation
In the same letter to John Wesley from which we quoted above,
John Davies wrote: "There are thousands of Negroes in this Colony
[Virginia], who still continue in the grossest ignorance, and are as
rank Pagans now, as they were in the wilds of Africa." In other words,
while a certain percentage of Negroes was exposed to the doctrines
of Christianity, and some of them were converted and baptized, the
large majority continued to live, spiritually, as though they were still
"in the wilds of Africa," which in the eyes of the missionaries meant
they were "rank Pagans" clinging to barbarous beliefs.
It is important to keep these proportions in mind as we trace the
growth of Afro-American music, observing that there was no uni-
form development, no general conformity of conditions, but rather a
variety of social and cultural conditions, ranging from the comparative
sophistication of urbanized Negroes to the primitive plantation life of
the Georgia Sea Islands, where slaves living in relative isolation re-
tained definite Africanisms of speech and customs for generation after
generation. If we look at Afro-American music as it exists today, we
can see that it contains elements derived from these various levels of
culture and experience and what the sociologists call "acculturation"
(the results of continuous firsthand contact between different cultural
groups): there are the highly self-conscious and artistically "correct"
arrangements of spirituals, closely conforming to traditional standards
of European art music; there are the relatively primitive work songs,
shouts, hollers, and blues, strongly marked by African retentions;
there are the "Dr. Watt" hymns and "surge songs," survivals of eight-
eenth-century psalmody and hymnody; and there is jazz and its de-
rivative styles, stemming from the Negro's contact, in urban environ-
ments, with the dances and instruments of the dominant white cul-
ture fused with the ancestral African heritage. Even within the frame
of American musical culture as a whole, Afro-American music is in
itself a complex whose diverse strands need to be traced individually
as well as in their mutual interaction.
Our minds tend to reject all complexes in favor of simplified stereo-
types. It is thus that there emerges the image of the "plantation darkie"
as a stock figure of our stage and popular-song literature, leading to a
whole musico-theatrical production ranging from the grotesque to the
sentimental. From the eighteenth-century sentimental songs about the
poor Negro boy, to the "Mammy" songs of twentieth-century tin-pan
alley, there is a continuous popular tradition. We shall in due course
AFRICAN EXILES 83
trace this tradition and its tenuous connection with the actual life of
the plantation Negroes. For the moment we simply point to it as one
of the phases of America's music that stemmed from the backgrounds
of Negro slavery in the United States.
All generalities tend to be misleading through oversimplification.
But if we must carry in our minds a composite picture of plantation
life in the early days of slavery, then let it be one drawn by a master
hand, the informal but authoritative sketch of a great scholar in this
field, Ulrich B. Phillips:
The plantation was a pageant and a variety show in alternation.
The procession of plowmen at evening, slouched crosswise on their
mules; the dance in the new sugarhouse, preceded by prayer; the bon-
fire in the quarter with contests in clogs, cakewalks and Charlestons
whose fascinations were as yet undiscovered by the great world; the
work songs in solo and refrain, with not too fast a rhythm; the bap-
tizing in the creek, with lively demonstrations from the "sisters" as
they came dripping out; the torchlight pursuit of 'possum and 'coon,
with full-voiced halloo to baying houn' dawg and yelping cur; the
rabbit hunt, the log-rolling, the house-raising, the husking-bee, the
quilting party, the wedding, the cock fight, the crap game, the
children's play, all punctuated plantation life—and most of them were
highly vocal. A funeral now and then of some prominent slave would
bring festive sorrowing, or the death of a beloved master an out-
burst of emotion.18
And intertwined with the frolic and the fun, the sorrow and the
mourning, the work and the prayer, there was always music, not music
of one kind, but of many kinds, changing and taking to itself melodies
and harmonies and rhythms from here and there, but always based on
the bedrock of the black man's intense love and great gift for the solace
and beauty and excitement of music.
It is only natural that Thomas Jefferson should have been the first
prominent American to recognize and to proclaim publicly the excep-
tional musicality of the Negro. For Jefferson was not only one of
the most perceptive and enlightened men of his time, he was also a
keen and discriminating music lover. In the next chapter we shall
learn something about the musical tastes of Jefferson, as well as about
the interests and activities of other American gentlemen of the eight-
eenth century who cultivated music as amateurs.
"Phillips, Life and Labor m the Old South, pp. 202-203. .
chapter five
Gentlemen amateurs
They would talk of nothing but high life, and high-Jived company; with
other fashionable topics, such as pictures, taste, Shakespeare and the musi-
cal glasses.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.
vJn October u, 1760, the South Carolina Gazette carried the an-
nouncement of UA Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Music" to be
given in Charleston with the assistance of "the Gentlemen who are
the best performers, both in Town and Country." In the eighteenth
century professional musicians were not considered gentlemen. Hence
this announcement, like many others of similar tenor that appeared in
newspapers throughout the colonies, refers to the participation of those
"gentlemen amateurs" who practiced music because they loved it and
who played in public because there were not in those days enough
professional musicians in any American community to make up a "full
band." As a rule they played in semiprivate subscription concerts such
as those sponsored by the St. Cecilia Society of Charleston, but when
a worthy member of the musical profession gave a public "benefit"
concert— that is, according to the custom of those times, a concert for
his own benefit— then the Gentlemen from Town and Country ral-
lied gallantly to his assistance with their fiddles, flutes, and hautboys.
French horns, clarinets, and even an occasional bassoon, were not un-
known; but these were not regarded as particularly genteel instru-
ments.
That the gentlemen amateurs had no prejudice against performing
in the theater is indicated by the following announcement in the
Pennsylvania Gazette of Philadelphia for November 30, 1769: "The
Orchestra, on Opera Nights, will be assisted by some musical Per-
sons, who as they have no View but to contribute to the Entertain-
ment of the Public, certainly claim a Protection from any Manner
84
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 85
of Insult." This implies that the professionals, being paid for their
pains, had no recourse save to suffer the abuse of the public if their
efforts failed to please, while the amateurs claimed immunity from
criticism by virtue of their voluntary service. Besides, they were Gen-
tlemen.
As a typical gentleman amateur of colonial America, let me intro-
duce Councillor Robert Carter of Nomini Hall in Virginia. Philip
Vickers Fithian, a tutor in his household, wrote of him: "He has a
good ear for Music, a vastly delicate Taste and keeps good instruments;
he has here at Home a Harpsichord, Forte Piano, Harmonica, Guitar &
German Flute, and at Williamsburg has a good Organ; he himself also
is indefatigable in the Practice." l Lest the mention of "Harmonica"
evoke an unseemly image of Mr. Carter playing the mouth organ, let
me explain that this was, according to a description in the Councillor's
own notebook, an instrument invented by Mr. B. Franklin of Phila-
delphia, "being the musical glasses without water, framed into a com-
plete instrument capable of thorough bass and never out of tune." We
shall hear more presently about this wonderful invention. For the
moment simply pause to contemplate the edifying spectacle of a
country squire who keeps good instruments as one might keep good
horses, and who is as familiar with a thorough bass as with a thor-
oughbred. He, moreover, is reputed to have "a vastly delicate Taste"—
than which there could be no higher compliment to a gentleman of
the eighteenth century. Good taste was the touchstone of the age.
We take for granted the good taste of our colonial ancestors in
architecture and interior decoration because we are familiar with the
incontestable beauty of the homes, churches, and public buildings of
that period. But we are sadly ignorant concerning the musical taste
of our eighteenth-century forebears because it is attested only by
musty newspaper files, library inventories, and documental archives.
Recently, however, the Williamsburg Festival Concerts have revived
the musical elegance and sophistication of that colonial capital, which
knew the music of the best European composers, such as Handel,
Hasse, Vivaldi, Corelli, Galuppi, Pugnani, Boccherini, Rameau, Arne,
Stamitz, the "London" Bach, and many others.
Young Thomas Jefferson, while studying law at the College of
William and Mary in Williamsburg, belonged to the intimate circle
of Governor Francis Fauquier, of whom he later wrote: "The Gov-
1 Fithian, Journal and Letters, p. 77.
86 | Preparation
crnor was musical also, being a good performer, and associated me
with two or three other amateurs in his weekly, concerts." Jefferson
himself played the violin; he and Patrick Henry often played duets
together. Do not imagine that this sort of thing pertained exclusively
to the Cavalier tradition of the South. While there may have been
more gentlemen of leisure in the Southern colonies, there were musical
amateurs everywhere. Take, for example, Lieutenant Governor John
Penn of Pennsylvania, a keen music lover and a good violinist who
gave private chamber-music concerts at his home in Philadelphia every
Sunday evening during the season, and who, together with his friend
Francis Hopkinson, was one of the chief promoters of musical activity
in the Quaker City. In all our cities, from Charleston in the South
to Boston in the North, the gentlemen of high degree were paying
their respects to the heavenly Muse.
The sage of Monticello
Among the devotees of music none was more ardent in his devo-
tion than Thomas Jefferson. Consequently none felt more keenly
than he the deterioration in American musical activity that took
place during the Revolutionary War. Patriot though he was, he must
have looked back wistfully on those halcyon days when, as a crony
of Francis Fauquier, he joined in the governor's chamber-music con-
certs. We know by his own confession that he gazed with intense
longing upon the greener pastures of European musical life. In 1778
he wrote to a friend whose name we do not know, probably a
Frenchman, saying: "If there is a gratification which I envy any people
in this world, it is your country its music." Years later, when his
diplomatic mission to France had enabled him to savor this gratifica-
tion at firsthand, he repeated the same thought in a letter to Charles
Bellini, a professor at the College of William and Mary, dated Paris,
September 30, 1785: "Were I to proceed to tell you how much I
enjoy their architecture, sculpture, painting, music, I should want
words. It is in these arts they shine. The last of them, particularly, is
an enjoyment, the deprivation of which, with us, cannot be calculated.
I am about ready to say it is the only thing which from my heart I
envy them, and which in spite of all the authority of the Decalogue,
I do covet."
Can this passage be reconciled with the thesis that early musical
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 87
life in America was not as crude and primitive as it has generally been
depicted? I think it can. The conctrr programs so painstakingly un-
earthed and assembled by Sonneck prove that the music of the best
European composers of that time was known and performed in
America. But it would be absurd to pretend that the performances
were on a par with the best that could be heard in Europe. Jefferson
was thinking of Europe's finest: the Paris Ope*ra, the "Concert Spiri-
tuel," the English oratorio performances. Only the best, and a great
deal of it, would satisfy his passion for music. Moreover, after the
Revolution the Northern cities took the lead in our musical life,
while the South, where Jefferson lived, lagged behind.
Had Jefferson been able to carry out a cherished idea, he would
have created a small musical world of his own at Monticello. In the
letter of 1778 from which I have already quoted, he outlined an in-
genious scheme for providing himself with a private musical establish-
ment somewhat after the manner of the European nobility:
The bounds of an American fortune will not admit the indul-
gence of a domestic band of musicians, yet I have thought that a
passion for music might be reconciled with that economy which
we are obliged to observe. I retain, for instance, among my domestic
servants a gardener, a weaver, a cabinet maker and a stone cutter,
to which I would add a vigneron. In a country where like yours
music is cultivated and practised by every class I suppose there might
be found persons of those trades who could perform on the French
horn, clarinet or hautboy & bassoon, so that one might have a band
of two French horns, two clarinets & hautboys and a bassoon, with-
out enlarging their domestic expenses.2
Nothing seems to have come of the scheme, but the letter leaves no
doubt that Jefferson knew what he wanted. He was not exaggerating
when, in this same letter, he referred to music as "this favorite passion
of my soul." The truth is that the father of American democracy
was an aristocrat in his musical tastes. He courted the Muse like a
grand seigneur.
The eminent Dr. Franklin
Among Jefferson's letters from Paris there is one to Francis Hop-
kinson of Philadelphia, dated July 6, 1785, which casts a curious side-
1 Quoted in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, cd. by P. L. Ford (New
York, 1892-1899), vol. z, p. 159.
88 | Preparation
light on the musical inclinations of another famous Philadelphian:
"I communicated to Doctr. Franklin your idea of Mesmerising the
Harpsichord. He has not tried it, probably because his affairs have
been long packed & packing; as I do not play on that instrument I
cannot try it myself. The Doctr. carries with him a pretty little in-
strument. It is the sticcado, with glass bars instead of wooden ones,
and with keys applied to it. It's principle [sic] defect is the want of
extent, having but three octaves. I wish you would exercise your
ingenuity to give it an upper and lower octave. . . ." 8 These men
of the eighteenth century were always exercising their ingenuity on
something or other! The reference in the first sentence is to Hopkin-
son's improved method for quilling the harpsichord, a very ingenious
device. As for the "pretty little instrument" that Dr. Franklin carried
about with him, it was a sort of glass dulcimer, usually called the
"Sticcado-Pastorale." James Woodforde, in his Diary of a Country
Parson, said that it looked, "when covered, like a working box for
ladies." So, what Dr. Franklin carried around in Paris was not neces-
sarily a dispatch box full of state papers.
Benjamin Franklin's musical accomplishments were by no means
limited to playing the Sticcado-Pastorale. He played the guitar and the
harp, both fashionable instruments at that time. While living in Lon-
don he offered his services as guitar teacher to the mother of Leigh
Hunt, the English poet and essayist. And Franklin was also some-
what of a virtuoso on the instrument that he himself invented, the
so-called "Glass Harmonica." He was fond of singing in congenial
company and was especially partial to Scotch songs. He tells us of one
called "The Old Man's Wish" that he sang "a thousand times in his
singing days." In his seventieth year he wrote to the Abbe de la
Roche recalling "a little drinking song which I wrote thirty years
ago" and quoted from it the following verse and chorus:
SINGER: Fair Venus calls: Her voice obey.
In beauty's arms spend night and day.
The joys of love all joys excell
And loving's certainly doing well.
CHORUS: Oh! No!
Not so!
For honest souls know
Friends and a botde still bear the bell.
8Sonneck, Francis Hopkinson and lames Lyon, p. 67.
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 89
Some biographers have conjectured that Franklin composed music
for this and other songs, but it is more probable that he simply set
the verses to well-known tunes, as was the custom in those days. The
evidence that he might have tried his hand at composing rests chiefly
on a passage in a letter from Mme. Brillon, addressed to Franklin, in
which she mentions receiving "your music engraved in America."
This may refer to music engraved, rather than composed, by Franklin.
A. manuscript recently discovered in the library of the Paris Conserva-
tory and published in 1946 bears the inscription: Quartette a 3
violini con violoncello del Sigre [Signore] Benjamin Franc klin (sic).
This is a kind of suite consisting of five short movements, each bearing
a conventional title (Menuetto, Siciliano, etc.). The music is written
for the open strings only and employs an unusual type of tuning
known as scordatura. The manuscript is not in Franklin's hand, nor
is there any further evidence to substantiate his authorship of this
string quartet, which has been called "a mathematical tour de force."
The celebrated Glassychord
It was primarily as a musical inventor that Benjamin Franklin
made the greatest impression on musical circles both in Europe and
America. According to the Musikalischer Almanack fur Deutschland
for the year 1782, "Of all musical inventions, the one of Mr. Franklin
of Philadelphia has created perhaps the greatest excitement." By this
time the instrument in question had been enjoying a widespread
vogue for some twenty years, as indicated by the following news item
from the Bristol Gazette, dated January 12, 1762:
The celebrated Glassy-chord, invented by Mr. Franklin of
Philadelphia; who has greatly improved the Musical Glasses, and
formed them into a compleat Instrument to accompany the voice.
. . . Miss Davies, from London, was to perform in the Month of
January, several favorite Airs, English, Scotch and Italian, on the
Glassychord (being the only one of the kind that has yet been
produced) accompanied occasionally with the Voice and German
Flute.
From this it appears that Franklin invented his improved version of
the musical glasses in 1761 and that the novel instrument was originally
called Glassychord (hyphen apparently optional!), a rather clumsy
appellation soon dropped in favor of "Armonica," the name that
90 | Preparation
Franklin himself gave it, in honor, as he said, of the musical Italian
language. With the addition of a superfluous but persistent aspirate, it
became generally anglicized as Harmonica.
The use of musical glasses was known to the Persians and Arabs
at least as early as the fourteenth century and may possibly have
spread to Europe from the Near East. A work published at Nurem-
berg in 1677 mentions "making a cheerful wine-music" by stroking
the rims of partially filled glasses with a moistened finger. The same
volume also describes a musical experiment with four glasses, filled
with brandy, wine, water, and salt water or oil.
No less a personage than the Chevalier Gluck, already crowned
with the laurels of operatic success, performed on the musical glasses
in London in 1746 and claimed them to be, with some exaggeration,
"a new instrument of his own Invention." Gluck's claim could not be
taken too seriously, for an Irish adventurer named Richard Pockrich
had been giving concerts on the musical glasses since 1743 and con-
tinued to win popular acclaim as a performer until both he and his
"angelick organ," as he called it, perished in a fire at London in 1759.
Something of Pockrich's reputation can be gathered from these verses
from "The Pockreiad," an epic poem by Brockhill Newburgh:
Old Pock no more, still lives in deathless fame,
He blazed when young, when old expired in flame. . .
Be silent, dumb, ye late harmonious glasses:
Free from surprise securely sleep ye lasses.
The musical glasses did not long remain dumb, for one E. H.
Delaval made a set modeled after Pockrich's and played on it in Lon-
don, where among his enraptured listeners was Benjamin Franklin.
In his letter to Padre Beccaria describing the Armonica (written from
London under date of July i, 1762),* Franklin states that Delaval's
instrument was "the first I saw or heard." And he continues: "Being
charmed by the sweetness of its tones, and the music he produced
from it, I wished only to see the glasses disposed in a more convenient
form, and brought together in a narrower compass, so as to admit
of a greater number of tones, and all within reach of hand to a person
sitting before the instrument. . . ." This, then, was the origin of Dr.
Franklin's celebrated Glassychord or Armonica.
4 This letter is printed in The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed.
by Bigelow, vol. 3, pp. 198-204; also in Sonneck, Suum Cuique, pp. 60-62.
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS <)l
Instead of having the glasses filled with varying quantities of water
to obtain variety of pitch, Franklin had the glasses made of different
sizes and used only the bowls, without the stems. He placed the glasses
on a horizontal rod or spindle which was rotated by foot action, like
a spinning wheel. The instrument, wrote Franklin, "is played upon,
by sitting before the middle of the set of glasses as before the keys
of a harpsichord, turning them with the foot, and wetting them now
and then with a sponge and clean water."
This simple yet ingenious mechanism made the musical glasses
infinitely more practical and led to their immediate and widespread
success both as a domestic and a concert instrument. Miss Marianne
Davies— the young lady mentioned in the item from the Bristol Gazette
—undertook an extensive concert tour of the Continent in 1768, to-
gether with her sister Cecilia, a well-known singer. Paris, Florence,
Turin, Milan, and Vienna acclaimed the charming Misses Davies and
the novel instrument with the celestial tones "inventato del celebre
dottore Franklin" Marianne Davies was especially appreciated in
Vienna. The court poet Metastasio wrote an "Ode" which was set to
music (for soprano and harmonica) by the fashionable operatic
composer Johann Adolph Hasse and performed by the Misses Davies
at the wedding of the Archduchess of Austria to the Duke of Parma.
Leopold Mozart and his brilliant young son, Wolfgang, were well
acquainted with Miss Davies and her harmonica. In the summer of
1773 Leopold wrote from Vienna: "Do you know that Herr von
Mesmer plays Miss Davies's harmonica unusually well? He is the
only person in Vienna who has learned it and he possesses a much
finer instrument than Miss Davies does. Wolfgang too has played
upon it. How I should love to have one!"
The Herr von Mesmer mentioned in this letter was Franz Anton
Mesmer, the exponent of "animal magnetism" or hypnotism. Accord-
ing to A. Hyatt King, "there seems little doubt that Mesmer used his
mastery of the highly emotional tones of the harmonica to induce a
receptive state in his patients." The harmonica seems to have had an
extraordinary physiological effect. Its tones could unnerve the strong-
est man and cause women to faint. Most of those who played it fre-
quently, including Marianne Davies, ended by having their nerves
shattered. Franklin himself was an exception: he must have had nerves
of iron.
In 1791, the year following Franklin's death and the last year
92 I Preparation
of his own life, Mozart, inspired by the playing of a blind girl named
Marianne Kirchgassner, composed a remarkable piece of music for
the instrument that had so delighted him and his father when he was
a boy. This was the lovely Quintet (Adagio and Rondo) for har-
monica, flute, oboe, viola, and cello (Kochel 617). Mozart also com-
posed an Adagio for harmonica solo (K. 356). Other more or less
celebrated European composers who wrote music for the harmonica
were Hasse, Martini, Jommelli, Galuppi, J. G. Naumann, K. L. Rollig,
W. L. Tomaschek, and Beethoven. The unearthly tone quality of the
harmonica appealed strongly to the Romantic imagination, and in-
spired the enthusiastic praise of such poets as Goethe, Schiller, Wie-
land, and Jean Paul Richter. Robert Schumann also succumbed to its
spell.
As a musical inventor Benjamin Franklin was not without honor
in his own country. To show what impression the harmonica made on
his countrymen, let us return to Nomini Hall, the home of Councillor
Robert Carter in Virginia, and read Philip Vickers Fithfan's descrip-
tion of a certain winter evening in that gentleman's household, in
the year 1773: "Evening. Mr. Carter spent in playing on the Har-
monica; it is the first time I have heard the Instrument. The Music is
charming! The notes are clear and inexpressibly soft, they swell, and
are inexpressibly grand; and either it is because the sounds are new,
and therefore pleased me, or it is the most captivating Instrument I
have ever heard."
Franklin as music critic
Franklin, though many-sided, was no mere dabbler. His interest
in music was neither casual nor superficial. Proof of his profound
and original thinking on musical subjects is afforded by two of his
letters, one to the philosopher Lord Kames of Edinburgh, the other
to his brother Peter Franklin, both written from London in 1765.
These documents speak for themselves, and in view of their remark-
able contents I make no apology for quoting from them at length. In
his letter to Lord Kames, Franklin writes as follows:
In my passage to America I read your excellent work, "The Ele-
ments of Criticism," in which I found great entertainment. I only
wish that you had examined more carefully the subject of music,
and demonstrated that the pleasure artists feel in hearing much of
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 93
that composed in the modern taste is not the natural pleasure arising
from melody or harmony of sounds, but of the same kind with the
pleasure we feel on seeing the surprising feats of tumblers and rope-
dancers, who execute difficult things. For my part, I take this really
to be the case, and suppose it to be the reason why those who are
unpracticed in music, and therefore unacquainted with those diffi-
culties, have little or no pleasure in hearing this music. I have some-
times, at a concert, attended by a common audience, placed myself
so as to see all their faces, and observed no signs of pleasure in them
during the performance of a great part that was admired by the
performers themselves; while a plain old Scotch tune, which they
disdained, and could scarcely be prevailed upon to play, gave mani-
fest and general delight.
Give me leave, on this occasion, to extend a little the sense of
your position, that "melody and harmony are separately agreeable
and in union delightful," and to give it as my opinion that the reason
why the Scotch tunes have lived so long, and will probably live for-
ever (if they escape being stifled in modern affected ornament), is
merely this, that they are really compositions of melody and har-
mony united, or rather that their melody is harmony. I mean the
simple tunes sung by a single voice. As this will appear paradoxical,
I must explain my meaning.
In common acceptation, indeed, only an agreeable succession of
sounds is called melody, and only the coexistence of agreeable sounds
harmony. But, since the memory is capable of retaining for some
moments a perfect idea of the pitch of a past sound, so as to com-
pare it with the pitch of a succeeding sound, and judge truly of
their agreement or disagreement, there may be and does arise from
thence a sense of harmony between the present and past sounds
equally pleasing with that between two present sounds.
Now, the construction of the old Scotch tunes is this, that al-
most every succeeding emphatical note is a third, a fifth, an octave,
or, in short, some note that is in concord with the preceding note.
Thirds are chiefly used, which are very pleasing concords. I used
the word emphatical to distinguish those notes which have a stress
laid on them in singing the tune, from the lighter connecting notes
that serve merely, like grammar articles in common speech, to tack
the whole thing together.
[Franklin here puts forth several arguments to demonstrate that
the mind can retain "a most perfect idea of sound just passed."]
94 | Preparation
Farther, when we consider by whom these ancient tunes were
composed and how they were first performed, we shall see that
such harmonical succession of sounds were natural, and even neces-
sary, in their construction. They were composed by the minstrels of
those days to be played on the harp, accompanied by the voice.
The harp was strung with wire, which gives a sound of long con-
tinuance, and had no contrivance like that in the modern harpsi-
chord, by which the sound of the preceding could be stopped the
moment a succeeding note began. To avoid actual discord it was
therefore necessary that the succeeding emphatical note should be
a chord with the preceding, as their sounds must exist at the same
time. Hence arose that beauty in those tunes that has so long pleased,
and will please forever, though men scarce know why. That they
were originally composed for the harp, and of the most simple kind,
I mean a harp without any half notes but those in the natural scale
and with no more than two octaves of strings, from C to C, I con-
jecture from another circumstance, which is, that not one of
those tunes, really ancient, has a single artificial half note in it,
and that in tunes where it was most convenient for the voice to use
the middle notes of the harp and place the key in F, then the B,
which, if used, should be a B flat, is always omitted by passing over
it with a third. The connoisseurs in modern music will say I have no
taste, but I cannot help adding that I believe our ancestors, in hear-
ing a good song, distinctly articulated, sung to one of those tunes and
accompanied by the harp, felt more real pleasure that is communi-
cated by the generality of modern operas, exclusive of that arising
from the scenery and dancing. Most tunes of late composition, not
having this natural harmony united with their melody, have re-
course to the artificial harmony of a bass and other accompanying
parts. This support, in my opinion, the old tunes do not need, and
are rather confused than aided by it. Whoever has heard James
Oswald play these on his violoncello will be less inclined to dis-
pute this with me. I have more than once seen tears of pleasure in
the eyes of his auditors; and yet, I think, even his playing those
tunes would please more, if he gave them less modern ornament.5
Notice that Franklin, in standing up for his convictions, has the su-
preme courage to risk being regarded as a person of no taste by
"the connoisseurs in modern music."
Now here is the letter to Peter Franklin, which tells something
• Ibid.
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 95
about Benjamin Franklin's own attitude to that "modern music" whose
artificialities he deplored and attacked. He writes:
Dear Brother: I like your ballad, and I think it well adapted for
your purpose of discountenancing expensive foppery and encourag-
ing industry and frugality. If you can get it generally sung in your
country, it may probably have a good deal of the effect you hope
and expect from it. But as you aimed at making it general, I wonder
you chose so uncommon a measure in poetry that none of the tunes
in common use will suit it. Had you fitted it to an old one, well
known, it must have spread much faster than I doubt it will do
from the best new tune we can get composed for it. I think, too,
that if you had given it to some country girl in the heart of Massa-
chusetts, who has never heard any other than psalm tunes or 'Chevy
Chase," the "Children in the Woods," the "Spanish Lady," and such
old, simple ditties, but has naturally a good ear, she might more
probably have made a pleasing popular tune for you than any of our
masters here, and more proper to the purpose, which would best be
answered if every word could, as it is sung, be understood by all that
hear it, and if the emphasis you intend for particular words could
be given by the singer as well as by the reader; much of the force
and impression of the song depending on those circumstances. I will,
however, get it as well done for you as I can.
Do not imagine that I mean to depreciate the skill of our com-
posers of music here; they are admirable at pleasing practiced ears
and know how to delight one another, but in composing for songs
the reigning taste seems to be quite out of nature, or rather the re-
verse of nature, and yet, like a torrent, hurries them all away with it;
one or two, perhaps, only excepted.
You, in the spirit of some ancient legislators, would influence the
manners of your country by the united powers of poetry and music.
By what I can learn of their songs, the music was simple, conformed
itself to the usual pronunciation of words, as to measure, cadence
or emphasis, etc., never disguised and confounded the language by
making a long syllable short, or a short one long, when sung; their
singing was only a more pleasing because a melodious manner of
speaking, it was capable of all the graces of prose oratory, while it
added the pleasure of harmony. A modern song, on the contrary,
neglects all the proprieties and beauties of common speech, and in
their place introduces its defects and absurdities as so many graces.
I am afraid you will hardly take my word for this, and therefore
I must endeavour to support it by proof. Here is the first song I lay
96 I Preparation
my hand on. It happens to be a composition of one of our great-
est masters, the ever famous Handel. It is not one of his juvenile
performances, before his taste could be improved and formed; it
appeared when his reputation was at the highest, is greatly admired
by all his admirers, and is really excellent in its kind. It is called,
"The additional favorite Song in Judas Maccabeus." Now I reckon
among the defects and improprieties of common speech the fol-
lowing, viz.:
1. Wrong placing the accent or emphasis by laying it on words
of no importance or on wrong syllables.
2. Drawling; or extending the sound of words or syllables beyond
their natural length.
3. Stuttering; or making many syllables of one.
4. Unintelligibleness; the result of the three foregoing united.
5. Tautology; and
6. Screaming without cause.
Franklin, like an exact and conscientious critic, then quotes musi-
cal examples from Handel's song to illustrate each one of these de-
fects. In a postscript he adds that he might have mentioned inarticula-
tion among the defects in common speech that are assumed as beauties
in modern singing. And he concludes with these two trenchant sen-
tences: "If ever it was the ambition of musicians to make instruments
that should imitate the human voice, that ambition seems now re-
versed, the voice aiming to be like an instrument. Thus wigs were first
made to imitate a good natural head of hair; but when they became
fashionable, though in unnatural forms, we have seen natural hair
dressed to look like wigs."
Though it undoubtedly belongs among the London letters of
1765, this extraordinary document was first published in the Massa-
chusetts Magazine for July, 1790, with the title "Criticism on Mu-
sick." 6 And excellent musical criticism it is, too, for it reveals wit,
exactness, originality, sound judgment, and independence of thought.
Franklin is not cowed by the enormous reputation of a composer like
Handel; at the same time, he recognizes Handel's greatness and admits
his music "is really excellent in its kind."
Franklin was one of the first to recognize the beauty, the power,
and the integrity of folk tunes in their pristine state. His contention
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 97
that these melodies should not be cluttered with new-fangled accom-
paniments and incongruous harmonizations anticipates the modern
aesthetic position derived from the scientific study of folklore, which
began fifty years after his death. In his musical ideas, as in every-
thing else, Franklin was the most modern American of his times, the
man who, in the words of Ibsen, was "most closely in league with the
future."
In a letter to Mary Stevenson written from Philadelphia in 1763,
Franklin wrote: "After the first cares of the necessaries of life are
over, we shall come to think of the embellishments. Already some of
our young geniuses begin to lisp attempts at painting, poetry and
music." We shall now meet one of these "young geniuses" who lisped
elegantly in all three arts.
"The sacred flame"
In the month of September, 1766. a young lawyer from Phila-
delphia named Francis Hopkinson, on a visit to relatives in England,
attended a performance of Handel's Messiah at Gloucester. He had
the misfortune of being afflicted by a large and painful boil, which
just then was at the height of tension and inflammation. Listening to
the music, he no longer felt any pain. The boil even broke while he was
at the concert, without his perceiving it. Yet, as he told his friend
Thomas Jefferson long afterward, had he been alone in his chamber
he "should have cried out with Anguish." And, in a characteristic
speculative vein, he added: "May not the Firmness of Martyrs be
accounted for on the same principle?"
Whatever Francis Hopkinson may have thought about the Firm-
ness of Martyrs, there can be no question about his belief in the Power
of Music, for he repeatedly proved it both by word and deed. Some
seven years before his English journey he had written a "Prologue
in Praise of Music," in which these lines occur:
Such pow'r hath music o'er the human soul,
Music the fiercest passions can controul,
Touch the nice springs that sway a feeling heart,
Sooth ev'ry grief, and joy to joy impart.
Sure virtue's friends and music are the same,
And blest that person is that owns the sacred flame.
98 I Preparation
If "the sacred flame" be taken to symbolize devotion to music rather
than creative genius, then Francis Hopkinson was abundantly blessed
with that gift. At the age of seventeen, when he began to take up the
study of the harpsichord, he wrote an "Ode to Music" that fully
reveals his enthusiasm for the divine art:
Hark! Hark! the sweet vibrating lyre
Sets my attentive soul on fire;
Thro' all my frame what pleasures thrill,
Whilst the loud treble warbles shrill,
And the more slow and solemn bass,
Adds charms to charm and grace to grace.
And so on for four more stanzas, rising to a grand paean of praise
for "th' admir'd celestial art." To demonstrate Hopkinson's fidelity to
the Muse, we need only quote the concluding lines of his poem titled
"Description of a Church," in which he describes the effect made
upon his sensibilities by the sound of the organ:
Hail heav'n born music! by thy pow'r we raise
Th' uplifted soul to arts of highest praise:
Oh! I would die with music melting round,
And float to bliss upon a sea of sound.
The final couplet almost matches the emotional mysticism of Fray
Luis de Leon— and this from the pen of an eighteenth-century Ameri-
can lawyer, businessman, and public official!
This was the Age of Reason and of Good Taste, but it was also
the Age of Sentiment and of Enthusiasm. A "rational" man like Francis
Hopkinson could indulge his sensibilities to the full while keeping a
firm hand on practical matters. Although as a poet he wrote about
music like an enthusiast (which in eighteenth-century parlance meant
a "crackpot"), he could also class it with "reading, walking, riding,
drawing &ca." as agreeable pastimes that "season the Hours with
calm and rational Pleasure." 7 If Hopkinson let himself go in his feel-
ings toward music, it was precisely because he considered it a "calm
and rational pleasure" that even in its most ecstatic moments would
not lead him from the path of Virtue and Reason. It thus contrasted
with those moral dangers that he mentions in a letter to his mother
from London: "You can have no Idea of the many Powerful Tempta-
T Letter to Benjamin Franklin from Hardcbury Castle, England, 1767.
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 99
dons, that are continually thrown out here to decoy unwary Youth
into Extravagance and Immorality."
Being by this time fairly well acquainted with the habits of the
gentleman amateur, the reader will not be too surprised at finding a
Philadelphia lawyer playing the harpsichord and dabbling in verse, or*
even trying his hand at painting, which was Hopkinson's third avoca-
tion. Born in Philadelphia on September 21, 1737, son of a distin-
guished father and a pious mother, Francis Hopkinson graduated from
the College of Philadelphia, was admitted to the bar, and became
prominent in the political, religious, educational, and artistic life of
his native city. A staunch patriot, he cast his fortune and the power
of his pen with the cause of the American Revolution, was a delegate
to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence. In 1779 he was appointed Judge of the Admiralty from
Pennsylvania, and he took an active part in the Constitutional Con-
vention of 1787, influencing its decisions with a humorous political
pamphlet titled "The History of a New Roof." During the war he
wrote his famous satirical poem, "The Battle of the Kegs," which
became immensely popular. It was set to music and widely sung.
John Adams met Hopkinson in the studio of the artist Charles
Willson Peale at Philadelphia in 1776 and wrote about the meeting
to his wife: "He is one of your pretty, little, curious, ingenious men.
His head is not bigger than a large apple. ... I have not met with
anything in natural history more amusing and entertaining than his
personal appearance; yet he is genteel and well-bred, and is very so-
cial." Adams envied the leisure and tranquillity of mind that enabled
Hopkinson to "amuse" himself with "those elegant and ingenious arts
of painting, sculpture, statuary, architecture, and music."
Hopkinson as composer
Besides playing the harpsichord and the organ, which many other
gentlemen amateurs also did, Francis Hopkinson composed a number
of songs, which was a less common accomplishment. That Hopkinson
himself was fully aware of the distinction to be derived from this
achievement is indicated by the dedication (to George Washington)
of his Seven Songs for the Harpsichord (1788), in which he says:
"However small the Reputation may be that I shall derive from this
Work I cannot, I believe, be refused the Credit of being the first
ioo ) Preparation
Native of the United States who has produced a Musical Composi-
tion." Let us see on what grounds he rested his claim to be regarded
as America's first native-born composer.
It is not known for certain whether Hopkinson was self-taught
in composition or whether he took lessons from one of the profes-
sional musicians who were active in Philadelphia. There is a strong
probability that he studied with the English organist James Bremner,
with whom he long maintained ties of friendship and upon whose
death he wrote a touchingly sincere elegy. During his college days,
young Hopkinson had already distinguished himself as a poet, as a
performer, and, it would seem, as a composer. In the winter of 1756-
1757 the students at the College of Philadelphia produced an adapta-
tion of The Masque of Alfred the Great which, according to a news-
paper report, included "an excellent Piece of new Music by one of the
performers." The piece of music in question was a song, "Alfred,
Father of the State," and in all likelihood Francis Hopkinson was its
composer.
In 1759 Hopkinson began to copy out in a large book, in his neat
and methodical manner, a collection of songs, operatic airs, cantatas,
anthems, hymns, and duets, by various celebrated European com-
posers, including Handel, Pergolesi, Purcell, and Arne. The completed
collection contained over a hundred pieces in a volume of more than
two hundred pages, and scattered among them were six songs signed
with the initials "F. H." The first of these is "My Days Have Been So
Wondrous Free" (a setting of Thomas Parnell's "Love and Inno-
cence"), which has attained a somewhat unwarranted notoriety as
the first known secular song composed by an American. The others
are "The Garland," "Oh! Come to Mason Borough's Grove," "With
Pleasures Have I Past [sic] My Days," "The Twenty-Third Psalm,"
and "An Anthem from the ii4th Psalm." All of them are written in
two parts— the ubiquitous eighteenth-century "treble and bass." The
common procedure was for the accompanist to fill in the harmony at
the harpsichord. It is curious to notice that the anthem includes a
figured bass, a rarity in early American music.
The inclusion of the psalm and anthem in this collection points
to Hopkinson's lifelong interest in church music. There is strong evi-
dence to indicate that he was the compiler of A Collection of Psalm
TuneSy with a few Anthems and Hymns . . . published at Phila-
delphia in 1763 for the United Churches of Christ Church and St.
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 1O1
Peter's Church. Hopkinson served as organist at Christ Church dur-
ing the absence of James Bremner, and he also instructed the children
of the two churches in "the art of psalmody." In 1786 he wrote A
Letter to the Rev. Dr. White on the Conduct of a Church Organ,
which contains some interesting observations on "the application of
instrumental music to purposes of piety." Arguing for the dignity of
church music, he writes: "It is as offensive to hear lilts and jigs from
a church organ, as it would be to see a venerable matron frisking
through the public street with all the fantastic airs of a Columbine."
During the 1780$, pro-French sentiment was at its height in Phila-
delphia. Hence we are not surprised to find the following notice
in the Freeman's Journal for December 19, 1781:
On Tuesday evening of the i ith inst. his Excellency the Minister
of France, who embraces every opportunity to manifest his respect
to the worthies of America, and politeness to its inhabitants, enter-
tained his Excellency General Washington, and his lady, the lady of
General Greene, and a very polite circle of gentlemen and ladies,
with an elegant Concert, in which the following ORATORIO,
composed and set to music by a gentleman whose taste in the polite
arts is well known, was introduced and afforded the most sensible
pleasure. The Temple of Minerva: An ORATORICAL ENTER-
TAINMENT.
The gentleman whose taste in the polite arts was so well known was,
of course, our friend Francis Hopkinson.
A few weeks after this performance, the Royal Gazette of New
York published the libretto of The Temple of Minerva, together with
a grossly indecent parody by a Philadelphia correspondent, titled The
Temple of Cloacina. Hopkinson's reply, published in the Pennsylvania
Gazette, described the circumstances under which he first saw the
parody, in thoroughly Rabelaisian terms. Such was the obverse of
eighteenth-century elegance and taste!
On October 25, 1788, Hopkinson wrote to his friend Thomas
Jefferson:
I have amused myself with composing Six easy & simple Songs
for the Harpsichord— Words & Music all my own. The Music is
now engraving. When finished, I will do myself the Pleasure of
sending a Copy to Miss Jefferson. The best of them is that they are
so easy that any Person who can play at all may perform them with-
iO2 | Preparation
out much Trouble, & I have endeavour'd to make the Melodies
pleasing to the untutored Ear.8
The work was published before the end of the year and was adver-
tised as follows in the Pennsylvania Packet: "These songs are com-
posed in an easy, familiar style, intended for young Practioners on
the Harpsichord or Forte-Piano, and is the first work of this kind
attempted in the United States."
The letter to Jefferson mentions six songs, the title of the book is
Seven Songs, and the collection actually contains eight, with the last
song bearing a note to the effect that it was added after the title page
was engraved. Here is the complete contents, which consists of first
lines:
Come, fair Rosina, come away
My Love is gone to the sea
Beneath a weeping willow's shade
Enraptur'd I gaze when my Delia is by
See down Maria 's blushing cheek
O'er the hills far away, at the birth of the morn
My gen'rous heart disdains
The traveller benighted and lost
Hopkinson dedicated the volume to George Washington in a letter
from which we quoted the passage in which he claims credit for
being the first native American composer. He expresses the hope that
"others may be encouraged to venture on a path, yet untrodden in
America, and the Arts in succession will take root and flourish amongst
us." Washington, who was fond of music though he played no in-
strument, replied in an amiable and humorous letter in which he
laments his inability to do anything in support of the music, for "I
can neither sing one of the songs, nor raise a single note on any in-
strument to convince the unbelieving." 9
There is no point in attempting a detailed analysis and critique of
Hopkinson's music. His songs are typical of hundreds written during
the eighteenth century and show no creative individuality whatever.
However quaint and innocuous they seem to us now, we must not
8 Quoted in Hastings, Life and Works of Francis Hopkinson, pp. 436-437.
9 The complete dedication and Washington's reply are printed in Hastings,
*p. cit., pp. 441-444.
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 103
assume that they were without emotional effect either for Hopkinson
or his listeners. Writing to Jefferson about the collection, Hopkinson
said: "The last Song, if play'd very slow, and sung with Expression,
is forcibly Pathetic— at least in my Fancy. Both Words & Music were
the Work of an hour in the Height of a Storm. But the Imagination
of an Author who composes from his Heart, rather than his Head, is
always more heated than he can expect his Readers to be."
That at least one listener found this song "forcibly Pathetic" is
indicated by Jefferson's reply: "Accept my thanks . . . and my
daughter's for the book of songs. I will not tell you how much they
have pleased us, nor how well the last of them merits praise for its
pathos, but relate a fact only, which is that while my elder daughter
was playing it on the harpsichord, I happened to look toward the
fire, & saw the younger one all in tears. I asked her if she was sick?
She said 'no; but the tune was so mournful.' " So that the reader may
compare his or her own reactions with those of Jefferson and his
daughter, we quote a portion of this song, The Traveller Benighted
and Lost.
Andante
JL
f*=d=^=
10 m ^
| .,^—s — ^ £ |^-|
fo » "i •^=._aj-p_i I) p
The Trav-'ler be-night-ed and
1<
= p-1 mJ-mH
Dst O'er the
0 1 ^ _ 1
r i * i
J J X 1
r t
moun - tain pur- sues his lone way,
i
jf lU — (* ff
Stream is all
:*P-T* 1
=*=
cand
=*=?=
- y'd with
__M_
Frost, and th
-4 0 .
e
U * \? 6J
4=
T
1J_J^ .-T. — *
— <
104 | Preparation
T 7
ci - cle hangs on the Spray
t r t » i ' J* ^FFF
wan-ders in hope some kind shel - ter to find, whilst —
r r i i i
i
thro* the Sharp Haw- thorne still blows the cold wind; He
lr i J
TSTT1
[— "1 _ — j
h h i
i JH ff
. .^. ... J2.
3*-ta 1
-$-* • « J) J' • *— •
wan - ders in hope some kind
VS" J f J=fc=
T J [T
shel - ter
PP^
r-J u »
to find, whilst
r * i
M r F f
n
thro' the Sharp Haw -thorne still blows the cold wind.
m
JLLJ!r^
GENTLEMEN AMATEURS 1O5
Hopkinson composed only one more song before his death in
1791. Titled "A New Song," it was a gay love lyric in which the poet
asks, rt What's life without the Joys of Love?"
Francis Hopkinson was correct in assuming that his historical
priority would secure him a permanent place in the annals of Amer-
ica's music. It is not so much for his music that we value him, as for
his attitude toward music. He represented the Golden Age of Ameri-
can culture, in which men of affairs, successful in business and in the
conduct of government, thought it no shame not only to love music
and practice it in private, but also to make public their love of the
"Divine Art." Men like Jefferson, Franklin, and Hopkinson, in helping
to create a nation that recognized man's inalienable right to the pur-
suit of happiness, did not overlook the aid and comfort that music
can give in this unceasing quest.
Each of these three great American music lovers might be taken
as a representative figure. Jefferson is the prototype of the patron of
music, who, if he had been wealthy enough, would have endowed
orchestras and formed rare collections of manuscripts and printed
scores. Such patrons, backed by the wealth of the country's indus-
trial development, were eventually to play an important role in the
growth of our musical institutions. Franklin was the practical man
with a strong inclination toward philosophical speculation: our first
music critic, and one of the rare individuals of the eighteenth century
who appreciated the strength and character of the musical vernacular.
Hopkinson was the ancestor of a long line of amateur composers in
the United States, from William Henry Fry in the nineteenth century
to John Alden Carpenter in the twentieth. After all, most of our
early American composers were amateurs, though few enjoyed such
social and political prominence as Hopkinson. Our first professional
musicians were those who came from Europe, and it is to these pro-
fessional emigrants that we turn in the next chapter.
chapter six
Professional emigrants
The promptness of this young country in those sciences which were once
thought peculiar only to a riper age, has a /ready brought upon her the eyes
of the world.
WILLIAM SELBY, ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE NEW MINSTREL (1782).
Un the last Sunday of August in the year 1757, a tall, thin man,
about sixty years of age, mounted on a small, white horse, rode rapidly
along a road in Westmoreland County, Virginia. A glance inside his
saddlebags would have revealed an assortment of musical instruments,
including a violin, a German flute, an oboe, and a bassoon. A glimpse
into his mind would have revealed that his chief concerns were, first,
to place as much distance as possible between himself and Stratford,
the home of Philipp Ludwell Lee, Esquire; and secondly, to reach a
town whose inhabitants would appreciate the talents of a versatile
fellow like himself, skilled in the polite arts of music, fencing, and
dancing.
Meanwhile, the master of Stratford was fuming in anger over the
loss of his prized bassoon. To relieve his feelings, he sat down and
wrote an advertisement to appear in the leading colonial newspapers:
"Runaway from the subscriber, at Stratford, in Westmoreland County
. . . Charles Love ... he professes Musick, Dancing, Fencing, and
plays exceedingly well on the Violin and all Wind Instruments; he
stole when he went away, a very good Bassoon, made by Schuchart,
which he carried with him. ... It is supposed he will make towards
Charlestown in South Carolina." This, together with a description of
the said Love, and the offer of a generous reward for his apprehension,
drew public attention to Mr. Lee's loss.
The interesting point about all this is not that Charles Love stole
106
PROFESSIONAL EMIGRANTS 1O7
a bassoon, but that, among the tidewater estates of colonial Virginia,
there was a bassoon for him to steal, and a very good one, "made by
Schuchart."
Apart from his larcenous propensities, which we may regard as a
personal idiosyncrasy, Charles Love was in many ways typical of the
professional musician who emigrated to the American colonies: a
symbol of those hundreds of humble musicians, more adventurous
than their stay-at-home colleagues, who took their luck, for better or
worse, in the New World. Versatile and resourceful they had to be
in order to survive in a pioneer society in which the "polite arts"
had yet to win a secure place. Few of them could earn a living solely
by music, even with dancing and fencing as more remunerative side-
lines. Some of them were obliged to become Jacks-of-all-trades. Her-
man Zedwitz, "violin teacher just from Europe," ran a chimney-
sweeping business in New York. Giovanni Gualdo of Philadelphia
was wine merchant as well as music teacher, concert manager, com-
poser, and performer. William Selby, the organist and composer, sold
groceries and liquor in Boston during the Revolution. Many of them
found it difficult to keep one step ahead of their creditors. The Eng-
lish flutist and composer William Young, who settled in Philadelphia,
was made so desperate by mounting debts that in a fit of rage he killed
the constable sent by his creditors to arrest him.
In spite of all hazards and uncertainties, musical emigrants kept
coming to America in steadily growing numbers. Before the Revolu-
tion, Charleston, South Carolina, was the chief point of attraction
for professional musicians. This was because Charleston, in the words
of Edmund Burke, "approached more nearly to the social refinement
of a great European capital" than any other American city. And
music was, of course, an indispensable ingredient of this "social re-
finement."
French horns and macaronis
The oldest musical society in the United States, the St. Cecilia
Society, was founded at Charleston in 1762. It combined private sub-
scription concerts with the most elegant and exclusive social amenities.
The activities of the Society are mentioned in the journal of Josiah
Quincy of Boston, who visited the Southern metropolis in 1772.
Describing a dinner with the Sons of St. Patrick, Quincy writes:
io8 | Preparation
"While at dinner six violins, two hautboys, etc. After dinner, six
French horns in concert: -most surpassing music. Two solos on the
French horn, by one who is said to blow the finest horn in the world.
He has fifty guineas for the season from the St. Cecilia Society." Not
bad!
To Josiah Quincy's journal we turn again for a priceless vignette
of eighteenth-century music and manners. He recounts his impres-
sions of a concert in Charleston:
The music was good-the two base viols and French horns were
grand. One Abercrombie, a Frenchman just arrived, played the first
violin, and a solo incomparably better than any one I ever heard.
He cannot speak a word of English, and has a salary of five hundred
guineas a year from the St. Cecilia Society. There were upwards
of two hundred and fifty ladies present, and it was called no great
number. In loftiness of headdress, these ladies stoop to the daughters
of the north,-in richness of dress, surpass them,-in health and florid-
ity of countenance, vail to them. In taciturnity during the perform-
ance, greatly before our ladies; in noise and flirtation after the music
is over, pretty much on a par. The gentlemen, many of them dressed
with richness and elegance, uncommon with us: many with swords
on. We had two macaronis present, just arrived from London.
As a revelation of the colonial mind, the key to this passage is in
the final sentence, and especially the last phrase. Why should a seri-
ous and sensible man like Josiah Quincy bother to mention a couple of
mincing fops— the two "macaronis"— in his description of a concert?
Simply because they had "just arrived from London" and therefore
set the ultimate note of fashionable bon ton upon the event he was
describing. They brought the latest gossip from the Pall Mall coffee
houses, reports of the latest hit at the Drury Lane Theatre, news of the
latest Court scandal- just as Monsieur Abercrombie (queer name for
a Frenchman!) brought the latest musical fashions from Paris. It was
all part of the general pattern of eighteenth-century American urban
culture (which the Revolution did not destroy): the imitation of
European standards of taste. Though it could be carried to foolish
extremes, the tendency at bottom sprang from a desire to get the
"best" of everything- from fiddlers to fops. No cultivated American
was naive enough to believe that his youthful country could produce
PROFESSIONAL EMIGRANTS 1C>9
overnight musicians to equal the best of Europe. Yet their partiality to
the sons of Bach, to Haydn, Stamitz, and other European celebrities,
did not blind them to the merits of local talent. In the liberal-minded
eighteenth-century attitude there was room for all: famous masters
and local lights, professionals and amateurs, immigrants and native-
born. The important thing was to have music, a lot of it, and the
best that could be had. The fact that they preferred music by living
composers is an amiable eccentricity, difficult for the twentieth-century
music lover to understand, since for us the only "great" composers are
the dead ones.
To get back to colonial Charleston, concerts had been given there
long before the founding of the St. Cecilia Society. In 1737 a concert
was announced "for the Benefit of Mr. Theodore Pachelbel," with the
following significant notice: UN.B. As this is the first time the said
Mr. Pachelbel has attempted anything of this kind in a publick man-
ner in this Province, he thinks it proper to give Notice that there will
be sung a Cantata suitable to the occasion." No further details are
given regarding this cantata, but it is quite possible that it may have
been composed by Pachelbel himself. There exists an admirable Mag-
nificat of his, for eight voices with organ accompaniment, which re-
veals him as a well-schooled composer of superior ability.1 This is not
surprising in view of his background.
Charles Theodore Pachelbel was the son of tl e famous Nuremberg
organist and composer Johann Pachelbel, one of the notable masters
of the South German organ school and a precursor of J. S. Bach.
Born in 1690, he migrated to America at the age of forty-three and
became organist at Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island. In
January, 1736, Pachelbel gave the first concert in New York of which
a definite record exists. The following year he was in Charleston,
where he died in 1750. His career indicates that even in the early
decades of the eighteenth century America was attracting distinguished
musicians from the Old World.
After the Revolution, musicians began to drift away from Charles-
ton, to New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The trend of musical
progress swung northward. Philadelphia, in particular, became the
leading cultural center of the young Republic and the chief center of
musical activity.
1 Published in the New York Public Library Music Series, ed. by H. T. David
no I Preparation
The general attends a benefit
A French observer, Moreau de Saint-Mery, declared that there
were more beautiful women in Philadelphia than anywhere else in the
world. This feminine pulchritude was matched by an impressive array
of professional talent: the city was full of teachers, lawyers, physi-
cians, scientists, philosophers, authors, and artists. In spite of the Quak-
ers, the city was gay. A few cranks tried to clamp down on theatrical
amusements but were eventually overridden by the more liberal ma-
jority. The pleasure-loving ranks received strong support from the
example of General Washington, who never missed an opportunity
to attend a play or a concert.
In June, 1787, the General was in Philadelphia as a delegate to the
Constitutional Convention. His diary reveals that on June 12 he at-
tended a concert for the benefit of a certain Mr. Alexander Reinagle,
a musician from England who had recently established himself in
Philadelphia. The program began with an Overture by Johann Chris-
tian (the "London") Bach, and ended with two compositions by
Reinagle: a Sonata for the Pianoforte, and a new Overture (in which
is introduced a Scotch strathspey). Whatever Washington thought
of the music—and he probably enjoyed it, for his taste was good— he
must have been impressed by Reinagle's skill and commanding pres-
ence at the pianoforte.
Alexander Reinagle was then about thirty years old, a handsome
and vigorous man with firm features and the air of being a gentleman
as well as a musician (a difficult combination to achieve in those days).
Regarding his distinctive style of playing the pianoforte, a contempo-
rary wrote: "He never aimed at excessive execution, but there was a
sweetness of manner— nay, in the way he touched the instrument I
might add, there was a sweetness of tone which, combined with ex-
quisite taste and neatness, produced unusual feelings of delight." 2 The
fact is that on this occasion George Washington, whether he knew it
or not, was hearing the finest piano playing and the finest piano music
produced in America up to that time. That Washington had high re-
gard for Reinagle is indicated by his having engaged the latter to
give music lessons to his adopted daughter, Nellie Custis. These two
men, the soldier and the musician, had much in common, for each was
2 John R. Parker, in The Euterpeiad.
PROFESSIONAL EMIGRANTS 111
a leader in his own field, a man of character and integrity who com-
manded respect from all. Reinagle before his orchestra was a counter-
part of Washington before his army. And sometimes an eighteenth-
century theater could be almost as dangerous as a battle field.
When General Washington, as President of the United States, at-
tended the theater in Philadelphia (which was the nation's capital from
1790 to 1800), some measure of decorum was preserved by a special
military guard, with a soldier posted at each door and four in the
gallery— where trouble was most likely to break out. That part of the
house was always crowded, and the rowdy element found safety in
numbers. The "gods" of the galleries, as they were called, would hurl
bottles and glasses, as well as apples, nuts, and vegetables, onto the
stage and into the orchestra. No one obeyed the no-smoking signs,
hence sensitive nostrils were continually assailed by the stench of
cigars. In spite of regulations to the contrary, liquor was brought into
the house and freely imbibed during the performance. The gay la-
dies of the town used the best boxes in the theater as their profes-
sional headquarters, until, in 1795, the managers decreed that "no
persons of notorious ill fame will be suffered to occupy any seat in a
box where places are already taken." When political feeling ran jiigh,
riots sometimes broke out in the theater.
As musical director of the New Theatre in Chestnut Street, Alex-
ander Reinagle reigned over this unruly mob like a monarch over his
court. This is the picture we get of him from a contemporary his-
torian of the theater:
Who that only once saw old manager Reinagle in his official
capacity, could ever forget his dignified personne. He presided at
the pianoforte, looking the very personification of the patriarch of
music— investing the science of harmonic sounds, as well as the
dramatic school, with a moral influence reflecting and adorning its
salutary uses with high respectability and polished manners. His
appearance was of the reverend and impressive kind, which at once
inspired the universal respect of the audience. Such was Reinagle's
imposing appearance that it awed the disorderly of the galleries, or
the fop of annoying propensities and impertinent criticism of the
box lobby, into decorum. ... It was truly inspiring to behold the
polished Reinagle saluting from his seat (before the grand square
pianoforte in the orchestra) the highest respectability of the city,
as it entered into the boxes to take seats. It was a scene before the
112 I Preparation
curtain that suggested a picture of the master of private ceremonies
receiving his invited guests at the fashionable drawing-room. Mr.
Reinagle was a gentleman and a musician,*
The admirable Mr. Reinagle
If Reinagle was not a "gentleman" in the strict meaning of the
term as understood in the eighteenth century, he undoubtedly had
qualities and accomplishments that led his contemporaries to bestow
this title upon him honoris causa. The only false note we can detect
in the description quoted above is that Reinagle was not actually
"old" at the time. He was in his forties, and the fact is that he died
at the age of fifty-three. He spent slightly less than half of his life in
America, and he was unquestionably the most gifted and the most dis-
tinguished of the professional musicians who emigrated to this country
before 1800.
Alexander Reinagle was born in the busy English seaport and naval
base of Portsmouth, in April, 1756— just a few months after the birth
of Mozart. His father was an Austrian musician, a fine trumpet player,
who had settled in England. When Alexander was in his late teens,
the family moved to Edinburgh, where the youngster seems to have
received some lessons from the organist and composer Raynor Taylor,
who later followed him to America. Young Reinagle became an ex-
cellent pianist as well as a violinist of considerable skill. He plunged
into the brilliant and cosmopolitan musical life of London and came
under the spell of the man who dominated the English musical scene
between the death of Handel and the coming of Haydn— the clever and
fashionable Johann Christian Bach, "Music Master in the Queen's
Household" and chief arbiter of musical taste. The "London" Bach
specialized in composing keyboard pieces "such as ladies can execute
with little trouble," and in graceful sonatas for piano or harpsichord
with violin accompaniment. Reinagle commenced his career as a com-
poser along both of these lines, publishing first two collections of
"short and easy pieces" for the pianoforte, followed by Six Sonatas
for the Pianoforte or Harpsichord, with an accompaniment for Violin.
In the autumn of 1784 Reinagle went to Lisbon together with his
younger brother Hugh, a cellist. They gave a concert there and also
played for the Royal Family. Hugh was ill of consumption and died
• Dunng, History of the Stag* ro Philadelphia.
PROFESSIONAL EMIGRANTS
during their sojourn in Lisbon. It was probably about this nme that
Reinagle paid a visit to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Hamburg, who
wrote him a cordial letter dated February 25, 1785, in which such a
visit is mentioned. The "great" Bach expressed a desire to have a por-
trait of Reinagle to place in his cabinet or gallery of celebrities. The
younger man no doubt fully appreciated the honor of such a request,
coming from a master who was recognized as the greatest organist of
the age. Bach's art and personality made a deep and lasting impression
on Reinagle. Like all his contemporaries, Reinagle knew nothing of
the art of Johann Sebastian Bach, for the old Cantor of Leipzig had
enjoyed only a local reputation and his "difficult" style of composi-
tion was entirely out of fashion. The sons of Johann Sebastian were
the men of the day.
In the spring of 1785 Alexander Reinagle found himself back in
Portsmouth, saddened by the death of his brother. He was nearing
thirty and must have felt that he stood at a turning point in his life.
He was a member of the Society of Musicians of London and en-
joyed good professional standing. Yet he did not take up again the
old round of music-making in London. Instead he turned his thoughts
to the New World. Was it the sight of the ships in Portsmouth har-
bor that directed his thoughts to America? Whatever the impulse that
drove him, within a year he found himself sailing across the ocean,
bound for the port of New York, facing an uncertain future in an
unknown land.
Shortly after his arrival in the summer of 1786, Reinagle gave a
concert in New York. He also announced that he was prepared to
give lessons on the pianoforte, harpsichord, and violin. The response
was far from encouraging, for New York, thriving commercially,
had yet to develop a demand for musical culture. Hearing about the
more favorable prospects offered by Philadelphia, Reinagle soon be-
took himself there. In Philadelphia he found three of his ex-European
colleagues—Henry Capron, William Brown, and John Bentley— en-
gaged in a professional quarrel, as a result of which the "City Con-
certs" had been discontinued. Reinagle immediately took the situation
in hand. Effecting a reconciliation between Capron and Brown (Bent-
ley conveniently left for New York), he revived the City Concerts
with himself as principal manager and featured performer. His su-
perior ability was at once apparent, and he forthwith assumed a de-
cisive role in the musical affairs of the Quaker City.
ii4 I Preparation
Reinagle as composer
When the actor Thomas Wignell, in 1792, formed a new theatri-
cal company in Philadelphia, Reinagle was appointed musical man-
ager of the enterprise. His first task, however, was to supervise the
building of the New Theatre in Chestnut Street, a large and hand-
some structure that came to be regarded as one of the seven wonders
of America, while Wignell went abroad to recruit a company of
actors and singers. In those days it was customary for theatrical com-
panies to include musical works—chiefly "ballad operas" like The
Beggar's Opera— as well as spoken drama in their repertoire. After a
long delay caused by the terrible epidemic of yellow fever that rav-
aged Philadelphia, the New Theatre was formally opened on Febru-
ary 1 7, 1 794, with a performance of Samuel Arnold's opera The Castle
of Andalusia.
Wignell and Reinagle aimed to give equal importance to music and
drama in their repertoire. Hence Reinagle was kept busy arranging
and adapting musical works for the theater, and composing the music
for several so-called "operas" and pantomimes. We qualify the term
"opera" because most of these works were simply plays with inci-
dental music and vocal numbers interspersed at suitable intervals.
Among the plays for which Reinagle composed music were Colum-
bus, or The Discovery of America; Pizarro, or The Spaniards in Peru
(in collaboration with Raynor Taylor); Slaves in Algiers, or A Strug-
gle for Freedo?n (described as "a play, interspersed with songs"); the
Savoy ard, or The Repentant Seducer ("musical farce"); and The
Volunteers, "comic opera in two acts." This list gives a good idea
of the sort of musical fare served up by American theaters in the
eighteenth century, ranging from an historical tragedy in five acts
(Pizarro) to a frothy two-act farce.
Very little of Rcinagle's music for the theater has been preserved.
The music for Columbus, arranged for piano, was copyrighted at
Philadelphia in 1799, but no copy has been located. There are, how-
ever, two known copies of an Indian March "of the much admired
play called Columbus" which may very likely be one of the numbers
composed by Reinagle. The Library of Congress has a score of The
Volunteers, the text of which was written by Mrs. Susanna Rowson,
PROFESSIONAL EMIGRANTS 115
author of one of the earliest American novels, Charlotte Temple
(1791). The following song from The Volunteers is typical:
»i!
When I've got the rea - dy rhi - no wounds I'll dress, so.
s
~-K—~r=fr=^=m
mor-tal fine O I'll keep- a -horse. to— run«at_rac- es
"T — -ir'Ti^
m
^^
peep through a glass at— La -dies fa-ces peep thro ugh a glass at _
-=}=
^
ir r iJ
^
La-dies fa-ces
I'll spend.the» night in.
ad /i6.
gam-ing drink- ing nor e'er_go_ home till mel-low then
UJ r n-^-^-r ir ^
^
m
sleep all day to ban-ish think-ing & be_ a_dash-ing_
'- -- LJ
^
n6 | Preparation
Sym.
Reinagle earned a living and exerted wide influence through his
theatrical activities, but as a composer he makes his strongest appeal
to us in a more intimate type of music, namely, his sonatas for piano.
Some time after his arrival in Philadelphia, Reinagle composed four
sonatas for piano, which were never published. The manuscript was
found in the music collection of the composer's daughter Georgianna,
and is now in the Library of Congress. We have already seen that
Reinagle's early sonatas and piano pieces, published in London, were
written under the influence of Johann Christian Bach. Those early
works reveal no marked individuality, for Reinagle had not yet fully
found himself as a composer. Evidently his meeting with another and
greater Bach— Carl Philipp Emanuel of Hamburg— shortly before his
departure for America, was the beginning of a new phase in Reinagle's
creative development, which found its complete fruition in the four
Philadelphia sonatas. While the double influence of C. P. E. Bach and
Haydn— where could he have found better models?— is apparent in
these works, they are by no means mere imitations. They reveal a
fresh and lively invention, resourcefulness in development and figura-
tion, a fine feeling for structure and proportion, and a capacity for
sustained lyrical expression in the Adagios.
All but the first of these sonatas are in three movements (fast-
slow-fast), following the pattern established by Emanuel Bach. In the
first sonata the slow movement is missing. Bound together with it in
the manuscript, however, are two pieces, both in the form of theme
with variations. The second of these, an Andante in A major, is par-
ticularly attractive and might well serve as a middle movement for
this sonata.
During his last years, which he spent in Baltimore, Reinagle worked
enthusiastically on composing a kind of secular oratorio based on se-
lections from Milton's Paradise Lost. The original feature of the work
was that spoken narrative replaced the usual recitatives. We can only
guess at its musical contents, for the manuscript— left incomplete at
PROFESSIONAL EMIGRANTS
his death— mysteriously disappeared from the library of the com-
poser's grandson, and has not been recovered.
Reinagle was twice married. By his first wife he had two sons,
Hugh and Thomas. His second wife, to whom he was married in 1803,
was Anna Duport, daughter of the celebrated dancing master Pierre
Landrin Duport of Philadelphia and Baltimore. The offspring of this
marriage was a daughter, Georgianna, born several months after her
father's death in 1809. Alexander Reinagle was deeply mourned, for, in
the words of a contemporary eulogist, he possessed "a heart formed
for tenderness and the charities of the world."
A rare character
Frequently associated with Reinagle as a composer for the New
Theatre was his older friend, colleague, and former teacher, Raynor
Taylor, who outlived him by many years. Trained in the King's sing-
ing school as one of the boys of the Chapel Royal, Taylor was for a
time musical director of the Saddler's Wells Theatre in London. He
came to America in 1792 and appeared in Baltimore as "music pro-
fessor, organist and teacher of music in general." He also appeared in
the less dignified role of theatrical entertainer, specializing in a type of
musical skit called "olio," very similar to a modern vaudeville sketch.
Moving to Philadelphia soon afterward, he became organist at St.
Peter's Church, without renouncing his theatrical high jinks—which is
further proof of the eighteenth century's tolerant attitude toward such
matters.
Raynor Taylor seems to have been a rare blend of erudition and
clownishness. He had the reputation of being the finest organist in
America, famous for his masterly improvisations. Reinagle declared
that he considered Taylor's extemporizing on the organ "to be equal
to the skill and powers of Bach himself—by whom, of course, he
meant C. P. E. Bach of Hamburg. John R. Parker, who often heard
him play, wrote of his "never failing strain of harmony and science.
. . . His ideas flowed with wonderful freedom in all the varieties of
plain chant, imitation and fugue." The same writer mentions the com-
poser's "shelves groaning under manuscript files of overtures, operas,
anthems, glees, &c." In spite of his extraordinary skill and industry,
Raynor Taylor achieved no other material recompense than "the
drudgery of teaching and a scanty organ salary."
n8 I Preparation
But lack of the world's goods did not dampen Taylor's sense of
humor. His hilarious parodies of Italian opera were highly appreciated
by a select circle. Let Parker, an eyewitness, be once again our chron-
icler: "Sometimes among particular friends he would in perfect play-
fulness sit down to the pianoforte and extemporise an Italian opera.
. . . The overtures, recitatives, songs and dialogue, by singing alter-
nately in the natural and falsetto voice, were all the thought of the mo-
ment, as well as the words, which were nothing but a sort of gibber-
ish with Italian terminations. Thus would he often in sportive mood
throw away ideas sufficient to establish a musical fame." 4 Raynor
Taylor was potentially the Alec Templeton of his day—all he lacked
was a radio audience.
Many of Taylor's compositions have been preserved, but they are
mostly comic skits, light songs, and incidental pieces that give little
idea of his real stature as a composer. Yet, bearing in mind the impor-
tance that the "olio" was to acquire in the minstrel show of the mid-
nineteenth century, we may look upon Raynor Taylor, the erudite
church organist, as a significant precursor of the popular American
lyric theater. He has also another claim to fame, for before his death
in 1825 he was active in founding the Musical Fund Society of Phila-
delphia, one of the most important musical organizations in America.
The versatile Mr. Carr
Associated with Raynor Taylor in founding the Musical Fund So-
ciety was Benjamin Carr, one of the most versatile, most energetic, and
most successful of the post-Revolutionary musical emigrants. Arriv-
ing at New York in 1793, he was soon followed by his brother Thomas,
and his father, Joseph Carr. The three of them became very success-
ful as music publishers and dealers, with stores in Philadelphia, Balti-
more, and New York. Benjamin Carr made his American debut as a
singer and quickly won popular favor in ballad operas. But his most
important contributions to America's musical life were made as com-
poser, arranger, organist, pianist, and, above all, as publisher and edi-
tor. He edited the Musical Journal founded by his father and pub-
lished Carr's Musical Miscellany in Occasional Numbers.
The Carrs imported the best vocal and instrumental music from
Europe, but did not neglect local talent. The first issue of The Gentle-
4 Parker, Musical Biogrttpby.
PROFESSIONAL EMIGRANTS
man's Amusement, a periodical musical collection published by Carr in
Philadelphia, contained The President's March by Philip Phile. This is
of special interest to us because later this march was used for the tune
of uHail Columbia," the famous patriotic song written by Joseph
Hopkinson, son of our friend Francis Hopkinson. Hopkinson wrote
the words of this song at the request of the actor Gilbert Fox, who
sang it for the first time with immense success at the New Theatre on
the night of April 25, 1798. Two days later, Carr brought out the old
tune in a new edition, advertising it as "the very favorite New Fed-
eral Song." And as "Hail Columbia" it soon became established as one
of our first national songs.
Also published in The Gentleman's Amusement was Carr's Federal
Overture, arranged as a "duetto for two German flutes," consisting of
a medley of patriotic airs, including the highly popular "Yankee Doo-
dle"—this being the first time that this famous tune was printed in
America, though it had been widely known since pre-Revolutionary
days.
In launching his weekly Musical Journal (1800), Carr announced
that for his selections of vocal and instrumental music he would draw
on "a regular supply of new music from Europe and the assistance of
Men of Genius in the Country" (that is, in the United States). This
sums up Carr's sound and constructive policy of striking a fair bal-
ance between foreign importations and native products. And he recog-
nizes that there are already "Men of Genius" in the country. Of
course, the eighteenth century did not attach exactly the same mean-
ing to "genius" that we do: it meant talent and skill rather than su-
preme inspiration.
That Benjamin Carr was a musician of exceptional talent, if not
precisely a "genius," is proved by his extant compositions, including
some of the music of his opera, The Archers; or, the Mountaineers of
Switzerland, produced at New York in 1796. The libretto deals with
the story of William Tell. The only two musical numbers from this
opera that have been preserved are a graceful Rondo from the over-
ture and the song, "Why, Huntress, Why?" which Carr published in
his Musical Journal.
Benjamin Carr was born in London in 1768 and died in Philadel-
phia in 1831. Widely esteemed for his personal and professional quali-
ties, his influence on every phase of musical life in America was strong
and far-reaching.
12O | Preparation
New York and Boston
The presence of such distinguished musicians as Reinagle, Taylor,
and Carr, gave to Philadelphia a musical supremacy lasting for sev-
eral decades. Yet musical talent was not lacking in other cities, par-
ticularly Boston and New York. The leading professional musician in
New York during the post-Revolutionary period was James Hewitt
(1770-1827), violinist, composer, manager, and publisher. He was
one of a group of musicians who arrived in New York in 1792, an-
nouncing themselves as "professors of music from the Operahouse,
Hanoversquare, and Professional Concerts under the direction of
Haydn, Pleyel, etc., London." Among them was the ill-fated flutist
William Young, and the Belgian violinist Jean Gehot. The first New
York concert given by the group included Gehot's Overture in twelve
movements, expressive of a voyage from England to America, and
Hewitt's Overture in nine movements, expressive of a battle. Presum-
ably Gehot's overture had the advantage of being based on personal
experience. This sort of descriptive music was very popular at that
time. In New England the blind English organist and pianist John L.
Berkenhead used to bring the house down with his powerful and realis-
tic rendition of a piece called The Demolition of the Bastille. The
classical example of this type of thing was Kotzwara's Battle of Prague,
introduced to America by Benjamin Carr, which continually cropped
up on programs, to say nothing of being thundered out on countless
parlor pianos by several generations of amateur keyboard thumpers.
James Hewitt made another contribution to the repertory of battle
pieces— this time also making an appeal to American patriotism—with
his sonata for piano titled The Battle of Trenton, published in 1797
and dedicated to General Washington, whose portrait embellishes the
cover. In this quaint period piece, Hewitt undertook to depict musi-
cally such episodes as The Army in motion— Attack-cannons-bombs
—Flight of the Hessians— General Confusion— Ankles of Capitulation
signed— Trumpets of Victory— General Rejoicing. Nor did he omit to
introduce the ever-popular "Yankee Doodle." Hewitt was obviously
catering to a current fad, but he was a thoroughly trained and capable
musician, hence this sonata sounds much better than its absurdly literal
"program" would lead us to suppose.
Hewitt's position in New York was very similar to that of Reinagle
PROFESSIONAL EMIGRANTS 121
in Philadelphia. He was the leading composer and arranger of operas
for the Old American Company, his social standing was high, and his
sentimental songs enjoyed wide favor. His three Sonatas for the Piano-
forte are attractive period pieces. His opera Tammany combined
American Indian lore with political implications, for it was produced
under the auspices of the Tammany Society of New York, then a
center of anti-Federalist feeling. The Federalist faction denounced the
opera as "a wretched thing," but this may have been simply due to
political prejudice. Since the music has been lost, we have no means
of forming our own opinion. Hewitt's song uThe Wampum Belt" ap-
parently had no connection with Tammany, though an ousted politi-
cal boss might well bewail that "The wampum belt can charm no
more."
James Hewitt married twice and had six children, several of whom
became prominent musicians. His descendants, in fact, are still active
in the musical profession.
Next to Hewitt, the principal New York composers were Victor
Pelissier, and John Christopher Moller. Pelissier was the most promi-
nent of the French musical emigrants. He composed several operas
for the Old, American Company, including Edwin and Angelina
(1796), based on Goldsmith's novel, which had the doubtful distinc-
tion of receiving only one performance. Moller, who appeared fre-
quently as a performer on Franklin's harmonica, composed a pleasing
Sinfonia, a String Quartet, and a Rondo for piano.
Among the foreign musicians who settled in Charleston before the
Revolution was Peter Albrecht van Hagen, lately "organist and di-
rector of the City's Concert in Rotterdam." In 1789, van Hagen
moved with his family to New York— his wife, daughter, and son
were all musicians— and later settled in Boston, where he opened a
music store, conducted the orchestra at the Haymarket Theatre, and
served as organist at the Stone Chapel. He belonged to a distin-
guished German musical family that had long been active in Holland,
and his case is one more proof of the high professional caliber of the
early musical emigrants. Van Hagen's compositions include a Federal
Overture and a Funeral Dirge on the Death of General Washington—
one of many such musical tributes to the Father of our Country. His
son, Peter Albrecht Junior, followed in the paternal footsteps by
composing "a new patriotic song" titled "Adams & Jefferson," which
rode the current wave of anti-French feeling:
122 | Preparation
Columbia's brave friends with alertness advance
Her rights to support in defiance of France. . .
To volatile fribbles we never will yield,
While John's at the helm, and George rules the field.
The professional emigrants never lagged behind in musical flag waving
The pioneer among Boston's professional musicians was the Eng-
lish-born but American-spirited organist, harpischordist, and composer,
William Selby (1738-1798), who came to America around 1771. Dur-
ing the lean years of the Revolution he kept a grocery store in Boston,
but even before the end of the war, in 1782, he issued proposals for
the publication of a musical collection in monthly installments, to be
titled The New Minstrel. His advertisement indicates that he was
more of an enthusiast than a business promoter. Here is a sample of
his eloquence:
At this age of civilization, at this area [sic] of the acquaintance
with a nation far gone in politeness and fine arts— even the stern
patriot and lover of his country's glory, might be addressed on the
present subject with not less propriety than the man of elegance and
taste.
The promptness of this young country in those sciences which
were once thought peculiar only to a riper age, has already brought
upon her the eyes of the world.
And shall those arts which make her happy, be less courted than
those arts which have made her great? Why may she not be "In
song unequall'd as unmatched in war"? 5
Why not, indeed, when such brave fellows as William Selby, and
his fellow musicians throughout the land, labored so valiantly and
perscvcringly, in the face of so many obstacles and discouragements,
to the end that their adopted country might truly become "In song
unequall'd as unmatched in war."
"This advertisement appeared in the Boston Evening Post, Feb. 2, 1782.
Quoted by Sonneck and Upton, A Bibliography of Early American Secular
Music, p. 293.
chapter seven
Native pioneers
Our Country is made up of the small fry. Give me a Seine of small meshes.
MASON L. ("PARSON") WEEMS, LETTER TO MATHEW CAREY (MARCH 25, 1809).
1 he native-born American musician in the eighteenth century occu-
pied a sort of no man's land between the privileged security of the
gentleman amateur and the acknowledged competence of the profes-
sional emigrant. Salaried positions in church or theater were almost in-
variably filled by the foreign musicians. Our native musical pioneers,
being self-taught empiricists with more zeal than skill, could not at
this early stage hope to compete with the imported professionals on
their own ground. Nevertheless, by their energy and enthusiasm,
and the frequent success of a good hymn tune, they managed to
stake out an area for themselves which, if it seldom provided them
with a living, yet enabled them to supply with considerable effective-
ness a large portion of the country's rapidly growing musical needs.
Being mostly "small fry" themselves, they knew how to make a seine
of small meshes to catch their own kind. They could not boast of hav-
ing performed before the crowned heads of Europe, but they knew
what the farmers and artisans and tradesmen of America wanted. Be-
ing of the people, they made music for the people.
As Balzac remarked in a conversation, "To live in a material way
one must work— one must be a sower, a reaper, a spinner, a weaver, a
carpenter, a mason, a blacksmith, a wheelright. . . . The rest is lux-
ury—luxury of the mind, of genius, of reason." True enough; yet even
a mason or a blacksmith may aspire to a taste of that luxury of mind or
spirit. The question is, if touched by "the sacred flame," how far shall
he let it carry him from the material realities of life— to what heights,
or to what depths? Take the case of Jacob Kimball, a blacksmith of
Topsfield, Massachusetts. Old Jake had some musical ability; no
doubt he sang at his forge; and surely it was a proud day for him
123
124 ! Preparation
when he was "chosen to set ye psalms, and to sit in ye elder's seat"
in the local church. Thus on the Sabbath and on meeting days he en-
joyed the mild luxury of setting ye psalms— but the rest of the time
he stuck to his smithy. Now, the blacksmith of Topsfield had a son,
Jacob Kimball, Jr., who was fortunate enough to attend Harvard Col-
lege, where he prepared himself for the practice of law. What an
opportunity, in this democratic land, for the second generation to ad-
vance in wealth and social prestige! But what had been a mild in-
fection in the father became virulent in the son. On December 7,
1795, the Rev. William Bentley of Salem wrote in his diary: "Found
Mr. Kimball, the celebrated musician, at his father's. It is his purpose
to establish himself in the law in Maine." So Jacob Junior, promising
young lawyer, is already known as a "celebrated musician." He had,
in fact, compiled and published in 1793 The Rural Harmony, contain-
ing original compositions by himself "for the use of singing schools
and singing assemblies." Whatever intention he may have had of es-
tablishing himself in the law was soon abandoned in favor of music.
Kimball went about teaching singing schools in New England and
promoting his own collections of psalms and hymns. He finally died
at the almshouse in Topsfield.
Let us glance for a moment at the career of the most popular
American composer of his generation, William Billings. He gave up
the trade of tanner to devote himself entirely to music. He published
many collections, and his music was known and sung all over the
country. He managed to buy a house in Boston, but at his death he
left his family in poverty. They could not even afford to buy a tomb-
stone for his grave in Boston Common. In the official record of his
decease his occupation was given as "tanner." For the American pio-
neer, music had not yet become either a trade or a profession.
Let us call the roll of these native musical pioneers, for names con-
vey something of the character and background and even perhaps the
history of the men who bear them. Here they are- Supply Belcher,
Asahel Benham, William Billings, Bartholomew Brown, Amos Bull,
Amos Doolittle, Josiah Flagg, Ezekiel Goodale, Oliver Holden, Jere-
miah Ingalls, Stephen Jenks, Thomas Loud, Justin Morgan, Daniel
Read, Timothy Swan, Abraham Wood. These are not all, but they are
enough to give the feel of the breed: solid yeoman names, smacking
of the humbler trades and occupations. The records confirm this:
Belcher was a tavernkeeper; Billings a tanner; Bull a storekeeper;
Doolittle a silversmith; Holden a carpenter; Ingalls a cooper; Morgan
NATIVE PIONEERS 125
a horse breeder; Read a combmaker; Swan a hatter; Wood a fuller,
or dresser, of cloth.
Not all of them remained poor and humble. Being Americans in
a free society, they were entitled to climb as high on the social and
economic ladder as their enterprise and energy could take them. While
none of them attained to remarkable wealth or eminence, several be-
came substantial and influential citizens in their communities. Oliver
Holden, starting as a carpenter in Charlestown, Massachusetts, became
a large-scale real-estate operator and a member of the Massachusetts
House of Representatives. Daniel Read set himself up as a manufac-
turer of ivory combs, and also established a business as publisher and
bookseller. Supply Belcher settled in Farmington, Maine, where he be-
came a justice of the peace and a representative in the legislature.
These were typical figures in our early musical life, men in close touch
with the little people of our country. It will be the purpose of this
chapter to relate something of their lives, their achievements, and
their lasting influence in shaping America's music.
Almost our first composer
Although the New England group of composers and compilers of
sacred music dominates this period, it so happens that the first Amer-
ican book of psalmody to appear after the publications of Tufts and
Walter in the 17205 was a work entitled Urania, printed at Philadel-
phia in 1762. Its author was James Lyon (1735-1794), a native of
Newark, New Jersey, where his father was "yeoman of the town."
Orphaned at an early age, Lyon was sent by his guardians to the
College of New Jersey, which until 1756 was located in Newark. In
that year the College (later Princeton University) was moved to
Princeton, where Lyon received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1759.
The commencement exercises for that year included the singing of
an Ode "set to music by Mr. James Lyon, one of the students." Thus
we find him already appearing as a composer, without knowing when
or how he acquired a musical education. The music of Lyon's com-
mencement ode has not been preserved.
It will be recalled that Francis Hopkinson's earliest extant song
dates from 1759, the same year in which Lyon's Ode was sung at
Princeton. How, then, does Hopkinson claim precedence over Lyon
as "America's first native-born composer"? The fact is that the as-
signment of such a title to Hopkinson is rather arbitrary and meaning-
126 I Preparation
less, because in all probability there were earlier amateur composers
of whom we know nothing. Hopkinson is simply the first American
composer whose identified works have been preserved. Though
Lyon's collection of psalms and hymns was not published until 1762,
it is probable that some of his compositions included in that volume
were composed somewhat earlier. It is, in any case, futile and point-
less to attempt to establish an absolute priority in such matters.
Curiously enough, Hopkinson and Lyon shared the musical hon-
ors at a public commencement program given by the College of Penn-
sylvania in Philadelphia on May 23, 1761. According to a notice in
the Pennsylvania Gazette the event took place "before a vast Con-
course of People of all Ranks," and uthere was performed in the Fore-
noon an elegant Anthem composed by James LYON, of New Jersey
College, and in the Afternoon an Ode . . . written and set to music
in a very grand and masterly Taste by Francis Hopkinson, Esq. A.M.
of the College of this City." Note that Hopkinson, a "favorite son," is
given abundant praise, while Lyon, an outsider who had only recently
come to Philadelphia, has to be satisfied with the trite adjective "ele-
gant." Anyway, Lyon's music was publicly performed in the cul-
tured stronghold of Brotherly Love, and this was an important step-
pingstone to fame.
Shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia in 1760, Lyon issued pro-
posals for the publication by subscription of a collection of psalms,
hymns, and anthems, which appeared two years later with the follow-
ing title:
V RANI Ay or a choice Collection of Psalm-Tunes > Anthems and
Hymns fro?n the. most approved Authors, ivith some entirely neiu;
in two, three and four Parts, the whole adapted to the Use of
Churches and Private Families; to which are prefixed the plainest
and most necessary Rules of Psalmody.
A new edition was published at Philadelphia in 1767, and another in
1773, indicating the continued demand for Lyon's collection. The au-
thor's avowed purpose was uto spread the art of Psalmody, in its per-
fection, thro' our American colonies." The work was liberally dedi-
cated to "the Clergy of every Denomination in America."
Lyon himself was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1764 (he
had taken his M.A. at Princeton in 1762), and the following year was
sent to Nova Scotia, where he had a hard struggle to support himself
and his family. In 1771 he became pastor in the newly settled town
NATIVE PIONEERS 127
of Machias, Maine, remaining there, except for two brief intervals,
until his death. During the Revolution he was an ardent supporter
of the American cause, and in 1775 he wrote a long letter to George
Washington outlining a plan for conquering Nova Scotia, which he
proposed to carry out himself. Washington replied politely, but noth-
ing came of the scheme.
These practical interests and activities apparently did not prevent
Lyon from continuing to compose music, judging by an entry in the
diary of Philip Vickers Fithian, whom we met previously as a tutor
in the home of Councillor Carter of Virginia. In 1774 Fithian spent
his vacation at Cohansie, New Jersey, where Lyon also happened to
be visiting at the time. Under date of Friday, April 22, 1774, Fithian
wrote:
Rode to the Stage early for the Papers thence I went to Mr.
Hunters where I met with that great master of music, Mr. Lyon.—
He sung at my request, & sings with his usual softness and accuracy
—He is about publishing a new Book of Tunes which are to be
chiefly of his own Composition. . . ,l
Besides confirming Lyon's reputation as a composer, this passage offers
our only clue to the possible existence of another book by him. No
trace of this "new Book of Tunes" has been found, and for all we
know it may never have been published. In the 19305 an old hymn-
book with the title page missing was found in a barn in Newbury-
port, Massachusetts. The first composition in this book is an Anthem
on Friendship by James Lyon. This has led to the conjecture that the
unidentified Newburyport volume might be Lyon's unew Book of
Tunes." 2
The collection titled Urania contains six compositions by Lyon:
settings of the 8th, the i8th, the 23d and the 95th Psalms; an Anthem
taken from the i50th Psalm; and the io4th Psalm "imitated" by Dr.
Watts. Other compositions by Lyon appeared in various collections:
A Marriage Hymn in Daniel Bayley's Ne<w Universal Harmony
v'775), the 1 7th Psalm in The Chorister's Companion (1788) com-
piled by Simeon Jocelyn, the i9th Psalm in the fourth edition of
Andrew Law's The Rudiments of Music (1792). The Anthem on
Friendship, already mentioned, was published in Stickney's Gentle-
men's and Ladies1 Musical Companion (1774) and, as late as 1807, in
1 Fithian, Journal arid Letters.
*See Notes of the Music Library Association, IV, 3, p. 293.
128 I Preparation
Elias Mann's Massachusetts Collection of Sacred Harmony. This
makes a total of ten compositions that can definitely be ascribed to
James Lyon.
Today we can discover little intrinsic merit in Lyon's music, but
we should note his considerable reputation among his contemporaries,
who obviously considered his music worthy of praise, publication, and
public performance. At one of Andrew Adgate's "Uranian Concerts"
at Philadelphia in 1786, an anthem by Lyon was performed on the
same program with music by Handel— an indication that our ancestors
managed to combine recognition of native talent with admiration for
the great European masters. Lacking such encouragement and recog-
nition, the path of our musical pioneers would have been drear and
difficult indeed.
"Better music" booster
When The Psalms of David, imitated in the language of the New
Testament, by Dr. Isaac Watts, was issued in one of several American
editions at Philadelphia in 1781, the volume contained an appendix
of sixteen pages with UA select number of plain tunes adapted to con-
gregational worship. By Andrew Law, A.B." Law had first published
his Plain Tunes at Boston in 1767, and they went through four edi-
tions up to 1785. Andrew Law (1748-1821) stood somewhat higher
in the social scale than most of his fellow pioneers in American music.
Ckaerful. A M E R
G»3 -dlPpH d
Behold tire tnorning fun Begirt* hi* glorious
0SD .JH J!d i D I
G,D -HPMPph I-PIP
r»D -PlP dip P|_
NATIVE PIONEERS 12<)
A grandson of Governor Law of Connecticut, he received a master's
degree from Brown University, studied divinity privately, began
preaching in 1777, and was ordained to the ministry ten years later
at Hartford. According to his obituary notice, he was for forty years
"an assiduous cultivator and teacher of sacred music." He was also a
composer who prided himself on his good taste, but he wrote only
one tune that became widely used: the one known as "Arch dale."
Law's second publication was The Select Harmony (New Haven,
1779), containing, "in a plain and concise manner, the rules of sing-
ing." In 1780 appeared The Musical Primer, also printed at New
Haven. It was apparently in the fourth edition of this work, issued at
Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1803, that Law introduced what he
termed ua new plan of printing music." This innovation consisted of
using, in place of the customary round notes, characters of four dif-
ferent shapes: diamond, square, round, and triangular. No staff lines
were employed, the pitch of the notes being indicated by the relative
position of the "shape-note" characters. As Law described this method,
the characters "are situated between the single bars that divide the
time, in the same manner as if they were on lines, and in every in-
stance where two characters of the same figure occur their situations
mark perfectly the height and distance of their sounds." Below is the
hymn tune "America" as it appears in The Musical Primer in Andrew
Law's shape-note system with the music in four parts.
I C A No. I. M
= I-JN dlPHHkM^FN J|o II'
way; Hi§ beam* tlnw^Kafl the nations run, And life and ligh
-did dld^djIj-iiddU i|0 II
o
0 up |p P
|-P|P
dl
o
130 I Preparation
It may be asked why only four shape notes were needed, since we
are accustomed to use seven different names, or rather, syllables, for
designating the notes of the diatonic scale (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, or
ti). The early American settlers brought over from England the so-
called "fasola" system, which employed only the four syllables: fa,
sol, la, mi. The first three were repeated, and "mi" was inserted for
the seventh note, the complete scale appearing thus: fa, sol, la, fa, sol,
la, mi.
We shall have more to say about the shape-note singing books, and
the people who sang from them, in the second part of this book, when
we deal with the musical customs and traditions of the American
frontier.
Andrew Law energetically promoted this "new plan" of musical
notation, and got several prominent persons, including John Hubbard
of Dartmouth, to write recommendations for it. To the objection that
the system was new and not in general use, he replied that if this
argument were accepted there would be an end of all improvement
in the arts. It is strange that Law should have been an innovator in
this respect, for on the whole his attitude was conservative as opposed
to the radical individualism of such a man as Billings. This is attested
by a sentence in a newspaper article that appeared a/ter his death:
"To his correct taste and scientific improvements may be ascribed
much of that decent, solemn and chaste style of singing so notice-
able in so many of the American churches." He was, in effect, a
staunch upholder of the genteel tradition and one of the first advo-
cates of the "better music" movement that was soon to dominate
American hymnody through the influence of Lowell Mason. From
the vantage point of his superior education and "correct taste," An-
drew Law looked down with disdain upon the antics of the musical
small fry that were overrunning our land. In the preface to The Musi-
cal Primer he deplored the frivolity of the singing in many churches,
which resembled more the singing of "songs" than of dignified hymns,
and castigated the creative efforts of the American musical pioneers:
. . . hence the dignity and the ever varying productions of Handel,
or Madan, and of others, alike meritorious, are, in a great measure,
supplanted by the pitiful productions of numerous composuists,
whom it would be doing too much honor to name. Let any one
acquainted with the sublime and beautiful compositions of the great
NATIVE PIONEERS 1 31
Masters of Music, but look round within the circle of his own
acquaintance, and he will find abundant reason for these remarks.
This curious piece of snobbism is interesting on several counts. Stu-
dents of musical taste and the vagaries of fame will find it instructive
that the names of Madan and Handel are coupled as twin luminaries
of sacred music. The Rev. Martin Madan, founder and chaplain of
Lock Hospital in London, was one of the prime movers in the devel-
opment of Anglican hymnody. In 1760 he published a Collection of
Psalms and Hymns, known as the Lock Hospital Collection, which
had considerable influence in America (it was reprinted in Boston).
He composed the tune "Denmark," used for the setting of "Before
Jehovah's awful throne"; one must admit that it is a strong and stir-
ring anthem.
From Law's quotation we extract that curious word "composu-
ist," doubtless derived from the obsolete use of "composure" to mean
"composition," But Law obviously uses it with disdain— and it does
have a certain contemptuous ring. It is, in any case, a useful word to
have at hand; for there are "composuists" in every age. Whether we
call them composers or composuists, Law's remarks make it clear that
persons addicted to the writing of music abounded in eighteenth-
century America. How did it happen that in the second half of the
eighteenth century one had only to look around within the circle of
one's acquaintance in order to find a "composer," whereas in the first
half of the century the existence of any such creature is not attested
by any documentary evidence? There is no valid historical reason why
composers should suddenly flourish in America after 1750, where none
existed before. Bear in mind that these "composers" were simply men
who made up hymn tunes and harmonized them with varying degrees
of skill and knowledge. My belief is that individuals in America had
been "composing," that is, making up tunes for psalms and hymns,
long before the first printed collections began to appear. The rise of
popular hymnody gave a strong impetus to these native attempts at
musical self-expression, and the spread of book publishing in America
—as Parson Weems said, the country was hungry for books— provided
a means for the tunes and arrangements to circulate widely in print.
132 I Preparation
Some Yankee music makers
When Francis Hopkinson, in one of his letters, was describing
some of the differences in American and European ways of living, he
remarked that in Europe one could get any kind of work done by a
specialist, but the average American, in those days, was accustomed
to doing everything for himself, from building a house to pulling a
tooth. Music was no exception to this rule. Our early music makers
belonged to that self-reliant breed of men who built our first towns,
established farms, schools, banks, and stores, and yet who believed
that music was no less essential than the more mundane needs of life.
Now we meet another of this sturdy breed, Supply Belcher of
Stoughton and points north, robust, prolific, sire of ten offspring,
hailed by his contemporaries as "the Handel of Maine." For several
years Belcher kept a tavern in his native town, where the singing-
school movement flourished, but his pioneer spirit urged him on to
the northern frontier. He moved with his wife and family to Maine,
settling first in Hallowell and later in Farmington, where he re-
mained until his death in 1836 at the age of eighty-five. He taught the
first school in Farmington, became choir leader, justice of the peace,
and representative in the Massachusetts legislature (Maine was a part
of Massachusetts until 1820). In his leisure time he composed music
that he hoped would "be ornamental to civilization."
Supply Belcher published The Harmony of Maine at Boston in
1794, containing psalms, hymns, fuguing pieces, and anthems of his
own composition. He was partial to the "fuging tunes" that Billings
had made popular, and aimed at a lively, expressive style of writing.
He alternated between extreme simplicity and an elaborate imitative
texture. Sometimes the transition from simple to complex texture was
made in the same composition, as in his setting of the Christmas
hymn, "While shepherds watch'd," which begins in a homophonic
style and then repeats the last line in extended imitative passages which
Belcher's contemporaries called "fuging" (probably pronounced
"fudging").
Elaborations of this type doubtless caused Belcher to be dubbed
the Handel of Maine, but he perhaps appeals more to us in his simpler
moments, and if our minds run to comparisons we would be inclined
to regard him as a precursor of Stephen Foster. Like Foster, he had the
NATIVE PIONEERS 133
gift to be simple and close to the folk; he could be tenderly lyrical or
contagiously vivacious. The f^ct that some of his liveliest tunes were
written for hymns need not cause us to deny that they would be
equally suitable for a minstrel show. Imagine what a lift the farmers
and villagers of the rural singing schools must have got in singing a
hymn to Belcher's sprightly tune "Omega":
r r
r r
Come thou Al- might -y king, Help us thy name to sing,
J
1
Help us to praise.
• ther all glo • ri - ous,
O'er all vie - to-ri-ous, Gome and reign o-ver us,
r ir *rrrr r »rr i ir r r |
An-cient of days Come and reign o-ver us, An-cient of days.
Scarcely less lively is the skipping and leaping tune, known as "York,"
that Belcher wrote for the hymn "So let our lips and lives express."
Here we have the forerunner of the gospel hymn of later days. That
Belcher could also write in a more dignified style of hymnody is
proved by his fine setting of Isaac Watts's "He reigns! the Lord, the
Saviour reigns!" for which he composed the tune called "Cumber-
land."
There is charm, freshness, and expressiveness in Belcher's three-
part setting of "Invitation" ("Child of the summer, charming rose").
The same qualities are also evident in the four-part "Spring," of which
we quote the beginning of the air (placed, according to the old cus-
tom, in the tenor part):
r
The scatt
'red clouds are fled_ at _ last, The
r r r T r
If
tain _ is gone, the win - ter's past,
love • ly
134 I Preparation
' I- r i
ver - nal flow'rs ap - pear, The feath-cr'd choir, de-light our ear.
Both for his music and his personality, Supply Belcher is one of the
most engaging figures among the primitives of American music.
The 1936 edition of the Original Sacred Harpy the modern shape-
note songbook of our rural singing societies, contains at least eight
tunes that bear the name of Daniel Read as composer, including that
fine fuguing tune, "Sherburne." Now, Daniel Read was born in the
town of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, in the year 1757, and died at New
Haven in 1836. Thus his music has had continuous appeal to thousands
of Americans for over a hundred years.
After brief periods of service in the Continental Army, Read set-
tled in New Haven, where, in partnership with Amos Doolittle, he
entered business as a bookseller and publisher. He courted Jerusha
Sherman of New Haven, whose father, wrote Read, "would not con-
sent to her marriage with me, because I was guilty of the unpardon-
able crime of poverty." Nevertheless, Daniel wed his Jerusha, four
offspring were born—one of them christened George Frederick Handel
—and the pater familias proceeded to overcome the crime of poverty.
He became a manufacturer of ivory combs, a stockholder in one of the
New Haven banks, and a director of the library— also a composer,
compiler, and publisher of sacred music.
Read published The American Singing Book in 1785, An Intro-
duction to Psalmody in 1790, and The Columbian Harmonist in 1793
(fourth edition, 1810). In 1786 he began to publish, as a monthly
periodical, The American Musical Magazine, "intended to contain a
great variety of approved music carefully selected from the works of
the best American and European masters." Note that Read takes for
granted the presence of "American masters" worthy to be included
side by side with "the best . . . European masters." The American
inferiority complex in music was a later development. The men of
Read's generation proceeded with sublime self-assurance and confi-
dence in America's musical destiny.
As we become acquainted with these early American composers,
we find ourselves wondering what made them take to music, what
opportunities they had for acquiring musical knowledge, and by what
NATIVE PIONEERS 135
steps they established a reputation as composers. Something of a pat-
tern has already emerged from the lives touched on thus far: the gen-
erally humble beginnings, the versatility, the determination, the enthu-
siasm. The case of Timothy Swan will fill in further details of the
picture. He was born in 1758 at Worcester, Massachusetts, the eighth
of thirteen children. Upon the death of his father, he was appren-
ticed to a merchant, and at sixteen went to live with a brother in
Groton. There he attended a singing school, and it was this that awak-
ened his musical interest. It also provided him with his meager musi-
cal education and started him on the road to composing. Apprenticed
to a hatter in Northfield, he began to jot down tunes at odd moments,
writing a few notes at a time. Thus while still very young he com-
posed several hymn tunes that at first circulated in manuscript. He
was an enthusiastic admirer of Billings— twelve years his senior— to
whom he doubtless looked up as an "American master."
Swan married the daughter of a pastor in Suffield, where he lived
for nearly thirty years. In 1807 he moved to Northfield, and died
there on his eighty-fourth birthday. It is difficult to understand how
he made a living, and it is reported that his neighbors said he was
"Poor, proud, and indolent." He was fond of poetry, trees, and birds.
He read widely, and wrote verse as well as music.
Like Read, Swan cultivated the fuguing style. His major compila-
tion was The New England Harmony (Suffield, 1801). Another col-
lection, The Songsters Assistant, published about a year earlier, con-
tained a number of secular songs by Swan. The Federal Harmony
(Boston, 1785) has also been attributed to him. His best-known hymn
tune is "China," said to have been composed in 1790. Others are
"London," "Ocean," "Poland," Quincy," "Spring," and "Mon-
tague."
Oliver Holden (1765-1844) is remembered chiefly as the com-
poser of the tune "Coronation," used for Edward Perronet's hymn
"All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name." In his day he was an influential
and successful composer and compiler of sacred music, though he
stood somewhat aside from the popular tradition of Billings and his
school. His aim, in his own words, was to compose "music in a style
suited to the solemnity of sacred devotion." In 1792 he brought out
The American Harmony, followed by The Union Harmony, and
The Massachusetts Compiler, the latter in collaboration with Samuel
136 I Preparation
Holyoke and Hans Gram. Holden was also engaged to edit the sixth
and later editions of The Worcester Collection of Sacred Harmony,
first published in 1786, which was one of the most widely used books
of that period. Holden seems to have shared Andrew Law's attitude
toward American composers of his time, for in the preface to the
eighth edition of the Worcester Collection he wrote: "It is to be
lamented that among so many American authors so little can be found
well written or well adapted tp sacred purposes, but it is disingenuous
and impolitic to throw that little away while our country is in a state
of progressive improvement."
In addition to running a music store, directing a choir, conducting
singing schools, and composing music, Holden was a real-estate opera-
tor, a prominent Mason, a preacher, and a member of the Massachu-
setts House of Representatives. He wrote the words and music of an
Ode to Columbia's Favorite Son, which was sung when General Wash-
ington was given a triumphal reception at Boston in 1789. This ode
was first published in The Massachusetts Magazine for October, 1789.
Besides the familiar "Coronation," included in most hymnals, an-
other tune by Holden, titled "Concord," is found in the latest edition
of the Sacred Harp (1936), proving that his music could survive sev-
eral generations of "progressive improvement."
Justin Morgan (1747-1798) of West Springfield, Massachusetts,
earned a living by teaching school, keeping a tavern, and breeding
horses. Among his stallions, by which he bred the "Morgan horse,"
were Sportsman, Diamond, and True Briton (this was in 1783!). In
1788 Morgan moved with his family to Randolph, Vermont, where he
became town clerk. Much of his time was given to teaching singing
schools, to which he used to ride on "the original Morgan horse."
Unlike most of his fellow singing teachers, Morgan did not publish
any collections of music, though he left such a book in manuscript.
Among his more ambitious compositions is a "Judgment Anthem,"
but his best-known tune is "Montgomery," a fuguing piece that has
remained popular with American rural hymn singers up to the present
day. Yet the historian Frank J. Metcalf wrote in 1925 that the music
of Justin Morgan "has now passed entirely out of use, and is of interest
only to the historian." Such statements, all too frequent in our his-
torical writing, can be made only by persons acquainted with but a
small segment of America's musical culture. Besides, a good tune never
NA1WE PIONEERS 137
passes entirely out of use; it simply passes into a different cultural
environment. We shall see this process at work in a later section of
this book, when we deal with the rural singing tradition of the fasola
folk in the South and West.
Jeremiah Ingalls (1764-1828) was another native of Massachusetts
(he was born in Andover) who moved to Vermont, though he did
this when he was much younger than Morgan. Ingalls was in his early
twenties when he settled in Newbury, Vermont, where in 1800 he
built a house that he kept as a tavern for about ten years. In 1819 he
moved to Rochester, Vermont, and later to Hancock, where he died.
In addition to keeping a tavern, being deacon of the Congregational
Church, leading the choir, teaching singing school, composing and
compiling music, Ingalls worked also, at various times, as a farmer
and as a cooper.
Jeremiah Ingalls was married to Mary Bigelow in 1791, and they
had several children. The following anecdote, quoted by Adetcalf with-
out indication of source, depicts music in the Ingalls's family circle:
His children were musical and his sons could play clarinet, bas-
soon, flute, and violin, and they would often practice for hours, the
old man leading the band with his bass viol. One Sunday they were
having an excellent time performing anthems, and after a while the
youngsters started a secular piece, the father with composure joining
in. From that they went on until they found themselves furiously
engaged in a boisterous march, in the midst of which the old gentle-
man stopped short, exclaiming, "Boys, this won't do. Put away these
corrupt things and take your Bibles." 8
This anecdote is pointed up by the fact that Ingalls's collection, The
Christian Harmony; or. Songster's Companion, printed at Exeter, New
Hampshire, in 1805, contains a large number of very lively tunes,
obviously taken from secular songs or dances, as settings for sacred
texts. Ingalls may have objected to his boys getting overboisterous on
Sunday, but he certainly had no objections to making use of good
tunes wherever he found them. One of the songs in The Christian
Harmony, titled "Innocent Sounds," is a plea for the use of secular
tunes for religious purposes:
8 Metcalf, American Writers and Compilers of Sacred Music.
138 I Preparation
4^hN
En -
Mu -
^
list
sic,
=«=
- ed in
a • las,
5*=**
the cause
too long
of
has
-* —
^
sin,
been
it — i
j. u j j j. i
Why should a good be
Press'dto o-bey the
0 ff H» = 1 1
JIB1h 1
i 2,
—
5=4=
T — H"T? —
-$ — sP-*1
e -vil?
tjt — « — -p_
»|
J' *
de - vil.
-* >
7 II p
Drunk -
• — H= — ^~
#=
en
— s
—f^
-P ^— +i — ff~^ — I
or lewd or light the lay,
L_tt tf « ff « 1
1? P
Flows to
T \ y IP i
their souls' un - do - ing
=t=
>
— 1 v V V — 1 P — 1
Wid-en'd and strew'd with
flow-ers the ^
ray,
Down to
e -
ter
J 1 J? al II
- nal ru - in.
The second stanza goes on to develop the idea of recovering the
"innocent sounds" that have been misused for carnal pleasures:
Who, on the part of God, will rise,
Innocent sounds recover;
Fly on the prey and seize the prize,
Plunder the carnal lover;
Strip him of every moving strain,
Of every melting measure;
Music in virtue's cause retain,
Risk the holy pleasure.
Ingalls himself did a rather effective job of "plundering the carnal
lover," judging by the large number of tunes in The Christian Har-
mony that are strongly reminiscent of English, Scottish, and Irish
popular tunes. A typical example is the anonymous "Redeeming Love."
Other tunes in The Christian Harmony that have a marked secular
character, recalling British dance tunes, are "Angels' Song," "Cla-
manda," "Mecklinburg," "Rose Tree," and "Separation." Ingalls evi-
dently was very close to the folk hymnody of his day. As we shall
see later, he was the first compiler to include in his collection the
revival camp-meeting songs that began to be so popular from around
1800.
Ingalls's most popular tune is "Northfield," a fuguing piece that
has remained a favorite with the rural hymn singers for nearly one
hundred and fifty years. Frederic P. Wells recounts the following anec-
dote about the origin of "Northfield":
NATIVE PIONEERS 139
Returning from fishing one day, he [Ingalls] laid [«V] down
before the fire to get dry and, impatient at the slow progress of
dinner, began to sing a parody to a well-known hymn [by Dr.
Watts]:
How long, my people, Oh! how long
Shall dinner hour delay?
Fly swifter round, ye idle maids,
And bring a dish of tea.
'Why, Jerry," said his wife, "that's a grand tune."
"So it is," replied the man of song: "I'll write it down." And
dinner waited the completion of "Northfield." *
Jeremiah Ingalls's famous fuguing piece passed from The Chris-
tian Harmony to one songbook after another, including the 1854
edition of The Southern Harmony and the 1936 revision of The Orig-
inal Sacred Harp. A recording of it, as sung by the Sacred Harp
Singers of Alabama, has been issued by the Library of Congress. So
that Jerry Ingalls and his music are still very much alive today, and
not merely of "historical interest."
Billings of Boston
William Billings was born in Boston on October 7, 1746. As a
youth he was apprenticed to learn the tanner's trade, and as far as the
official records are concerned, a tanner he remained to the end of his
days. But, like so many others around him, he caught the contagion
of music, and before long he was devoting all of his remarkable energy
and promotional ability to teaching, conducting, composing, and pub-
lishing music. Unlike his colleagues, he engaged in no business side
lines, but devoted himself completely, recklessly, tirelessly, to the art
that he loved above all else. "Great art thou O Music!"— he exclaimed
in one of his frequent outbursts of enthusiasm— "and with thee there is
no competitor. . . ."
His natural gifts, his energy and industry, and his force of charac-
ter, all concentrated without deviation on his life's one ambition— the
composition, performance, and promotion of music— gave Billings a
unique position among his fellow Americans. Great must have been
his force of character, for his personal appearance, to judge by the
'Cited by Metcalf, op. cit.
140 I Preparation
account of a contemporary, was not prepossessing. The Rev. William
Bentley of Salem wrote of him just after his death: "He was a singu-
lar man, of moderate size, short of one leg, with one eye, without any
address, and with an uncommon negligence of person. Still he spake
and sang and thought as a man above the common abilities." Billings
knew his own worth.
Billings probably received no formal schooling after the age of
fourteen, when his father, a shopkeeper, died. He is said to have re-
ceived some music lessons from a local choirmaster, and he evidently
studied Tans'ur's Musical Grammar. He was only twenty-four when
he published his first book, The New England Psalm Singer, or Amer-
ican Chorister (Boston, 1770), containing psalm tunes, anthems, and
canons of his own composition. His other collections were: The Sing-
ing Master's Assistant (1778; popularly known as ^Billings's Best");
Music in Miniature (1779); The Psalm Singer's Amusement (1781);
The Suffolk Harmony (1786); and The Continental Harmony (1794).
He died in Boston on September 26, 1800.
Billings was not in the least disconcerted by his lack of scientific
knowledge. On the contrary, he gloried in his musical independence.
In The Neiv England Psalm Singer he aired his views in words that
may be taken as his own musical credo:
Perhaps it may be expected by some, that I should say some-
thing concerning Rules for Composition; to these I answer that Na-
ture is the best Dictator, for all the hard, dry, studied rules that ever
was prescribed, will not enable any person to form an air. ... It
must be Nature, Nature must lay the Foundation, Nature must in-
spire the Thought. . . . For my own Part, as I don't think myself
confin'd to any Rules for composition, laid down by any that went
before me, neither should I think (were I to pretend to lay down
Rules) that any one who came after me were any ways obligated to
adhere to them, any further than they should think proper; so in
fact, I think it best for every Composer to be his own Carver.
In justice to Billings, it must be pointed out that he sought to
strike a happy balance between nature and art. In the same essay from
which we have just quoted, he writes:
But perhaps some may think I mean and intend to throw Art
entirely out of the Question. I answer by no Means, for the more
NATIVE PIONEERS 141
Art is displayed, the more Nature is decorated. And in some forms
of Composition, there is dry Study required, and Art very requisite.
For instance, in a Fuge [sic], where the parts come in after each
other, with the same notes; but even there, Art is subservient to
Genius, for Fancy goes first, and strikes out the Work roughly, and
Art comes after, and polishes it over.
By the term "Fuge," Billings did not, of course, mean what we un-
derstand by the term "fugue," in the sense of a formal composition in
contrapuntal texture. His "fuges" were imitative vocal passages in
which, as he says, "the parts come after each other, with the same
notes." Although he did not create the "fuging tune," which was
known in England and had earlier antecedents in the old psalm tunes
called "Rapports," Billings's name is popularly associated with this
type of composition because of his success in exploiting it.
In his Thoughts on Music, Billings tells us something about the
way in which he thinks his music should be sung:
Suppose a Company of Forty People, Twenty of them should
sing the Bass, the other Twenty should be divided according to the
discretion of the Company into the upper Parts, six or seven of the
deepest voices should sing the Ground Bass . . . which if well sung
together with the upper Parts, is most Majestic; and so exceeding
Grand as to cause the floor to tremble, as I myself have often ex-
perienced. . . . Much caution should be used in singing a Solo, in
my opinion Two or Three at most are enough to sing it well, it
should be sung as soft as an echo, in order to keep the Hearers in an
agreeable suspense till all the parts join together in a full chorus, as
smart and strong as possible.
This reveals the effects at which Billings aimed, and his manner of
achieving them. He wanted to produce a strong, powerful, majestic
impression, with startling contrasts between the soft "solo" passages
and the full chorus. We cannot measure the effect his music had upon
his first hearers unless we hear it sung that way, by large groups of
powerful voices, and the floor trembling with the reverberation of
the booming basses.
In The New England Psalm Singer, Billings printed a poem by the
Rev. Mather Byles of Boston, which gives us an idea of the impression
that the "fuging tunes" made upon listeners and singers of that time:
142 I Preparation
On Music
Down steers the Bass with grave Majestic Air,
And up the Treble mounts with shrill Career;
With softer Sounds, in mild Melodious Maze,
Warbling between the Tenor gently Plays:
But if th' aspiring Altus joins its Force,
See, like the Lark, it Wings its tow'ring Course;
Thro Harmony's sublimest Sphere it flies,
And to Angelic Accents seems to rise;
From the bold Height it hails the echoing Bass,
Which swells to meet, and mix in close Embrace.
Tho* different Systems all the Parts divide,
With Music's Chords the distant Notes are ty'd;
And Sympathetic Strains enchanting winde
Their restless Race, till all the Parts are join'd:
Then rolls the Rapture thro' the Air around
In the full Magic Melody of Sound.
Incidentally, according to the pronunciation of that rime, "winde"
and "join'd" formed a perfect rhyme. There can be no question that
those who sang or heard Billings's music, especially under his dy-
namic direction, experienced "the full Magic Melody of Sound."
The continued effectiveness of Billings's famous hymn tune "Maj-
esty" is attested by a passage in one of the stories of Harriet Beecher
Stowe, who was born in 1811 and as a girl in Litchfield, Connecticut,
frequently heard the old fuguing tunes sung by the village choir.
The story is called Poganuc People and deals with New England life
in the early years of the nineteenth century. This is the passage:
. . . there was a grand, wild freedom, an energy of motion in
the old 'fuging tunes' of that day that well expressed the heart of
the people courageous in combat and unshaken in endurance. . . .
Whatever the trained musician might say of such a tune as old
Majesty, no person of imagination or sensibility could hear it well
rendered by a large choir without deep emotion. And when back and
forth from every side of the church came the different parts shout-
ing-
On cherubim and seraphim
Full royally He rode,
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad,
NATIVE PIONEERS 143
there went a stir and thrill through many a stern and hard nature,
until the tempest cleared off in the words-
He sat serene upon the floods
Their fury to restrain,
And He as Soverign Lord and King
For evermore shall reign.
Mrs. Stowe's reference to the singing coming from "every side of the
church" would seem to indicate the practice of having a "dispersed
choir," with the various sections located in different parts of the
church and "answering" one another, which of course would increase
the effectiveness of the fuguing tunes. The words to which "Majesty"
was sung were from the Sternhold and Hopkins version of the i8th
Psalm, beginning, "The Lord descended from above." Billings's setting
first appeared in The Singing Master's Assistant.
To take the measure of the man, let us run through some of his
compositions. Observe how he always identifies himself completely
with the subject or the mood that his music portrays. Is the subject
Creation? Then Billings strikes the note of grandeur and—as in the
hymn of Dr. Watts beginning "When I with pleasing wonder stand"—
when he reaches the last line, "Strange that a harp of a thousand strings
should keep in tune so long," he brings in his "Fuge" con spirito, first
the basses, then the tenors, next the altos and sopranos, and so they go
flying along fortissimo, one after the other, until they meet in the
broad, impressive climax of the final phrase.
Now it is Jesus weeping, and our composer gives us a beautiful,
tender melody, cast in the form of a canon or round for four voices,
a melody that for sheer inspiration marks the culminating point of
American musical primitivism (the term "primitive" is used stylistically,
with no connotation of inferiority). Here it is, "When Jesus Wept,"
from Billings's first book, The Ne*w England Psalm Singer:
s
1
When Je- sus
the fall
ing tear in
m
^
mer • cy flowed be - yond all bound.When Je - sus groaned, a
i" J ij- J'J J iJ(' (•
trem-bling fear Seized all— the guil • ty world— a-round
144 I Preparation
Now it is an old English Christmas carol, "A Virgin Unspotted"
("Judea"), to which Billings has provided one of his most delightful
and spirited tunes. When he comes to the refrain, "Then let us be
merry, put sorrow away, Our Saviour Christ Jesus was born on this
day," his tune becomes as lively as a jig—which no doubt offended the
Doctors of Divinity no less than it pleased the people for whom
Billings wrote.
We turn next to the Easter anthem, "The Lord is Risen Indeed,"
in which a strong, surging rhythm contributes to the general effect of
jubilant exultation, heightened by the recurrent ejaculation, "Halle-
lujah." Rhetorically, the anthem employs the device of interrogation
and affirmation. One after another the sections of the choir fling forth
the interrogation, "And did He rise?" And the full choir peals out af-
firmatively, "Hear ye, O ye nations, Hear it, O ye dead, He rose, He
rose, He rose, He burst the bars of death." Then it is the risen Christ
who speaks, affirming His Ascension, and when we reach the lines,
"Then first humanity triumphant past [passed] the crystal ports of
light," Billings achieves one of his most striking, most original, and
most apt effects, using a succession of fourteen open fifths and sixths
that convey the image of "the crystal ports of light" with surprising
vividness.
Turning to the Old Testament, we have Billings's version of David's
lamentation, which reveals his power of pathos achieved through stark,
simple means. When David laments, "Would to God I had died for
thee, O Absalom, my son!" the music compels us to share his grief,
as Billings himself undoubtedly felt it and partook of it, and embodied
it in the austere yet deeply expressive texture of his composition. The
"incorrect" consecutive octaves and fifths in this passage are precisely
what is needed to achieve the desired result. This lament has the
strength and simplicity of the ancient ballads, and indeed Billings at
his best was a bard of the folk.
And so we might go on and on, to savor the joy of "The Shep-
herd's Carol," the quaint charm of "The Bird," trie lyrical sensuous-
ness of "The Rose of Sharon," the stirring tunefulness of "Chester"
(which became the American Revolutionary hymn), the grandiose
drama of the anthem "Be Glad Then America"— and everywhere we
would find the vitality, the originality, the variety, and the inspiration
of a natural genius, a true primitive of musical art. Billings's contempo-
rary William Bentley, in an awkwardly worded sentence, coined a
NATIVE PIONEERS 145
phrase that perhaps conceals more than a grain of truth: "His late
attempts, and without a proper education, were the cause of his in-
ferior excellence." Inferior excellence! Yes, the queer contradictory
term is good. Inferior in education, in knowledge, in technical skill
Excellent in the gifts of nature, in intuition and imagination and emo-
tive power. It seems to me that Billings is an example of that spiritual
self-reliance that Emerson had in mind when he wrote (in Spiritual
Laws): "No man need be perplexed in his speculations. Let him do
and say what strictly belongs to him, and though very ignorant of
books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual obstructions
and doubts." 5 The kind of integrity and natural force that found ex-
pression in Billings's music is well summed up in the words of a
writer who was himself far from primitive, William James: "I don't
care how incorrect language may be if it only has fitness of epithet,
energy and clearness."
We have seen that during the second half of the eighteenth cen-
tury American composers sprang up in profusion, though within a
limited field; numerous American collections of music were pub-
lished, reflecting the transition from metrical psalmody to free hym-
nody; the elaborated anthem and the fuguing tune came into vogue;
and the institution of the singing school became firmly implanted.
Many of the men whom we have discussed in this chapter lived on
well into the nineteenth century: the books, the music, the traditions
with which they are identified lived on too, and survived them. But
they lived on chiefly in the hinterlands, gradually ousted from the
dominant urban centers by the pressure of progress and the imposition
of more sophisticated standards. In the course of this narrative we shall
encounter again and again the tunes of Billings and his contempo-
raries as a living element in American music. It is therefore only tem-
porarily that we take leave of them now, as the scene changes to an-
other setting in the vast panorama of America's music.
5 Emerson, Complete Works: Essays, First Series, vol. 2, p. 126.
two
Expansion
The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization.
FREDERICK J. TURNER, THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN LIFE.
chapter eight
Progress and profit
A line of demarcation between the Musical Art and that other and more
worldly pursuit known as the Musical Business ... is difficult to trace.
PAUL S. CARPENTER, MUSIC, AN ART AND A BUSINESS.
VV e have seen how the combined efforts of gentlemen amateurs and
professionally trained musical emigrants, reinforced by the energy
and enthusiasm of some native pioneers, led to the establishment dur-
ing the eighteenth century of orchestral concerts, operatic perform-
ances, choral societies, and similar types of organized musical activity
requiring group participation and public support. This organized
musical activity at first inevitably concentrated in the cities that
formed a sort of fringe along the Atlantic seaboard, from Boston in
the North to Charleston in the South. As the nineteenth century ad-
vanced, these cities, particularly those of the North, grew in wealth
and size due to the effects of a steadily expanding commerce and a
rapidly increasing rate of immigration. Thus there were gradually
created the three conditions propitious for the regular consumption
of art: population, wealth, and leisure. When these three factors as-
sume large proportions in any given society, the consumption of art
tends to increase, and may indeed become itself a major economic
enterprise.1
It was during the first half of the nineteenth century that this
pattern of music as big business began to take shape in the United
States. For the first time, musicians began to make real money from
their art. They profited from American methods of mass production
and distribution. They were among the first to use high-pressure pro-
1 For two recent studies of this phase of music in America, the reader may
consult Music, An Art and a Business, by Paul S. Carpenter (Norman, Oklahoma,
1950), and Worlds of Music, by Cecil Smith (Philadelphia, 1952).
149
150 I Expansion
motion and sensational advertising. When the ex-blacksmith Isaac
Baker Woodbury wanted to tell the public about his collection of
sacred music called The Dulcimer, he, or his advertising manager, ran
an advertisement in Dwight's Journal of Music which screamingly
proclaimed:
125,000 Copies in Two Seasons!
Live Music Book!
The Dulcimer
The sacred-music collections of Lowell Mason topped them all. His
Carmina Sacra, in various editions, sold 500,000 copies between 1841
and 1858. Another of Mason's collections, The Hallelujah, sold 150,000
copies in five years! This may not seem impressive in comparison with
sales of popular sheet music in later times, but remember that this was
"sacred" music, that the unit cost was greater, and that the music
industry was still in its infancy. To our early struggling musical
pioneers, such as Billings, Lyon, and Kimball, who were likely to end
in the poorhouse or a pauper's grave, the idea of making $100,000
from a collection of sacred music, as Mason did, would surely have
appeared fantastic.
In the musical activity of the United States during the first half of
the nineteenth century, it seems to me that two things stand out as
most typical of the age. One is that the leading musical impresario
of that period was also the creator of the American circus, the great
master of ballyhoo, the exploiter of Tom Thumb and Joice Heth—
that incomparable and sensational showman, Phineas Taylor Barnum.
The other symbolically significant phenomenon is that the leading
musical figure of that mid-century period, Lowell Mason, was in his
career and his character the prototype of the self-made, successful
American business magnate. The one succeeded by appealing to the
frivolity of the public. The other succeeded by "uplifting" the public.
The common meeting point is that both were excellent promoters
and both were highly successful in a practical and tangible way.
Here are some impressions of Lowell Mason by various persons
who knew him. He was very handsome and finely dignified in appear-
ance. He had a "commanding personality." He had "a remarkable de-
gree of personal magnetism." He was "a manager of men, an organ-
izer of movements. . . ." He had "huge industry," "great ability,
penetrating foresight, splendid ideas." He was "a clear-sighted, prac-
tical man, just the leader the American people could then understand,
PROGRESS AND PROFIT 151
and be willing to follow." He was shrewd and successful in business.
He was "a man of strong and impressive individuality, a virile nature
in which an iron will was coupled with a gentle and tender heart"
Discounting the tender heart as sheer sentimentality, would not these
characterizations convey the impression that the man in question was
one of America's "empire builders," a railroad baron, a real-estate op-
erator, or a shipping magnate? And in effect, Lowell Mason 'was an
"empire builder": he opened up vast new areas for musical exploita-
tion, and he did it through industry, energy, determination, and or-
ganization. Of all musicians active in the United States during the
nineteenth century, Lowell Mason has left the strongest, the widest,
and the most lasting impress on our musical culture. This is not a
tribute of praise: it is merely an objective statement of fact. Let us
examine the record.
The rise of Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason was born in Medfield, Massachusetts, on January 8,
1792. His father was town treasurer and a member of the state legis-
lature; he also sang in the church choir and played several musical
instruments. His grandfather, Barachias Mason, had been a singing-
school teacher as well as a schoolmaster. Lowell Mason, therefore, in-
herited a traditional New England musical background. As a boy he
attended for a time the singing school of Amos Albee, compiler of
The Norfolk Collection of Sacred Harmony, and later received mu-
sical instruction from Oliver Shaw, a prominent musician of Dedham.
He learned to play the organ, the piano, the flute, the clarinet, and
various other instruments. In 1812 he accompanied the Medford organ
builder George Whitefield Adams to Savannah, where he took a job
as clerk in a bank. In Savannah, Mason met a recently arrived German
musician named F. L. Abel, from whom he received competent musi-
cal instruction. This Abel was the forerunner of many professional
German musical immigrants who were to exert a far-reaching in-
fluence on America's musical development as the nineteenth century
progressed.
Mason became organist and choirmaster of the Independent Presby-
terian Church in Savannah, began to compose hymns and anthems, and
in 1817 married Abigail Gregory of Westboro, Massachusetts. Though
not yet intent on making music his career, Mason, like many of his
152 I Expansion
predecessors and contemporaries, decided to compile and publish a
collection of sacred music. In it he included some of his own tunes, as
well as melodies from instrumental compositions by Handel, Mozart,
Beethoven, and other European masters, adapted to familiar hymns and
arranged "for three and four voices with a figured base [sic] for the
organ or pianoforte." Completing this work in 1819-1820, Mason
sought a publisher in Philadelphia and other large cities, but without
success. Then he met Dr. George K. Jackson, organist of the Handel
and Haydn Society of Boston, who took an interest in the compila-
tion and recommended that the Society sponsor its publication— with
several of his compositions incorporated in it. Dr. Jackson, whose
opinion carried much prestige, endorsed it as "much the best book of
the kind I have seen published in this country." Thus was born the
famous Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church
Music , which went to press in 1821 and was copyrighted the follow-
ing year. Lowell Mason's name did not appear as editor, though he
was mentioned in the preface. In later years, Mason gave this ex-
planation for the omission of his name: "I was then a bank officer in
Savannah and did not wish to be known as a musical man, and I had
not the least thought of making music my profession/* - The success
of this collection soon caused Mason to change his mind. The book
went through twenty-two editions and brought handsome profits both
to its compiler and to the Handel and Haydn Society, to which it
gave financial stability and permanent security.
Mason returned to Savannah after the publication of his collection,
but in 1826 he was in Boston to deliver a lecture on church music
(later printed), and in July, 1827, he was persuaded to settle in Bos-
ton as choirmaster of Dr. Lyman Beecher's church on Hanover Street.8
Being a prudent man, for a while he also took a position as teller in a
bank: he was not yet fully convinced that music could be made to
pay. In 1827 he was elected president of the Handel and Haydn So-
ciety, holding this office until 1832. One of the reasons for his resigna-
tion was that he wished to devote more time to teaching music and
singing to children, a line of activity that he had begun in Savannah
and that was to occupy his attention increasingly as time went on. In
1829 Mason brought out his Juvenile Psalmist, or The Child's Intro-
2 Quoted by Rich, Lowell Masony p. 9.
8 This church was burned down shortly after Mason's arrival in Boston, and a
new one was built on Bowdoin Street, where he continued to conduct the choir.
PROGRESS AND PROFIT 153
duction to Sacred Music, followed in 1830-1831 by the Juvenile Lyre,
which he claimed was "the first school song book published in this
country." Mason's work in public-school music is so important that
it will be advisable to treat this subject separately in another section
of this chapter. Meanwhile, let us briefly summarize the rest of his
career.
In 1832, together with George J. Webb and other Boston musi-
cians, Mason founded the Boston Academy of Music for the purpose
of applying the Pestalozzian method to the teaching of music to chil-
dren. The Academy, which had as many as 1,500 pupils in its first
year, continued in existence until 1847. The instruction was "free to
all children, no other condition being required of the pupils than that
they be over seven years of age, and engaged to continue in the school
one year." Classes for adults were also given. The Academy was ap-
parently responsible for the beginnings of "music appreciation" in
this country, for it sponsored a translation of Fetis's Music Explained
to the World; or, Ho<w to Understand Music and Enjoy its Perform-
ance. This work has long been obsolete, but the title still has a fa-
miliar ring!
In the summer of 1837, Mason went to Europe to study the Pesta-
lozzian methods of instruction in Switzerland and Germany. At the
end of 1851 he again sailed for Europe, this time remaining there fif-
teen months and spending much of his time in England. After his re-
turn to America in 1853, Mason made his headquarters in New York.
He died at his home in Orange, New Jersey, on August 11, 187?, at
the age of eighty. Of his four sons, the youngest, William, became an
influential pianist and teacher. Lowell, junior, with his brother Henry,
founded the firm of Mason & Hamlin, manufacturers first of organs
and later of pianos. A grandson, Daniel Gregory Mason, was to be-
come a prominent composer.
The age of progress
As the eighteenth century stood for improvement through reason,
so the nineteenth century stood for progress through science. One still
heard the words "good taste" and "correctness" used occasionally, but
they were generally coupled with the words "science" and "progress,"
and gradually one heard less and less of good taste and more and more
of progress. Nowhere was this belief in improvement through prog-
154 I Expansion
rcss more firmly entrenched than in the United States. It runs through
the thought and the career of Lowell Mason like a leading motive,
marking him once again as a highly typical American of his time.
In order to succeed in his ventures, Mason had to strike a balance
between lack of novelty and an excess of innovation. The public was
conservative in its tastes, strongly attached to the accustomed and the
familiar. Yet a certain amount of novelty, if skillfully administered and
prepared, could prove attractive, especially if associated with the no-
tion of being "up to date," of keeping up with the times. The manner
in which Lowell Mason handled this delicate problem is illustrated in
the various editions of The Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collec-
tion of Church Music, in which the older hymns and psalm tunes were
gradually supplanted, in large part, by more "modern" compositions
from the pen of celebrated European composers, and of course from
the pen of Mason himself. Let us take, for example, the tenth edition
of this famous collection, published in 1831. The following passages
from the preface are illuminating:
The several later editions of this work have presented an almost
uniform appearance. ... It is obvious, however, from the progres-
sive nature of science and taste, in respect to music as well as other
subjects, that this uniformity cannot be, and ought not to be per-
petual. Within the last few years, much attention has been directed
to the subject, and, as was to be expected, great improvement has
been made, not only in the manner of performing psalm and hymn
tunes, but also in their composition.
Is it to be supposed that in psalmody, science and taste have
accomplished all that they can accomplish? and is it desirable that
all attempts at improvement should be checked? This is impracticable
if it were desirable. . . .
Unless, therefore, it be maintained that the present psalm and
hymn tunes cannot be improved, and that no better can be substi-
tuted in their stead, or else, that bad tunes are as valuable as good
ones, there may be as valid reasons, founded in public utility, for
introducing alterations into text books of psalmody, as for introduc-
ing alterations into text books on arithmetic or grammar. [Another
good reason: new editions promote sales].
All this, and considerably more to the same effect, is by way of
justifying a "thorough revision" of the Handel and Haydn Collection.
Mason gives some indication of what he means by "bad" tunes, when
PROGRESS AND PROFIT 155
he states that he has reduced the number of "imitative and fugueing
[sic] pieces," kept down the proportion of "light music" in the collec-
tion in deference to "the good sense and improved taste of the public."
Certainly the public that would show its good sense and improved taste
by preferring Mason to Billings would be thoroughly in line with
"scientific progress"! In reviewing this collection, the New Haven
Chronicle wrote: "A book so valuable must become the standard of
music in our churches, since its harmony and style are fixed on the
immovable basis of science and correct taste." Here the drive toward
standardization is clearly manifested. The assumption is that earlier
tune writers, not having benefited by "the immovable basis of science"
(happily a nineteenth-century discovery) could only write inferior
music that needed improvement, correction, or complete elimination
by the products of modern science. According to this criterion, Ma-
son's "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" is inevitably a better hymn
than Madan's "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne." People who per-
sisted in singing the old-fashioned anthems could be made to feel that
they were failing to take advantage of modern improvements, and not
many Americans liked to admit that they were behind the times. Hence
the sweeping success of the "better music" movement led by Lowell
Mason.
As a typical product of this movement, let us glance at a collec-
tion of church music edited by Mason entitled The New Carmina
Sacra, published "under the sanction of the Boston Academy of
Music" in 1853. According to the customarily elaborate descriptive
title, this collection comprised "the most popular Psalm and Hymn
Tunes in General Use, together with a great variety of New Tunes,
Chants, Sentences, Motetts, and Anthems; principally by distinguished
European Composers . . ." (the italics are mine). Once again, "made
in Europe" was being stressed as the trade-mark of distinction in
music for American consumption, as it had been in the days of the
thirteen colonies. Looking through the table of contents of this col-
lection, we come across the names of Arne, Beethoven, Cherubini,
Giardini, Handel, Josef and Michael Haydn, Mozart, Palestrina, Pleyel,
J. J. Rousseau, Schubert, Vogler, Weber— certainly an impressive and
eclectic choice of "distinguished European composers." Perhaps the
first question that strikes the reader is, "What are these composers do-
ing in a collection of American church music?" The answer is: "They
were providing tunes." The procedure of plundering secular music
156 I Expansion
for making hymn tunes was not, as we have seen in earlier chapters,
something new. The Wesleys, among others, had done it. The main
difference is that Lowell Mason and his associates did it more sys-
tematically and more successfully than any of their predecessors. And
as their movement coincided with the era of mass production and
standardization, its effects were more widely felt.
At this point the reader should begin to perceive that the empha-
sis on church music in America during the mid-portion of the nine-
teenth century was by no means as "churchly" as might appear at first
sight. The trend toward secularization was accelerated by two factors.
One was the increasing use of tunes from secular compositions: in fact,
any tune that appealed to the taste of the day, whatever its origin, was
likely to be adapted for a hymn. The second factor was the increas-
ing emphasis on quality of performance: how one sang was becoming
almost more important than fwhat one sang. Here, too, Lowell Mason
was an influential leader. He zealously trained his choir at Dr. Lyman
Beecher's Bowdoin Street Church in Boston to such a point of excel-
lence that it drew nationwide attention and admiration. According to
T. F. Seward:
Pilgrimages were made from all parts of the land to hear the
wonderful singing. Clergymen who attended ministerial gatherings
in Boston carried home with them oftentimes quite as much musical
as spiritual inspiration. . . .4
With the general shift from religious to secular emphasis that took
place in American life during the latter part of the nineteenth century,
this striving for technical virtuosity and impressive perfection in
choral singing was transferred to the schools, resulting eventually in
the wonderfully trained public-school choirs that dot the land today.
Returning for a moment to the New Carmina Sacra, it should be
observed that this collection made a bow to the older traditions of
psalmody by including some of the most famous tunes of Tallis, Play-
ford, Tans'ur, and Aaron Williams. Even a few native American pio-
neers were included: Daniel Read, Isaac Tucker, Oliver Holden.
Mason could not afford to alienate completely that portion of the
public that clung somewhat stubbornly to its old-fashioned tastes.
One of the most curious features of Mason's musical arrangements
4 Quoted by Rich, Lowell Mason, p. 12.
PROGRESS AND PROFIT 157
is the introduction of what might be called "ejaculatory codas.*' In
his Preface to the New Carmina Sacra, Mason writes:
The Codas added to many of the tunes form quite a new feature
in a book of this kind, and it is hoped they may add interest to the
performance of psalmody. Although they are called codas, yet they
are not designed for the close, merely, but may be introduced be-
fore the first stanza, or between the stanzas of a hymn as may be
appropriate. In the singing schools and choir meetings, they may be
always sung, but in public worship the propriety of singing them
must depend upon the circumstances of the occasion, hymn, &c. The
hymns in which these Hallelujahs may with propriety be introduced,
are more numerous than may at first be supposed; for under what
circumstances does not the devout heart say, "Praise the Lord?"
Herewith is an example of Mason's "coda," showing only the
rhythmic pattern:
J>. J> U J r J>. Jl
Hal • le - lu - jah! HaJ - le - lu • jah!
Mason says that these "codas" constitute "quite a new feature" in
collections of sacred music. That such ejaculations were not in them-
selves a new feature of hymn singing, will be apparent from the ac-
count of the beginning of revival hymnody given in Chapter 11. The
interjection of "Hallelujah!" sometimes after each line, sometimes after
each stanza, was a characteristic of popular hymnody. Sometimes the
"Hallelujah" was inserted before the first stanza, which, as Mason sug-
gests, may be done in his collection. Mason claimed this as a novelty
which he hoped might "add interest to the performance of psalmody"
(here this word is evidently used as synonymous with hymnody). Yet
it was a practice that had been prevalent among certain sections of the
populace for some fifty years before the publication of Mason's collec-
tion. Many examples of the "Hallelujah" refrain and its variants can be
found in popular collections of hymns and "spiritual songs" printed
before 1850. The evidence seems to indicate that Mason borrowed a
feature from popular hymnody in the hope that it would add spice to
his collection and perhaps also with the thought that it might keep
his followers from straying into the camp of the revivalists. It would
never do to let his competitors have a monopoly of the more obvious
158 I Expansion
joys in hymn singing. Let it be noted, in passing, that one of Mason's
most successful collections was called The Hallelujah.
Mason and the schools
Mason believed and preached that all school children should be
taught to sing, just as they were taught to read. He advocated this
policy as early as 1826, and after settling in Boston he directed a
major portion of his activities toward the introduction and develop-
ment of music teaching in the public schools of that city. The achieve-
ment of this goal was a long and difficult process because the idea was
new and had to overcome both inertia and opposition. Finally, in 1838,
the Boston School Committee authorized the introduction of music as
a branch of instruction in the city schools. Lowell Mason was given
charge of this musical instruction, becoming the first Superintendent of
Music in an American public-school system. He continued in this post
until 1 845, when he was forced out by some political intrigue, though
the official reason given was "the principle of rotation in office."
In 1851, referring to the Boston school program of music instruc-
tion, the first to be officially established in this country, Mason wrote:
The result already is, that a multitude of young persons have been
raised up who . . . are much better able to appreciate and to per-
form music than were their fathers; and experience proves that large
classes of young persons, capable of reading music with much ac-
curacy, may be easily gathered in almost any part of the New-Eng-
land, or indeed of the United States.5
Moreover, Mason pointed out that an increasing number of persons
who had received their first musical instruction in the public schools
were devoting themselves to the profession of music, particularly as
choral conductors, church musicians, and organists.
Mason stressed vocal instruction as the basis of the musical educa-
tion in the schools. His course of instruction consisted of four main
phases: (i) rote singing, (2) the song approach to note reading, (3)
note reading, (4) part singing and choral singing. Mason's theory and
practice of education were based on the methods of the Swiss re-
former Pestalozzi, which in turn were influenced by the theories of
Jean Jacques Rousseau. As Mason summed it up: "The teacher in pur-
11 Mason, An Address on Church Music, p. 16.
PROGRESS AND PROFIT 159
suance of the right method, is guided by nature; he looks ... to the
intuitions, instincts, and opening faculties or active powers of his
pupils. . . ." He stated that music "should be cultivated and taught
... as a sure means of improving the affections, and of ennobling,
purifying and elevating the whole man." Hence, he declared, "the
chief value of music ... in schools or families, will be social and
moral." His method of music instruction is embodied in the Manual
of the Boston Academy of Music, for Instruction in the Elements of
Vocal Music, on the System of Pestalozzi (Boston, 1834), and in The
Pestalozzian Music Teacher (New York, 1871).
Mason was also a pioneer in the teacher-training movement in
America. In 1834 he established at the Boston Academy of Music an
annual summer class for music teachers. Out of this was formed, in
1836, a Convention "for the discussion of questions relating to the
general subject of Musical Education, Church Music, and Musical Per-
formances. . . ." In 1 840 the teachers organized themselves into a Na-
tional Music Convention, which later was reorganized as the American
Musical Convention. The idea of holding musical conventions spread
rapidly to other cities throughout the country, and, in the words of
A. L. Rich, "they were a power in American musical life and musical
education," though "often dominated by commercial interests." The
latter feature was perhaps inevitable, for music education in America
was fast becoming "big business." Today the national music conven-
tions are mammoth affairs involving many thousands of persons, many
thousands of dollars, and an impressive array of commercial exhibits
ranging trom band instruments to television sets. All this has grown
from the seeds sown by Lowell Mason.
Among the numerous collections of music compiled by Mason
were: Choral Harmony (1830), Spiritual Songs for Social Worship
(with Thomas Hastings, 1831), Lyra Sacra (1832), The Choir; or
Union Collection of Church Music ("including many beautiful sub-
jects from the works of Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, Naumann, Mar-
cello, M6hul, Himmel, Winter, Weber, Rossini, and other eminent
composers, harmonized and arranged expressly for this work," 1832;
seven more editions by 1839), Manual of Christian Psalmody (with
David Greene, 1832), Sacred Melodies (with G. J. Webb, 1833), Sab-
bath School Songs (1833), The Boston Academy's Collection of
Church Music (1835), The Sacred Harp or Eclectic Harmony (with
Timothy Mason, 1835), The Boston Academy's Collection of
160 | Expansion
Choruses (1836), The Odeon: a collection of secular melodies, ar-
ranged and harmonized for four voices (with G. J. Webb, 1837), The
Boston Glee Book (1838), The Boston Anthem Book (1839), The
Modern Psalmist (1839), Carmina Sacra (1841; twelve more editions
by 1860), The Psaltery (with G. J. Webb, 1845), The Choralist
(1847), The National Psalmist (1848, with G. J. Webb), Mason's
Handbook of Psalmody (1852), The Hallelujah (1854), The People's
Tune Book (1860), Carmina Sacra Enlarged: The American Tune
Book (1869).
This list, by no means complete, will serve to give an idea, not
only of Mason's industry but also of the demand that existed in the
United States for vocal music of every kind. When we bear in mind
that Mason and his Boston associates, such as Webb (his chief col-
laborator in the work of the Boston Academy of Music), were not
the only ones compiling and publishing collections of music for the
American public, we begin to realize that the songbooks of the early
American pioneers were producing an enormous progeny. And this,
as we shall see later, is only part of the picture. In addition to the
urban songbook production dominated by European importations and
imitations, the rural and frontier songbook production flourished si-
multaneously and independently (it will be discussed fully in a later
chapter).
As a composer, Lowell Mason wrote mostly hymns, anthems, and
school songs. His best-known tune is the so-called "missionary" hymn,
"From Greenland's Icy Mountains," written between 1824 and 1827,
when Mason was a bank clerk in Savannah, where this hymn was first
sung. Scarcely less familiar are the hymns "Nearer My God to Thee"
and "My Faith Looks Up to Thee." He attempted some more ambi-
tious anthems, without rising above mediocrity. It is not as a composer
but as an organizer, a musical empire builder, that Lowell Mason
claims our attention. He exerted a decisive and lasting influence on the
course of musical activity in the United States. On the negative side,
he was instrumental in thrusting the native American musical tradi-
tion, as represented by our early New England music makers, into the
background, while opening the gates for a flood of colorless imitations
of the "European masters." On the positive side, he brought systematic
musical education into our public schools, raised the standards of
choral performance, and paved the way for professional music schools.
And he was the first American musician to make a fortune out of
PROGRESS AND PROFIT l6l
music. That in itself was no mean accomplishment. He believed in
"scientific improvement," and he made progress pay.
Lowell Mason collected a large and valuable musical library, which
after his death was presented by his family to Yale University. When
the library of Professor Dehn of Berlin was placed on sale, Mason sent
an agent to purchase it. According to Metcalf, "It is said that he was
unable to read one of the books that were thus acquired, but he
wanted them to add value to his growing collection." e
The eminent Dr. Hastings and others
Outdoing Lowell Mason in longevity, rivaling him in productivity,
success, influence, and mediocrity, was his older contemporary and
colleague Thomas Hastings (1784-1872). Metcalf, usually a reliable
writer, credits Hastings with having written six hundred hymns, com-
posed over one thousand hymn tunes, published fifty volumes of
music, and "many articles on his favorite subject." Out of this huge
production, what remains musically alive are about four hymn tunes,
of which the most familiar is "Toplady," sung to the words, "Rock
of Ages, cleft for me." Other tunes frequently used are "Ortonville,"
"Retreat," and "Zion."
Thomas Hastings was the son of a country physician and farmer
of Washington, Connecticut. When he was twelve years old, the fam-
ily moved to Clinton, New York, where at eighteen young Hastings
became choir leader. In 1828 he settled in Utica, New York, where he
edited a religious paper, The Western Recorder, in which he aired
his musical opinions. From 1832 he was choirmaster at various churches
in New York, including the Bleecker Street Presbyterian Church. In
1858, New York University conferred upon him the honorary de-
gree of Doctor of Music. He died in New York City.
One of Hastings's most popular collections was Musica Sacra, first
issued in 1816 and subsequently republished in numerous editions up
to 1836. (For an account of the use of this publication in a Connecti-
cut singing school, see Chapter 10.) Other collections were The
Juvenile Psalmody (1827), The Manhattan Collection (1837), The Sa-
cred Lyre (1840), The Selah (1856), and The Songs of the Church
(1862). The Mendelssohn Collection of 1849— clearly indicating in its
title the Europeanizing trend of the "better music" school—he edited
6 Metcalf , American Writers and Compilers of Sacred Music, p. 215.
162 I Expansion
in collaboration with William B. Bradbury, the third member of this
triumvirate of sacred music in the United States.
William Batchelder Bradbury turned out an average of more than
two music books a year from 1841 to 1867. One of his most popular
collections was The Jubilee, which sold over 250,000 copies. Another
collection, The Golden Chain (1861), was so successful that it drew
severe attacks from his competitors, who claimed that it was full of
errors. Doctored up by Bradbury's friend Doctor Hastings, The
Golden Chain went on selling and brought its compiler a golden har-
vest. It is estimated that over two million copies of Bradbury's music
books were sold.
Bradbury was born in York, Maine, in 1816, and inherited his mu-
sical talent from his parents, who were good singers. As a young man
he lived in the home of a Boston musician, Sumner Hill, from whom
he received lessons in harmony. He entered the Boston Academy of
Music, becoming associated with Webb and Lowell Mason. The latter
recommended him to teach singing school in Machias, Maine, where
James Lyon, the eighteenth-century American composer, had been
active for twenty-three years. After a few years, Bradbury went to
New York as church organist and choir leader. In 1847 he went to
Europe, remaining two years in Germany, where he studied music at
Leipzig. He was thus one of the first American musicians to study in
Germany, a trend that was soon to become general.
Together with Lowell Mason, Thomas Hastings, and George F.
Root, Bradbury taught in the recently established Normal Institutes— a
scientifically improved version of the old singing schools— that were
organized in the Northeastern states for the training of music teach-
ers. Not satisfied with manufacturing music books, Bradbury entered
the piano business with his brother, manufacturing and selling pianos
and other musical supplies.
As a composer of hymns, Bradbury is remembered chiefly for "He
Leadeth Me," and a Sunday-school song, "Sweet Hour of Prayer."
Another composer of this group who managed to study in Eu-
rope for a year was Isaac Baker Woodbury (1819-1858), a native of
Beverly, Massachusetts. He began the study of music in Boston at the
age of thirteen, learning to play the violin. After a sojourn in London
and Paris, he taught music in Boston for six years and later traveled
throughout New England with the Bay State Glee Club. He organized
the New Hampshire and Vermont Musical Association and became its
PROGRESS AND PROFIT 163
conductor. Later he went to New York as choirmaster and was also
editor of the New York Musical Review. Plagued by ill-health, he
went to Europe again, hoping to recuperate, and while there gathered
music for publication in his magazine. In 1858 he left New York to
spend the winter in the South and got as far as Columbia, South Caro-
lina, where he fell mortally ill and died after three days, leaving a
wife and six small children.
Among Woodbury's most successful collections were The Dulci-
mer (1850), The Cytherea (1854), and The Lute of Zion (1856). He
also brought out Woodbury's Self-Instructor in Musical Composition
and Thorough Bass, catering to the American appetite for self-instruc-
tion. It is interesting to note that he attempted to gain a following in
the South by publishing two collections especially designed for South-
ern use, The Harp of the South (1853) and The Casket (1855), tne
latter sponsored by the Southern Baptist Society and published in
Charleston, South Carolina. Woodbury's secular songs, extremely pop-
ular in their day, are now forgotten.
In the next chapter we shall discuss the music of another member
of this group, George Frederick Root, compiler of The Young Ladies'
Choir and other church collections, but whose reputation rests more
firmly upon his secular songs.
chapter nine
The genteel tradition
I would ask if there are not words in the Anglo-Saxon language that can be
associated so as to express what is, in the supreme affectation of fashionable
parlance, termed "soire'e musicale"?
JOHN HILL HEWITT, SHADOWS ON THE WALL (1877).
iNothing could be more elegant than to refer to a public concert as
a soiree musicale. These two words were fragrant with the aristocratic
aroma of a Paris salon, redolent of an elite society in which artistic
celebrities mingled with the representatives of rank and wealth. They
disguised the crude fact that the performing musicians were profes-
sional entertainers who hoped to make money from their public ap-
pearances. Could such a distinguished personage as the Baron Rudolph
de Fleur, pianist to His Majesty the Emperor of Russia, be concerned
with vulgar pecuniary considerations when, in the year 1839, he gave
a recital that attracted the elite of New York society? Or could one
place on a mere level of commercial entertainment the elegant series
of soirees musicales given in New York on alternate Thursdays during
February and March of the same year by the eminent maestro Charles
Edward Horn and his accomplished wife? The programs offered by
Mr. and Mrs. Horn featured vocal selections by the most celebrated
European composers of the day, among whom Mr. Horn might be
justified in including himself, for he had achieved some success both
as composer and singer in England before coming to the United States
in 1833, at the age of forty-seven. Moreover, some of these soirees
were graced by the participation of two of the most successful Eng-
lish ballad composers and singers of that time, Mr. Joseph Knight and
Mr. Henry Russell, both of whom were then intent upon elevating the
musical taste of the American people.
These gentlemen were not alone in this endeavor. Two distin-
164
THE GENTEEL TRADITION 165
guished opera singers from England, Anna and Arthur Seguin, who
had come to the United States in 1838, offered New York music lovers
a series of ten recitals featuring selections from Italian opera. Those
who favored this truly fashionable type of musical entertainment were
also regaled with Italian operatic selections by such visiting artistes
as Madame Albini, Madame Vellani, Signora Maroncelli, and Signor
Rapetti.
About this time the Irish composer William Vincent Wallace, au-
thor of the opera Maritana, was also in New York. It was Wallace
who, some years later, made a gallant musical offering to the ladies of
America in the form of Six Valses Elegantes—six elegant waltzes for
piano— further described and pictorially represented on the cover as a
bouquet of "Fleurs Musicales, Offertes aux Dames d'AmMque" The
elegance of the French language, the exquisite gallantry of the gesture,
the beautiful bouquet of flowers on the cover, the polite banality of the
music— everything about this musical offering bespoke the influence
of the genteel tradition that was being imposed like a veneer on Amer-
ican society.
To savor fully the tone and character of the genteel tradition, one
should see the elaborately illustrated sheet-music editions published in
the United States during the mid-portion of the nineteenth century,
in which sentimental songs and elegant piano pieces are adorned with
ornate covers depicting fashionable ladies in refined or poetic atti-
tudes, in domestic or pastoral settings untouched by sordid reality.
In 1868, William A. Pond & Co. of New York issued a piece titled
The Grecian Bend, described as "The Latest Sensation in the Fash-
ionable World." On the cover is shown a young lady of fashion, car-
rying a ridiculously small parasol and bending over in what is pre-
sumably an authentic demonstration of "the Grecian bend." Figura-
tively speaking, large sections of American society were engaged in
doing the Grecian bend, preferably with a Parisian dip and an Italian
twist.
The genteel tradition is characterized by the cult of the fashion-
able, the worship of the conventional, the emulation of the elegant, the
cultivation of the trite and artificial, the indulgence of sentimentality,
and the predominance of superficiality. Its musical manifestations are
found chiefly in a flood of vocal literature that presumably drew tears
or sobs from its original listeners or filled them with chills and thrills
in its more dramatic moments, but that in the cold light of the twen-
166 | Expansion
ticth century seem to us more silly than pathetic, more ludicrous than
impressive. Nevertheless, we cannot afford to neglect these songs in
the chronicle of America's music: some of them continue to appeal
to the sentimental streak that is in all of us, and even those that are
forgotten once appealed to millions of people and struck deep into the
heart of our musical consciousness.
Henry Russell, who composed the music for "Woodman, Spare
That Tree," tells an anecdote that is revealing in this respect. He
writes:
A very dear friend of mine, now well-known as a public man
... has often told me that he dates the birth of his sentimental
nature to the fact that an old nurse used to sing Woodman, Spare
That Tree, at his bedside, and that scores of times as a child he cried
himself to sleep over the simple song.
Well, this is not the worst of the sentimental ballads; but it is not
really a "simple" song: it is an artificial song, a concocted song, in-
flated with a synthetic sentimentality; it does not have the genuine
emotion, the organic vitality, the timeless and impersonal quality of,
for example, the old folk ballads. There is no point in comparing un-
like elements, and this contrast is made simply to emphasize the viti-
ating effect of pseudosimple, artificially sentimental songs in forming
adult musical tastes through childhood experiences.'
During the nineteenth century the people of the United States as
a whole were in this state of aesthetic immaturity. Hence the success
of any music that made a blatant appeal to the feelings of the listeners,
and the success of musical performers who stressed the elements of
exhibitionism and showmanship, like the pianist who played while
balancing a glass of water on his head. Aesthetic appreciation—that is,
the quality that permits an artistic experience to be received and en-
joyed as such—was almost entirely lacking. People were continually
crossing the line that separates art from reality; indeed, most of them
were not aware that such a dividing line existed. Henry Russell, in
his memoirs, tells several anecdotes regarding the reactions of his
listeners that illustrate this attitude. One of them concerns the song
"Woodman, Spare That Tree," with which Russell never failed to
work on the emotions of his audience. One night when he had sung
this number at a concert, a dignified gentleman in the audience stood
up, and in a very excited voice called out, "Was the tree spared, sir?"
THE GENTEEL TRADITION l6j
To which Russell replied, "It was." With a sigh of heartfelt relief,
the man said: "Thank God for that."
Because he spent nine years in the United States, because he was a
shrewd and sympathetic observer of the American scene— "I doubt
whether I am not a little more than half American in thought and
sentiment," he wrote of himself— because he exerted considerable in-
fluence on American musical taste, and because he is such a typical
representative of the genteel tradition, Henry Russell deserves more
than casual mention in these pages. He began his musical career as a
boy singer in England, then went to Italy for further study at
Bologna and Milan, becoming acquainted there with Rossini, Donizetti,
and Bellini. From Bellini he received some lessons in composition and
orchestration. He then went to Paris, where he met Meyerbeer and
other celebrities. He thus received the double accolade of Italy and
Paris, indispensable for admission to the ranks of fashionable gentility.
Back in England, Russell found no immediate means of turning his
fashionable assets into concrete financial returns. He decided to try his
fortune in a less crowded portion of the world. Going first to Canada,
he was disappointed in that dominion's potentiality for cultural ex-
ploitation. A friend persuaded him to visit Rochester, New York,
whither he traveled by cart. In Rochester he was offered the position
of organist and choirmaster at the Presbyterian church, which he
accepted. And it was in Rochester that he began his career as a com-
poser of songs.
According to Russell's own account, "the orator Clay was the direct
cause of my taking to the composition of descriptive songs." It seems
that Henry Clay delivered a speech in Rochester and made a deep
impression on Russell by the musical quality of his voice. "Why,"
Russell asked himself, "if Henry Clay could create such an impression
by his distinct enunciation of every word, should it not be possible
for me to make music the vehicle of grand thoughts and noble senti-
ments, to speak to the world through the power of poetry and song!"
Why not, indeed! Then and there Henry Russell set to music a poem
by his friend Charles Mackay, "Wind of the Winter Night, Whence
Comest Thou?" In the composer's own words, which have a vaguely
familiar ring, "Success followed success." The songs "which leapt
quickest into popularity" were "Woodman, Spare That Tree," "A
Life on the Ocean Wave," "The Gambler's Wife," and "The Maniac."
When Russell went on to New York, he met there his old London
168 | Expansion
friends, the Seguins, and the composer Vincent Wallace. Uniting
their forces, they gave "six concerts at New York, Brooklyn, Jersey
City, and several other towns in the United States." This proves that
even at that time Brooklyn was avid for culture. These concerts, ac-
cording to Russell, "proved an immense success, both financially and
artistically." Thereafter Russell at various times toured all over the
United States, singing his own songs and accompanying himself on
the piano. Dwight called him a "charlatan" but this did not interfere
with his success. After all, Dwight had only five hundred readers for
his Journal, whereas the songs of Henry Russell sold in the hundreds
of thousands.
But it was not through the sale of his songs that Russell made
loney. As he wrote in his memoirs:
I have composed and published in my life over eight hundred
songs, but it was by singing these songs and not by the sale of the
copyrights that I made money. There was no such thing as a royalty
in those days, and when a song was sold it was sold outright. My
songs brought me an average price of ten shillings each . . . though
they have made the fortune of several publishers. Had it not been
that I sang my songs myself . . . the payment for their composition
would have meant simple starvation.1
This bears out my theory that the only way Stephen Foster could
have been assured of a lucrative living would have been to appear in
public as the interpreter of his own songs, if he could have trained
his voice sufficiently for that purpose. Later we shall see that Russell's
contemporary, John H. Hewitt, most popular American ballad com-
poser of this period, also found it impossible to make money from
his songs and turned to various other occupations for a living.
One of Russell's most dramatic songs was "The Ship on Fire,"
text by Charles Mackay. It has an elaborate piano accompaniment,
full of runs, tremolos, octaves, and arpeggios. The piano begins with
a two-page introduction, opening quietly, sweeping up and down in a
tremendous run in sixths, crescendo, followed by tremolo chords and
crashing octaves. Then the voice enters, Quasi ad lib: ma Largamento:
The storm o'er the ocean flew furious and fast,
And the waves rose in foam at the voice of the blast,
And heavily laboured the gale-beaten Ship. . . .
* Russell, Cheer! Boys, Cheer!, p. 198.
THE GENTEEL TRADITION 169
After further description of the ship, the poet paints this pathetic
picture:
A young mother knelt in the cabin below,
And pressing hei babe to her bosom of snow,
She pray'd to her God 'mid the hurricane wild,
Oh Father have mercy, look down on my child.
The storm passes away and terror is succeeded by joy; the mother
sings a sweet song to her babe as she rocks it to rest; the husband sits
beside her, and they dream of the cottage where they will live when
their roaming is finished.
Ah, gently the ship glided over the sea. . . .
(here the music fades to a pianissimo cadence). But now thunderous
octaves strike an ominous warning of impending disaster. "Hark!
what was that— Hark, hark to the shout,— FIRE! " The young wife
is shaken with terror:
She flew to her husband, she clung to his side,
Oh there was her refuge what e'er might betide.
Fire! Fire! Raging above and below. The smoke, in thick wreaths,
mounts higher and higher (furious octave runs in the piano accom-
paniment, fortissimo). There's no remedy save to lower the boat
Cold, cold was the night as they drifted away,
And mistily dawn'd o'er the pathway the day.
Then suddenly, oh joy!
Ho, a sail, ho! a sail! cried the man on the lee.
The chords of the accompaniment take on a solemn and joyous
grandiosity. "Thank God, thank God, we're sav'd."
This is the genteel tradition's equivalent of purging the spirit
through pity and terror, running the gamut from bombast to bathos.
There are eleven pages to this opus—far too much to quote in full.
And it is the sort of thing one has to enjoy in toto or not at all (there
are ways of enjoying such a masterpiece of banality). The reader
whose curiosity has been irresistibly whetted by the above r&ume*
may find the complete song, music and words, in the collection titled
170 | Expansion
Songs of Yesterday, edited by Jordan and Kessler (see bibliography
for this chapter).
It is a curious fact, and one that needs to be considered in apprais-
ing the "social significance" of the vocal literature of this period,
that Henry Russell did not regard himself solely as an artist or an
entertainer, but also as a social reformer. Toward the end of his life
Russell wrote: "Slavery was one of the evils I helped to abolish
through the medium of my songs." Developing this theme, he goes on
to give himself credit for promoting other social reforms:
When I commenced my Anti-Slavery Crusade, I did not stop at
seeking to relieve the distresses of the unfortunate coloured race,
but, to a certain extent, I happened to forestall the good work that
is being done by "The Early Closing Association," by the publica-
tion of a song, written in the interests of the overworked shop as-
sistants, and entitled: TIME IS A BLESSING. . . . The private
lunatic asylum, another sore in our social system, was attacked . . .
by my song, "The Maniac," which was written with the object of
exposing the horrors of the iniquitous system.
One may be permitted to wonder whether "The Maniac" was not
actually composed for the purpose of making an effect on paying
audiences rather than in the interests of social reform. Nevertheless,
the fact remains that the espousal of "Causes" was characteristic of this
period, and that the trend is amply illustrated in the song literature,
as well as in the writings and activities of leading singers, such as
Russell and the Hutchinson Family, whom we shall meet presently.
In addition to Abolition, a favorite cause was Temperance. Russell
did his bit for this cause with his song "Let's Be Gay," which begins:
Let's be gay, let's be gay, let's be gay, boys,
We'll quaff, we'll quaff from this cup, ha, ha!
And ends with this anticlimax, followed by two solid lines of "ha,
ha" that must indeed have rung out gaily around the flowing bowl:
But let the draught, but let the draught, be water, water!
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of Henry Russell's connection
with American music is his claim to have composed virtually all of
the most popular Negro minstrel or blackface "Ethiopian" songs, from
THE GENTEEL TRADITION I Jl
"Coal Black Rose" to "Old Dan Tucker." No less surprising is his
account of the manner in which he composed these songs:
One hot summer afternoon, when I was playing the organ at the
Presbyterian Church, Rochester, I made a discovery. It was that
sacred music played quickly makes the best kind of secular music.
It was quite by accident that playing the "Old Hundredth" very
fast, I produced the air of "get out o' de way, Old Dan Tucker."
This was the first of a good many minstrel songs that I composed
or rather adopted, from hymn tunes played quickly. Among them
are "Lucy Long," "Ober de Mountain" and "Buffalo Girls." . . .
Afterwards, when giving my entertainments about the country, I
would occasionally illustrate this principle to my audiences by play-
ing slowly and pathetically the "Vesper Hymn," and then repeat it,
gradually quickening the time till it became a numerous plantation
song, "Oh! take your time, Miss Lucy," or "Coal Black Rose." 2
Although RusselFs claim to these songs cannot be substantiated, his
description of the "speed up" method of producing popular tunes out
of hymns has fascinating implications. He seems to be describing a
sort of rudimentary method for "jazzing the classics"; although this
actually requires more than a speed-up in tempo. A few off-beat
accents and syncopations would help to produce the desired effect.
The reader might find it instructive and amusing to put Russell's
formula to the test.
In New York, Henry Russell formed a friendship with a man who
played an important role in the genteel tradition. This was George
Pope Morris (1802-1864), journalist and poet, founder of the New
York Mirror and Ladies' Literary Gazette, to which the leading con-
tributors were William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Fitz-
Greene Halleck, and Morris himself. A contemporary satirist referred
to Morris as,
A household poet, whose domestic muse
Is soft as milk, and sage as Mother Goose.
It was Morris who wrote the text of the first published song of
Stephen Foster, "Open Thy Lattice, Love." He wrote the words of
"Woodman, Spare That Tree" and of "On the Lake, Where Droop'd
* Russell, Cheer! Boys, Cheer!, p. 68.
172 I Expansion
the Willow," the latter set to music by his friend Charles Edward
Horn, who simply lifted the tune from a popular minstrel song,
"Long Time Ago." This is the first stanza of Morris's poem, with the
melody as arranged by Horn:
." |f Jl Ji A || r
On the lake where droop'd the wil-low, Long time a - go!
I'll h
iir-
ni
the ro
Where the rock threw back the bil-low, Bright • er _ than snow;
Dwelt a maid, be -loved and cher-ish'd, By high and low;
But, with au-tumn's leaf, she per-ish'd, Long time a - go!
In later editions the title was changed to "Near the Lake," perhaps
to counteract the impression that the heroine was a mermaid or a
water sprite. This song, completely typical of the genteel tradition,
enjoyed a great vogue in its time.
Morris wrote the libretto of an opera in three acts, The Maid of
Saxony, which was set to music by C. E. Horn and in 1842 had a run
of about two weeks in New York City. Charles Edward Horn (1786-
1849), the son of a German musician who had settled in London,
was active in New York from 1833 to 1843. After four years in Eng-
land he went to Boston as conductor of the Handel and Haydn
Society, and died in that city. Together with two other foreign-born
musicians, Henry Christian Timm (1811-1892) and William Scharf en-
berg (1819-1895), and the "Connecticut Yankee" Ureli Corelli Hill
(1802-1875), Horn participated in the founding of the New York
Philharmonic Society in 1842. He also established a music-publishing
business. As a composer he is interesting to us chiefly for his attempts
to inject local color into his musical settings of a cycle of poems by
G. P. Morris, published collectively as National Melodies of America.
Besides "On the Lake" the series included a song called "Meeta,"
"adapted from a negro air," and "Northern Refrain," based on the
"carol of the sweeps of the city of New York."
THE GENTEEL TRADITION 173
The singing Hutchinsons
It was not only in New York that the year 1839 proved eventful
in the annals of American music. On Thanksgiving Day of that year,
in the town of Milford, New Hampshire, the eleven sons and two
daughters of the Hutchinson family ("the tribe of Jesse") gave a vocal
concert in the Baptist meetinghouse. The building was packed with
sympathetic listeners who applauded the program of hymns, anthems,
and glees. The Hutchinsons felt that they had started something with
their first public concert. And they were right. They gave another
conceit in Lynn and then decided that they needed more scope. Said
John Hutchinson to his brothers, "We need more discipline and more
culture." So they went to Boston in search of culture. Instinct or fore-
knowledge guided them straight to the fountainhead of musical culture
in the City of Culture: the office of Professor Lowell Mason. Humbly
they requested his advice. The eminent musical magnate gave them
impeccable advice: he recommended that they acquire and use his
latest singing book.
The Hutchinson brothers (only four of them had gone to Bos-
ton) thereupon betook themselves to that other eminent apostle of
musical culture in Boston, Professor George James Webb, president
of the Handel and Haydn Society, composer of such genteel ballads
as "Art Thou Happy, Lovely Lady?" 'Til Meet Thee, Sweet Maid,"
"When I Seek my Pillow," and of the tune used as a setting for the
hymn "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus." Professor Webb received the
Hutchinson brothers most courteously— and invited them to join the
Handel and Haydn Society.
At this point the New Hampshire lads probably decided that what
they really needed was less culture and more discipline. Renting a
room, they settled down to systematic practice. John Hutchinson
spent his last dollar to acquire a copy of Henry Russell's cantata,
"The Maniac." It was an investment that paid off, for they made a
tremendous hit with this number on their concert tours, singing it even
more effectively than Russell himself. John was the star performer
in this number. While his brothers played a prelude on the violin
and the cello, John would sit in a chair behind them, raising the hair
on his head with the fingers of each hand. Then he would rise, suitably
disheveled, "with the expression of vacancy inseparable from mania,"
174 I Expansion
and proceed with the gruesome performance, to the horror and de-
light of the audience. We shall spare the reader further details of
this excruciating opus, though it might still be good for a few laughs.
By 1843, after several successful concerts in Boston and elsewhere,
the Hutchinsons were able to have several of the songs in their reper-
toire published by Oliver Ditson of Boston. These were "The Snow
Storm," "Jamie's on the Stormy Sea," "The Grave of Bonaparte," and
a temperance song, "King Alcohol." The music for the first of these
songs was written by Lyman Heath, a composer and singer of Nashua,
New Hampshire; the words by Seba Smith. "The Snow Storm/'
with its pathetic portrayal of a young mother struggling through the
snow drifts, carrying her little babe, is indeed a classic of the genteel
tradition.
Armed with a New England reputation and such sure-fire num-
bers as the above, the Singing Hutchinsons ventured to New York in
May, 1843. They were delighted with the metropolis on the Hudson.
In his diary Asa Hutchinson wrote:
O! New York is all that I have had it represented to be; Boston
does not compare with it for life and business. The Splendid Street
"Broad Way" is the most splendid street that I ever saw, and then
the Grand Park, and the splendid water works where the water is
thrown into the air to the height of 25 or 30 feet and then falls into
the Pool again in the most majestic style.
At their concert in the Broadway Tabernacle, the Hutehinsons were
introduced by the celebrated Dr. Lyman Beecher. They sang four of
their favorite numbers: "King Alcohol," "We Are Happy and Free,"
*'We Have Come From the Mountains," and their theme song, "The
Old Granite State," for which they used the tune of that rousing
revival song, "The Old Churchyard." The program was announced as
one that had pleased "fashionable audiences in Boston." Though they
were country boys themselves, the Hutchinsons aspired to receive
the accolade of fashion and of gentility, and they succeeded. In New
York they met George P. Morris, who became "their dear friend"
and several of whose poems they set to music and featured in their
programs. Among these was "My Mother's Bible," thoroughly typical
of the Morris output:
THE GENTEEL TRADITION 175
This book is all that's left me now,
Tears will unbidden start;
With faltering lip and throbbing brow,
I press it to my heart.
Through Morris, the Hutchinsons met Henry Russell, who said to
them: "I think you are the best singers in America." With such
friends and admirers, the New Hampshire lads— and their sister Abby,
who formed part of the concert group—were definitely established
in the genteel tradition. Russell's song "The Gambler's Wife" gave
Abby Hutchinson a chance to shine as soloist and wring tears from
the audience with her description of the poor, lonely, deserted wife.
The Hutchinsons made a four-part vocal setting of Longfellow's
"Excelsior" and then called on the poet to request a few words of
explanation of the poem's meaning, which they might append to the
sheet music. The poet obligingly complied, and the Hutchinsons had
another feather in their cap as well as another successful number in
their repertoire. This musical setting of "Excelsior," too long tu quote
here, will be found in the collection Songs of Yesterday.
In 1845 the Singing Hutchinsons made a tour of England and
Ireland. Returning to America, they toured widely in this country,
not only entertaining large audiences but also espousing such causes
as Temperance, Women's Suffrage, and especially Abolition, to which
they were enthusiastically devoted. It would be plausible to claim
that the Hutchinsons were concerned with bringing music to ordi-
nary people, to "the masses" rather than "the classes," and that there-
fore they did not really represent the genteel tradition. My view is
that they allied themselves with the genteel tradition as far as reper-
toire is concerned and in their desire to obtain the approval of fash-
ionable urban audiences. Compared with the repertoire of Italian
opera, that appealed only to the initiated or the snobbish, their
programs were popular and designed for mass appeal. They therefore
represented what might be called the "left wing" of the geriteel tradi-
tion, approaching the popular tradition while retaining the prestige of
elegance and refinement associated with such names as Morris and
Longfellow and with the accolade of urban culture acquired in Bos-
ton and New York. They had, it is true, some humorous songs in
their repertoire; but these avoided vulgarity. To the raucous banjo
ij6 | Expansion
and bones of minstrelsy they opposed the gentle rones of the violin
and violoncello, and in dress and manner they emulated a discreet
and genteel respectability.
There were numerous other singing families in America, of which
the most prominent, after the Hutchinsons, were the Bakers of New
Hampshire. Their repertoire included such numbers as "The Happiest
Time Is Now," "Where Can the Soul Find Rest?" "The Inebriate's
Lament," and "The Burman Lover," all composed by the leader of
the group, John C. Baker.
Poet and composer
When Edgar Allan Poe formulated his famous dictum that the
most poetic subject was the death of a beautiful young woman, he
voiced an aesthetic principle that was a fundamental tenet of the gen-
teel tradition. The maid who dwelt on the lake, or near the lake, and
who perish'd with the autumn's leaf, was first cousin to Poe's rare
and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore. To the same
family, and more popular though not so distinguee, belonged sweet
Lilly Dale, immortalized in verse and music by H. S. Thompson, in a
song copyrighted in 1852, which in turn inspired many other musical
mementos for the departed maiden, including Sigmund Thalberg's
Lilly Dale, Air Americain varit pour le Piano— one of the numerous
variations on favorite airs with which pianists of that period regaled
the public. In Thompson's song the vocal solo is followed by a chorus
for four mixed voices.
Poe himself, notwithstanding his superior genius, exhibited at
times a surprising indulgence toward the productions of the genteel
tradition. Many are the now forgotten female poets upon whom he
bestowed flattering praise. Of George Pope Morris's poems, "Wood-
man, Spare That Tree" and "Near the Lake," he wrote in the South-
ern Literary Messenger (April, 1849) that they were "compositions of
which any poet, living or dead, might justly be proud."
While composers such as Henry Russell and Charles E. Horn
turned to successful poetasters such as Morris and Mackay for the
texts of their songs, the American musician John Hill Hewitt (1801-
1890) enjoyed the advantage, if such it was, of being both poet and
composer. His accomplishments as a poet, in fact, gained him quite
a reputation in his day. In 1833 Hewitt submitted his poem "The
THE GENTEEL TRADITION 177
Song of the Wind" in a poetry contest sponsored by the publisher of
the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, of which Hewitt himself was at that
time editor. Among the contestants was Edgar Allan Poe, whose poem
"The Coliseum" vied for the first prize with Hewitt's entry. The
prize for the best short story, under the same sponsorship, had just
been awarded to Poe's A Manuscript Found in a Bottle. According to
Hewitt, the judges hesitated to bestow the poetry prize upon the
author who had also carried off the honors, and the cash, for prose.
Hence the first prize for poetry— fifty dollars in -cash— was awarded
to Hewitt. "This decision," wrote Hewitt, "did not please Poe, hence
the 'little unpleasantness1 between us."
Poetry and journalism were, together with music, the chief but not
the only activities to which John H. Hewitt turned in his varied
career. He was a son of the English musician James Hewitt who had
emigrated to America in 1792 and had become a prominent leader
in the musical life of New York and Boston. John was born in New
York, but in 1812 the family moved to Boston, where he attended
public school. Hewitt p£re did not favor a musical career for his son.
After leaving school the boy was apprenticed to a sign painter, an
arrangement not at all to his liking. He ran away and led an adven-
turous existence for the next few years. In 1818 he received an ap-
pointment to the military academy at West Point. During his four
years there he studied music with the band leader, and when he was
not permitted to graduate with his class because of deficiency in his
studies, he decided to take up a musical career.
Joining a theatrical troupe directed by his father, young Hewitt
traveled to the South and soon found himself stranded in Augusta,
Georgia, when the company failed. He spent the ensuing years in
Georgia and South Carolina, reading for the law, publishing a news-
paper, and also composing and teaching music. His first song, "The
Minstrel's Return from the War," was written at this period and
proved widely successful; but as it was not copyrighted, it brought
him no money. He fared somewhat better, financially, with his next
song, "The Knight of the Raven Black Plume."
The death of his father in 1827 brought Hewitt north to Boston,
but a year later he was in Baltimore, which he regarded henceforth
as his home city, though he continued to be rather restless. In Balti-
more he was active as editor and publisher, and for a time was a
political supporter of Henry Clay in Washington. In 1861 he was
ij8 | Expansion
living in Richmond, and at the outbreak of the Civil War offered
his services to the Confederacy. He was assigned the dreary task of
drilling recruits. Two years later he was active in Augusta as man-
ager of a theater troupe for which he wrote or adapted numerous
plays and operettas. His song "All Quiet Along the Potomac To-
Night" was one of the hit tunes of the Civil War.
In the 18705 Hewitt returned to Baltimore and remained there till
his death at an advanced age. He had been twice married. By his first
wife he had seven children, and four by his second. He composed
over three hundred songs, which earned him the title of "Father of
the American Ballad," a considerable number of stage works with
music, and some oratorios, of which the best known is ]ephthay per-
formed in New York, Washington, Baltimore, and Norfolk. In spite
of the wide popularity of his songs, Hewitt found that music as a
profession did not pay. "The publisher pockets all," he wrote, "and
gets rich on the brains of the poor fool who is chasing that ignis
fatiws, reputation." In his volume of recollections, Shadows on the
Wall, he summed up his attitude toward music:
Music has always been, and still is, my frailty. Since my earliest
youth I have sought its gentle influence . . . and it finally became
my profession, though my parents were solicitous that I should adopt
any other honorable calling but that. I studied it as an art and a
science; but only for the sake of the accomplishment, never thinking
that I should use it as the means of support. . . . Whenever I failed
in any enterprise I fell back on music; it was my sheet-anchor.8
It is curious that Hewitt's father, a musician himself, should not
have wished his son to adopt music as a profession. But his mother,
the elder Hewitt's second wife, was the daughter of Sir John King
of the British Army, and it is probable that social prejudice, as well
as economic motives, may have been behind their desire to have
their son adopt "any other honorable calling" but music. Hewitt him-
self was resentful of being regarded as a professional musician. When
he was invited to the homes of wealthy or prominent persons, he
wished to be received as an equal, to converse on intellectual or politi-
cal matters like the other gentlemen, and not to be kept in reserve as
an entertainer when the company requested some music. Although he
was an outstanding representative of the genteel tradition, he resented
* Hewitt, Shadows on the Wall, pp. 65-4*6.
THE GENTEEL TRADITION 179
and ridiculed the mania for foreign fashions that was a hallmark of
that tradition. He particularly detested the affectation which caused
people in society to admire, or pretend to admire, Italian vocal music.
His resentment may have been due in large part to his dislike of the
foreign musicians— Italian, French, and German— who were becoming
increasingly prominent in the musical life of the United States, and
whose success hindered the acceptance of native-born musicians like
himself. It may be conceded that Hewitt was not an important com-
poser, but he was certainly a representative figure in this transitional
period of America's music.
Some Civil War songs
George Frederick Root (1825-1895) was so many-sided in his mu-
sical activities that his work might well be distributed among several
chapters. He was associated with Mason, Webb, and Bradbury in the
"better music" movement radiating from Boston, and wrote hymns
that were suitably sentimental, such as "The Shining Shore" ("My
days are gliding swiftly by"). Born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, he had
from childhood the ambition to be a musician. In Boston he became a
pupil of Benjamin Franklin Baker and later assisted Lowell Mason at
the Academy of Music. Around 1845 he went to New York, assum-
ing the position of music teacher at Abbot's Institute for Young
Ladies. In 1850 a trip to Europe for further musical study gave him
the foreign finish needed to uphold the genteel tradition with distinc-
tion. Three years later he collaborated with Mason in organizing the
Normal Institute for music teachers in New York. One of the interest-
ing aspects of Root's career, however, is that he did not remain in the
cultural strongholds of the East, but followed the westward trend
of expansion. His brother had opened a music store in Chicago with
C M. Cady as partner, under the firm name of Root & Cady, which
became an important publishing house. Root joined his brother in
1859, making Chicago his headquarters henceforth. The business was
ruined by the fire of 1871, but recovered rapidly. In 1872 Root at-
tained to the peak of eminent respectability by receiving the degree
of Doctor of Music from the University of Chicago.
Root definitely belongs to the genteel tradition through his senti-
mental ballads. The words for some of these were written by his
former pupil, the blind poetess Fanny Crosby, who provided the verses
180 | Expansion
for "Hazel Dell," "There's Music in the Air,"'and "Rosalie the Prairie
Flower." Rosalie proved to be a popular girl, bringing the composer
$3,000 in royalties. During the Civil War, Root turned out some of
the most successful songs associated with that struggle: "Just Before
the Battle, Mother," "The Vacant Chair," "The Battle Cry of Free-
dom," and "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!" or "The Prisoner's Hope." It
was through these war songs that Root achieved his most lasting repu-
tation. "The Battle Cry of Freedom" was included in the repertoire of
the Hutchinson Family and stirred audiences throughout the Northern
states. Root also composed several cantatas that are now forgotten.
Henry Clay Work (1832-1884) is best known for his Civil War
songs— "Kingdom Coming," "Babylon is Falling," "Marching Through
Georgia"— and he was also associated with American minstrelsy
through such songs as "We're Coming, Sister Mary" (which he sold
to E. P. Christy) and "Wake, Nicodemus," which many people know
without being aware that Work composed it. Work was a native of
Connecticut but spent part of his boyhood in Illinois, where his father,
an ardent abolitionist, had migrated. In 1845 r^e family returned to
Connecticut. At the age of twenty-three, Work, who had learned
the printer's trade, went to Chicago and combined the occupations of
printer and composer. Like his father, he was an active abolitionist. He
also championed the cause of temperance and produced that classic
of temperance songs, "Come Home, Father." Work belongs to the
genteel tradition through such songs as "The Lost Letter," "The Ship
that Never Returned," "Phantom Footsteps," and "Grandfather's
Clock."
Expansion and transition
The period that marked the rise of the genteel tradition was also
the period of westward expansion. Though most of the songs asso-
ciated with the genteel tradition deal with romantic or sentimental
subjects, there was also a certain type of song written by "armchair
pioneers"— musicians and writers who lived comfortably in large cities
while turning out jolly songs urging the delights of life on the ocean
waves or the allurements of existence on the wild open prairie. Henry
Russell actually prided himself on having promoted the westward
movement of population through some of his songs. An American
song of this type was written and composed by Ossian E. Dodge,
THE GENTEEL TRADITION l8l
voicing the theme of "manifest destiny." The song is titled "Ho,
Westward, Ho!" and lauds the virtues of the West as a glorious
source of health and wealth.4 The refrain, "Ho, Westward, Ho!"
occurs after each line, following a familiar pattern of revival songs
and of Negro work songs, such as the one quoted in Chapter 13,
with the refrain, "Ho, meleety, ho!" The song continues for six stan-
zas, lauding the virtues of the West as a glorious source of health and
wealth.
It seems to me that we can get a rather good perspective on musi-
cal life in the United States during this era of transition and expan-
sion by listening to the conversation of two foreign musicians, each
of whom had contrasting experiences in this country in the ante-
bellum period. One of these musicians is oui friend Henry Russell,
the other is the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull (1810-1880), who made
five visits to America, the first in 1843, and who eventually married
an American woman. The scene is New Orleans, and the conversation
is reported by Russell in his autobiography. The English musician
had gone to pay a professional visit of courtesy to his Norwegian
colleague.
B.-I have heard a great deal of you, Mr. Russell,— I am glad to
see you; pray sit down. You have been some considerable time
in this country; how do you like it?
R.-Very much, but I fear the reception accorded to you has not
been worthy of your great talent.
B.— I regret to say that is so. I have encountered, since I have been
there nothing but jealousy and rivalry, with but little sympathy
from those I most expected it from.
R.— You must not lose sight of the fact that, until the beginning of
this century, musical culture was a thing practically unknown
outside such towns as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. It is
only now the denizens of the smaller towns are beginning to take
an interest in things musical, therefore do not be downhearted.
I need hardly say that those people who know anything whatever
of music, are charmed with your exquisite playing. Tell me, sir,
how do you like New Orleans?
B.-Not a great deal. The people here prefer the nigger's violin to
mine. I have travelled from New York to play to people who
do not understand me.
4 This song will be found m Sangf of Yttttrdty, edited by Jordan and Reader.
182 | Expansion
R.-Yes, the generality of the nation are young in scientific music;
their idea of fine music consists of simple song. My dear Mr.
Bull, you must have patience. It is only time and perseverance that
will teach the uneducated to appreciate your marvellous perform-
ance.*
Henry Russell was right; in time America would learn to appre-
ciate the playing not only of Ole Bull, but of every other visiting
virtuoso with a foreign accent and a European reputation. The Age
of Innocence, the Era of Simple Song, would soon be over. Enter then
the Age of Scientific Music, the Triumph of Progress, the Era of Big
Business. But before we reach those dizzy heights of progress and
appreciation, of standardized production and mass consumption, there
are other phases of the Era of Simple Song to be explored.
8 Russell, op. cit.y pp. 146-148.
chapter ten
The fasola folk
'Ask for the old paths and walk therein.'
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WHITE, PREFACE TO 1869 EDITION OF THE SACRED HARP.
In the year 1848 a certain Miss Augusta Brown wrote an article
which appeared in The Musician and Intelligencer of Cincinnati.
Pointing to the musical superiority of Europe, Miss Brown voiced her
opinion as to the causes of America's inferiority in this field:
The most mortifying feature and grand cause of the low estate
of scientific music among us, is the presence of common Yankee
singing schools, so called. We of course can have no allusion to the
educated professors of vocal music, from New England, but to the
genuine Yankee singing masters, who profess to make an accom-
plished amateur in one month, and a regular professor of music
(not in seven years, but) in one quarter, and at -the expense, to the
initiated person, usually one dollar. Hundreds of country idlers, too
lazy or too stupid for farmers or mechanics, ugo to singing school for
a spell," get diplomas from others scarcely better qualified than
themselves, and then with their brethren, the far famed "Yankee
Peddlars," itinerate to all parts of the land, to corrupt the taste
and pervert the judgment of the unfortunate people who, for want
of better, have to put up with them.
This outburst of snobbishness, so typical of the genteel tradition,
not only confirms the widespread influence and popularity of the
singing schools but also reveals the radiating influence of New Eng-
land's pioneer folk tradition throughout the expanding frontier coun-
try. The "genuine Yankee singing masters" were keeping alive
throughout the land the spirit of old Bill Billings of Boston. After
1 800 many singing-school teachers and compilers of songbooks sprang
up in the South and in what was then the West: Kentucky and Ten-
nessee and the valley of the Mississippi. This chapter is the story of
183
184 I Expansion
these frontier singing folk, their songbooks, and their tunes, which
are so vital a part of America's music.
In the eighteenth century the singing school was an urban as well
as a rural institution. It was patronized by city idlers as well as
country idlers, by ladies and gentlemen as well as country yokels.
This is made clear in an advertisement that appeared in the Penn-
sylvania Gazette of 1760:
Notice is hereby given that the Singing-School, lately kept in
the Rooms over Mr. William's School in Second Street [Phila-
delphia], will again be opened on Monday Evening, the 3d of No-
vember next, at the same Place; where the ART OF PSALMODY
will be taught, as usual, in the best Manner, on Monday and Friday
Evenings, from Six to Eight. And that, if any Number of Ladies
and Gentlemen incline to make up an exclusive Set, to Sing on two
other Nights, they may be gratified by making Application in time.
So that, if Miss Augusta Brown had lived a couple of generations
earlier, she might have joined a singing school in Boston or Phila-
delphia in the company of an exclusive Set of Ladies and Gentlemen.
But under the impact of the "progressive improvement" described
in the previous chapter, the singing schools, considered old-fashioned
and backward because they refused to adopt the latest European mu-
sical fashions, were driven out from the cities to the hinterlands, and
the vast new territories opened up for musical cultivation by the ex-
panding frontier. For a while the singing schools lingered as an
anachronism in small towns of New England. The most complete
description of a singing school in the genuine Yankee tradition was
written by the Rev. E. Wentworth in his old age, referring to a
period sixty years earlier, probably around 1820, when he attended
his first singing school as a lad. His account contains so many curious
details that it is worth quoting almost in full:
Time, sixty years ago; place, south-eastern Connecticut; local-
ity, a suburban school-house; personelley the choir of a Congrega-
tional church, and two dozen young aspirants, thirsting for musical
knowledge; teacher, a peripatetic Faw-sol-law-sol, who went from
town to town during the winter months, holding two schools a week
in each place; wages, two dollars a night and board for himself and
horse, distributed from house to hou$e among his patrons, accord-
ing to hospitality or ability; instrument, none but pitch-pipe or
tuning-fork; qualifications of teacher, a knowledge of plain psalmody.
THE FASOLA FOLK 185
ability to lead an old style "set piece*' or anthem, a light, sweet, tenor
voice, and a winning manner. . . .
For beginners, the first ordeal was trial of voice. The master
made the circuit of the room, and sounded a note or two for each
separate neophyte to imitate. The youth who failed in ability to
"sound the notes" was banished to the back benches to play listener,
and go home with the girls when school was out. The book put into
our hands was Thomas Hastings' Musica Sacra, published in Utica in
1819, in shape like a modern hymnal. There were four pages of ele-
ments and two hundred tunes, half of them written in three parts,
wanting the alto or confounding it with the tenor. The elements
were given out as a lesson to be memorized, studied by question
and answer for a couple of evenings or so, and then we were sup-
posed to be initiated into all the mysteries of staff, signature, clef,
flats, sharps, and naturals, notes, rests, scales, and, above all, ability
to find the place of the "mi." Only four notes were in use— f aw, sol,
law, mi; and the scale ran faw, sol, law, faw, sol, law, mi, faw. The
table for the "mi" had to be recited as glibly as the catechism, and
was about as intelligible as some of its theology:—
The natural place for mi is B;
If B be flat, the mi is in E;
If B and £, the mi is in A and C;
If F be sharp, the mi is in G;
If F and C, the mi is in C and C.
The Continental scale, do, re, mi, had not yet been imported.
The key-note was called the "pitch," and preliminary to singing,
even in church, was taking the key from the leader, and sounding
the "pitch" of the respective parts, bass, tenor, and treble, in the notes
of the common chord. A few simple elements mastered, or supposed
to be, the school plunged at once into the heart of the book, and
began to psalmodize by note in the second week of the brief
term. . . .
The rest of the winter's work comprehended "Barby," "St.
Ann's," "St. Martin's," "Colchester," "Portugal," "Tallis," "Win-
chester," "Shirland," "Silver Street," "Easter Hymn," "Amsterdam,"
and many others now forgotten. The favorite fugues [i.e., fuguing
tunes] of the preceding century had passed out of fashion, and the
leading church airs of this were not yet. A few anthems of the
simpler sort we tackled, such as "Denmark," "Dying Christian," and
"Lord of all Power and Might" . . . That, reader, was sixty yean
ago. Germany and Italy have since been transported to America,
and, musically, we live in a new earth and a new heaven. Yet the
186 | Expansion
simple strains of those days were as perfectly adapted to those who
made them as Wagner, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Chopin are to us
today! *
What a tremendous segment of America's musical history is en-
closed in that passage! The last stand of a popular musical institution
against the rising tide of urban domination, the lingering anachronism
of the fa-sol-la system of solmization, brought to America by the
early English colonists; the falling out of fashion of the fuguing
tunes in the urbanized communities of the Eastern seaboard; the
oblivion into which many of the old hymns fell among educated
music lovers brought up on the latest European importations, "Ger-
many and Italy . . . transported to America." But this shows only
one half of the picture. For Reverend Wentworth and other educated
city dwellers, the old order may have passed away, but it was not
dead. It may have been thrust out of sight and hearing by "progres-
sive improvement/' but it was thriving and flourishing, and becoming
more American all the time, under the influence of the frontier and
of the rural South, where folks preferred to go their own way rather
than to take up newfangled notions and "scientific" innovations.
Take, for example, the fa-sol-la system, mentioned by Reverend
Wentworth as not yet having been superseded by the imported Con-
tinental do-re-mi scale. If the fa-sol-la system was good enough for
the first American settlers, it was good enough for the rural singing-
school teachers and singing folk of the South and West. So they kept
the four-syllable solmization, used it in their singing schools, singing
conventions, and songbooks, for generation after generation, even to
the present day. That is why we call them the "fasola folk," for the
old-time syllables are a symbol of the unchanging folkways of a large
body of rural singers who have kept alive the tunes and the traditions
of the American pioneers.
Along with the fa-sol-la system, the rural singing folk clung to an-
other device that was considered backward and unprogressive by the
advocates of scientific improvement. This was the device of having
each of the four notes represented by a character of different shape.
In an earlier chapter we mentioned this shape-note system as it was
used by Andrew Law in his Musical Primer (1803). Law claimed this
as a "new plan of printing music," but there is evidence that two
singing-school teachers named William Little and William Smith
Curwcn, Studies m Music Worship, pp.
THE FASOLA FOLK 187
anticipated the system in a work titled The Easy Instructor. There is
extant a copyright entry for this book dated 1798, which indicates
possible publication at Philadelphia in that year; but the earliest known
edition was apparently published at New York in i8oz.2 Little and
Smith used the same shape characters as Law, though they arranged
them in a different order. Fa (or faw) is represented by a right-angled
triangle, sol by a circle or round note, la (law) by a square, and mi
by a diamond, each with a stem appended to it, thus:
In their system, Smith and Little retained the staff lines, which Law
had eliminated. Perhaps this was one of the factors that caused singing
teachers and compilers in the South and West to adopt the system
of Smith and Little rather than that of Law.
In the 18305 Timothy Mason, brother of Lowell Mason, went to
Cincinnati and prepared for publication a work called The Ohio
Sacred Harp. The Masons attempted to do away with the fasola sing-
ing and the shape notes (also called "patent" or "buckwheat" notes),
and wrote a preface to the above collection in which they attacked the
use of these old-fashioned methods. uBy pursuing the common method
of only four syllables," they wrote, "singers are almost always super-
ficial. It is therefore recommended to all who wish to be thorough,
to pursue the system of seven syllables, disregarding the different
forms of the notes." Perhaps they would have been more successful
in their campaign if they had used the homely argument of William
Walker, when the latter decided to switch to the seven-character
system in 1866: "Would any parent having seven children, ever
think of calling them by only four names?" As it was, the publishers
of The Ohio Sacred Harp were the first to disregard the Masons'
advice, for they issued the collection with shape notes, explaining that
this was done "under the belief that it will prove much more accep-
table to a majority of singers in the West and South."
Thus the two sets of syllables, fa-sol-la and do-re-mi, came to
represent two conflicting cultural trends. The do-re-mi system, with
3 See the bibliographical study by Frank J. Metcalf , "The Easy Instructor," in
The Musical Quarterly, XXIII (1937), 89-97. Further research on this subject
has been done by Allen P. Britton of the University of Micnigan.
i88 | Expansion
ail that it implied in the way of "scientific improvement," was vic-
torious in the cities and those areas, chiefly of the Eastern seaboard,
'ominated by urban culture. But the fasola folk held their own in
the hinterland.
Fasola leaders and songbooks
The main path of the singing-school movement appears to have
been from New England to Pennsylvania, thence southward and
westward. Frederic Ritter, writing of Andrew Law in his book
Music in America, says: "He did good pioneer work in the New
England States and in the South." Since this statement is unconfirmed
by documentary evidence, the extent of Law's activity and influence
in the South must remain a matter of conjecture. There was, how-
ever, another advocate of the shape-note system, a New Englander
by the name of John Wyeth (1770-1858), who settled in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, and who published there in 1810 a collection titled
Repository of Sacred Music, which went through seven editions up
to 1834 and had an extremely wide circulation for those times. In
this collection, Wyeth used the shape-note system of Little and Smith.
John Wyeth was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, learned the
printer's trade, and at twenty-one went to Santo Domingo to super-
intend a printing establishment in that island, from which he was soon
afterward driven away by the Negro insurrection, escaping with great
difficulty and danger, disguised as a sailor. He reached Philadelphia,
worked there as a printer, and in 1792 moved to Harrisburg, where
he purchased a newspaper, established a bookstore and a publishing
house. President Washington appointed him postmaster of Harrisburg
in 1793. The hymn tune "Nettleton" ("Come, Thou Fount of Every
Blessing") is attributed to Wyeth.
The Repository of Sacred Music contains numerous pieces by the
early New England composers, such as Billings, Holyoke, Read, and
Swan, whose music was falling into neglect in the North but was to
continue flourishing in the songbooks and singing conventions of the
South and West. In 1813 Wyeth issued a supplement to the Reposi-
tory y as Part II, intended particularly for Methodists, which includes
the hymn "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" followed by the
refrain, "Hallelujah, Hallelujah, We are on our journey home." This
is a typical camp-meeting chorus, of which more will be said in the
next chapter.
THE FASOLA FOLK 189
Here it is necessary to emphasize the importance of Wyeth's
Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, as a primary source of
American folk hymnody. It was intended especially for use at re-
vivals and camp meetings and, as such, contained a large proportion of
tunes that may properly be classified as "folk hymns," that is, basically
"a secular folk tune which happens to be sung to a religious text." 8
Most of the southern tune-book compilers of the early nineteenth
century, beginning with Ananias Davisson, borrowed extensively
from Pan Second of Wyeth's collection (which in spite of the mis-
leading title, was entirely different in character from the original
Repository of Sacred Alusic).-
According to Irving Lowens, the "musical brains" behind Wyeth's
influential tunebook was the Rev. Elkanah Kelsay Dare (1782-1826),
author of a theoretical work on music (which seems never to have
been published: Wyeth quotes from it as a "Manuscript work"), who
is named as the composer of thirteen tunes in this collection. Reverend
Dare must therefore take his place as one of the initiators of the im-
portant Southern folk-hymn movement.
The next singing book in the four-shape system was compiled by
Ananias Davisson of Virginia around 1815, and thereafter we find the
chief concentration of the fasola movement in the South. Virginia,
North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and
Georgia, were the homegrounds of several generations of rural sing-
ing-school teachers and songbook compilers who carried on the tra-
dition of the native New England pioneers. Let us make the acquain-
tance of some of these fasola leaders.
Not much is known of Ananias Davisson (1780-1857), except that
he was an elder of the Presbyterian Church, that he was active in
northwestern Virginia, and that he acquired ua practical knowledge
as a teacher of sacred Music." His Kentucky Harmony was copy-
righted in 1817, but there is evidence that it may have been in cir-
culation a couple of years earlier. This collection contains 144 tunes
in four-part harmony, the parts being bass, tenor, counter, and treble.
In his instructions on singing, Davisson writes: "The bass stave is
assigned to the gravest voices of men, and the tenor to the highest.
The counter to the lowest voices of the Ladies, and the treble to the
highest of Ladies' voices." What this means is that the principal melody
8 The definition is by Irving Lowens, who has done extensive research in the
history of early American vocal music tnd has in preparation a definitive work
on the subject. (See the bibliography for this chapter.)
190 I Expansion
or "air" was earned by high male voices in the tenor part, while the
women sang subordinate parts. This practice of having men sing the
melody was another heritage from colonial rimes and was opposed
to the "improved" urban practice of having the women sing the
melody in the soprano. The custom of the tenor melody continued to
prevail in the fasola tradition, although it should be pointed out that
the arrangers of these tunes tried to make each voice melodically
interesting and independent. Their conception of voice-leading was
"horizontal" rather than "vertical": they aimed at real part singing
rather than at harmonized melody.
The reader must not suppose, however, that the voice-leading and
the resultant harmonies were "correct" according to the academic tra-
dition. On the contrary, the violation of conventional "rules" was so
persistent, and generally so consistent, as to constitute a well-defined
style. In the first place, it should be pointed out that in the most au-
thentic fasola tradition the vocal settings were for three voices rather
than four. Although Davisson arranged his tunes for four voices in
the Kentucky Harmony, many other tune books, including the Harp
of Columbia , the Southern Harmony, the Missouri Harmony, and the
Sacred Harp, employed the more characteristic three-part arrange-
ment (with the "tune" in the middle part). Charles Seeger, who has
made th& most thorough study of the contrapuntal style of these three-
voiced shape-note hymns, found that they systematically violated most
of the established rules, such as those forbidding parallel fifths, oc-
taves, and unisons; parallel fourths between outer voices or between
upper voices without a third in the bass; unprepared and unresolved
dissonances; and crossing of voices.4 It is not beccruse the rules are vio-
lated that this type of authentic American music is interesting to us,
but rather because, in seeking their own style of expression, these early
composers created a kind of choral writing that has a "rigorous, spare,
disciplined beauty" of its own. And it is also interesting to observe
that a similar rigorous and spare quality, avoiding harmonic lushness
and padding, has characterized some of the most significant "new"
music of our own times. It is no wonder that modern composers like
Cowcll and Thomson have drawn inspiration from the texture and the
spirit of the American folk hymns. But let us return now to Ananias
Davisson and his companions of the shape-note tradition.
In compiling the Kentucky Harmony, Davisson drew on the col-
4 For musical examples of the three-voiced shape-note style, see the article
by Charles Seeger listed in the bibliocraohv for this chapter.
THE FASOLA FOLK 1<)1
lections of Billings, Holyokc, Andrew Adgate, Smith and Little,
Wyeth, and others. Among the New England composers represented
are Billings, Justin Morgan, and Timothy Swan. Fifteen tunes were
claimed as his own by Davisson. Of these, the best-known is "Idumea,"
a pentatonic melody, used with a text by Charles Wesley:
L«i i " r^
And am I born to die? To
r^r i " r i " r r r"H
lay this bod - y down? And must my trem -
.•- J J L J I" J_J^^
^^
bling spir- it fly, In - to a world un • known?
In 1820 Davisson brought out the Supplement to the Kentucky
Harmony, proudly placing after his name the initials A. K. H.— "Au-
thor of Kentucky Harmony." Davisson claimed authorship of eleven
tunes in this collection, besides six written in collaboration with others.
It is difficult to say with certainty whether any of the tunes in these
collections were actually composed by the musicians whose names
are affixed to them. In some cases the compilers frankly acknowledged
that theji had merely harmonized or arranged the tunes, and therefore
considered them as their own. In other cases they expressly state that
some of the tunes were taken from oral tradition. And in some in-
stances the same tune was claimed by several different "composers."
The whole question of individual authorship is not of prime impor-
tance in the fasola singing-school tradition. These poorly educated
rural musicians were not composers in any professional sense of the
term. They inherited a large body of traditional music, derived mainly
from the British Isles. This, together with the techniques and rules
of the early New England music teachers and compilers, was their
musical stock-in-trade. Sometimes they took over these tunes in their
natural state; sometimes they altered them, or constructed new tunes
with the same melodic elements. They were craftsmen rather than
creators. The tradition was more important than the individual.
Whatever hand Davisson may have had, therefore, in the composi-
tion of the twenty-six tunes that he claimed as his own, the real sig-
nificance of his work lies in his having compiled and published two
192 I Expansion
extensive collections that served as a reservoir of American rural hym-
nody, upon which later compilers drew freely. Through his work we
can observe the beginnings of a widespread regional movement in
America's music, the true homespun music of the American people.
Certainly, if we look only at the notes of this music, at its metrical and
modal patterns, we find that it is of British or Celtic origin. But it
was gradually being remade in the American grain under the influence
of a frontier society that reworked the European heritage in a new
environment.
The Rev. James P. Carrell (or Carroll) of Lebanon, Virginia, was
the compiler of Songs of Zion (1821) and Virginia Harmony (1831).
Born in 1787, Carrell become a Methodist minister, clerk of the county
court, and a substantial citizen, owning farmlands and slaves. Perhaps
his comparatively elevated social status accounts for the fact that he
endeavored to make his song collections as dignified and correct as
possible. The preface of the Virginia Harmony states that the editors
"have passed by many of the light airs to be found in several of the
recent publications . . . and have confined themselves to the plain
psalmody of the most eminent composers." This means, for example,
that he snubbed his colleague Ananias Davisson, using only two of
the ktter's tunes. It is curious to observe these nuances of caste and
decorum in the popular tradition. Lowell Mason would have looked
down his nose at Carrell as a rustic singing teacher, but Carrell in
turn deprecated the "light airs" composed or arranged by his less
dignified associates. Yet Carrell was entirely loyal to the fasola system
itself, extolling in his Rudiments the advantages of the four-shape
notes, which he calls "patent" notes, "on account of their author's
having obtained a patent for the invention."
Carrell affixed his name as composer to seventeen tunes in the
Virginia Harmony. In spite of his ministerial dignity, he was very
close to the folk tradition in his music. This is demonstrated, for in-
stance, in "his "Dying Penitent," a characteristic specimen of the Amer-
ican religious ballad stemming directly from British folk music:
J r PI* r r^^
on the cross the Sav-ior hung, And
wept and bled and died, He pour'd sal - va • don
THE FASOLA FOLK
193
on a wretch, That lan-guish'd at_his_ side. His
•anf
?s=pi
crimes with in - ward
gricf^
shame, The
j J in ..
pen - i - tent con - fess'd; Then turn'd his dy - ing-
S r r r
i
eyes on -Christ, And
thus his prayer ad
dress'd.
Eight other religious songs signed by Carrell were reprinted in later
collections by other compilers, indicating that he continued to enjoy
some regional reputation as a composer. Carrell died in 1854.
In 1825 William Moore, of Wilson County, Tennessee, brought
out his Columbian Harmony, printed in Cincinnati. In his "General
Observations" Moore gives some rather amusing admonitions to sing-
ers: "Nothing is more disgusting in singers than affected quirks and
ostentatious parade, endeavoring to overpower other voices by the
strength of their own, or officiously assisting other parts while theirs
is silent." Much of his material is taken from Ananias Davisson, thir-
teen of whose songs are included in Moore's collection.
Moore himself claimed authorship of eighteen songs in the Colum-
bian Harmony. One of these songs, "Sweet Rivers," is interesting as
containing one of the early examples of the "crossing over Jordan"
theme that is so frequent in American folk hymnody. The tune also
is typical of this tradition.
HI||»-,||J
J
Sweet ri-vers of re - deem -ing love, Lie just be - fore mine eyes
Had I the pi-nions of a dove, I'd to those ri • vers fly;
.•• m f I
c ir r crr
I'd rise su-pe-rior to my pain, With joy out-strip the wind,
T r
I'd cross o'er Jor- dan's storm -y waves, And leave the world be -hind.
194 I Expansion
Another Tennessee collection is William CaldwelPs Union Har-
mony, printed at Maryville in 1837. Caldwell ascribed to himself forty-
two of the songs in this collection. He admits, however, that many
of these are not entirely original, but that, as he has harmonized the
times, he claims them as his own. He furthermore states that "many
of the airs which the authors has reduced to system and harmonized,
have been selected from the unwritten music in general use in the
Methodist Church, others from the Baptist and many more from the
Presbyterian taste." This is an extremely interesting statement, for it
confirms the existence of a body of "unwritten music"— that is, folk
music transmitted by oral tradition— among the Methodists and other
denominations, and through William Caldwell's enterprise actual speci-
mens of this early American folk music have been preserved on the
printed page.
"A wonderful book"
Passing over John B. Jackson's Knoxville Harmony, printed at
Madisonville, Tennessee, in 1838, we turn to a book of exceptional
interest and importance: William Walker's Southern Harmony.
"Singin* Billy" Walker, as he was familiarly called, was the son of
poor parents who settled in Spartanburg, South Carolina, when he
was eighteen years old (he was born in 1809). He received only a rudi-
mentary education, but early in life was filled with the ambition "to
perfect the vocal modes of praise." According to a quaint account in
Landrum's History of Spartanburg County (Atlanta, 1900):
From the deep minstrels of his own bosom he gathered and
arranged into meter and melody a wonderful book suitably adapted
to the praise and glory of God. . . . Notwithstanding some depre-
ciation by the press, he adhered to his original system [i.e., shape
notes], and his reputation for attainments in his science soon spread
all through the South and Southwest. Everywhere his popularity
as a music teacher went and his work received a most popular
indorsement.
The "wonderful book" was Walker's Southern Harmony, first pub-
lished in 1835 (printed for the author in New Haven, Connecticut),
with four later editions, the last in 1854. Walker stated that 600,000
THE FASOLA FOLK 195
copies of Southern Htrmony were sold. In the 19305 Walker's book
was still being used by fasola singers in Benton, Kentucky-eighty
years after the publication of the last edition!
The original edition of Southern Harmony contained 209 songs, of
which twenty-five were claimed by Walker as composer. In later edi-
tions he ascribed other songs to himself, making a total of forty songs
to which he claimed authorship. Before me is a reproduction of the
1854 edition of Southern Harmony, which carries us right into the
heart of the fasola singing movement. The title page is worth repro-
ducing in full, for in itself it tells us much about this aspect of Amer-
ica's musical culture:
THE
SOUTHERN HARMONY, AND MUSICAL COMPANION:
CONTAINING A CHOICE COLLECTION OF
TUNES, HYMNS, PSALMS, ODES, AND ANTHEMS:
SELECTED FROM THE MOST EMINENT AUTHORS IN THE UNITED STATES:
TOGETHER WITH
NEARLY ONE HUNDRED NEW TUNES, WHICH HAVE NEVER BEFORE BEEN PUBLISHED:
SUITED TO MOST OF THE METRES CONTAINED IN WATTS'S HYMNS AND PSALMS, MERCER'S
CLUSTER, DOSSEV'S CHOICE, DOVER SELECTION, METHODIST HYMN BOOK, AND
BAPTIST HARMONY:
And Well Adapted To
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF EVERY DENOMINATION, SINGING SCHOOLS, AND PRIVATE SOCIETIES:
ALSO, AN EASY INTRODUCTION TO THE GROUNDS OF MUSIC, THE RUDIMENTS OF MUSIC,
AND PLAIN RULES FOR BEGINNERS
BY WILLIAM WALKER
Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth; O sing praises unto the Lord.-DAviD
Speaking to yourselves in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs and making
melody in your hearts to the Lord.-PAUL
NEW EDITION, THOROUGHLY REVISED AND MUCH ENLARGED
PHILADELPHIA:
PUBLISHED BY E. W. MILLER, 1 102 and 1 104 SANSOM STREET
and for sale by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., AND BOOKSELLERS, GENERALLY, THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES
Outwardly, this title page, which is typical of other shape-note
collections, is not much different from the title pages of collections
published by Lowell Mason and his associates. And, in effect, we ac-
196 I Expansion
tually find in Walker's collection a tune "arranged from Handel,"
taken from Mason's Carmina Sacra, as well as a few tunes by Maspn
himself. Just as we find in Mason's collections a few tunes by the old
New England pioneer school. The urban and the rural traditions had
certain points of contact, but the emphasis was entirely different.
What was occasional and peripheral in one was predominant in the
other. The fasola books gave much place to fuguing pieces, to penta-
tonic and other "gapped scale" melodies of folk character, and to re-
vival "spiritual songs" used at camp meetings. In spite of an occasional
bow to progress and elegance, folk hymns, religious ballads, revival
spirituals, and fuguing pieces formed the bulk of the fasola repertory.
Another important collection is the Sacred Harp (1844), compiled
by B. F. White and E. J. King, both active in Georgia. Not much is
known of King, but Benjamin Franklin White (1800-1879) was one
of the most prominent figures in the fasola movement. White was born
in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the youngest of fourteen children.
He attended school for a few months only, but inherited a musical
inclination from his father. Like most of these singing-school teachers,
he was self-taught in music. Around 1840, White moved to Harris
County, Georgia, where he published a newspaper called The Organ,
in which many of his sacred songs first appeared. He was also clerk
of the superior court of Harris County. The teaching of singing he
considered his life's work, but, says his biographer Joe James, "he
never used his talent as a musician to make money." He gave instruc-
tion free to those who could not afford to pay for it, and lodged many
of his pupils in his home without charge. "He was gentle in his na-
ture, lovable in disposition and treated everyone with universal kind-
ness." In religious matters he was remarkably liberal, for while him-
self a Missionary Baptist, he worshipped also in the churches of other
denominations: the Primitive Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Meth-
odist, Christian, etc. He had fourteen children, of whom nine lived
to adulthood. Several of them carried on the family's musical tradition.
White became president of the Southern Musical Convention, or-
ganized in 1845, which, together with the Chattahoochee Musical Con-
vention, founded in 1852, was the chief center of Sacred Harp activ-
ity and influence. These conventions brought fasola singers together
for annual "singings" lasting several days— a custom still kept up in
some sections of the Deep South, notably Georgia, Alabama, and
Texas. The Sacred Harp has had the longest continuous history of
THE FASOLA FOLK 197
any of the shape-note singing books, for in various editions and revi-
sions, it has been in print and in use from 1844 to the present day
(1954). Revised editions appeared in 1850, 1859, 1869, 1911, and
1936 (Denson Revision).
The Rev. William Hauser, M.D.— he was doctor, preacher, editor,
teacher, composer, and singer— was one of the most remarkable fig-
ures in the Southern fasola movement, and indeed in all the annals
of American music. Born in Forsyth County, North Carolina, in 1812,
the youngest son of eleven children, he lost his father when he was
two years old, and his mother was able to provide him with only a
meager education. But Hauser had a strong thirst for knowledge,
plus the determination and perseverance to acquire it. Joining the
Methodist Church in 1827, he was licensed to preach seven years later.
He then traveled a circuit for two years, "preaching, praying, and
singing wherever he went." In 1837 he married, and in 1839 went to
Emory and Henry College, Virginia, to study Greek and Latin. In
1841 he settled in Richmond County, Georgia, where he taught school
and began the study of medicine, which he commenced to practice
in 1843, becoming a highly successful and respected member of the
profession. He was appointed professor of physiology and pathology
in the Oglethorpe Medical College, Savannah (1859-1860) and was
assistant editor of the Oglethorpe Medical Journal.
It is interesting to note that Hauser was of Moravian stock, his
grandfather, Martin Hauser, having emigrated to North Carolina about
the year 1750. As we mentioned in an earlier chapter, the Moravians
gave exceptional importance to music not only in their religious ob-
servances but also in their community life. It will be recalled also that
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was the center of a Moravian settle-
ment in that state.
Such was the man, versatile, hard-working, practical, with a genius
for self-improvement and a strong, simple, religious faith, who in
1848 brought out the work that has been called "the rural South's
biggest and best song book," the Hesperian Harp, printed in Philadel-
phia, filled with over 550 pages of music ranging from "standard"
hymns of urban or European provenience to pure folk melodies re-
corded from oral tradition. Hauser's name stands as composer of
thirty-six songs in this colossal collection, and as arranger of numerous
others. Well represented are his Southern colleagues: Ananias Davis-
son, William Walker, and William CaldwelL
198 I Expansion
As a "composer" William Hauser was very close to the folk tradi-
tion. Let this pentatonic tune, "Hope Hull," taken from Hauser's
Hesperian Harp, serve to confirm the foregoing statement:
if M p Jl
Ye souls who are now bound for heav - en, Pray
An an -them of praise un - to Je - sus, My
(D.C.)When Je-sus him -self is the lead - er, Who
Fine
m
join and as-sist me to sing
Pro-phet, my Priest and my King; These notes are so soft and mel-
draws you with cords of his love. _
/T* — Da Capo
r r i g f f i. » * j
o - dipus, They'll help you most sweet -ly to move,
Like their New England predecessors, these Southern singing lead-
ers and music makers were practical, hard-working men, taking a full
part in the tasks and the affairs of daily life, closely identified with the
people for whom they made their music. John Gordon McCurry
(1821-1886), of Hart County, Georgia, was a farmer and a tailor as
well as a singing-school teacher. He was also a Missionary Baptist and
a Royal Arch Mason. He compiled the Social Harp (Philadelphia,
1859), which is exceptionally rich in songs of indigenous flavor, in-
cluding "revival spirituals" (which will be discussed in a later chap-
ter). Forty-nine songs in this collection were claimed by McCurry as
composer. One of these is "John Adkins' Farewell/' typical of the
religious or moral ballad in which a repentant wrongdoer bids other
people to take warning by his example and avoid the pitfalls of sin
and crime. John Adkins, it seems, was a drunkard who killed his wife
and was hanged for it. This is his farewell message, which consists of
nine doleful stanzas, culminating in a final plea for the mercy "That
pardons poor drunkards, and crowns them above."
* i 1
Poor drunk- ards, poor drunkards, take warn- ing by me,
THE FASOLA FOLK
199
e fruits of trans - gress - ion be -hold now I sec;
y soul is tor-ment-ed, my bo • dy con-fin'd;
My friends and my chil-dren left weep- ing be - hind.
Dr. George Pullen Jackson has pointed out that this tune is identi-
cal with that of the folk song "When Boys Go A~Courting," recorded
in the Appalachians by Cecil Sharp. There is a Negro version of the
tune adapted to the ballad of the fabulous race horse "Noble Skew-
ball/'
As a "composer" McCurry was partial to lively tunes. Among the
songs which he ascribed to himself, many will be found of the kind
that was anathema to the "better music" boys. Thoroughly typical of
this trend is the camp-meeting song "Few Days," with its syncopations
that savor more of minstrelsy than of hymnody. As a matter of fact,
a song embodying the same idea ("I am going home") and the iden-
tical refrain, appeared in the Negro Singer's Own Book (1846), though
without any tune. A variant of McCurry's tune and text, with the in-
terpolation of two lines about Jonah and the whale, has been recorded
among the mountain whites of Tennessee sometime in the 19205. It is
clear, therefore, that this song, like many others of its kind, has had
a long life in America's music; how long, we cannot exactly tell, for
it may have existed in oral tradition before McCurry caught it up
and put his name to it. A song with such a history, and so character-
istic of the American popular tradition, deserves quotation. Here is
"Few Days," from McCurry's Social Harp, dated 1855:
I pitch my tent on this camp ground, Few days, few days
;ive old Sa-
f
and give
tan another round, And I am go • ing
2oo | Expansion
m
r g ir i it* p j f ip r ip i g
home;! can't stay in these dig-gmgs, Few days, few days, I
P pf p I P
• J • • W
can't stay in these dig-gings, I am go - ing home.
Seven-shape songsters
We have seen that the fasola folk used only four syllables in sing-
ing the notes of the scale: fa-sol-la-fa-sol-la-mi. We also remarked that
the newer European system of solmization, using a different syllable
for each note (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si) was rapidly gaining ground in
America during the first half of the nineteenth century and soon be-
came firmly entrenched in the urban and urban-dominated singing
tradition as exemplified by Lowell Mason and his followers. From
1832 attempts were made to combine the do-re-mi system with the
shape notes or patent notes to which the vast majority of rural sing-
ers were stubbornly attached. The most successful manipulator of this
combined system was Jesse B. Aikin of Philadelphia, whose collection,
the Christian Minstrel (Philadelphia, 1846), went into 171 editions by
1873. Aiken simply added three more shape notes to the four that had
been in general use, so that his complete scale appeared as follows:
At least six other seven-shape systems were introduced by various com-
pilers up to 1866, but Aiken's was the one that proved most popular
and that was accepted as standard by the numerous seven-shape song-
book publishers of the South.
William Walker, in the introduction to the 1854 edition of his
Southern Harmony, devoted a page to discussing "The Different Plans
of Notation." He says there are seven plans of notation used in vari-
ous parts of the world, including one that employs numerals, used
"in Germany (among the peasants) and in some parts of the United
States." Regarding what he calls the Italian "doc, rae, me" system, he
has this to say:
THE FASOLA FOLK 2Ot
Some contend that no one can learn to sing correctly without
using the seven syllables. Although I have no objections to the seven
syllable plan, I differ a little with such in opinion, for I have taught
the four syllable patent notes, the Italian seven syllables, and the nu-
merals also, and in twenty-five years1 experience, have always found
my patent note pupils to learn as fast, and sing as correct [sic] as
any.
Nevertheless, William Walker was wavering. The seven-shape
practitioners seemed to be aligned with progress. Walker decided to
switch to the Italian system. When he published his Clmstian Har-
mony, printed at Philadelphia in 1866, it appeared with a seven-shape
system of his own invention. Now he was convinced that the "seven-
syllable character-note singing" was "the quickest and most desirable
method known."
A certain aspiration toward "scientific improvement" accompa-
nied the spread of the seven-shape do-re-mi system. Its principal cham-
pion, Jesse Aiken, expressed the hope that his Christian Minstrel would
supplant the "trashy publications" so widely used in the South and
West. Even "SingnV Billy" Walker endeavored to include in his
Christian Harmony "more music suitable to church use," and in the
edition of 1873 he incorporated "the most beautiful and desirable of
modern tunes." The editors of another important seven-shape book,
the New Harp of Columbia (1867), stated that many tunes originally
published in the first edition of their collection (1848) had been dis-
carded "and their places filled by others of superior merit." This is
the language of Lowell Mason and progressive improvement.
The process of urbanization, accelerated in recent times by the ra-
dio and the phonograph, has been undermining the old, indigenous,
rural folk tradition of the fasola singers. This trend has been going on
for a long time. Leaders of the "better music" movement in the South
were two brothers, L. C. Everett (1818-1867) and A. B. Everett
(1828-1875), who, having received an excellent musical education^
including a period of European study, established their headquarters
in Richmond, Virginia, and spread the gospel of scientific improve-
ment as widely as they could. They were ably seconded by Rigdon
McCoy Mclntosh (1836-^1899) of Tennessee and Georgia, one of the
most active propagators of the "Everett Method" and of urbanized
church music. These men aspired to be the Lowell Masons and the
202 j Expansion
Thomas Hastings of the South. If they did not succeed on such a
large scale, it is because the South is primarily a rural area, hence
strongly conservative and traditional in its culture. The "better music"
advocates took over the official church hymnals, but the rural folk
continued in large measure to cling to their old fuguing tunes, folk
hymns, religious ballads, and revival spirituals.
Since the fuguing tune is essentially an eighteenth-century prod-
uct, and as the revival songs will be discussed in the next chapter, it
will be appropriate now to give one or two more examples of the
religious ballad and folk hymn. From a song literature so abundant
and so rich in traditional values, it is difficult to make such a limited
selection. Perhaps a good example of the religious ballad would be
"Weeping Mary," of which the earliest printed version appeared in
Ingall's Christian Harmony of 1805. The version reproduced here is
from William Walker's Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist,
published in 1846. The tune belongs to a large family of English
secular folk songs.
*
Whenweep-ingMa-ry came to seek Her lov-ing Lord and Sa-vior,
Twas ear-ly in the motiving she In tears to gain his fa-vor.
m
With guards and sol - diers placed a - round the tomb that
held the bod
y Of him whom she thought
un - der ground, By wick - ed hands all blood - y.
For an example of the folk hymn, we may take one that has had
a long history in the American oral tradition, "Amazing Grace," with
text by the English evangelist John Newton, whose colorful career
was described in an earlier chapter. The tune, under various names,
is found in numerous fasola songbooks without any composer's name
affixed to it. Numerous versions have also been recorded from oral
tradition by modern folk-song collectors. In William Walker's South-
THE FASOLA FOLK
203
ern Harmony it appears under the title "New Britain." The melody is
pcntatonic. It is this version (from the edition of 1854) which we
quote here:
.cj H .r i
A - maz • ing — grace! (how sweet the sound) That
saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but
n i j j 1 1'
now am — found, Was blind, but now I see.
Dr. George Pullen Jackson recorded in 1936 an ornamented version
of this tune, sung very slowly and with numerous grace notes, which
he describes as "an excellent illustration of the widespread southern
folk-manner in the singing of hymns of this sort." Thus we have here
a continuation of the tradition of ornamented psalmody that flourished
in the eighteenth century and that caused such consternation and con-
demnation among the New England divines. This is the ornamented
version as printed by Dr. Jackson in Spiritttal Folk-Songs of Early
America:
Very slow
m
PS
maz • ing
grace! (how sweet the-
m
sound) That— saved a wretch like — me! I — once was_
Lost — but — now I'm found, Was -blind -but — now I
see.
The fasola singing leaders and compilers did not, of course, think
of their songs according to the classifications mentioned above. We
need to bear in mind the cultural law that "folklore does not exist for
the folk." These people did not regard themselves as quaint or back-
ward or as followers of an archaic tradition. Conservative they were,
yes; and believers in the tried-and-true values of their ancestors. When
204 I Expansion
a revision of the Sacred Harp was being discussed in 1879, and the
question of adopting the seven-shape notation was raised, Benjamin
Franklin White held out firmly for the old four-shape system. "The
four-note scheme," he declared, "has had the sanction of the musical
world for more than four hundred years [ ! ) ; and we scarcely think
that we can do better than to abide by the advice . . . 'Ask for thfc
old paths and walk therein/ " Preserve the past, yes; but as something
alive and useful for the present. The fasola leaders considered them-
selves as supplying the musical needs of their communities according
to methods and values that they thought were suitable and acceptable
to the people around them.
When Ananias Davisson published his Kentucky Harmony in 1817
he divided the contents into two main classifications: (i) "Plain and
easy tunes commonly used in time of divine worship" and (2) "More
lengthy and elegant pieces, commonly used at concerts, or singing
societies." The same classification was adopted by other fasola com-
pilers. William Walker, in his Southern Harmony, for instance, in-
cludes in Part II the more dignified or elaborate hymns, the fuguing
pieces, and anthems. One of the hymns in this section, taken probably
from the Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony, is titled "Mississippi,"
the composer's name being given as "Bradshaw." In spite of the com-
poser's name and the imposingly grandiose text, the melody bears all
the earmarks of an eighteenth-century English popular tune. It was
used by Shield in his ballad opera The Lock and Keyy and for a
patriotic song called "Bold Nelson's Praise." Here we have simply an-
other case of a hymn tune borrowed from secular sources. This is the
religious version of this tune, "Mississippi," as it appears in Southern
Harmony:
r
• nil
Wnen — Ga-briel's aw • nil trump shall sound And
r r ir I,
' 1 I ' r
rend the rocks, con - vulse the — ground, And give to
time her ut - most, bound, Ye
THE FASOLA FOLK
ft^-J--=3=
205
juug • meat; See iighc-nings flash and thun-ders
r ir r i rr u j .1-1
roil, See earth wrapt up like parch-ment scroll;
J J J
^m
Co -mets blaze, Sin - ners_ raise, Dread a - maze,
0"' ir rr-g=*i=*b±=^
ors seize The guilt -r y sons of A - dam's _
Hor -rors seize
^
i
race, Un
saved from sin ^ by — Je - sus.
William Walker included in his Southern Harmony , with no indi-
cation of the author or composer, another tune that has an exception-
ally curious history. This is "Long Time Ago," obviously borrowed
from an old Negro song that was already widely known by the time
the first edition of Southern Harmony appeared in 1835. According
to the editors of Slave Songs of the United States (1867), the original
Negro melody was sung to words beginning, "Way down in Raccoon
Hollow." An arrangement by William Clifton, beginning, "O I was
born down ole Varginee," was published in 1836 and described as UA
Favorite Comic Song and Chorus" (see musical example on page 279).
As we have seen, a "refined" version, in the high-flown sentimental
fashion of the genteel tradition, was made by the composer C Charles
E. Horn with words by George P. Morris (see musical example on
page 172). This is a striking illustration of the borrowing of ma-
terial among different cultural traditions. Although the original Negro
version has not been located, we can assume that it existed; thus we
have four different traditions represented in the various versions of this
song: (i) Negro folk tradition, (2) urban popular tradition (black-
face minstrelsy), (3) white rural folk tradition, (4) urban cultivated
tradition. The religious version of "Long Time Ago," as printed by
William Walker, is given below:
206 I Expansion
r
Je * sus died on Cal- vary's moun-tain, Long time a - go
i" p r r if F jl r * u r p
* "
And sal - va- tion's roll - ing foun- tain, Now free- ly flows!
While these rural fasola singing teachers, compilers, arrangers, and
composers were keeping alive the pioneer musical tradition, other
forces were at work on the frontier that contributed to shape the
vernacular idioms of America's music.
chapter eleven
Revivals and camp meetings
Shout, shout, we're gaining ground,
Halle, hallelu/ah/
Satan's kingdom is tumbling down,
Glory hallelu/ah/
REVIVAL HYMNS (BOSTON, 1842).
It has been said that "to the American frontier Methodism gave the
circuit rider and to Methodism the frontier gave the camp meeting."
The circuit rider was an itinerant preacher who traveled up and down
the countryside on horseback, preaching, praying, singing, and bring-
ing the gospel to the widely scattered rural population. Francis As-
bury, the first American circuit rider, is credited* with having ridden
a total of 275,000 miles. But no matter how many miles the preacher
on horseback traveled, he could bring the gospel only to as many
people as were gathered together within reach of his voice at a single
time. Hence it was a natural development for the people of a certain
territory to come together at a specified time and place to hear the
itinerant preacher, whose arrival had been announced in advance; and
since these rural people often had to travel long distances to the meet-
ing ground, they came prepared to stay several days. This was the
origin of the American camp meetings, of which the first was held in
Logan County, Kentucky, near the Caspar River Church, in July of
the year 1 800.
The immediate instigator of the camp-meeting movement appears
to have been the Rev. James McGready, a Presbyterian minister.
Hence the movement was not exclusively Methodist. In fact, it was
customary for preachers of several denominations to get together and
arrange for a camp meeting jointly. The crowds were so large, rang-
ing anywhere from two thousand to twenty thousand, that several
preachers were needed to conduct the activities. If the Methodists
207
208 I Expansion
soon gained the ascendancy in the camp meetings that quickly spread
from Kentucky to the rest of the United States, it was partly because
they had a large stock of popular hymnody that could readily be
thrown into the emotionally boiling caldron out of which was to
emerge the revival spiritual. Speaking of the Methodist invasion of the
early camp meetings, a historian of the Presbyterian Church writes:
They succeeded in introducing their own stirring hymns, famil-
iarly, though incorrectly, entitled "Wesley's Hymns"; and as books
were scarce, the few that were attainable were cut up, and the
leaves distributed, so that all in turn might learn them by heart.1
The book so roughly handled at these first camp meetings was
probably The Pocket Hymn Book (Philadelphia, '1797), which was
rapidly going through one edition after another in response to the
eager demand for revival hymns. This book, like many others published
in the next few decades to supply the revivalist movement, contained
only the words of the hymns or spiritual songs, not the music. The
tunes were either familiar ones that everybody already knew, or of
such a simple and catchy nature that they could quickly be picked
up from the singing of the preacher, who was also the song leader.
As Benson remarks, "Of the tunes to which the Camp Meeting Hymns
were sung the leaders demanded nothing more than contagiousness
and effectiveness." 2
In a previous chapter, tracing the development of evangelical
hymnody in England under the influence of the Wesleys and their
followers, with particular reference to the intensely emotional and
folksy hymns of Cennick and Newton, we described the background
out of which grew the popular religious songs of the American camp
meetings. We should recall the use of the term "spiritual songs" in
many of the collections of evangelical hymnody, including the Hymns
and Spiritual Songs of Isaac Watts in 1 709. This term was taken over
in American collections, such as Joshua Smith's Divine Hymns or
Spiritual Songs (Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1794), Henry Alline's
Hymns and Spiritual Songs (Stoningtonport, Connecticut, 1802),
David Mintz's Spiritual Song Book (Halifax, North Carolina, 1805),
and John C. Totten's A Collection of the most admired hymns and
spiritual songs, 'with the choruses affixed as usually sung at camp-?neet-
1 Davidson, History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, p. 134.
a Benson, The English Hyrnn^ p. 294.
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS 2OQ
ings (New York, 1809). Many such books (a total of over fifty) were
published up to the time of the Civil War. Totten's collection is par-
ticularly interesting as making specific mention of camp meetings and
of the choruses that, as we shall presently see, constituted the most
striking feature of revival hymnody.
Since the compilers speak of hymns and spiritual songs, it is obvi-
ous that some distinction between the two categories was intended.
For our purpose it will be convenient to treat of revival hymnody as
a whole, in relation to the camp-meeting movement; but we shall
place the emphasis on those songs that were most specifically and
organically a product of the revivalist fervor, and it is to these that
the term "spiritual songs" may be especially applied. In its shortened
form, "spirituals," the term has come to be generally associated in
America with the religious songs of the Negroes. But the term is
clearly of English evangelical origin, and in this chapter we shall refer
to the camp-meeting songs either as "revival spirituals" or as "spirit-
uals." Since both Negroes and whites attended the same camp meet-
ings and sang the same songs, there is no need, at this stage at least, to
make any kind of racial distinction. Amid the sometimes unedifying
features of the revivalist frenzy, we have to put down in the credit
column that the camp meetings broke through rigid denominational
barriers and encouraged both religious and racial tolerance.
Traveling the circuit
Perhaps the best way to share the spirit of the camp meetings is to
travel the circuit with one of the Methodist riders who was most
fervently engaged in the revivalist movement. Lorenzo Dow (1777-
1834) of Connecticut early in life felt the call to preach, and in spite
of much opposition and many difficulties, caused in part by his eccen-
tric and extravagant character, he succeeded in carrying the gospel
throughout most of the United States, and even brought the camp-
meeting movement to England, where he aroused large crowds with
his fervor and enthusiasm. He married a person as enthusiastic and
eccentric as himself, Peggy Dow, who in 1816 brought out A Col-
lection of Camp-meeting Hymns, printed in Philadelphia (words only).
Dow left a voluminous journal of his travels and experiences in Amer-
ica and the British Isles.
According to a footnote in Dow's journal, "Camp meetings began
2io | Expansion
in Kentucky— next N. Carolina— attended them in Georgia— introduced
them in the centre of Virginia, N. York, Connecticut, Massachusetts
and Mississippi Territory!— 1803-4-5." Thus within five years the
camp-meeting craze had spread all over the United States, from North
to South, and westward to the frontier territory. In 1804, Lorenzo
Dow attended a camp meeting at Liberty, Tennessee, and wrote in
his journal:
Friday i9th. Camp-meeting commenced at Liberty: here I saw
the jerks; and some danced: a strange exercise indeed; however it is
involuntary, yet requires the consent of the will: i.e., the people are
taken jerking irresistibly, and if they strive to resist it, it worries
them much, yet is attended with no bodily pain, and those who are
exercised to dance (which in the pious seems an antidote to the
jerks) if they resist, it brings deadness and barrenness over the
mind; but when they yield to it they feel happy, although it is a
great cross, there is a heavenly smile and solemnity on the counte-
nance, which carries great conviction to the minds of the beholders;
their eyes when dancing seem to be fixed upwards as if upon an in-
visible object, and they lost to all below.8
The question of dancing, so closely related to the jerks, was evi-
dently a matter of some theological concern. On Sunday the 2ist,
writes Dow,
I heard Doctor Tooley, a man of liberal education, preach on the
subject of the jerks and the dancing exercise: He brought ten pas-
sages of scripture to prove that dancing was once a religious exer-
cise, but corrupted at Aaron's calf, and from thence young people
got it for amusement. I believe the congregation and preachers were
generally satisfied with his remarks.
Lorenzo Dow found that the jerks had no respect for denomina-
tions. In Tennessee he met some Quakers who said, "the Methodists
and Presbyterians have the jerks because they sing and pray so much,
but we are still a peaceable people, wherefore we do not have them."
But latef, at a meeting, he found that about a dozen Quakers "had the
jerks as keen and as powerful as any I have ever seen, so as to occa-
sion a kind of grunt or groan when they would jerk." Summing it all
up, Lorenzo wrote:
8 Dow, Journal, p. 213.
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS 211
I have seen Presbyterians, Methodists, Quakers, Baptists. Church
of England, and Independents, exercised with the jerks; Gentleman
and Lady, black and white, the aged and the youth, rich and poor,
without exception. . . .*
So much for the universal democracy of the jerks.
Back in his native Connecticut, Lorenzo gives us a brief picture of
the general atmosphere of a camp meeting:
About three thousand people appeared on the ground, and the re-
joicing of old saints, the shouts of young converts, and the cries of
the distressed for mercy, caused the meeting to continue all night.5
It was at night that the revival frenzy reached its greatest inten-
sity. As the campfires blazed around the grounds, preachers went
through the crowds exhorting the sinners to repent and be saved
from the fires of Hell. The volume of song rose to a mighty roar, the
sound of shouting shook the earth; men and women jerked, leaped, or
rolled on the ground until they swooned and had to be carried away.
Amid sobs and groans and shouts, men and women shook hands all
around and released all their frustrations and emotions in great bursts
of song that culminated in "the singing ecstasy."
Jesus, grant us all a blessing,
Shouting, singing, send it down;
Lord, above may we go praying,
And rejoicing in Thy love.
Shout, O Glory! sing glory, hallelujah!
I'm going where pleasure never dies.
The typical revivalist is a pilgrim traveling through the wilderness,
burdened with the sins of the world but rejoicing in the vision of the
promised land, which is in sight just on the other side of Jordan, and
when he gets there he'll be able to lay his burdens down, his troubles
will be over.
A well-known hymn by the English dissenting divine, Samuel
Stennett,
On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, and cast a wishful eye
To Canaan's happy land, where my possessions lie,
* Ibid., p. 184.
*lbid., p. 187.
212 I Expansion
was taken up by the revivalists and appears with a variety of typical
camp-meeting choruses appended to it. Here is one, first printed in
the Southern Harmony of 1835, that is thoroughly typical:
•H~J;
i
I am bound for the. prom - ised knd .
I'm
u j._j>u
"
bound for the prom-iied land, Oh — who wilLcomeand
P
^
go with me? I am bound for the prom- ised land.
Here on earth life is full of woe and trouble, of trials and tribula-
tions; but just ahead lies the prospect of the promised land— O, glory,
hallelujah!
m
3
low, O
We have _ our _ tn - als here _ be
There's a bet- ter
com -ing, Hal - le - iu
jah! There's a bet -ter day a-com-ing, Hal -la - lu - jah!
This revival spiritual is also from William Walker's Southern Har-
mony, where it is entitled "Christian Prospect." It belongs to the pat-
tern that has a refrain interpolated after each line. This was a very
popular pattern in revival singing, because it was easy to "compose"
a song in this manner on the spot, and because it gave an effective
opportunity for mass participation and all-out shouting.
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS
213
One of the earliest recorded songs of this type is "Satan's King-
dom Is Tumbling Down," which was printed in Revival Hymns, com-
piled by H. W. Day (Boston, 1842). In a headnote to this spiritual
song, the compiler writes:
This hymn and the original melody, 'which have been so useful
in revival seasons, for more than half a century, and which, it is
believed, have never before been published together, were lately
procured after considerable search, from the diary of an aged serv-
ant of Christ, bearing the date 1810.
I have italicized the passage above simply to emphasize that many
of these spirituals had circulated in oral tradition long before they
were published in books; this applied particularly to the music, for it
was not until after 1840 that the music of the camp-meeting spirituals
began to be included to any extent in the songbooks with notation,
and then they found a place chiefly in the shape-note books described
in the preceding chapter.
Another interesting feature of "Satan's Kingdom" is that the text
is pieced together by an accumulation of "wandering verses" that
formed the stock-in-trade of revivalism. It was by having a large
reserve of such material, usually in the form of rhymed couplets,
to draw upon that the camp-meetings spiritual could proliferate so
rapidly and so abundantly. "Satan's Kingdom" has the refrain after
each line of the quatrain, and this in turn is followed by a typical
camp-meeting chorus of four lines:
p^p
ppp
This night my soul has caught new fire,
i1 r r H' r i J ii
- le hal • le • lu - jah! I fee
jah! I feel that heav'n is
draw - ing — nigh'r, Glo - ry hal - le - lu - jah!
CHORUS
Shout, shout, we are gain - ing ground,
214 I Expansion
Hal - le hal • le - lu - jah! Sa - can's king-dom is
turn - bling— down, Glo • ry hal • le - lu - jah!
By inserting a familiar tag line after each verse, and singing the
whole to a rollicking tune, it was easy to transform a Wesleyan hymn
into a camp-meeting spiritual. This is what happened to Charles
Wesley's hymn, "He comes, he comes, the Judge severe." The re-
vivalists tacked on the refrain, "Roll, Jordan, roll," after each line, and
added a characteristic "I want to go to heaven" chorus.
IT r r
3
•
Jor-dan, roll;
i
He comes, he comes, the Judge sev- ere, Roll,
The sev-enth trum-pet speaks him near, Roll, Jor-dan,
ft' o I"
roll.
f I «. g
A— F
I want
Ef*E5F
to go to heav'n,
=M^
I do, Hal
^ 1___
- le - lu - jah,
r U II
Lord; We'll praise t
in heav'n a-bove, Roll, Jor-dan, roll.
Perhaps Charles Wesley's hymn deserved this treatment, for he is
said to have written it as a parody on a popular song celebrating the
return to England of Admiral Vernon (after whom Washington's
Mount Vernon was named) following the capture of Portobello in
1739. As for the tune, it belongs to a type that has enjoyed wide cir-
culation in America's music, from the folk hymns of the fasola singers
to the minstrel songs of Stephen Foster.
Often the camp-meeting choruses bore little or no relation to the
words of the hymns to which they were appended. An illustration is
the hymn by Robert Robinson, "Come, thou fount of ev'ry bless-
ing," to which the revivalists appended the following chorus, as re-
corded in McCurry's Social Harp and dated 1849:
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS
215
IT
p
j> n J-
And I hope to gain the prom- is'd land, O
hal-le, hal-le - lu - jah; And I hope to gain the prom -is'd
How I love my Sav - ior, Glo-ry, glo • ry, yes_ I do.
Also included in McCurry's Social Harp (1855) is a version of
John Cennick's popular hymn, "Jesus, my all, to heaven is gone," with
a "Jordan" chorus added to it, and the refrain "Happy, O happy"
after each line. The chorus goes like this:
We'll cross the river of Jordan
Happy, O happy,
We'll cross the river of Jordan,
Happy, in the Lord.
Another one of Cennick's hymns, "Children of the heavenly
King," was printed in the Social Harp with McCurry's name as com-
poser and with the following "happy" chorus of camp-meeting origin:
^
^
m
I want to
as hap - py as
pii
P
well can be, Lord, send sal - va - don down.
In the following revival spiritual from William Hauser's Hesperian
Harp (1848), the Jordan theme is combined with the highly popular
and widespread theme of the "Old Ship of Zion," of which numerous
versions are found in various songbooks. In Hauser's version the Ship
of Zion does not make its appearance until the second stanza.
216 I Expansion
i J
Come a • long, come a • long and let us go .
V • | -—». | J; j) j, j) | J | J
home; O _ glo • ry hal - le - lu - jah!
iff p IF
Our home is o - ver Jor- dan, hal - le
M m m --
(T y j y I ' J J> » I- I • 'II
jah! Our home is o -ver Jor-dan, hal - le • lu - jah!
Then the second stanza:
What ship is this that will take us all home?
O glory hallelujah!
Tis the old ship of Zion,
O glory hallelujah!
And in the fifth stanza we find another familiar theme of the revival
spirituals:
If you get there before I do,
You may tell them that I'm coming.
It is part of the larger "traveling to Canaan" theme that recurs in
so many spirituals. As the revivalist preacher passed through the
crowds on the meeting ground, clapping his hands, he would sing out
at the top of his voice:
0 brethren, will you meet mef
In Canaan's happy land?
And hundreds of voices would reply in a mighty burst of song:
By the grace of God, we'll meet you,
In Canaan's happy land.
Another time the preacher would sing out:
1 feel the work reviving, I feel the work reviving.
Reviving in my soul.
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS 2 17
And the camp-meeting crowd would respond:
We'll shout and give him glory,
We'll shout and give him glory,
We'll shout and give him glory,
For glory is his own.
It was possible to keep a song going almost indefinitely, merely
by changing one word in the stanza. For instance, in the line "O
brothers will you meet me," the word "brothers" could be replaced
in subsequent repetitions by "sisters," "mourners," "sinners," and so
on. In the same manner, "We have fathers in the promised land"
could be followed by "We have brothers, sisters, mothers, etc."
We do not know exactly how the early revival spirituals were
sung because when the music appeared in the songbooks it was modi-
fied by harmonized arrangements that followed the singing-school
tradition, with three or four voice parts blending together in more
or less correct harmony. From the patterns of the song texts, and
from descriptive accounts left by some witnesses and participants in
the camp meetings, such as Lucius Bellinger of South Carolina, active
as a revivalist from around 1825, we can be fairly certain that many
of the songs, though not all, were sung according to the leader and
chorus pattern indicated above. This is, in any case, a common practice
in mass group singing, where the crowd is always ready to come in on
a familiar chorus.
Then there were the "dialogue songs," in which one phrase was
sung by men and another by women. An example of this is the "Mari-
ner's Hymn," from the Millennial Harp (1843):
HI
Hail you! and where did you come from? Hal - le - lu - jah!
Female voice L . .
r r r. J'F T r r J 'r pr |fl"
Oh, I'm come from the land of B-gypt! Hal - le- lu - jah!
The dialogue continues:
Hail you! and where are you bound for?
Hallelujah!
Oh, I'm bound for the land of Canaan,
Hallelujah!
218 I Expansion
Hail you! and what- is your cargo?
Hallelujah!
Oh, religion is my cargo.
Hallelujah!
And so on, for several more stanzas. Dr. Guy B. Johnson believes
that the pentatonic tune of this revival spiritual came from some sailor
song, and points to its similarity to the hoisting chantey "Blow, Boys,
Blow."
The idea of gaining ground against sin is another basic theme of
the revival spirituals. We find it in a camp-meeting chorus affixed
to the eighteenth-century hymn "I know that my Redeemer lives,"
in the following song which appeared originally in the Social Hffrp
(1855), attributed to F. C. Wood of Georgia, and which is here re-
produced from the Denson Revision of the Original Sacred Harp:
f r p r
-er lives, Glo-ry hal-le -lu-jah!
* jvnvw that my Ke-deem-er lives, Glo-ry hal-*w *« ,-*..
What com-fort this sweet sen-tence gives, Glo- ry hal-le - lu-jah!
Lr _ +*—
T
d,
Shout on, pray on, we're gain-ing ground, Glo-ry hal-le -lu-jah,The
Lrr M 'r r if Pr r |J ^ "
dead's a - live and the lost is found, Glo - ry hal • le • lu-jah.
The same theme of conflict and victory is embodied in a revival
spiritual called "The Good Old Way," of which the words were
printed in Zion's Songster (1832) and the music in William Walker's
Southern Harmony (1835). In the example below, the words of the
fourth stanza are quoted with the music, as being most clearly indica-
tive of the battle against Satan:
rnr j j j j i
£
Though Sa - tan may his power em ploy,- O
Our peace and com - fort to de - stroy,— O
r .r r.
=P
Vet
hal - le, Kal
hal - le, hal
le - lu - jah,
le - lu - Jan.
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS
219
nev • er fear, we'll gain the day, — O hal - le, hal • le •
3J=
lu
jah; And . tri • umph in the good old
^
way, O hal le, hal le - lu jah.
A characteristic example of the way in which a text by Dr. Watts
could be made to serve as the nucleus of a camp-meeting spiritual is
"Sweet Canaan," in which the refrain "I am bound for the land of
Canaan" is inserted after each line. The tune, of unknown origin,
though attributed by the editors of the Original Sacred Harp to "Rev.
John Moffitt, 1829," is probably traditional and bears a resemblance
to some of Stephen Foster's minstrel songs.
• • f
O — who will come and go with me? I am
I'm bound fair Ca-naan's Land to see, I am
£ b r j) 1
K I-M 1 1
-\ —
*
B-v—
P — f
1 » - »
m * — p — • — mi — i w • * — —
bound for the land - of
bound for the land _ of
j> b - h - j J h h \t
Ca
a
-4-r: — t
naan;
• naan.
p —
J-
(
—
[
}
_m —
•'r1
Ca-naan, sweet
y i i i 1 .
^ * r — * ff ij — J; J i — -
Ca-naan,Imboundforthe land of
C
a-n
=t=i
aan, sweet
G
i-na
•« *
an,'tis my
r r ir
i
7^ ".'"• T" —F
hap-py home; I am bound for the land— of Ca - naan.
A well-known hymn by Dr. Watts, beginning "When I can read
my title clear to mansions in the skies,'1 was given the revival treat-
ment and emerged as "I Want to Go" in McCurry's Social Harp,
where it is dated 1851. McCurry ascribed it to himself as composer,
22O | Expansion
but in all probability he merely arranged or harmonized a tune that
had circulated in oral tradition. The chorus goes like this:
I want to go, I want to go,
I want to go to glory;
There's so many trials here below,
They say there's none in glory.
The revival movement reached its peak in the 18305 and 18405,
owing largely to the preaching of a Vermont farmer by the name of
William Miller (1782-1849), who predicted that the end of the world
would come in the spring of the year 1843:
In eighteen hundred forty-three
Will be the Year of Jubilee.
Obtaining a Baptist license to preach, Miller traveled around the
country carrying his message of the coming Day of Wrath, distribut-
ing tracts, hymnbooks, and printed propaganda of every kind. His
message of impending doom was reinforced by the portents of Nature.
In 1833 there was a meteoric shower of "falling stars." Halley's comet
appeared in 1835, and in 1843 the Great Comet appeared, seemingly
in cooperation with Miller's schedule. The universe, however, did not
fully cooperate. The spring of 1843 passed and the world did not
come to an end. Miller announced that he had made a slight miscal-
culation. The Day of Judgment was definitely reset for October 22,
1844.
"Miller Madness" seized large sections of the population, driving
some to suicide, some to insanity, and many others simply to becom-
ing "Millerites," for by 1843 Miller had become the leader of his own
sect, known as the Millennialists and later as the Seventh-Day Adven-
tists. Miller's chief lieutenant in the Millennial movement was Joshua
V. Himes, pastor of the First Christian Church in Boston, who in 1843
compiled and published a songbook called The Millennial Harp con-
taining over two hundred songs, mostly in the tradition of revival
spirituals, written or adapted especially for conveying the message of
the Second Advent. Himes took, for example, a popular and widely
used revival chorus, "I will be in this band, hallelujah!" and adapted
it to the Millerite message by adding "In the Second Advent Band,
hallelujah!" Appropriate stanzas were also added, such as:
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS 221
O bless the Lord, we need not fear,
For Daniel says he'll come this year.
Here is the first stanza and chorus of "Christian Band," with the
music, as published in the Millennial Harp:
&
^
p 7 p
i-ren dear, I
Igl
Here is a band of breth-
Their lead • er tells them not to fear, I
-£-^
— tr-Jh-
-J — =
1.
will
will
-$ — (J—
be in
be in
!___
..=J=
this band,
this band,
Jj — ^ —
hal - le -
hal - le -
=M=
lu -
lu -
=fc
=f=J
jah;)
Jah;j
I
=4=
will
_^ ^
be in
> — h-= — —
ft m±L «u.
this band, hal
— .. ( — ft —
- le -
$ fr r
lu -
f 9 {=*=p=p=
jah, In the Sec -end
P ? Jj
Ad -vent band,
^f •
haJ-Ie -
rf [MI
lu . jah!
Another Millennial song, evidently prepared especially for the
"tarrying season" that began in the spring of 1 844, had the following
text:
Now we feel the Advent Glory
While the Savior seems to tarry,
We will comfort one another
And be trusting in his name.
Are your lamps all burning?
Are your vessels filled with oil?
By some unaccountable obstinacy of Nature, the world survived
the fateful day of October 22, 1844. Miller himself survived his dis-
appointment by five years, dying in 1849; his followers did not lose
faith, for a few years later they were singing:
O praise the Lord, we do not fear
To tell the world he'll come next year.
In eighteen hundred fifty-four
The saints will shout their sufferings o'er.
(Pilgrim's Songster, 1853)
222 | Expansion
One of the most stirring songs in the Millennial Harp was "Old
Churchyard," sung especially at meetings in the cemeteries, for many
of the Millerites "sought the graveyards where friends were buried,
so as to join them as they arose from their earthly resting places and
ascend with them.0 The tune has been widely used in American folk
music. As we observed in an earlier chapter, it was the tune to which
the Hutchinson Family sang their famous theme song, "The Old
Granite State." Here is the song as it appeared in Millennial Harp:
V \l-l 7 V IP
You will see your Lord a • com - ing, You will
[f |f (f (T I [f
ff
see your Lord a - com • ing, You will see your Lord a
CHORUS
J> J)
com -ing; While the old church- yards Hear the band of
(T
mu-sic, hear the band of mu - sic Hear the band of
P"
mu - sic Which is sound - ing through the air.
Now we have learned something about the revival spirit, the at-
mosphere of the camp meetings, and various types of revival spirit-
iials and camp-meeting hymns. The question remains—and it is an
important one— how did the singing sound? Unfortunately, those who
witnessed the early camp meetings have left us more detailed accounts
of the sensational manifestations of religious hysteria than of the exact
nature of the singing that went on. We have to pick up clues here
and there, and then rely largely on our imagination to project the
old-time tunes as they were actually sung at camp meetings. The
Southern revivalist Lucius Bellinger has some references to revival sing-
ing strewn among his autobiographical Stray Leaves from the Port-
folio of a Local Methodist Preacher (1870). Writing of a preacher who
led the singing: "He was a man with a sharp, strong, piercing voice.
We now have old-time singing— clear, loud, and ringing." All accounts
agree that the singing was loud.
EVTVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS 22 J
Samuel E. Asbury, a descendant of the Rev. Henry Asbury who
was America's pioneer circuit rider, recalling the old-time revival
singing of his youth, said: "The immediate din was tremendous; at a
hundred yards it was beautiful; and at a distance of a half mile it was
magnificent." No musical instruments at all were used, not even a
tuning fork. Some brass-lunged male pitched the tune. A lot of other
brass-lunged males took it up and carried it along. It was the men,
not the women, who sang the "tune." The women sang their subordi-
nate part an octave higher, often, says Mr. Asbury, "singing around
high C with perfect unconcern because they didn't realize their feat."
They may have enjoyed themselves, but they were not singing for the
sake of singing. "What they were there for was to hammer on the
sinner's heart and bring him to the mourner's bench." There was no
thought of art; the singing was like a force of nature, an uncontrollable
torrent of sound.
But the tunes were beautiful and stirring. To hear them sung at
the height of the revival fervor must have been a thrilling experience.
Bearing in mind the remarks quoted above— the clear, loud, ringing
voices, the high male voices carrying the tune, the basses below, and
the female voices soaring above— let the reader give full scope to his
or her imagination in recreating the sonorous texture of this wonderful
revival spiritual, one of the glories of America's music: "Morning
Trumpet," words by John Leland, music attributed to Benjamin
Franklin White, compiler of the Sacred Harp (1844):
JliJt Ji
a •
Oh when shall I see Je - sus, And reign with him
And from the flow-ing foun -tain Drink ev • er -last- ing
. V ?* f And shall hear the trum-pet sound in that morn - ing
OF") IF p F MI
Shout O — glo - ry, for I shall mount a-bove the
j p (T IE- f [? [T- ji M .1 1. 1 a
skies When I hear the trum-pet sound, in that morn • ing.
224 I Expansion
There is one aspect of revival singing that cannot be reconstructed
from the printed music and that can be but inadequately described
with words. That is the practice of taking familiar, conventional hymns
and ornamenting the melodies with what Mr. Asbury calls "number-
less little slurs and melodic variations." He mentions "Jesus, Lover of
My Soul" and "How Firm a Foundation" as hymns that were sung
in this manner. References to this ornamented style of folk singing
were made in the second chapter of this book and also in Chapter 10,
where an example was given of "Amazing Grace" with melodic orna-
mentation. The best way to become acquainted with this style, which
was not limited to revival meetings but is widespread in folk tradi-
tion, is to listen to some of the recordings of Southern folk singers
issued by the Library of Congress. Though these were recorded com-
paratively recently, the old tradition remains essentially unchanged,
because conservatism, in its literal sense of preserving the. values of the
past, is the very essence of folklore.
Shakers defy the devil
When the Shakers— officially the United Society of Believers in
Christ's Second Appearing— spread their activities westward in the
early years of the nineteenth century, they swelled their ranks with
converts from various schismatic sects that had been prominent in
promoting the spirit of revivalism. Under the influence of frontier re-
vivalism in Kentucky and Ohio, the Shakers began to develop a large
body of song that, while having certain original traits of style and
form stemming from the peculiarities of Shaker rituals and beliefs, was
closely related to the general corpus of revivalist spiritual songs that
we have been describing. Like other schismatic revivalists, the Shakers
made no bones about plundering "carnal" tunes. A hymn in one of
their books, Millennial Praises (1813), vigorously justifies this pro-
cedure:
Let justice seize old Adam's crew,
And all the whore's production;
We'll take the choicest of their songs,
Which to the Church of God belongs,
And recompense them for their wrongs.
In singing their destruction.
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS 22$
Since the Shakers' religion brought them joy and holy mirth, they
saw no reason for avoiding gay and lively tunes:
We love to sing and dance we will
Because we surely, surely feel
It does our thankful spirits fill
With heavenly joy and pleasure.
In 1 807 the Shaker community at Watervliet, New York, produced a
song called "The Happy Journey," of which one line might easily
be misconstrued by the evil-minded as indicating that the Shakers went
in for nudism:
0 the happy journey that we are pursuing,
Come brethren and sisters let's all strip to run.
While the act of stripping to run was no doubt symbolic, in many
instances the Shakers interpreted literally and realistically the actions
described in their songs. When they sang of their faithful brethren,
1 love to see them stamp and grin,
And curse the flesh, the seat of sin,
they actually stamped and grimaced.
In warring against the flesh and the devil, the Shakers found a
perpetual source of excitement and of realistic ritual:
The act of chasing or shooting the devil was a revival ritual. In
one account, as some one spies the devil coming into the meeting,
he gives the alarm, whereupon every true believer "opens the bat-
tery at once." This was done uby drawing the right knee nearly
to the chin, placing the arm in the position of a sportsman, then
straightening themselves out with a jerk, and a stamp of the foot,
accompanied by a quick bursting yelp, in imitation of a gun. . . ."
As the devil starts to flee, cries arise: "See him dart!" "Shoot him!"
"Kill him!" All rush for spiritual weapons from the "spiritual Ar-
senal." The fight then commences.6
As "Old Ugly" was driven away, the victory of the faithful might be
celebrated with a song: T
•Andrews, The Gift to Be Simple.
* The Shaker songs in this chapter ire quoted from The Qift to Be Simple,
by permission of the author, Edward D. Andrews.
226 | Expansion
Be joy - ful, be joy • ful, be joy - ful, be joy
ful, For Old Ug - ly is go
ing.
Good rid-dance,good rid-dance,good riddance we say,
And don't you nev - er come here a
gain.
Even though "Old Ugly" did not always appear in person, it was
necessary to wage continual battle against the flesh. The process of
"shaking" was a powerful weapon in this fight, as described in the
following song, "Shake Off the Flesh":
i
Come, let us all u • nice To purge out this
j
J
r
filth - y, flesh • y, car - nal sense, And la - bor for the
p r
pow-er of God To mor - ti - fy and stain our pride.
V r PIT Q Mr * J
We'll raise our glitt-'ring swords and fight And war the
J J1 J JMJ. J'lJ J J jilj JJ J'l
flesh with all our might, All car- nal ties we now will break And
rr ~ \n.
"
in the pow'r of God we'll shake. God we'll shake.
In the autumn of 1837 the Shakers experienced a great revival that
lasted for more than ten years and that produced a large quantity of
songs. Many of these were "gift" or "vision" songs, revealed to the
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS
227
faithful in dreams or visions, sometimes by the spirit of Mother Ann,
sometimes by angels, and other times by the spirits of famous persons
whose relation to the Shaker religion is not readily explicable: Alexan-
der the Great, Queen Elizabeth, George Washington, William Penn,
Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon, and many others.
"Native" songs were received from the spirits of American Indians,
Eskimos, Chinese, Hottentots, and other heathen races. When the
Shakers were possessed by the spirits of Indians, they behaved like
Indians themselves. An eyewitness described a "dancing night" at
which "eight or nine of the Sisters became possessed of the Spirits of
Indian Squaws and about six of the Brothers became Indians: then en-
sued a regular Tow Wow/ with whooping, yelling, and strange an-
tics. . . ." Here is an example of an Indian "vision song" received in
1838:
Se - mo faw - len, faw • len, faw - len, Se - mo faw - len,
wal - la wil - le wa • wa,
Se • mo faw - len
1
faw - len, faw • len, Se • mo faw wa - la wil - le wa - wa.
One of the Shaker exercises consisted of a sort of lively whirling
dance, "during which the worshippers constantly turned or whirled"
(Andrews), at the same time singing an appropriate song. Many of the
Shaker songs were "action songs," that is, songs that described an
action which was performed during the singing. They had, for in-
stance, "bowing songs," such as the following:
I will bow and be simple
I will bow and be free*
I will bow and be humble
Yea bow like the willow tree.
Then there was a "hopping and jumping" song which is quite graphic
in its description of movement:
228 | Expansion
Hop up and jump up and whirl round, whirl round,
Gather love, here it is, all round, all round.
Here is love flowing round, catch it as you whirl round,
Reach up and reach down, here it is all round.
In a ritual song of mortification, the faithful "scour and scrub" to
take away the stains of sin:
Bow down low, bow down low,
Wash, wash, clean, clean, clean, clean.
Scour and scrub, scour and scrub
From this floor the stains of sin.
Another time the ritual might be that of sweeping the floor clean:
Sweep, sweep and cleanse your floor,
Mother's standing at the door,
She'll give us good and precious wheat,
With which there is no chaff nor cheat.
The imaginary drinking of "spiritual wine" was another Shaker
ritual that had its appropriate songs. "The Gift of spiritual wine,"
wrote Isaac N. Youngs, "carried a great evidence of its reality, by the
paroxysms of intoxication which it produced, causing those who
drank it to stagger and reel like drunken people." This realistic imi-
tation of drunkenness is reflected in such drinking songs as the fol-
lowing:
i p P
Drink ye of Moth-er's wine Drink, drink, drink ye free • ly,
if J
Drink ye of Moth-er's wine, It will make you lim - ber.
Hi Jl Jl J Jl
I Jl Jl J J
If it makes you reel a • round, If it makes you fall down,
f \f
f
If it lays you on the floor, Rise and drink a lit - tie more.
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS 22Q
It is easy to laugh at the antics of the Shakers and to ridicule the
crude and naive manifestations of their religious fervor. But they
contributed something vital and genuine to American folkways, both
in their songs and in their dances. They had what one of their most
famous songs describes as "the gift to be simple." In their best songs
and rituals there is a spirit of play, a sense of the dramatic, and a feel-
ing for plastic movement that can readily be transferred to the aesthetic
realm of choreographic art, as Martha Graham has done in the ballet
Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copland based partly on
traditional Shaker tunes.
No song more fully embodies the Shaker spirit than does the one
titled "Simple Gifts," a favorite among all Shaker communities in the
United States. It is said to have been composed in 1848. The tempo is
allegro:
ji ji It li M n *=*=\
Tis the gift to be sim-ple, 'tis the
^ J) Jl I J1 Ji-^-^lM
gift to be free, Tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be, And when we find our-selves in the
J Ji I
place jusi right, Twill be in the val - ley of
j j i
love and de - light. When true sim - pli - ci - ty is gain'd, To
*
bow and to bend we shan't be a-sham'd, To turn, turn will
fl« J» Jl. p Jl Jl|J> J> J» J) J)|Ji Ji J ||
be our de- light till by turn -ing, turn -ing we come round right.
When fully under control, the exercises of the Shakers, including
elaborate marching formations and ritual dances of various kinds, were
230 I Expansion
well ordered and disciplined. But under the effect of revival frenzy,
decorum was often destroyed and unrestrained freedom prevailed in
the expression of religious emotion through song and dance. A meet-
ing at West Union, Indiana, in 1851, was thus described by an eye-
witness:
The Sound is like mighty thunderings, Some a Stamping with all
their might and Roaring out against the nasty stinking beast. . . .
Others turning with great Power and warring against the flesh, and
at the same time a number Speaking with new tongues with such
Majestic Signs and motions that it makes the powers of Darkness
tremble. . . .
Another eyewitness account, by A. J. Macdonald, describes a meeting
in the grip of extreme revival frenzy:
As the singing and dancing progress, the Worshippers become
more zealous, then frantic with excitement—until nothing but what
the "World" would call disorder and confusion reigns. As the ex-
citement increases, all order is forgotten, all unison of parts repudi-
ated, each sings his own tune, each dances his own dance, or leaps,
shouts, and exults with exceeding great joy— The rnore gifted of the
Females engage in a kind of whirling motion, which they perform
with seemingly incredible velocity their arms being extended hori-
zontally and their dresses blown out like a Balloon all around their
persons by the centrifugal force occasioned by the rapidity of their
motion. After performing from Fifty to One Thousand revolutions
each, they either swoon away and fall into the arms of their
Friends, or suddenly come to a stand, with apparently little or no
dizziness produced. Sometimes the Worshippers engage in a race
round the Room, with a sweeping motion of the Hands and Arms,
intended to present the act of sweeping the Devil out of the Room.
While the details might differ, the general symptoms are the same
as those manifested in the revival meetings of other separatist sects.
We may recall, for instance, that at the great Cane Ridge revival in
Kentucky in the summer of 1801, three thousand persons fell helpless
to the ground after swooning from religious ecstasy, and had to be
carried to the nearby meetinghouse until they recovered.
In this chapter we have tried to give representative examples of the
songs that came out of the great revivals and camp meetings that swept
the country from about 1800 to the eve of the Gvil War, reaching
REVIVALS AND CAMP MEETINGS
their apogee in the 18305 and 1840$. The music, as we have observed,
came from many sources and could not, in its constituent elements,
be regarded as a product of American revivalism. But the songs as a
whole were shaped by the environment and emerged remade as mani-
festations of the American frontier.
If anyone doubts that these revival songs are woven deep in the
fabric of America's music, deep in the strands of our national culture,
let him recall a song that all Americans know, that they have sung
for generations, and that each rising generation inherits anew— the song
that we know as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," but that, years
before Julia Ward Howe wrote the words beginning "Mine eyes have
seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," was a rousing camp-meet-
ing spiritual, with a typical repetitive stanza and a swinging hallelujah
chorus.
While the revivalist movement and the camp-meeting tradition
were developing this large body of popular hymnody, a closely re-
lated but distinctive body of religious folk song was taking shape
among the Negroes of the United States. The growth of the Negro
spirituals, and their "discovery" by the country at large at the rime
of the Civil War, will be the subject of the next chapter.
chapter twelve
The Negro spirituals
Ole Satan is a busy ole man,
He roll stones in my way;
Mass' Jesus is my bosom friend,
He roll 'em out o' my way.
NEGRO SPIRITUAL.
Ihere are very few accounts of the singing of the Negroes on South-
ern plantations previous to the Civil War. One of the earliest and most
detailed accounts is that of Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble, the Eng-
lish actress and writer who was married to Pierce Butler and spent
some time on his plantations on the coast of Georgia. In her Journal of
a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839, Fanny Kemble
writes of a Negro funeral that she attended in the evening, by torch-
light: "Presently the whole congregation uplifted their voices in a
hymn, the first high wailing notes of which— sung all in unison . . . —
sent a thrill through all my nerves." Here is Mrs. Kemble's description
of the singing of the Negroes who rowed to St. Simon's, one of the
Georgia Sea Islands at the entrance of the Altamaha on which her
husband's rice and cotton plantations were located: *
... As the boat pushed off, and the steersman took her into the
stream, the men at the oars set up a chorus, which they continued to
chant in unison with each other, and in time with their stroke, till
their voices were heard no more from the distance. I believe I have
mentioned . . . the peculiar characteristics of this veritable negro
minstrelsy— how they all sing in unison, having never, it appears, at-
tempted or heard anything like part-singing. Their voices seem
oftener tenor than any other quality, and the tune .and time they
1 Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839, pp.
128-129.
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 233
keep something quite wonderful; such truth of intonation and ac-
cent would make almost any music agreeable. That which I have
heard these people sing is often plaintive and pretty, but almost al-
ways has some resemblance to tunes with which they must have be-
come acquainted through the instrumentality of white men; their
overseers or masters whistling Scotch or Irish airs, of which they
have produced by ear these rtfacciamenti. The note for note repro-
duction of "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman?" in one of the most popular
of the so-called negro melodies with which all America and Eng-
land are familiar, is an example of this very transparent plagiarism;
and the tune with which Mr. — 's rowers started him down the
Altamaha, as I stood at the steps to see him off, was a very distinct
descendant of "Coming Through the Rye." The words, however,
were astonishingly primitive, especially the first line, which, when
it bursts from their eight throats in high unison, sent me into fits of
laughter:
Jenny shake her toe at me,
Jenny gone away.
(bis)
Hurrah! Miss Susy, oh!
Jenny gone away.
(bis)
Elsewhere Mrs. Kemble speaks of "an extremely pretty, plaintive,
and original air," to which "there was but one line, which was re-
peated with a sort of wailing chorus—'Oh! my massa told me, there's
no grass in Georgia.' Upon inquiring the meaning of which, I was
told it was supposed to be the lamentation of a slave from one of the
more northerly states, Virginia or Carolina, where the labor of hoeing
the weeds, or grass as they call it, is not nearly so severe as here, in
the rice and cotton lands of Georgia."
Later in her journal, Mrs. Kemble confesses that in her daily voy-
ages up and down the river she has encountered a number of Negro
songs that seemed to her "extraordinarily wild and unaccountable," and
for which she could recall no counterpart in any European melodies
familiar to her. Of these songs she writes: "The way in which the
chorus strikes in with the burden, between each phrase of the melody
chanted by a single voice, is very curious and effective. . . ." What
she describes here is the leader-and-chorus or call-and-response pattern
that we have noted as characteristic of African singing.
234 | Expansion
Mrs. Kemble refers repeatedly to the "strangeness" of the words
of the Negro songs, most of which made no sense to her. She was
struck by the oddness of one song whose burden was the line "God
made man, and man makes money!" Truly, as she remarks, "a peculiar
poetical proposition." She mentions "another ditty . . . they call
Caesar's song: it is an extremely spirited war-song, beginning, 'The
trumpets blow, the bugles blow— Oh, stand your ground!'" It would
be strange indeed to hear the slaves sing a "war-song," and there is a
strong suspicion that this may be an early example of a Negro spiritual.
Apparently no sharp distinction was made, either in the occasion
or the manner, between the singing of purely secular songs and those
having some sacred or spiritual import. Sir Charles Lyell, writing about
a visit to a Southern plantation in 1 849, remarks of some Negro boat-
men: "Occasionally they struck up a hymn, taught them by the Meth-
odists, in which the most sacred subjects were handled with a strange
familiarity." 2 Just such a rowing song as Lyell describes, from the
Port Royal Islands of South Carolina, is included in the first collection
of Negro spirituals to be published, Slave Songs of the United States
(1867). In it the Archangel Michael is made to row the boat ashore:
1. Mi -chad row de boat a -shore, Hai-Je • lu - jah!
J i1 '
„
2.Mi-chael boat a gos-pel boat, Hal - le • lu - jah!
Each line of this spiritual that was used as a rowing song is followed
by the refrain, "Hallelujah!" Additional verses of this song, "Michael
Row the Boat Ashore," are quoted below to illustrate the making of a
Negro spiritual:
On de rock gwine home in Jesus' name.
Gabriel blow de trumpet horn.
Jordan stream is wide and deep.
Jesus stand on t'oder side.
O de Lord he plant his garden deh.
He raise de fruit for you to eat.
» Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States of North America, New York,
1849, p. 244.
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 235
He dat eat shall neber die.
Sinner row to save your soul.
In addition to the repeated hallelujah refrain, the reader will recog-
nize in these verses some of the basic themes or tag lines of the revival
hymns discussed in the previous chapter. What is distinctive about the
Negro song, besides the manner of singing, is the adaptation of the
imagery and vocabulary of evangelical hymnody to concrete situations
related to his own environment and experience. For instance, in the
last verse the idea of the sinner saving his soul is fused with the neces-
sity of performing a given task (rowing) and attaining a practical ob-
jective (the shore). The crossing over Jordan is identified with the
immediate task of rowing across a body of water. The line "Michael
boat a music boat" probably an improvised variant on the line
"Michael boat a gospel boat," takes one by surprise; yet it leads natu-
rally to the mention of Gabriel's trumpet in the next line. This in
turn suggests the Last Judgment and the need to care for one's soul:
O you mind your boastin' talk.
Boastin' talk will sink your soul.
There the soul, like the boat, is in possible danger of sinking-* bold
and appropriate metaphor. The danger incurred by the sinner is as-
similated into the prospect of danger that could beset the boat in
landing if overtaken by darkness and rising waters:
When de ribber overflo,
O poor sinner, how you land?
Ribber run and darkness comin\
Sinner row to save your soul.
The more one lingers over this Negro spiritual, the more one becomes
aware of how beautifully its seemingly disparate elements are bound
together by an imaginative fusion of themes and images.
The English musician Henry Russell, who was in the United States
from 1833 to 1841, writes in his memoirs about a Negro service that
he attended:
I had long taken a deep interest in negro life, and I often won-
dered whether it was possible that negroes could originate melody.
I was desirous of testing this, and I made up my mind to visit many
negro meetings throughout several of the States. On my entering the
236 I Expansion
chapel at Vicksburg [then a slave town] there was a restlessness
about the little congregation-whether it emanated from one or twd
white people being present I cannot say. There was one peculiarity
that struck me very forcibly. When the minister gave out his own
version of -the Psalm, the choir commenced singing so rapidly that
the original tune absolutely ceased to exist— in fact, the fine old psalm
tune became thoroughly transformed into a kind of negro melody;
and so sudden was the transformation, by accelerating the time, that,
for a moment, I fancied that not only the choir but the little con-
gregation intended to get up a dance as part of the service.8
Russell was not far wrong in this last supposition. Had white persons
not been present it is very likely that the Negroes at that service would
have taken up that peculiar type of religious dancing and singing
known as "shout," which will be described later in this chapter. It
should be remarked that when Russell speaks of "negro melody" he
means that of blackface minstrelsy, the only kind with which he was
familiar. We may assume therefore that the old psalm tune which he
heard was not only greatly accelerated but also strongly syncopated,
in the manner of most minstrel melodies.
It is important to observe that hymns and spirituals were sung not
only in church and at religious meetings but also as accompaniment
to all kinds of labor. The singing of spirituals by rowers among the
Georgia Sea Islands has already been noted. In an account written by
William Cullen Bryant, who visited a tobacco factory in Richmond,
Virginia, in 1843, we learn of Negroes singing while performing seden-
tary work. The owner of the factory, noticing that Bryant's attention
was caught by the singing, offered some comments on it:
What is remarkable [he continued], their tunes are all psalm
tunes and the words are from hymn books; their taste is exclusively
for sacred music; they will sing nothing else. Almost all these per-
sons are church members; we have not a dozen about the factory
who are not so. Most of them are of the Baptist persuasion; a few
are Methodists.4
If we compare this with the description of Negro singing given by
Samuel Davies in 1755 (see p. 80), we are at once impressed by the
8 Henry Russell, Cheer! Boys, Cheer!, pp. 84-85.
4 Bryant, quoted in DeB&ufs Review^ n^n I (1850), p. 326. Cited by Johnson,
Folk Culture on St. Helena Island, p. 85.
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 237
similarity, for Davies wrote that the Negroes "are exceedingly de-
lighted with Watts' Song1' and "they have a kind of ecstatic delight in
psalmody." Behind the Negro spirituals, then, was a century-long tra-
dition "of ecstatic delight in psalmody." And what, indeed, is more
characteristic of the spirituals than that quality of ecstatic delight in
the glories of Heaven, the visions of the Promised Land, the mercy
of Jesus, and the salvation of the sinner?
Although the religious instruction of the Negroes left much to be
desired, they had ample opportunity to become familiar with English
hymnody. In 1833 the Rev. Samuel J. Bryan of Savannah issued A Plain
and Easy Catechism: designed for the benefit of colored children,
•with several verses and hymns. Charles C. Jones, in his work The Reli-
gious Instruction of the Negroes, published in 1842, states that the
period from 1820 to 1842 was "a period of revival of religion in re-
spect to this particular duty, throughout the Southern states; more es-
pecially between the years 1829 and 1835. This revival came silently,
extensively, and powerfully; affecting masters, mistresses, ministers,
members of the church, and ecclesiastical bodies of all the different
evangelical denominations." 5 The author's statement that the revival
"came silently" is not, we suppose, to be taken literally; for it gaye a
further impetus to the singing of hymns among the colored population.
The spread of religious instruction among the Negroes coincided
with the rise of the camp-meeting movement. As we know from the
journals of Lorenzo Dow and other contemporary sources, Negroes as
well as whites took part in the early camp meetings. How long this
practice continued is uncertain, but in any case there is no doubt that
the same songs were sung by both races. In a book published in 1860
there is an account of revival singing that implies a sort of rivalry in
this respect: ". . . the loudest and most fervent camp-meeting singers
amongst the whites are constrained to surrender to the darkeys in The
Old Ship of Zion or / Want to go to Glory." 6 The Southern evan-
gelist Lucius Bellinger wrote of one of his camp meetings: "The ne-
groes are out in great crowds, and sing with voices that make the
woods ring." T
Some early writers are struck by the "wildness" of the Negroes'
5 Jones, The Religious Instruction of the Negroes, pp. 96-97.
6 Dr. R. Hundley, Social Relations in Our Southern States. New York, 1860,
p. 348. Cited by Johnson, loc. cit.
7 Bellinger, Stray Leaves, p. 17.
238 I Expansion
singing, others are impressed by its musicality and "correctness." An
English journalist, William Howard Russell, writing in 1863, speaks
of "those wild Baptist chants about the Jordan in which they de-
light." § Another Englishman, the Rev. William W. Malet, writing
about the same time (1862), has this to say about the Negroes' singing:
Just before bed-time more solemn sounds are heard: the negro
is demonstrative in his religion, and loud and musical were heard
every evening the hymns. . . . Remarkable for correctness are their
songs, and both men's and women's voices mingled in soft though
far-sounding harmony. Some old church tunes I recognized.9
It is a question as to whether Reverend Malet is using the term "har-
mony" in its literal or in a figurative sense. If the former, it would
mean that the singing was in parts, something which no other account
mentions. It is likely that the writer refers simply to the blending of
voices of different tessitura, especially as he mentions the blending of
men's and women's voices. In any case, the manner of Negro singing
cannot be accurately described in terms either of "unison" or "har-
mony." It is more complex than that, a style sui generis. A clue to the
style is contained in Emily Hallowell's remark that the "harmonies
seem to arise from each [singer] holding to their own version of the
melodies or from limitation of compass." A fairly comprehensive de-
scription is given by William Francis Allen in his preface to Slave
Songs of the United States, based on singing heard in the Port Royal
Islands (South Carolina) in the early i86os:
There is no singing in parts, as we understand it, and yet no two
appear to be singing the same thing; the leading singer starts the
words of each verse, often improvising, and the others, who "base"
him, as it is called, strike in with the refrain, or even join in the
solo when the words are familiar. When the "base" begins the
leader often stops, leaving the rest of the words to be guessed at,
or it may be they are taken up by one of the other singers. And the
"basers" themselves seem to follow their own whims, beginning
when they please and leaving off when they please, striking an
octave above or below (in case they have pitched the tune too
high), or hitting some other note that "chords," so as to produce the
* W. H. Russell, My Diary, North and South, Boston, 1863, p. 143.
• Milet, An Errand to the South in the Summer of 1862, p. 49. Cited by John-
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 239
effect of a marvellous complication and variety and yet with the
most perfect time and rarely with any discord. And what makes it
all the harder to unravel a thread of melody out of this strange net-
work is that, like birds, they seem not infrequently to strike sounds
that cannot be precisely represented by the gamut and abound in
"slides from one note to another and turns and cadences not in ar-
ticulated notes."
Surely the reader who still bears in mind the account of early New
England popular psalmody cannot fail to recognize the analogies be-
tween that style and the manner of singing described above: "no two
appear to be singing the same thing" . . . "seem to follow their own
whims" . . . "striking an octave above or below" . . . "hard to un-
ravel a thread of melody" . . . abounding in "slides from one note
to another and turns and cadences not in articulated notes." There is
practically the whole catalogue of indictments drawn up against the
followers of the folk tradition by the New England reformers. That
Negro singing in America developed as the result of the blending of
several cultural traditions is certain; and it seems equally certain that
one of these traditions was the folk style of early New England psal-
mody and hymnody, carried southward in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries.
From Allen's description of Negro singing, apart from the specific
details, it is important to retain the impression of "a marvellous com-
plication and variety," for it is this complication and variety, fused
together by a powerful musical impulse (basically rhythmic), that gives
to the spirituals, and to other types of American Negro song, their
original and fascinating quality, most of which has been distorted or
destroyed in the standardized arrangements made to conform with
conventional European musical practice.
Discovery of the spirituals
As we have seen, the singing of the Negroes attracted the attention
of an isolated writer here and there in the period before the Civil War.
But it was only during and after the war that the songs of the
Negro, and the spirituals in particular, began to arouse widespread in-
terest and to receive general attention. The impulse to the "discovery**
of the spirituals came, as might be expected, from the North. The im-
mediate occasion was the sending of an educational mission to the
240 ] Expansion
Port Royal Islands in 1861. In the words of the editors of Slave Songs
of the United States:
The agents of the mission were not long in discovering the rich
vein of music that existed in these half -barbarous people, and when
visitors from the North were on the islands, there was nothing that
seemed better worth their while than to see a "shout" or hear the
people sing their "sperichils."
Listed as "established favorites" in those days were "Roll, Jordan,
Roll/' "I Hear from Heaven Today," "Blow Your Trumpet, Gabriel,"
"Praise, Member," "Wrestle On, Jacob," "The Lonesome Valley."
The first American Negro spiritual to appear in print with its
music is believed to be "Roll, Jordan, Roll," published by Miss Lucy
McKim of Philadelphia in 1862. The second spiritual to be printed was
probably "Done Wid Driber's Dribin," which appeared in an article
by H. G. Spaulding titled "Under the Palmetto," published in The
Continental Monthly for August, 1863. This song has the familiar
revival refrain, "Roll, Jordan, Roll":
ru j
Efefe
^
=£=t
^=$=
J J 1
Done wid dri - ber's dri - bin', Done wid dri • ber's
* j. J. I j, J J' J) iPf Ir J' J'lJ f II
dri -bin', Done wid dri -ber's dri - bin', Roll, Jor- dan, roll.
The verses continue with "Done wid Massa's hollerin' " and "Done wid
Missus' scoldin'." This is one of the very few spirituals that make di-
rect reference to emancipation.
Another emancipation song was published by Colonel Thomas
Wentworth Higginson in his interesting essay, "Negro Spirituals," in
The Atlantic Monthly for June, 1867. This was "No More Peck o'
Corn for Me," also known, from its refrain, as "Many Thousands Go."
Other verses are: "No more driver's lash for me,"— "No more pint o'
salt for me,"—"No more hundred lash for me," etc. According to
Higginson, the peck of corn and pint of salt were slavery's rations. It is
said to have been first sung when Beauregard took the slaves to the
islands to build the fortifications at Hilton Head and Bay Point:
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 241
r ir1 t J
No more peck o* corn forme, No more, no more;
' I" f r II" s J * In r' -I ^
p J r ip r
No more peck o* corn for me, Man - y tou - sand go.
Colonel Higginson speculated on the origin of the spirituals and
recounted an incident that enabled him actually to witness the "birth"
of one of these songs. This occurred when he was being rowed across
from Beaufort to Ladies' Island:
One of the oarsmen, a brisk young fellow ... on being asked
for his theory of the matter, dropped out a coy confession. "Some
good sperituals," he said, "are start jest out o' curiosity. I bin a-raise
a sing myself once." ... I implored him to proceed.
"Once we boys went for tote some rice, and de nigger driver, he
keep a-callin' on us: and I say, "O, de ole nigger driver!" Den
anudder said, "Fust t'ing my mammy tole me was not'in so bad as
a nigger driver." Den I made a sing, just puttin' a word and den
anudder word."
Then he began singing and the men, after listening a moment,
joined in the chorus as if it were an old acquaintance, though they
evidently had never heard it before. I saw how easily a new "sing"
took root among them.
O' de ole nigger driver!
O, gwine away!
Fust t'ing my mammy tell me.
O, gwine away!
Tell me 'bout de nigger driver,
O, gwine away!
Nigger driver second devil,
O, gwine away!
Best t'ing for do he driver,
O, gwine away!
Knock he down and spoil he labor—
O, gwine away!
One reason, of course, that the Negroes could so readily improvise
a song was that the metrical pattern was pretty well established be-
242 I Expansion
forehand. The above arrangement conforms to the general pattern of
Negro songs with which the reader is already familiar. In the same
manner, a poet can readily turn out a sonnet, because the form has
already been determined for him.
In an address delivered in Philadelphia on July 9, 1862, J. Miller
McKim told of a somewhat similar experience, except that he was
given only an explanation, not a specimen of the product:
I asked one of these blacks, one of the most intelligent of them,
where they got these songs.
"Dey make 'em, sah."
"How do they make them?"
After a pause, evidently casting about for an explanation, he said:
"I'll tell you; it's dis \vay: My master call me up an* order me a
short peck of corn and a hundred lash. My friends see it and is sorry
for me. When dey come to de praise meeting dat night dey sing
about it. Some's very good singers and know how; and dey work
it in, work it in, you know, till dey get it right; an^ dat's de way." 10
Although this anecdote savors of abolitionist propaganda, we may ac-
cept the hypothesis that many of the spirituals (and other songs too,
for that matter) were "made" in this spontaneous manner, while re-
iterating the proviso that they were made largely out of pre-existing
elements, both as regards the words and the music. That the factor of
invention, as well as of accretion and transformation, entered into the
process, is not to be denied. But it was probably invention of detail
rather than of a whole: some felicitous phrase or contagious tag line
thought up and caught up on the spur of the moment and incorporated
into the ever-changing content of a traditionally established form. We
have already observed something of this "spontaneous generation" of
song in connection with the revival hymns, and the principle under-
lying the creation of the Negro spirituals is the same; as it is, indeed,
for all folk music.
This seems an appropriate place to quote the definition of a spiritual
—rather ironic, but realistic— attributed by R. W. Gordon to "a learned
colleague":
A Spiritual is nothing but a tune— never twice the same—accom-
panied by not over two standard verses-not the same-followed by
10 Quoted in Allen, Slave Songs of the United States.
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 243
as many other verses from different songs as the singer happens to
remember.11
It is salutary to quote this definition here because it will serve to warn
the reader against assuming that there is ever one and only one version
of a Negro spiritual. There is, for example, no fixed, definite, and un-
varying musicopoetic entity known as "Nobody Knows the Trouble
I See." Any particular printed version or arrangement is arbitrary and
artificially static. The spiritual itself is a composite and infinitely varied
creation that exists with its own genuine being only in that moment
of time during which it is actually sung. Captured on a phonograph
recording, that experience can be repeated at will, but the song itself
goes on having its own independent existence, so that another record-
ing made a year later will not be exactly the same song. We may be
able to record a hundred different versions of a song to which we give
the same title; but we cannot say that any one of these versions is
the song. The song is all of them together and none of them indi-
vidually.
The first collection of Negro spirituals
As a result of the activities of the United States Educational Mis-
sion to the Port Royal Islands, the first collection of American Negro
spirituals was published in 1867 under the title, Slave Songs of the
United States, edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware,
and Lucy McKim Garrison. Though this collection contains many
errors and bears slight evidence of musical scholarship, it yet retains
its importance as a primary source. Only the words and the tunes are
printed, without harmonization. Some representative spirituals from
this collection will be quoted. The editors were at least aware of the
difficulties of their undertaking. They had heard these spirituals sung
in their pristine state by the Negroes on these isolated rice and cotton
plantations: they knew it was different from any other kind of sing-
ing with which they were familiar, and they made it clear in their
prefatory remarks that their notations could only approximate, not
accurately reproduce, the characteristic traits of the music in actual
performance:
11 Gordon, "The Negro Spiritual," in The Carolina Low Country, p. ioj.
244 I Expansion
It is difficult to express the entire character of these negro bal-
lads by mere musical notes and signs. The odd turns made in the
throat and the curious rhythmic effect produced by single voices
chiming in at different irregular intervals seem almost as impossible
to place on the score as the singing of birds or the tones of an
aeolian harp.
Only the advent of the phonograph could solve this problem of re-
producing folk music as it actually sounds.
Most of the early writers refer to the spirituals as being in the
"minor," probably because the unusual intervals and the manner of
singing gave in many cases an impression of "melancholy" or "plain-
tiveness." In spi^e of this impression, it has been established that the
majority of spirituals are in the major mode. Of 527 Negro songs
examined by H. E. Krehbiel, 331 were found to be in the major mode.
In addition, 1 1 1 songs were pentatonic. Furthermore, according to
Krehbiel's data:
Of the 331 major songs twenty . . . have a flat seventh; seventy-
eight— that is, one fourth— have no seventh, and forty-five, or nearly
one-seventh, have no fourth. Fourth and seventh are the tones which
are lacking in the pentatonic scale, and the songs without one or the
other of them approach the pentatonic songs in what may be called
their psychological effect.
On the whole, Krehbiel interprets the musical data "as emphasizing
the essentially energetic and contented character of Afro-American
music, notwithstanding that it is the fruit of slavery." 12
One of the most characteristic spirituals, both musically and poeti-
cally, that appeared in this pioneer collection, is the one called "O'er
the Crossing,11 concerning which the editors printed the following
note: "This 'infinitely quaint description of the length of the heavenly
road/ as Col. Higginson styles it, is one of the most peculiar and
widespread of the spirituals. It was sung as given [herej in Caroline
Co., Virginia, and probably spread southward from this state variously
modified in different localities." What is especially to be remarked in
this song is the rhythmic pattern of the melody at the phrase begin-
ning, "Keep prayin'." This rhythmic figure, /J"3, is characteristic
12 Krehbiel, Afro-American Folk Songs, p. 70. Copyright 1914 by G. Schirmer,
Inc.
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS
245
of all types of Afro-American music, from spirituals to ragtime. Here
is the song:
-jhjH — -j-
=3=
=4=
"Is —
Ft
1 —
F^
1 .
1
* Bend
• — •.*.
-in' knees
. j i j)
=t
^=
a -
H"-
ach
==|
=#=
-in',
Tt=
=|=
^
|-di__ . S 1
Bod-y racked wid
. hiJ) 1 h=i
~cr»
pain
..jB «-_
I wish
-3 H |-
_»
I
was
» •»
a
4*-
child
_• —
of
=*
m i m .-|...y ^flLL^^L. j — j
God, I'd git home bime-
<• *T IT ft i
1 — r
r-
M-
Cy ** p — -j — -
T I)
=3=
Mt
~~W
P~
P_
K — L
! P 1
by
Keep pray -in', I do be-lieve We're a
^^
long time wag - gin' o' de cross - in'; Keep
be^%^
m
pray-in*, I do be-lieve We'll git home to heaven bime - by.
It is not clear what is meant by the line "We're a long time waggin'
o' de crossinV It has been suggested that "waggin' " may be a corrup-
tion of "lagging." Another possibility is "Waggoning o'er de crossinY'
which would relate to a familiar experience in fording rivers. The
fourth stanza of this spiritual contains some striking imagery:
O see dat forked lightnin'
A- jump from cloud to cloud,
A-pickin' up God's chil'n;
Dey'll git home bime-by.
Pray, mourner, I do believe, etc.
The use of spirituals as working songs has already been mentioned.
Of the spirituals included in Slaves Songs of the United States, twelve
were most commonly used for rowing. One of the editors, Charles P.
Ware, writes as follows about these songs:
As I have written these tunes, two measures are to be sung to
each stroke, the first measure being accented by the beginning of the
stroke, the second by the rattle of the oars in the rowlocks. On the
passenger boat at the [Beaufort] ferry they rowed from sixteen to
246 I Expansion
thirty strokes a minute; twenty-four was the average. Of the tunes I
heard I should say that the most lively were "Heaven bell a-ring,"
"Jine 'em," "Rain fall," "No man," "Bell da ring" and "Can't stay
behin' "; and that "Lay this body down," "Religion so sweet" and
"Michael, row," were used when the load was heavy or the tide
was against.
Accounts such as the above confirm the lively, vigorous, strongly
rhythmic character of the Negro spirituals.
We have already examined the spiritual "Michael, Row the Boat
Ashore," and now we may glance at another spiritual mentioned above
as one of the songs used for the slower and heavier tasks of rowing,
"Lay This Body Down":
walk -in' troo de grave -yard; Lay dis bod-y down.
This may have been the same song that W.*H. Russell heard when
he was being rowed from Pocotaligo to Barnwell Island by some
Negro boatmen at midnight:
The oarsmen, as they bent to their task, beguiled the way sing-
ing in unison a real negro melody, which was unlike the works of
the Ethiopian Serenaders as anything in song could be unlike an-
other. It was a barbaric sort of madrigal, in which one singer be-
ginning was followed by the others in unison, repeating the refrain
in chorus, and full of quaint expression and melancholy:—
Oh your soul! oh my soul! I'm going to the churchyard
To lay this body down;
Oh my soul! oh your soul! We're going to the churchyard
To lay this nigger down.
And then some appeal to the difficulty of passing the "Jawdam" con-
stituted the whole of the song, which continued with unabated en-
ergy during the whole of the little voyage. To me it was a strange
scene. The stream, dark as Lethe, flowing between the silent, house-
less, rugged banks, lighted up near the landing by the fire in the
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS
247
woods, which reddened the sky— the wild strain, and the unearthly
adjurations to the singers' souls, as though they were palpable, put
me in mind of the fancied voyage across the Styx.13
Apart from its picturesque quality, this account from a book pub-
lished in 1863 confirms the description given by Mrs. Kemble of the
manner in which the spirituals were sung: the singing in unison, the
beginning of each verse by the leader alone, the repeating of the re-
frain in chorus, and a certain wild and barbaric effect that these
writers are able to feel but not to define.
Russell states that the Negro melodies he heard in the Port Royal
Islands were completely unlike those of the "Ethiopian Serenaders,"
that is, the blackface minstrels. H. G. Spaulding, in the article previ-
ously cited, wrote that the melodies of the Negro spirituals "bear as
little resemblance to the popular Ethiopian melodies of the day as
twilight to noonday." Both writers are contradicted by the musical
facts. Doubtless they received an impression of hearing something
completely different because of the manner of singing and the circum-
stances under which they heard the spirituals. But the tunes themselves
in many cases reveal a close kinship with those made familiar by the
blackface minstrels. The editors of Slave Songs of the United States
were sometimes aware of these similarities. Regarding the spiritual
"Gwine Follow," William Allen observes: "The second part of this
tune is evidently 'Buffalo' (variously known also as Charleston' or
'Baltimore') 'Gals.' "-
f y Vi IF" £*
Tit - ty Ma - ry, you know I gwine
n Ji* + + J-F— / ^' | •' ^ / ^/ yzz
fbi-low, I gwine fol-low, gwine fol-low, Brud-der
— a -
K p ^ * .JJ JJ ' *> •' f K
Wil-liam, you know I gwine to fol-low, For to
W k
do my Fa-der will.
11 W. H. Russell, op. cit., chap. 18.
*' ' V V :?=
Tis well and good I'm a -
248 I Expansion
9 f 9 J t t t \t 9 J 9 V
com -in* here to-night, I'm a com-in'here to-night I'm a -
w
com-in'here to-night. Tis well and good, I'm a
f P (M F F [I P' -^^
light, For to do my ra - der will.
com-in'here to-night, For to do my ra-der will.
Additional similarities were noted by H. E. Krehbiel in his work
Afro-American Folk Songs. He observed particularly "a palpable like-
ness" between "Lord, Remember Me" and "Camptown Races," the
latter composed by Stephen Foster in 1850. He believes that the tune
was invented by Foster and borrowed by the Negroes for their spirit-
ual. This is entirely plausible; yet the possibility of a common ancestor
for both should not be discounted. The exact process of tune borrow-
ing, conscious and unconscious, that went on during this period will
in all probability never be fully known nor completely traced. What
matters most, perhaps, is to recognize, in addition to definite borrow-
ings (whatever their direction), a general family resemblance in the
basic melodic materials of the three main popular traditions of vocal
music that developed in the United States during the first half of the
nineteenth century: the revival hymns of the whites, the Negro spirit-
uals and work songs, and the so-called "plantation" or "Ethiopian"
melodies. What gave to each current or branch its peculiar character
was the "working over" of the material, the transformation of basic
elements through the shaping spirit and the prevailing trend of each
tradition, each with its concomitant cultural factors, ranging from an-
cestral African patterns to vulgarized commercial entertainment. None
of these traditions was particular about the kind of materials it used,
provided these could be made effective for the purpose at hand. And
the force of the tradition, in each case, generally brought about the
transformation required for its needs. There are examples of old Brit-
ish ballads, for instance, so "worked over" by the tradition of Negro
folk singing that they are scarcely recognizable.
Regarding the spiritual "Oh, Freedom Over Me," Krehbiel remarks
that it "challenges no interest for its musical contents, since it is a
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 249
compound of two white men's tunes— "Lily Dale," a sentimental
ditty, and "The Battle Cry of Freedom," a patriotic song composed
by George F. Root. . . ." l4 The challenge, however, would lie in
hearing what the Negroes might do with this composite, borrowed
tune after they had worked it over for a generation or two. Folk
music is made, not born.
As a final selection from Slave Songs of the United States, we quote
the spiritual "Good-bye, Brother," which thoroughly resembles a typ-
ical "Ethiopian" melody, or, if you prefer, a Stephen Foster tune:
dt=
Good-bye, bro-ther, good-bye, brother, If I don't see you more;
Now God bless you, now God bless you, If I don't see you more.
The folk tradition of the spirituals
Mention has previously been made of the survival of lining-out
among the Negroes. This practice is found in connection with the
slow-paced and embellished singing of old hymns, undoubtedly de-
rived from the eighteenth-century tradition. Since this procedure con-
forms perfectly to the leader-and-chorus or call-and-response pattern
of African song, its adoption by the Negroes in America is a natural
instance of musical syncretism or blending. Mary Allen Grissom, in
The Negro Sings a New Heaven, recorded some examples of Negro
hymns sung and chanted with lining-out by the leader. Regarding these
she writes:
This type of singing is used particularly at funerals and very sol-
emn occasions. It is rarely heard now. It probably had its origin in
the old type of hymn-singing, used in the early church, in which the
hymn was "lined" by a leader. When given with the Negro's peculiar
style of chanting and sliding to and from the main melody note, it is
distinctly a thing apart. The example given here is purely Negro
both in tune and words, but frequendy one hears a well-known
l* Krehbiel, op. cit^ p. 17.
250 I Expansion
hymn chanted. The entire congregation sings in unison with each
line of the verse chanted by the leader.18
FULL CHORUS
Very slowly
4|" f M- jap Irf.JjTTo j
gate They —
would _ not let
CHANT flUEADER)
in. I prayed to my good lawd. I .
prayed __ to
CHANT
rjt <BT %•>•* J **==*
. ., :^( ^^-x^^ *L/ •*•
3E
my.
good
Lawd to cleanse me from all sin To
cleanse me
sin.
We have now brought the history of the religious songs of the
American Negro— including the African backgrounds discussed in an
earlier chapter—up to the time of their general "discovery" and initial
diffusion through the printed page shortly after the close of the Civil
War. It would be well at this point to summarize the data that we have
been able to assemble from the various contemporary accounts to
which reference has been made.
1. The spirituals were sung with a freedom, independence, and in-
dividuality in the vocal lines that conveyed the effect of a sort of un-
conventional polyphony, attaining to "a marvellous complication and
variety."
2. There was a prevalence of the leader-and-chorus (or call-and-
response) pattern, the melody sung or chanted by a single voice, the
chorus joining in with the refrain.
3. Spirituals were used as working songs, e.g., for rowing and for
field tasks, as well as at religious meetings.
4. Some of the melodies resembled familiar European tunes, while
others were "extraordinarily wild and unaccountable."
18 Descriptive note and musical example used by permission of the publisher,
The University of North Carolina Press.
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 251
5. There was much singing of standard hymns, cspecialy Methodist
and Baptist, among the Negro population of the South.
6. The Negroes participated in camp-meetings and often sang the
same revival songs as the whites did.
7. At some Negro services, psalms and long-meter hymns were
sung according to the old practice of lining-out (which could be
readily assimilated into the call-and-response pattern).
8. The singing of the Negroes was characterized by peculiar vocal
effects, difficult if not impossible to indicate by regular notation.
In the remainder of this chapter an attempt will be made to throw
further light on these aspects of Negro song, with a view to establish-
ing its true nature and its present status.
It is necessary to recognize the existence of two main currents in
the history of the Negro spiritual after the Civil War. One current
tended to assimilate the spirituals into the forms and techniques of
European art music. The other tended to conserve their traditional folk
character with retention of primitive and archaic survivals. The first
spread rapidly and widely through the publication of harmonized ar-
rangements, the tours of trained Negro choirs at home and abroad,
concert performances by celebrated artists, the vogue of choral ar-
rangements used by choirs and glee clubs everywhere, and instru-
mental transcriptions or stylizations of every sort. The second fol-
lowed a kind of undercover existence, somewhat as the original Negro
spirituals did during the ante-bellum period; that is, cultivated by the
folk, chiefly in rural areas or small communities, and attracting little
attention from outsiders. It is to this second current that we shall direct
our attention, not because we deprecate the pleasure that may be de-
rived from listening to artistic arrangements of Negro spirituals beauti-
fully sung by trained artists but because it seems more important, from
the standpoint of cultural history, to try to know and understand a
musical tradition in its unique and essential nature rather than in its
secondary derivations. The spirituals are a folk product, and their
true character must therefore be sought in a folk tradition.
The folklorist should be our guide in any folk tradition. It is to the
folklorists of the twentieth century that we owe the "rediscovery" of
the Negro spirituals, and indeed of virtually the whole body of Negro
folk music, including the remarkable wealth of secular songs of which
very little was known previously. In several current collections of
American folk music, there can now be found numerous Negro songs
252 I Expansion
carefully and faithfully notatcd with the most scrupulous regard for
authenticity and accuracy. Better still, in recordings issued by Ethnic
Folkways Records and by the Library of Congress, the singing kself
can be heard in all the "marvellous complication and variety" that as-
tonished and delighted the first Northern visitors to the Port Royal
Islands.
One of the earliest and most detailed descriptions of authentic
Negro folk singing was given by Jeannette R. Murphy in an article
published in Popular Science Monthly for September, 1899. Speaking
of the difficulty that a white person has in singing Negro spirituals, she
points out that "he must break every law of musical phrasing and nota-
tion." Furthermore:
. . . around every prominent note he must place a variety of
small notes, called "trimmings," and he must sing tones not found in
our scale; he must on no account leave one note until he has the
next one well under control. . . . He must often drop from a high
note to a very low one; he must be very careful to divide many of
his monosyllabic words in two syllables, placing a forcible accent
on the last one, so that "dead" will be "da-dkte," "back" becomes
&," "chain" becomes "cha-fl/w."
To illustrate some of these points, Mrs. Murphy printed her notation
of a spiritual, which is of exceptional interest both textually and musi-
cally: 16
(J-84)
* J' J» J. Jg
Ma - ry and Mar - thy had a cha - ain
P
^
Walk
Je - ru - s'lem jus like Job! An a
j. j j
^m
*l
eb* - ry link was a Je - sus na - amef
"3 J'
m
m
Walk Je • ru-s'lem jus like Job!.
• Popular Science Monthly, Sept. 1899, p. 665.
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS
253
When I comes ter die
gwme ter
Je • ru - s'lem
It should be added that the difficulties mentioned above apply chiefly
to persons accustomed to standard or conventional musical practice;
there are white folk singers who sing spirituals in this same style, with
"trimmings" and all the other characteristics of the tradition.
Natalie Curtis Burlin, in an article titled "Negro Music at Birth,"
published in 1919, caught the mood of Negro singing with real sym-
pathy and understanding; she is describing a group of Negroes in a
meeting at the Calhoun Industrial School in Alabama:
Seated in rows, reverent and silent, they waited for something to
happen. And as they sat, patient in the early warmth of the April
sun, suddenly a rhythmic tremor seemed to sway over the group
. . . there arose a vibration, an almost inaudible hum . . . and then
the sound seemed to mold itself into form, rhythmic, melodic, taking
shape in the air ... till soon the entire gathering was rocking in
time to one of the old plantation melodies. Men, women and chil-
dren sang, and the whole group swung to and fro, from side to side,
with the rhythm of the song, while many of the older people
snapped their ringers in emphasis like the sharp click of an African
gourd rattle. . . .
And as usual with Negroes, this was extemporaneous part-sing-
ing—women making up alto, men improvising tenor or bass, the
music as a whole possessed so completely by them all (or so utterly
possessing them!) that they were free to abandon themselves to the
inspiration of their creative instinct.11
17 Musical Quarterly, 1, i (Jan. 1919), 87-88.
254 I Expansion
Elsewhere in the same article, the author telk of hearing a group of
Negro workers in a tobacco factory and of being impressed by "their
brilliant unmodulated grouping of diatonic chords, their sudden inter-
locking of unrelated majors and minors, and their unconscious defiance
of all man-made laws of Voice progressions.1 "
The transition from unison to part singing in the Negro spirituals
evidently took place in the decades following the Civil War and was
probably due to increased contact with white persons and to the in-
fluence of the schools in particular. The educated Negro grew to be
ashamed of the "barbaric1* elements in his music. Institutions for the
education of Negroes, such as Fisk University, and the Hampton and
Tuskegee Institutes, attempted to "improve" the musical quality of
Negro singing by making it conform to the standards of "refined"
practice. "Wrong" notes and "incorrect" harmonies had to be changed
in the name of "progress." Nevertheless, the folk tradition persisted,
as we have remarked, with its own style of singing, its own harmonies
and progressions.
The question remains: what were the sources of this tradition? Did
it originate with the Negro or did he adopt it from the white man?
In recent years much controversy has surrounded this question. Some
investigators, notably George Pullen Jackson, Guy B. Johnson, and
Newman White, maintain that the Negro spirituals were copied from
the white spirituals, that is, the religious folk songs of the rural South-
ern white population. Guy B. Johnson found pentatonic scales, flat
sevenths, and "neutral" thirds in the folk songs of the whites as well as
the Negroes, and concluded from this evidence that the songs of the
latter were imitations of the former. The melodic and textual analo-
gies between white and Negro spirituals compiled by G. P. Jackson
are intended to support the same conclusion. What these investigators
have done is to establish an incontrovertible correspondence or anal-
ogy between the white and Negro spirituals, but they have proved
nothing as regards the direction of the influences. The fact that the
white spirituals were printed before the Negro spirituals is not proof
that they existed earlier in the oral tradition.
The opposite theory, upheld by Krehbiel, by Kolinski, by Herzog,
and by Waterman, is that the Negro spirituals, and all Afro-American
music in general, embodies traits that are fundamentally of African
origin, though blended with Anglo-American elements. Waterman
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 255
stresses the concept of "hot" rhythm as the essential characteristic of
African and Afro-American music, and states:
The religious songs the Negroes learned ffom the missionaries
were soon given the "hot" treatment. Known today as "Spirituals,"
they are found, in their folk setting ... to employ hand-clapping
and foot-stamping in lieu of drumming, and to make consistent use
of off-beat phrasing in a manner directly in line with African musi-
cal thought-patterns. The concept of "hot" religious music had been
communicated to Southern whites by the close of the revivalistic
period, during which heavily rhythmic hymns were useful in in-
ducing camp-meeting "possession." l8
More will be said regarding the concept of "hot" rhythm and its in-
fluence on American music in the chapter dealing with the rise of jazz.
Waterman's thesis that Negro "hot" rhythm, as exemplified in the
spirituals, may have influenced the camp-meeting hymns of Southern
whites, is plausible and extremely interesting.
The musicologist M. Kolinski made a comparative study of Negro
spirituals and West African songs, which has not been published, but
which Waterman summarizes as follows: 10 Thirty-six spirituals are
either identical or closely related in tonal structure (scale and mode)
to West African songs. The spiritual "Cyan' Ride" has an almost exact
counterpart in a Nigerian song, and "No More Auction Block" is
clearly the same as one of the Ashanti songs. Certain features of
melodic progressions such as "pendular thirds," sequences of at least
three intervals of a third moving in the same direction, and both linear
and pendular combinations of fourths, are common in both the spirit-
uals and the West African songs. Duple or binary meters are predomi-
nant in both groups of songs. Syncopated and rubato figures, triplets,
off-beat phrases, and sequences of several notes of equal time value,
appear in the same forms in both bodies of music. The beginning
rhythms of thirty-four spirituals are almost exactly like those of sev-
eral songs of Dahomey and the Gold Coast. Regarding the leader-
chorus pattern, generally admitted to be an African survival in the
spirituals, Kolinski found that in many cases the overlapping of parts
produced identical polyphonic patterns in the two types of songs.
l§ Waterman, Journal of the American Musicological Society, I, i (1048)1 30.
19 See bibliography for Chapter 4.
256 I Expansion
Fifty spirituals were discovered, in this respect, to have the identical
formal structure of certain West African songs.
Kolinski concludes, according to Waterman, that while many of
the spirituals are evidently patterned after European tunes, some with-
out apparent distortion, they are all either altered so as to conform, or
selected for adoption because they already did conform, to West
African musical patterns. It is in this connection that he indicates the
role of a "common musical base" of European and West African
music, which facilitated this musical syncretism.
The theory of musical syncretism of West African and European
elements in the American Negro spiritual— whether or not the hypoth-
esis of a "common musical base" be accepted— seems the soundest con-
clusion that can be reached in the light of the available evidence.
There remains to speak of a highly important custom in connection
with Negro religious practice, one having a direct and vital bearing on
the preservation of the spirituals in their traditional form. We refer
to the "shout" or "holy dance" of the Negroes. This ceremony was
described in The Nation of May 30, 1867, by a writer who had wit-
nessed it on a Southern plantation:
. . The true "shout" takes place on Sundays, or on "praise"
nights through the week, and either in the praise-house or in some
cabin in which a regular religious meeting has been held. Very likely
more than half the population of a plantation is gathered together.
. . . The benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal
meeting is over, and old and young, men and women ... all stand
up in the middle of the flodr, and when the "sperichil" is struck up
begin first walking and by and by shuffling around, one after an-
other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the
progression is mainly due to a jerking, hitching motion which agi-
tates the entire shouter and soon brings out streams of perspiration.
Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle they sing
the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself is also sung
by the dancers. But more frequently a band, composed of some of
the best singers and of tired shouters, stand at the side of the room
to "base" the others, singing the body of the song and clapping their
hands together or on the knees. Song and dance are alike extremely
energetic, and often, when the shout lasts into the middle of the
night, the monotonous thud, thud of the feet prevents sleep within
half a mile of the praise-house.30
*° Quoted in Allen, op. cit.
THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS 2 57
It is above all through the rhythmic ecstasy of the shout that the
"hot" element in the spirituals has been kept alive.
The association of the shout or holy dance with the spiritual seems
natural indeed, for in the words of Robert W. Gordon, "Anyone who
has heard the spiritual properly sung has found it practically impos-
sible to keep still while listening. The rhythm demands bodily move-
ment. The feet insist on tapping, the body sways in time, or the hands
pat. There is an almost uncontrollable desire to rise and throw the
whole body into the rhythm." 21
The sentence, "The rhythm demands bodily movement," links
the spirituals and shouts to the tradition of African music on the one
hand, and on the other to some of the most distinctive manifestations
of America's music from blackface minstrelsy to ragtime and jazz.
We have seen that Henry Russell, when he attended the Negro church
service in Vicksburg, momentarily expected the congregation "to get
up and dance/' Had they done so, Russell would doubtless have found
the spectacle "quaint," or "barbaric," or "amusing." These were the
terms most often applied by white observers to Negro singing and
dancing. The dancing, in particular, was always regarded as amusing
by white people. It exerted a peculiar and powerful fascination,
whether in the plantation "walk-arounds" or in the "ring shouts."
The division of secular or secular usage made little difference as far
as the basic facts are concerned. The prancing walk-arounds and the
shuffling shouts were motivated by an identical impulse and resulted
from the same traditional concept of "hot" rhythm in the indissoluble
union of song and dance.
The Northern abolitionists and educational uplifters who "dis-
covered" and publicized the Negro spirituals during and after the
Civil War were intent upon dignifying the Negro and emphasizing
what they considered to be his higher, spiritual qualities. Hence they
stressed the Negro's religious songs and neglected his secular songs,
though they could not in many instances fail to recognize that there
was a close connection between the two. The members of the educa-
tional mission to the Port Royal Islands prided themselves that they
"were not long in discovering the rich vein of music that existed in
these half-barbarous people"; but actually this was no discovery at
all. At least forty years earlier white musicians and entertainers had
21 Gordon, 'The Negro Spiritual," op. cit.y p. 192.
258 I Expansion
begun to discover "the rich vein of music" that existed among the
Negroes. From the early 18205 they began tentatively to exploit that
vein, and by the 18405 the exploitation was in full swing. This ex-
ploitation of the rich vein of Negro music in the realm of popular
entertainment came to be known as the "Ethiopian business," or
"Negro minstrelsy," or simply "American minstrelsy." It brought to
the whole of America, and to much of the rest of the world, a new
type of humor and a new note of pathos that could have come only
from the background of American plantation life.
chapter thirteen
The Ethiopian business
The source of Negro minstrelsy is to be found in the soiJ of the Southland.
CARL WITTKE, TAMBO AND BONES.
Une evening in February of the year 1843, f°ur grotesque figures
in blackface, wearing white trousers, striped calico shirts, and blue
calico coats with long swallowtails, appeared on the stage of the
Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City. They proceeded to enter-
tain the delighted audience with a combination of singing, dancing,
Negro dialect patter, and instrumental music played on the banjo,
violin, bone castanets, and tambourine. Their performance concluded
with a general dance and "breakdown."
This was the historic debut of "the novel, grotesque, original and
surpassingly melodious Ethiopian Band, entitled, the Virginia Min-
strels," as advertised in the New York papers. The Virginia Minstrels
had been recently organized in New York City by four friends who
possessed a measure of musical and comic talent, and some theatrical
experience. These four friends were Daniel Decatur Emmett l (vio-
lin), Billy VVhitlock (banjo), Frank Brower ("bones"), and Dick
Pelham (tambourine). All of them were to leave their mark in the
American popular theater, and one of them— "Old Dan" Emmett— was
to win great and lasting fame as the composer of "Dixie." They ad-
vertised their show as "an exclusively minstrel entertainment . . .
entirely exempt from the vulgarities and other objectionable features
which have hitherto characterized Negro extravaganzas."
From this it appears that "Negro extravaganzas"— blackface enter-
tainment by white performers who blackened their faces with burnt
cork— had been familiar to the American public for some rime. Amer-
ican entertainers, such as George Washington Dixon and "Daddy"
1 In his early years on the minstrel stage, he was known as "Old Dan Emmit."
259
260 | Expansion
Rice, had been giving blackface performances since the 18205. How,
then, could the Virginia Minstrels claim that their "Ethiopian Band"
was a novel and original type of entertainment? The novel feature of
the Virginia Minstrels was the association of four entertainers in a
coordinated team, dressed in distinctive costumes, each assigned a
specific role in the ensemble, each playing a characteristic instrument,
and putting on a complete, self-contained show. This four-man team
was the classic type of American minstrel show that sprang into enor-
mous popularity in the two decades preceding the Civil War.
The "Ethiopian business" prospered tremendously, much to the
chagrin of the upholders of the genteel tradition. As one writer
lamented: "How frequently the most eminent in tragedy or comedy,
have toiled through the choicest efforts, to scanty listeners; while
upon the same evenings, fantazias upon the bones, or banjo, have
called forth the plaudits of admiring thousands." It should perhaps
be added that among those "admiring thousands" were some of "the
most eminent in tragedy or comedy," who by no means disdained
the novelty, the exuberant nonsense, the genuine pathos, and even the
underlying implications of tragedy, that characterized the best of
American minstrelsy. Thackeray was deeply moved by Negro minstrel
melodies; the great actor Forrest declared that "he knew no finer
piece of tragic acting than the impersonation of Dan Bryant as the
hungry Negro in Old Time Rocks." (Dan Bryant, like Emmett and
E. P. Christy, was one of the famous pioneer figures of minstrelsy.)
The vogue of minstrelsy spread rapidly and far. It reached Cali-
fornia with the forty-niners during the gold rush. One minstrel troupe,
headed by Henry Whitby, brought the "plantation melodies" to
South America when it appeared at Santiago de Chile in 1848, en
route to California around Cape Horn. American minstrel troupes went
to England in the 18405 and 1850$, achieved resounding acclaim, and
succeeded in amusing Queen Victoria. Blackface minstrelsy was a
unique and novel type of entertainment, completely a product of the
American scene. Often crude, sometimes mawkish, at its best it had
an exuberant vitality and an exotic fascination. It brought to birth and
kept alive a vast body of American popular song; it remained the
mainstay of American popular entertainment for over half a cen-
tury; and before it expired it ushered in one of the most typical and
influential forms of American popular music: ragtime.
The antecedents of American minstrelsy are therefore worth look-
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS 261
ing into. Without discussing isolated eighteenth-century examples,*
we may begin with what might be called "the pre-minstrel-show
period," with such early nineteenth-century blackface entertainers as
G. W. Dixon, George Nichols, Bob Farrell, and "Jim Crow" Rice.
George Nichols, for many years a clown in "Purdy Brown's Theatre
and Circus of the South and West" (there was a close connection
between the circus and minstrelsy), is said to have got the idea of
singing in Negro make-up "from a French darky banjo player, known
throughout the Mississippi Valley as Picayune Butler, a peripatetic
performer who passed the hat and sang, 'Picayune Butler is Going
Away/ " The reference to "a French darky"— probably a Louisiana
Negro from Saint Domingue or Martinique— is interesting. Nichols was
one of those who claimed authorship of that popular minstrel song,
"Zip Coon"— a claim disputed by both Dixon and Farrell. According
to Wittke, Nichols was the first to sing in public another old-time
favorite that enjoyed immense popularity, "Clare de Kitchen," which
"he had adapted from a melody which he had heard sung by Negro
firemen on the Mississippi River." One frequently comes across state-
ments that this or that minstrel song was adapted from a Negro
melody; but since the original source is never given, such statements
cannot be corroborated. Whatever may have been the origin of "Clare
de Kitchen," it was first copyrighted in 1832 by George Willig, Jr.,
the Baltimore music publisher, and it was widely popularized (in a
somewhat altered version) by "Jim Crow" Rice.
George Washington Dixon was one of the most successful of the
early blackface entertainers. He was doing Negro songs in character
at Albany as early as 1827, and two years later he appeared at the
Bowery Theatre in New York, where he introduced one of the favor-
ite numbers in his repertoire, "Coal Black Rose," which Foster Damon
describes as "the first burnt-cork song of comic love." Edward L.
Rice, in Monarchs of Minstrelsy, states that the tune was "appropri-
ated from an old ballad," which he does not identify. An edition of
1829 attributes the authorship of "Coal Black Rose" to White Snyder.
Because of its early date and wide popularity— it was sung at all the
theaters from 1829 on— a sample of the words and melody is given
2 It should nevertheless be mentioned that eighteenth-century English stage
impersonations of Negroes had considerable influence on early American min-
strelsy, particularly as regards the use of dialect and the type of melody used
in certain so-called "plantation melodies."
262 I Expansion
here, from a sheet-music edition published by Firth & Hall of New
York.
tub - ly Ro - sa Sam - bo cum,
Don't you hear de Banjo turn, turn, turn, Oh Rose de
coal black Rose, I wish I may be cortch'd if
don't lub Rose,
Oh
Rose
coal black Rose.
The edition from which this music was quoted has a crude sketch
of "Lubly Rosa" and of "Sambo/1 each playing on the primitive
Negro gourd banjo, also known as the "bonja" or "banga." The reader
may recall that Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, called it
the "banjar." This brings to mind one of the earliest of the blackface
songs, the "Bonja Song," published in a sheet-music edition some-
time between 1818 and 1821. The words, written by R. C. Dallas,
show the stilted, artificial style of pseudo-Negro diction.
Since we have mentioned the "bonja" here, we may jump ahead
chronologically for a moment to trace its transformation into the
"banjo." The man credited with this development is Joel Walker
Sweeney (1813-1860), who played the banjo and sang with various
minstrel shows and circuses. According to Foster Damon: "Dissatis-
fied with the four-stringed gourd, he cut an old cheese-box in half,
covered it with skin, and strung it with five strings, thus inventing
the modern banjo. He is credited with doing this as early as 1830; by
1840 his reputation was secure." In the absence of concrete evidence,
one is inclined to regard Air. Sweeney's "invention" of the five-
stringed banjo as rather mythical, like the invention of the lyre by
Apollo. In any case, it is the instrument with four strings, not five,
that is depicted on the cover of "The celebrated Banjo Song" titled
"Whar Did You Cum From?" or "Knock a Nigger Down," adver-
tised as "Sung with great Applause at Broadway Circus by Mr. J. W.
Sweeney" (New York, Firth & Hall, 1840). The transition to the five-
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS 263
stringed banjo probably took place around 1845, and there is no proof
that Sweeney was responsible for it.
Minstrel music for banjo is an extremely interesting phase of early
American popular music that has not yet been sufficiently studied
On this subject Dr. Hans Nathan writes:
Some of it is fashioned after Irish-Scotch tunes; other tunes are
banjo variants of well-known minstrel songs (using typical banjo
figuration); and there are original tunes. The latter kind are so
primitive (constant repetition of brief motives of small range, with
downward trend of the motives, etc.) that these tunes no doubt in-
clude many elements of the early plantation music. In many minstrel
banjo tunes (though less frequently in those related to the fiddle
music of the Old World) there are distinct and tricky syncopa-
tions.8
The following is an example of such a syncopated banjo tune, taken
from one of Emmett's manuscripts but not composed by him:
Returning to George Washington Dixon— He claimed the author-
ship of another early and highly popular minstrel song, "Long Tail
Blue," which he featured in his performances from 1827. Other black-
face entertainers, such as Barney Burns and William Pennington,
helped to popularize this song, which became a standard minstrel
number for the next fifty years. The character is that of a Negro
dandy out strolling on Sunday dressed in his elegant blue swallow-
tail coat. As one of the earliest and most successful of the burnt-
cork melodies, "Long Tail Blue" deserves quotation; here are the
words and tune of the chorus:
Oh! for the long tail blue. Oh! for the long tail blue.
[T f 1? f Iff
I'll _ sing a song not ver - y long a • bout my long tail blue.
» In a letter to the author, dated Feb. *6, 1954. Dr. Nathan was kind enough
to supply the banjo tune quoted here.
264 I Expansion
As Foster Damon observes, "Long Tail Blue" was the first comic
song of the Negro dandy, a character that was to reappear frequently
in our popular entertainment. The "dandy" stood as a contrast to that
other stock type of blackface minstrelsy, the ragged "plantation
darky."
"The father of minstrelsy"
We come now to the man who has been called "the father of
American minstrelsy," known to his contemporaries as "Daddy" or
"Jim Crow" Rice, but whose full name was Thomas Dartmouth Rice
(1808-1860). He was born of poor parents in New York City and
was trained to be a wood carver. Lured by the stage, he obtained
occasional jobs as a supernumerary at the Park Theatre, and soon took
to the road as an itinerant player, heading for the frontier settlements
of the Ohio Valley. He got a job as general handyman in Ludlow
and Smith's Southern Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, and later
joined a stock company at the Louisville Theatre, where he played
bit parts. This was in 1828. One of the parts he played was that of a
Negro field hand in a local drama titled The Rifle. As was custom-
ary in those days, Rice interpolated a Negro song between the acts of
this play (this was done in all theaters, whether the play was a seri-
ous drama or a comedy). The song was "Jim Crow." It made Rice
famous and became the first great international song hit of American
popular music.
According to the generally accepted tradition, Rice saw an old,
deformed Negro cleaning the horses in a stable near the Louisville
Theatre, singing an odd melody and doing a curious sort of shuffling
dance. Every time he reached the chorus of his song, he gave a little
jump that set his "heel a-ricken." His right shoulder was drawn up
high and his left leg was crooked at the knee and stiff with rheuma-
tism, so that he walked with a limp. Rice decided to imitate this old
Negro on the stage, and to copy his song, making up additional stanzas
of his own. His impersonation, his shuffling step and jump, and his
song, all caught the fancy of the public: in Louisville, in Cincinnati,
in Pittsburgh, in Philadelphia, in Baltimore, in Washington, in New
York (1832), and finally in London, where "Jim Crow" Rice
achieved a sensational success in 1836.
In Pittsburgh, Rice got his friend W. C. Peters (who afterward
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS 265
published Stephen Foster's first minstrel songs) to write down the
music of "Jim Crow." Peters opened a music store in Louisville in
1829, and it may have been at that rime that Rice became friendly
with him. By the end of 1830, however, Peters was back in Pitts-
burgh, where he went into partnership with Smith and Mellor.
Within a short time many editions of "Jim Crow" were published,
some of them making no mention at all of Rice. Both words and
melody varied considerably in different editions. Here is the tune of
"Jim Crow" as it appears in an edition published in Baltimore by
George Willig, Jr., with no date, but probably issued around 1828
(the introductory measures and the piano accompaniment are omitted
in the example quoted below).
t"fl n p
1 ff
=l'=
=fr=
=f=
• —
T —
— * 13 [
Come
^4=
lis
•
• ten
, ••
all
m
you
galls and
„. „ h
/
boys,
=4^
-H
s=fF=l
-?? £ — f-
*
~4=
I I
/
T
i— L|
. ^
::?=*:
^.i
=^t
. Mx
»r_.
jist from Tuc -ky- hoe I'm goin to sing a lit • tie song, My
4s — ^
k-d
-J
T
Ir-JJ * MftJ J^ ^
j
J — ' J J 1
name's Jim Crow. Weel a- bout and turn a- bout and do jis so,
Ji
i J
^^
Eb* - ry time I weel a - bout I jump Jim Crow.
In the innumerable stanzas of "Jim Crow" that accumulated as
the song was put through the paces of minstrelsy, we find echoes
from topical events ranging from politics ("I put de veto on de boot/
An nullefy de shoe") to the playing of the celebrated violin virtuoso
Paganini:
I'm a rorer on de fiddle,
An down in ole Virginny
Dey say I play de skientific
Like massa Pagganninny.
Verses such as this show clearly the accretion of commercialized
theatrical jargon in some of the more obviously concocted "plantation
melodies." One may contrast this type of "darky" song with the verses
266 | Expansion
of a genuine Negro song as given by a Southern plantation owner and
printed in Putnanfs Monthly, January, 1855:
De ladies in de parlor,
Hey, come a rollin' down—
A drinking tea and coffee;
Good morning, ladies all.
De genmen in de kitchen,
Hey, come a rollin* down—
A drinking brandy toddy;
Good morning, ladies all.
This is evidently the same song that Fanny Kemble mentions in A
Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation, 1838-1839 (p. 127).
She says that the tune was "pretty and pathetic/' It is quite possible
that the early minstrel performers, such as Dixon, Nichols, and Rice,
may have derived their inspiration from hearing Negroes sing such
songs as this; but as American "Negro" minstrelsy developed, it was
largely a white man's production. Nevertheless, American minstrelsy
could not have developed without the background of Negro tradi-
tion. The songs, the humor, the dances, and the instruments of the
plantation darkies formed the nucleus out of which grew the first
distinctly American type of theatrical entertainment. Granted that
the minstrel-show "darky" was a caricature of the Negro^ yet the
caricature could not have been created without the original model,
however great the subsequent distortion. After all, the theater, espe-
cially the comic stage, has always created standard "types" that every-
one recognizes as caricatures. And the early minstrel performers man-
aged to convey a great deal of pathos and emotion in their presenta-
tion of the more serious songs. Once, after attending a minstrel per-
formance, Thackeray wrote: "... a vagabond with a corked face
and a banjo sings a little song, strikes a wild note, which sets the
heart thrilling with happy pity." Something genuine did come through.
Rise of the minstrel show
Wittke, in his book Tambo and Bones, states that one of Rice's
better-known renditions "contained the idiotic line, 'Kitty-co-dink-a-
ho-dink! oh, oh, roley-boley-Good morning, ladies all!'" Now, the
line probably is nonsense; or, at least, we have lost the clue to its orig-
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS 267
inal meaning, as happens in the case of many of the old Negro songs;
but the last four words are identical with the last line of the song
quoted above as representing a "genuine" Negro plantation melody.
The question is: did Rice copy the song from the Negroes, or did the
latter copy it from him? As far as the dates and the documentary
evidence are concerned, it could have happened either way.
"Daddy" Rice was not merely an impersonator and singer of
blackface songs: he was the creator of numerous farces and bur-
lesques, full of crude, often vulgar, humor, into which he wove his
"plantation melodies." Among these farces, which for a time were
known as "Ethiopian Operas,'7 may be mentioned Long Island Juba,
The Black Cupid, and Bone Squash Diavolo. He also concocted a bur-
lesque of Othello. These blackface extravaganzas were the forerun-
ners of the variety acts that were incorporated into the "second part"
of the minstrel show after the latter became fully organized. Rice
himself was primarily identified with the preminstrel show period.
In later life he played the role of Uncle Tom in the dramatization of
Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery novel. He suffered a stroke of
paralysis around 1850, recovered, but was again stricken, fatally, in
September, 1860. At the time of his death he was poor and alone, for
he had squandered the fortune that his popularity had brought him.
We have seen how Dan Emmett and his associates launched the
first organized minstrel show in New York in 1843. There is some
controversy as to whether this really was the first minstrel company
organized in this country. Claims have been made that E. P. Christy
organized the first minstrel troupe in Buffalo in 1842. We need not
concern ourselves overmuch with these rival claims. What seems
fairly well established is that the Virginia Minstrels set the pattern
of the minstrel show in its conventional form: the division into two
parts, and the semicircular arrangement of the performers, with a
middleman or interlocutor in the center and two endmen, known
respectively as "Tambo" and "Bones" because one played the tam-
bourine and the other the bone castanets. Christy organized the rou-
tine of songs, jokes, and repartee which made of the first part a
lively, continuous, coordinated program. The second part, called an
"olio," consisted, as has been said, of variety acts, a farce or bur-
lesque opera, closing with a singing and dancing number for the entire
cast.
E. P. Christy was born in Philadelphia in 1815. After organizing
268 | Expansion
the Christy Minstrels in Buffalo, he toured throijgh the West and die
South, and in 1846 appeared at Palmo's Opera House in New York.
In 1847 Christy leased Mechanics' Hall on Broadway, where his
troupe played for almost ten years. In 1854 Christy retired with a
fortune, and the company was taken over by his brother, George
Christy. The victim of attacks of melancholia, E. P. Christy died as
the result of jumping from a second-story window of his home in New
York.
Many other minstrel troupes sprang up in the two decades from
1850 to 1870, which was the heyday of American Negro minstrelsy.4
The blackface minstrel show became an American institution and
enjoyed an international vogue, for several companies toured in the
British Isles with great success. This is not the place for an account
of minstrel companies as such, because our main concern is with the
music of minstrelsy, and in particular the songs of its two outstanding
composers, Daniel Decatur Emmett and Stephen Collins Foster. Just
as Foster's beginnings in minstrelsy are associated with E. P. Christy,
so the first notable musical success of Emmett as a composer is asso-
ciated with Bryant's Minstrels. Dan Bryant (recte Daniel Webster
O'Brien) was an enterprising Irishman who, after playing with various
minstrel troupes, formed his own company in New York in 1857.
Among those who joined Bryant's Minstrels in that year was Dan
Emmett, who remained with the company until 1865. He was en-
gaged both as performer and composer, it being his task to provide
songs for the show.
"Old Dan" Emmett
Daniel Decatur Emmett was born in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, on Octo-
ber 29, 1815, of. an Irish- American pioneer family that had followed
the path of westward migration from Virginia, first across the Blue
Ridge Mountains, then beyond the Alleghenies, and finally to the
frontier country of Ohio. The first of four children, he received scant
4 This refers to the rise of Negro minstrelsy as a widespread type of com-
mercialized popular entertainment. The most authentic or "classical" period of
minstrelsy was from 1830 to 1850. After 1870 the minstrel shows became more
lavish and spectacular, and in the i88os it was customary to have as many as 100
performers in a troupe. These shows were designated by such adjectives as
"Gigantean," "Mammoth," and "Gargantuan." Thereafter their decline was rapid.
By 1896 there were only ten minstrel companies on the road.
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS 269
schooling, but somehow learned to read and write while helping in his
father's blacksmith shop. At thirteen he began to work in a printing
office, and at seventeen he joined the Army as a fifer. Emmett's own
account of his army experience is worth quoting:
At the early age of 17, 1 enlisted in the U.S. Army as a fifer, and
was stationed at Newport Barracks, Ky., the then school of practice
for the western department. For one year, or more, I practiced the
drum incessantly under the tuition of the renowned John J. Clark
(better known as "Juba"), and made myself master of the "Duty"
and every known "side beat" then in use. Being transferred to the
6th U.S. Infantry, then stationed at Jefferson Barracks, Mo., I was re-
tained as "leading fifer" until discharged. In the meantime I contin-
ued my drum practice, which was then taught according to the
School of Ashivorth. In after years I travelled as Small Drummer
with the celebrated Edward Kendall while he was leader of Spalding
and Rogers' Circus Band.5
Whoever "the renowned John J. Clark" may have been, it is inter-
esting to note that he was nicknamed "Juba," for this is the name of
a familiar Negro dance song frequently encountered in the folklore
of the South.8 In addition to his competence on the fife and drum,
Emmett learned to play other instruments, excelling particularly on
the violin and the flute. He was also a good singer. In the summer of
1835 he was discharged from the Army "on account of minority,"
and it was then that he entered show business via the circus, travel-
ing through the West and South before organizing his own minstrel
troupe in New York.
If army and circus bands provided a major portion of Emmett's
musical training on the instrumental side, his musical talent and his
earliest musical repertoire, were inherited from his mother, who had
a nice voice and sang to him often when he was a child. In later years
Emmett said:
As far back almost as I can remember, I took great interest in
music. I hummed familiar tunes, arranged words to sing to them
and made up tunes to suit words of my own. I paid no especial at-
tention to the poetry and thought little about the literary merit of
8 Cited by Galbreath, Daniel Decatwr Emmett.
• It is also found as a Negro name in the West Indies as early as the eight-
eenth century.
270 I Expansion
what I wrote. I composed Old Dan Tucker in 1830 or 1831, when I
was fifteen or sixteen years old, before I left ML Vernon.T
Whenever it may have been written, "Old Dan Tucker'1 was not pub-
lished until 1843. An edition copyrighted in that year and published
by Millet's Music Saloon, New York, describes it as "A Favorite
Original Negro Melody ... By Dan. Tucker, Jr." As often hap-
pened with minstrel songs, the authorship of "Old Dan Tucker" has
been disputed. Perhaps the most curious claim is that of the English
singer and composer Henry Russell, mentioned in an earlier chapter,
who asserted that he composed the tune at Rochester, New York,
in 1835, and in the following strange manner: "It was quite by acci-
dent that, playing 'Old Hundredth* very fast, I produced the air of
'Get Out o' de Way, Old Dan Tucker.' "
Musically, the most interesting feature of "Old Dan Tucker" is the
syncopation in the chorus, at the words, "Get out de way!":
Old DanTuck-er's come to town, so get out de way! Get out de way!
Dan Emmett himself was convinced that his "walk-arounds" faith-
fully reflected the character and the traditions of the Southern planta-
tion Negro. In some preliminary remarks for a manuscript collection
of his minstrel "walk-arounds," he wrote:
In the composition of a "Walk 'Round" (by this I mean the style
of music and character of the words), I have always strictly confined
niyself to the habits and crude ideas of the slaves of the South.
Their knowledge of the world at large was very limited, often not
extending beyond the bounds of the next plantation; they could sing
of nothing but everyday life or occurrences, and the scenes by
which they were surrounded. This being the undeniable fact, to be
true to the Negro peculiarities of song, I have written in accord-
ance.8
The whole question of the relationship between the tradition of Negro
minstrelsy and the reality of Southern Negro life and character is a
7 Regarding this passage, Dr. Nathan comments: "Emmett said all kinds of
things when he was old. The time of *Old Dan Tucker' is definitely not by him."
•Cited by Galbreath, op. cit.
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS 2JI
complex sociocultural problem that needs to be studied carefully by
anyone wishing to get at the truth. The subject has been very ably
treated in The Southern Plantation by Francis Pendleton Gaines, de-
scribed as "A Study in the Development and the Accuracy of a Tra-
dition." The interested reader should consult in particular Chapter V,
A, "The Plantation in Minstrelsy," and Chapter VIII, "Plantation
Characters" (The Conception Compared with the Actual).
Most writers agree that in its beginnings American minstrelsy, in
the words of Brander Matthews, "endeavoured to reproduce the life
of the plantation darkey. The songs sung by the Ethiopian serenaders
were reminiscertces of the songs heard where the Negro was at work,
on the river steamboat, in the sugar field, or at the camp-meeting.
. . ." It is likely that the steamboats of the Mississippi and the Ohio,
as well as the Southern plantations, were the direct source of many
Negro tunes and songs that found their way into the repertoire of the
earliest blackface entertainers, such as Dixon, Rice, and Emmett. The
river was a great carrier of songs, and many Negroes worked on the
river.
One of Dan Emmett's best songs, "De Boatman's Dance," copy-
righted and published in 1843, is a direct reflection of life on the
river.9 Here are a couple of typical stanzas of this song:
When you go to de boatman's ball,
Dance wid my wife, or don't dance at all;
Sky blue jacket and tarpaulin hat,
Look out my boys for de nine tail cat.
De boatman is a thrifty man,
Dars none can do as de boatman can;
I neber see a putty gal in my life
But dat she was a boatman's wife.
As far as we can judge, from internal and external evidence, "De
Boatman's Dance" seems to belong in the group of early minstrel songs
•The chorus of this song appears to have been sung by Ohio River boatmen
one or two decades before the publication of Emmett's version (cf. The Pio-
neers of the West, by W. P. Strickland, New York, 1856, p. 198). According to
Nathan, the words of this song, except for the chorus, are by Emmett, and the
tune is probably his also, though this is by no means certain. "Boatman's Dance"
appears with the remark "Words by old Dan Emmit" in Songs of the Virginia
Minstrels: A Correct Edition of the Celebrated Songs of the Virginia Minstrels
. . . Boston, 1843. (Information from Nathan's bibliography of Emmett's songs.)
272 I Expansion
that reflect with comparative fidelity the music that the Negro may
have actually used. Be that as it may, the song has outlived its vogue
on the minstrel stage and passed into the tradition of American folk-
lore. Here, then, are the tune and the words of the first stanza as
printed in a sheet-music edition of 1843:
CHORUS
High row, de boat-men tow, float-in down de ri • ver de O - hi- o.
Moderate
De boat-men dance, de boat -men sing, de boat-men up to
eb - ry ting, An when de boat • men gets on shore, he
~f p- $Tp [T J J> I Jt J) J> J' IP
P y
dance, O
spends his cash an works for more, Den dance de boat-men
IJ
dance de boat -men dance, O dance all night till
ji j HI.
broad day-light, an go home wid de gals in de morn -ing.
Another song by Emmett, also copyrighted in 1843, k "
Aunt Sally." The words are of the stilted, artificial pseudo-darky type
that soon became prevalent in minstrelsy; but the tune is of interest
as containing examples of the "flattened seventh" (in this case F
natural) which is characteristic of much American Negro music.
"In Dixie Land . . ."
To most people Emmett is known, if he is known at all, as the
composer of "Dixie," a song which has become more famous than the
man who wrote it. This was one of the walk-arounds that Emmett
wrote for Bryant's Minstrels in 1859. To give an idea of his output in
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS
273
this field, we print below the list of the walk-arounds composed by
Emmett (words and music) from 1859 to 1868, as set forth by his
biographer Galbreath: 10
1863
High Daddy
Here we are, or cross ober Jordan
Greenbacks
Goose and Gander
Ober in Jarsey
1864
Foot-falls on de karpet
U.S.G.
1865
Whar ye been so long?
Old times rocks
1868
Burr Grass
Pan-cake Joe
Want any shad?
Sugar in de ground
Whoa, Bally!
Yes or no
Abner Isham Still
I am free
I ain't got time to tarry
Nigger in de tent
John come down de holler
Road to Georgia
Flat foot Jake
Billy Patterson
Hai, Johnny Roach
Loozyanna low grounds
I wish I was in Dixie's Land
Johnny Gouler
Chaw roast beef
What o'dat?
Turkey in de straw
i860
Darrow Arrow
Old K.Y., Ky
De Contrack
1862
De Back-log
Bress old Andy Jackson
Mr. Per Coon
Black Brigade
From the foregoing it will be seen that when Emmett joined
Bryant's Minstrels in the fall of 1858, he entered upon an extremely
productive period as a writer of minstrel melodies. He now had a job
that required the full exercise of his talents as a musician and a black-
face entertainer. Unlike Stephen Foster, whose association with min-
strelsy was marginal, Dan Emmett was thoroughly immersed in the
"Ethiopian business"; hence his songs, and the walk-arounds in par-
ticular, are an epitome of the minstrel tradition in its heyday. This
heyday coincided with the growing tension over the slavery issue,
and it is important to realize that political factors, however disguised
by liumor or sentiment, were increasingly reflected in the minstrel
10 The list is not complete; k does not, for instance, include variants.
274 I Expansion
songs of the decade preceding the outbreak of the Civil War. When
war came, Dan Emmett's "Dixie" was claimed by both sides; but it
was the Confederacy that decisively took it over and made it virtually
into a national anthem. The war gave an unforeseen significance to
the lines of the carefree chorus: "In Dixie Land I'll take my stand, To
lib and die in Dixie."
Emmett's song "Johnny Roach," performed in March 1859 and
published in New York the following year, tells of a Negro slave
bound for Canada by "de railroad underground," but who wishes "he
was back agin." Then he tells why he wishes to be back in the South
again:
Gib me de place called "Dixie's Land,"
Wid hoe and shubble in my hand;
Whar fiddles ring an* banjos play,
I'll dance all night an* work all day.
According to Hans Nathan, who has made the most thorough study
to date of Emmett's life and work, this is "the very first occurrence
in print of the word 'Dixie' as another name for the South—the black
one, to be exact."
There has been much discussion as to the origin of the word
"Dixie." A common assumption is that it was derived from the name
Dixon and referred to the South as the part of the country below the
Mason and Dixon's line. Another theory is that the name was taken
from the French bank notes issued in New Orleans, said to be called
"dixies"— from the French word "<##," meaning "ten." A third version
has it that Dixie was the name of a man who kept slaves on Man-
hattan Island, New York, until the hostility of the abolitionists obliged
him to move to the South, taking his slaves with him. The latter
allegedly kept wishing they were back in "Dixie's Land." This last
version is absurd and has no foundation whatever. The other two
theories are more plausible but are unsupported by any valid evi-
dence. Emmett himself, in later life, stated that the phrase "I wish I
was in Dixie's Land" was a common expression referring tc the South
used by people in the entertainment business. The available evidence
indicates that the term "Dixie," in any case, was of Northern origin.
The earliest use of the name that Nathan was able to discover oc-
curred in 1850 in a Northern minstrel play titled United States Mail
and Dixie in Difficulties. Here the name "Dixie" is given to a stupid
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS 275
Negro postboy.11 Nathan is probably right when he suggests that the
name may have been invented by white showmen as an occasional
nickname for a Negro character, by phonetic analogy with such
Negro stage-types as "Pompey" and "Cuffee."
The whole vexing matter of the origin and significance of the term
Dixie has been authoritatively summarized by Dr. Nathan:
Since Dixie meant the Negro, "Dixie's Land" was obviously the
Land of the Negro, that is, according to the consensus of the mid-
nineteenth century, the black South. When Emmett in his famous
song abbreviated the phrase to Dixie Land and finally to Dixie, there
appeared again the original name though not referring to a person
but to its habitation. Thus Dixie had five connotations: it was first a
synonym for the Negro (probably the Southern Negro); it changed
(as a simplified version of Dixie's Land and Dixie Land) to a synonym
for the Negro's South, then for the South pure and simple, and finally
to a synonym for the South as seen by the Confederates. Parallel to
this, Dixie was the popular tide by which Emmett's song was known.13
Emmett's famous song was originally billed as "Dixie's Land"
when it was first performed by Bryant's Minstrels at Mechanics'
Hall, New York City, on April 4, 1859. It was announced as a
"Plantation Song and Dance . . . Introducing the whole Troupe in
the Festival Dance." On that occasion it did not conclude the pro-
gram, but was next to the last number. According to the custom pre-
vailing in minstrel walk-arounds, "Dixie's Land" was sung in a man-
ner reminiscent of the call-and-response pattern of Afro-American
music. The first part of the song (it is divided into two sections of
sixteen measures each) was sung Iternately by a soloist and by a
small chorus in unison which came in at the end of every other line
with a brief interjection, "Look away! Look away! Dixie Land!" As
performed on the minstrel stage, "Dixie," like other walk-arounds,
also had an instrumental section of eight measures, during which the
members of the troupe would do a grotesque dance.
"Dixie" became an immediate popular success, and several pub-
lishers clashed over the copyright. Emmett gave the song to Firth,
11 It appears in a playbill of the Sabine Minstrels of Portsmouth [N.H.?], in
the possession of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. Cf. Na-
than's article, "Dixie" cited in the bibliography for this chapter.
12 In his forthcoming book, Dan Emmett and Early American Negro Min-
strelsy.
276 I Expansion
Pond & Co. of New York, who brought it out in June, 1860. In the
same year several other editions appeared, without credit to Emmett.
One of these editions was published by P. P. Werlein of New Orleans,
with the composition accredited to J. C. Viereck! This matter was
eventually straightened out, and in subsequent editions Viereck's name
appeared as "arranger." Then, in February, 1861, Emmett sold all his
rights in the song to Firth, Pond & Co. for the sum of $300. Werlein,
on his side, took advantage of the outbreak of hostilities to bring out
another edition of "Dixie" in which Emmett's name was omitted as
composer and Viereck's restored. The writ of Northern publishers
and composers did not run in the Confederacy. Soon there were many
unauthorized Southern editions of "Dixie." It was sweeping the South,
both as a song (often with words written especially for the war) and
as a march arranged for military band. A Confederate band played
"Dixie" at the inauguration of President Jefferson Davis, and many
Southern regiments marched in quickstep to its enlivening rhythm
and jaunty tune. Emmett himself, whose sympathies were with the
North, is reported to have said, "If I had known to what use they were
going to put my song, I'll be damned if I'd have written it."
The North, for its part, was anxious to claim "Dixie" as its own.
During the first year of the war, "Dixie," in spite of its adoption by
the Confederacy, was at the peak of its popularity in the North, espe-
cially in New York, the city of its origin. The words, of course, were
not considered appropriate for Northern usage, but that could easily
be remedied. Many "Northern" versions of the song began to appear,
among them "Dixie for the Union" and "Dixie Unionized." A "Union-
ized" text was published in John Brown and the Union Eight or
Wrong Songster (San Francisco, 1863).
At the end of the Civil War— in fact, the day after the surrender
of General Lee's army at Appomattox— President Lincoln took steps
to restore "Dixie" to the Union. A crowd had assembled at the White
House to serenade him with a band. The President made a very brief
speech, and then requested the band to play "Dixie," which he said
was one of the best tunes he ever heard. Alluding to its quasi-official
status as a Confederate song, he remarked dryly: "I had heard that
our adversaries over the way had attempted to appropriate it. I in-
sisted yesterday that we had fairly captured it ... I presented the
question to the Attorney-General, and he gave his opinion that it is
our lawful prize. ... I ask the Band to give us a good turn upon it."
In this manner "Dixie" was "officially" restored to the North; but
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS 277
since the South never relinquished its claim upon the song, it belongs
now to both North and South— it is a truly national song, probably
the most genuinely "American" song that we possess.
According to Marius Schneider, "The popularity of a melody is
the result of its degree of simplicity and of its conformity to the
melodic type current in a given culture." Melodically and harmoni-
cally, the music of "Dixie" is simplicity itself. In style it closely re-
sembles other tunes by Emmett, and it has a family kinship with a
wide range of popular tunes current in America, stemming from Irish-
Scotch sources. "Dixie" is in duple time, in the major mode, does not
modulate, and employs syncopation.18 These traits are common to a
vast body of American vernacular music that has been put to vari-
ous usages, from revival meetings to minstrel shows. Yet "Dixie" itself
is unique, for it possesses high individuality within its conformity to
type. In spite of its simplicity it is a well-constructed song, both uni-
fied and varied.
In 1888 Dan Emmett retired to a small country home near his na-
tive town of Mt. Vernon, Ohio. There he was discovered by A. G.
Field, who persuaded him to take to the road again with Field's
Minstrels.14 This was in the year 1895. "Old Dan's" tour was trium-
phant, especially in the South (he never aired his antisecessionist views
publicly). On April u, 1896, he bade farewell to the public for the
last time and returned to his rural homestead once more. There he
lived on a pension from the Actors' Fund of New York until his death
on June 28, 1904, at the age of eighty-eight.
Minstrel medley
Among the hundreds of songs associated with American min-
strelsy, let us glance more closely at some that, for one reason or an-
other, seem to merit special attention.
Recalling Jefferson's proposal for the establishment of a Negro
"haven" abroad, and remembering that in the 18305 the Negro Re-
public of Haiti appeared to offer just such a haven, we turn to a
blackface song published at Boston in 1833 as "Sambo's Address to He'
Bred'rin" and also known as "Ching a Ring Chaw," in which the
"bred'rin" are urged to emigrate to "Hettee," where each one will be
11 The syncopation in "Dixie" is slight but effective. It is used twice in the
chorus with a peculiarly characteristic effect.
14 Apparently all that he did in the performance was to sing "Dixie.9*
278 | Expansion
received "gran* as Lafayette," where all will "lib so fine wid our
coach and horse," where "we smoke de best segar, fetch from
Havanna," where "our wibes be gran', an in dimons shine," and "dar
dance at nice jig, what white man call cotillion, in hall so mity big it
hole haff a million." In contrast with this life of ease and luxury, the
song depicts the hard lot of the Negro in the United States, forced
to perform All the menial and unpleasant tasks. Although this is obvi-
ously a white man's concoction, and was treated as a comic number,
it shows what might be called the "social significance" aspect of Negro
minstrelsy.
One of the most widely successful of the early blackface songs
was "Jim Along Josey," written and introduced on the stage by
Edward Harper around 1838. The tune uses only the five notes of the
pentatonic scale. The song itself is followed by a lively "Dance" in
which the comic actor had a chance to "do his stuff." The popularity
of the song was doubtless due in large measure to the catchy tune of
the chorus:
MjijiJ J J If |T |T
Hey get a-long, get a-long Jo-sey Hey get a-longjim a-longjoe!
Apart from its popularity on the minstrel stage, "Jim Along Josey"
became widely used as a "Play Party Song" in the Middle West, and,
as Foster Damon observes, was admitted as a game even among those
stricter sects that prohibited dancing, "although to uncritical eyes
the players seemed to be doing something easily mistaken for a Vir-
ginia Reel." There are many examples of songs and tunes passing
from the minstrel stage into the realm of folklore.
To complete the cycle of borrowings, we should reiterate that
many minstrel songs have their origin in anonymous folk tunes, so
that they have passed from the domain of folklore and back to it again
after the usual process of being modified or "reworked." A case in
point is "Zip Coon," one of the most successful of the early minstrel
songs, which has persisted in American folklore in numerous versions.
As "Turkey in the Straw" it became a favorite fiddle tune for country
dances. Bob Farrell, who sang "Zip Coon" in New York in 1834,
claimed authorship of the song. Kis claim was disputed by George
Washington Dixon. There is no reason to believe that either of these
men actually "composed" the song— certainly not the music (one of
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS 279
them may have written the words). There is strong evidence to indi-
cate that this is one of the many American minstrel songs of Scotch*
Irish descent. Hans Nathan has found a Scotch reel that is very simi-
lar to parts of "Zip Coon." And Francis O'Neill writes that there is
"convincing evidence of its Irish antecedents." 16
Another old favorite is "Clare de Kitchen," popularized by
"Daddy" Rice in the early 1830$, which has the "Old Virginny never
tire" refrain. The text of the song is closer to the tradition of Negro
humor than are the later minstrel songs. In a succession of nonsense
verses we meet various animals: an old blind horse, a jaybird sitting
on a hickory limb, a bull frog dressed in soldier's clothes, and "a little
Whip poor will" whose sad fate it is to be eaten. In the last stanza
of one version, the line occurs, "I wish I was back in old Kentuck"—
the first of the "I wish I was . . ." tag lines that became a stock item
in the nostalgic type of minstrel song.
Another song popularized by "Daddy" Rice and later by William
Clifton, who arranged a version printed in 1836, was "Long Time
Ago," in which the refrain is sung at the end of each line. Of interest
is the syncopation on the words "Varginee" and "free." The whole
structure of this song, in relation to Negro music, is worth noting
(my reference is to Clifton's version, copyrighted 1836). The struc-
ture of the song is as simple as possible: the verse consists of two lines,
each repeated, with an identical metrical pattern in the melody. Let-
ting "C" stand for the chorus, the scheme may be expressed thus:
A-C, A-C, B-C, B-C. The music example below is printed so as to
show this parallel arrangement:
j ifr fl~fny J) J't Ji i ji JIT ij f y ifEji
O I was born _ down ole Var-gin-ee Long time a - go.
J'. JiijiJi f iJ P' (Mr
~" ' •
O I was born _ down ole Var-gin-ee Long time a - go.
O Mas-sa die__ an make me fre-e Long time a * go.
O Mas-sa die an make me fre-c Long time a - go.
**Tbe Dance Music of Ireland, Chicago, 1907.
280 | Expansion
Compare this pattern with that of the following corn-shucking
song published in Putnam? s Monthly > 1855, as an example of a genuine
Negro plantation song:
Cow boy on middle 'e island-
Hi o, melee ty, ho!
Cow boy on middle *e island-
He, meleety, ho!
Airs. Kemble, in A Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation,
1838-1839, quotes the words of a "rowing chant" with an identical
pattern:
Jenny shake her toe at me
Jenny gone away
Jenny shake her toe at me
Jenny gone away.
The editors of Slave Songs of the United States (1867) state in a
footnote in their preface that " 'Long Time Ago* . . . was borrowed
from the negroes, by whom it was sung to words beginning 'Way
down in Raccoon Hollow.' " This still does not prove that the planta-
tion Negroes originated the melody, which was very likely picked up
from a white man's song. A version of "Long Time Ago," published
by John Cole of Baltimore in 1833, has the following words:
As I was gwoin down shinbone alley,
Long time ago! (chorus)
To buy a bonnet for Miss Sally,
Long time ago! (chorus)
The alternation of solo and chorus is of course characteristic of Negro
singing, and doubtless we have here, once again, an example of a song
that passed back and forth among Negroes and whites, becoming in
the process a thoroughly hybridized product.
The song "Ole Tare River" (1840) deserves mention for its com-
bination of the "Way down in . . ." tag line with other catch
phrases that reappear in Stephen Foster's songs, such as:
I go from dar to Alabama
For to see my ole Aunt Hannah.
THE ETHIOPIAN BUSINESS l8l
and
Now Miss Dinah I'm going to leave yon
And when I'm gone don't let it grieve you.
One thinks also of "Way down upon the Swanee River," and one
observes that both melodies are based on the pentatonic scale. Old
Aunt Hannah seems to be a close relative of Miss Susanna. Herewith
is a portion of "Ole Tare River," omitting the instrumental interludes:
down in North Car - o - lina
On de banks of Ole Tare Riv-er
I go from dar to Al - a - ba-ma
l> J> J> J> iJ> J> h J>
For to see my ole Aunt Han-nah
The song "Lubly Fan" (Will You Come Out To Night?), writ-
ten and copyrighted by Cool White in 1844, has had a varied history.
A few years later it was brought out by the Christy Minstrels as
"Bowery Gals," and in 1848 it was featured by the Ethiopian Sere-
naders as "Buffalo Gals." It is with this last title that the song has
circulated most widely in the oral tradition, although in the South
it was often heard as "Charleston Gals." The tune is so well known
that direct quotation may be spared.
These old minstrel songs are so much a part of the American tra-
dition, and have in many cases such wide ramifications in our folk-
lore, that one is tempted to linger over them indefinitely, discussing
and quoting one after another. Enough has been given, at least, to
show the roots of the tradition and to trace some of its most charac-
teristic manifestations and developments. If we have dwelt almost ex-
clusively on the early period of minstrelsy, from the appearance of the
first blackface entertainers to the rise of the original minstrel troupes
in the 18405, it is because this period produced the songs that were
282 I Expansion
most deeply rooted in America's music, and which in turn branched
out most widely into the oral tradition of the folk, both black and
white. Moreover, we shall have more to say of Negro minstrelsy and
its influence on America's music when we discuss the life and work of
Stephen Collins Foster.
chapter fourteen
America's minstrel
I have concluded ... to pursue the Ethiopian business without fear or
shame and ... to establish my name as the best Ethiopian songwriter.
STEPHEN C. FOSTER, LETTER TO E. P. CHRISTY, MAY 2$, 1852.
In the spring of 1853 the pious, respectable, and prolific Mr. Thomas
Hastings, composer of over a thousand hymn tunes, most of which
have been forgotten by almost everybody, took his pen in hand to
indite an indignant epistle to the editor of the Musical Review and
Choral Advocate. The editor of that chaste periodical had recently
commented on the deplorable fact that certain "Ethiopian melodies"
were being adapted for use in Sunday schools. Mr. Hastings, while
carefully protecting his respectability by stating that he was "not very
conversant with Ethiopian minstrelsy," disclosed that he had actually
discovered a Sunday-school superintendent endeavoring to foist the
melody of "Old Folks at Home" on a large class of innocent "infant
scholars." The superintendent thought the children would not recog-
nize the tune. So the teacher sang a line or two—with suitably pious
words, of course— and then asked, " 'Children, have you ever heard
anything like that before?'— 'Old Folks at Home! Old Folks at Homer
shouted the little urchins with such merry glances and gesticulations
as showed them upon the very point of Cutting up,' when the experi-
ment ended and the piece was abandoned."
Mr. Hastings, in his letter, went on to castigate those responsible
for perverting the taste of children by "fishing up something from the
lowest dregs of music" by which their minds "are filled with poison-
ous trash, to forget which in after life would be to them a blessing."
The practice he describes, he says, is nothing new. "It is an old trick,
which many seem determined to 'play off every time they have an op-
portunity." Mr. Hastings fears these abuses will not yet be abandoned,
284 I Expansion
in spite of the fact that there are, he says, plenty of good hymn tunes
in circulation. But "Christy has more melodies; and then Yankee Doo-
dle, Frog and Mouse, and Jim Crow, I believe, have not yet been ap-
propriated." Thus the eminent Mr. Thomas Hastings, soon to receive
the degree of Doctor of Music from New York University, vented
his sarcasm and his scorn upon "the lowest dregs of music," including
the "Ethiopian melodies" of Stephen Collins Foster.1
Perhaps the perpetrator of "Old Folks at Home," before his tragic
death at the age of thirty-seven, had an opportunity to redeem him-
self in the eyes— or the ears— of Mr. Hastings and other advocates of
the "better music" movement. In 1863, the last year of his life, when
he had sunk to his lowest level of physical and spiritual vitality, Foster
turned out what his granddaughter calls "about a dozen uninspired
expressions of religious hack-writing" that surely were respectable
and mediocre enough to satisfy even Mr. Hastings. The latter lived to
be eighty-eight; when he finally went to his reward, perhaps his soul
had been edified by hearing such masterpieces of bathos as Stephen
Foster's "Little Ella's an Angel in the Skies" or "Willie's Gone to
Heaven, Praise the Lord." Sad as was the physical and social deteriora-
tion of Stephen Foster in the last years of his life, it is still sadder to
observe his deterioration as an artist, his surrender to mediocrity. But
in his short life, with its unhappy ending, Stephen Foster, in spite of
some vacillations and an eventual succumbing to adverse circum-
stances, succeeded surprisingly well in producing the kind of songs
that earned the disapproval of the "better music" advocates.
The pontifical John S. Dwight, in his Journal of Music, had to
admit—this was in the year 1853— that such tunes as "Old Folks at
Home" were whistled and sung by everybody; but he asserted that
they had not really taken a deep hold of the popular mind; that their
charm was only skin-deep; and that such melodies "are not popular
in the sense of musically inspiring, but that such and such a melody
breaks out every now and then, like a morbid irritation of the skin." 2
The battle lines were clearly drawn, and the worst of it is that
Stephen Foster often had to fight the same battle in his own mind. As
a member of a solid and highly respectable middle-class family, he did
not grow up naturally into show business and the world of popular
entertainment as did the poor country lad Dan Emmett. In his circle,
1 Morneweck, Chronicles of Stephen Foster's Family, vol. 2, p. 467.
* Quoted by J. T. Howard, Our American Music, p. 185.
AMERICA'S MINSTREL 285
music was not considered a suitable profession. If one did take up
music, it should be of the most respectable kind Stephen Foster
aspired to be a writer of sentimental ballads and elegant songs "ren-
dered" by sentimental and elegant young ladies in the most polite so-
ciety. In his younger days he omitted his name on the title pages of
his Ethiopian melodies because he feared the association would injure
his reputation as a composer of refined music— he does not actually
use the word "refined" but that is the implication of his meaning when
he writes that the prejudice against Ethiopian songs might injure his
reputation "as a writer of another style of music." Yet in May, 1852, a
few months after the publication of "Old Folks at Home," he writes
to E. P. Christy saying that he had decided "to pursue the Ethiopian
business without fear or shame." That was Stephen Foster's first and
greatest spiritual victory: to overcome the fear of not appearing re-
spectable, to fight off the feeling of shame associated With writing the
kind of music that everybody liked and sang and whistled and remem-
bered forever.
Yet the fight went on. The forces of respectability would not let
him be himself. He had to be continually tilting against the genteel
tradition. The Musical World and Times of New York, on January 29,
1853, deplored the talented Mr. Foster's propensity for Ethiopian mel-
odies and expressed the hope that he would turn his attention to *
higher type of music. More: it informed the public that Mr. Foster
had personally given his assurance to the editor that henceforth he% in-
tended to devote himself to composing "white men's music." Here, ap-
parently, we have a bit of race prejudice thrown in to enrich the
theme of respectability. When Foster made the statement reported
above, "My Old Kentucky Home" had just been published. It was
to be followed by "Massa's in de Cold Ground," in July, 1852, and
by "The Glendy Burk," "Old Black Joe," and "Down Among the
Cane Brakes," the last three all published in the same year, 1 860. No,
fortunately for us and for America's music, Stephen Foster did not
abandon the writing of Ethiopian melodies. He turned out a few more
glorious songs before succumbing to drink and the genteel tradition.
Early life in Pittsburgh
Stephen Collins Foster was born on July 4, 1826, in "The White
Cottage" on his father's farm overlooking the village of Lawrenceville,
286 | Expansion
near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father, Colonel William Barclay
Foster, had moved from eastern Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh when the
latter place was little more than a frontier trading post. He became as-
sociated with a firm of local merchants and took charge of their river
trade, which obliged him to journey down the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers about twice a year. While on a business trip to Philadelphia,
Colonel Foster met Eliza Tomlinson, member of a substantial Eastern
family, whom he married in 1807. They had ten children, of whom
two died in infancy. Stephen grew up with three sisters— one of whom,
Charlotte Susanna, died young—and five brothers— one of whom (Wil-
liam) was an adopted child. Stephen himself was next to the youngest
in the family.
Colonel William B. Foster became wealthy, but later suffered finan-
cial reverses, which in 1826 led to the loss of his property by fore-
closure. The family lived for a while in the village of Harmony, and
in the autumn of 1832 moved into a new home in the town of Alle-
gheny. Music in the Foster family was encouraged as a form of recrea-
tion and as a polite accomplishment for young ladies. Mrs. Foster, who
had been raised in Baltimore and was filled with ideas of gentility, was
eager to have her daughters receive the benefits of a "polite educa-
tion," including the accomplishment of playing the piano and singing
sentimental ballads. Opportunities for acquiring the "polite arts" were
not lacking in Pittsburgh. Charlotte Foster's music teacher was one
Williams Evens, who in 1826 issued the following advertisement: 3
Wm. Evens, teacher of the French Horn,
Trumpet, Bugle, Serpent, Bassoon, Clarionet,
German Flute, Hautboy, Violin,
Violoncello, and Tenor Viol—
at Six Dollars per quarter.
W. E. professes the Andante stile. Those
who wish to play Concerto's or become
Prestissimo Players need not apply.
Tempo Gusto.
Here, indeed, was every guarantee of sedate respectability, even to the
exclusion of tempo rubato!
This William Evens was a plane maker by trade, but in 1817 he
opened a singing school in his shop, and afterward was very active as
8 Quoted by Morneweck, op. cit.t vol. i, p. 30*
AMERICA'S MINSTREL 287
a choir leader and teacher in Pittsburgh. He formed a manuscript col-
lection of the works of Bach, Haydn, Handel, and Beethoven, copy-
ing them out meticulously by hand and employing in the process, we
are told, gallons of homemade black ink. To his pupils he offered in-
struction in the music of "the most celebrated modern composers." It
is not true, as some writers have stated, that Stephen Foster grew up
in a musical wilderness. Pianos were by no means unknown in Pitts-
burgh. Some were transported from the East, some were manufactured
to order, right in the town, by Charles Rosenbaum, as early as 1815.
The Fosters had a piano in their home by 1818; they had to give it up
in 1821, but Brother William, hard-working and prosperous, presented
the family with a new piano in 1828, two years after Stephen's birth.
As his granddaughter writes, "From early childhood, Stephen Foster
was always accustomed to music in the home of his parents and their
friends." The question, of course, is: what kind of music? The answer,
I think, is: many kinds. Popular ballads of the day (that is, currently
popular songs, chiefly of a sentimental type) probably held first place.
Evelyn Foster Morneweck, in her excellent and valuable Chronicles
of Stephen Foster's Family, evokes a picture of the little boy Stephen
leaning against the piano "whilst his sisters charmed their admiring
family circle with <Come Rest in This Bosom'; *Go, Mv Love, Like
the Gloom of Night Retiring'; 'Flow on, Thou Shining River'; 'I Have
Loved Thee, Mary'; 'Home, Sweet Home'; Td Be a Butterfly,' and
'Susan in the Valley.' " Among the more than two hundred songs that
Foster was to compose, there were many of this type, and most of
them have been forgotten as completely as most of the songs men-
tioned above. Undoubtedly, an inescapable portion of Foster's musical
heritage was the genteel tradition of his own family circle. But it was
not the whole heritage. The children used to be delighted by their
father's singing of some jolly old songs, in particular "Good Old
Colony Times," with its tale of three rogues: a miller, a weaver, and
a little tailor.
The Fosters had a colored servant named Olivia Pise, called "Lieve,"
said to be the mulatto daughter of a French dancing master from the
West Indies. As a boy Stephen loved to attend the services in the
Negro church with Lieve and to hear the "shouting" of the people.
Later in life, Stephen told his brother Morrison that two of his songs,
"Oh! Boys, Carry Me 'Long" and "Hard Times Come Again No
More," were based on snatches of Negro melodies that he heard while
288 | Expansion
attending Negro services as a boy with Olivia Pise. Many other
snatches of melody may have remained in his memory and been used
unconsciously in his plantation melodies. It is also tempting to specu-
late on the possibility that Lieve may have sung to him some West
Indian songs, like those that the French Negroes brought to Louisiana
from Martinique and Saint Domingue.
According to Morrison Foster, when Stephen was two years old,
he would lay his sister's guitar on the parlor floor and pick out har-
monies on the strings of the instruments. When he was about six, he
took up a flageolet— an instrument that he had never before handled—
in Smith & Mellor's Music Store, and in a few minutes was playing
"Hail, Columbia" with perfect correctness. Soon afterward, his mother
bought him a clarinet. There was no question of providing systematic
music instruction for the boy: music was not a serious occupation for
boys or men in the Foster household. Foster's granddaughter believes
that all he knew of musical theory was acquired from an older friend
and professional musician of German origin named Henry Kleber,
from whom he received some lessons. However, Stephen's earliest com-
position, The Tioga Waltz, written at the age of fourteen when he
was attending a school at Athens, near Towanda, was apparently
produced before he received any instruction from Kleber. Nor does
Stephen appear to have taken advantage of the musical instruction
that was offered at Athens Academy. He did not like school, and pre-
ferred to follow his own inclinations both in study and in music. There
must have been a general feeling in the family that Stephen was de-
voting too much time to music, for once he wrote to his brother Wil-
liam saying "I will also promise not to pay any attention to my music
untill after eight Oclock in the evening." He was lonesome and home-
sick at Athens and in 1841 returned home, somewhat to the distress
of his father, who wrote: "He is a very good boy, but I cannot get
him to stick at school. He reads a good deal, and writes some in the
office with me." William B. Foster was then mayor of Allegheny.
Sometime in 1843, probably after passing his sixteenth birthday,
Stephen set to music a poem by George Pope Morris titled "Open Thy
Lattice, Love," which was published in the following year by George
Willig of Philadelphia. This was his first published song. It was as
pretty and polite as anyone could wish. On the back of the original
manuscript of this song, Stephen wrote a little waltz for piano, "Dedi-
cated to Miss Maria Bach"— we do not know who she was.
AMERICA'S MINSTREL
Foster and Negro minstrelsy
But neither the pretty song nor the conventional waltz were in-
dicative of the main road that Stephen Foster was to take as a com-
poser. For an indication of this we must go back to another aspect of
his boyhood. Stephen Foster had a keen feeling for fun, a talent for
comedy, and a love for lively, zestful song. He and his brothers, to-
gether with neighborhood youngsters, formed a "Thespian Company"
for the performance of plantation melodies, the popular blackface
songs of the 18305 mentioned in the previous chapter: "Coal Black
Rose," "Long Tail Blue," "Jim Crow," and "Zip Coon." Stephen was
the star performer of the company; his brother writes that his per-
formance was so inimitable and true to nature that he was greeted with
uproarious applause and called back again and again. Later the boys
made the acquaintance of the celebrated clown Dan Rice, who in 1 843
wrote to Morrison Foster: "I am making money pretty fast. . . .
A Bout twenty five dollors A Weeke. I am clowning an also my
nigero singing an Dancing is drawing good houses." 4 Stephen doubt-
less thought Rice's spelling was pretty bad, but he was probably in-
trigued by the "nigero singing." The reader will recall that this was
the year, 1843, in which the first organized minstrels shows made their
appearance. The result was to be decisive for the budding songwriter
Stephen Foster.
About this time Stephen obtained a position in a Pittsburgh ware-
house, checking cotton bales as they were rolled up from the steam-
boat wharf to the building. The work was done by Negro roustabouts
who sang cheerfully at their task. We may be sure that Stephen kept
his ears open. It may be that the river, and the men who worked on
it, were his best music teachers. Echoes not only of his churchgoing
experiences with Lieve, but also of the singing of the Negro roust-
abouts, mingled with the currently popular plantation melodies, must
have been in Stephen's mind when, in the year 1 845, he began to com-
pose his first Ethiopian songs. In Morrison Foster's biography of his
brother, the origin of these songs is described as follows:
In 1845, a club of young men, friends of his, met twice a week at
our house to practice songs in harmony under his leadership. ... At
that time, Negro melodies were very popular. After we had sung over
* Morneweck, op. cit.y voL i, p. 265.
290 I Expansion
and over again all the songs then in favor, he proposed that he
would try and make some for us himself. His first effort was called
The Louisiana Belle. A week after this, he produced the famous song
of Old Uncle Ned. ... At the time he wrote "His fingers were long
like de cane in de brake,'1 he had never seen a canebrake, nor even
been below the mouth of the Ohio river, but the appropriateness of
the simile instantly strikes everyone who has travelled down the
Mississippi.
In these songs Stephen followed his usual practice of writing both the
words and the melody himself.
Around 1845 Stephen's brother Dunning established himself in busi-
ness in Cincinnati under the firm name of Irwin & Foster. Either late
in 1846 or early the following year Stephen went to Cincinnati to
work as a bookkeeper in his brother's office, which was near the
largest steamboat landing in the city. He frequented the music store
of Peters & Field, of which one of the partners was William C Peters
of Pittsburgh, who published some of Stephen's earliest songs. He met
William Roarke, member of a minstrel troupe known as the Sable Har-
monists, who introduced his song "Old Uncle Ned" in one of their
programs. This was probably Stephen's first professional contact with
the minstrel stage.
In September, 1847, the proprietors of The Eagle Saloon in Pitts-
burgh organized a musical contest for the best Ethiopian melody.
Stephen submitted a lively little song called "Away Down Souf,"
which has a curious geographical juxtaposition in the chorus:
No use talkin' when de darky wants to go
Whar de corntop blossom and de canebrake grow;
Den come along to Cuba, and we'll dance de polka- juba,
Way down souf, whar de corn grow.
Stephen's song "Away Down Souf" did not win the silver Prize
Cup. But Nelson Kneass, musical director of The Eagle Saloon, wrote
it down and tried to copyright it under his own name the next day!
This Kneass, incidentally, was the author of "Ben Bolt," one of those
moribund songs that refuses to die. On September 1 1, 1847, The Eagle
Saloon announced a Grand Gala Concert which featured:
SUSANNA— A new song, never before given to the public.
AMERICAS MINSTREL
Once "given to the public"— and, one might say, given to the publish-
ers, because Stephen got only a hundred dollars for it— "Susanna" took
the country by storm. Before long, the "forty-niners" had carried it
all the way to California. Stephen sold the song to Peters, who had
it copyrighted on December 30, 1848. Meanwhile, a pirated edition
was issued in New York and copyrighted in February of the same
year. Such piratings and copyright imbroglios were not uncommon
in those days. Small as was the sum he received, Stephen was pleased
at getting paid for his work. He wrote to Robert Nevin:
Imagine my delight in receiving one hundred dollars in cash!
Though this song was not successful, yet the two fifty-dollar bills I
received for it had the effect of starting me on my present vocation of
song-writer.
Stephen was wrong about the success of his song: Peters made more
than ten thousand dollars from it and from "Old Uncle Ned." Within
a year both songs were being featured by minstrel troupes throughout
the country. Another song of this period, featured by the Sable Har-
monists, titled "Way Down South in Alabama," was recently discov-
ered to have been composed by Foster, though the published version
was arranged by Frank Spencer.
In spite of the success of these plantation melodies, Stephen felt
that he should be composing music of a more genteel character, suit-
able for the parlor rather than the stage. He turned out a piano piece
called Santa Anna's Retreat from Buena Vista, full of elegant pianistic
effects. Immediately afterward he wrote "Nelly Was a Lady," one
of his delightfully simple and effective plantation melodies, with much
of that plaintive quality that was to endear his songs to millions of
people. Yet Stephen was ashamed of it, called it a "miserable thing,"
told his brother to take "10$, 5$ or even if for it," and ended by giv-
ing all the rights to Firth, Pond & Co., in return for fifty copies of the
printed music. He did the same thing with another "darky" song, "My
Brudder Gum," and the only benefit he received from this transaction
was that it led to signing a contract, in the autumn of 1849, with
Firth, Pond & Co., leading music publishers of New York, who brought
out most of his songs for the next ten years. The signing of this con-
tract was doubtless one of the major factors that caused Stephen to
abandon bookkeeping in favor of a musical career. He was encouraged
to believe that he could earn a living as a writer of songs.
292 I Expansion
Returning to his family's home in Pittsburgh, Stephen began to
court Jane McDowell, the daughter of a prominent neighbor, with
whom he had fallen in love while she was visiting in Cincinnati. On
June 22, 1850, Stephen and Jane were married. His financial assets as
a maiyied man had been augmented by the writing and publication of
"Dolcy Jones," "Summer Longings," "Oh! Lemuel!", "Mary Loves
the Flowers," "Soiree Polka," "Camptown Races," "Dolly Day," "An-
gelina Baker," "Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway," "Way Down in
Cairo," "Molly! Do You Love Me?", and "The Voice of Bygone
Days." Of these, the one that turned out to be most successful was
"Camptown Races"— at least from the standpoint of fame and popu-
larity. Financially it did not prove to be a best seller, for in seven years
it brought Foster only $101.25 in royalties, representing a sale pf some
5,000 copies over that period. This was a bonanza, however, in com-
parison with "Angelina Baker," which in the same seven-year period
earned for the composer a total of $16.87!
It will be noticed that of the songs listed above, half were planta-
tion melodies. Stephen was determined to use the minstrel stage to
forward his career as a songwriter. On February 23, 1850, he wrote
to E. P. Christy, leader of the famed Christy Minstrels, sending him
copies of "Camptown Races" and "Dolly Day," and saying, "I wish to
unite with you in every effort to encourage a taste for this style of
music so cried down by opera mongers." Stephen was now compos-
ing at a great rate. In July, 1851, he rented an office, where he could
work without interruption, and installed a piano in it. By this time he
had a baby girl, as well as a wife, to support. He was trying to be as
businesslike as possible.
It was in the summer of 1851 that Stephen composed the most fa-
mous of all his songs, "Old Folks at Home." According to his brother
Morrison's account, Stephen asked him, "What is a good name of two
syllables for a southern river? I want to use it in this new song, Old
Folks at Home" With a laugh, Morrison answered, "How would
Yazoo do?" referring to a current comic song called "Down on the
Old Yazoo." Stephen replied, "Oh, that's been used before," and they
both started looking for a suitable river in an atlas that Morrison had
on his desk. They hit on Suwannee, a river flowing from Georgia
through Florida to the Gulf of Mexico. Stephen, delighted, crossed
out the name "Pedee," which he had originally written, and sub-
AMERICA'S MINSTREL 293
stituted the more euphonious "Suwannee," merely simplifying it to
"Swanee"— thus producing the familiar opening line of his song, "Way
down upon the Swanee River."
Foster made an arrangement with Christy whereby die latter
would have "first performance" rights on his new songs, in advance of
publication, in return for a payment of ten dollars on each song. In
the case of "Old Folks at Home" this payment was increased to fif-
teen dollars. Moreover, Stephen agreed to let Christy's name appear
on the title page as the composer of this song. It was a foolish thing
to do, and Stephen soon realized his mistake, for on May 25, 1852, he
wrote a significant letter to Christy, parts of which have already been
quoted in this chapter, and which is important enough to reproduce
in full: '
E. P. Christy, Esq.
Dear Sir:
As I once intimated to you, I had the intention of omitting my
name on my Ethiopian songs, owing to a prejudice against them by
some, which might injure my reputation as a writer of another style
of music, but I find that by my efforts I have done a great deal to
build up a taste for the Ethiopian songs among refined people by
making the words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and
really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.
Therefore I have concluded to reinstate my name on my songs and
to pursue the Ethiopian business without fear or shame and lend all
my energies to making the business live, at the same time that I will
wish to establish my name as the best Ethiopian song-writer. But I
am not encouraged in undertaking this so long as "The Old Folks at
Home" stares me in the face with another's name on it. As it was at
my own solicitation that you allowed your name to be placed on the
song, I hope that the above reasons will be sufficient explanation for
my desire to place my own name on it as author and composer, while
at the same time I wish to leave the name of your band on the tide
page. This is a little matter of pride in myself which it will certainly
be to your interest to encourage. On the receipt of your free consent
to this proposition, I will if you wish, willingly refund you the money
which you paid me on that song, though it may have been sent me
for other considerations than the one in question, and I promise in
addition to write you an opening chorus in my best style, free of
charge, and in any other way in my power to advance your interests
8 Morneweck, op. cit^ vol. 2, pp. 395^.
294 I Expansion
hereafter. I find I cannot write at all unless I write for public appro-
bation and get credit for what I write. As we may probably have a
good deal of business with each other in our lives, it is best to pro-
ceed on a sure basis of confidence and good understanding, therefore
I hope you will appreciate an author's feelings in the case and deal
with me with your usual fairness. Please answer immediately.
Very respectfully yours,
Stephen C Foster
According to Morrison Foster, who must have had the information
from Stephen himself, Christy paid $500 for the privilege of placing
his name as author on the title page of "Old Folks at Home." Christy
refused to accede to Foster's request. In fact, on the back of Stephen's
letter the celebrated minstrel performer wrote down his opinion of the
composer as "a vacillating skunk"! Royalties on the song were paid
to Stephen, but for the rest of his life he suffered the humiliation of
seeing his most famous song appear with the name of another man
as author and composer. Not until the copyright was renewed in 1879
did Stephen C Foster's name appear as the composer of "Old Folks
at Home."
In February, 1852, Stephen and Jane and a party of friends took a
trip to New Orleans on the steamboat James Milligan, of which
Stephen's brother Dunning was captain. They were away for a month.
This was Stephen's only trip to the deep South.
In that year, 1852, Stephen wrote two of his best-known plantation
melodies, "Massa's in de Cold Ground" and "My Old Kentucky Home,
Good Night." There is a legend, without foundation in fact, that the
latter song was written at Federal Hill, the home of the Rowan family
in Bardstown, Kentucky. Stephen wrote the first draft of his song as
"Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night," evidently influenced by the vogue of
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tonfs Cabin, published in 1851-1852.
Later he changed it to its present form, doubtless thinking that there
were enough Uncle Toms on the market already. It is also interesting
to note that in the first draft, the Uncle Tom version, Stephen used
Negro dialect, as he had in his other "darky" songs; but in the revised
version he dropped the dialect, and "My Old Kentucky Home" is
written in ordinary English. Stephen's taste guided him wisely in this,
for the absence of dialect doubtless adds to the universal appeal of the
song. He followed the same practice in "Old Black Joe," the last of his
great plantation melodies, written in 1860.
AMERICA'S MINSTREL 295
The last years
Stephen's marriage was not running smoothly. Quarrels grew more
frequent, and in May, 1853, Jane kft Stephen, taking baby Marion
with her. Stephen went off to New York, but within the year he and
Jane were reconciled and began living together again. Their troubles,
however, were not over. Stephen's financial situation was not flourish-
ing. John Tasker Howard has calculated that from 1849 to 1857 his
average yearly income from royalties was $1425.84, enough for the
small family to live on with careful management. But Stephen was not
a good manager. He was in debt and overdrawn at his publishers. In
1857, therefore, he sold out all his future rights in the songs published
by Firth, Pond & Co., for the sum of $1872.28. He also sold the com-
plete rights to sixteen other songs (including ^'Camptown Races") to
F. D. Benteen for $200. He thus raised immediate cash, but forfeited
the future income from royalties, upon which he depended for a liv-
ing. This, in turn, put him under the necessity of continuing to pro-
duce at a rapid rate, regardless of quality or inspiration, in order al-
ways to have something to sell. If Stephen Foster had been a good
showman and self-promoter like Henry Russell, if he had gone on the
stage and presented his own songs in person, surrounded with un-
limited ballyhoo, he doubtless would have made money. But as a mere
writer of songs he was doomed to an unequal struggle and a losing
battle. The performers and the publishers were the ones who made the
money.
In 1860 Stephen moved to New York with his wife and daughter.
By this timeJie had practically ceased to write the plantation melodies
that were his true vein. "Old Black Joe," "The Glendy Burk," and
"Down Among the Cane Brakes" were published in 1860, but these
were the last of their kind. Of far different character were the other
songs that Foster submitted to his publishers in that year: "Poor
Drooping Maiden," "None Shall Weep a Tear for Me," "The Wife;
or He'll Come Home," and "Under the Willow She's Weeping." In
spite of potboilers, he continued to be seriously overdrawn at Firth,
Pond & Co., and was trying to make contracts with other publishers
in a desperate effort to improve his situation.
Stephen by this time was drinking heavily. Jane left him in the
summer of 1861, though she visited him that September and continued
296 I Expansion
to be anxious about his welfare. They were together again in 1862, but
the following year found Jane working as a telegraph operator at
Greensburgh, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Stephen's relations with Firth,
Pond & Co. had deteriorated. His latest songs were not making money.
Firth, Pond, refused to take his song, "Our Bright, Bright Summer
Days are Gone"; so Stephen gave it to his friend John Mahon, told him
to submit it to another publisher, "and take what he will give you."
Stephen Foster was reduced to a mere peddler.
After 1862 Stephen Foster was a defeated man. America's greatest
songwriter was transformed into a slovenly alcoholic, an ailing and
penurious hack. He turned out potboilers at a furious rate: forty-six
songs in one year! And only once did any of these songs reveal a
gleam of inspiration: "Beautiful Dreamer, Wake Unto Me," composed
in 1863. Incidentally, this was not, as William Pond claimed, the "last
song" written by Foster before his death.
In New York Stephen lived at the New England Hotel, on the
corner of Bayard Street and the Bowery. There, on January 9, 1864,
he went to bed ill and weak with fever. The next morning, when he
tried to get a drink of water, he fell against the washbowl and cut a
severe gash in his face and neck. When his friend George Cooper
arrived in response to an emergency call, Stephen gasped, "I'm done
for." Cooper took him to Bellevue Hospital and sent a telegram to
Henry Foster telling him that his brother Stephen was very sick and
wished to see him. He also wrote a letter to Morrison Foster with the
same message, adding, "He desires me to ask you to send him some
pecuniary assistance as his means are very low."
For a while Stephen seemed to rally, but on Wednesday afternoon
he fainted and did not regain consciousness. He died at half past two
o'clock on the afternoon of January 13, 1864. No friend or relative
was at his bedside. The next day George Cooper telegraphed to Henry
and Morrison: "Stephen is dead. Come on."
On January 21, 1864, while an orchestra played "Come Where My
Love Lies Dreaming," the remains of Stephen Collins Foster were in-
terred in Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh. His grave is marked by a
simple marble tombstone. In Pittsburgh's Highland Park a statue was
erected to his memory. There are two figures in the sculptured group:
one is that of the composer, seated and writing down a song; the other
is that of a Negro strumming a banjo.
AMERICA'S MINSTREL 297
A summing-up
Stephen Foster's music may be described as a product of the ur-
banized frontier. Had he been raised in Boston, New York, or Phila-
delphia, he would have grown up hearing concerts of music "by the
most celebrated European composers"; he would have heard operas,
oratorios, symphonies, concertos, and he might have been tempted to
try to become a composer in the grand style. He would, in any case,
have been entirely an urban, that is to say, a thoroughly Europeanized
product, completely cut off from the frontier. In Pittsburgh, and in
Cincinnati, he had contact with the frontier, he became a part of the
process of Americanization achieved by the frontier. Yet his environ-
ment was that of the urbanized frontier, which was rapidly ceasing to
be a frontier at all as the cities of the then West became more and
more Europeanized, aspiring to cultivate the "polite arts" in the same
degree as the older cities of the Atlantic seaboard. Stephen Foster's
\\ ide appeal lies largely in this cultural dualism of his background,
through which he was able to combine the vitality of the frontier and a
certain element of primitive simplicity with the genteel tradition of
the urban fringe, dominated by sentimentality, conventionalism, and
propriety.
To appreciate Stephen Foster's musical output in relation to the
cultural context in which it was produced, one needs to go through
all of his more than two hundred songs in their original or at least con-
temporary sheet-music editions, or in nineteenth-century songbooks
like The Love and Sentimental Songster or The American Dime Song
Book, to see their illustrated covers with portraits of sentimental maid-
ens and lovers in stilted romantic attitudes, and to realize the over-
whelming proportion of merely "pretty" songs that he turned out for
the genteel trade. Stephen Foster's preeminence as an American song-
writer rests upon some dozen songs, to which may be added another
dozen of lesser fame but of evident superiority to the rest of his out-
put or to that of his contemporaries. The "big four" among Foster's
songs, the pillars of his universal fame, are "Old Folks at Home," "My
Old Kentucky Home," "Massa's in de Cold Ground," and "Old Black
Joe." Now, these are not the songs that are closest either to the roots
of Negro folksong or to the prevailing style of blackface minstrelsy.
Neither are they the closest to the genteel tradition of the European-
298 I Expansion
izcd urban fringe. In terms of Foster's songs, they stand midway be-
tween "Oh! Susanna" or "Camptown Races" and "Come Where My
Love Lies Dreaming" or "Wilt Thou Be Gone, Love?" In three of
the ubig four," the Negro dialect has been eliminated, and in the
fourth, "Massa's in de Cold Ground" it is somewhat attenuated. Foster
himself stated that he intended to make the minstrel melodies or Ethi-
opian songs palatable to refined tastes, and this is part of the clean-
ing-up process. Musically, these four songs are in slow tempo: Moder-
ate con espressione, Poco adagio, Poco lento, and again Poco adagio
for "Old Black Joe." Above all, "con espressione"f—that is an indis-
pensable requirement of the genteel tradition. Compare, for example,
such an old-time minstrel song as "Long Time Ago" with "Old Folks
at Home." The former is really rooted in popular tradition: it is marked
Allegro, and the minstrels have their way with it as a comic song. As
we saw in the previous chapter, Morris and Horn made a sentimental
song out of "Long Time Ago." Their concoction strikes us as ludi-
crous now because it leans so obviously on a faded tradition. Foster
wrote plenty of sentimental songs that seem equally ludicrous— one
need only mention "Willie We Have Missed You" as an example. But
he was not, like Charles Horn, a hopeless victim of the genteel tradi-
tion. Like the Ohio and the Missouri flowing into the Mississippi, two
traditions converged in the broad stream of Stephen Foster's best mu-
sic. It is this that gives him his unique position and significance in
American music. How thoroughly he was master of both traditions is
proved by the fact that he excelled in the pure minstrel song, he ex-
celled in the sentimental ballad, and he excelled in the combination of
both types: the blending of simplicity and pathos with expression and
refinement that marks his most famous and most beloved songs.
Stephen Foster's songs may be divided into two broad categories:
minstrel songs and nonminstrel songs. Under the latter there are some
minor subdivisions, such as religious songs and war songs, which have
slight value if any. The best of Foster's Civil War songs is probably
"We Are Coming Father Abraham, 300,000 More," published in 1862.
As for the "Ethiopian" productions, they fall into two groups: the
comic songs and the sentimental songs, the latter represented chiefly by
the "big four" already mentioned. Let us glance more closely at a song
in each of these groups.
"Oh! Susanna" is a typical example of the comic or nonsense min-
AMERICA'S MINSTREL 299
strel song. The music consists of four nearly identical periods, each
divided into two phrases to correspond with the eight lines of the
verse. The same period is used for the last two lines of the chorus, so
that the only new material occurs in the first portion of the chorus,
which also contains the one instance of syncopation, on the word "Su-
sanna." Having said that the melodic periods are nearly identical, it
remains merely to remark that the only difference lies in a slight
melodic variation of the second phrase. The first period leads to a
semicadence on the dominant, the second to a full cadence. The second
phrase of the chorus, "do not cry for me," has exactly the same
melodic and metrical pattern as the last phrase of the first line. This
unity through repetition, with only slight but effective contrasts, is
characteristic of Foster's songs. Harold Vincent Milligan, remarking
on this trait, wrote: "The repetitiousness of Foster's melodies is such
that one cannot fail to wonder that they exert such an influence upon
the listener as they do." 6 But, being such good tunes to begin with,
it is precisely through this repetitiousness that they make their unfail-
ing effect. And this, in turn, makes the variation doubly effective when
it does occur.
"Old Folks at Home" may be taken as an example of the senti-
mental plantation melody constructed on the same simple basis. As
in the case of "Oh! Susanna," the first introduction of new melodic
material occurs in the first two lines of the chorus, and again this is
followed by a repetition of the main melody. Again we have four
successive repetitions of the principal melody, ending twice on a
semicadence and twice on a full cadence. Very characteristic is the
rhythmical "snap" which dislocates the accent on words having nor-
mally a feminine ending, such as "ribber," "ebber," "plantation," and
"weary." Except for the first part of the chorus, the melody of "Old
Folks at Home" uses only the five tones of the pentatonic scale.
While recognizing the element of repetition in Foster's melodies,
we should nevertheless bear in mind that slight metrical variations in
the melody were, in some cases, introduced for different stanzas, as
shown by the original editions. For instance, in the original edition of
"Old Folks at Home," published by Firth, Pond & Co. in 1851, the
following metrical variants occur for the second and third stanzas of
the song:
•Milligan, Stephen Collins Foster, p. 113.
300
Expansion
Q fl.. 1 , ,—
1 J. h l=
J. * II
«J 9
p 0 ttjj 1 c : 1 —
1 Jl J J
j I.I
As regards harmony, Foster stays pretty close to the tonic, domi-
nant, and subdominant. A rare example of the use of secondary chords
is to be found in the song "Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway."
Modulations are very scarce and confined chiefly to the dominant key,
as in "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Old Black Joe."
Among Foster's nonminstrel songs, the best known is, of course,
"Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair." It seems that in his original
manuscript book Foster wrote the name as "Jennie," definitely indi-
cating that he had his wife Jane in mind, for she was often affection-
ately addressed as Jennie. But the publishers preferred "Jeanie" and
brought the song out with this name. "Jeanie" has not always been
so popular. After the composer's death, when the copyright was re-
newed for the benefit of his widow and daughter, they received, for
a nineteen-year period, accumulated royalties of 75 cents! Only fif-
teen copies had been sold.
We have already observed, according to the dictum of Marius
Schneider, that the popularity of a melody depends partly on its
degree of simplicity and partly on its conformity "to the melodic
type current in a given culture." The melodies of Stephen Foster ful-
fill these conditions in the highest degree. Simplicity is the essence
of his music. His songs conform to melodic types widely current in
American folklore. These melodic types and their basic harmonic pat-
terns, in turn, are deeply rooted in age-old folk traditions inherited
from Anglo-Celtic civilization transplanted to America. These factors
contribute to make Stephen Collins Foster the most beloved composer
whom America has produced.
chapter fifteen
The exotic periphery
Existence in a tropical wilderness, in the midst of a voluptuous and half-
civilized race, bears no resemblance to that of a London cockney, a Parisian
lounger, or an American Quaker.
L. M. COTTSCHALK, NOTES OF A PIANIST.
In the 18205, somewhat more than two decades after the Louisiana
Purchase, there arrived in the turbulent and colorful city of New
Orleans a young Englishman from London named Edward Gottschalk.
He had studied medicine at Leipzig, but after emigrating to America
in his twenty-fifth year he became a successful broker. Handsome,
cultured, and affluent, he was admitted to the best Creole society— that
is, the old French and Spanish families— of New Orleans, and in this
aristocratic milieu he met, and fell in love with, a young girl of ex-
ceptional charm and beauty, Aimee Marie de Brusl£. Her grandfather
had been governor of the northern province of the French colony of
Saint-Domingue, one of the wealthiest and most luxurious colonies of
the New World until its prosperity was shattered by war and civil
strife. In that troubled period, Mile, de Brusle's father, an army officer,
fled to Jamaica, where he married a lady of French and Spanish noble
birth. Soon afterward, like many other refugees from the West Indies,
they settled in New Orleans, a city congenial to them because of its
gay social life and its mixed heritage of French and Spanish culture.
Founded by the Sieur de Bienville in 1718, New Orleans soon be-
came a city of strong contrasts, ranging from the most refined ele-
gance to the most unbridled depravity. While the French royal gov-
ernor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, busied himself with creating a little
Versailles on the Mississippi and organizing grand balls with court
dress de rigueur, he at the same time fostered gross corruption and
nepotism, while his official laxity made the provincial capital an open
301
3<32 | Expansion
city for thieves, prostitutes, gamblers, and lawless adventurers of every
description. Negro slaves were brought from Africa in considerable
numbers (later they came mostly from the West Indies) and in 1724
the original "Black Code** was promulgated for the regulation of Ne-
groes in Louisiana. It prohibited any mingling of the races, black and
white, either through marriage or concubinage, regardless of whether
the Negroes were free or slave. To manumitted slaves it granted "the
same rights, privileges, and immunities which are enjoyed by free-born
persons." This was the basis of the code adopted by the Louisiana
legislature after the territory became a part of the United States.
In 1762, by a secret treaty, France ceded Louisiana to Spain, whose
colonial empire already included vast sections of what is now the
United States, from Florida to California. Not until 1769 did Don
Alexander O'Reilly arrive in New Orleans to take possession of the
city and the province in the name of the Spanish King. New Orleans
then became a Spanish colonial city, with its cabildoy its regidores, its
alcaldes. In spite of two disastrous fires, the city grew and prospered
under the Spanish regime; in fact, the fires may have done some good,
for as a result the Spaniards rebuilt most of the city, thus giving rise
to the local saying that they found "a town of hovels and left it a city
of palaces."
In 1800 Spain retroceded Louisiana to France, but before the
French authorities could take effective possession, the territory was
purchased by the United States, and in 1803 New Orleans became
officially an American city. Essentially it remained an exotic city
within the borders of the United States. The son born to Edward
Gottschalk and his Creole wife on May 8, 1829, an American citizen
by reason of the Louisiana Purchase, was to become and remain an ex-
otic personality within his native country; and, like the city of his birth,
he acted as a link between the progressive, practical civilization of the
expanding United States, and the seductive, colorful civilization of
Latin America. Louis Moreau Gottschalk— he was named after his
mother's uncle, Moreau de I'lslet— whether he lived in Paris or New
York, never forgot that he was a child of the tropics; and what we
value in his music today is not the glitter of the concert hall or the
sophistication of the salon, but the alluring charm of his Caribbean
rhythms and melodies.
"Caribbean" is perhaps the best word to describe the musical at-
mosphere of New Orleans in which Louis Moreau Gottschalk spent
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY 303
his boyhood. I do nor, of course, refer to the world of French opera
as performed at the Theatre d'Orleans, attended by fashionable audi-
ences in full dress. Gottschalk knew this world of "cultivated" music,
both at home and during his years of study in Europe. What I refer
to is that exotic, unconventional, hybrid, exciting blend of musical
elements, the product of complex racial and cultural factors in a new
society evolving under strange conditions, which finds its most char-
acteristic expression in the Caribbean area. There was an influx of
population from the islands of the Caribbean to New Orleans. Negro
slaves were brought from the West Indies, but many other persons,
both white and colored, came to the city on the Mississippi as refu-
gees from the terrors of revolution in Haiti, or to escape the interna-
tional strife that afflicted the Caribbean area. In 1809 and 1810, more
than ten thousand refugees from the West Indies arrived in New Or-
leans, most of them originally from Saint-Domingue (or Haiti, as the
former French colony was called after it became independent in 1804).
Of these, about three thousand were free Negroes, or rather "persons
of color," for their racial composition varied greatly. In order to un-
derstand the racial background of this emigration, it will be helpful to
glance at a breakdown of the population in the French colony of Saint-
Domingue in the year 1789:
White 30,826 Free Negroes and Mulattoes 27,548 Slaves 465429
To be noted in particular are ( i ) the overwhelming majority of Negro
slaves, and (2) the large proportion of free "persons of color." It was
the coming of the latter class to New Orleans that gave the city, in
large part, its peculiar social structure. The mulatto women— called
quadroons or octoroons, according to the proportion of white blood
in their veins—were famous for their seductive beauty, as well as for
their gay and attractive dress. The gentlemen of Louisiana flocked to
the celebrated Quadroon Balls not merely to dance and admire but
also to select the mistress of their choice. The free men of color could
gain admittance to these balls only in the capacity of musician, to
fiddle for the dancers. Thus it was that the "f.m.c."— free male of
color— frequently turned to music as a profession; if such it could be
called, for the dance musician was little more than a menial.
The persons of color, gens de couleur, having even a single drop
of white blood, were a class apart from the blacks, the Negroes. Even
304 | Expansion
within the gens de couleur there were rigid caste distinctions, accord-
ing to the proportion of white blood. It might be unnecessary to dwell
on this subject, were it not for the importance of the caste-and-color
system in New Orleans for the future development of American mu-
sic, particularly with relation to the origin and growth of jazz. Fur-
thermore, these distinctions have led to a curious confusion in the
use of the term "Creole." This word is the French equivalent of the
Spanish criollo, which was used from early colonial times to designate
a person of European parentage born in America. It was during the
Spanish regime that this term came into usage in Louisiana. As a noun
the term was always applied to white persons of European ancestry,
born in the New World. But as an adjective, it was applied also to
Negroes born in the New World, as opposed to those brought from
Africa. It was also applied to the dialect, or patois, spoken by these
Negroes, which was a strongly corrupted variety of French. Hence in
popular speech the term "Creole" became associated with Louisiana
Negro dialect, songs, customs, and dances. Later the octoroons of New
Orleans began to be called Creoles, which added to the confusion. In
short, the term "Creole" has become so laden with conflicting conno-
tations that it can be used only when hedged around with definitions.
New Orleans had three colorful, exotic dance rituals that all visi-
tors wanted to see: the Quadroon Balls, the voodoo ceremonial dances,
and the dances of the Negroes in Place Congo, or Congo Square.
The cult of voodoo (more correctly, vodoun) is a form of African
religion involving ritualistic drumming and dancing to induce "posses-
sion" by the loa or supernatural spirits. Because one of the leading
deities of the cult is Damballa, the serpent god, voodooism is popu-
larly associated with snake worship. Voodoo probably existed in Lou-
isiana from the earliest colonial period, but it received a marked im-
petus from the influx of West Indian refugees from 1809 to 1810,
for the cult flourished primarily among the free "persons of color."
Although basically African in origin, voodoo became mixed with
Roman Catholic elements, and therefore, like most Caribbean cul-
tural manifestations, was a hybrid product. In New Orleans the prin-
cipal public voodoo ceremonies took place on St. John's Eve (June
23) and attracted a multitude of spectators. But there were also secret
ceremonies that few if any outsiders ever witnessed. George W. Cable
described voodoo dances in New Orleans with a great show of moral
indignation and the vividness of an eyewitness:
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY 305
... the voodoo dance begins. The postulant dances frantically in
the middle of the ring, only pausing, from time to time, to receive
heavy alcoholic draughts in great haste and return more wildly to
his leapings and writhings until he falls in convulsions. He is lifted,
restored, and presently conducted to the altar, \takes his oath, and by
a ceremonial stroke from one of the sovereigns is admitted a full par-
ticipant. . . . But the dance goes on about the snake. The contor-
tions of the upper part of the body, especially of the neck and
shoulders, are such as to threaten to dislocate them. The queen
shakes the box and tinkles the bells, the rum bottle gurgles, the
chant alternates between king and chorus:
Eh! Eh! Bomba hon, hone!
Canga bafio tay,
Canga moon day lay,
Canga do keelah,
Canga li!
There are swoonings and ravings, nervous tremblings beyond
control, incessant writhings and turnings, tearing of garments, even
biting of the flesh— every imaginable invention of the devil.1
That gifted writer Lafcadio Hearn, whose book on the West
Indies might well serve as background for this chapter, became inter-
ested in the music of the Louisiana Negroes, and at one time con-
ceived the idea of writing a book on the subject in collaboration with
the music critic H. E. Krehbiel. According to the latter, Hearn pro-
posed to relate the migrations of African music through the ages:
"Then I would touch upon the transplantation of Negro melody to
the Antilles and the two Americas, where its strangest black flowers
are gathered by the alchemists of musical science and the perfume
thereof extracted by magicians like Gottschalk." 2
Dancing in Congo Square
But in Gottschalk's time "the alchemists of musical science" (to-
day more prosaically called comparative musicologists) were not yet
busy gathering the "strange black flowers" of Negro music; so Gott-
schalk had to gather the flowers himself as well as extract the per-
1 Cable, The Century Magazine, Apr. 1886.
2 Krehbiel, A fro- American Folksongs, p. 39.
306 | Expansion
fume thereof. The question is, under what circumstances did he do
it? In his entertaining book on the New Orleans underworld, The
French Quarter, Herbert Asbury asserts in a footnote: "Louis Moreau
Gottschalk . . . based one of his best known compositions, La Bam-
boula, on what he heard and saw in Congo Square as a boy." Now,
it is true that the bamboula was one of the Negro dances that could
be seen and heard (it was also a song) in Congo Square when Gott-
schalk was a boy in New Orleans. Whether the boy Moreau— as his
family called him—was ever taken to see the dances in Congo Square
is a matter of conjecture. But before we attempt to bring him to this
exciting spectacle, let us first bring him out of the cradle, where we
left him some time ago.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk took only three years to progress from
the cradle to the piano. Such, at least, is the family tradition. Accord-
ing to his sister, when Moreau was three years old, one day everyone
in the family was startled by a faint but most exquisite melody on the
piano. "The tone and touch were perfect." When Mamma rushed into
the drawing room, "she found little Moreau standing on a high stool,
playing the melody she had sung to him in the morning." After that,
Papa lost no time arranging for his small son to take music lessons.
He studied both piano and violin, but the piano was his instrument.
At the age of eight he gave his first public concert, a benefit for his
violin teacher Miolan. Shortly before his twelfth birthday, his father
decided to send him to Europe for further study. In May, 1842, after
giving a farewell concert, young Moreau sailed for France and was
placed in a private school in Paris. Three years later, while conva-
lescing from an attack of typhoid fever in the French provinces, he
composed the piano piece that was to become so popular everywhere,
La Bamboula.
If Gottschalk based that composition on "what he heard and saw
in Congo Square," then it is obvious that he must have been taken to
see the dancing there before his departure for Europe. Assuming
that the sheltered child was taken there, perhaps by a Negro nurse if
not by his parents, what would he have seen and heard? Firsthand
accounts are lacking, but George W. Cable, in his article The Dance
in Place Congo, published in 1886, seems to have reconstructed the
scene with considerable authenticity. The following is extracted from
his article.
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY 307
The booming of African drums and blast of huge wooden horns
called to the gathering. . . . The drums were very long, hollowed,
often from a single piece of wood, open at one end and having a
sheep or goat skin stretched across the other. . . . The smaller drum
was often made from a joint or two of very large bamboo . . . and
this is said to be the origin of its name; for it was called the Bam-
boula.
The drummers bestrode the drums; the other musicians sat about
them in an arc, cross-legged on the ground. One important instru-
ment was a gourd partly filled with pebbles or grains of corn, flour-
ished violently at the end of a stout staff with one hand and beaten
upon the palm of the other. Other performers rang triangles, and
others twanged from jew's-harps an astonishing amount of sound.
Another instrument was the jawbone of some ox, horse or mule, and
a key rattled rhythmically along its weatherbeaten teeth. . . . But
the grand instrument at last, was the banjo. It had but four strings,
not six. . . .
And then there was that long-drawn human cry of tremendous
volume, richness, and resound, to which no instruments within their
reach could make the faintest approach:
Eh! pou' la belle Layotte ma mourri 'nocent,
Oui 'nocent ma mourri!
All the instruments silent while it rises and swells with mighty en-
ergy and dies away distantly, "yea-a-a-a-a-a!"— and then the crash of
savage drums, horns, and rattles.
Cable then goes on to describe the dancing of the bamboula:
The singers almost at the first note are many. At the end of the
first line every voice is lifted up. The strain is given the second time
with growing spirit. Yonder glistening black Hercules, who plants
one foot forward, lifts his head and bare, shining chest, rolls out the
song from a mouth and throat like a cavern. . . . See his play of re-
strained enthusiasm catch from one bystander to another. They
swing and bow to right and left, in slow time to the piercing treble
of the Congo women. . . . Hear that bare foot slap the ground!
one sudden stroke only. . . . The musicians warm up at the sound.
308 | Expansion
A smiting of breasts with open hands begins very softly and be-
comes vigorous. The women's voices rise to a tremulous intensity.
. . . The women clap their hands in time, or standing with arms
akimbo receive with faint courtesies and head-liftings the low bows
of the men, who deliver them swinging this way and that.
See! Yonder brisk and sinewy fellow has taken one short, nervy
step into the ring, chanting with rising energy. ... He moves off
to the farther edge of the circle, still singing, takes the prompt hand
of an unsmiling Congo girl, leads her into the ring, and leaving the
chant to the throng, stands before her for the dance. ... A sudden
frenzy seizes the musicians. The measure quickens, the swaying, atti-
tudinizing crowd starts into extra activity, the female voices grow
sharp and staccato, and suddenly the dance is the furious Bamboula.
Now for the frantic leaps! Now for frenzy! Another pair are in
the ring. The man wears a belt of little bells, or, as a substitute, little
tin vials of shot, "bram-bram sonnette!" And still another couple
enter the circle. What wild—what terrible delight! The ecstasy rises
to madness; one— two— three of the dancers fall— blouc out oum! bourn!
—with foam on their lips and are dragged out by arms and legs from
under tumultuous feet of crowding new-comers. The musicians
know no fatigue; still the dance rages on:
Quand patate la cuite na va mange It!
("When that 'tater's cooked don't you eat it up!")
fr r r ' r J> J J J
Quand pa • tate la cuite na va man - ge
Fine
>v J J) J J -J h J> J> J J i'1 "1
li, na va man - g6 na va . man - g£ ii!
For Cable, the bamboula represented "a frightful triumph of body
over the mind," and he adds: "Only the music deserved to survive,
and does survive. . . . The one just given, Gottschalk first drew from
oblivion." The second musical example quoted above is one of several
tunes included in a supplement to Cable's article. It is tided The Earn-
boula, the arrangement is credited to Miss M. L. Harriett, but no
source for the music is given. Actually this tune bears little resem-
blance to a West Indian dance; so it is not surprising to find Cable
remarking, "I have never heard another to know it as a bamboula/1
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY 309
But he goes on to remark that in Slave Songs of the United States there
is a bamboula from Louisiana, "whose characteristics resemble the
bambouk reclaimed by Gottschalk in so many points that here is the
best place for it." He then quotes the music of this song, under the
title "Mich6 Banjo," in an arrangement by H. E. Krehbiel (who,
incidentally, calls attention to what he describes as "the particularly
propulsive effect of the African 'snap' at the beginning"). I quote the
music as it appears on page 1 1 3 of Slave Songs of the United States
(New York, 1867), where it is titled "Musieu Bainjo": the song is
about a mulatto who puts on airs, with his hat on one side, his cane,
and his new boots that creak. The spice of the text is in the double
meaning between mulet (mule) and mulatre (mulatto).
T*
_i£-u — m —
PL~Tf — ff
— H — i
. H= — ^
.,_J}_J5
==]
*=
9 t
4 H — 5 —
Vo-vez
^=7=
P P '
ce mu-let
•L j) — ^y~
ty=
1J.A
)
f^
lus-ieu
Is
Bain-jo,Comme
1 Is ^ — hr
il est
A
in -so
K a
— 1
C
"
— J 1
lent.
II1 ^; — J1-
Cha • peau
La canne
Botte qui
— /
sur
I
fait
=&=
c6 -
la
crin,
+^L-
t^,
main,
crin,
_^u — ^~
Mu-sieu
Mu-sieu
Mu-sieu
/
Bain
Bain
Bain
•jo,
- jo,-
•jo»
Creole songs and dances: the background
The editors of the collection from which this song was taken, state
that, along with six others in the same volume, it was obtained from a
lady who heard them sung, before the Civil War, on the Good Hope
plantation, St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. According to them, it repre-
sents "the attempt of some enterprising Negro to write a French
song." There is perhaps no need to take this information literally, but
they were undoubtedly correct in recognizing this song as the product
of French music plus Negro "enterprise." Its West Indian character
is unmistakable. When the French contredanse was transplanted to
Haiti in the eighteenth century, it began to undergo rhythmic modi-
fications under Negro influence, particularly by the introduction of
the "habanera rhythm" in the bass. This rhythm became the basis of
the contradanza of the Antilles, as well as of the habanera, the tango,
and numerous other Latin American dances. Further modifications
occurred when Negro musicians altered this fundamental rhythm
310 | Expansion
by transferring the accent to a weak beat. This may be seen in the
bass of a contradanza titled Los M erengazos: *
The alert reader will at once notice that this metrical pattern corre-
sponds exactly to that of the first and third measures of "Musieu
Bainjo." It is, moreover, identical with the so-called "cakewalk" fig-
ure that forms the rhythmic basis of American ragtime music.
Let us now seek a Caribbean counterpart for the metrical pattern
of the second and sixth measures of "Musieu Bainjo." Among many
examples that could be quoted, we shall choose a Cuban contradanza
from the early nineteenth century, which also shows the habanera
rhythm in the bass.4 The metrical pattern that concerns us particu-
larly is marked with a bracket.
The foregoing, among numerous other illustrations that might be
cited, should serve to indicate concretely the extremely close relation-
ship between the music of the "Creole" Negroes of Louisiana and the
music of the Caribbean islands, with its mixture of Spanish, French,
and African elements. It is worth noting that the editors of Slave
Songs of the United States speak of these tunes as "peculiar . . . diffi-
cult to write down, or to sing correctly." Their notation is probably
only an approximation of what the Louisiana Negroes actually played
and sang when they made their music "hot" for Place Congo.
The supposition that Gottschalk "lifted" his Bamboula from
Congo Square seems farfetched. A more likely explanation is that,
like the anonymous lady who supplied the Creole tunes for Slave
Songs of the United States, he heard this, and other similar tunes, sung
by Negroes in his household or on nearby plantations. Cable is correct
* From Carpentier, La Murica en Cuba, p. 119.
* Ibid., p. in.
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY
in remarking the traits that Gottschalk's Bamboula has in common
with "Mich6 Banjo" (or "Musieu Bainjo11). The points of resemblance
have to do chiefly with the use of two characteristic rhythmic fig-
ures: that of the habanera and that of the cakewalk. Gottschalk uses
the former in the treble over a heavily accented first beat in the bass: 8
The cakewalk figure appears in the following measures in combina-
tion with a typical pattern of the contradanza:
Elsewhere in this piece, he uses the contradanza rhythm with the
characteristic accent on the weak beats.
In his Cuban dance titled Ojos Criollos, there is an interesting
juxtaposition of the cakewalk and the habanera rhythms, with synco-
pation in the bass. In another Cuban dance, Di que si (also known by
its French title, Reponds-moi), the cakewalk figure appears system-
atically over a bass that repeatedly stresses the weak beat of the meas-
ure (in 2/4 time).
Although Gottschalk adapted his Creole and Caribbean composi-
tions to the prevailing style of mid-nineteenth-century piano writing
in the virtuoso manner, he was highly sensitive to the nuances of local
color and extremely perceptive of the rhythmic intricacies of this New
World music.
8 This and the following example copyrighted in 1908 by G. Schirmer.
312 I Expansion
Among other dances of the Louisiana Negroes, all reported by
various writers as found in the West Indies also, were the babowlle,
the cata (or chacta), the cownjaille (or counjai), the voudou, the
calinda, and the con go. According to Cable, the congo ("to describe
which would not be pleasant") was known as the chica in Santo
Domingo, and in the Windward Islands was confused under one name
with the calinda. It is indeed difficult to unravel the nomenclature of
these dances. Probably the most widespread of all was the calinda,
which Cable says was the favorite dance all the way from New
Orleans to Trinidad.
The editors of Slave Songs of the United States wrote that the
calinda "was a sort of contra-dance." They quote the description of a
French writer, Bescherelle, who mentions the two lines of dancers as
"advancing and retreating in cadence, and making very strange con-
tortions and highly lascivious gestures." 6 They were right in char-
acterizing the calinda as an adaptation of the French contredanse,
which as brought to the West Indies by the French colonists was a
polite and circumspect social dance. But, as Curt Sachs has pointed
out,7 dances in which men and women line up in two rows facing
each other and advance and retreat, were not unknown in Africa.
So the Negroes found in the contredanse a natural point of departure
for a new type of hybrid dance combining European and African ele-
ments. This applies to the choreography. What about the music?
In Slave Songs of the United States, the following song (No. 134) is
given as an example of the calinda:
m
r^l P~T
Mi • che' Pr£ - val li don - nin gran bal, Li fait
CHORUS
~?rTJ~3~r*~-}rf- II J> | Ji J)j J J» |
naig pa - y€ pou sau • t€ in - p£ Dan - se ca-lin-da, bou-
v i ff i IT "^rr > i J j j i»
doum, bou-doum, Dan - $£ . ca-lin-da, bou-doum, bou-doum.
• I have been unable to identify the work from which this quotation is taken.
Compare, however, the quotation from Pere Labat given on p. 314. It would
not be surprising if this were the source of the description attributed to
Bescherelle.
7 Sachs, World History of the Dtnce.
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY 313
The first thing that strikes one about this tune is its completely
European character; it is clearly a tune of French origin, which has
undergone little or no modification by the Caribbean milieu. In this
connection we observe also that of seven Creole tunes included in the
collection, this is the only one in 6/8 meter. Of the others, four are
in 2/4 and two in common time. This distinction is significant, for,
although 6/8 meter is not foreign to Caribbean music, the 2/4 meter is
by far the more prevalent, not only in Caribbean music, but in Afro-
American music as a whole. In short, this calinda is obviously a tune
that has scarcely been "worked over" at all by the Negroes, and one
cannot but be struck by the incongruity between this pleasant little
tune and the wild orgies which Cable describes as taking place in the
Congo Square. Of course, it no doubt sounded wilder when the
Negroes played and sang it to the accompaniment of drums, gourd
rattles, triangles, jew's-harps, jawbone and key, quils (Pan's pipe
made of three cane reeds), and banjos.
The songs of the calinda are satirical and often personally abusive.
The calinda quoted above is about a certain Monsieur Preval who
gave a ball in New Orleans, using a stable as the ballroom— much to
the astonishment of the horses, says the song— and neglecting to ob-
tain the necessary license. Krehbiel, in his book Afro-American
Folksongs, gives a composite text for this song, in which he includes
several stanzas that he says were supplied to him by Lafcadio Hearn.
One of these is particularly interesting: "Black and white both danced
the bamboula; never again will you see such a fine time." Two points
are significant here: one, that the bamboula was a ballroom dance;
two, that it may have been danced by both blacks and whites. Let
the reader return for a moment to what was said in Chapter 4 of
this book, where mention was made of the congo as a ballroom dance
in Colonial Virginia. Cable and other writers describe the congo and
the bamboula as wild, lascivious, primitive dances. Yet it is likely
that they also existed as more or less restrained social dances, per-
formed to such European instruments as the violin and the clarinet.
Mention of the calinda as a favorite dance of the Antilles goes
back as far as the early part of the eighteenth century. P&re Labat, in
Nouveau Voyage . . . (The Hague, 1724), mentions it as an "Afri-
can1* dance, which he saw in Santo Domingo around the year 1698.
According to this author, the Spaniards learned the "calenda," as he
314 I Expansion
calls it, from the Negroes, who brought it over from the Coast of
Guinea in Africa. His description follows:
The calenda is danced to the sound of instruments and of voices.
The participants are arranged in two lines, one in front of the other,
the men facing the women. The spectators form a circle around the
dancers and the musicians. One of the participants sings a song, of
which the refrain is repeated by the spectators, with clapping of
hands. All the dancers then hold their arms half-raised, leap, turn,
make contortions with their posteriors, approach within two feet of
each other, and retreat in cadence, until the sound of an instrument
or the tone of the voices, signals them to approach again. Then they
strike their bellies together two or three times in succession, after
which they separate and pirouette, to begin the same movement
again, with highly lascivious gestures, as many times as the instru-
ment or the voice gives the signal. From time to time they go arm
in arm, and circle around two or three times, while continuing to
strike their bellies together and exchanging kisses, but without losing
the cadence.
This description, which was copied (without acknowledgment)
by several later writers, supplies the realistic details omitted by Cable
in his account of the dance in Place Congo. It would not be at all
surprising to find that this passage was also one of the major sources
for Cable's article. Cable was born in 1 844, a year after the dancing in
Place Congo was suppressed; he had to reconstruct the scene from
earlier accounts of writers who had actually witnessed the West
Indian dances that were transplanted to New Orleans. As for the
music, he took most of the tunes from the Creole songs included in
Slave Songs of the United States. These songs evidently circulated
widely in Louisiana, and Gottschalk must have had ample oppor-
tunity to hear them elsewhere than in Congo Square.
Gottschalk in Europe
There is sufficient evidence that Moreau Gottschalk carried with
him to Europe, deeply impressed in his mind, the Creole songs of his
native Louisiana. Besides his Bamboula, there is his Ballade Creole
(Opus 3 de la Louisiane) titled La Savane, dating from his first years
in Europe, in which he uses the theme of a song called "Lolottc"
(No. 135 in Slave Songs of the United States):
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY
315
ftmr flr r ir ^^=^
^2.
r if r 1
etc
Gottschalk used only a portion of the original melody, which is one
of the most attractive of the Creole songs. Poor Lolotte, says the
song, has only a heartache, while Calalou has an embroidered petti-
coat and a Madras kerchief. Pointing out that calalou was originally
the term for a West Indian dish, a noted ragout, Cable thinks that in
this song "Calalou" is a derisive nickname "intended to apply here to
the quadroon women who swarmed into New Orleans in 1809 as
refugees from Cuba, Guadeloupe, and other islands. ..." A com-
posite version of "Pov' piti Lolotte," with the music arranged by
H. T. Burleigh, is given in Krehbiel's Afro-American Folksongs.
One more remark may be made about this song, and that is the
strong resemblance it bears to the familiar American play-party song,
"Skip to my Lou." Numerous versions of this old play-party song
are available in collections of American folk music, so that the reader
can easily verify this similarity— if indeed the familiar tune be not
remembered from one's own childhood. Are the two songs related?
Do the words "Skip to my Lou" indicate some connection with
Louisiana? Is the play-party song derived from the Creole song? I
do not know the answers.
La Savane was among the pieces that Gottschalk composed while
he was in France, at the age of fifteen or sixteen. La Bamboula, as pre-
viously stated, was another; and a third was Le Bananler ("The Banana
Tree"), subtitled "Chanson negre" These youthful compositions
might be called a Louisiana trilogy and were to become and remain
favorites with the public, along with that other characteristic and
brilliant showpiece, The Banjo, subtitled "Fantaisie grotesque" and
probably composed in Spain in 1851. (According to Gottschalk's
Cuban biographer Fors, there was an earlier version of The Banjo,
published by Espadero; but I have not located a copy of it.)
Gottschalk's first piano teacher in Paris was Charles Halle, with
whom he worked for six months. He then studied piano with Camille
Stamaty and harmony with Maledan. Through his mother's family
connections he was received and feted in the salons of the French
316 | Expansion
nobility. In April, 1845, just after his sixteenth birthday, he gave his
first public concert in the Salle Pleyel and attracted the attention of
Chopin, who saluted him as a future "king of pianists." He became
the pupil and friend of Hector Berlioz, with whom he gave a series of
concerts at the Theatre des Italiens during the season of 1846-1847.
Concerning Gottschalk as a pianist, Berlioz wrote:
Gottschalk is one of the very small number who possess all the
different elements of a consummate pianist— all the faculties which
surround him with an irresistible prestige, and give him a sovereign
power. He is an accomplished musician— he knows just how far
fancy may be indulged in expression. . . . There is an exquisite
grace in his manner of phrasing sweet melodies and throwing light
touches from the higher keys. The boldness, the brilliancy, and
the originality of his playing at once dazzles and astonishes. . . .
In 1850 Gottschalk made a concert tour of the French provinces,
Savoy, and Switzerland. The following year he went to Spain, where
his success was enormous. The Queen entertained him in the royal
palace and bestowed upon him the diamond cross of the Order of
Isabel la Catolica. He remained in Spain nearly two years, concert-
izing, composing, and basking in adulation. Among the compositions
that recall his Spanish sojourn are Midnight in Seville, Manchega
(Etude de Concert), The Siege of Saragossa, and Jota Aragonesa.
In the autumn of 1852 Gottschalk returned to Paris, where he took
leave of his mother and his sisters, who had been living there since
the end of 1847. He then embarked for New York, where he was met
by his father and where his formal American debut as a mature
pianist took place on February u, 1853, in the ballroom of Niblo's
Garden. The success of the concert may be judged by the fact that
P. T. Barnum immediately offered him a contract for $20,000, plus
expenses, for a concert tour of one year. Gottschalk refused, on the
advice, it is said, of his father, whose dignity was doubtless offended
at the thought of having his son exhibited in public like a side show.
Nevertheless, under the management of Max Strakosch, Gottschalk
embarked on a tremendously successful concert career. In the winter
of 1855-1856 he gave eighty concerts in New York alone, and in
1862-1863 he gave more than eleven hundred concerts in the United
States and Canada. In the intervening years he was far otherwise en-
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY $17
gaged: the lure of the tropics, the spell of the Caribbean, held him in
thrall.
Caribbean vagabondage
Gottschalk seems to have visited Cuba for the first rime in 1853.
In his Notes of a Pianist he wrote:
I shall never forget the two months which I passed at Caymito,
in the interior of Cuba. The house which I inhabited was at an
hour's distance from the first cabins of Caymito. . . . Unfortunately,
the only company of my Eden was a very ugly negress, who, every
evening, after having roasted the coffee, bruised her corn in a hollow
piece of wood, and recited the Ave Maria before an old coloured
image of the Virgin, came and squatted down at my feet on the
veranda, and there, in the darkness, sung to me with a piercing and
wild voice, but full of strange charm, the canciones of me country.
I would light my cigar, extend myself in my butaca, and plunge,
surrounded by this silent and primitive nature, into a contemplative
reverie, which those in the midst of the everyday world can never
understand. The moon rose over the Sierra de Anafe. . . . The dis-
tant noises of the savanna, borne softly by the breeze, struck on
my ear in drawn-out murmurs. The cadenced chant of some negroes
belated in the fields added one more attraction to all this poesy,
which no one can ever imagine.
What a pity that Gottschalk did not write down for us the nota-
tion of these Afro-Cuban songs and chants. He did, however, try to
capture some of this atmosphere in his own music. Meanwhile, the
atmosphere of the tropics captured him. In 1856 he returned to Havana
and then began a period of vagabondage in the Caribbean that lasted
nearly six years: ". . . six years madly squandered, scattered to the
winds"— so he wrote of this period afterward. About these irrespon-
sible years he tells us in his Notes of a Pianist:
I have wandered at random, yielding myself up indolently to
the caprice of Fortune, giving a concert wherever I happened to find
a piano, sleeping wherever night overtook me,— on the green grass
of the savanna, or under the palm-leaf roof of a veguero [caretaker
of a tobacco plantation], who shared with me his corn-tortilla, coffee,
and bananas. . . . And when, at last, I became weary of the same
horizon, I crossed an arm of the sea, and landed on some neighbor-
318 I Expansion
ing isle, or on the Spanish Main. Thus, in succession, 1 have visited
all the Antilles-Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Swedish, and Dan-
ish; the Guianas, and the coasts of Para [Brazil]. At times, having
become the idol of some obscure pueblo, whose untutored ears I had
charmed with its own simple ballads, I would pitch my tent for five,
six, eight months, deferring my departure from day to day, until
finally I began seriously to entertain the idea of remaining there for
evermore. Abandoning myself to such influences, I lived without
care, as the bird sings, as the flower expands, as the brook flows;
oblivious of the past, reckless of the future, and sowed both my heart
and my purse with the ardor of a husbandman who hopes to reap a
hundred ears for every grain he confides to the earth. But, alas!
. . . the result of my prodigality was, that, one fine morning, I
found myself a bankrupt in heart, with my purse at ebb-tide.
Suddenly disgusted with the world and myself, weary, discouraged,
mistrusting men (ay, and women too), I fled to a desert on the
extinct volcano of M — [in Guadeloupe], where, for several months,
I lived the life of a cenobite. . . .
My hut, perched on the verge of the crater, at the very summit
of the mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country.
. . . Every evening I rolled my piano out upon the terrace; and
there, facing the most incomparably beautiful landscape, all bathed
in the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics, I poured forth on
the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts with which the
scene inspired me. . . .
Amid such scenes I composed "R6ponds-moi," "La Marche des
Gibaros," "Polonia," "Columbia," "Pastorella e Cavaliere," "Jeunesse,"
and many other unpublished works. . . . My despair was soothed;
and soon the sun of the tropics . . . restored me with new confi-
dence and vigor to my wanderings.
I relapsed into the manners and life of these primitive countries:
if not strictly virtuous, they are, at all events, terribly attractive.
. . . The mere thought of re-appearing before a polished audience
struck me as superlatively absurd. ... It was at this period that
Strakosch wrote to me, offering an engagement for a tour of con-
certs through the United States. . . .
Gottschalk hesitated, breathed a sigh of regret—and accepted. He felt
morally rescued: ". . . but who could say, if, in the rescue, youth and
poetry had not perished?" Meanwhile, thousands of America's youth
were perishing in the Civil War; but this did not diminish the brilliant
success of Gottschalk's concert tour. Actually, Gottschalk did nor
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY 319
remain indifferent to the issues of the Civil War. His sympathies were
with the North, perhaps in part because— as John Kirkpatrick sur-
mises—he was conscious of his musical debt to the Negroes. In 1862 or
1863 he composed a piece called The Union, an allegory prophesying
the rescue of the Union by the Northern armies.
From his sojourn in Cuba, Gottschalk drew material for a number
of his most effective piano pieces. These include Souvenir de la
Havane (Opus 39), Souvenir de Cuba (Mazurka), Di que si (Rfponds-
moi!), Suis-moi!, Ojos Criollos, and La Gallina ("The Hen"). John
Kirkpatrick, the pianist who frequently features Gottschalk's pieces
on his programs of American music, tells me that he thinks the piece
titled Suis-moi! ("Follow Me!") shows the composer "at his very
best." Kirkpatrick has made a two-piano arrangement of Gottschalk's
symphony in two movements, La Noche de los Trdpicos ("The Night
of the Tropics"). Another large work inspired by tropical atmosphere
is the Escenas Ccmipestres Cubanas ("Cuban Country Scenes") for
vocal soloists (soprano, tenor, baritone, and bass) and orchestra.
In all his travels Gottschalk never forgot that he was an American.
Whenever the occasion arose, he was ready to talk on American sub-
jects, and in his concerts he also recalled his native land. At a concert
in Havana in 1854, he performed a fantasia for piano on "Old Folks
at Home," which he titled Recuerdos de mi P atria ("Memories of my
Homeland"). Wherever he went in Latin America, he was highly
esteemed and honored, both as a person and as an artist.
It is ironic that American musicians had to wait until 1893 ^or
Antonin Dvorak to tell them about the possibilities of utilizing Ameri-
can Negro music to achieve "local color," when Gottschalk began
doing just that as early as 1845.
South American triumphs
In June. 1865, Gottschalk sailed for California, where he spent the
summer concertizing. Then he embarked on a ship bound for Chile,
beginning what was to be his life's last journey. In Peru, en route, he
remained long enough to give about sixty concerts and to receive "a
gold, diamond, and pearl decoration." Gottschalk was always ready
to place his talent at the disposal of charity and other worthy causes.
Hence it is not surprising that in Valparaiso, Chile, the board of
public schools, the common council, the board of visitors of the hos-
32O I Expansion
pitals, and the municipal government, each presented him with a gold
medal. The government of Chile voted him a special grand gold
medal. In Montevideo, Republic of Uruguay, Gottschalk gave a bene-
fit concert for the "Society of the Friends of Education," which
warmly thanked "this noble American citizen." In a letter to the so-
ciety, Gottschalk expressed himself eloquently and with apparent con-
viction on the subject of democracy and education in the United
States. He pointed out that "The popular system of education in the
United States . . . which, of a child, makes successively a man, and
later a citizen, has, for its principal object, to prepare him for the use
of liberty. . . ." The United States has seldom if ever had a more
effective cultural ambassador in South America than Louis Moreau
Gottschalk.
In Buenos Aires he gave other charity concerts and in November,
1868, organized a great music festival at the Teatro Solis, with over
three hundred participants (orchestra, chorus, and soloists). After
compositions by Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Rossini, the concert ended
with two works by Gottschalk: Marche Solennelle and Montevideo,
the latter a descriptive symphony. In the spring of 1869, Gottschalk
went to Rio de Janeiro, where his triumphs exceeded anything pre-
viously experienced. Brazil was then ruled by the Emperor Dom
Pedro II, a benevolent and liberal monarch. Gottschalk's success in
Brazil is best described in his own words, from a letter to a friend in
Boston:
My Dear Old Friend,— My concerts here are a perfect furore.
All my, houses are sold eight days in advance. . . . The emperor,
imperial family, and court never missed yet one of my entertain-
ments.
His Ma jeSjy, received me frequently at palace. . . . The Grand
Orient of the masonry of Brazil gave me a solemn reception. . . .
The enthusiasm with which I have been received here is inde-
scribable. At the last concert, I was crowned on the stage by the
artists of Rio. . . .
The emperor is very fond of my compositions, especially "Prin-
temps d'Amour" and "Ossian."
My "Morte" (she is dead!) has had here, the same as in the
Rio de la Plata, un succ$s de larmes, as several of my fair listeners
wept at listening to that rather sad and disconsolate of my last
effusions, -which is my favorite now, and which I consider as being
neither better nor worse than old "Last Hope."
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY 321
My fantaisie on the national anthem of Brazil, of course, pleased
the emperor, and tickled the national pride of my public. Every
time I appear I must play it
In great haste, yours as ever,
GOTTSCHALK
Of the compositions mentioned in this letter, Ossian was one of
his earliest piano pieces, written for his mother's birthday when he
was a young student in Paris (from the same period dates his Danse
Ossianique, originally called Danse des Ombres). The piece titled
Morte is mentioned again in a letter to the music publishers Hall &
Son of New York, dated Rio, October 24, 1869:
Herewith I send you a new piece ("Morte,"— "She is Dead"),—
a lamentation. I do not know whether it will be successful or not,
but I believe it to be my best effort for years. Ever since I have
played it, it has been encored; and a great many women have hys-
terics and weep over it— maybe owing to the romantic tide. . . .
For once, Gottschalk appears to have been too modest. If any-
thing could make women weep and swoon, it was his own playing and
the romantic aura of his personality. And if Morte did not become as
famous as his earlier sentimental effusions, The Last Hope and The
Dying Poet, it was probably because Gottschalk did not live long
enough to play it himself for the American public in his own inimi-
table manner.
On July 24, 1869, Gottschalk wrote to his Boston friend F. G. Hill,
saying, among other things: "On the 3oth, the emperor gives a grand
fete at the palace, at which I am to play. I see his Majesty very often.
He is a very kind and liberal-minded man. He is fond of inquiring
about the States; and we have long talks together, alone in his private
apartments." Soon after this, Gottschalk was stricken with yellow
fever. On August 5 he was so low that the physicians gave him up.
Yet by the latter part of September he had recovered sufficiently to
resume his concerts. He was preparing "three grand festivals, with
eight hundred performers, at which I will produce my symphonies,
and the grand 'Marche Triomphalc' I dedicated to the emperor. He is
very anxious to have those festivals organized, and has offered me the
means to muster in Rio all the musicians that can be had within the
province." In another letter he exclaimed: "Just think of eight hun-
322 | Expansion
dred performers and eighty drums to lead!" There speaks the disciple
of Berlioz. Gottschalk burned up all his energy, expended the last
ounce of his depleted strength, to organize and conduct this mammoth
festival, which took place on November 26, 1869, at the Opera House
of Rio de Janeiro.
The Marche Triomphale, which closed the first program, and into
which the composer had woven the strains of the Brazilian national
anthem, aroused tremendous enthusiasm, the excited audience rising
to its feet and cheering. Gottschalk was called to the stage again and
again to receive the ovations of the public. It was his last triumph.
The next day he felt very weak, drove to the Opera House in his
carriage, but was unable to conduct the orchestra in the second pro-
gram of the festival. About two weeks later he was taken to the suburb
of Tijuca, where, after much suffering, he died at four o'clock on
the morning of December 18, 1869. The next day his embalmed body
was exposed in state in the hall of the Philharmonic Society of Rio
de Janeiro, and there the orchestra of the society played Gottschalk's
Morte before the coffin was removed to the cemetery of St. John
the Baptist, several miles outside the city. The newspapers of Brazil
printed glowing eulogies of the dead musician. The following year
Gottschalk's remains were taken to New York and placed in Green-
wood Cemetery (October, 1870).
While admitting that he was no more than a petit mattre, it seems
to me that Gottschalk is a significant figure in America's music, not
merely a historical effigy. Apart from the fact that his best music still
has power to delight and charm the listener, his significance lies in his
capacity for fully absorbing the atmosphere of the New World in
some of its most characteristic aspects. As far as most American com-
posers of the nineteenth century were concerned, Columbus might
just as well have never discovered the New World. Our national
folkloristic movement in music did not acquire definite momentum
until the arrival of Dvorak, half a century after Gottschalk had com-
posed his characteristic Creole pieces. Under more favorable circum-
stances, Gottschalk might have been the Glinka of America's music,
the initiator of an impulse toward exploring and exploiting a new
world of musical impressions. As it was, he remains an isolated, exotic
figure, his music marked by a curious ambivalence. On the one hand
he produced elegant salon pieces that stand as slightly tarnished gems
THE EXOTIC PERIPHERY 323
of the genteel tradition. And on the other hand he ventured into
exotic realms of personal and musical experience, projecting, however
tentatively and incompletely, something of that untrammeled eclecti-
cism, that reaching out for, and eager acceptance of, unprecedented
sensations and impressions, that should characterize the artist who
feels himself privileged to be born in a new world.
chapter sixteen
Europe versus America
Shun the lures of Europe.
TIMOTHY DWICHT, GREENFIELD HILL (1794).
Americans of the eighteenth century were as confident of Amer-
ica's artistic glory as they were of her political, military, and material
success. This confidence extended to all the arts, including music.
Billings was hailed as a man of extraordinary genius, whom Nature
had made "just such a musician, as she made Shakespeare a poet."
Supply Belcher was called "the Handel of Maine." There was a gen-
eral belief that the American, "the new man" saluted by Crevecoeur
as one "who acts upon new principles," would manifest his freedom
and his newness in powerful and individual works of the imagination,
whether in literature, painting, or music. Yet, in 1838, Emerson had
to admit: "This country has not fulfilled what seemed the reasonable
expectation of mankind." In his address at Dartmouth, he went on to
say:
Men looked, when all feudal straps and bandages were snapped
asunder, that nature, too long the mother of dwarfs, should reim-
burse itself by a brood of Titans, who should laugh and leap in the
continent, and run up the mountains of the West with the errand
of genius and of love. But the mark of American merit in painting,
in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain
grace without grandeur, and is itself not new, but derivative, a vase
of fair outline, but empty. . . .*
Emerson might have included music in his catalogue, had he deigned
to consider music seriously as an art. In any event, his remarks apply
to American art music of the nineteenth century, and continued to
1 "Literary Ethics, An Oration Delivered before the Literary Societies of
Dartmouth College," July 24, 1838.
324
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 325
apply long after they ceased to be applicable to literature, since Ameri-
can music had to wait much longer for the equivalent of a Melville
or a Walt Whitman.
The post-Revolutionary self-confidence was succeeded by an atti-
tude of condescension toward American culture. In their obsession
with good taste, with elegance, with gentility, cultivated Americans
sought, like the colonial gentry, to imitate or import the products of
European culture. While folk and popular music (also derived in the
main from Europe) became gradually transformed by the American
environment, fine art music, on the contrary, developed for several
generations with scarcely any organic relationship to that environ-
ment.
It was inevitable that European musicians, both immigrants and
those who came to America temporarily, should endeavor to exploit
the American musical market. True, an American showman, P. T.
Barnum, did the same thing, but he did it with European talent. And
an American musician, Lowell Mason, made a fortune out of selling
hymn books, but these, too, offered a thinly disguised European prod-
uct. What actually happened was that European musical culture, with
much of its apparatus and its standard repertoire, was transported to
the United States and superimposed upon our social structure. In a
sense, however, it is incorrect to say that European culture was
brought to America, because culture, strictly speaking, is inseparable
from its environment. It would be more accurate to say that the prod-
ucts, the techniques, and the carriers of European musical culture
were transported to America.
And it was precisely because these products, these techniques, and
these carriers had no organic— that is, no true cultural— relationship
to the structure of American society, that they proved sterile, that
they failed to provide the American composer with "a usable past,"
an operative tradition. Not until the end of the nineteenth century
did a composer in the larger forms arise who carried within him the
living tradition of "a usable past" in America's music. Most of the
nineteenth century is merely an extended parenthesis in the history
of American art music. Take it out and nothing vital is lost in the cul-
tural continuity. (I am speaking, be it understood, of the cultivated
fine-art tradition, not of our popular composers such as Emmett and
Foster.) Nevertheless, in the discourse of history, we cannot ignore
that long parenthesis, since history imposes itself upon us not only by
326 I Expansion
its significance but also by its existence as preterit fact. We cannot
change what has happened, however strongly we may be convinced
that it should have happened differently.
A champion of American music
The musician who may be taken as the typical professional com-
poser of art music in the United States during the nineteenth century
was the son of an English organist—a circumstance that may not be
pleasing to everyone. On the other hand, he was born in Brooklyn,
which entitles him to some sort of consideration as a native son.
George Frederick Bristow was born in Brooklyn, New York, on
December 19, 1825. His life spanned nearly the whole of the remaining
three-quarters of the century, for he died in 1898. If we view the
American musical scene through his eyes, we will encounter most of
the major developments in the panorama of musical art in the United
States during the nineteenth century. He was the first American com-
poser to handle successfully the traditional forms of European art
music, including opera and symphony. Not that his treatment of these
forms was in any way remarkable, but he did display sufficient com-
petence and industry to establish his reputation as a professional com-
poser and to get his works publicly performed during a period of
some fifty years. He showed an interest in American subjects for his
stage works, he endeavored to be inspired by the natural wonders of
America (viz., in the symphony Niagara, his last work), and he
showed himself to be properly patriotic in his symphonic ode, The
Great Republic. Moreover, he championed the "cause" of the Ameri-
can composer.
Apparently there was no question about Bristow's taking up a
musical career. He learned the violin and at the age of eleven played
in the orchestra of the Olympic Theatre in New York. He studied
theory and composition with Henry Christian Timm, a native of
Hamburg, Germany, who had settled in New York in 1835, and
who later was one of the founders of the New York Philharmonic
Society and its president from 1847 to 1864. Bristow also had some
lessons from the English composer G. A. MacFarren. When the New
York Philharmonic was founded in 1842, Bristow joined the violin
section of the orchestra, an activity which he continued for some forty
years. One of his earliest compositions, a Concert Overture (Opus 3),
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 327
was performed by the New York Philharmonic in November, 1847.
Two years earlier Bristow had composed his First Symphony, in E
flat. His cantata Eleutheria was written in 1849. In 1851 he became
conductor of the Harmonic Society of New York, a choral associa-
tion, holding this position until 1862.
In 1850, when P. T. Barnum brought Jenny Lind, "the Swedish
Nightingale/* to the United States for her first sensational concert tour
—he offered her a guarantee of $150,000 plus expenses— Bristow was
in the orchestra that played for her opening concert in New York's
Castle Garden. Three years later Bristow was among the sixty Ameri-
can musicians engaged by the no less sensational French conductor
Jullien to augment the band of forty players he had brought from
Europe. Jullien was a Frenchman who specialized in giving popular
concerts heralded by high-powered publicity and presented with
elaborate showmanship. He boasted of having twelve hundred pieces
in his repertoire, including an American Quadrille "which wiU contain
all the NATIONAL AIRS and embrace no less than TWENTY
SOLOS AND VARIATIONS." The New York Courier (end En-
quirer declared roundly that "Monsieur Jullien is a humbug," but
admitted that "the discipline of his orchestra is marvellous" and con-
cluded that both the humbug and the music were magnificent. Along
with his quadrilles, polkas, schottisches, galops, and so forth, Jullien
occasionally played some "classical" music— a movement from a sym-
phony by Mozart, Beethoven, or Mendelssohn— and, what is more to
the point, he included in his programs the music of American com-
posers.
This matter of performing the works of native American com-
posers was one upon which Bristow felt strongly. When the New
York Philharmonic Society was founded, a clause in its constitution
formulated the policy in regard to the performance of American
works:
If any grand orchestral compositions such as overtures, or sym-
phonies, shall be presented to the society, they being composed in
this country, the society shall perform one every season, provided
a committee of five appointed by the government shall have ap-
proved and recommended the composition.
Actually, the phrase "composed in this country" left the door wide
open for visiting musicians or recent immigrants, so that the native-
328 I Expansion
born American composer was really given no special consideration at
all. The attitude of the New York Philharmonic toward American
music was made into a public issue in 1853 by a letter written by
William Henry Fry and published in the Musical World, in which
he declared that ". . . the Philharmonic Society of this city is an
incubus on Art, never having asked for or performed a single Ameri-
can composition during the eleven years of its existence."
Henry C. Timm, president of the Philharmonic Society, published
an answer to Fry's letter in which he said that the society had per-
formed "several American compositions by either native or adopted
citizens of this country." However, of the ten works mentioned, only
three were by native Americans: a Duetto for two cornets by Dod-
worth, a Serenade by William Mason, and an Overture by George
F. Bristow.
At this point Bristow himself jumped into the controversy. In a
letter to the Musical World he wrote:
As it is possible to miss a needle in a hay-stack, I am not sur-
prised that Mr. Fry has missed the fact, that during the eleven years
the Philharmonic Society has been in operation in this city, it played
once, either by mistake or accident, one single American composition,
an overture of mine. As one exception makes a rule stronger, so this
single stray fact shows that the Philharmonic Society has been as
anti- American as if it had been located in London during the Revo-
lutionary War, and composed of native-born British tories. . . .
It appears the society's eleven years of promoting American art
have embraced one whole performance of one whole American
overture, one whole rehearsal of one whole American symphony,
and the performance of an overture by an Englishman stopping
here. . . .*
The "American symphony" to which Bristow refers was his own
First Symphony which, according to Timm, had been "performed
twice at public rehearsal." Bristow evidently chose to overlook the
two small pieces by Dodworth and Mason. Under the circumstances,
it is not surprising that Bristow's resignation from the Philharmonic
Society was announced two weeks later.
Yet the breach was not permanent. Bristow soon returned to his
desk at the Philharmonic, and on March i, 1856, the Society per-
* Quoted in Howard, Our American Music, p. 247.
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 329
formed his Second Symphony, in D minor. This was followed, on
March 26, 1859, by a performance of his Third Symphony, in F sharp
minor. Finally, to complete the tale, Bristow's Fourth (Arcadian)
Symphony, in E minor, was played by the Philharmonic Society on
February 14, 1874. Perhaps his letter had done some good, after all!
The Overture to Bristow's unfinished opera, Columbus, was per-
formed at the first concert given by the Philharmonic Society in
Steinway Hall (then located at Fourteenth Street), November 17,
1866.
In March, 1861, the New York Harmonic Society, the choral
group of which Bristow was director, performed his oratorio Praise
to God. Another oratorio, Daniel, was performed by the Mendelssohn
Union on December 30, 1867. As conductor of the Harmonic Society,
Bristow made it a policy to perform the works of American com-
posers—when he could find them.
"American" grand opera
"Sebastopol has fallen, and a new American opera has succeeded
in New York! "— thus began an article by the critic Richard Storrs
Willis published in the New York Musical World in the autumn of
1855. The opera was Rip Van Winkle, the composer was George F.
Bristow, and the premiere took place at Niblo's Theatre on September
27, 1855. It ran for four weeks. The box-office receipts compared
favorably with those of other New York attractions. They were bet-
ter, for example, than those of the Italian opera at the Academy of
Music.
Rip Van Winkle was the second grand opera composed by a native
American (the first was Fry's Leonora). In adapting Washington
Irving's tale for the operatic stage, Bristow's librettist introduced a
love affair between Rip's daughter Alice and a British officer, which
provided opportunity for the indispensable love duets.
Richard S. Willis found something to praise in Bristow's work,
though not without reservations:
The opera of Rip Van Winkle exhibits an easy flow of melody.
This melody is free from effort and spontaneous-an important
quality in a dramatic composer. But in none of the arias of Mr.
Bristow do we meet with large conception or rich development of
330 | Expansion
ideas; none of them is shaped after a large pattern. The same re-
mark will apply to the choruses. . . .
Willis criticized most severely the instrumentation of the opera:
"The orchestra of Rip Van Winkle is in general inanimate and life-
less, and devoid of that brilliancy which we must meet with in modern
opera."
In spite of these shortcomings, Rip Van Winkle showed some
vitality, for in 1870 it was revived. Today it stands on the shelf of
musical antiques as the first specimen of American grand opera dealing
with a "native" subject, a subject taken from American legend and
literature. Before taking leave of Bristow we should remark that
from 1854 until the year of his death he was a supervisor of music in
the public schools of New York. Thus, as composer, as executant, as
conductor, as church organist, as educator, and as champion of Ameri-
can music, his career reflected virtually every phase of organized
musical activity in the United States during the second half of the
nineteenth century.
We mentioned William Henry Fry as the man who protested
publicly about the New York Philharmonic Society's neglect of the
American composer. Fry was born in Philadelphia in 1815, the son of a
newspaper publisher, and received a good education, with the empha-
sis on literature rather than music. Fie learned to play the piano, com-
posed an overture at the age of fourteen, and then studied theory and
composition with Leopold Meignen, a graduate of the Paris Conserva-
tory who had settled in Philadelphia. Fry turned out three more
overtures before he was twenty, and one of them was locally per-
formed. But it was not his intention to take up music as a profession.
He embarked on a journalistic career by entering his father's office
in 1839, became editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger in 1844, and
from 1846 to 1852 was in Europe as correspondent for this and other
newspapers, including the New York Tribune, for which he served
as music editor after returning to the United States. In 1861 he re-
ceived a diplomatic appointment at Turin, but his health was poor,
and in 1864 he died of tuberculosis at Santa Cruz, in the West Indies.
Like his Russian contemporary Glinka, Fry was an amateur, and
like Glinka he tried his hand at opera. But unlike the Russian com-
poser, Fry did not draw upon his country's folk music for his mate-
rial, or upon its history and legend for his subject matter. The libretto
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 331
of Fry's opera Leonora was adapted from Bulwer-Lytton's novel The
Lady of Lyons. It was "grand opera" according to the most ap-
proved Italian recipe, complete with coloratura arias, recitatives,
choruses, and ensemble numbers. The initial production, at the Chest-
nut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, on June 4, 1 845, was given by the
Seguin opera troupe, and paid for by the composer. The opera was
sung in English and ran for twelve nights.
During his sojourn in Europe, Fry tried unsuccessfully to have
Leonora produced in Paris, at his own expense. According to Fry's
account, the director of the Paris Opera told him: uln Europe we
look upon America as an industrial country—excellent for electric
telegraphs, but not for art . . . they would think me crazy to produce
an opera by an American."
After his return to America, Fry succeeded in having his opera
performed by an Italian company at the Academy of Music in New
York (1858), this time sung in Italian. The New York critics were
not impressed by Leonora. The critic of the Express wrote:
The opera seems to us a study in the school of Bellini. It is full
of delicious, sweet music, but constantly recalls the Sonnambula
and Norma. It is marked by skill in instrumentation. ... It has
many flowing melodies, many pretty effects, much that should
encourage its author to renewed efforts. . . . The peculiarities which
most strongly distinguish his production are sweetness of melody
and lack of dramatic characterization.
The Times praised the fertility of melodic invention but pointed out
that some of the melodies carried the memory "to past pleasures
afforded by other composers." The Musical Review and Gazette was
condemnatory: "Almost everything is poorly shaped and put to-
gether, and what is still worse, worked closely after the most common
pattern."
In May, 1929, a concert of excerpts from Leonora was presented
by the Pro Musica Society in New York, with the metropolitan music
critics present. Oscar Thompson of the Post made a good point when
he wrote: ". . . at least one tenor-soprano duet in mellifluous thirds
would not have been laughed at, it is fair to assume, if it had been
heard in a performance of Norma, Puritani or Sonnambula at the
opera." If Fry, as Herbert Peyser said, "played the sedulous ape to
Bellini, Donizetti, and Auber," he seems to have done it rather well.
332 | Expansion
However, one can scarcely blame the American public for preferring
the genuine article, imported from Italy, to an American imitation
made in Philadelphia. There is no suggestion that Fry improved on
Rossini, Bellini, or Donizetti.
The ambitious Mr. Fry also tried his hand at writing symphonies.
He composed four, each with an appropriate title indicating the
programmatic content: Childe Harold, A Day in the Country, The
Breaking Heart, and Santa Clous. These concoctions were actually
performed, thanks to the enterprising Monsieur Jullien, who thought
they would be effective "novelties" on his American programs. Willis,
writing in the Musical World, refused to take the Santa Clous Sym-
phony seriously as a work of art. He called it "a kind of extrava-
ganza which moves the audience to laughter, entertaining them sea-
sonably with imitated snow-storms, trotting horses, sleighbells, crack-
ing whips, etc." This made Fry furious. He dashed off a spirited reply
to Willis, saying among other things: "I think that the American
who writes for the mere dignity of musical art, as I understand it,
without recompense, deserves better treatment at the hands of his
countrymen at least." It was in this letter that Fry made his attack
on the New York Philharmonic Society, previously quoted.
One of Fry's most ambitious undertakings was a series of lectures
on the forms and history of musical art, illustrated with selections per-
formed by a chorus and orchestra of eighty players. The series started
on November 30, 1852, in the Metropolitan Hall, New York. We are
told that the second part of the first lecture opened with some speci-
mens of Chinese music. "This was followed by the overture to Der
Freyschutz [sic] which marked all the advance of Christian upon
Pagan civilization.
In the last lecture of his series, Fry voiced his opinions on musical
art in the United States. He called for a Declaration of Independence
in Art on the part of American composers. Let them cease to bow
down to a Handel, a Mozart, or a Beethoven. Let them strike out into
untrodden realms, guided only by nature and their own inspirations.
Let them discard their European liveries and found an American school
of composition. Only then shall we cease to be provincial in Art. Brave
words, yet strange from the lips of one who "played the sedulous apen
to Bellini and Donizetti, who cultivated the form of "grand opera"
which lies entirely outside the tradition of American culture. It is not
the last time that we shall encounter this strange dichotomy in Amer-
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 333
lean music: the case of the composer who pleads for artistic independ-
ence while (perhaps unconsciously?) imitating European models in his
own work.
The true worshipers
Fry's plea for nonworship of European composers did not meet
with much response. In the same year that he gave his New York lec-
tures, an item in Dwight's Journal of Music, sent in by a correspond-
ent from Newport, Rhode Island, expressed the prevailing atmosphere
of musical incense burning:
The lover of music has great privileges here. ... In Mr.
Scharfenberg's little cozy parlor, Beethoven, Chopin and Mendel-
ssohn, Spohr, and other worthy associates, are daily worshipped by
a few of the true worshippers. . . .
In this atmosphere, most American musicians found it advisable to be-
come "true worshippers" themselves, in the hope that at least a little
of the incense might eventually be wafted in their direction.
Take, for example, the case of William Mason (1829-1908), son of
the eminent Doctor Lowell Mason of Boston. After preliminary study
with Henry Schmidt in Boston, young Mason sailed for Europe in
1849. There he studied with Moscheles and Hauptmann in Leipzig,
with Dreyschock in Prague, and with Liszt in Weimar. To Liszt,
Mason dedicated one of his first piano pieces, elegantly titled Lcs
Perles de Rosee. After five years of soaking up this supcrrcfincd musi-
cal atmosphere, Mason returned to America to spread the gospel of
good music. On one occasion, when giving a piano recital on tour, he
was asked by a member of the audience to improvise by playing "Old
Hundred" with one hand and "Yankee Doodle" with the other. By
offering to improvise on any themes that might be suggested, he had
placed himself in the position of a showman bound to please the pub-
lic. Later Mason became more austere. He formed a string quartet
with which he appeared as pianist in concerts of chamber music, not
precisely a popular form of entertainment. Much of Mason's time was
devoted to teaching the piano, a field in which he was extremely suc-
cessful and influential.
We mention William Mason chiefly because he and his family are
so typical of the prevailing trend in American musical life. His great-
334 | Expansion
grandfather, Barachias Mason, conducted singing schools in his spare
time. His grandfather, Johnson Mason, found time, among more im-
portant civic dudes, to play the cello and sing in the parish choir. His
father, Lowell Mason, as we know, passed from the banking business
to a full-time, lucrative career in music. But Lowell Mason was still
partly bound by the tradition of hymnody and the singing-school
movement. He did not fully penetrate the inner circle of those who
worshiped at the shrine of Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. To his
son William was vouchsafed the privilege of entering this arcanum:
the culmination of four generations of progressive improvement. The
fruits: some piano pieces, such as Les Perles de Rosee and Amitie pour
Amitie. The latter, we are told, was a favorite with Liszt. Swnmum
bonum!
We turn now to two American musicians who were born in the
same year, 1839, and whose life span extended into the first decade of
the twentieth century. Each was highly successful and widely hon-
ored in his lifetime. (We must go far to find that mythical creature,
the "neglected American composer.") Their names were Dudley Buck
and John Knowles Paine, and both were New Englanders. Dudley
Buck's background is interesting as showing the transition from mer-
cantile to artistic interests in an American family of the upper middle
class. His father was a shipping merchant of Hartford, Connecticut,
and the son was intended for a commercial career. Not until he was
sixteen did he begin to receive music lessons. His progress was then
so impressive that Buck senior gave his consent to a musical career
and decided that the youngster should have the best musical education
that money could buy. This meant, of course, packing him off to Ger-
many. In Leipzig, Buck became a pupil of Hauptmann, Moscheles,
Plaidy, and Richter. He studied the organ in Dresden and then spent
a year in Paris before returning to the United States in 1862. He had
been abroad four years.
After holding positions as church organist in Hartford, Chicago,
and Boston, Buck in 1875 settled in New York in a similar capacity.
As a composer he devoted himself chiefly to choral works, including
a series of short cantatas for church use. Among his more ambitious
works are the Centennial Meditation of Columbus (1876, with words
by Sidney Lanier), Scenes from the Golden Legend (1880, after Long-
fellow), King Olafs Christmas (1881, also after Longfellow), The
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 335
Light of Asia (dramatic cantata), and The Voyage cf Columbus (an-
other dramatic cantata, adapted from Irving's Life of Colitmbus).
Some remarks on The Golden Legend will serve to illustrate Buck's
style. The legend tells of Prince Henry of Hoheneck, who is afflicted
with an incurable malady that can be cured only by the blood of a
maiden who will freely consent to die for his sake. He finds such a
maiden, but refuses to let her make the supreme sacrifice. Instead,
the prince is miraculously healed and marries the willing maiden. The
music employs the Wagnerian device of the leitmotiv— melodic themes
to identify characters, emotions, and the forces of Nature. Here, for
example, is one of the storm motives:
There is a suitably sentimental solo for "Elsie's Prayer," a Pilgrims*
Chorus, a Bacchanalian Monks' Song, a scene of Revel, a Drinking
Song, an orchestral Barcarolle, a Chorus of Sailors, a solemn Cathedral
motive (with Gregorian reminiscences), and a grand finale with a
Hymn of Praise by full chorus and orchestra. In short, there is all the
conventional paraphernalia of pseudo-Wagnerian claptrap, chords of
the diminished seventh included.
Buck enjoyed some reputation abroad. His cantatas were performed
in England and Germany. At home he wrote for the taste of the day
and for a ready market. He supplied the demand for church music
that was mellifluous and not difficult to perform. He died in 1909.
The composer as professor
John Knowles Paine was born in Portland, Maine, on January 9,
1839. His family was musical. His grandfather had built the first organ
in Maine. In Portland young Paine studied with a local musician, Her-
mann Kotzschmer, and in 1857 went to Germany, becoming a pupil
of Haupt in Berlin. He concentrated on the organ and gave nu-
merous recitals in Germany before returning to America in 1861. The
336 I Expansion
following year he was appointed director of music at Harvard Col-
lege, where he remained until a year before his death. Beginning as
an instructor, he attained full professorship in 1875, not without oppo-
sition from those who felt that music was not a subject to be taken
seriously in the college curriculum. It seems that Francis Parkman, the
historian, was one of the most stubborn opponents of music at Har-
vard. As a member of the Corporation, he is said to have ended every
meeting of that body with the words "musica delenda est." 8 When-
ever the question of raising funds came up, Parkman was ready with
a motion to abolish the music department in the interests of economy.
In 1867 Paine revisited Germany, where his Mass was performed
under his direction at the Berlin Singakademie. At home he lacked
neither recognition nor public performance. In 1873 he conducted the
first performance of his oratorio St. Peter in his native city, Portland.
In 1876 Theodore Thomas conducted the premiere of Paine's First
Symphony in Boston. In the same year Paine set to music Whittier's
"Hymn" for the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. The first per-
formance of his Second Symphony, a programmatic work titled Im
Frtihling ("In the Spring17), given at Boston in 1880, was received
with unprecedented enthusiasm. According to contemporary accounts,
ladies waved handkerchiefs, men shouted their approval, and the digni-
fied John S. Dvvight, arbiter of musical taste in Boston, "stood in his
seat, frantically opening and shutting his umbrella as an expression of
uncontrollable enthusiasm." 4 This was the same man who dismissed
Stephen Foster's songs as cheap trash.
As we look at Paine's Spring Symphony, we may well wonder what
all the shouting was about. The first movement portrays the depar-
ture of winter and the awakening of Nature. Here is the winter theme,
given out by the cellos:
Adagio -^
8 "Music must be abolished," a paraphrase of the Latin sentence that embod-
ied Rome's undying enmity against Carthage.
4 Richard Aldrich in Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 14.
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 337
The second movement, "May-night Fantasy," is a scherzo. Then comes
the slow movement, "A Romance of Springtime" (Adagio), which is
in the form of a rondo. The final movement, Allegro giocoso, de-
picts "The Glory of Nature" and is in sonata form. The musical idiom
k that of academic postromanticism, stemming from the school of
Raff. It is a coincidence that Raff composed a Spri?ig Sym phony in
1878, the year before Paine's symphony was completed. The plan of
both symphonies is remarkably similar. No doubt it was mere coinci-
dence, but a coincidence that serves to emphasi/e to what an extent
American composers were simply echoing the current cliches of Ger-
man postromanticism.
Paine wrote what is probably his best and most enduring music for
a performance of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyramins given at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in 1881. The music consists of a Prelude, six Choruses,
and a Postlude. This is one of the few examples of Paine's music with
which the listener of today may become acquainted, for the Prelude
has been recorded under the direction of Howard Hanson in the
album "American Music for Orchestra." A comment made by Rupert
Hughes on the opening chorus is worth noting. After remarking that
the second strophe has a few good moments, he adds "but soon [it]
falls back into what is impudent enough to be actually catchy!11 Fortu-
nately for his reputation as our leading academic composer, Paine sel-
dom succumbed to the temptation of writing catchy tunes.
Among other compositions of Paine are the Columbus March and
Hy?nn for the Chicago World's Fair, Hymn to the West for the St.
Louis World's Fair, several symphonic poems (The Tempest, Poseidon
and Aphrodite, Island Fantasy), and an opera, Azam, based on the
medieval story of Aucassin and Nicolette, for which Paine himself
wrote the libretto and which never had a stage performance (it was
performed twice in concert form, in 1903 and 1907). From this score
he extracted three Moorish Dances and some ballet music, which were
frequently performed— as was, indeed, nearly all of Paine's music dur-
ing his lifetime.
Paine's music has some qualities of workmanship and invention that
raise it above work previously attempted by American composers in
the symphonic field. Nevertheless, it remains primarily of historical
interest. Paine has a place as our first notable academic composer in the
larger forms, and as the teacher of others who were to carry on the
academic tradition with some distinction. Among his pupils were
338 | Expansion
Arthur Foote, Frederick S. Converse, Daniel Gregory Mason, and
John Alden Carpenter.
Gilchrist and Gleason
Two composers born in the 1 8405 may be mentioned as having at-
tained a considerable reputation in their time. They were William
Wallace Gilchrist (1846-1916) and Frederick Grant Gleason (1848-
1903). The latter was born in Middletown, Connecticut, where his
father was a banker. Like many another well-to-do gentleman, Gleason
senior was an amateur flutist. He considered music a pleasant pastime
but not a serious occupation. He wanted his son to enter the ministry—
a good old New England tradition. But the son insisted on becoming
a composer, and the father yielded. Young Gleason studied with an-
other Connecticut Yankee who had gone musical: Dudley Buck. He
then made the inevitable pilgrimage to Europe, studying with a long
list of musicians in Germany. After six years in Europe he returned to
America, and in 1877 went to Chicago, where he was active as a
teacher and music critic. In 1897 he became president of an organi-
zation titled the "American Patriotic Musical League" (!).
Gleason's compositions include a Processional of the Holy Grail
written for the Chicago World's Fair; a symphonic poem, Edris, based
on a novel by Marie Corelli; the tone poem Song of Life; a Piano Con-
certo; a cantata with orchestra, The Culprit Fay; and two operas: Otho
Visconti and Montezuma. The former was produced at Chicago in
1907. He left other scores in manuscript, with instructions that they
were not to be publicly performed until fifty years after his death.
W. S. B. Mathews describes Gleason's operatic style as an attempt "to
combine the melodic element of Italian opera with the richness of
harmonization characteristic of the modern German school and the
leit-motif idea of Richard Wagner." 5 At least, in fifty years American
grand opera had "progressed'' from Bellini to Wagner.
Gleason applied the leitmotiv principle to his setting for solos,
chorus, and orchestra of Joseph Rodman Drake's poem The Culprit
Fay, described as "A Fairy Cantata." The poem is a coyly romantic
concoction that tells about a "fay" (a river sprite) who "has loved an
earthly maid" and who in punishment therefor is assigned the accom
5 Mathews, The Great in Music (1900), p. 188.
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 339
plishment of two difficult tasks, one of which is to catch a drop of
brine from the brow of a leaping sturgeon on the shore of elfin
land, the other to follow a shooting star and light the elfin lamp from
a spark of its burning train. Gleason's music is developed from the
following themes: summer-night motive, mystery motive, gathering of
the fays, fairy life, the fay's love, penalty motive, night on the Hud-
son, water sprites' motive, task motive, and sylphid queen's love mo-
tive. A quotation of the motive of the fay's love will serve to illustrate
Gleason's style. The theme is begun by the clarinets, taken up by the
oboes, and continued by the flutes.
Andante
Gleason's contemporary William Wallace Gilchrist was born in
Jersey City in 1846 and at the age of eleven moved with his family
to Philadelphia, where he studied music with H. A. Clarke. His father's
business having been ruined during the Civil War, young Gilchrist
turned to the law and to business for his own living, but finally de-
cided to take up music as a career. With the exception of a short period
in Cincinnati (1871-1872), he lived in Philadelphia, where he was ac-
tive as church organist, teacher, and leader of musical clubs. He
founded the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia.
In 1882 Gilchrist won the Cincinnati Festival Prize for his setting
of the 46th Psalm, for soprano solo, chorus, and orchestra. Among his
other choral works are Ode to the Sim, Journey of Life, The Uplifted
Gates, and Legend of the Bended Boiv. He composed two nonpro-
grammatic symphonies, and some chamber music, including a nonet
for piano, strings, flute, clarinet, and horn.
Although Gilchrist was one of the very few American composers
of this period who did not study in Europe, his style is no less imi-
tative and conventional than that of his Europeanized colleagues.
340 | Expansion
The self -made man in music
No account of American music in the nineteenth century would be
complete without an example of that typically American product, the
self-made man. A perfect specimen of the type is to be found in the
person of Silas Gamaliel Pratt (1846-1916), a native of Vermont whose
family moved to Illinois while he was still a boy. His father's business
failed and he was obliged to start working at the age of twelve. His
liking for music induced him to get employment as clerk in several
Chicago music stores. Determined to take up a musical career, he saved
enough money to go to Europe (i.e., Germany) in 1868, remaining
there three years while studying piano and composition. An injury
to his wrist from overstrenuous practice prevented him from becoming
a concert pianist. Returning to Chicago in 1871, he had his First Sym-
phony performed there. But he felt the need for another touch of
Germany, whither he returned in 1875 for further study with Liszt
and Heinrich Dorn. It was in Germany that he composed his Centen-
nial Overture, performed in Berlin on July 4, 1876, and later played
in the Crystal Palace, London, in the presence of General Grant, to
whom the piece was dedicated. In 1885, Pratt visited London again
for a performance of his Second Symphony (The Prodigal Son) at the
Crystal Palace. Meanwhile his opera Zenobia had been produced in
Chicago and New York (1883). Another opera, Lucille (originally
called Antonio), was performed in Chicago in 1887. From 1888 to
1902 Pratt taught at the Metropolitan School of Music in New York,
and in 1906 he founded the Pratt Institute of Music and Art in Pitts-
burgh.
Pratt aspired to be the great national composer of the United
States, a sort of grand exalted tonal commentator on national events,
past and present. His dramatic cantata, The Triumph of Columbus
(1892), celebrated the discovery of America. The list of his symphonic
works includes Paul Revere's Ride, a Fantasy depicting the struggle
between the North and the South, a Lincoln Symphony, The Battle
of Manila, and A Tragedy of the Deep (on the sinking of the Titanic).
The remarks on Pratt's career made by F. L. Gwinner Cole in the
Dictionary of American Biography deserve to be quoted not only as
a comment on this composer's life but also as a priceless recipe for
success from which all aspiring composers may profit:
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 34!
Throughout his life he had been industrious and persevering
and had succeeded in bringing his name before the public as a com-
poser of rank. In this he was greatly aided by his exaggerated opinion
of the worth of his own compositions.
In contrast to these practical men who succeeded in becoming
known as composers by dint of application and imitation, the man to
whom we shall now dedicate a page or two was a stifled genius, per-
haps the most magnificent and tragic failure in the annals of American
music. He was born in 1842 and died in 1881. His name was Sidney
Lanier.
Poet-Musician of the South
One of Lanier's best biographers, Edwin Mims, remarked: "It is
unfortunate that he left no compositions to indicate a musical power
sufficient to give him a place in the history of American music." True,
Sidney Lanier, dying of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-nine, did not
live to complete the larger musical compositions that he was plan-
ning: a Choral Symphony for chorus and orchestra (being a setting
of his "Psalm of the West"), and a Symphony of the Plantation ("be-
ing the old and the new life of the negro, in music"). It may be
doubted whether, if he had lived to finish these works, he could have
risen above the limitations of his training and his background. The
tragedy of Sidney Lanier as a creative musician depends not so much
on his premature death as on his premature existence. He was born too
soon, too early in America's cultural development.
Sidney Lanier's father was a lawyer in Macon, Georgia, his mother
the daughter of a Virginia planter. From early childhood the boy
could play any musical instrument on which he happened to lay
hands; his favorites were the violin and the flute. Music as recreation
was a good old Southern tradition, but music as a profession was not
to be considered by a gentleman or the son of a gentleman. Yet Lanier
was fully conscious of his musical capacities and inclinations. In a note-
book written while he was at college, probably before the age of
eighteen, he inquired earnestly of himself regarding "God's will" for
his future life:
I am more than ail perplexed by this fact, that the prime in-
clination, that is, natural bent (which I have checked, though) of
342 | Expansion
my nature is to music; and for that I have the greatest talent; indeed,
not boasting, for God gave it me, I have an extraordinary musical
talent, and feel it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any
composer. But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended
for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with
other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here, What
is the province of music in the economy of the world? •
In later years Lanier was to answer that last question to his own
satisfaction and on a lofty mystical plane: "Music is Love in search of
a word." Whether he could have persuaded his father to let him
study composition professionally is a moot question. Well-to-do New
England parents encouraged their sons to enter the ministry or take
up business; but if the sons insisted on music the fathers usually yielded
and sent the sons to Boston or to Europe for musical training. In New
England there was a practical (economic) rather than a social (aristo-
cratic) prejudice against music as a profession. Young Lanier prob-
ably shared his father's conviction that music was not a fit profession
for a gentleman. We know, at any rate, that he felt himself to be
endowed with remarkable musical powers, sufficient to carry him to
the pinnacle of creative music. Yet he was reluctant to take the plunge,
to commit himself fully to the hazard of art.
Whatever hil plans at the moment may have been, they were in-
terrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War, into which Lanier threw
himself with high spirit and confidence. He believed that "the new
Confederacy was to enter upon an era of prosperity such as no other
nation, ancient or modern, had ever enjoyed," and that "the city of
Macon, his birthplace and home, was to become a great art-centre."
And perhaps he dreamed that in this great art center he, Sidney Lanier,
might become the great composer of a new nation. The impact of
reality was harsh and bitter. After serving in the Confederate Army
for four years he was captured and imprisoned at Point Lookout,
Maryland. Released at the end of the war, he made his way painfully
on foot to his home city and fell dangerously ill for two months.
Thereafter it was a struggle for existence, for mere survival. He clerked
in a hotel, he worked in his father's law office, he did some teaching.
In 1867 he married and soon there was the burden of a family 'to
support. During these years poetry as well as music had attracted his
6 Quoted in Minis, Sidney Lamer.
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 343
latent creative talents. His father wanted him to settle in Macon and
share his law practice, with a comfortable assured income. But Lanier
was now ready to commit himself to art, to his twin stars of music
and poetry. From Baltimore, where he had moved with his family,
he wrote to his father, in 1873, a letter from which I quote the follow-
ing passages:
Then, as to business, why should I, nay, how can I, settle myself
down to be a third-rate struggling lawyer for the balance of my life,
as long as there is a certainty almost absolute that I can do some
other things so much better? . . . My dear father, think how, for
twenty years, through poverty, through pain, through weariness,
through sickness, through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical
college and of a bare army and then of an exacting business life . . .
I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circumstances, and of
a thousand more which I could enumerate, these two figures of
music and of poetry have steadily kept in my heart so that I could
not banish them. Does it not seem to you as to me, that I begin to
have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two
sublime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly,
and through so much bitterness?
The father was won over by this plea, and thenceforth did what
he could to help his son. But Lanier's great enemy now was tubercu-
losis. He went to San Antonio, Texas, for his health, and while there
composed a piece for flute, Field-larks and Blackbirds. It was about
this time that he wrote in a letter, "I am now pumping myself full of
music and poetry, with which I propose to water the dry world. . . .
God has cut me off inexorably from any other life than this. ... So
St. Cecilia to the rescue! and I hope God will like my music."
Mere mortals, in any case, liked Lanier's music, and praised it en-
thusiastically. In Baltimore he played his Field-larks and Blackbirds
for the conductor Asger Hamerik, who was in the process of organ-
izing the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. Hamerik "declared the com-
position to be that of an artist, and the playing to be almost perfect."
Lanier was engaged as first flutist of the Peabody Symphony: he was
now a professional musician. He kept on studying and practicing,
striving always to perfect himself in his art. His playing had an extraor-
dinary effect on those who heard him. The opinion of Hamerik, a
highly competent professional musician, is worth quoting:
344 | Expansion
In his hands the flute no longer remained a mere material in-
strument, but was transformed into a voice that set heavenly har-
monies into vibration. Its tones developed colors, warmth, and a low
sweetness of unspeakable poetry. . . . His playing appealed alike to
the musically learned and to the unlearned— for he would magnetize
the listener: but the artist felt in his performance the superiority of
the momentary living inspiration to all the rules and shifts of mere
technical scholarship. His art was not only the art of art, but an art
above art.
Miss Alice Fletcher indulged in feminine hyperbole when she declared
that Lanier "was not only the founder of a school of music, but the
founder of American music." 7 What I would venture to say is that
Sidney Lanier was the truest artist among American musicians of the
nineteenth century, the only one to whom the term "genius" might
be applied.
Lanier's known compositions are the following: Sacred Melodies
for flute solo (performed in Macon, July, 1868); Field-larks and Black-
birds, for flute solo (composed in 1873); Swamp Robin, flute solo
(same year); Danse des Aloucherons, for flute and piano (probably
composed in December, 1873; three manuscripts are at The Johns
Hopkins University); Longing, flute solo (composed early in 1874);
Wind-song, flute solo (1874); songs for voic$ with piano: The Song
of Love and Death (Tennyson, "Lancelot and Elaine"), Love That
Hath Us in the Net (Tennyson, "The Miller's Daughter"), Little Ella
("A Beautiful Ballad"; words and music by Sidney Lanier; composed
in 1866; published in 1888), and My Life Is Like a Summer Rose
(poem by Richard Henry Wilde). He left unfinished a Choral Sym-
phony, Symphony of Life, and Symphony of the Plantation.
This is, of course, a pitifully slight output with which to impress
posterity, and it is overbalanced by the weight of Lanier's literary rep-
utation and his poetic production. Nevertheless, the music he left is
the work of a gifted musician and a true artist. It has been my privi-
lege to hear Lanier's Wind-song admirably played by that modern
"gentleman amateur" of American musicians, Carleton Sprague Smith,
and the piece is certainly worthy of being included in the permanent
repertoire of American music for flute. Perhaps Sidney Lanier was
right when he felt in his soul that he could become a great com-
T Quoted by Starkc, Musical Quarterly, XX. 4 (1934), p. 389.
EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA 345
poser. The fact that circumstances did not permit him to develop
his creative genius to the full is one of the major tragedies of Amer-
ica's music.
Lanier's ideas on music, his system of prosody based on the identity
of music and poetry, his remarkable poem titled "The Symphony"—
these and other aspects of his work and thought might well claim our
attention, did space permit. Here we must content ourselves with giv-
ing to Sidney Lanier, the musician, the place that he deserves as a
precursor in the long struggle for the recognition and encouragement
of native musical talent in the United States. The light of his tragic
glory illumines the fulfillment of America's music that he did not
live to see.
Very different was the fate of the American composer whose life
and work will be discussed in the next chapter. Though Edward Mac-
Dowell was struck down by illness at the height of his powers, his
musical talents were carefully nurtured from an early age, and he had
full opportunity to develop his natural talents and to receive the proud
acclaim of his country during his lifetime.
chapter seventeen
A romantic bard
Music . . . is a language, but a language of the intangible, a kind of soul-
language.
EDWARD MACDOWBLL, CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS.
In a book published in 1900,* Rupert Hughes wrote of Edward Mac-
Dowell that "an almost unanimous vote would grant him the rank of
the greatest of American composers." One is mildly surprised at the
intrusion of the qualifying adverb "almost." Who was there to cast a
dissenting vote? Perhaps some admirer of John Knowles Paine or of
Ethelbert Nevin. The opposition, indeed, was not strong. Now, half
a century later, if such a hypothetical plebiscite were held among
American music lovers, it would be rash to predict that MacDowell
would be kept in top place by an electoral landslide. To the present
generation his name is more familiar than his music. We have more or
less agreed to let the handsome effigy of Edward MacDowell stand
on the pedestal where our admiring parents placed him, to gaze re-
spectfully on the statue labeled "America's greatest composer," and
to write tacet over most of his musical scores. Amateur pianists doubt-
less continue to delight in the smaller piano pieces, but the larger works
—the sonatas, the concertos, the orchestral suites— are heard infre-
quently in our concert halls.
No such neglect afflicted the composer during his lifetime. Mac-
Dowell was fully, even fulsomely, appreciated by his contemporaries;
his music was played, published, applauded, and praised without stint.
Americans of the fin de siicle were so pleased at finding an authentic
composer in their midst that they heaped superlatives upon him. When
MacDowell was offered the professorship of music at Columbia Uni-
1 Hughes, American Composers.
346
A ROMANTIC BARD 347
versity, the nominating committee cited him as "the greatest musical
genius America has produced." For Rupert Hughes, the piano sonatas
of MacDowell were "far the best since Beethoven."
MacDowell found his most eloquent panegyrist in the person of the
critic Lawrence Gilman, who, in 1905, three years before the com-
poser's death, contributed an enthusiastically appreciative volume to
the "Living Masters of Music" series; a volume which he later brought
out, revised and enlarged, as Edward MacDowell: A Study (1908).
Gilman, who became music, critic of the New York Herald Tribune,
and the author of many other books, may have lived to regret some
of his more unabashed outbursts, such as the statement that Mac-
Dowell's name "is the one name in our music which . . . one would
venture to pair with that of Whitman in poetry." This is Oilman's
summing up of the American composer's art:
He was one of the most individual writers who ever made
music—as individual as Chopin, or Debussy, or Brahms, or Grieg.
His manner of speech was utterly untrammelled, and wholly his own.
Vitality— an abounding freshness, a perpetual youthfulness— was one
of his prime traits; nobility— nobility of style and impulse— was an-
other. The morning freshness, the welling spontaneity of his music,
even in moments of exalted or passionate utterance, was continually
surprising: it was music not unworthy of the golden ages of the
world.
Twenty years later, Paul Rosenfeld, adventurous "voyager among
the arts," impressionistic critic of music, art, and literature, wrote hi
An Hour With American Music (1929):
The music of Edward MacDowell . . . amounts more to an
assimilation of European motives, figures and ideas than to an orig-
inal expression. In any case, the original elements are small and of
minor importance. . . . The ideas of the main romantic composers,
particularly Wagner, continued to haunt MacDowell even in his
later, more personal phase. . . . He was badly equipped in poly-
phonic technique; and where ... he attempted canonic imitation,
we find him essaying it clumsily, and with all the obsessive rapture
of a child in possession of a new and dazzling toy. . . . Even where
he is most individual, even in the personal, characteristically dainty
and tender little piano pieces, he frequendy appears fixed and rigid
in invention.
348 I Expansion
It might be wise to steer a middle course between these poles of
affirmation and negation; to put aside the issue of MacDowell's great*
ness, to avoid adulation and deprecation, and to regard him, sympa-
thetically but objectively, in his historical role as one of the first
Americans to acquire fame as a composer of "serious" music.
The lure of Europe
Edward Alexander MacDowell (he dropped the middle name in
later life) was born in New York City on December 18, 1861, of Irish-
Scotch descent. His father was a prosperous businessman with artistic
inclinations which had been thwarted by Quaker parents. There is no
mention of a musical heritage in the family, but Edward early mani-
fested musical aptitude and around the age of eight began to receive
piano lessons from a family friend, a Colombian by the name of Juan
Buitrago. His next piano teacher was a professional musician, Paul
Desvernine, with whom he studied until the age of fifteen. It was then
decided that Edward should go abroad for further study. Accom-
panied by his mother, he sailed for Europe in April, 1867, and in the
following autumn was admitted to the Paris Conservatory as a pupil
of Marmontel (piano) and of Savard (theory).
The methods and atmosphere of the Conservatory appear to have
been uncongenial for the young American student. After hearing
Nicholas Rubinstein play in the summer of 1878— the year of the Paris
Exposition— Edward exclaimed to his mother, "I can never learn to
play like that if I stay here." His ambition then was to become a
pianist rather than a composer. Leaving Paris, mother and son went
first to Stuttgart, which proved to be even more unsatisfactory, and
then to Wiesbaden, where Edward took some lessons in theory and
composition from Louis Ehlert, whose informal approach "rather stag-
gered" the American because, as he said later, his idea in leaving Paris
"was to get a severe and regenerating overhauling." Edward worked
hard all winter and heard lots of new music, which, he tells us, "was
like manna in the desert after my long French famine." This is an
early example of MacDowell's persistent Francophobia. The primary
purpose in coming to Wiesbaden was to meet the pianist Karl Hey-
man, who was visiting there at the time. Heyman taught at the Frank-
fort Conservatory, and it was there that MacDowell decided to go in
the autumn of 1879, his mother having meanwhile returned to America.
A ROMANTIC BARD 349
The director of the Frankfort Conservatory was Joachim Raff
(1822-1882), whom Alfred Einstein characterizes as a composer of
"mostly Romantic routine works, none of which have shown lasting
vitality," and whose music Adolfo Salazar describes as being "of a
Mendelssohnian and picturesque Romanticism and of weak pulsation."
When Raff was told that MacDowell had studied for several years the
"French school" of composition, he flared up and declared that there
was no such thing nowadays as "schools"— that if some French writers
wrote flimsy music it arose simply from flimsy attainments, and such
stuff could never form a "school." * This was the man with whom
MacDowell studied composition, and in whom, according to Gilman,
he encountered "an influence at once potent and engrossing— a force
which was to direct the currents of his own temperament into definite
artistic channels."
MacDoweil felt thoroughly at home in Germany. "His keen and
very blue eyes, his pink and white skin, reddish mustache and im-
perial and jet black hair, brushed straight up in the prevalent German
fashion, caused him to be known as 'the handsome American.1 " Mac-
Dowell had now been five years in Europe, but apparently he had no
intention of returning to his native land. His studies were finished and
he had embarked on his professional career as pianist, teacher, and
composer. In 1881 he applied for, and obtained, the position of head
piano teacher at the nearby Darmstadt Conservatory. He commuted
between Frankfort and Darmstadt, composing on the train. He also
read a great deal, especially Goethe, Heine, Byron, Shelley, and— his
favorite— Tennyson.
After a year the Darmstadt duties proved burdensome, and Mac-
Dowell resigned. In the spring of 1882 he went to visit Liszt at Weimar,
taking with him the score of his First Piano Concerto, which Liszt
heard and praised. It was upon Liszt's recommendation that Mac-
Dowell's Second Modern Suite, Opus 14, was published at Leipzig by
Breitkopf & Hartel. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1882, Joachim Raff
died. His death was felt as a deep personal loss by MacDowell.
It was Raff who had persuaded MacDowell that his real path lay
in composition, and during the next two years he gave an increasing
amount of time to composing. In June, 1884, MacDowell returned to
America to marry his former pupil, Marian Nevins. A few days after
2 Cited by Oilman, Edward MacDowell: A Study, p. 9.
350 I Expansion
the wedding the couple sailed for Europe, going first to England and
then to Frankfort, which by this time must have seemed like home to
MacDowell. He applied, unsuccessfully, for a position at the Wiirz-
burg Conservatory (as he had done previously at the Frankfort Con-
servatory). During this period he wrote the two-part symphonic
poem, Hamlet and Ophelia. In 1885 he applied, again unsuccessfully,
for the position of examiner at the Royal Academy of Music in Edin-
burgh. The following winter was spent in Wiesbaden, and in the
summer of 1886 the MacDowells visited London again. Returning to
Wiesbaden, they made their home in a small cottage in the woods,
where MacDowell worked at his composition. But, according to Gil-
man, "Musicians from America began coming to the little Wiesbaden
retreat to visit the composer and his wife, and he was repeatedly urged
to return to America and assume his share in the development of the
musical art of his country."
The Boston years
In September, 1888, MacDowell and his wife sailed for the United
States. It would be incorrect to say that he left Germany behind, be-
cause actually he brought it along with him. Furthermore, Boston,
where the MacDowells settled, was musically a sort of German prov-
ince. With the exception of the brief trip in 1884, MacDowell had
lived in Europe from his fifteenth to his twenty-seventh year. Most of
these twelve years were spent in Germany, warming his hands in the
embers of a dying Romanticism.
In Boston, before his arrival, MacDowell was already known as a
successful composer— that is, one who had received the accolade of
European performance and publication. The celebrated pianist Teresa
Carrefio had included some of his pieces on her programs. In April,
1888, MacDowelFs First Piano Concerto w s performed in Boston,
and, wrote W. F. Apthorp in the Transcript, "The effect upon all
present was simply electric." After his return to America, MacDowell
further consolidated his position both as composer and executant.
His first great success was wher he played his Second Pinno Concerto
in New York in March, 1889; a success repeated soon afterward in
Boston. In the summer of that year he appeared as soloist in this con-
certo at a concert of American music conducted by Van der Stucken
A ROMANTIC BARD 351
in Paris (July 12, 1889). Other composers represented on this historic
program were Dudley Buck, George W. Chadwick, Arthur Foote,
Henry Holden Huss, Margaret Ruthven Lang, John K. Paine, and
Frank Van der Stucken.
In Boston, where he remained for eight years, MacDowell taught
privately and composed industriously. The more important works
composed during this period include the Concert Study for piano
(Opus 36), the Twelve Studies for piano (Opus 39), the Six Love
Songs (Opus 40), the Sonata Tragica (Opus 45), the twelve Virtuoso
Studies (Opus 46), the Eight Songs (Opus 47), the Second (Indian)
Suite for orchestra, the Sonata Eroica (Opus 50), and the Woodland
Sketches (Opus 51). This last collection contained some of his best-
known pieces, such as To a Wild Rose, From an Indian Lodge, and
To a Water Lily. Several of his larger works— the symphonic poem
Lancelot and Elaine, the Orchestral Suite in A Minor, The Saracens
and The Lovely Alda (episodes from The Song of Roland), Hamlet
and Ophelia— were performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The public applauded, the critics praised him. James Huneker wrote
of the D minor Piano Concerto that "it easily ranks with any modern
work in this form." W. J. Henderson called the same work "a strong,
wholesome, beautiful work of 'art, vital with imagination, and made
with masterly skill."
Teaching at Columbia
In May, 1896, the trustees of Columbia University in New York
offered MacDowell the newly created professorship of music at that
institution. After some hesitation, he accepted. He seems to have been
fired by the vision of accomplishing great things in music education.
This was his program of instruction: "First, to teach music scientifi-
cally and technically, with a view to training musicians who shall be
competent to teach and to compose. Second, to treat music historically
and aesthetically as an element of liberal culture." 3 This program was
to.be carried out in five courses of study. For the first two years Mac-
Dowell bore the entire burden of teaching by himself, after which
an assistant was appointed. As a teacher, MacDowell worked hard and
conscientiously, shirking none of the drudgery associated with this
» W. J. Batzcll, in Preface to MacDo well's Critical and Historical Essays.
352 | Expansion
task. He was an inspiration to his students and his courses were wel
attended. His lectures ranged over the entire field of musical history
from the ancient Greeks and Romans, and included a survey of Ori-
ental and primitive music. He was outspoken in his opinions, independ-
ent in his ideas, and repeatedly urged his students to think for them-
selves rather than to accept ready-made judgments from others. As 2
lecturer he was fluent, dynamic, and, on occasion, humorous.
During the academic year 1902-1903, MacDowell took his sab-
batical vacation, making first an extended concert tour in the United
States and then spending the spring and summer in Europe. It was in
1902 that Nicholas Murray Butler succeeded Seth Low as president
of Columbia University, and while MacDowell was absent Butler un-
dertook to reorganize the teaching of the fine arts at the university,
Now, this was a subject very near to MacDowelTs heart; he had defi-
nite ideas on the scope and nature of a department of fine arts that
would embrace music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and belles-
lettres. These ideas, according to MacDowell, were rejected as im-
practical by President Butler. Feeling dissatisfied with the situation,
MacDowell, early in January of 1904, presented his resignation. In-
discreetly, he talked to two student reporters who came to interview
him, and the next day the story of his resignation was featured in the
New York papers, with such tendentious headlines as "No Idealism
Left in Columbia." Thus "the MacDowell affair" became overnight a
cause celebre in the annals of America's music. Butler issued a state-
ment to the press in which he stated that MacDowelPs resignation
had been prompted by the latter's wish to devote all his time and
strength to composition. MacDowell countered with another state-
ment for the press, in which he said:
President Butler has evidently misunderstood my interview with
him when he affirms that my sole object in resigning from Columbia
was to have more time to write: he failed to explain the circum-
stances which led to my resignation. . . . There is certainly indi-
vidual idealism in all universities, but the general tendency of modern
education is toward materialism.
Thus, for MacDowell the fundamental issue was one between
idealism and materialism. In his report to the trustees he made his posi-
tion fully clear. He was opposed to Butler's plan for a Division of
Fine Arts with "the inclusion of Belles Lettres and Music, including
A ROMANTIC BARD 353
kindergarten, etc., at 9 Teachers College. . . . The Division of Fine
Arts thus acquires somewhat the nature of a co-educational depart-
ment store, and tends toward materialism rather than idealism. . . .
For seven years I have put all my energy and enthusiasm in the cause
of art at Columbia, and now at last, recognizing the futility of my
efforts, I have resigned the chair of music in order to resume my own
belated vocation."
There is no point in attempting to follow further the details of
the controversy. The important thing to emphasize is that in Mac-
Dowell's mind it was a question of idealism versus materialism: whether
art should be dispensed as in "a co-educational department store" or
whether it should be considered on a high aesthetic and technical level.
The issue is a vital one, and by no means dead in American higher
education. The only footnote that it seems necessary to add to this
affair is that the chief professorship of music at Columbia University
now bears the name of the Edward MacDowell Chair of Music.
During the years at Columbia, MacDowell continued to compose
and to develop as a creative artist. He wrote the admirable Sea Pieces
(Opus 55), the Third Piano Sonata (called Norse, Opus 57), the
Keltic Sonata (Opus 59), the Fireside Tales (Opus 61), the New Eng-
land Idyls, and some of his best songs. In 1896 he had acquired a farm-
house and some arable and wooded land near Peterboro, New Hamp-
shire, where he and his wife thenceforth spent their vacations. In a
log cabin that he built in the woods he did most of his composing,
during the summer months. It was an ideal spot for both work and
relaxation, but MacDowell, after his resignation from Columbia, was
not long to enjoy the satisfaction of creative work. In the spring of
1905 his health began to deteriorate. He showed signs of nervous ex-
haustion, but the malady proved to be malignant and incurable: it soon
left him helpless and mentally impotent. Tended by his faithful wife,
he dragged out his existence for many months and finally passed away
in New York City on the evening of January 23, 1908. His remains
were taken to Peterboro for burial. Today the artists' colony at Peter-
boro, established by his widow as a summer haven for creative workers
in the arts, stands as a tribute to MacDowell's memory.
To understand the personality, the background, and the art of
Edward MacDowell is to understand a large segment of our musical
culture. To arrive at this understanding, we should consider Mac-
354 I Expansion
Dowell's attitude toward America, his relation tp Europe, and his con*
ception of the art of music.
MacDowell and America
Writing sympathetically of MacDowell in the Dictionary of Amer-
ican Biography, John Erskine remarked that "undoubtedly he missed
some of the contacts with national life which are helpful to creative
art." This is an understatement. The composer spent his boyhood in
New York City, in the sheltered circle of an upper middle-class fam-
ily. At fifteen he went to Europe and stayed there until he was twenty-
seven. Upon his return he lived in Boston and New York. It was a nar-
rowly circumscribed cultural orbit, bounded on all sides by the con-
ventions of the urban genteel tradition. As we have pointed out, the
prevailing weakness of the genteel tradition was sentimentality, and
from this weakness the music of MacDowell suffered grievously. In
the words of Paul Rosenfeld:
The feelings entertained about life by him seem to have re-
mained uncertain; and while fumbling for them he seems regularly
to have succumbed to "nice" and "respectable" emotions, conven-
tional, accepted by and welcome to, the best people. It is shocking to
find how full of vague poesy he is. ... His mind dwells fondly
on old-fashioned New England gardens, old lavender, smouldering
logs, sunsets, "a fairy sail with a fairy boat," little log cabins of
dreams, the romance of German forests and the sexual sternness of
Puritan days.4
Apropos of this last phrase, it is interesting to compare Oilman's
remark about MacDo well's music: "It is music curiously free from
the fevers of sex." And he says of the composer that "his sensuousness
is never luscious." Shall we then speak of subconscious puritan inhibi-
tions in the music of MacDowell? That is scarcely necessary; it is
enough to observe the ravages of a sentimentality which turns the
artist away from life into a private dreamworld, where even the
erotic becomes sublimated into "vague poesy." In paying tribute to
MacDowell, Philip Hale said he was one "who in his art kept himself
pure and unspotted." We may connect this with Howard's statement
that in his latter years MacDowell "often told his friends that he
4 Rosenfeld, An Hour with American Music.
A ROMANTIC BARD 355
avoided hearing music, so that he would not be in danger of showing
its influence." This I construe as a sort of aesthetic sterilization.
Erskine claims that MacDowelFs "interest in America was genuine
and deep, reaching far beyond the field of music." Even within the
field of music, he concerned himself with the problem of an American
"national" school. Opposing the ideas of Dvofak, he rejected the con-
cept of musical nationalism based on folklore. His views on this sub-
ject are worth quoting in full:
So-called Russian, Bohemian, or any other purely national music
has no place in art, for its characteristics may be duplicated by
anyone who takes the fancy to do so. On the other hand, the vital
element in music— personality— stands alone. . . . We have here in
America been offered a pattern for an "American" national musical
costume by the Bohemian Dvofak— though what the Negro melodies
have to do with Americanism in art still remains a mystery. Music
that can be made by "recipe" is not music, but "tailoring." To be
sure, this tailoring may serve to cover a beautiful thought; but—
why cover it? ... The means of "creating" a national school to
which I have alluded are childish. No: before a people can find a
musical writer to echo its genius it must first possess men who truly
represent it— that is to say, men who, being part of the people, love
the country for itself: men who put into their music what the nation
has put into its life; and in the case of America it needs above all,
both on the part of the public and on the part of the writer, absolute
freedom from the restraint that an almost unlimited deference to
European thought and prejudice has imposed upon us. Masquerad-
ing in the so-called nationalism of Negro clothes cut in Bohemia
will not help us. What we must arrive at is the youthful optimistic
vitality and the undaunted tenacity of spirit that characterizes the
American man. That is what I hope to see echoed in American
music.5
This passage, taken from one of his lectures at Columbia Univer-
sity, seems amazing, almost incredible, coming from MacDowell. Is it
this bard of the Celtic twilight, this worshiper of Arthurian flum-
meries, who cries for the expression of "youthful optimistic vitality"
in American music? Is his the prophetic voice that summons American
composers to put into their music what the nation has put into its life?
The phrases are there, and we can only wonder at this dichotomy of
* MacDowell, Critical end Historical Essays.
356 I Expansion
word and deed, repeating the query of the apostle: "What doth it
profit . . . though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? . . ."
As we shall see in the next chapter, it was Dvofak, and not Mac-
Dowell, who proved to be the man of the hour, the man who felt
the historical need of the moment in American music. This does not
mean that MacDowell was entirely wrong in theory and Dvofak en-
tirely right. MacDowell was right in maintaining that folklore and
nationalism are not permanent, absolute values in artistic creation. Art
is the product of a personality multiplied by a cultural tradition, or by
the sum of several traditions, depending on the complexity of the
artist's heritage and equipment. MacDowell inherited the genteel tra-
dition of American urban culture, which in turn was a derivation of
conventional European modes. In so far as the American imitation
failed to reproduce the authentic atmosphere of the European original,
by that much was MacDowell a spiritual expatriate from Europe. As
Erskine writes:
The deep emotions of his early manhood were bound up with
Europe, with a tradition and an atmosphere not to be found on
this side the ocean. Perhaps he was always looking for it here, wist-
fully and tragically. He gave the impression, against his will, of being
a visitor in his own land, trying to establish himself in alien condi-
tions.
Perhaps this explains his remarks on American music previously
quoted: he was trying desperately, trying too hard, to say what he
thought he should say as an American composer; but the lack of con-
viction—or, rather, the lack of an operative American tradition in his
cultural heritage— prevented him from embodying a bold, independ-
ent speech in his own creative work. He was in love with Europe,
and the worst of it is that, in the words of Erskine, "the Europe he
loved was a dream country, suggested by the great poets and artists
and by ancient monuments, by folk-lore, by enchanting forests." Even
after he transferred his dtcor to New England, it was this dream
country that continued to inspire him. His music was a bridge from
reality to that dream.
Music as a "soul-language"
What, then, was MacDowelTs conception of music, of its nature
and meaning? This is what he said in one of his lectures:
A ROMANTIC BARD 357
The high mission of music ... is neither to be an agent for ex-
pressing material things; nor to utter pretty sounds to amuse the ear;
nor a sensuous excitant to fire the blood, or a sedative to lull the
senses; it is a language, but a language of the intangible, a kind of
soul-language. It appeals directly to the Seelenssustande it springs
from, for it is the natural expression of it, rather than, like words, a
translation of it into stereotyped symbols which may or may not be
accepted for what they were intended to denote by the writer.4
For MacDowell, then, music is a language in which one soul speaks
to another. He states plainly that "music is not an art, but psycholog-
ical utterance" (my italics). He denies that music can be compared
with architecture, painting, or poetry. "Painting is primarily an art of
externals . . . for that art must touch its audience through a palpable
delineation of something more or less material; whereas music is of the
stuff dreams are made of" (Again the italics are mine.) Speaking of
the type of music that "suggests," as contrasted with music that
"paints," he says:
The successful recognition of this depends not only upon the
susceptibility of the hearer to delicate shades of sensation, but also
upon the receptivity of the hearer and his power to accept freely
and unrestrictedly the mood shadowed by the composer. Such music
cannot be looked upon objectively. To those who would analyze
it in such a manner it must remain an unknown language; its potency
depends entirely upon a state of willing subjectivity on the part of
the hearer.7
This passage, particularly the sentence italicized (by me), is crucial
in relation to MacDowelPs own music. If we do not voluntarily place
ourselves in a state of willing subjectivity to the "mood shadowed by
the composer," if we do not lay aside an objective awareness of the
musical substance, the sonorous structure as such, then his music re-
mains for us "an unknown language"— that is, it does not communicate
—and thereby loses its potency.
Perhaps the key to MacDowelTs limitations in his attitude toward
music as a medium of artistic expression has been unwittingly pro-
vided for us by Gilman in the following sentence:
6 MacDowell, Critical and Historical Essays.
. 259.
358 I Expansion
His standpoint is, in the last analysis, that of the poet rather than
that of the typical musician: the standpoint of the poet intent mainly
upon a vivid embodiment of the quintessence of personal vision and
emotion, who has elected to utter that truth and that emotion in
terms of musical beauty.
What this means, in effect, is that MacDowell did not think in terms
of musical expression. Therefore, if we find ourselves unable or un-
willing to share a priori his moods and emotions, we are apt to find
his musical expression inadequate. He will have the listener abjure
"that objective state which accepts with the ears what is intended for
the spirit." He considers that a higher order of music which "aims
at causing the hearer to go beyond the actual sounds heard, in pursu-
ance of a train of thought primarily suggested by this music."
In contrast to this superior type of soulful music is "mere beauty
of sound," which is, in itself, "purely sensuous." Developing this
thought, MacDowell writes: "It is the Chinese conception of music
that the texture of a sound is to be valued; the long, trembling tone-
tint of a bronze gong, or the high, thin streams of sound from the
pipes are enjoyed for their ear-filling qualities. . . ." Thus the con-
cept that the texture of sound is to be valued is regarded as an out-
landish notion, the mark of an inferior civilization, for, says Mac-
Dowell, this is "sound without music." One wonders why he does
not simply advocate music without sound, since that is the surest way
of eliminating the "purely sensuous" element of sonorous beauty.
The following passage is extremely revealing: "If we could eliminate
from our minds all thoughts of music and bring ourselves to listen
only to the texture of sounds, we could better understand the Chinese
ideal of musical art." 8 This is truly an amazing dichotomy, which
draws a line between music and the texture of sounds. Further on this
subject: "For instance, if in listening to the deep, slow vibrations of
a large gong we ignore completely all thought of pitch, fixing our at-
tention only upon the roundness and fullness of the sound and the
way it gradually diminishes in volume without losing any of its pul-
sating colour we should then realize what the Chinese call music." In
other words, if we listen to a musical sound with full aesthetic aware-
ness of its properties and effects as sound, we should then realize what
the Chinese call music but what is not music for MacDowell. The
significance of all this, apart from its revelation of MacDowell's atti-
• IMf, p. <fc.
A ROMANTIC BARD
359
tudc toward music, is that many people are still prevented from ap-
preciating, for instance, twentieth-century music, because of this con-
cept of music as a "soul-language" divorced from consideration of the
actual texture of sounds in the musical artwork. Conversely, no amount
of insistence upon the "nobility" of the message contained in the "soul-
language" of MacDowell's music will arouse a response in those of us
who find that his sonorous texture lacks interest and structural vitality.
MacDowell spoke disparagingly of counterpoint: "Per sey counter-
point is a puerile juggling with themes, which may be likened to
high-school mathematics. In my opinion, J. S. Bach . . . accomplished
his mission, not by means of the contrapuntal fashion of his age, but
in spite of it. ... Neither pure tonal beauty, so-called 'form,' nor
what is termed the intellectual side of music (the art of counterpoint,
canon, and fugue), constitutes a really vital factor in music." p
Writing of the music of Schumann, which he admired, MacDowell
said: "It represents ... the rhapsodical reverie of a great poet to
whom nothing seems strange, and who has the faculty of relating his
visions, never attempting to give them coherence, until, perhaps, when
awakened from his dream, he naively wonders what they may have
meant." This passage tells us much more about MacDowell than it
does about Schumann. Many of MacDowell's smaller pieces are musi-
cal reveries, or moods expressed in tone, while his larger works, par-
ticularly the four piano sonatas, tend toward the rhapsodical. Even in
the sonatas, however, as Rosenfeld remarks, "we are never very far
from the little old rendezvous" represented by echoes of such pieces
as At an Old Try sting-place or An Old Garden. Here, for example,
is a passage from the second movement of the Fourth (Keltic) Sonata,
which is supposed to be a musical portrait of the enchanting Deirdre: 10
•Ibid., p. 265.
10 By permission of the copyright owners, The Arthur P. Schmidt Co., Inc.
r
The music for piano
Most of MacDowell's piano pieces may be divided into two cate-
gories: the "quaint" (sentimental) and the "frisky" (lively). In the
former class belong To a Wild Rose, At cm Old Try sting-place, To a
Water Lily, A Deserted Farm, Told at Sunset, An Old Garden, With
Sweet Lavender, Starlight, and Nautilus. The second class includes
Will o' the Wisp, In Autumn, From Uncle Remus, By a Meadow
Brook, The Joy of Autumn—to mention only pieces from Woodland
Sketches and New England Idyls. There is a third category, in which
the descriptive or emotional content tends toward the "dramatic," with
contrasting moods of emotional emphasis and lyrical tenderness. The
prototype of this category is From Puritan Days, in which the musical
message is underlined by such directions as "pleadingly" and "de-
spairingly." In this class also belong In Deep Woods, To an Old White
Pine, From a Log Cabin, From an Indian Lodge, A.D. MDCXX, Song
(from Sea Pieces), and In Mid-Ocean. The first of the Sea Pieces,
titled To the Sea, might also be placed in this category, though it is
more of a single mood, to be played throughout "with dignity and
breadth."
It seems unnecessary to dwell at length on the four piano sonatas.
The first, Sonata Tragica in G minor (Opus 45), is said to have been
composed while MacDowell "was moved by the memory of his grief
over the death of his master Raff." The work attempts "to heighten
the darkness of tragedy by making it follow closely on the heels of
triumph." As for the music, on the evidence of its facile romanticism,
one can truly believe that the composer was moved by memories of
Raff.
A ROMANTIC BARD 36 1
The Sonata Eroica in G minor (Opus 50), published in 1895, bears
the motto Flos regwn Arthunis. It has a programmatic content, as
explained by the composer: "While not exactly programme music, I
had in mind the Arthurian legend when writing this work. The first
movement typifies the coming of Arthur. The scherzo was suggested
by a picture of Dore showing a knight in the woods surrounded by
elves. The third movement was suggested by my idea of Guinevere.
That following represents the passing of Arthur." Gilman called this
work "the noblest musical incarnation of the Arthurian legend which
we have."
The Third Sonata, called Norse (Qpus 57), published in 1900,
bears the following verses at the head of the score:
Night had fallen on a day of deeds.
The great rafters in the red-ribbed hall
Flashed crimson in the fitful flame
Of smouldering logs;
And from the stealthy shadows
That crept 'round Harald's throne,
Rang out a Skald's strong voice,
With tales of battles won;
Of Gudrun's love
And Sigurd, Siegmund's son.
Along with the crashing chords and sweeping figurations of this
music, we find such passages of chromatic tenderness as the follow-
ing, marked to be played "Very dreamily, almost vague." u
Very dreamily, almost vague.
41 By permission of the copyright owners, The Arthur P. Schmidt Co., Inc.
362 I Expansion
The Fourth (Keltic) Sonata (Opus 59), was published in 1901
and, like the third, was dedicated to Edvard Grieg. Like the third also
it has only three movements. Four lines of MacDoweU's own verse
stand at the head of the score:
Who minds now Keltic tales of yore,
Dark Druid rhymes that thrall,
Deirdre's song and wizard lore
of great Cuchullin's fall.
Hedging, as usual, on the matter of programmatic content, MacDowell
wrote that "the music is more a commentary on the subject than an
actual depiction of it." He wrote of this sonata that it was "more of a
'bardic* rhapsody on the subject than an attempt at actual presenta-
tion of it, although I have made use of all the suggestion of tone-
painting in my power." It is as "bardic rhapsodies" that the sonatas
of MacDowell, particularly the last two, may best be appreciated.
Orchestral works: Indian Suite
MacDowell did not compose symphonies, overtures, or string
quartets. For orchestra he wrote symphonic poems, suites, and two
piano concertos. The Second l?iano Concerto, in D minor (Opus
23), completed in 1885, remains one of MacDowell's most viable
works, probably because it purports to carry no solemn "soul mes-
sage" but is simply a good, workable concerto in neo-romantic style.
Of his orchestral works, the best is the Second or Indian Suite (Opus
48), first performed in 1896, which consists of five movements: (i)
"Legend," (2) "Love Song," (3) "In War Time," (4) "Dirge," (5)
"Festival." According to Henry F. Gilbert, who was at one time a
pupil of MacDowell, the genesis of the Indian Suite was as follows:
A ROMANTIC BARD 363
MacDowell became somewhat interested in Indian lore and curi-
ous to see some real Indian music. He asked me to look up some
for him, so I brought him Theodore Baker's book, Die Musik der
Nordamerikanischen Wilden. "Oh, yes," he said, "I knew of this
book, but had forgotten about it." From Baker's book the main
themes of his Indian Suite are taken. . . . Although all the themes
have been changed, more or less, the changes have always been in
the direction of musical beauty, and enough of the original tune has
been retained to leave no doubt as to its barbaric flavor.
The theme of the first movement ("Legend") occurs in a sacred
ceremony of the Iroquois. A love song of the lowas is used as the
theme of the second movement ("Love Song"). A Kiowa tune, a
chant of mourning, provides the theme for the fourth movement
("Dirge"), which is considered by many to be the most beautiful and
effective orchestral music written by MacDowell. The last move-
ment ("Festival") utilizes a women's dance and a war song of the
Iroquois. Gilman quotes MacDowell as having said, in 1903: "Of all
my music, the 'Dirge' in the Indian Suite pleases me most. It affects
me deeply and did when I was writing it. In it an Indian woman
laments the death of her son; but to me, as I wrote it, it seemed to
express a world-sorrow rather than a particularized grief."
We have already seen that MacDowell frowned upon musical
nationalism based on folklore. To Hamlin Garland he said: "I do
not believe in 'lifting' a Navajo theme and furbishing it into some kind
of musical composition and calling it American music. Our problem
is not so simple as that." Certainly not. Yet there is something curi-
ously ironic in the fact that MacDowell should have drawn from
American Indian music the material and the inspiration for some of
his best and most effective pages. It represents at least an attempt to
get away from secondhand romanticism and genteel sentimentality.
If we are now in considerable doubt as to "its barbaric flavor," and
if we have no delusions regarding its significance as "American mu-
sic," we at least are ready to acknowledge that it is rather good
music, and to be thankful that MacDowell turned for a moment from
Teutonic forests, New England nooks, and Celtic legends, to look
into a book on American Indian music.
Something should be said about MacDowell's songs, though his
production in this field was not large: he wrote forty-two songs for
single voice with piano. He believed that "song writing should follow
364 I Expansion
declamation," and that "the accompaniment should be merely a back-
ground for the words." MacDowell had literary aspirations and wrote
the words for many of his own songs. He felt that much of the finest
poetry, including that of Whitman, was unsuitable for musical set-
ting. Among his more effective songs are "Fair Springtide," "Confi-
dence," "Constancy, "The Swan Bent Low to the Lily," "A Maid
Sings Light," "Long Ago," "To the Golden Rod," and "As the Gloam-
ing Shadows Creep."
When Edward MacDowell appeared on the scene, many Ameri-
cans felt that here at last was "the great American composer" awaited
by the nation. But MacDowell was not a great composer. At his best
he was a gifted miniaturist with an individual manner. Creatively, he
looked toward the past, not toward the future. He does not mark the
beginning of a new epoch in American music, but the closing of a
fading era, the fin de siecle decline of the genteel tradition which had
dominated American art music since the days of Hopkinson and
Hewitt. This does not mean that the genteel tradition died with
MacDowell: it survived in countless other composers of lesser repu-
tation. But MacDowell was the last to endow it with glamour and
prestige, the last important figure to live and work entirely within
its orbit. After him the tradition either becomes identified with aca-
demic dignity, as in the composers of the so-called "Boston Group,"
or simply peters out in inconsequential drivel. Since we shall not
concern ourselves with the latter, we may turn now to the group of
composers sometimes called the "Boston Classicists," among whom
MacDowell lived for a time and whose ideals he shared in large
measure.
chapter eighteen
The Boston classicists
One truth you taught us outlived all the rest:
Music hath Brahms to soothe the savage breast.
D. G. MASON, LINES TO PERCY COETSCHIUS, ON HIS EIGHTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY.
U n Thanksgiving Day in the year 1 895 a young American composer
wrote in his journal: "Thank God Wagner is dead and Brahms is
alive. And here's to the great classical revival of the 2oth century in
America." The name of this ardent young classicist— he was then only
twenty-two—was Daniel Gregory Mason.1 The reader is familiar
with the name of Mason and what it stands for in American music:
the transition from the pioneer singing-school tradition of early New
England to the imitative provincialism of such Europeanizers as Wil-
liam Mason. Daniel Gregory was the nephew of William, and with
him this New England musical dynasty reaches its culmination in an
almost ecstatic surrender to the potent spell of the classical-romantic
European tradition. In a volume of reminiscences, Music in My Time,
Daniel Gregory Mason has described both the musical background
of his boyhood in Massachusetts and his own musical credo as a ma-
ture individual. Describing the musical atmosphere of the family
circle, he writes:
The truth is, our whole view of music was based on the style
of classic and romantic symphonists, beginning with Haydn and
Mozart and ending with Mendelssohn and Schumann. Even Bach
was rather on the edge of the music we recognized, and the rhythmic
freedom or unmetricality of say, Gregorian chant, was decidedly
beyond our horizon.2
1 Mason died on Dec. 4, 1953, at the age of eighty. For an account of his
compositions, see p. 380.
2 Mason, Music in My Time, p. 1 4.
365
366 I Expansion
In speaking of rhythmic freedom and unmetricality, Mason need
not have gone as far afield as Gregorian cnant: he might have cited
American folk music as an example; but that, of course, was also a
closed book in this highly restricted musical circle. As regards his own
views of musical art, Mason says:
. . . one of my deepest convictions has always been a sense of the
supreme value in art of balance, restraint, proportion— in a word,
of classic beauty. Hence my lifelong adoration of men like Bach,
Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms, in whom this ideal is su-
premely realized. Contrariwise I have always felt an instinctive antip-
athy toward excess, unbalance, romantic exaggeration, sensational-
ism, typified for me in such composers, great artists though they
be, as Wagner, Tschaikowsky, Liszt, Strauss.8
As we shall see, Mason also felt, and expressed, "an instinctive
antipathy" toward everything in American music that did not con-
form to this classic ideal of balance and restraint. And his antipathy
crystallized around an element in American music that came to sym-
bolize for him the "excess" and "exaggeration" that he hated. This
element was the Jewish influence. But of that we shall speak later.
For the moment we must attempt to define the prevailing New Eng-
land attitude toward musical art, that is to say, the attitude that domi-
nated the musical thinking of those New England composers who,
in the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the
twentieth, succeeded in forming a rather impressive school variously
known as the "Boston Classicists" or the "New England Academi-
cians." It might be denied that they formed a "school" in the strict
sense of the term, but, like all New England cultural manifestations,
this musical movement that centered in Boston and that flourished
from about 1880 to World War I assumed rather definite character-
istics, and I think it can be shown that it stemmed from a fairly
homogeneous cultural and aesthetic background.
If we look at American art music as a whole during the period cov-
ered by the activity of this Boston group, we must admit that their
achievement was notable. With such men as Chadwick, Foote, and
Parker, American art music certainly had a group of composers who
counted for something. At the same time, we may bear in mind R. H.
Shryock's observation that "New England once excelled in cultural
THE BOSTON CLASSICISTS 367
achievement, by the simple device of defining culture in terms of those
things in which New England excelled."4 Translated into musical
terms this means, for example, that if you arbitrarily set up Brahms as
the ideal of musical art, then all music reflecting Brahmsian influence
must ipso facto be considered superior to any other type of music.
We have already dealt with John Knowles Paine, who may be
regarded as the ancestor of. the Boston academicians. Among his
pupils was Arthur W. Foote (1853-1937). In one respect, Foote's
musical education was not typical of the New England group: he did
not study in Europe. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, he was allowed
by his parents to take piano lessons when he was fourteen, but with
no thought that he would take up music as a profession. At Harvard
he became conductor of the Glee Club and studied music with Paine,
yet still had a business career in sight when he graduated. It was
B. J. Lang, to whom he had gone for some lessons on the organ, who
persuaded young Foote that his future lay in music rather than busi-
ness. So Foote became an organist and a pianist, opened a teaching
studio in 1876, began to compose, and settled down to a quiet, pro-
ductive existence in Boston. Like most of his contemporaries he was
a Brahmsian, but, with exceptional adroitness, managed to be simul-
taneously a devotee of Wagner.
The Brahmsian influence is apparent chiefly in Foote's chamber
music: Piano Quartet (Opus 23, 1891), String Quartet in E (1894);
Quintet for piano and strings (1898), Piano Trio in B flat (1909).
He followed the lead of Liszt in his ambitious symphonic poem
called, after Dante, Franc esc a da Rimini (1893), *n which he at-
tempted some moderately realistic programmatic effects. He had a
predilection for strings: his compositions for string orchestra include
a pseudoclassical Serenade in E and Suite in D, and a rather austere
Suite in E, composed in 1910. He also composed a mildly evocative
Night Piece for flute and strings. Among his works for full orchestra
are an overture, In the Mountains (1887), a Cello Concerto (1894),
and Four Character Pieces after Omar KhayyAm (1912).
Foote's Serenade for string orchestra, Opus 25, consists of Prelude,
Air, Intermezzo, Romance, Gavotte. It was this sort of thing that
Rupert Hughes had in mind when he wrote of Foote: "I know of no
modern composer who has come nearer to relighting the fires that
*Shryock, in The Cultural Approach to History, cd. by Caroline F. Ware
(New York, 1940), p. 267.
368 I Expansion
beam in the old gavottes and fugues and preludes." 6 This remark is
quoted because it seems so typical of what the Bostonians were trying
to do: relighting the fires of old forms and calling it a classical re-
vival. Unfortunately, Hughes let the skeleton out of the closet (and
also made a quick change of metaphor) when he went on to add that
the gavottes of Foote "are an example of what it is to be academic
without being only a rattle with dry bones." This gives us another
characterization of the so-called "classical" revival: dry bones rattling
in the academic closet. One could at least hope to cover the bones
attractively. Or, as Louis Elson put it, "Foote uses the classical forces
with most admirable ease and fluency." 6
Foote left a large body of vocal music, both sacred and secular.
His major choral works are The Farewell of Hiawatha, for men's
voices (1886), The Wreck of the Hesperus (1888), and The Skeleton
in Armor, with orchestra (1893). ^n these two latter works, Wagner-
ism is ramp&iit, particularly in the storm scenes. A prolific composer,
Foote wrote a quantity of church music, about one hundred and fifty
songs (with a preference for Elizabethan lyrics), numerous piano
pieces, and some thirty works for organ.
Among the adjectives that have been applied to the music of
Arthur Foote by various writers are "noble," "pure," "refined," "dig-
nified," "earnest," and "agreeable." These adjectives seem to me not
only to delimit an individual production but also to epitomize an era
and an aspiration that converged in Boston of the fin de siecle.
A Boston blend
In examining the antecedents of modern New England composers,
rime and again we find them emerging from a family background
whose pattern repeats that of the native musical pioneers of the eight-
eenth century. Such is the case, for example, with George W. Chad-
wick, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, November 13, 1854. His father
was one of those versatile, self-reliant Yankees who managed to com-
bine the love and cultivation of music with success in practical mat-
ters. Beginning as a farmer, he became a machinist, and in 1860
established an insurance company, which prospered. Like the old
England singing-school masters, he taught a singing class in his
•Hughes, Contemporary American Composers, p. 227.
6 Elson, The History of American Music, p. 479.
THE BOSTON CLASSICISTS 369
spare time, and organized a chorus in his community. His sons were
encouraged to study music, and there were frequent musical gather-
ings in the family, In this scheme of things, music was not supposed
to take the place of business, but to provide a wholesome and "up-
lifting" leisure-time occupation. So it was that George Chadwick,
after learning to play the organ and the piano, entered his father's
business according to the prescribed procedure. Before long, however,
he decided that music was more important to him than business, left
the paternahfirm, and became a student at the New England Conserva-
tory, of which many years later he was to be director. After a brief
period of teaching music at Olivet College, young Chadwick decided
to go to Europe to complete his musical education, to learn the art
of orchestration, and to master the complexities of composing in the
larger forms. It was then that he met with parental opposition: music
as a full-time profession was still a heretical idea to the elder Chad-
wick. But it was too late for his opposition to be effective: music as a
career was becoming a reality in America, and George Chadwick was
moving with the times. He went to Europe.
Inevitably, for a Bostonian of that time, his destination was Ger-
many. He first studied with Haupt in Berlin but soon went to work
with the celebrated Jadassohn in Leipzig, after which he received a
final polishing from Rheinberger in Munich. By 1880 he was back in
Boston, thoroughly imbued with the laws of counterpoint and strict
composition, a knowledge which he offered to impart to others for a
moderate fee. Among his earliest pupils were three destined to achieve
some prominence in American music: Horatio Parker, Sidney Homer,
and Arthur Whiting. In 1882 he began teaching at the New England
Conservatory and gradually ascended the pedagogic ladder until,
fifteen years later, he was appointed director of that institution,
holding this position until his death in 1931. Meanwhile, he had con-
ducted choral societies, served as church organist, and composed in-
dustriously. His was indeed an exemplary musical career, pursued with
tenacity and crowned with success.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Chadwick did not have the
benefit of a Harvard education, for he went to work after finishing
high school. But, perhaps to compensate for his lack of a higher
education, he continually turned to "high-brow" subjects, setting
Latin texts to music, as in his Phoenix Expirans for mixed chorus
370 | Expansion
(1892), or alluding to ancient Greek legend and mythology, as in his
overtures Thalia (the Muse of Comedy, 1883), Melpomene (the
Muse of Tragedy, 1887), Enter fe (the Muse of Music, 1906), Adonais
(1899), and the symphonic poem Aphrodite (1913). The program-
matic content of the last-mentioned composition has been described
as follows:
The idea of the work was suggested by a beautiful head of the
goddess, found on the island of Cnidos, and now in the Boston Art
Museum. The composition endeavors to portray the scenes that might
have taken place before such a statue when worshipped in its temple
by the sea. There are festal dances; a storm at sea; the thanks of
rescued mariners to their patron goddess; religious services in the
temple; and other similar suggestions of suitable nature.7
The score itself is headed by the following verses:
In a dim vision of the long ago
Wandering by a far-off Grecian shore
Where streaming moonlight shone on golden sands
And melting stars knelt at Aphrodite's shrine,
Imploring her with many a fervid prayer
To tell the secret of her beauty's power
And of the depths of ocean whence she sprang.
At last the wave-born goddess raised her hand
And smiling said: "O mortal youth behold!"
And all these mysteries passed before mine eyes.8
These quotations are given in full because they are so revealing of
die cult for the past— especially a remote and legendary past that
could be conceived only "in a dim vision of the long ago" and envel-
oped in vague reveries and fantasies— which characterized the artistic
aspirations of Chadwick and, to a greater or lesser degree, the whole
group of Boston classicists. It should also be observed that the se-
quence of scenes described in the program note to this symphonic
poem— the feast, the dances, the storm, the shipwreck, the rescue, the
thanksgiving— is of such a stereotyped pattern that it could serve for
any descriptive seapiece. This indicates what is confirmed by the
music itself: that the whole work is conceived on a plane of academic
T Hughes, op. cit.y p. 479.
• Score published by The A. P. Schmidt Co., Inc.
THE BOSTON CLASSICISTS 371
conventionality. It is no more than a proper Bostonian flirtation with
the shade of Aphrodite.
Chadwick had a preference for descriptive music, either in the
form of orchestral program pieces or of choral settings of narrative
poems. His setting of The Vikings Last Voyage (1881) for baritone
solo, male chorus, and orchestra, reminds one of Rupert Hughes's
query, "What would part-song writers do if the Vikings had never
been invented? Where would they get their wild choruses for men,
with a prize to the singer that makes the most noise?" 9 Other choral
works by Chadwick include Dedication Ode, Lovely Rosabelle, The
Pilgrims, and Phoenix Expirans. Though he wrote smoothly and cor-
rectly for voices, his choral output "dates" more than his instrumental
music, partly because the Victorian cantata as a genre has "dated,"
and partly because he was less original in his vocal writing than in his
best instrumental works. Chadwick tried his hand at opera, both
serious and light, without much success, his most ambitious effort
being the music drama Judith, which achieved a concert performance
in 1901. Of his numerous songs (over a hundred), the best-known is
his setting of Sidney Lanier's "Ballad of Trees and the Master."
Chadwick's instrumental works, in addition to those already men-
tioned, include five string quartets, a piano quintet, three symphonies,
the early program overtures Rip Van Winkle (1879) and The Miller's
Daughter (1884), and a set of four orchestral pieces which he called
Symphonic Sketches (1895-1907), consisting of "Jubilee," "Noel,"
"Hobgoblin," and "A Vagrom Ballad." It is these symphonic sketches
that make of Chadwick a figure of more than historical interest
in America's music. Heard today, they have a vitality, a genuineness,
a human and emotional quality that takes them out of the category of
museum pieces. We may not feel that "Jubilee" and "A Vagrom
Ballad" are entirely successful in expressing, as Philip Hale said, "the
frankness, swagger and recklessness that Europeans commonly asso-
ciate with Americans"— nor do we necessarily feel that there is any
particular virtue in the musical expression of these traits, assuming
that we do indeed possess them. But we do feel that this music is
alive, and that Chadwick was at least on the right track when he
broke away from his pseudoclassical preoccupations and gave vent
to the Yankee humor and humanity that was in him. At the head of
the score of "Jubilee," the composer placed the following verses:
9 Hughes, op. cit., p. 213.
372 | Expansion
No cool gray tones for me!
Give me the warmest red and green,
A cornet and a tambourine,
To paint my jubilee!
For when the flutes and oboes play,
To sadness I become a prey;
Give me the violets and the May,
But no gray skies for me!
To establish this mood, the sketch (Allegro molto vivace) opens
with a jovial theme proclaimed by the whole orchestra, fortissimo,
followed soon by another striking theme stated by bass clarinet, bas-
soons, violas, and cellos, in unison. Then the horns announce a phrase
in C major, which Philip Hale describes as a "patting Juba horn call,"
referring to some verses from Richard Hovey's More Songs From
Vagabondia: 10
When the wind comes up from Cuba
And the birds are on the wing,
And our hearts are patting Juba
To the banjo of the spring . . .
After a lyrical episode for wood winds and horns, the piece ends
excitingly with a coda marked presto.
Of the three remaining Symphonic Sketches, the one titled "A
Vagrom Ballad" is probably the most effective. Its atmosphere is
evoked in these lines:
A tale of tramps and railway ties,
Of old clay pipes and rum,
Of broken heads and blackened eyes
And the "thirty days" to come.
While this sort of toying with the seamy side of life is still conceived
on a conventional plane—a sort of Boston blend of the pastoral and
picaresque traditions— the attempt to grasp some kind of earthy
reality, rather than to dwell on remote legends and misty myths,
marks a wholesome departure from the mood of high-minded imag-
inings and dreamy escapism that dominates so much of the music
produced by the Bostonians of this period. Not that there is any
"Boston, 1896.
THE BOSTON CLASSICISTS 373
specific musical virtue in railway ties and old clay pipes as compared
with the fabulous phoenix or the beautiful Aphrodite; and it would in
any case be fallacious to judge the value of music by its associative
connotations rather than by its intrinsic substance. But there is a
danger in the artist's completely losing contact with his environment
and having no real roots in the cultural traditions of his own land.
Edward MacDowell was an artist of this type, as were most of the
New England neoclassicists. We come now to a composer who de-
liberately cut himself off from direct contact with his environment,
enclosing himself, as with a medieval moat, in a refuge of exquisitely
elaborate sonorities.
An exquisite artificer
Charles Martin Loeffler was born in Alsace on January 30, 1861,
and died at his farm in Medfield, Massachusetts, on May 20, 1935. A
violin pupil of Joachim and Massart, he spent some time in Russia as
a youth, then joined the Pasdeloup Orchestra in Paris. Had he re-
mained in Paris, he would have become identified with the French
impressionists, setting to music the poems of Baudelaire and Verlaine,
indulging his taste for delicate nuances and his passion for polished
workmanship. There would then have been no reason for including
him in this book, or for raising the question as to whether or not he
can really be considered an American composer. The late Carl Engel,
in a disconcerting outburst of hyperbole, apparently settled that ques-
tion to his own satisfaction by declaring that Loeffler was the great-
est of American composers.11 For a dissenting opinion, we may turn,
as usual, to the iconoclastic Rosenfeld, who characterized Loeffler
as a correct and inhibited New Englander (though he was only that
by geographical proximity) who produced music that was sterile
and stiff with the dead weight of tradition. And the truth, as usual,
would seem to rest midway between these extremes. I do not think
that Loeffler can be regarded as an American composer in anything
but a literal sense of that term, that is, a composer who lived and
worked for most of his life in America.
Loeffler came to the United States in 1881, spent about a year in
New York, and then, upon the invitation of Major Higginson, joined
11 Engel, in The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, ed. by
Oscar Thompson.
374 I Expansion
the recently founded Boston Symphony Orchestra as first violin. He
continued in this capacity until 1903, when he resigned and retired
to a farm that he had acquired in Medfield. He had been composing
for a number of years, and the Boston Symphony had performed
several of his works from manuscript, notably a Suite for violin and
orchestra (after Gogol), Les VeilUes de V Ukraine (1891), a fantastic
Concerto for cello and orchestra (1894), and a Divertimento for
violin and orchestra (1895). After his retirement he began to publish
some large works, such as the symphonic poem La Mort de Tintagiles
(after Maeterlinck) and a Symphonic Fantasy (after a poem by Rol-
linat), both published in 1905. In 1901 he had written a work titled
A Pagan Poem for chamber orchestra with piano. This he later re-
wrote for full orchestra, with piano obbligato, in which form it was
played by the Boston Symphony in 1907. It remains Loeffler's best-
known work. A Pagan Poem is based on the eighth Eclogue of Virgil,
which tells of a Thessalian girl who tries to use sorcery to win back
her errant lover Daphnis, repeating the magical refrain: Ducite ab
urbe dontum, mea carminay ducite Daphnim ("Draw from the city,
my songs, draw Daphnis home"). Three trumpets obbligati, heard
at first off-stage and then gradually drawing nearer, finally merging
with the orchestra on-stage, suggest the incantation of the sorceress,
gaining in passion and potency as she weaves her spell.
Of Loeffler's numerous compositions, only three others need be
mentioned here. These are Music for Four Stringed Instruments
(published in 1923), Canticum Fratris Soils for voice and chamber
orchestra (1925), and Evocation for orchestra, women's chorus, and
speaking voice (1931). All of these compositions display Loeffler's
penchant for the archaic and the impressionistic, for the evocation of
past ages and idioms. His setting of St. Francis's "Canticle of the Sun,"
commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation and
first performed at the Library of Congress in 1925, is another ex-
ample of his musical preciosity and technical refinement.
Loeffler's work forms a sort of parenthesis in the history of Amer-
ica's music. He drew nothing from the American environment and
contributed nothing to it in the way of immediate influence or direc-
tions for others to follow. Unlike other musical immigrants, he did
not throw himself into the main stream of America's musical life.
Spiritually remote and physically isolated, he created a dreamworld
of lovingly wrought sounds, capable, indeed, of affording us delight,
but in the end perhaps palling by its very exquisiteness.
THE BOSTON CLASSICISTS 375
It will be appropriate here to mention briefly another member of
the Boston group, Arthur B. Whiting (1861-1936), not because his
music is important (he outlived its reputation) but because it is so
highly symptomatic of the Boston coterie which we are discussing. A
native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Whiting studied composition
with Chadwick at the New England Conservatory of Music, then
betook himself to Germany for the customary academic polishing,
exposing himself to the teachings of Abel and Rheinberger, two emi-
nent Teutonic pedagogues, at the Munich Conservatory. He returned
to Boston brimful of enthusiasm for Brahms and imbued with what
his friend and admirer Mason calls "the classic spirit," sternly opposed
to anything "slipshod or mawkish or inept." In this mood of idealistic
austerity he proceeded to produce a series of works, including a Con-
cert Overture, a Suite for horn and strings, some chamber music and
songs, and a Fantasy for piano and orchestra (Opus n), which drew
from the irrepressible Philip Hale the following choice bit of critical
sarcasm:
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 select-
men. Perhaps he never went so far as to petition for an injunction
against sex in music; but rigorous intellectuality was his one aim. He
might have written A Serious Call to Devout and Holy Composi-
tion, or A Practical Treatise upon Musical Perfection, to which
is now added, by the same author, The Absolute Unlawfulness of
the State Entertainment Fully Demonstrated.12
Mr. Hale obviously knew his early New England tracts. He did, how-
ever, concede that Whiting had put somewhat more of warmth and
humanity into his Fantasy than he had permitted to appear in his
earlier works. If there is any possibility at all of reviving interest in
Whiting's music, it will probably be through this Fantasv for piano
and orchestra.
Some cantatas and an opera
Horatio Parker is a composer who stands very near the top of the
Boston group. Born in Auburndale, Massachusetts, on September 15
1853, he came of a highly cultured New England family. His father
12 Quoted by Hughes, op. cit., p. 289.
376 I Expansion
was an architect and his mother an amateur organist and a lover of
literature who knew Greek and Latin. Not until he was fourteen
did Parker begin to take any interest in music, and then his mother
became his first teacher, in piano and organ. Within two years the
boy had made such progress that he was appointed church organist
in Dedham and began to compose hymns and anthems, just as any of
his early New England forebears might have done. When Chadwick
returned from Europe in 1880 and opened a teaching studio in Boston,
young Parker became one of his first pupils. The next step, of course,
was for him to follow in Chadwick's footsteps and make his own
pilgrimage to Germany, which he did in 1882, electing to sit at the
feet of Rheinberger in Munich, from whom he absorbed with exem-
plary thoroughness the rules of counterpoint. While in Germany,
Parker composed several large works— concert overtures, a Symphony,
cantatas—some of which were performed in Munich. After three years
abroad he settled in New York, as church organist, teacher at the
National Conservatory, and music director at St. Paul's School, Garden
City. In 1893 he transferred his activities to Boston, and a year later
accepted the Battell Professorship of Music at Yale University, where
he remained until his death in 1919. He was also very active as a choral
conductor, which kept him busily commuting between New Haven
and New York. Although his position at Yale and his choral conduct-
ing removed him physically from the Boston scene, Parker definitely
belongs with the Boston group because of his background, his train-
ing, his associations, and his aesthetic tendencies.
Although he wrote nine orchestral works, some chamber music,
and pieces for piano and for organ, it is as a composer of choral mu-
sic that he made his reputation. His first conspicuous success came
with the performance in New York in 1893 °f his sacred cantata Hora
Novissima, for mixed chorus and orchestra, a setting of 210 lines from
the twelfth-century Latin poem by Bernard of Cluny, "De Contemptu
Mundi." This was the work that established Parker's fame in England,
when it was performed at the Three Choirs Festival, Worcester, in
1899. As a result, he was commissioned to write two choral works
for English festivals: Wanderer's Psalm and Star Song. Another am-
bitious sacred cantata, dramatic in conception and Wagnerian in style,
The Legend of St. Christopher, was performed in Bristol and led
to the culmination of Parker's English fame when he received the
degree of Doctor of Music from Cambridge University in 1902. An
THE BOSTON CLASSICISTS 377
earlier cantata, The Dream King and His Love, had won the prize in
a contest sponsored by the National Conservatory of Music in New
York in 1892. Thus both abroad and at home Parker was honored
and acclaimed.
Parker had a capacity for winning important prizes. When the
Metropolitan Opera House of New York offered a prize of $10,000
for an opera by an American composer, Parker entered the competi-
tion and won the prize for his opera Monay with a libretto by Brian
Hooker. The story deals with the well-worn theme of love versus
patriotism, for Mona is a princess of Britain at the time of the Roman
conquest who falls in love with the son of the Roman governor and yet
cannot stifle her hatred for the haughty invaders of her country.
Mbna was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 14,
1912, being the third opera by an American to be performed by that
institution (the other two were Converse's Pipe of Desire and Her-
bert's Natoma, produced, respectively, in 1910 and 1911). It received
only a few performances that season and was never revived. Argu-
ments as to the merits of the opera Mona seem rather futile. That it
contains some well-written academic music is undeniable, but this does
not establish it as a viable dramatic work for the lyric theater. As a
footnote to Parker's operatic ventures, it should be remarked that in
1913 he won anothei" $10,000 prize, this time offered by the National
Federation of Music Clubs, with an opera titled Fairyland, also having
a libretto by Brian Hooker. This opera received six performances in
Los Angeles in 1915 and has not been heard since then.
The cantata Hora Novissima is generally acknowledged to be
Parker's masterpiece. Yet even the admiring Philip Hale admitted
that its most eloquent moments are "expressed in the language of
Palestrina and Bach," while the enthusiastic W. J. Henderson spoke
of an a cappella chorus that "might have been written by Hobrecht,
Brumel, or even Josquin des Pres." Other critics remarked on its
Mendelssohnian mannerisms and Handelian repetitiousness, all of
which adds up to a rather disconcerting hodgepodge of influences.
Philip Hale, in what was meant to be high praise, wrote that Hora
Novissima was a work to which "an acknowledged master of com-
position in Europe would gladly sign his name." The point is that
several European masters could have legitimately signed their names
to it. Perhaps this sort of accomplishment was important while Amer-
ica's music was coming of age. It meant that, judged by European
378 I Expansion
standards, American music had no need to be ashamed of itself: the
imitation was getting to be practically as good as the model. But
what we really needed was some American music to which no Euro-
pean master of composition could sign his name and get away with
it. This the Boston classicists were incapable of giving us.
A lady and two professors
The Boston group had a feminine representative in the person of
Amy Marcy Cheney (1867-1944), who later became Mrs. H. H. A.
Beach. A native of Henniker, New Hampshire, she belonged to one
of those long-settled New England families who cultivated music
and learning in their leisure and passed on this cultural heritage from
generation to generation. She received her first musical lessons from
her mother, continued with various teachers when the family moved
to Boston, and at sixteen made her debut as a professional pianist.
Meanwhile she had been composing since early childhood, and it was
not long before she established a reputation as the most prominent
American woman composer of her time. Official commissions con-
firmed her success as a career woman in musical composition: a
Festival Jubilate for the dedication of the Woman's Building at the
Chicago World's Fair in 1893; a Song of Welcome for the Trans-
Mississippi Exposition at Omaha in 1898; and a Panama Hymn for the
Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco in 1915.
Of Mrs. Beach's larger works, the best-known are the Gaelic Sym-
phony, based on Gaelic folk tunes, and a Piano Concerto. A quantity
of church music, some chamber music, many piano pieces, and over
one hundred and fifty songs—her most popular output— constitutes
the bulk of the work that she produced in her long and busy life.
She achieved considerable recognition, particularly in Germany, in
the years immediately preceding World War I. While a place must
always be reserved for her in the history of American music, the
public will doubtless remember her best for such songs as "Ah, Love,
But a Day" and "The Year's at the Spring."
Few composers have been more closely identified with the Boston
tradition than has Edward Burlingame Hill, born in Cambridge in
1872, of old New England ancestry, grandson of a president of Har-
vard University, son of a professor there, and himself on the staff
of Harvard from 1908 until his retirement in 1940. Inevitably he
THE BOSTON CLASSICISTS 379
attended Harvard as a youth and was a pupil in music of John Knowlcs
Paine. He also studied with Chadwick and Whiting in Boston, and
with Widor in Paris. Where he differs most sharply from the Boston
classicists is in his preference for French music, of which he made a
special study. He lectured on this subject at the universities of Lyon
and Strasbourg, and published a book tided Modern French Music.
Hill has written instrumental music almost exclusively. His or-
chestral works include three symphonies, several suites, the sym-
phonic poems Launcelot and Guinevere and Lilacs, two sinfoniettas,
a Concertino for piano and orchestra, a Violin Concerto, and Music
for English Horn and Orchestra. His two Stevensoniana suites are
based on poems from Stevenson's A Child9 s Garden of Verses. Hill's
chamber music consists of a Sextet for wind instruments and piano, a
Quintet for clarinet and strings, a String Quartet, a Sonata for flute
and piano, and a Sonata for clarinet and piano.
When Hill's Symphony No. 3 in G major received its first perform-
ance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on December 3, 1937, ^e
composer wrote that the work had "no descriptive background, aim-
ing merely to present musical ideas according to the traditional
forms." As he said much the same thing about his First Symphony,
this may be taken as a statement of his aesthetic position as an aca-
demic traditionalist. He aims to maintain interest by deft instrumenta-
tion and skillful organization of his material in accepted forms. In
this he is a precursor of Walter Piston and heralds the new genera-
tion of Boston traditionalists who adhere to the fundamental triad of
form, style, and craftsmanship, as conceived and regulated by aca-
demic canons.
At the beginning of this chapter we mentioned the late Daniel
Gregory Mason (1873-1953), who as a young man in Boston hailed
"the great classical revival of the zoth century in America." Mason's
classical ideal was defined by what he himself spoke of as "an in-
stinctive antipathy toward excess, unbalance, romantic exaggeration,
sensationalism, typified for me in such composers, great artists though
they be, as Wagner, Tschaikowsky, Liszt, Strauss." Among European
contemporaries he had little use for Debussy and Ravel, but felt a
profound admiration for Vincent d'Indy, with whom he studied in
Paris and from whom he learned the value of "the unbroken stream
of tradition." Although Mason eventually left Boston for New York,
it seems fitting to write of his life and work here because, stemming
380 I Expansion
from a long line of New Englanders and imbued with a stern sense
of what was fitting and proper in musical expression, he embodied
throughout his long career both the virtues and the limitations that
we associate with the Boston Classicists.
Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, Mason attended Harvard Uni-
versity and was for a time a pupil there of J. K. Paine, whom, how-
ever, he found unsatisfactory as a teacher. Later he studied composi-
tion with Chadwick in Boston and with Goetschius in New York.
From 1910 he was a member of the music faculty at Columbia Uni-
versity, where he was appointed MacDowell Professor of Music in
1929. He retired from the chairmanship of the Music Department in
1940.
Among Mason's orchestral works are three symphonies, of which
the Third (1936) is the Lincoln Symphony, a tone-portrait of the
"Great Emancipator." His best-known orchestral composition is the
Chanticleer Overture (1928), inspired by passages from Thoreau's
Walden, as quoted in the score: "All climates agree with brave
Chanticleer. He is more indigenous than the natives. His health is ever
good, his lungs, his spirits never flag."
Mason's interest in Anglo-American folk material is revealed in his
Suite After English Folk Songs for orchestra (1924) and his Folk
Song Fantasy (Fanny Blair) for string quartet (1929). His numerous
chamber-music works include an attractive String Quartet on Negro
Themes, first performed in 1919. The first movement is based on the
spiritual "You May Bury Me in the East," while the second move-
ment develops the theme of "Deep River," with a contrastingly ener-
getic theme in the middle section. The third movement uses three
spirituals: "O What Do You Say, Seekers?" "Shine, Shine, I'll Meet
You in the Morning," and "Oh, Holy Lord!"
Other chamber-music works by Mason are a Violin Sonata; Three
Pieces for flute, harp, and string quartet; Sonata for clarinet and
piano; Variations on a theme of John Powell for string quartet; Diverti-
mento for five wind instruments; Sentimental Sketches for violin,
cello, and piano; and Variations on a Quiet Theme for string quartet.
Mason thought of himself as "a musical humanist." But his human-
ism tended to be scholastic and restrictive, and caused him to balk
at our "heterogeneous national character." For his views on this
subject, the reader is referred to page 402. Here we may mention two
of Mason's books, dealing with the contemporary scene in American
THE BOSTON CLASSICISTS 381
music: Tune In, America and The Dilemma of American Music. Per-
haps the most perceptive comment on Mason's music is that made
by Randall Thompson, when he wrote: "A certain sinister and fore-
boding pessimism, a dour and bitter irony in Mason's music has not
been fully appreciated." 18 It may be that this dour quality will endure
longer than the lusty bravado of Chanticleer.
In summing up the achievements of the Boston Classicists we may
say that they gave to the American composer a professional dignity, a
social and artistic prestige, and a degree of recognition both at home
and abroad, such as he had not previously enjoyed. In a sense their
mission was similar to that accomplished in France by Vincent d'Indy
and his associates of the Schola Cantonlm: the affirmation of idealism
combined with technical discipline. If they were stronger in idealism
than in technique, and stronger in technique than in originality, that
was partly the consequence of historical factors. They were epigoni
rather than originators, and they almost succeeded in making Boston a
musical suburb of Munich. They were not moving with the main
stream of America's music, nor were they able to recognize and cher-
ish their native musical heritage.
While many of the Boston group were still flourishing, a reaction
took place among another group of American musicians, stimulated by
a famous visitor from abroad and led by a composer from the Middle
West, which resulted in greater awareness of American values, tree-
dom from the musical hegemony of Germany, and a keen interest in
the folk, popular, and primitive music of the United States, including
Anglo-American folk songs and ballads, Negro spirituals, minstrel
tunes, ragtime, and the tribal melodies of the Indians. In the next chap-
ter, with which Part III of this book commences, we turn to the be-
ginnings of what is generally known as "musical nationalism." Ac-
tually, the outlook of the composers who participated in this move-
ment was widely international. They sought stimulation and fresh
ideas from many sources; many of them were attracted by the folk
music of far-off countries. But as Americans aware of their own cul-
tural heritage they felt that America's native or popular music was
worth looking at and listening to and using in their compositions. Thus,
with the third part of this book, a new era begins in America's music.
We become conscious of our musical heritage, we explore it in all its
"In The Musical Quarterly, XVHI, i, p. 13.
382 I Expansion
aspects, we feel the excitement of new popular currents in the rise of
ragtime and jazz, our vernacular musical theater develops, our com-
posers achieve mastery of the larger forms, and we witness a tremen-
dous expansion of all our musical resources and activities. Such, in
brief, are the developments that form the subject matter of the third
and concluding section of this work.
three
Fulfillment
The real America is not to be found either in the order of the long-
settled communities or in the disorder of the frontier, but in that area
of dynamic and expanding life which is born of the union of the two.
FLOYD STOVALL, AMERICAN IDEALISM.
chapter nineteen
Nationalism and folklore
I get a great Icicle out of a rip-snorting development of a good old American
tune.
ARTHUR FARWELL.
In his History of American Music, Louis C. Elson recounts that Mas-
senet once spoke enthusiastically to him about the inspiration that
ought to come to the American composer. "Were I in America," said
he, "I should be exalted by the glories of your scenery, your Ni-
agara, your prairies; I should be inspired by the Western and South-
ern life; I should be intoxicated by the beauty of your American
women; national surroundings always inspire national music!"1 The
last phrase might be supplemented by adding: "Especially if one is a
foreigner." Until recently, for instance, the most effective "Spanish"
music was written by foreigners: Glinka, Bizet, Lalo, Rimsky-Kor-
sakoff, Ravel. Turning for a moment to poetic inspiration, one thinks
of the Cuban, Jose* Maria Heredia, spending two years of exile in the
United States (1823-1825), gazing spellbound at Niagara Falls, and
producing under this overwhelming impression one of the famous
poems of the Spanish language, "Niagara."
Shortly before Heredia's sojourn in the United States another for-
eigner arrived in this country, an eccentric amateur musician from
Bohemia named Anton Philip Heinrich (1781-1861), who became en-
thusiastic about creating an "American" music inspired by the natural
scenery, the history, and the native Indian music of the United States.
Formerly a banker in Hamburg, Heinrich came to America around
1818, was active first in Philadelphia as musical director of the South-
wark Theatre and then went to Louisville, Kentucky, where he taught
violin. He spent some time among the Indians in Bardstown and was
1 Elson, History of American Music, p. 337.
385
386 | Fulfillment
fascinated by the possibility of using Indian themes in his compositions.
In 1820 Heinrich published Dawning of Music in Kentucky, or the
Pleasures of Harmony in the Solitudes of Nature, in which he de-
clared that "no one would ever, be more proud than himself, to be
called an American Musician" This "American production" was rec-
ommended to the favorable notice of the public in the pages of
Parker's Euterpeiad, which hailed the composer as "the Beethoven of
America." Heinrich tried hard to play the role of great American
composer. He turned out such works as The Columbiad, Grand
American national chivalrous symphony, Jubilee ("a grand national
song of triumph, composed and arranged for a full orchestra and a
vocal chorus— in two parts, commemorative of events from the land-
ing of the Pilgrim fathers to the consummation of American liberty"),
Yankee Doodliad, The New England Feast of Shells ("Divertimento
Pastorale Oceanico"), and numerous works "inspired" by his interest
in Indian music: Indian Carnival, Indian Fanfares, The Mastodon, Man-
itou Mysteries, and Pushmataha.
Certainly old "Father" Heinrich, as he was called, found plenty of
"inspiration" in the national surroundings of America; the only draw-
back was that he lacked talent and technique as a composer. But his
enthusiasm for all things American, his aspiration to be known as an
American musician, his interest in American Indian lore, were symp-
tomatic of things to come. He tried to do, singlehanded and poorly
equipped, what it took a whole generation of American musicians to
accomplish, collectively and arduously, many decades after Father
Heinrich had passed away from the American musical scene on which
he made so slight and ephemeral an impression.
Curiously enough, it was another Bohemian— but this time a tal-
ented and trained musician— who gave a definite impetus to the forma-
tion of a "national" school of composers in the United States. His
name was Antonin Dvorak, the composer of the Symphony "From
the New World." Before recounting the circumstances of Dvorak's
sojourn in the United States from 1892 to 1895, an^ its effects on the
development of American music, it would be well to review briefly
the rise of the movement known as "musical nationalism," of which
Dvorak was one of the leading representatives.
The spirit of nationalism was rooted in romanticism, which ex-
alted liberty and which recognized the artistic value of folklore. In
some cases the use of folk music went hand in hand with a passionate
NATIONALISM AND FOLKLORE 387
patriotism. Chopin, writing his Polonaises and his Mazurkas, thought
of his native land, Poland, enslaved and oppressed. Smetana and
Dvofak thought of the political subjugation of Bohemia, a land rich
in culture but deprived of independence. Edvard Grieg identified him-
self with the movement for the independence of Norway. In Russia,
on the other hand, the movement was almost exclusively artistic and
centered on the exploitation of Russian folk music for the creation of a
distinctively "national" school of composition that would assert its
independence from the musical hegemony exercised by Germany over
Europe.
In the person of Mikhail Glinka (1803-1857), Russian music found
its liberator, the creator of a national school with his operas A Life for
the Czar and Russian and Ludrmlla. True, the Russian aristocracy
sneered at Glinka for writing "coachmen's music," just as American
snobs sneered at composers who used "Negro melodies." But Glinka's
music appealed to the people, and what is more, a whole group of
composers arose to follow in his footsteps. The group of composers
known as the "Mighty Five"— Balakirev, Moussorgsky, Borodin, Cui,
Rimsky-Korsakoff— formed the "new school of Russian music" in the
i86os, which soon became widely influential, challenging the su-
premacy of the Germanic tradition and, later in the century, stimu-
lating the emergence of national schools in such countries as France,
Spain, and England. The United States, isolated by the domination of
German influence, was one of the few countries that did not feel
this stimulating current of liberation and creative vigor until after
the turn of the century. Nevertheless, thanks to the presence and the
prestige of Antonin Dvofak, some American composers began to be
aware of the value of their folk music before the nineteenth century
drew to a close.
Dvofak in America
Dvofak had come to America in response to an invitation to be
director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Among
his pupils there were William Arms Fisher (b. 1861), Rubin Gold-
mark (1872-1936), Harvey Worthington Loomis (1865-1930), and
Henry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949). Anyone disposed to minimize
Dvorak's influence might point out that none of these men proved
to be creative artists of exceptional stature. Fisher, known chiefly as a
388 | Fulfillment
writer of songs, had the happy thought of adapting the melody of the
Largo (slow movement) from Dvorak's New World Symphony to
the words of "Coin* Home," thus producing a pseudo spiritual that
has become widely popular. Goldmark, nephew of the Austrian com-
poser Carl Goldmark and trained at the Vienna Conservatory before
studying with Dvof ak, became professor of composition at the Juil-
liard School of Music in New York. His musical Americanism mani-
fested itself in several orchestral works: Requiem (suggested by Lin-
coln's Gettysburg Address), Hiawatha Overture, Negro Rhapsody,
and The Call of the Plains. Loomis became particularly interested in
American Indian music, which he studied carefully and arranged ef-
fectively in his Lyrics of the Red-Man for piano (Opus 76), pub-
lished in 1903-1904. Burleigh, a Negro, made a career as singer and
as arranger of Negro spirituals (his setting of "Deep River" is well
known). His association with Dvorak is of special interest to us, for
it was through Burleigh's singing that the Bohemian composer became
acquainted with many of the Negro spirituals that were to fascinate
him. Years later, in 1918, Burleigh wrote as follows regarding the
genesis of the Ne*w World Symphony:
There is a tendency in these days to ignore the Negro elements in
the "New World" Symphony, shown by the fact that many of those
who were able in 1893 to ^°d traces of Negro musical color all
through the symphony, though the workmanship and treatment of
the themes was and is Bohemian, now cannot find anything in the
whole four movements that suggests any local or Negro influence,
though there is no doubt at all that Dvorak was deeply impressed
by the old Negro "spirituals" and also by Foster's songs. It was my
privilege to sing repeatedly some of the old plantation songs for him
at his house, and one in particular, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,"
greatly pleased him, and part of this old "spiritual" will be found in
the ind theme of the first movement of the symphony, in G major,
first given out by the flute. The similarity is so evident that it doesn't
even need to be heard; the eye can see it. Dvofdk saturated himself
with the spirit of these old tunes and then invented his own themes.
There is a subsidiary theme in G minor in the first movement, with
a flat 7th, and I feel sure the composer caught this peculiarity of
most of the slave songs from some that I sang to him; for he used
to stop me and ask if that was the way the slaves sang.8
* Quoted by M. (Cuney) Hare, Negro Music and Musicians, p. 59.
NATIONALISM AND FOLKLORE 389
There is a certain inconsistency in Burleigh's insistence on the
identity of the "Swing Low; Sweet Chariot" theme and his statement
that "Dvo&k saturated himself with the spirit of these old tunes and
then invented his own themes." The latter statement I believe to be
true, and the thematic similarity merely a coincidence. This is con-
firmed by a declaration attributed to Dvofak regarding the program
notes for the New World Symphony: "Omit that nonsense about my
having made use of Indian1 and 'American' motives. That is a lie. I
tried only to write in the spirit of those national American melodies."
DvoHk, then, did not advocate the literal use of folk tunes. In this he
differed from Glinka, who said: "We the composers are only ar-
rangers." Glinka, being only a gifted amateur, could afford such mod-
esty, such self-effacement in favor of the collective document, the tra-
ditional tune. But Dvofak, the great composer, was angry at the
thought of being considered a mere arranger. Fundamentally, these
attitudes represent two significantly different points of view: that of
the composer who "dresses up" folk tunes in attractive instrumental
colors and that of the composer who, assimilating the elements of folk
music, seeks to develop its idiosyncratic traits of idiom and expression.
To the first group belong such composers as Glinka, Lalo, Rimsky-
Korsakoff. Among representatives of the second group are Dvofak,
Grieg, Falla, and Bartok. While these last-mentioned composers used
folk tunes occasionally, their aim was not to provide attractive window
dressing for folk songs, but rather to explore ways of musical thinking
based on the characteristic rhythms, modalities, and melodic intervals
of the folk tunes of a given culture.
Dvofak, of course, approached the subject much more superficially
than did later composers such as Falla and Bartok, who made a pro-
found study of the folk music of their respective countries (Spain and
Hungary). The scientific study of folk music was in its infancy in
Dvofak's day, and at the period of his sojourn in the United States
almost nobody knew or cared anything about American folk music.
Elson reflected the general opinion when he wrote: "It must be ad-
mitted that in this field [folk music] America is rather barren." 8 And
Frederic L. Ritter asked rhetorically: "How are we to account for
this utter absence of national people's music and poetry in America?" 4
The trouble was that most city-bred, Europeanized Americans were
8 Elson, The History of American Music, p. 123.
4 Ritter, Music in America, p. 388.
390 | Fulfillment
so busy keeping their noses in the air that they never thought of put-
ting their ears to the ground. When they finally got down to earth,
they heard the land shaking with music.
As we know, some Americans began to be interested in the Negro
spirituals shortly after the Civil War; and the study of Indian music,
begun by Catlin and Schoolcraft in the first half of the nineteenth
century, was continued by specialists in the latter decades of the cen-
tury. But MacDowell was asking superciliously what "the Negro
melodies" had to do with "Americanism in art," and sneering at the
pattern for "an 'American* national musical costume" offered by "the
Bohemian Dvorak." The truth is that Dvofak was not offering a pat-
tern. He was pointing to a potential source of inspiration. And more
important than any particular source he mentioned— Negro spirituals
or Indian melodies— was the attitude of mind, the spiritual message,
that he conveyed to American musicians.
Dvofak, in effect, was saying to the American composer, "Look
homeward" and "Cultivate your own garden." He was not simply
saying, "Play around with folk tunes for a change." His message, trans-
lated into its broader and deeper significance, meant that American
composers should turn their attention to the indigenous products of
American culture, that they should value and cultivate— by assimila-
tion rather than by imitation— the idiosyncratic elements of musical
culture in America. The fact that Dvofak was incompletely acquainted
with these elements— that he mistook the part for the whole— is of no
particular consequence, for with time and increasing knowledge,
American musicians obtained a wider perspective of the subject. The
important fact is that he issued a challenge, a challenge which was ac-
cepted by a small but enthusiastic and determined group of American
composers, with significant results for America's music.
Given the circumstances of his time and background, Dvofak can
scarcely be blamed for sharing the common fallacy, expressed by Elson
in the dictum that "American folk song in its true sense can only be
derived from Indian or plantation life." Of these two elements,
Dvofak attached more importance to the so-called "plantation melo-
dies." In this connection it is interesting to note his high regard, men-
tioned by Burleigh, for the songs of Stephen Foster. This admiration
is significant, for Foster, frowned upon by the devotees of the genteel
tradition, did not at that time occupy the eminent place in our musical
pantheon that we have since accorded to him.
NATIONALISM AND FOLKLORE 39!
In a statement issued before the New York premiere of the New
World Symphony in 1893, Dvofak was quoted as having said, refer-
ring to the plantation melodies:
These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil.
They are American. They are the folk songs of America, and your
composers must turn to them. In the Negro melodies of America I
discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.
Philosophically and ethnographically considered, it would be easy to
find fault with this statement. By this time, however, the reader knows
much more about the Negro spirituals than did Dvorak; so there is
no need to embark on a lengthy critique of his views. He was on
safer ground, because simply expressing a personal preference based
on taste, when, in an article published in the Century Magazine (Feb-
ruary, 1895), he said, "The so-called plantation songs are indeed the
most striking and appealing melodies that have been found on this side
of the water." When we contrast this with the contemptuous attitude
of such musical snobs as Hastings and Dwight— the latter died in the
same year that the New World Symphony was first performed—we
can begin to appreciate the wholesome and liberalizing effect of
Dvorak's opinions.
Dvorak, who visited various sections of the United States and lived
for a while in Spillville, Iowa, became so enthusiastic about this coun-
try that he wrote a Cantata to the American flag and even proposed
to write a new national anthem for the United States! In addition to
his famous Symphony "From the New World" (No. 5, in E minor),
he also composed a String Quartet and a Quintet utilizing themes de-
rived from, or suggested by, the Negro spirituals.
Revolt against German hegemony
The significance of Dvorak's American visit does not reside ex-
clusively in his enthusiasm for American folk songs (as far as he knew
them), in his call for the formation of an American "national school"
of composition, or in his writing of notable works inspired by his ex-
periences in the New World. All these are important factors, but they
are transcended by the over-all liberating influence symbolized by his
visit in relation to this particular historical moment in the develop-
ment of musical culture in the United States. To put it in plain Ian-
392 | Fulfillment
guage, let us recall MacDowelTs contemptuous reference to the na-
tionalistic notions of "the Bohemian Dvofak," quoted in a previous
chapter. On the face of it, one might take MacDowell's epithet as sig-
nifying a foreigner, one who is not an American and who therefore
has no business telling Americans how they shall create their "na-
tional" music. But the implication of MacDowell's epithet seems rather
to be somewhat as follows: "Here is a composer 'who is not German
and who yet presumes to establish values and directions for American
music." Translated into its broader implications, this attitude repre-
sents the last stand of the German conservatories and their satellites
against the "invasion of the barbarians"— that is, the rise and the spread
of invigorating musical forces, coming chiefly from Russia, but also
from France, from Bohemia, from the Orient, from the New World.
The German domination of American music was so complete that,
in the words of Arthur Farwell, only German music sounded natural
to concertgoers in the United States. A revolt against this domination
was an absolute historical necessity. Dvofak prepared the way, and the
movement of liberation found its American spokesman in the person
of Arthur Farwell, musician of the Middle West, who in 1903 boldly
proclaimed a plan of action:
The first correction we must bring to our musical vision is to
cease to see everything through German spectacles, however wonder-
ful, however sublime those spectacles may be in themselves! The
correction is to be effected by malting the thorough acquaintance of
Russian and French music of the present, by allowing Russia and
France not the mere opportunity of occasionally getting a musical
word in edgewise, but of engaging, with Germany, equal shares of
our musical conversation. . . . Thus fortified, we will no longer fear
that the American composer is going to the dogs when he revels in
a new and unusual combination of notes; that is, one which differs
from the good old German tradition.6
Farwell fearlessly proclaimed the heresy that "France and Russia lead
the world today in musical invention, in all that makes for greater
plasticity of tone as an art medium."
Was this simply advocating a change of masters? By no means. In
the first place, Farwell was not proposing to discard German music,
whose achievements he respected and valued. His plea was for an en-
lightened eclecticism, a search for originality resulting from the inter-
6 Quoted by Waters, The Wa-Wtm Press, pp. 222-223.
NATIONALISM AND FOLKLORE 393
play of multiple influences. Imitation he believed to be a necessary
step in acquiring artistic individuality, but let us begin by imitating all
styles and forms. Eventually, from the factors of our environment,
there would result a characteristically American manner of expression,
compounded of many styles, in which would be found: "Notably,
ragtime, Negro songs, Indian songs, Cowboy songs, and, of the utmost
importance, new and daring expressions of our own composers, sound-
speech previously unheard." e The last half of this statement we shall
leave for later consideration in the chapter dealing with our musical
experimentalists. Before commenting on the remainder of the state-
ment, let us learn something about the man who made it.
Arthur Farwell was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1872. Although
he received violin lessons from the age of nine, he was not groomed
for a musical career. He went east to attend the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology, from which he was graduated with a degree in
engineering in 1893— the year of the New World Symphony. It was
after going to Boston that he heard a symphony orchestra for the first
time. Music soon became his chief interest, and after graduating he
studied composition with Norris in Boston. Following the nearly in-
evitable trend at that time, he went to Germany in 1897 f°r study
with Humperdinck and Pfitzner; but he also went to Paris, where his
teacher was Guilmant. Two years later he returned to the United
States and became lecturer on musical history at Cornell University,
at the same time taking up the study of American Indian music.
After founding the Wa-Wan Press, in 1901, for the publication of
American music, he undertook, from 1904, a series of transcontinental
tours, lecturing on American music and playing his compositions based
on Indian themes. During his travels he studied the Indian music of
the Southwest and collected the folk songs of Spanish California. He
was eager to embrace the entire range of musical expression in America.
From 1909 to 1917, Farwell was active in New York, as staff writer
for Musical America, as Supervisor of Municipal Music (1910-1913),
and finally as director of the Music School Settlement. For one year
(1918-1919) he was on the staff of the University of California, and
from 1927 to 1939 he taught at Michigan State College in East Lansing.
He wrote the music for several pageants and was keenly interested in
developing "Community Music Drama" along the lines of La Prima-
• Quoted by Waters, loc. ch.
394 | Fulfillment
veray produced at Santa Barbara in 1920. Through these varied activi-
ties he was brought into firsthand association with virtually every
aspect of America's musical life. Farwell died in 1951.
The Wa-Wan Press
It was through the Wa-Wan Press, and the movement that cen-
tered around it, that Farwell made his most significant contribution to
the advancement of America's music. He had been unable to find a
publisher for his Indian melodies, and he felt that the American com-
poser simply had no status in his own country. He knew that he was
not alone in this feeling. One night, while he was thinking about this
problem, there suddenly came to him "the thought of William Blake
and William Morris, with their presses, printing their own work and
that of colleagues, at least in Morris' case." There, he believed, was
the solution. Combining his work with that of others, he would
"launch a progressive movement for American music, including a defi-
nite acceptance of Dvorak's challenge to go after our folk music" (my
italics). He talked it over with Edgar Stillman Kelley and others, and
they were all for it.
The enterprise was launched without capital and without financial
backing of any kind. Farwell engaged a local printer in Newton Cen-
ter, Massachusetts, borrowed a few dollars for postage, and set out to
get subscribers. The music engraving and lithography were done
in Boston. The plan was to bring out two books of music each quar-
ter; later the publications were also issued separately, in sheet-music
form. During one year the press did receive a modest subsidy from
George Foster Peabody, but mostly it was supported by Farwell's lec-
tures, for the subscriptions did not always cover expenses. The enter-
prise continued for eleven years and the catalogue was then turned
over to the firm of G. Schirmer (excepting the compositions of Gil-
bert and Troyer).
In his preliminary announcement of the Wa-Wan Press, Farwell
stated:
The Wa-Wan Press is a natural outcome of the rapid growth of
true musical genius in America, and in proportion to its capacity and
growth, will aim to render available hitherto unpublished composi-
tions of the highest order, which because of circumstances which the
NATIONALISM AND FOLKLORE 395
art-life of America is rapidly outgrowing, have heretofore been de-
nied the daylight of print.
He also declared:
We are in earnest. We shall ask of the composer, not that he
submit to us work which is likely to be in demand, but that he
express himself. We shall do our utmost to foster individuality. Name
shall be nothing to us. We shall stand for no particular composer,
but for a principle. . . . We shall avoid the trivial, the ephemeral,
the merely pretty, and seek the poetic and vitally emotional, striving
to produce works of genial fire and enduring worth.
To what extent did the publications of the Wa-Wan Press bear
out this ambitious program? As far as catholicity of selection and ar-
tistic integrity are concerned, the record is creditable. As regards
"genial fire and enduring worth*'— which are rare in any place and any
age—the results were somewhat less satisfactory. Of the thirty-seven
composers represented in the catalogue of the Wa-Wan Press, the
most important, besides Farwell himself, are Henry F. B. Gilbert,
Arthur Shepherd, Edward B. Hill, Harvey W. Loomis, Frederic
Ayres, and Edgar Stillman Kelley. Of these, only Farwell, Gilbert,
and Shepherd may be said to have achieved a considerable degree of
significance in our national music. Others, however, acquired an es-
timable reputation in various fields: Arthur Olaf Andersen, John P.
Beach, Gena Branscombe, Natalie Curtis Burlin, Rubin Goldmark,
Katherine Ruth Heyman, Carlos Troyer, Arne Oldberg, and
Louis Campbell Tipton. Let us admit that this is scarcely a roster of
flaming genius. Nevertheless, looking at the movement as a whole,
there are positive values. One notices a remarkable variety of individ-
ual interests and backgrounds. This was not coterie music. This was
not a clique of Indianists and Negrophiles. We have here a group of
young artists working in the musical medium, striving to develop
their creative capacities and to gain a hearing in a society that had
hitherto virtually refused to acknowledge their existence, or even to
recognize that, as social beings, they had any rightful relation to the
res publica. The Wa-Wan Press was intended to establish the identity
of the American composer as a free creative artist, independent of
commercial interests.
In retrospect, Farwell wrote of his publishing venture: "There were
two major departments of our plan. One comprised all American
396 I Fulfillment
work showing talent or progress along any of the paths of musical
tradition. The other comprised all interesting or worthwhile work
done with American folk-material as a basis." Let us examine further
the second department of this plan. Among those comparatively few
composers who turned to folk material in publications issued by the
Wa-Wan Press, the main interest centered on American Indian music.
Farwell himself brought out American Indian Melodies (1901), The
Domain of Hurakan (1902), Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony
of the Omahas (1906), From Mesa and Plain (Indian, Cowboy, and
Negro Sketches, 1905), and Dawn (1902), based on Omaha Indian
themes. All these were for piano solo. The Navajo War Dance (one
of the pieces in From Mesa and Plain) and Dawn were also arranged
for orchestra (unpublished). In addition, the catalogue included Far-
well's collection, for voice with piano accompaniment, Folk-Songs of
the West and South (Negro, Cowboy, and Spanish-California). Har-
vey Worthington Loomis was represented by his Lyrics of the Red-
Man, already mentioned. Carlos Troyer (1837-1920), who made a
special study of Indian music of the Southwest, contributed two series
of Traditional Songs of the Zunis for voice and piano (1904), Hymn
to the Sun ("An ancient jubilee song of the sun-worshippers. With
historic account of the ceremony and the derivation of music from
the sun's rays"), Ghost Dance of the Zuftis, and Kiowa-Apache War-
Dance.
An eclectic folklorist
In the case of Henry Franklin Belknap Gilbert (1868-1928) we
find a composer whose interest in folk music ranged over the world.
This interest is only slightly adumbrated in his publications for the
Wa-Wan Press, though it is curious to notice the inclusion of Two
South American Gypsy Songs ("La Montonera" and "Zambulidora"
indicating that, after Gottschalk, he was one of our first composers to
take an interest in Latin American music (his ethnology, however,
was weak: there is no "Gypsy" music in South America). The Negro
Episode for piano (1902) reflects another phase of Gilbert's concern
with American material.
Henry Gilbert had an unorthodox background. Though he was
MacDowell's first American pupil in Boston (1889-1892), he led no
sheltered academic existence. While studying composition he earned
NATIONALISM AND FOLKLORE 397
a living playing the violin for dances and in theater orchestras. Later
he took up miscellaneous occupations: real-estate agent, factory fore-
man, silkworm grower, and bread- and pie-cutter in a restaurant at
the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Eager to hear the first performance
of Charpentier's opera Louise in Paris, he went to Europe on a cattle
boat. Soon after the founding of the Wa-Wan Press he and Farwell
became close friends, drawn together by a common interest in folk-
lore and in promoting a national musical movement. Gilbert was an
eclectic by choice: his nationalism was not narrow. This is how he
explained his attitude toward music:
It has been my ideal not to allow any composer or school of music
to influence me to the point of imitating them. I have striven to
express my own individuality regardless whether it was good, bad,
or indifferent. I prefer my own hat to a borrowed crown. Of course,
I have had many admirations and have absorbed musical nutriment
from many sources. . . . More than the music of any individual
composer; more than the music of any particular school, the folk
tunes of the world, of all nationalities, races, and peoples, have been
to me a never-failing source of delight, wonder, and inspiration. In
them I can hear the spirit of all great music. Through them I can
feel the very heart-beat of humanity. Simple as these folk melodies
are in structure, they yet speak to me so poignantly, and with such
a deep sincerity of expression, as to be (for myself, at least) more
pregnant with inspirational suggestion than the music of any one
composer.7
It is important to note that Gilbert's concern with "native" Amer-
ican music went hand in hand with an enthusiasm for music of the
folk everywhere, of all nationalities and all races throughout the
world. This is a significant point, to which we shall return later. It
prepares the way for that eclecticism which I take to be the essence
of America's music.
In a foreword printed with the score of his symphonic poem The
Dance in Place Congo, Gilbert described the basis of his musical na-
tionalism:
It has been for a long time an ideal of mine to write some music
which should be in its inspiration native to America. The efforts of
my compatriots, though frequently very fine technically, failed to
T Quoted by Farwell, Music m America, p. 408.
398 I Fulfillment
satisfy me. To my mind they leaned far too heavily upon the tradi-
tion of Europe, and seemed to me to ignore too completely the very
genuine touches of inspiration which exist in our history, our tem-
perament, and our national life. I was, therefore, moved to strike out
boldly on a different course. . . .
Gilbert furthermore tells us that in casting about for an American
subject upon which to base a symphonic poem he was much attracted
by the picturesque quality of the life in New Orleans during the ante-
bellum days. Notice that what attracts him is the picturesque, and that
he is drawn to what I have called "The Exotic Periphery" in Amer-
ica's musical culture. He came across the article by George W. Cable
in the Century Magazine describing the dancing in Place Congo and
decided to use this as a background for a symphonic poem, taking his
themes from the tunes published by Cable (quoted in Chapter 15).
The first episode is developed from the melody that Cable calls a
"bamboula" (see musical example on page 308). Gilbert saw in this
material "a strong and romantic picture . . . full of dramatic and
colorful suggestion," and he treated it Romantically, that is, descrip-
tively and dramatically. The subject, indeed, struck him as "so pic-
turesque and so full of dramatic possibility" that he decided, after
completing the score, to write a scenario for it, thus transforming the
work into a ballet-pantomime which was performed at the Metropoli-
tan Opera House, New York, on March 23, 1918. Later it was per-
formed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra as a symphonic poem.
The same orchestra had performed, in 1911, Gilbert's Comedy
Overture on Negro Themes, the first work that brought him national
recognition. It was originally planned as an overture for an opera
(never completed) based on the Uncle Remus stories. The overture is
based on two short (four-measure) melodies taken from the collection
Bahama Songs and Stories by Charles L. Edwards, a highly interesting
work published in 1895, on P*1* °f a Mississippi boat song, "Fse gwine
to Alabammy, oh," and on the first four measures of the spiritual
"Old Ship of Zion," used as the subject of a fugue.
In his Negro Rhapsody (1913) Gilbert attempted to contrast the
"barbaric" and the "spiritual" elements in Afro- American culture. Ten
years earlier he had turned to tunes of the blackface minstrel tradition
-"Zip Coon," "Dearest May," and "Don't Be Foolish, Joe"-in his
Americanesque for orchestra. A set of three American Dances m Rag-
time Rhythm was another incursion in the field of musical Americana.
NATIONALISM AND FOLKLORE 399
With his five Indian Scenes for piano, Gilbert delved into Indian
lore. He roamed further afield with his Celtic Studies for voice and
piano (1905), and various piano pieces, including The Island of the
Fay (after Poe) and Two Verlaine Moods (1903). SalAmmbo's Invo-
cation to Tanith (1902), originally for voice with piano, was subse-
quently orchestrated. The Fish Wharf Rhapsody (1909) for voice
with piano, is an experiment in musical realism. Finally, we should
mention the Symphonic Prelude to Synge's drama, Riders to the Sea,
originally written for small orchestra (1904), later expanded for full
orchestra.
Though Gilbert's music "dates" perceptibly and is often derivative,
he deserves to be honored as a forward-looking pioneer. His place in
American music has been aptly summed up by Arthur Farwell: "Often
rough in technique, though greatly resourceful, and rich in orchestral
imagination, it is to the spirit of the time and nation that Gilbert makes
his contribution and his appeal." 8
Of Farwell himself, as a composer, something more must be said,
for the reader should not be left with the impression that he was
merely an arranger of Indian music. His orchestral works include
Symbolistic Study No. 3 (after Walt Whitman, 1922), The Gods of
the Mountain (suite, 1927), Symbolistic Study No. 6: Mountain Vision
(piano concerto in one movement, 1931), Prelude to a Spiritual Drama
(1932), and Rudolph Gott Symphony (1934). His Mountain Song
(1931) is a symphonic work in five movements with incidental songs
by mixed chorus. His chamber music includes a String Quartet (The
Hako), a Piano Quintet, and a Sonata for Violin and piano. In his
later works he experimented with the use of Oriental scales. Farwell
was the prototype of the eclectic composer in America.
Other "Indianist" composers
Among other composers who have utilized American Indian ma-
terial, Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1947) achieved wide popu-
larity with his song "The Land of the Sky Blue Water," in which
the indigenous elements are so thickly sugar-coated as to bf almost
imperceptible. Cadman composed two operas dealing with the relation
of the Indians to the civilization of the whites. The first of these,
ShanetviSy was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1918;
8 Farwell, loc. cit.
400 | Fulfillment
the second, The Sunset Trail, received its premiere at Denver in 1925.
His Thtmderbird Suite for piano (also orchestrated) is based on
Omaha themes. After 1925 Cadman began to be less interested in
Indian music, and turning to other aspects of Americana, composed
the two-act opera A Witch of Salem (1926), Dark Dancers of the
Mardi Gras for piano and orchestra (1933), American Suite (1937),
and the overture Huck Finn (1945). His "abstract" compositions in-
clude a Symphony and some chamber music. He was a minor figure in
the development of musical nationalism in America; his style is facile
and undistinctive.
Charles Sanford Skilton (1868-1941), in spite of his New Eng-
land background, his education at Yale University, and his musical
training in Berlin, became strongly attracted to Indian music after he
went to teach at the State University of Kansas in 1915. Like Cadman,
he composed "Indian" operas: Kalopin (three acts, 1927) and The
Sun Bride (one act, 1930). For orchestra he wrote Two Indian Dances
(Deer Dance ', War Dance), Suite Primeval, American Indian Fantasie
(with cello solo), and Sioux Flute Serenade (chamber orchestra).
Widely performed in its day, his Indianizing music, superficial and
conventional, has for us now solely the interest of a period piece,
demonstrating the "picture postcard" school of "native" music.
Arthur Nevin (1871-1943), brother of Ethelbert Nevin, composed
the opera Poia, based on the traditional lore of the Blackfeet Indians
of Montana. Curiously enough, this work was produced not in Amer-
ica but at the Royal Opera House in Berlin (1909). Two foreign-born
musicians who settled in the United States, Alberto Bimboni and Carl
Busch, became, like "Father" Heinrich, enamored of American In-
dian music. Bimboni composed the opera Winona (1926), using Indian
themes, with the chorus singing in unison. Busch wrote the symphonic
poem Minnehaha's Vision, Four Indian Tribal Melodies for string or-
chestra, and A Chant from the Great Plains for military band.
The "Indianist" movement in American music may now be recog-
nized as a transitory phase. It attracted a number of composers who
were looking for something indigenous, something that could imme-
diately and unmistakably be identified as "American." But the fal-
lacy of attempting to create representative American music out of
Indian material soon became apparent. Indian tribal music was not part
of the main stream of American culture. It was an interesting but essen-
tially exotic branch that one could follow for a time as a digression.
NATIONALISM AND FOLKLORE 401
a diversion from the European heritage. But if followed to its source it
led to a primitive culture that had nothing in common with prevailing
norms and trends of American civilization. It is perhaps fair to say that
nowadays we are more interested in the study of Indian tribal music
for its own sake, as a manifestation of primitive cultural patterns, than
for its possible influence on American art music and its hypothetical
contributions to musical "nationalism." Indeed, musical nationalism as
it was understood at the beginning of this century appears to have
run its course in the United States, and with its decline as a main issue,
the interest of our composers in utilizing Indian material rapidly
waned. The momentum of the Indianist movement ceased about
twenty-five years ago, and it is not likely to be revived.
The Anglo-American heritage
In addition to those American composers who turned to Afro-
American and Indian tribal material, there were some who held that
the real roots of American national music lay in the tradition of
Anglo-American folk song. A leading representative of this school is
John Powell, born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1882. A pupil of Lesche-
tizky in Vienna, he appeared frequently as a pianist, often in perform-
ances of his own works, such as the Negro Rhapsody for piano and
orchestra (1918) and Sonata Virginianesque for violin and piano
(1919). Although Powell used highly stylized Negro material in the
two works just mentioned— both of which have programmatic conno-
tations—his abiding concern has been with the cultivation of Anglo-
American folk music, of which there exists a rich heritage in his na-
tive state of Virginia.
Among Powell's compositions utilizing Anglo-American folk music
are the overture In Old Virginia (1921); Natchez on the Hill (1932)
and A Set of Three (1935), both for orchestra; At the Fair, suite for
chamber orchestra (1925); The Babe of Bethlehem, folk carol for
mixed chorus a cappella; Soldier, Soldier, folk song for chorus a cap-
pella with soprano and baritone solos; Five Virginia Folk Songs for
baritone and piano; Twelve Folk Hymns; and the Symphony in A,
commissioned by the National Federation of Music Clubs and first
performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on April 26, 1947.
This symphony is a noble, sincere, and ambitious effort to apply the
neo-romantic symphonic technique to the development of Anglo-
402 I Fulfillment
American folk themes. It comes out of a lifetime of devotion to, and
close study of, this aspect of America's music. Yet, impressive though
it may be, the Symphony in A leaves one with the suspicion that its
aesthetic premise and its technical apparatus are outmoded. It is a
grand monument, but one feels that the folk songs from which it
derives possess more vitality and a more enduring quality.
John Powell is definitely a composer of the South, one of the few
distinctly regional composers of any stature that the United States
has produced. For Daniel Gregory Mason, a New England colleague
who believes in the absolute and representative value of the Anglo-
American tradition in America's music, the significance of Powell's
contribution is more than regional. Holding to the conviction that the
characteristic musical expression of America must be based on what
he calls "Anglo-Saxon reticence," Mason cites Powell's overture In
Old Virginia as an example of this reticence. According to Mason:
"This Anglo-Saxon element in our heterogeneous national character,
however quantitatively in the minority nowadays, is qualitatively of
crucial significance in determining what we call the American tem-
per." 9 It is difficult to see how the national temper or character can
be determined by an element that is quantitatively in the minority. It
seems more reasonable to hold that "our heterogeneous national char-
acter" itself determines what is "the American temper"— all-embrac-
ing, generous, and expansive. That is why we really have no "national"
school in American music.
9 Mason, Tune In, America, p. 160. This book, incidentally, offers a striking
instance of musical anti-Semitism. The author quotes himself in an earlier maga-
zine article, as follows: "The insidiousness of the Jewish menace to our artistic
integrity ... is due to the speciousness, the superficial charm and persuasive-
ness of Hebrew art, its violently juxtaposed extremes of passion, its poignant
eroticism and pessimism." There is much more to this effect; I quote it merely
as t curiosity in our musical literature.
chapter twenty
Indian tribal music
I believe it to be true that among no people, the world over, is music so
loved and so generally used as among the North American Indians.
FREDERICK R. BURTON, AMERICAN PRIMITIVE MUSIC, 1QO9.
Ihe Indians of North America comprise many tribes, each with its
own language, customs, and traditions. Even though we limit our
study to those regions of North America contained within the present
boundaries of the United States, the number of tribes is disconcerting
for the purpose of a brief survey. Nevertheless, in spite of these differ-
ences, Indian tribal music as a whole possesses certain common traits
that permit a degree of generalization. Our method will be to pro-
ceed from the general to the particular, giving a r6sum£ of the gen-
eral characteristics of North American Indian music, and then illus-
trating its specific manifestations with examples drawn from represent-
ative tribes of various regions.
All competent observers agree on the importance of music in In-
dian culture. In the words of Natalie Curtis Burlin:
Wellnigh impossible is it for civilized man to conceive of the
importance of song in the life of the Indian. To the Indian, song is
the breath of the spirit that consecrates the acts of life. Not all songs
are religious, but there is scarcely a task, light or grave, scarcely an
event, great or small, but has its fitting song.1
And Alice C. Fletcher writes:
Music enveloped the Indian's individual and social life like an at-
mosphere. There was no important personal experience where it did
not bear a part, nor any ceremonial where it was not essential to
1 Burlin, The Indians' Book, p. zxx.
403
404 I Fulfillment
the expression of religious feeling. The songs of a tribe were coex-
tensive with the life of the people.9
Passages of similar tenor could be cited from the writings of those who
have made the closest study of the Indians and their music.
It is only within the past sixty years or so that Indian tribal music
in the United States has been die object of systematic and concen-
trated investigation by musicians and ethnologists. Earlier writings on
Indian life and lore, such as those of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-
1864) and George Catlin (1796-1872) contained only passing refer-
ences to music in connection with the songs, dances, and ceremonies
of the various tribes. The first scientific monograph to be published
on North American Indian music was Theodore Baker's Vber die
Musik der Nordamerikanischen Wilden (Leipzig, 1882). Baker was
an American musicologist who studied in Leipzig and who chose
American Indian music as the subject for his doctoral thesis. He spent
the summer of 1880 among the Senecas in western New York and
then visited the Training School for Indian Youth in Carlisle, Penn-
sylvania. His treatise, admirably organized and documented, copiously
illustrated with transcriptions of tribal melodies, remains a basic work
in its field. Strangely enough, Baker himself never saw fit to translate
his work into English; and as no one else has undertaken the task, his
book remains comparatively little known and of limited influence.
Edward MacDowell, however, used it as the source for the themes in
his Indian Suite for orchestra.
Indian studies in the United States owe much to Mrs. Mary Hem-
enway of Boston, who from 1887 until her death in 1894 sponsored
the Hemenway Southwestern Expedition. Mrs. Hemenway also com-
missioned J. Walter Fcwkcs to study Indian folklore among the Passa-
maquoddy of Maine, in the winter of 1889-1890. Fewkes, on this oc-
casion, was the first to employ a phonograph in the study of Indian
music and speech. In the summer of 1889 Fewkes was appointed di-
rector of the Hemenway Expedition (succeeding Frank C. Gushing)
and thereupon proceeded to apply the phonograph to the investigation
of Zuni and Hopi tribal music. The melodies thus recorded were
transcribed and analyzed, with a wealth of scientific apparatus, by
« Fletcher, Inditn Story end Song, p. 114.
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC 405
Benjamin Ives Oilman, and published in A Journal of American Eth-
nology and Archaeology, a publication in five volumes containing the
reports of the Hcmenway Southwestern Expedition. This remains the
most valuable source for the study of Zuni and Hopi tribal music.
The first work on Indian music to attract wide attention was that
of Alice C. Fletcher, who began to study the songs of the Omaha
Indians around 1882 and whose findings were published in 1893 by the
Peabody Museum of Harvard University. She had the assistance of
Francis La Flesche, an Omaha Indian, and of John Comfort Fillmore,
a trained musician who analyzed and harmonized the tribal melodies.
In 1900 she published a small popular book, Indian Story and Song
From North America, with melodies harmonized by Fillmore.
Frederick R. Burton and Natalie Curtis (later Mrs. Paul Burlin)
began to work among the Indians about the same time but independ-
ently, around 1901. Burton, a composer, worked chiefly among the
Ojibways (Chippewas) in Minnesota and Wisconsin, while Natalie
Curtis concentrated on the Southwest area (Hopis and Zunis), though
eventually she extended her field of interest and included songs of
many tribes in The Indians? Book, which she published in 1907. Bur-
ton's book, American Primitive Music, appeared two years later,
shortly after his death. Miss Curtis printed only the melodies and
words of the songs, without accompaniment. Burton, who was inter-
ested in using Indian themes in his compositions (he wrote music for
Hiawatha in 1882), printed the unaccompanied melodies in the body
of his book and added an appendix with his harmonizations, some of
which are rather elaborately developed as art songs. Natalie Curtis
Burlin, a devoted and enthusiastic student of Indian lore, died in Paris
in 1921, as the result of being struck by a motor vehicle.
The study of Indian tribal music undertaken by Arthur Farwell
and other American composers in the early decades of the present
century, and the use made of this material in American art music,
have been discussed in the previous chapter. It remains to speak here
of the studies of Indian music made over a long period of years by
Frances Densmore, who from 1907 worked under the auspices of the
Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, which
published her findings in its Bulletins. These studies, embracing tribal
melodies of the Chippewa, Mandan and Hidatsa, Menominee, Northern
406 | Fulfillment
Ute, Papago, Pawnee, Teton Sioux, Tide (Panama), and Yuman and
Yaqui Indians, constitute the most comprehensive and objective survey
and analysis of North American Indian music thus far undertaken.
Miss Deiismore's monographs, containing hundreds of melodies, many
illustrations, and a wealth of background material on Indian lore, have
provided the principal source of material for this chapter.
General characteristics of Indian music
Of the three main elements of musical structure— melody, har-
mony, and rhythm— there is general agreement that rhythm is the most
important in Indian tribal music. Miss Densmore's remarks on Chip-
pewa songs are generally applicable to most Indian tribal music. Her
analysis shows that the large majority of songs consists of "simple
intervals and complicated rhythms." Further:
The tones comprised in the songs are limited in number, many
of the songs containing only three or four tones, except as the num-
ber is extended by repetition in a lower octave; the variety of
rhythms is great. . . . Accidentals rarely occur in the songs. An
accidental in the opening measures of a song is worthy of little con-
sideration, as in many instances the introductory measures are sung
only once, and the singer is allowed some freedom in them. The
rhythm of the song is determined by noting the accented tones and
dividing the song into measures according to them.
By observation we find that in many of the songs the metric
unit is the measure, not the individual count in the measure. In these
instances the accented measure beginnings are found to conform to a
very slow metronome beat, but the intervening tones are irregular
in length and can not be accurately indicated by note values. These
songs would probably be chants except for the freedom of their
melody progressions. . . .
There are other songs in which two or more measures of vary-
ing lengths combine to form a rhythmic unit, which is repeated
throughout the song. One measure constitutes the rhythmic unit,
which is continuously repeated. . . .
The drum and voice are usually independent in metric units, the
drum being a rapid unaccented beat and the voice having a rhythm
which bears a relation to the mental concept of the song.3
9 Densmore, Cbippew* Music, part I, p. i&
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC 407
This metrical independence of the singing voice and the accompany-
ing drum is strongly characteristic of tribal music and is a feature that
has baffled many non-Indian observers.
In her melodic analyses, Miss Densmore makes reference to the
five pentatonic or five-toned scales as tabulated by Helmholtz, as
follows:
1. The First Scale, without Third or Seventh (Keynote G;
sequence of tones G, A, C, D, E).
2. The Second Scale, without Second or Sixth (Keynote A;
sequence of tones A, C, D, E, G).
3. The Third Scale, without Third and Sixth (Keynote D;
sequence of tones D, E, G, A, C).
4. The Fourth Scale, without Fourth or Seventh (Keynote C;
sequence of tones C, D, E, G, A).
5. The Fifth Scale, without Second and Fifth (Keynote E;
sequence of tones E, G, A, C, D).
An analysis of 600 Indian melodies (Chippewa and Sioux) revealed that
137 songs used the Fourth Five-toned Scale, and 74 the Second Five-
toned Scale. The other pentatonic scales appeared with insignificant
frequency. Fifty-four melodies used the octave complete except for
the seventh; 49 the minor triad and fourth; 46 the major triad and
sixth; 35 the octave complete; 29 the octave complete except for the
sixth; 22 the octave except seventh and sixth; and 21 the octave except
seventh and second. Approximately half of the songs were found to be
in the major tonality and half in the minor tonality. As regards the last
note of the song, 371 were found to end on the keynote, 155 on the
fifth, and 72 on the third. Eighty-five per cent of the melodies, con-
tained no accidentals. As regards structure, 397 songs were classified as
melodic (meaning that "contiguous accented tones do not bear a simple
chord-relation to each other"), 85 as melodic with harmonic frame-
work, and 1 1 6 as harmonic. Miss Densmore's analysis includes many
other factors, but the above summary is sufficient to convey a general
idea of the structure of Indian tribal melodies.
It should be remembered, of course, that the Indian has no con-
ception of scales, modes, or tonality as such. Analysis simply reveals
that his melodies tend to fall into certain basic tonal patterns that are
common to large segments of primitive music throughout the wor
408 | Fulfillment
The concept of harmony is also foreign to the Indian mind. Indian
tribal melodies are sung as solos or in unison.
The manner of singing is very important in Indian music. As de-
scribed by Alice Fletcher:
The continual slurring of the voice from one tone to another
produces upon us the impression of out-of-tune singing. Then, the
custom of singing out of doors, to the accompaniment of the drum,
and against the various noises of the camp, and the ever-restless
wind, tending to strain the voice and robbing it of sweetness, in-
creases the difficulty of distinguishing the music concealed within
the noise,— a difficulty still further aggravated by the habit of pulsat-
ing the voice, creating a rhythm within the rhythm of the song.4
Miss Densmore observes that the Indian "greatly admires a pro-
nounced vibrato" and that "a falsetto tone is also considered a mark
of musical proficiency." She remarks also that "a peculiar nasal tone
is always used in the love songs." As regards intonation, considerable
variation was found, according to the proficiency of the singer. In-
dians with a reputation for being good singers "keep the pitch of
their tones approximately that of the tones of the diatonic scale." In-
tervals with accidentals are sung more accurately than those without
accidentals. There is considerable accuracy in the repetition of songs.
While deviations from correct diatonic pitch occur, there is no evi-
dence of systematic microtonal alteration.
Downward melodic progressions occur with about twice the fre-
quency of upward progressions. The two intervals most frequently
found in both downward and upward progressions are the major sec-
ond and the minor third. In general the line of the melody is de-
scending.
The Indians .of the United States have only two types of native
musical instruments: pipe and percussion. The pipelike instrument,
often referred to as a "flute," is in reality a kind of flageolet, blown
at the end instead of at the side. This is about 1 8 to 24 inches long,
pierced with six holes, and capable of playing a complete octave; but
the intonation is inaccurate. Love songs are often played on the flageo-
let, by a lover to his sweetheart, as a form of courtship. There are
also small pipes, with three holes, that play up to five tones.
4 Fletcher, op. crt., p. 117.
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC 409
The percussion instruments consist of drums and various kinds of
rattles. There is a water drum consisting of a small keg partly filled with
water and covered with a skin; its pitch may be changed by wetting
the cover or by scraping it dry. Drums are of different sizes and
facture. Many were made from hollow logs, covered with untanned
deerskin, and played with a curved stick. Most songs are accompa-
nied by drums, many by rattles also. The Iroquois use rattles made
from gourds, from the horns of steers, and from the carapaces of
turtles, with a stick inserted through the head and neck to form a
handle.
The Iroquois and the Chippewas
We may begin our survey of tribal melodies with those of the
Iroquois, or "The Five Nations"— the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga,
Cayuga, and Seneca tribes— who occupied the central part of New
York State and who still adhere to many of their ancestral traditions.
It will be recalled that Theodore Baker spent some time collecting the
tribal melodies of the Senecas. He transcribed several songs of the
Harvest Festival, celebrated every year at the time of the ripening of
the corn. Herewith is the "First Harvest Song/1 of which the words,
according to Baker, mean: "He came from Heaven to us lowly ones
and gave us these words."
Andante
i
Ka yon a hi a de ni ta • a ha
yo m he he a ban nan ka yon hi
ya de he he a ban hao
bo!
a bo!
410 | Fulfillment
It will be noticed that the melody employs only three tones, that
there are many repeated tones, that the melodic line descends a fifth,
and that the metrical pattern is irregular, with but one figure repeated
(marked with a bracket).
Another Iroquois tribal melody transcribed by Baker is that of the
Women's Dance, for which the words, he says, have no exact mean-
ing. While the women danced, a chorus of seventeen young men sang
this song, fifteen of them accompanying themselves with rattles and
two with drums, in unison:
fr
— i
£^=
=f=
— *
~ — P-
-1
* P
4=
l - ,
r.- -
Ka non wi yo ka non wi yo ka non
i ; : ; I
wi yo lot noo wi yo he ya! a!
J • J j j^ j, j j>> Ji j> >
he ka non wi yo ho wi a hi .nan .
i j. ,i i r i h r
n
ka aoo wi yo he ya ka non wi yo ka non wi
Having only four tones, this melody may be considered as employing
a "gapped" pcntatonic scale (C, D, G, A). It too is metrically irregu-
lar and repeats only one rhythmic figure exactly.
More than fifty years after Theodore Baker another American
investigator, William N. Fenton, went among the Seneca Indians and
other Iroquois tribes in New York and Canada, finding that there was
still a plenitude of songs and dances. Many of the recordings that he
made were issued by the Library of Congress, together with an in-
formative booklet published by the Smithsonian Institution. These
recordings should be heard by anyone interested in knowing how
North American Indian tribal music sounds as sung and played by
Indians of the present time.
Frederick Burton felt that the musicality of the Ojibways, or
Chippewas, the tribe to which he devoted special attention, was supe-
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC 411
rior to that ot other North American Indian tribes. While this is
doubtless a purely subjective judgment, it is true that he managed to
find among the Ojibways of Minnesota a number of attractive tunes,
such as "My Bark Canoe" and "The Lake Sheen," which, harmonized
and provided with stylized piano accompaniments, caused these songs
to become widely and favorably known. These artistic versions, how-
ever, belong more to what might be called the "aesthetic projection"
of Indian music than to the traditional lore of tribal song. On the
other hand, Burton included in his book some unharmonized melodies
that reflect more faithfully the character of the traditional music.
One of these is a song known to be of considerable antiquity, for
Schoolcraft made a versified translation of the words in the 1 8408. Of
course the music underwent some change during the intervening
period, and in fact Burton recorded three different versions of the
song, which he believed revealed different stages of development. He
found one version that was quite long and involved much repetition.
Another version, the one generally current among the Ojibways at
that time, was shortened by the omission of several repetitions. Burton
was inclined "to believe that the change from the older to the modern
version was due to the Ojibway's groping for formal, that is, artistic
expression." And he declared: "Musically the song is far better in
the modern version because there are fewer repetitions of the leading
phrase." Actually, while the compressed version of the song may be
"better" according to our artistic standards, it may not be so from the
viewpoint of Indian tradition, in which repetition is a fundamental
trait. At any rate, Burton transcribed a third version of "The Lake
Sheen" (as he called it), sung by an old man who probably adhered
rather closely to the traditional pattern of the melody: a
i
9 r\
^
m
m
r ir r
8 This and the following melody are quoted from Burton's American Primi-
tive Music, pp. 100, 102. Used by permission of Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
412 I Fulfillment
1 1 1
m
J
This melody was sung to words meaning: "I have lost my sweetheart,
but I will leave no place unsearched and will find her if it takes me
all night. As day breaks I think I can see her in the distance, but as I
draw near I find that what I saw was the flash of a loon's wing on the
water."
A more characteristic tribal melody that Burton recorded among
the Ojibways is a "Visiting Song," most of the words of which con-
sist of meaningless syllables, with one phrase signifying, "Who sits
on the ice will hear me singing"— which indicates that it was a song
used for visiting in winter. The introduction, the descending melodic
line, and the conventional ending, are typical:
Hey - ah hey - ah hey - ah hey hey - ah
hey - ah hey- ah — hey- ah — hey- ah hey -ah ah!
hey - ah hey hey - ah hey • ah hey - ah hey hey —
J) J J fj. j>. Ji j j
1
ah hey - ah hey • ah hey ah hey? ah hah.
r r M n r J '99' r
O -git ko _ nem-ah-dah bit
nin-gah-nom-dog -
I. J J> J> J
- ah hey — ah hey - ah hey - ah ah
9 r
. J
hey - ah hey hey - ah hey - ah hey - ah hey
J J
J J J
hey - ah hey • ah hey • ah hey • ah hey - ah hey • ah.
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC 413
This melody falls within the structure of the Fourth Five-toned
Scale, with the fourth and the seventh omitted and the keynote
of C.
In her study of Omaha Indian music (which embraced the lin-
guistically related tribes of the Dakotas, Otos, and Poncas), Alice
Fletcher made some significant observations concerning the role of
words in Indian tribal songs. She writes:
Words clearly enunciated in singing break the melody to the
Indian ear and mar the music. They say of us that we "talk a great
deal as we sing." Comparatively few Indian songs are supplied with
words, and when they are so supplied, the words are frequently
taken apart or modified so as to make them more melodious; more-
over, the selection of the words and their arrangement do not al-
ways correspond to that which obtains in ordinary speech. A major-
ity of the songs, however, are furnished almost wholly with syllables
which are not parts or even fragments of words but sounds that lend
themselves easily to singing and are without definite meaning; yet
when a composer has once set syllables to his song, they are never
changed or transposed but preserved with as much accuracy as we
would observe in maintaining the integrity of a poem.6
This passage once more confirms that what is accepted as "good" in
one cultural tradition appears to be "bad" in another cultural tradi-
tion. It also points to one of the fundamental factors that have to be
understood if we are to appreciate the essential qualities of Indian
tribal song.
Since the Omaha melodies collected by Miss Fletcher were har-
monized by Fillmore, and as it is our policy not to include harmoni-
zations in this chapter because they are alien to the tradition of Indian
music, the linguistic family of these Plains Indians will be represented
here by a "Night Song" (serenade) of the Dakotas, transcribed by
Baker. It was sung by several young men walking through the vil-
lage, to the accompaniment of a drum.
DRUM, RHYTHM J I J I I I
(J-96) i i i i i i ctc
•Fletcher, A Study cf Omaha Indian Music, p. 12*
414 | Fulfillment
coo *moto
&
gspl
shi ce shan te ma shi ca ,
shi
g
p
^
a
ka shi ce na
ma yu za
The Ojibways are one of the largest of the North American Indian
tribes, a branch of the Algonquins, formerly spread over a vast region
from the Great Lakes to the Dakotas, now consisting of some 30,000
people, half of whom live in the United States and half in Canada.
Frances Densmore, in reporting extensively on the music of these
Indians, preferred to use for them the more widely accepted name
Chippewa, rather than Ojibway, used by Burton. Miss Densmore
began to study the music of the Chippewas in 1907 and published her
findings in Bulletins Nos. 45 and 55 of the Bureau of American Ethnol-
ogy. Music, she wrote, "is one of the greatest pleasures of the Chip-
pewa." And: "Every phase of Chippewa life is expressed in music."
The Chippewas were frequently engaged in warfare with the
Sioux. An old Chippewa Indian named Odjib'we recounted many of
his experiences as a warrior and sang several songs of the warpath, of
which the following is a typical example. The words mean: "I will go
to the south/ I will bring the south wind." This was sung by the leader
of a war party or by the scouts:
( J »112) (VOICE AND DRUM)
(9 \ +' + 1* m I Ji PK +*
r ICJuTI*" C.
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC 415
The following drum rhythm was used for the accompaniment of this
song.
DRUM RHYTHM
etc
A Chippewa song of more definitely warlike character, the "Arrow
Song," also sung by Odjib'we, was used while the warriors dipped the
heads of their war arrows in red "medicine." The text is concise:
"Scarlet is its head." The song is interesting both for its rhythmic
and melodic contours.
VOICE
(J-60)
O - na - mun -tin / de - bwan o - na - mfin •
"A, f r r r_c
i
dn i de-bwan wa hi yu hu ya wa hi yu wahi yu
hu o - na - mvln iin i de bwan o - na - mdn -
(in i de - bwan yu wa hi yu bu ya
DRUM , RHYTHM
(J-84)
J J J J J
etc
Among the ceremonies of the Chippewa there is one called "Re-
storing the Mourners," which marks the end of the period of mourn-
ing for family deaths. Painting the face is part of the ceremony, and
while this is being done the following melody is sung:
41 6 I Fulfillment
VOICE ( J -92)
=&
As Miss Densmore remarks: "This melody contains a peculiar grace
and charm."
Songs of the Teton Sioux
We may turn next to the Dakota Indians, and in particular to that
branch of them known as the Teton Sioux, inhabiting parts of what
are now the states of North and South Dakota. Dakota, a word mean-
ing "leagued" or "allied," is used by these Indian tribes in speaking of
themselves; but they are more commonly called the Sioux. The music
of the Teton Sioux was studied and recorded by Frances Densmore
from 1911 to 1914 and the results of her findings were published in
Bulletin No. 61 of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Most of her
work was done on the Standing Rock Reservation, occupying a region
of prairie and lowland along the Missouri River. When the Teton
Sioux held their last buffalo hunt in 1883, their traditional tribal life
came to a close; yet, in the process of adjusting themselves to modern
civilization, these Indians of the plains have preserved many of their
old songs and ceremonies According to Miss Densmore, "Music may
perhaps be said to be the last element of native culture remaining in
favor among the Sioux." In comparing the older with the newer songs
of the Teton Sioux, Miss Densmore found significant changes:
Summarizing briefly the results of a comparison of the old and
the more modern Sioux songs, we find in the percentages a reduction
in the compass of the songs with an increase of harmonic form and
of accidentals; a more direct attack (shown by the increase of songs
beginning on the accented pan of the measure); an increase of songs
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC 417
beginning in 2-4 time; and also in songs without a change in time.
We find a change in the drumbeat from a rapid and somewhat
tremolo beat to a quarter-note value, with a reduction in the tempo
of the drum and an increase in the proportion of songs in which
the tempo of voice and drum is the same. We note further a devel-
opment of the rhythmic sense in song construction, shown by the
increase in the number of songs having two or more rhythmic units.
These contrasts between the two groups of songs may suggest a
connection between the Indians' manner of life and the form of their
musical expression, or they may be regarded as an effect of contact
with the more conventional music of the white race.7
In other words, a process of acculturation has been going on, and
the norms of the dominant white civilization appear to be in the
ascendancy in the development of American Indian music, which is
gradually shedding the traits that characterized it during the period of
organized tribal existence.
Many tribal melodies are associated with ceremonies, and these in
turn are related to the legends and myths upon which a large measure
of Indian tradition reposes. Among the Teton Sioux the principal
supernatural being was the White Buffalo Maiden, who appeared to
two young men of the tribe as they were out hunting and announced
to them that she had something important to present to the tribe.
She was a beautiful young maiden, wearing a fringed buckskin dress,
leggings, and moccasins, with a tied tuft of shedded buffalo hair on
her left side, and her face painted with red vertical stripes. When all
preparations had been made to receive her, she appeared in the camp
at sunrise, carrying in her hands a pipe. Entering the lodge, she spoke
to the assembled people, praising the virtues of the tribe, saying,
among other things:
For all these good qualities in the tribe you have been chosen as
worthy and deserving of all good gifts. I represent the Buffalo tribe,
who have sent you this pipe. . . . Take it, and use it according to
my directions. This pipe shall be used as a peacemaker. ... By this
pipe the medicine-man shall be called to administer help to the sick.
After finishing her speech and presenting the pipe to the chief, she
went slowly out of the tent and as soon as she was outside she turned
into a white buffalo calf.
T Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, p. 25.
41 8 | Fulfillment
Here is the "Song of the White Buffalo Maiden," which she is said
to have sung as she entered the Sioux camp:
(J-58)
Ni ya tan - in-yan ma-wa-ni ye
ya' tan-in-yan ma-wa-ni ye— e e o-ya.teie i-ma-wa
ni — na bo bo ho-tan-in-yan ma-wa-ni ye_ ye ye
ye a ye a ye ni -ya tan-m-yanma-wa-m
lu - ta le i - ma - wa
ni — na
— e e wa-
ho ho
ho-tan-in-yan ma-wa-ni
ye ye
ye a ye a ye
The words mean: "With visible breath I am walking/ this nation I
walk toward/ and my voice is heard/ I am walking with visible breath
I am walking/ this scarlet relic/ [for it] I am walking." The italicized
vocables in the song are interpolated between the meaningful words.
The "scarlet relic" mentioned in the above song refers to another
Sioux custom, that of "keeping a spirit," which requires the making
of a scarlet- wrapped packet containing objects belonging to the dead
person whose spirit is being "kept." It was considered highly desirable
to place the spirit-bundle upon the robe of a white buffalo in the
lodge. When such a robe was used, the "Song of the White Buffalo
Maiden" was sung as part of the spirit-keeping ceremony.
One of the most interesting customs of the Sioux was that of
forming "dream societies," composed of men who had seen the same
animal in their fasting visions. Often the dreams or visions would be
acted out in the dances performed by members of these societies.
There were buffalo, elk, wolf, and horse societies. The following is a
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC
419
Horse Society song, which says: "Daybreak appears when a horse
neighs."
An-pa-o hi-na-pecin
ban o sun- ka-kan wan ho - con -we
The drum accompaniment to this song was a rapid tremolo in a
rhythm of eighth notes, as follows:
DRUM RHYTHM:
j? 7 J) =
t-y-
A song described as a favorite of the Sioux is "Those Hills I Trod
Upon," which reveals the Indian's feeling for nature. In another version
of the song, the singer mentions the streams instead of the hills, but
the evocation of nature and solitude is in the same spirit. The words
say: "In the north to those hills I climbed/roaming again I myself
come.
(J«92) (VOICE)
Wa - zi - ya - ta pa - ha yan • ke - ce lo he
na i • ya - ha • an o • ma • wa - ni kon a - ke mi -
i» m
S
ye t ca ya hi • bu. we - lo
The melody is based on the Fourth Five-toned Scale.
420 I Fulfillment
A Sioux Indian named Jaw explained that before any important
undertaking (such as a horse-stealing expedition) he offered prayers
to Wakan'ranka and smoked a pipe in a certain ritualistic manner,
saying: "Wakan'tanka, I will now smoke this pipe in your honor. I
ask that no bullet may harm me when I am in battle. I ask that I may
get many horses." Upon completing the ceremony, he sang this song,
"I Wish to Roam11:
DRUM
VOICE
Ko-kwa - ya-kte-pi kin- na to-kel wa -
cin • ka o - ma-wa-ni ktc-lo be son • ka-wa-kan
o-wa-le ktc-lo
The meaning of the words is: "Friend be alert/ any way I wish to
roam about/ horses I will seek." This is a good example of a song
built from a well-defined rhythmic unit. The melody, moreover, is of
interest as utilizing all tones of the complete octave. The drum rhythm
is similar to the foregoing.
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC 421
Pawnee ceremonial songs
The Pawnee, located in Oklahoma, are a small tribe but one with
a highly developed mythology and ceremonialism. In the words of
Alice C. Fletcher, among the Pawnee,
. . . religious ceremonies were connected with the cosmic forces and
the heavenly bodies. The dominating power was Tirawa, generally
spoken of as "father." The heavenly bodies, the winds, thunder,
lightning, and rain were his messengers. . . . The mythology of the
Pawnee is remarkably rich in symbolism and poetic fancy, and their
religious system is elaborate and cogent The secret societies, of
which there were several in each tribe, were connected with the
belief in supernatural animals. The functions of these were to call
the game, to heal diseases, and to give occult powers. Their rites were
elaborate and their ceremonies dramatic.8
The Pawnee personified the Evening Star as a woman, placing her
next in power to Tirawa. From her garden in the west, with fields of
ripening corn and many buffalo, sprang all forms of life. Her consort
was the Morning Star, a warrior who drove the other stars before
him across the sky. From their union the first human being was cre-
ated. The second human being was the daughter of the Sun and the
Moon. From her marriage to the son of the Morning Star and the
Evening Star, sprang the human race.
The Morning Star ceremony was held in the early spring, for the
purpose of securing good crops in the coming season. One of the prin-
cipal songs in this ceremony was sung to the following melody:
r
r
rrr ir r Mr r ir r
y'b r rf nr r
•Fletcher, Handbook of American Indians, Bulletin 30, Bureau of American
Ethnology, part II, p. 215. Quoted by Dcnsmore, Pawnee Music, p. 4.
422 | Fulfillment
J J J ij jij j. JMJ
Miss Dcnsmorc writes that this song was considered too sacred for
phonographic recording and was taught to her orally by the singer,
Coming Sun. The words of the song signify: "This I did when I
became angry, in order that in the future the earth might be formed."
In singing this and other ceremonial songs, one voice sang the opening
phrase, which was repeated by two or three voices while the first
singer held a low tone; then all the voices sang the remainder of the
song in unison. This song was found among the Skidi (Wolf Pawnee),
one of the bands into which the Pawnee tribe is divided.
A principal ceremony among the Chaui Band of Pawnee is that of
Painting the Buffalo Skull, held every spring and including a buffalo
dance with various related songs. One of these is connected with an
incident that occurred long ago. A great herd of buffalo suddenly
appeared near the Indian encampment, to which it threatened destruc-
tion. An old Indian named Naru'dapadi rode out toward the herd,
shouting and firing his rifle to divert the buffalo; but he was caught
in the herd, surrounded by the buffalo, and swept away across the
stream. This is the song, "The Herd Passes Through the Village":
VOICE
Ti wa - ka o we re ru ti ka - ku sa .
ku • ra ra wa - ku - ru sa — we re ru ti ka - ku
sa § A—- we ra n tu - ru kat ka a a
ru te wi leaks a - wa -
we re ra hu ka - ta - ta
hu — u — we re ru ti ka - ku sa. a a —
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC
4*3
we re ri tu- ru kat - ka a a _ we re w hu ka - ta • ca.
DRUMjRHYTHM: J) J) J) J) J) J)
One more Pawnee song will be given here. It is neither a cere-
monial song nor a song of the societies, but was sung by the wife of a
chief whose infant daughter had died— "Mother's Song for a Dead
Baby."
-72)
Drum not recorded
The second half of the fourth measure is described as "a descending
wail" in which the tones E-D-B were connected by a glissando. This
wailing phrase is all that alters the regular recurrence of the rhythmic
unit upon which the song is built.
Music of the Pueblo Indians
The Pueblo Indians, the ruins of whose ancient towns are scattered
throughout New Mexico and Arizona, were a peaceful agricultural
people skilled in handicrafts and with an elaborate ceremonial ritual.
The Spaniards called them Pueblo Indians because they lived in towns
or villages, in houses made of stone and adobe. Their best-known
tribes are the Zuni and the Hopi.
The Zunis live near the Little Colorado River, among the buttes
and mesas of New Mexico. The occupations of their daily life are
reflected in their corn-grinding songs, sung by the women as they
grind the corn in stone troughs called "metates" upon which the corn
424 I Fulfillment
is placed and ground by another stone. One of these corn-grinding
songs, recorded by Natalie Curtis, refers to the "sacred mountain" of
the Zunis, the great mesa that they call To'yallanne.
In the words of J. Walter Fewkes: "Almost everything in the life
of a Zunian has a religious side, or is to be met by something which
for want of a name we may call a religious observance." In addition
to the ceremonial rain dances, and dances connected with the ripening
of corn, Fewkes classified the following as semireligious observances
among the Zunis: foot races, rabbit hunts, planting of prayer-plumes,
and communal burning of pottery. The periods of the summer and
winter solstices have much prominence in the Zuni ritual and are
celebrated with appropriate ceremonies. The Zunis have primitive
altars upon which they regularly make offerings of plumes, sacred
meal, and water. Their important summer ceremonies have the prime
purpose of securing water for the crops. Featured in these ceremonies
are the various rain dances. The most important of these, at least at
the time when Fewkes observed them, was the Sacred Dance of the
Ko-ko, which he described as follows:
Each Ko-ko wore a painted mask with a long horse-hair beard
extending down on the breast, while his own hair, carefully dressed,
fell down the back. On the top of his head he wore two or three
bright yellow feathers, while on a string weighted by a stone, which
hung down over the hair, small, white, downy feathers were tied at
intervals. The mask was of blue color, with two slits for the eyes,
and a third with zigzag bars representing teeth. . . . Around the
neck hung numerous chains of shell beads and worsted yarn, from
which depended ornaments made of the abalone and other shells.
The shoulders and body, down to the loins, were bare, but the shoul-
ders were painted a pinkish color, with zigzag markings, said to be
rain symbols. ... In one hand he held a gourd rattle, and in the
other a sprig o£ cedar. The body was thrown into a slightly stooping
position, the elbows bent so that the forearm was thrown forward.
Some of the Ko-ko dancers carried in the hand a live turtle. . . .
Around the loins each Ko-ko wore a Moqui (Hopi) dance-blanket,
a sash with long, white pendent strings knotted at the ends, and from
behind hung a fox-skin, with head uppermost, and tail extending to
the ground. Empty turtle shells . . . were tied to the sash behind.
The legs and feet were bare, with the exception of a black woolen
garter tied on the left leg, and a turtle shell securely fastened on the
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC 425
right, inside die knee. This turtle shell . . . had small hoofs sus-
pended by buckskin thongs on one side. The rattle of these hoofs
on the empty turtle shells could be heard for a considerable distance
as the dancers, settling back on one leg, raised their feet and then
brought them down to the earth, in accord with the song which they
chanted.9
This is the Zufii tribal melody of the Sacred Dance of the Ko-ko,
as recorded by Fewkes and transcribed by Oilman:
im
4±
E^fe
'if' l^P
E Eg P F E 1^^
Among the summer ceremonial dances of the Zuni, one of the
most impressive was the Dance of the Hay-a-ma-she-que ("Dancers
Who Wear the Masks"), in which thirty-four dancers participated,
wearing elaborately painted masks and strings of ornaments similar
to those worn by the Ko-ko dancers, and with the upper part of
body painted a deep red or copper color. The peculiar feature of this
dance was the tablet carried by each dancer. As described by Fewkes
Their heads were wholly covered by cedar boughs, which formed
a helmet with an extensive collar. The tablet which they carried on
their head above the cedar was a thin, flat board with three apical
•Fewkes, A Journal of American Ethnology and Archaeology, vol. i, pp
426 I Fulfillment
projections, each ornamented with a feather. On this tablet, which
was about two feet high, there were gaudily painted figures in the
form of crescents, birdlike outlines, and variegated circles. ... In
the hands they carried a gourd rattle and a sprig of cedar. . . . The
turtle-shell rattle and brass bells also dangled at the knee, making a
noise with every movement of the legs.10
Here is part of the melody for the Dance of the Hay-a-ma-she-que:
^ f f
Benjamin Ives Oilman, who transcribed and analyzed the Zuni
and Hopi melodies recorded by Fewkes, was convinced that these
were "examples of a music without scale." He formulated his convic-
tion in these terms:
What we have in these melodies is the musical growths out of
which scales are elaborated, and not compositions undertaken in con-
formity to norms of interval order already fixed in the consciousness
of the singers. In this archaic stage of the art, scales are not formed
but forming.
This statement stirred up some controversy when it was published,
and later investigators have not accepted Oilman's conclusion, as
nearly all Indian melodies have been classifiable under some kind of
scale. It is true, however, as previously remarked, that the Indian
probably did not have a conscious a priori concept of scale. It should
be added that Oilman was very thorough in his investigations, and his
data deserve to be carefully studied.
Snake songs figure prominently in the tribal melodies of the Hopi
(or Moqui) Indians, the cliff dwellers of northern Arizona. For the
" Ibid., pp. 38-39.
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC
427
rest, many of the ceremonial songs, like those of the Zufiis, are con-
nected with invocations for rain and with the planting and ripening
of corn. The following is a Hopi snake song as transcribed by Gilman:
J J J "M J
r i
(T
J
J J J
r r
J^J J J
Papago tribal melodies
Indian music of the Southwestern desert may be represented by
tribal melodies of the Papago Indians, of which six subdivisions live in
southern Arizona, the rest in Mexico. The Papago are a Piman tribe,
given to agricultural pursuits. Their musical instruments are a gourd
rattle, used for songs to bring rain and songs for treating the sick;
scraping sticks, used in pairs, a smooth stick being scraped over one
that is notched and slightly curved; basket drum, simply a household
basket turned upside down and struck with the hands, usually by
three or four men at once; and the "flute," made of cane, end-blown,
with three finger holes.
Papago songs are characterized by exceptional melodic freedom.
For this reason it is often difficult to designate any tone as a keynote.
There is a very small percentage of harmonic melodies among the
Papago songs. A glissando is frequently used in certain types of songs.
In contrast to those of other tribes, the words of Papago songs are
always continuous throughout the melody.11
Tribal melodies collected by Miss Densmore among the Papago
Indians included songs connected with legends; songs for the treat-
« Data from Densmore, Pawnee Music, from which next three melodies are
quoted.
428 I Fulfillment
ment of the sick; songs connected with ceremonies; songs connected
with expeditions to obtain salt; war songs; songs of the kicking-ball
races; songs of the Bat Dance; dream songs; hunting songs; songs for
the entertainment of children; and miscellaneous songs, the latter in-
cluding some humorous songs. The following is an example of a
Papago humorous song, of which the words mean: "The pigeon pre-
tended that he was setting up a tiswin lodge. The frog doctor drank
his wine, got drunk and shouted, and pulled out his cloud." Tiswin is
a wine made from the fruit of the saguaro cactus. It was customary to
construct a special lodge for the drinking of tiswin, and the wine was
drunk during the ceremony for making rain; hence the reference to
the cloud in this song, "The Pigeon and His Tiswin Lodge."
(J^-138)
ir CJiur
The Papago ceremony for making rain was held early in August
and was the occasion for a festival in which a large number of rain-
making songs were sung. There were said to be more than a hundred
of these songs. The following song, "I Draw the Rain," was sup-
posed to have been first sung by a small boy who wished to be of help
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC
429
to his people. It says: "Here I am sitting and with my power I draw
the south wind toward me. After the wind I draw the clouds, and
after the clouds I draw the rain that makes the wild flowers grow on
our home ground and look so beautiful."
(J-104)
^i. » f .r r
- . f 1
r^ ff i f
1— P — 0 — i—
9 • m \
. y* i PI — * — i JH
J 1 ' II
-I ir rr
r p i i
^^
1 r i
t-M
^
p
P3£
Another Papago ceremony for obtaining rain and good crops was
the Viikitd) held every four years. The ceremony involved fasting and
the carrying of an object representing the sun. In some sections the
drinking of tiswin was part of the ritual, in others it was not. The
following song of the Viikita ceremony again emphasizes the impor-
tance of clouds in the cosmic economy of these desert dwellers. The
translation of the words is: "We see the light that brightens in the
east/ it seems to turn to flame/ on the edge of it is something that
looks like a white feather/ but we see that it is white clouds."
r r
n r r r irrp^i
430 | Fulfillment
» r
Indian tribal music today
The tribal melodies of the North American Indians belong largely
to the past, intimately bound up as they are with traditions and folk-
ways that in some cases have already disappeared and that in others
may soon vanish before the impact of civilization. Nevertheless, the
Indian often shows a surprising tenacity in the retention of his ances-
tral traditions, and this retention is generally strongest in the realm
of tribal music. The evidence indicates that the Indians who are in
closest contact with civilization tend to assimilate some of the traits
of the white man's music, particularly as regards tonality, harmonic
feeling, elimination of repetition, and regularity of metrical patterns.
The resulting musical syncretization, while combining elements of
both cultures, does not necessarily cease to be "Indian," since it ex-
presses the creative personality of the Indian within the context of
the new environment to which he has had to adapt himself and his
traditions.
The Indians are still making songs that are a blend of the old and
the new, that reflect the conditions of today's world in terms of
inherited techniques united to recently acquired values and resources.
In 1942, after the United States found it necessary to go to war for
the second time in the defense of freedom for the world, a Sioux
folk poet wrote the words of a song that said:
The President, the flag, and my country,
These things I stand for.
So saying the Sioux boys went as soldiers.
In the summer of 1942 Willard Rhodes visited the Oglala band
of the Teton Sioux on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South
Dakota and recorded twelve songs dealing with World War II, com-
posed by the Indians within the traditional framework of their tribal
melodies. He found them to be based on a tetratonic scale consisting
of the following tones: D, F, G, A; and marked by a smaller tonal
range than the older war songs recorded by Frances Densmore among
INDIAN TRIBAL MUSIC
431
the Teton Sioux several decades ago. Here is one of the new war songs
as transcribed by Rhodes: "
LEADER
CHORUS
Ya - a he - a he • a he
DRUM
U U «c.
ya - a he • a he he he
r-ya he ya he ya he ya he yo
ya he ya he ya
- ta he ko-la na-ta he yu we-e we-kal ki-ya
DRUM p p*
ha' ya he ma-hel na-ta ha a we io he
La - ko - ta hok si * la o - hi - ti - ka pe
J J
2.
- ke-ya pe • lo he- ya he yo.
This is the translation of the words:
12 This song and the remarks by Willard Rhodes are reprinted from the
quaneri/ Modern Music, XX, 3 (Mar .-Apr. 1945), 158; by permission of the
League of Composers, Inc., copyright 1943.
432 | Fulfillment
From across the ocean, my friend,
They come charging.
With airplanes above,
And with submarines under the water
They come charging.
The Sioux boys are brave.
That is what the United States says.
Regarding the manner of singing the song, Rhodes writes:
At this point [2] the women join in the refrain of the song.
While the men continue singing with a "pulsating tone," indicated
by dots above or beneath the notes, the women vocalize the phrase
very legato with a meaningless syllable, he. The sharply timbred
voices of the women singers is highly suggestive of the tone quality
of a reed instrument.
Concerning intonation and melodic structure, Rhodes remarks:
A plus or minus sign over a note indicates a slight raising or low-
ering of the pitch of that particular tone. Inasmuch as the tonic tone,
D, is sung consistently flat throughout this song, only the initial
appearance of the D is so marked [at the point indicated by the nu-
meral "i"]. In the melodic cadence which occurs at the end of each
phrase, F functions as a leading tone in relation to D. This results
in an interval that is neither major nor minor, a neutral third which
is fairly common in primitive music.
It may be true, as Willard Rhodes suggests, that "the rime has
arrived when the composer can safely reconsider American Indian
music as a source of material' '—now that the romantic and picturesque
exploitation of the American Indian is a thing of the past, reaching
its apogee in the Indianist movement of the early 19005. There is an-
other approach that may also prove fruitful in a reconsideration of
Indian music today: its intimate relationship to the myths and rituals
that form the foundation of traditional Indian life. Today we are
conscious, as never before in the modern world, of the significance of
myth and ritual in the life of mankind and in his arts—whether of
music, poetry, or drama— whereby he seeks to express his sense of
mystery and of awe, and of participation in a common and unknown
destiny. Whatever may be the limitations of the Indian's mode of
musical expression, it has always been a deep and indispensable parr
of his living.
chapter twenty-one
The rise of ragtime
I can shake the earth's foundation wid de Maple Leaf Ragf
SIDNEY BROWN, "MAPLE LEAF RAG SONG" (1903).
JLJuring the Gay Nineties, ragtime music swept the country and
even made a considerable impression on Europe. It rose rapidly to an
immense popularity— became, indeed, a sort of craze— was taken over
for commercial exploitation by tin-pan alley, degenerated into un-
imaginative manipulation of cliches, and fizzled out like a wet fire-
cracker about the time the United States went into World War I.
In the 19405 there was a revival of interest in ragtime. Looking at it
in the perspective of rime, one discovers that it was no ephemeral fad,
but an important phase of America's music, deeply rooted in our folk
and popular traditions; not a mere novelty but something strongly
original; not wholly a meretricious commercialized output but a
movement genuinely creative at the core that produced a permanent
body of music and that exerted an enduring influence.
The convergence of ragtime and blues in classic New Orleans jazz,
which occurred during the last decades of the nineteenth century, is
one of the fundamental developments in the history of American
music. Although these three currents of American popular music— rag-
time, blues, and jazz— are closely related, it will be convenient, for the
sake of clarity, to trace separately the course of each. Ragtime and
blues may be considered as important tributaries of jazz, the Mississippi
River of American music. These tributaries are of interest for their
own sake as well as for what they contribute to the main stream of
jazz.
There are direct links between ragtime and American minstrelsy.
Two of these links are the so-called "plantation melodies" or "coon
songs," generally sung with banjo accompaniment, and the type of
433
434 | Fulfillment
dance known as "cakewalk," which became increasingly popular as a
feature of minstrel shows from about 1880. We must bear in mind
that while in the beginning the blackface minstrel troupes consisted
of white performers with their faces blackened— who more or less
faithfully imitated what they took to be typical traits of Negro music
and dancing— after the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves,
with the consequent incorporation of the Negro into many phases of
American life, particularly the entertainment field, Negroes them-
selves began to take part in the minstrel shows. While the Negro
minstrel performer was still more or less bound by the long-estab-
lished stereotypes of blackface minstrelsy, he nevertheless was able,
through details of emphasis and interpretation, to give the songs and
dances and instrumental accompaniments an authenticity and an orig-
inality that they had not previously possessed.
In an earlier chapter it was pointed out that many of the old
minstrel tunes were marked by syncopation. For example, both "Old
Zip Coon" and "Old Dan Tucker," among many others, contain the
characteristic rhythmic figure, /J"^, that became the standard
cakewalk formula of ragtime music. Among the songs of Stephen
Foster, particularly those in which he was most influenced by the
singing and dancing of the Negro roustabouts on the Ohio River,
this syncopation is also found. Willis Laurence James has observed
that Foster's 'The Glendy Burk" (1860) is "a true ragtime song," and
that to be convinced of this one need simply pat the hands and feet
while singing it, to provide the regular beat of the bass in ragtime.
It is thus a very thin gap that separates the more genuine minstrel
songs of the mid-nineteenth century from the authentic ragtime style
that emerged a few decades later. That gap was filled by the Negro
performers, particularly the banjoists and later the pianists, who be-
gan to find an outlet for their musical talents and an expression for
their racial heritage in minstrelsy, in vaudeville and variety (which
soon replaced the minstrel shows), and in the entertainment world in
general. As we shall presently see, some of that "entertainment" was
associated with the unrespectable "underworld" that opposed no bar-
riers of convention or prejudice to the Negro musicians and their
strangely disconcerting music with its "hot" rhythm and its "blue"
notes. It was the musical meeting of these two worlds— that of the
honky-tonks and barrel houses, and that of the popular stage and
THE RISE OF RAGTIME 435
commercial publishing— that made possible the rise of ragtime as a
permanent form of American popular music. Before we go on to
describe where and in what manner this development took place, we
must cast a backward glance at some of the antecedents of ragtime,
which, are equally applicable to the background of jazz and the blues.
The entire body of Afro-American music is in fact a whole, pos-
sessing an organic unity stemming from a common cultural tradition
(the basic traits of this tradition were described in Chapter 4). We
are aware that Afro-American music absorbed many influences, from
folk tunes of the British Isles to the French and Spanish dance music
of Louisiana. We also know that it has manifested itself in various
directions: the spirituals and shouts, the work and play songs, the
children's songs and lullabies, the cornfield "hollers" and the blues,
the banjo tunes and the many dances that go with them. In spite of
superficial differences, all these manifestations, when one gets to the
core of them, disregarding conventional adulteration (such as the
"arranged" spirituals sung by trained choirs and concert artists), will
reveal their common ancestry and close kinship. This common tie
is in the "hot" quality of the music. All true Afro-American music
is "hot," whether it be a spiritual, a work song, a blues, a banjo tune, a
piano rag, or a jazz piece.
"Hot rhythm" on the levee
That greatly gifted writer and observer of Afro-American folk-
ways, Lafcadio Hearn, spent several years in Cincinnati as a young
man, before going to New Orleans. He took a keen interest in the
music of the Negro stevedores, and in 1876 published in the Cincin-
nati Commercial an article called "Levee Life," * in which he vividly
described the songs and dances of these workers. He also collected
the words of many of the songs, but unfortunately not the music.
His article was subtitled "Haunts and Pastimes of the Roustabouts,
Their Original Songs and Peculiar Dances." His description is worth
quoting, for it is one of the basic documents on the folk backgrounds
of ragtime and jazz. He begins by setting the scene:
... on a cool spring evening, when the levee is bathed in moon-
light, and the torch-basket lights dance redly upon the water, and
1 Reprinted in An American Miscellany, vol. i.
436 I Fulfillment
the clear air vibrates to the sonorous music of the deep-toned steam-
whistle, and the sound of wild ban jo- thrumming floats out through
the open doors of the levee dance-houses. . . .
Then he tells something of their songs and dances in general:
Roustabout life in the truest sense is, then, the life of the colored
population of the Rows, and, pardy, of Bucktown— blacks and mu-
lattoes from all parts of the States, but chiefly from Kentucky and
Eastern Virginia, where most of them appear to have toiled on the
plantations before Freedom; and echoes of the old plantation life still
live in their songs and their pastimes. You may hear old Kentucky
slave songs chanted nightly on the steamboats, in that wild, half-
melancholy key peculiar to the natural music of the African race;
and you may see the old slave dances nightly performed to the air
of some ancient Virginia-reel in the dance-houses of Sausage Row,
or the "ballrooms" of Bucktown. . . . Many of their songs, which
have never appeared in print, treat of levee life in Cincinnati, of all
the popular steamboats running on the "Muddy Water," and of the
favorite roustabout haunts on the river bank and in Bucktown.
Finally he takes us into one of these "dance-houses," where on the
back of a long bench, placed with its face to the wall, with their feet
inwardly reclining upon the seat, sat the musicians:
A well-dressed, neatly-built mulatto picked the banjo, and a
somewhat lighter colored musician led the music with a fiddle, which
he played remarkably well and with great spirit. A short, stout
negress, illy dressed, with a rather good-natured face and a bed
shawl tied about her head, played the bass viol, and that with no
inexperienced hand.
What Hearn calls a "bass viol" is doubtless the double bass or
bull fiddle (generally referred to as string bass, or simply bass, in jazz
terminology), which later came to be an important element in the
rhythm section of the classic New Orleans jazz band. It is exasperating
that Hearn does not tell us how this Negro woman played the string
bass, instead of how well she played it. If it was used primarily to
mark the rhythm, then we have the precursor of a jazz trio.
Hearn then goes on to describe the dancing:
The musicians struck up that weird, wild, lively air, known per-
haps to many of our readers as the "Devil's Dream," and in which
THE RISE OF RAGTIME 437
"the musical ghost of a cat chasing the spectral ghost of a rat" is
represented by a succession of "miauls" and "squeaks" on the fiddle.
The dancers danced a double quadrille, at first, silently and rapidly;
but warming with the wild spirit of the music, leaped and shouted,
swinging each other off the floor, and keeping time with a precision
which shook the building in time to the music. The women, we no-
ticed, almost invariably embraced the men about the neck in swing-
ing, the man clasping them about the waist. Sometimes the men ad-
vancing leaped and crossed legs with a double shuffle, and with al-
most sightless rapidity.
Then the music changed to an old Virginia reel, and the dancing
changing likewise, presented the most grotesque spectacle imagin-
able. The dancing became wild; men patted juba and* shouted, the
negro women danced with the most fantastic grace, their bodies de-
scribing almost incredible curves forward and backward; limbs inter-
twined rapidly in a wrestle with each other and with the music; the
room presented a tide of swaying bodies and tossing arms, and flying
hair. The white female dancers seemed heavy, cumbersome, ungainly
by contrast with their dark companions; the spirit of the music was
not upon them; they were abnormal to the life about them.
Once more the music changed— to some popular Negro air, with
the chorus—
Don't get weary,
I'm goin' home.
The musicians began to sing; the dancers joined in; and the dance
terminated with a roar of song, stamping of feet, "patting juba,"
shouting, laughing, reeling. Even the curious spectators involuntarily
kept time with their feet; it was the very drunkenness of music, the
intoxication of the dance.
It was something of this "intoxication of the dance," something of
this irresistible "hot" rhythm that forced you to keep time with your
feet, that the whole country was to feel when ragtime swept across
the land. Notice Hearn's remark that the white dancers were not pos-
sessed by the spirit of this music, and that only with the Negroes
did it appear as a natural, spontaneous outpouring of rhythm and
feeling. The rise of ragtime could take place only after the Negro
was given an opportunity to express himself musically outside of his
own limited milieu: on the stage and in the world of entertainment.
What is important to remember is that the fusion in ragtime of
438 I Fulfillment
the more or less conventional "coon song" and Cakewalk tradition of
minstrelsy with the authentic strain of genuine Afro- American syn-
copated and polyrhythmic "hot" music could not have occurred unless
the culturally untamed (i.e., conventionally uneducated) Negro folk
had kept alive throughout the South, and more particularly along
the vast Mississippi River basin, their uninhibited "hot" style of mak-
ing music. The cities along the Mississippi and its tributaries were
especially significant in this development because they provided em-
ployment for the Negroes on the levees and steamboats and created
permanent urban communities where the kind of music and dancing
described by Hearn could flourish unmolested by the entrenched
forces of respectability. What Hearn saw and heard and described in
Cincinnati in 1876— -in effect a kind of primitive jam session— had obvi-
ously been going on for some time before that, and undoubtedly
had its replica in other riverside cities. His account reveals the exist-
ence of a well-established tradition of "hot" instrumental music flour-
ishing "beyond the pale" in the water-front dance houses of our
riparian cities. It is no wonder, then, that the rise of ragtime and blues
and jazz was to center around these cities, chiefly New Orleans,
Memphis, and St. Louis. Later, of course, Chicago and New York
became the inevitable centers of commercial exploitation and mass
diffusion.
Thus far we have traced two principal currents as converging in
the creation of ragtime: the blackface minstrelsy of the stage, with its
concomitant output of "coon songs," and the genuine, "hot" Afro-
American folk music. A third contributing current should now be
mentioned: the Negro brass bands of the towns and cities, which
began to spring up shortly after the Civil War. More will be said
about these street bands in the chapter on jazz, in the development of
which they had a vital role. Here it is sufficient to mention that Negro
brass bands, under the driving impulse of "hot" rhythm, soon began
to "rag" many of the marches and tunes they played. This "ragtime"
band music was later imitated by such celebrated white bands as
Sousa's and Pryor's, and in fact it was Sousa's band that gave Europe
its first taste of ragtime. Band music, however, is more important in
connection with the history of jazz, because ragtime is essentially
music for piano. Ragtime may be described as the application of
systematic syncopation to piano playing and composition. More pre-
cisely, it consists basically of a syncopated melody played over a regu-
THE RISE OF RAGTIME 439
laxly accented beat (2/4 time) in the bass. As previously observed,
the basic rhythmic formula of ragtime is the so-called "cakewalk'*
figure, which, as we pointed out in discussing the compositions of
L. M. Gottschalk, is also frequently met with in much of Latin Ameri-
can popular music, particularly that which has been strongly influ-
enced by Afro-American elements from the Caribbean area. In view
of the close connection between the cakewalk and the rise of ragtime
something should be said here about the background of the former.
Cakewalk and "coon songs"
The cakewalk appears to have originated in an actual custom of
plantation life in ante-bellum days. Featured in the blackface minstrel
shows, it passed over into the variety acts that marked the transition
to vaudeville. When the team of Harrigan and Hart presented, in 1877,
a number called "Walking for Dat Cake" (music by Dave Braham
and words by Harrigan), they billed it as an "Exquisite Picture of
Negro Life and Customs." It was a precursor of the many cakewalk
songs that flooded the nation around the turn of the century.
According to the testimony of Shephard N. Edmonds, a Negro
born in Tennessee of freed slave parents,
The cakewalk was originally a plantation dance, just a happy
movement they (the slaves) did to the banjo music because they
couldn't stand still. It was generally on Sundays, when there was
little work, that the slaves both young and old would dress up in
hand-me-down finery to do a high-kicking, prancing walk-around.
They did a take-off on the high manners of the white folks in the
"big house," but their masters, who gathered around to watch the
fun, missed the point. It's supposed to be that the custom of a prize
started with the master giving a cake to the couple that did the
proudest movement.2
The combination of cakewalk rhythm and banjo technique is a direct
forerunner of ragtime.
During the 18905 variety teams such as Smart and Williams, and
especially Williams and Walker, popularized the cakewalk, which
quickly became a national craze. Cakewalk contests sprang up every-
where, from the biggest cities to the remotest hamlets. That high-
'Quoted in Blesh and Janis, They All Played Ragttme, p. 96.
440 | Fulfillment
kicking step and that tricky rhythm had captivated the country. A
large part of the world was also fascinated by this American novelty.
One of the earliest and most perceptive writers on American
music, the novelist Rupert Hughes, wrote in 1899:
Negroes call their clog dancing "ragging" and the dance a "rag,"
a dance largely shuffling. The dance is a sort of frenzy with frequent
yelps of delight from the dancer and spectators and accompanied
by the latter with hand clapping and stomping of feet. Banjo figura-
tion is very noticeable in ragtime music and division of one of the
beats into two short notes is traceable to the hand clapping.8
There can be no question about the importance of the banjo in the
genesis of ragtime. This instrument, used by the Negroes from the
early days of slavery, and having undoubtedly an African prototype,
was the precursor of piano ragtime music. As we observed in an earlier
chapter, the original "coon songs" took the banjo as the symbol of the
plantation melody, even though they were published in versions for
voice and piano. When the "coon songs" were revived and attained a
new and wider popularity toward the end of the nineteenth century,
they still clung to the banjo as a symbol of the plantation life that
was by then very much under the enchantment of distance and igno-
rance. One of these songs, "New Coon in Town," by J. S. Putnam,
published in 1883, was specifically subtitled "Banjo Imitation." This
was an adumbration of ragtime before the name itself was applied to
popular music. Just as in the early plantation melodies syncopation
occurs incidentally, so in the later "coon songs" of the i88os and
18905 ragtime appears in a few measures here and there, until, by
1897, full-fledged ragtime piano numbers began to be published with
a rush. In order to explain this sudden surge of published ragtime, it is
necessary to take up the story of the popular pianists who created
American ragtime music out of the materials and backgrounds we have
been describing.
"King of ragtime"
The most famous name associated with the rise of ragtime is that
of Scott Joplin (1869-1917), though there is some dispute as to
• Hughes in the Boston Musical Record, Apr. i, 1899.
THE RISE OF RAGTIME 44!
whether he actually deserves the ride of "King of Ragtime." Per-
haps such tides are unnecessary anyway. Joplin, a Negro, was born
in Texarkana, Texas, and grew up in a household that was full of
music. His mother sang and played the banjo, his father played the
violin, and his brother the guitar. Scott himself was attracted by the
piano (there was one in a neighbor's house). When his father man-
aged to save enough money for the purchase of an old-fashioned square
grand, Scott taught himself to play, and attracted the attention of a
local German musician who gave him lessons and familiarized him
with the music of the great European composers. This orthodox in-
fluence was counterbalanced by his wanderings as an itinerant musi-
cian while he was still in his teens: an experience that brought him
into intimate contact with the folklore and the low-life of the South.
In 1885, at the age of seventeen, he arrived in St. Louis, which became
his headquarters for the next eight years. He played there in the honky-
tonks on Chestnut and Market Streets, where Negro pianists were de-
veloping, with freedom and originality, the style of piano music that
was soon to be known as ragtime.
In 1893 Joplin, along with many other musicians, went to Chicago
for the World's Columbian Exposition, where he met some of the early
Chicago ragtime players, such as "Plunk" Henry and Johnny Sey-
mour. He also made the acquaintance of Otis Saunders, who returned
with him to St. Louis and soon persuaded him to write down and pub-
lish some of the piano pieces that he was playing. The following year
he went across the river to Sedalia, Missouri, where he wrote his first
compositions. These, however, were sentimental songs, not rags. Jop-
lin nevertheless was still playing ragtime piano, notably at a place
called the Maple Leaf Club. There, in the summer of 1899, he was
heard by a man who was to become a central figure in the spread of
ragtime: the music publisher John Still well Stark. The latter was a
pioneer and ex-farmer who had settled in Sedalia around 1885 and
had taken to cultural pursuits with characteristic vigor and enthusi-
asm. Although he embraced the genteel tradition on one side (his
daughter studied music with Moszkowski in Germany), he was broad-
minded enough, and his pioneer instincts were strong enough, to rec-
ognize something new and vital in American music when he heard
Scott Joplin play at the Maple Leaf Club. The result was the publica-
tion, in 1899, of a composition that made history: Maple Leaf
442 | Fulfillment
with its classic ragtime syncopation over the steady rhythm of the
bass.
Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag was a huge success. Stark had given him
a royalty contract, so that composer as well as publisher profited from
the sales, which 'were enormous for those times. Stark, ready for big-
ger things, moved over to St. Louis, set up his own printing press, and
continued to publish ragtime numbers, by Joplin and others. Later he
opened an office in New York, but he was not cut out for the tin-pan-
alley type of business. In 1912 he returned to St. Louis, where he con-
tinued to champion ragtime, insisting that it was both respectable and
valuable. He outlived the vogue of ragtime by some ten years, for he
died in 1927. John Stark was a true pioneer, a man of conviction and
culture, whose name should be honored in the annals of America's
music.
Scott Joplin soon outgrew the "tenderloin" district where he and
so many other pianists had found employment and an opportunity to
play ragtime. He moved into a large house of his own and set himself
up as a music teacher. He went on composing a long succession of rags
and other popular pieces, some of them in collaboration with Scott
Hayden, Arthur Marshall, and Louis Chauvin. His first published rag
was not the Maple Leaf Rag, but Original Rags, published in March,
1899. *n aU> J°plin published thirty-nine piano rags, of which seven
were written in collaboration with others. There are also a number of
unpublished rags in manuscript. Among his rags for piano solo are
Peacherine Rag (1901), The Easy Winners (1901), Palm Leaf Rag— A
Slow Drag (1903), Rose Leaf Rag (1907), Fig Leaf Rag (1908), Eu-
phonic Sounds (1909), Stoptime Rag (1910), Scott Joplin's New Rag
(1912), and Reflection Rag— Syncopated Musings (1917).
In 1903 Joplin wrote the book and music for A Guest of Honor,
described as "A Ragtime Opera." It received only one concert per-
formance in St. Louis and was never published, though Stark evi-
dently contemplated its publication, judging by an entry in the U.S.
Copyright Office. The manuscript has disappeared; so nothing is
known concretely of this first attempt at an American ragtime opera.
From about 1909 Joplin lived in New York, and there he tried his
hand at opera again. The work was Treemonisha, an opera in three
acts, which he published at his own expense in 1911, in a piano score.
The scene of the opera is laid "on a plantation somewhere in the State
THE RISE OF RAGTIME 443
of Arkansas,'' and the action takes places in 1886. Treemonisha is a
Negro girl who receives an education and is thus able to overcome
the superstitions by which her people are bound. She is acclaimed as
their teacher and leader, while the Negroes assemble and dance A Real
Slow Drag, which forms the climax of the opera:
Dance slowly, prance slowly,
While you hear that pretty rag.
The score of Treemonisha employs ragtime, but not exclusively. Scott
Joplin was trying to create an American folk opera; he deserves credit
for pioneering in this direction.
After he had painstakingly orchestrated the work, a single per-
formance was given in Harlem, in a concert version without scenery
or costumes, and with piano accompaniment. It did not reach the right
audience, obtained no success, and was never heard again. The dash-
ing of his operatic ambitions was a severe blow to Joplin. His mind
began to fail, and on April i, 1917 he died, famous and honored for
his rags if not for his operas.
Other ragtime composers
Another important figure in early ragtime was the Negro pianist
Thomas M. Turpin, composer of the first published Negro rag that is
known, the Harlem Rag, which appeared in 1897. This was followed
by The Bowery Buck (1899), A Ragtime Nightmare (1900), St. Louis
Rag (1903), and The Buffalo Rag (1904). Turpin was definitely as-
sociated with the St. Louis sporting district and wrote most of his
rags in a place called the Rosebud, which he owned and where he
played the piano and imparted to other colleagues the secrets of rag-
time. He died in 1922, having earned the unofficial title of "Father
of St. Louis Ragtime."
James Sylvester Scott (1886-1938) learned to play the piano in
his home town of Neosho, Missouri, and later moved to Carthage,
Kansas, where he got a job in Dumars's music store and played rag-
time in his spare time. Dumars thought his music was good enough
to publish; so the next few years saw the publication of several James
Scott numbers. Scott visited St. Louis where Stark published his
Climax Rag in 1914. Other early Scott rags include Frog Legs Rag
Fulfillment
(1906), Kansas City Rag (1907), Great Scott Rag (1909)1 Sunburst
Rag (1909), Hilarity Rag (1910), and Ophelia Rag (1910). Altogether
he published thirty rags for piano solo, the last of which was Broad-
way Rag, issued in 1922.
From 1914 James Scott lived as a music teacher and performer in
Kansas City, continuing to compose and to develop his extraordinary
technique as a ragtime pianist. Honeymoon Rag and Prosperity Rag,
both published by Stark in 1916, reveal the increasing complexity of
his style.
Louis Chauvin, a Negro pianist of St. Louis, who could neither
read nor write music, is credited by some authorities with being one
of the pioneer creative figures in ragtime, though only his Heliotrope
Bouquet (1907) was published with his name (in collaboration with
Scott Joplin). Two writers on ragtime, Simms and Borneman, assert
that "many of his [Chauvin's] original tunes and syncopations were
transcribed by Tom [Turpin] and later by Scott Joplin without any
due credit." It is impossible to prove or disprove this statement, but
it is a fact that much appropriation of unpublished material was go-
ing on in the 18905, when musicians, both Negro and white, were
racing neck-and-neck to get on the ragtime band wagon with compo-
sitions that they could call their own once the copyright had been
registered. Actually, the first piano rag to be copyrighted was by a
white musician, William Krell, and was titled Mississippi Rag (Janu-
ary 25, 1897). Not until December of 1897 was the first rag by a
Negro composer published; that was, as previously noted, Tom Tur-
pin's Harlem Rag.
If one took the date of copyright or ot publication as the criterion,
then precedence in the ragtime field would go to a white musician
named Ben R. Harney, from Middlesboro, Kentucky (b. 1871), whose
celebrated hit tune, "You've Been a Good Old Wagon but You've
Done Broke Down," was published in Louisville in January, 1895. The
following year it was brought out by Witmark in New York. This
was a song, not a piano rag, but, in the words of Blesh and Janis,4 "the
piano accompaniment and the concluding instrumental 'dance' section
are bona fide, if elementary, ragtime. . . . These facts establish Har-
ney's unassailable priority as a pioneer of printed ragtime— if one dis-
regards a mere matter of nomenclature or tiding—and amply explain
* Blesh and Janis, op. cit^ p. 95.
THE RISE OF RAGTIME 445
his own staunch conviction that he 'originated ragtime/ " Actually,
Harney was a writer of ragtime songs rather than of piano rags. An-
other famous early ragtime hit of his was Mr. Johnson (Turn Me
Loose), published in 1896.
Ben Harney undoubtedly had a lot to do with popularizing rag-
time. When he appeared in New York in 1896, at the age of twenty-
five, an item in the New York Clipper said: "Ben R. Harney . . .
jumped into immediate favor through the medium of his genuinely
clever plantation Negro imitations and excellent piano playing/* When
Harney published his Rag Time Instructor in 1897, ne called himself
"Original Instructor to the Stage of the Now Popular Rag Time in
Ethiopian Song." Harney certainly did not originate ragtime, but he
was a link in the chain that connected the old-time "Ethiopian busi-
ness" with the folk-rooted novelty called ragtime.
Many other white musicians, nearly all from the South or Middle
West, where they had ample opportunity to hear the true ragtime
Negro playing and to absorb its characteristic traits at first hand, took
a prominent part in the development and diffusion of ragtime. Among
the most notable were George Botsford, Charles H. Hunter, Charles
L. Johnson, Joseph Lamb, and Percy Wenrich. Botsford began with
The Katy Flyer-Cakewalk Two Step in 1899 and ended with the
Boomerang Rag in 1916. Charlie Johnson published about thirty rags,
among them Doc Brown's Cake Walk (1899), Dill Pickles (1906),
Swanee Rag (1912), Blue Goose Rag (1916), and Fun on the Levee
•-Cakewalk (1917). Some of his rags were published under the
name of Raymond Birch. Hunter, a native of Nashville, Tennessee,
almost totally blind from birth, first appeared in print in 1899 witn
Tickled to Death, followed by A Tennessee Tantalizer in 1900, 'Pos-
sum and 'Taters in 1901. Hunter published a few more numbers, but
died of tuberculosis in 1907. Joseph Lamb, a prot6g£ of Joplin in New
York (he was, exceptionally, an Easterner), was the author of Excel-
sior Rag and Ethiopia Rag (both 1909), American Beauty Rag (1913),
Cleopatra Rag (1915), Contentment Rag (1915), and numerous oth-
ers, many of which remain unpublished. Percy Wenrich, born in
Joplin, Missouri, in 1880, and known as "The Joplin Kid," began imi-
tating Negro ragtime at the age of twelve and later attended the Chi-
cago Musical College but preferred— to use the title of one of his
songs- "Wabash Avenue after Dark." He brought out Peaches and
446 I Fulfillment
Cream Rag (1905), Noodles (1906), Sweet Meats Rag (1907), Mem-
phis Rag (1908), Sunflower Rag (1911), and others. He also wrote
many successful songs, among them: "Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet"
(1909) and "When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose"
(1914).
Other ragtime composers who merit at least passing mention are
Eubie Blake (Charleston Rag, c. 1899), Thomas E. Broady (Mandy's
Broadway Stroll, 1898), Robert Hampton (The Do girt Rag, 1913),
Tony Jackson (The Naked Dance, c. 1902), Joe Jordan (Double
Fudge, 1902), Henry Lodge (Temptation Rag, 1909), Arthur Mar-
shall (Ham and—Rag, 1908), Artie Matthews (Pastime Rags, Nos.
1-5, 1913-1920), Paul Pratt (Vanity Rag, 1909), Luckey Roberts
(Junk Man Rag, 1913), J. Russel Robinson (Sapho Rag, 1909; Dyna-
mite Rag, 1910). Other prominent ragtime musicians— Ferdinand "Jelly
Roll" Morton, Thomas "Fats" Waller, and James P. Johnson— will be
discussed later, for their careers run over into the postwar period of
ragtime.
Genuine ragtime music was difficult to play. But around 1900, and
for several years thereafter, almost everybody in the United States
wanted to play it. Harney's Rag Time Instructor proved unsatisfac-
tory as a textbook. A more practical method was needed, and this
came in 1903 when Axel Christensen of Chicago hired a studio and
advertised: "Ragtime Taught in Ten Lessons." Pupils flocked to him,
and encouraged by his success he published in 1904 Christensen's
Instruction Book No. i for Rag-Time Piano Playing, which went into
several revised and enlarged editions. Admitting that "It takes a skill-
ful musician to play ragtime flawlessly," Christensen nevertheless un-
dertook to impart the rudiments and "to teach the rawest beginner
how to play ragtime in twenty lessons" (not ten this time!).
Far different was The School of Ragtime— Six Exercises for Piano,
by Scott Joplin, published by John Stark in 1908. This is not a be-
ginner's school, but a set of ttudes for the advanced student. In his
preface Joplin wrote:
What is scurrilously called ragtime is an invention that is here
to stay. That is now conceded by all classes of musicians. That all
publications masquerading under the name of ragtime are not the
genuine article will be better known when these exercises are studied.
That real ragtime of the higher class is rather difficult to play is a
THE RISE OF RAGTIME
447
painful truth which most pianists have discovered. Syncopations are
no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at "hateful
ragtime" no longer passes for musical culture. To assist the amateur
players in giving the "Joplin Rags" that weird and intoxicating effect
intended by the composer is the object of this work.
Joplin wrote his exercises on three staves, of which the uppermost
is a kind of guide and not to be played. This fundamental document
of classic ragtime, consisting of the exercises and the composer's com-
ments thereon, demands some quotation here. In his note to Exercise
No. i the author writes:
It is evident that, by giving each note its proper time and by
scrupulously observing the ties, you will get the effect. So many are
careless in these respects that we will specify each feature. In this
number, strike the first note and hold it through the time belong-
ing to the second note. The upper staff is not syncopated, and is
not to be played. The perpendicular dotted lines running from the
syncopated note below to the two notes above will show exactly its
duration. Play slowly until you catch the swing, and never play
ragtime fast at any time.5
Slow march tempo (Count Two)
Concerning Exercise No. 3, Joplin made the following comment:
This style is very effective when neatly played. If you have ob-
served the object of the dotted lines they will lead you to a proper
rendering of this number and you will find it interesting:
* Excerpts from The School of Ragtime used by permission of Scott Joplin '$
estate.
448 I Fulfillment
Slow march tempo (Count Two)
The sixth and final exercise is preceded by the following note:
The instructions given, together with the dotted lines, will en-
able you to interpret this variety which has very pleasing effects.
We wish to say here, that the "Joplin ragtime" is destroyed by
careless or imperfect rendering, and very often good players lose
the effect entirely, by playing too fast. They are harmonized with
the supposition that each note will be played as it is written, as it
takes this and also the proper time divisions to complete the sense
intended [since the principle of the dotted lines has been illustrated
in the previous examples, the upper staff is omitted in quoting Exer-
cise No. 6]:
Slow march tempo (Count Two)
THE RISE OF RAGTIME 449
It is significant that Joplin stresses the need of a moderate tempo
for ragtime. "Never play ragtime fast," he tells the student. And
again, ". . . very often good players lose the effect entirely, by play-
ing too fast." This was the classic St. Louis concept of ragtime, as
exemplified by Scott Joplin.
New Orleans and New York
Important as was St. Louis in the rise of ragtime, the contribution
of New Orleans must not be overlooked. That was the original center
of "ragging" street bands and of the ragtime dance bands that ushered
in jazz. It was also a center of ragtime piano, especially in the notori-
ous red-light district of "Storyville," a section of the city set aside
for "sporting" purposes. The leading New Orleans ragtime pianists
were Antony Jackson (1876-1921) and Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton
(1885-1941), both of whom later went to Chicago. Morton's major
role in the history of jazz will receive attention in a later chapter.
Meanwhile our main concern will be with his piano rags. But first a
few words about Tony Jackson.
Tony Jackson was a singer as well as a pianist, and the "composer"
of several song hits, though he could not read music. His "Pretty
Baby" (in collaboration with Egbert Van Alstyne) was a big hit in
1918. Among other melodies are "Don't Leave Me in the Ice and
Snow" and "Miss Samantha Johnson's Wedding Day." As a ragtime
player and improviser he is recalled as a fabulous performer by old-
timers, but none of his rags was ever published. When queried about
this, Jackson is said to have replied that he would burn them before
he would give them away for five dollars apiece. The men who made
money out of ragtime were not always its genuine creators.
During eight weeks in 1938, Jelly Roll Morton recorded for the
Library of Congress, on 116 record sides, the story of his life, with
musical illustrations at the piano. Here is a large part of the saga of
ragtime, blues, and jazz, requiring the addition of many scholarly
footnotes on points of historical fact, but presenting, with vivid and
authentic details that otherwise would be lost to history, the back-
ground and genesis of a people's music. In Morton's recordings we
can follow the transformation of an old French quadrille into the
famous Tiger Rag, and observe the metamorphosis, of Maple Leaf Rag
450 | Fulfillment
into the hot, "stomping" style of New Orleans ragtime, of which
Jelly Roll was the great piano exponent.
Morton did not begin to have his piano rags published until 1918,
but many of them were written much earlier. The celebrated King
Porter Stomp, for instance, dates from 1906. Other piano rags by
Morton include Frog-i-more Rag, The Pearls, Kansas City Stomps,
Shreveport Stomps, Midnight Mama, Chicago Breakdown, Black Bot-
tom Stomp, Ham and Eggs, Bugaboo, Mister Joe, Crazy Chord Rag,
Buddy Carter's Rag, The Perfect Rag (some unpublished). Through
the many recordings that Jelly Roll Morton made, we can appreciate
both the individual brilliancy of his style and the development of the
typical New Orleans uhot" idiom.
With James P. Johnson (b. 1894) and Thomas "Fats" Waller, the
scene shifts to New York. Johnson received lessons in harmony and
counterpoint from a "long hair" professor and has worked ambitiously
at compositions in the larger forms, such as the Jasmine (Jazz-o-Mine)
Concerto for piano and orchestra and the Harlem Symphony, in four
movements (1932), which includes a syncopated passacaglia on the
hymn tune "I Want Jesus to Walk with Me." Looking upon Scott
Joplin as a great forerunner, Johnson has endeavored to continue the
tradition of classic ragtime with such piano pieces as Caprice Rag
(1914), Harlem Strut (1917), Carolina Shout (1925), and many others.
Mention should also be made of his syncopated Eccentricity Waltz
(1926).
Thomas "Fats" Waller (1904-1943), a Negro born in New York,
was the son of a pastor; his mother, who was musical, provided him
with a high-class musical training under Carl Bohm and Leopold Go-
dowsky. But he took to ragtime as to his natural element, composing
his first rag at the age of fifteen. A man of huge bulk, irrepressible
humor, and prodigious energy, he turned out over four hundred com-
positions in his relatively brief lifetime. In addition to his popular songs
and scores for Broadway shows (Keep Shuffling Hot Chocolates, Early
to Bed), Waller composed many piano rags, among them: Handful of
Keys, Smashing Thirds, Fractious Fingering, Bach Up to Me, and
Black Raspberry Jam.
The heyday of ragtime was from about 1897 to '910' ^ was *n
1897 that Kerry Mills, white composer of sentimental songs, brought
out, in an inspired moment, his stirring and immensely popular rag-
time tune, At a Georgia Camp Meeting, based on the Civil War song
THE RISE OF RAGTIME 451
"Our Boys Will Shine Tonight." Contrary to a popular notion, Irving
Berlin's much-publicized Alexander's Ragtime Band (1911) did not
usher in the great age of ragtime. By that time ragtime was on the
way out. Berlin's tune caught the public fancy and gave a fillip to the
waning vogue of ragtime. But overexploitation by commercial inter-
ests, the high-pressure promotion of pseudo ragtime, and the mechan-
ical repetition of routine formulas, soon brought about the decline
of ragtime as a vital form of American music.
That this decline was under the circumstances inevitable may now
be clearly perceived. What may also be now perceived and proclaimed
is that ragtime, in its most authentic manifestations, as played and as
written by both Negro and white musicians who were closest to its
traditional origins, with its spurious elements sifted out by time and
critical appraisal, remains as a permanent, important, and original con-
tribution to America's music.
chapter twenty-two
Singin' the blues
Got de blues, but too dam' mean to cry.
(TRADITIONAL.)
Ihe spirituals are the manifestation of Afro-American folk music in
choral singing. The blues are the manifestation of Afro- American folk
music in solo singing. When "a lonely Negro man plowing out in
some hot, silent river bottom," raised his voice in a wailing "cornfield
holler," he was singing the birth of the blues.1 When a roustabout rest-
ing on the levee sang,
Gwine down de river befo' long,
Gwine down de river befo' long,
Gwine down de river befo' long,
as if strengthening his lazy resolve by reiteration, he was singing the
birth of the blues, with its three-line, twelve-bar pattern.
The three-line stanza seemed to develop naturally by repetition.
Since the singer was giving relief to his feelings— of lonesomeness, or
longing, or resentment, or sorrow— there was consolation in repeating
the sentiment that he wanted to express. He began by telling what
was on his mind, repeated it once for emphasis, and finished it off
with a second repetition for good measure. This pattern was certainly
no strain upon the singer's powers of improvisation. When the latter
sought more scope, a variation in the third line resulted:
I've never seen such real hard times before
I've never seen such real hard times before
The wolf keeps walkin' all 'round my door.
1 See John and Alan Lomaz, American Ballads and Folk Songs, p. 191.
452
SINGIN' THE BLUES 453
This three-line stanza, consisting of statement, repetition, and "re-
sponse," is the classic verse form of the blues. There are other pat-
terns, for the blues are not stereotyped; but the above may be re-
garded as the norm.
Within their compact form the blues conveyed a complete mood
and situation:
Railroad blues
I'm gonna lay my head on some lonesome railroad line
I'm gonna lay my head on some lonesome railroad line
An1 let that two-nineteen train pacify my min*.
Often the verses of the blues, like those of the spirituals, were made
up of current tag lines strung together in the moment of improvisa-
tion.
Although most blues have the burden of lament associated with
the expression "feeling blue," they have an undertone of humor, not
so much stressed as implied, that gives them a character utterly differ-
ent from that of the ordinary sentimental song. Indeed, they are not
sentimental at all, but combine realism and fantasy in a straightforward
projection of mood and feeling.
The origin of the blues is lost in obscurity. Conjecturally, we can
say that they developed concurrently with the rest of Afro-American
folk song in the South of the United States. By 1870 they were prob-
ably widespread throughout that region, though assuredly not known
by the name of "blues" until considerably later,
Besides being a type of folk song in their own right, and later a
form of American popular music, the blues were a means of effecting
the transition of Afro-American "hot" music from the vocal to the
instrumental realm through the medium of piano blues and the jazz
band. The blues are therefore of far-reaching significance in the de-
velopment of American music.
The musical structure of the blues
Abbe Niles was unquestionably right when he remarked that "the
blues architecture is admirably adapted to impromptu song and versifi-
cation alike"— except that the term "architecture" is a bit pretentious
for folk music. Since we have already seen something of the versifica-
454 I Fulfillment
tion, let us now glance at the musical structure of the blues. First, as
regards harmony: the harmonic scheme of the blues is merely a foun-
dation upon which the melodic structure rests, its function is impor-
tant—for without it the whole structure would collapse—but it does not
constitute the creative element in the blues. It is like the form of the
sonnet in poetry, providing a definite framework, capable of being
varied within limits but needing the skill and inspiration of the poet
to result in something creative. Keats and Hunt could not have impro-
vised sonnets on the spur of the moment unless they had been thor-
oughly familiar with the sonnet as a traditional form.
To be suited to "impromptu" song, a harmonic scheme must be
simple and stable, and at the same time provide scope for sufficient
variation to avoid absolute sameness. The harmonic scheme of the
blues fulfills these conditions. Normally only three chords are used:
tonic, subdominant, and dominant seventh. The usual progression con-
sists of the common chord of the tonic, the same on the subdominant,
the chord of the dominant seventh, and back to the tonic chord. There
are several variants, such as the introduction of the dominant seventh
at the beginning, but essentially the harmonic foundation is "solid"
enough to offer a firm base for the melodic inspiration of the singer
or instrumentalist.
The usual structure of the blues consists of a twelve-bar pattern.
Each line of the verse corresponds to four measures of the music. To
express it in another way, there are two complete melodic statements
(corresponding to the verse statement and its repetition), each ending
on the tonic (or the third or fifth of the tonic chord), followed by the
melodic "response" (corresponding to the third line of the verse),
which also ends on the tonic. Here is an example in the widely diffused
folk blues, "Joe Turner": 2
J iJ J J I[T J» J Jl^ Ij, J. lj .gHJF
Dey tell me Joe Tur-ner's come and goneL. Dey tell me Joe
&
lur-ner's come and gone — Got my man an' gone —
•From A Treasury of the Blues, p. 12. Copyright 1926, 1929, by W. C Handy
and Edward Abbe Niles. Published by Charles Boni, New York. Used by per-
mission of the copyright owners.
SINGIN THE BLUES 455
It will be noticed that there is a considerable gap between the end
of one melodic phrase and the beginning of the next. Each statement
actually occupies three rather than four measures. Abbe Niles has ably
described the significance of this time interval in the melodic structure
of the blues:
This is typical, and important. It affords to the improviser, for
one thing, a space in which his next idea may go through its period
of gestation,— and this is important to him. But to us it is of far
greater interest that, assuming he isn't compelled to concentrate on
what is to follow, he can utilize this space, not as a hold, but as a
playground in which his voice or instrument may be allowed to
wander in such fantastic musical paths as he pleases, returning (not
necessarily but usually) to the keynote, third, or fifth, yet again
before vacation is over. Regularly in folk-blues the last syllable of
each line thus coincides, not only with the keynote or another ele-
ment of the tonic major triad, but with the first beat, third bar, of
its corresponding four bars of music, leaving seven quick beats or
three slow ones (according to the time-signature) before the melody
proper resumes its motion.8
This pattern can be verified by reference to the melody of "Joe
Turner1' quoted above. The space 'between the end of one melodic
statement and the beginning of the next was often filled in with a
simple ejaculation sung on a few interpolated notes, such as ohy Lawdy!
As we have previously noticed, the interpolation of a brief ejaculatory
refrain after each line is a common trait of Negro folk song, being fre-
quently found both in spirituals and work songs. In the blues, the in-
terpolated notes, whether sung or played instrumentally, came to be
known as the "break" or the "jazz"; but this was after the blues had
passed their archaic or folk stage. All these folk-born forms— blues,
ragtime, jazz— existed in practice long before they were tagged with
a name, classified, imitated, and exploited.
The "break" might be very simple or very elaborate, according to
the impulse and skill of the singer or player. From the very beginning
of our chronicle of America's music we have been familiar— recall the
early folk psalmody of New England— with the traditional practice of
melodic ornamentation. Handy says that as a child he heard Negro
congregations singing "baptism' " and "death-and-burial" songs with
*Ibid., p. 14. From the introductory text by Abbe Niles.
456 I Fulfillment
all the voices weaving their own melodic threads around the notes of
the tune. He transcribed one of these melodic improvisations, as re-
called by him: *
As sung
storm
banks I
stand
m
m
This is interesting (though much more so would be the combination
of many voices in this improvised embellishment); but Niles, who
quotes this transcription, is mistaken when he writes that these hymns,
in their ornamented versions, were "sung as they never were except
by Negroes." The Negroes undoubtedly had their peculiar intonation,
rhythm, and intervals; but the singing of tunes with improvised
melodic embellishments, and the filling-in of "gaps'* or holds with
interpolated notes, was a firmly established practice in Anglo-Ameri-
can folk music long before the development of the Negro spirituals
and the blues. The manner of jazz improvisation may be unique, but
the principle has a long tradition in both the folk and the art music
of Europe.
Many of the folk blues use the pentatonic scale (it will be found
in "Joe Turner," above, with the addition of a minor third), but this
scale, so widespread in folk music, is not what gives to the blues their
peculiar melodic quality. The characteristic trait is rather the flatting
of the third and seventh degrees of the diatonic scale. These are the
so-called "blue notes" that have been of such significance in modern
* Ibid^ p. 23. Arranged by W. C Handy. Copyright 1916 by W. C Handy
Used by permission.
SINGIN THE BLUES 457
music. Frequently, in singing the blues, a Negro will return to the
third of the tonic chord; and as Niles remarks, this is "a fact of the first
importance to the blues because of the tendency of the untrained
Negro voice when singing the latter tone at an important point, to
worry if, slurring or wavering between flat and natural."5 Strictly
speaking, therefore, it is not the flatted third as such, but rather this
ambivalent, this worried or slurred tone, that constitutes the true
"blue note."
The blues scale (diatonic, with microtonally flatted third and sev-
enth) lies at the very core of Afro- American folk song, and its in-
fluence has permeated large sectors of American music, both in the
popular and in the fine-art idioms. To demonstrate the widespread use
of the blues tetrachord in every type of Afro-American vocal expres-
sion, Winthrop Sargeant cites the "chanting sermon" of a Negro
preacher in Alabama who in his declamation employed just two notes:
a tonic, and the "blue" third above it.6 And the congregation would
echo him in similar fashion.
All the evidence indicates that the blues scale, and the blues in-
tonation that goes with it, are an original and unique contribution
of the Negro race to America's music.
The primitive or archaic blues, as we have remarked, were prob-
ably sung at first without accompaniment. But as the possession of
musical instruments became more common among the Negroes, in-
strumental accompaniments, usually on the banjo or the guitar, later
on the piano, were added. This instrumental participation was of im-
mense importance in the development of the blues and their transition
5nto jazz. The incorporation of the blues scale, blues harmony, and
melodic improvisation, into the idiom of instrumental music, from
the piano to the emergent jazz band, was an epoch-making develop-
ment in the history of American music. The accompanying instru-
ment, or instruments— for there might be several— not only provided
the basic harmony but imitated, and in a manner competed with, the
voice in melodic improvisation. The solo voice is the "leader"; the
instruments "follow the leader" but also weave semi-independent
melodic lines, while at the same time filling in the harmony and mark-
ing the beat of the rhythm. When the voice ceases at the end of a
melodic statement (i.e., a line of the verse), it is "answered" by the
• Ibid., p. 14.
•Sargeant, Jazz: Hot and Hybrid, p. 183.
458 | Fulfillment
instruments, which then find themselves "on their own," free to as-
sert their individuality boldly before the voice assumes its ascendancy
again in the next vocal statement. And at the end, when the voice has
finished with its third line, it is the instruments that have the final say.
Since each vocal statement is answered by an instrumental statement,
there is a perfect antiphonal pattern that corresponds to a fundamental
device of Afro-American music.
Since the instruments, in addition to "answering" the voice, also
weave their melodic lines along with it, we get the element of po-
lyphony in the blues, with a more or less complex contrapuntal tex-
ture, depending on the number of instruments involved. And since
the singer will sometimes follow a melodic line independent of the
underlying harmony, we also get the element of poly tonality (or more
accurately, bitonality), that is, the simultaneous use of two or more
keys. Thus the vocal and instrumental blues, within their deceptively
simple framework, are capable of considerable complexity and variety.
It is important to stress the interplay between the vocal and instru-
mental elements in the blues. As we shall see later, jazz developed
largely from the attempt to render the effects of Afro-American vocal
intonation on modern musical instruments. When, toward the end of
the nineteenth century, the piano began to be widely used for accom-
panying the blues, Negro pianists employed the so-called "blues tone-
cluster," played by simultaneously sounding the flat and natural keys
of the third and seventh, as follows:
These piano "blue notes" were the keyboard equivalent of the
"slurred" or microtonal pitch used in singing.
To summarize: the blues developed originally as a form of Afro-
American folk song, probably took shape gradually after the Civil
War, were widely sung throughout the rural South in the final decades
of the nineteenth century, and soon emerged as a (normally) twelve-
bar song form with instrumental accompaniment, basically antiphonal
in structure. Taken up by the Negro musicians who converged on
the cities of the South and Middle West in the 18908 in search of
employment, legitimate or otherwise, the urbanized blues branched off
from the archaic or folk blues (which continued on their own course)
and took a line of development that in turn branched off into two
SINGIN' THE BLUES 459
distinct channels: the blues as popular song and the blues as jazz. Both
of these currents eventually converged in the productions of tin-pan
alley, where the blues became less blue and the jazz less hot.
Composer of "St. Louis Blues"
Many musicians and many singers, some anonymous, some legend-
ary, some obscure, some famous, many now dead, some still living,
were responsible for the transition of the blues from a folk song of
one region and one group to a type of song known throughout the
land, widely imitated, often changed, frequently distorted, occasion-
ally cheapened, but generally asserting its essential integrity and in-
dividuality as a musical form and as a nonsentimental expression of
feeling. Among these musicians, there is one whose name has been
particularly associated with the rise of the blues as a type of popular
music: W. C. Handy, known above all as the composer of "St. Louis
Blues."
William Christopher Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, on
November 16, 1873* His father, a Methodist preacher, was strongly
opposed to the boy's musical inclinations. "Son," he said one time, *Td
rather follow you to the graveyard than to hear you had become a
musician." Nevertheless, young Handy managed to acquire the rudi-
ments of music in school— and out of it also, though scarcely in an
orthodox fashion. In his own words:
We Handy's Hill kids made rhythm by scraping a twenty-
penny nail across the teeth of the jawbone of a horse that had died
in the woods near by. By drawing a broom handle across our first
finger lying on a table we imitated the bass. We sang through fine-
tooth, combs. With the thumb of the right hand interlocked with
the little finger of the left, we placed the thumb of the left hand
under our chin and made rhythmic sounds by rattling our teeth. We
would put the thumb of our right hand on our goozle or Adam's
apple, yelling at the same tune:
Went down the river,
Couldn't get across,
Paid five dollars for an old gray horse.
. . . For drums we wore out our mother's tin pans and milk pails*
singing:
460 I Fulfillment
Cornstalk fiddle and shoestring bow
Broke in the middle, jumped up Joe.T
Then there was the eighty-year-old fiddler called Uncle Whit
Walker, who not only fiddled but sang and "stomped" at the same
time. "Uncle Whit could stomp the left heel and the right forefoot
and alternate this with the right heel and the left forefoot, making
four beats to the bar. That was real stomping." And it was real musi-
cal training for young Handy.
Later, having learned to play an old-fashioned rotary-valve cornet,
Handy took to the road with a minstrel show. In 1903 he formed his
own dance band in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and in 1905 transferred his
activities to Memphis, where he formed a new band. In the 1909 cam-
paign for mayor of Memphis, Handy's Band was hired by the sup-
porters of a candidate named E. H. Crump. Handy set out to write a
campaign song that would not only help elect Mr. Crump but also
provide a hit tune for his own band. The result was a piece originally
called "Mister Crump," but published three years later as "Memphis
Blues." Regarding this composition, Handy wrote in his autobiog-
raphy:
The melody of Mister Crump was mine throughout. On the other
hand, the twelve-bar, three-line form of the first and last strains, with
its three-chord basic harmonic structure (tonic, subdominant, domi-
nant seventh) was that already used by Negro roustabouts, honky-
tonk piano players, wanderers and others of their underprivileged
but undaunted class from Missouri to the Gulf, and had become a
common medium through which any such individual might express
his personal feelings in a sort of musical soliloquy.8
Handy, therefore, did not claim to have originated the blues, but
merely to have developed and exploited the vein of Negro folk music
with which he had become familiar in his boyhood and youth. The
lyrics he mostly pieced together from snatches of folk song that he
picked up here and there.
In the "Memphis Blues," Handy introduced a rhythmic figure in
the bass, which is that of the habanera or tango rhythm, widely dif-
T Handy, Father of the Bluer, p. 15.
p. 99.
SINGIN' THE BLUES 461
fused in the music of the Caribbean and. the east coast of South
America: J. J J J . He called it the "tangana" rhythm. A variant of
this pattern, by the way, produces the rhythm of the once-popular
American dance called the Charleston ( J. J* J). Handy also intro-
duced the tangana rhythm into his famous "St. Louis Blues," com-
posed in 1914. He used it in the instrumental introduction and in part
of the accompaniment (middle strain).
Handy used both three- and four-line verses in "St. Louis Blues."
The first two strains consist of the typical three-line verse of the folk
blues, so that the first part is made up of two twelve-bar strains. But
the second part consists of a four-line unit, so that we get the sixteen-
bar strain that is standard for most American popular songs. This pro-
cedure of using the sixteen-bar strain in the blues was continued as a
regular practice by most of the commercial composers who turned out
the pseudo blues of tin-pan alley.
Handy himself stood about midway between the tradition of
Negro folk music and that of tin-pan alley. He claimed that in his
blues he "aimed to use all that is characteristic of the Negro from
Africa to Alabama." Nevertheless, he also confesses that he took up
with the "low forms" of Negro folk music hesitantly and approached
them "with a certain fear and trembling" because they were not con-
sidered respectable and they did not come from books, which were the
symbol and source of education. So Handy was to a certain extent
another victim of the genteel tradition, which functions on many
levels. Whatever strength he has as a musician, he owes entirely to
the tradition of Negro folk music, some of which he absorbed in spite
of himself.
From Memphis, Handy moved to Chicago and later to New York,
where he formed his own music publishing company. He eventually
became blind, but continued to carry on courageously with his work.
In addition to those already mentioned, Handy's published blues in-
clude "Joe Turner Blues" (1915), "The Hesitating Blues" (1915),
"John Henry Blues" (1922), and "Blue Gummed Blues" (1926). In
spite of the much-publicized title "Fathei of the Blues," W. C. Handy
did not create the blues any more than Ben Harney created ragtime.
But he was indubitably a pioneer of the composed blues as a type of
American popular song.
462 I Fulfillment
The following blues cadences and connecting passages (examples
furnished by W. C. Handy ') will serve to demonstrate the harmonic
style as developed in the popular idiom:
=&:
j
i
y u j
Numerous white composers began to cultivate the blues as a
type of popular song, among them Cliff Hess ("Homesickness Blues,"
1916), Jerome Kern ("Left- All- Alone- Again Blues," 1920), Irving
Berlin ("School-House Blues," 1921), and George Gershwin ("The
Half of It, Dearie, Blues," 1924). The use of the blues idiom in the
symphonic music of Gershwin and other composers of "serious" music
will be discussed in the chapter titled "The Americanists." It is time
now to return to the folk roots of the blues and to say something about
those who in a sense were and are the real creators of the blues: the
Negro singers and players through whose interpretations are heard
the deep ancestral strains of this traditional song, containing the quint-
essence of the Afro- American spirit in music.
The great blues singers
Listening to recordings of the great blues singers is the only way
that one can learn to know the real spirit and texture of these unique
songs. As a word of caution, it should be remarked that many of the
blues do not conform to the three-line twelve-bar pattern that was de-
•From A Treasury of the Bkt*s, p. 21.
SINGIN* THE BLUES 463
scribed as the norm. Folk music is not standardized, and form in the
sense of pattern is not the prime factor in the blues. The intonation,
the rhythm, the harmonic progression and melodic inflection, the style
and the spirit: these are what make the blues be really the blues. And
these qualities have to be embodied in a real blues singer before they
come alive in all their power and authenticity.
We began this chapter by saying that the spirituals were the mani-
festation of Afro-American folk music in choral singing, and the
blues in solo singing. This is true in the main, but on occasion a man
or a woman alone might sing a spiritual for his or her own solace,
perhaps even humming or chanting it without words; and very likely
it was out of this kind of lonesome singing, just for consolation, just
for the pleasure and beauty of the music, that the blues were born. An
example of Negro song with guitar accompaniment, chanted without
words, in which the spiritual blends into the blues, is heard in the
haunting singing and playing of "Blind Willie" Johnson in "Dark Was
the Night." To hear this beautiful and somber chant is to feel the
folk roots of the blues entwined very deeply indeed in the heart of
the Negro race.
Another example of the organic relationship between the spiritual
and the blues is to be found in "Blind Willie" Johnson's singing of
"Lord, I Just Can't Keep From Crying," with guitar accompaniment
and female "helpers" (women's voices as background). This is, strictly
speaking, a spiritual, but its mood of lament is very close to the origin
of the blues. Furthermore, this is an extraordinary number that should
be heard by anyone interested in either the spirituals or the blues. The
rhythm of the guitar, the husky, moving quality of Blind Willie's
voke, and the graceful weaving of the women's voices in the back-
ground, create an unforgettable impression.
The true minstrels of American music were not those of the stage,
but those itinerant Negro singers and players, sometimes blind like the
bards of old and led by a boy, who wandered through the Southland,
singing the songs learned in their childhood and others that came from
later and more bitter experience of life, like the blues that were so
often a lament for betrayal in love:
Ain't got no mama now, ain't got no mama now.
She told me late las' night, you don* need no mama no how.
464 J Fulfillment
"Blind Lemon" Jefferson sings this "Black Snake Moan" (the snake is
an age-old sexual symbol) with guitar accompaniment and some word-
less chanting in between the verses.
With Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (1886-1939) we come to the greatest
personality in blues singing. She was in show business all her life, and
at fifteen was already married and traveling with her husband's min-
strel troupe. Ma Rainey's rich and powerful voice, and the classic line
of her blues singing, may be heard in "Traveling Blues," accompanied
by her own tub, jug, and washboard band (Folkways Records, Album
FP 59). Other fine recordings made by Ma Rainey include "Counting
the Blues," "Jelly Bean Blues," "Levee Camp Moan," "Moonshine
Blues," "Stack O'Lee Blues," and "Slow Driving Moan." Here it will
be appropriate to quote Rudi Blesh's fine appreciation of Ma Rainey's
qualities as a blues singer:
Ma Rainey's singing, monumental and simple, is by no means
primitive. It is extremely conscious in its use of her full expressive
means, definitely classic in purity of line and its rigid avoidance of
the decorative. . . . Rainey's voice is somber, but never harsh, and
its sad and mellow richness strikes to the heart. Her vibrato, slow,
controlled and broad, is one of the important and characteristic ele-
ments in her tone production, and her tones are projected by sheer
power with an organlike fullness and ease. The deepest and most
genuine feeling fills her every note and phrase with gusty humor
or with an elegiac and sometimes almost gentle sadness.10
Bessie Smith (d. 1937) continued the tradition of Ma Rainey and
became known as "Empress of the Blues." Before succumbing to com-
mercialism in her later years, she produced many excellent recordings
of the blues, of which one of the most beautiful and best-known is
her singing of "Careless Love," an Anglo-American folk song made
over into a blues. Other notable recordings are "You've Been a Good
Ole Wagon," "Empty Bed Blues," "Spider Man's Blues," "Poor Man's
Blues," "Back Water Blues," "Mean Old Bed Bug Blues," and "A
Good Man is Hard to Find."
An interesting combination of instruments— guitar, piano, and tuba
—accompanies the singing of Gertrude Perkins in "No Easy Rider
Blues," recorded in New York in 1928 but couched in traditional folk
style, with interpolated humming and chancing, and a generally un-
"Blesh, Sbmmg Trumpets, p. 114.
SINGIN* THE BLUES 465
sophisticated delivery. This may be compared with Bessie Smith's
earlier recording of "Yellow Dog Blues," which also deals with the
familiar theme of the "easy rider1' (lover).
One of the most picaresque, and also most gifted, figures in the
field of American Negro folk music was Huddie Leadbetter (1885-
1949), more familiarly known as "Leadbelly." He was born in Louisi-
ana, acquired a vast repertoire of folk songs that he never forgot, and
became a masterly performer on the twelve-string guitar, as well as a
folk singer of extraordinary qualities.
As a youth, Leadbelly was "lead man" for Blind Lemon Jefferson
and accompanied the latter on many of his wanderings through the
South, learning from him much of the authentic blues tradition. As a
recollection of those days, Leadbelly used to sing a number that he
called "Blind Lemon Blues."
Along with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, Bertha "Chippie" Hill
must be mentioned as one of the great blues singers. Her recordings
of "How Long Blues" (close to the spiritual tradition), "Careless
Love," and "Trouble in Mind," are masterpieces in the classic blues
style. In her original recording of "Trouble in Mind" she is accompa-
nied by Louis Armstrong on the trumpet and Richard M. Jones on the
piano (recorded in 1926; another recording was made in 1946 with
Lee Collins, trumpet; Lovie Austin, piano; John Lindsay, bass; and
"Baby" Dodds, drums). The lyrical quality of Armstrong's trumpet
in the earlier recording is a thing of wondrous beauty, and the blend-
ing of voice, piano, and trumpet in warm, vibrant tone colors is a joy
to hear.
The same instrumental combination— Armstrong on trumpet and
Jones on piano— accompanies Nolan Welsh's singing of "Bridwell
[recte Bridewell] Blues," in a recording also made in 1926. But the
term "accompaniment" is misleading in connection with such a per-
formance. After each vocal statement, Armstrong's eloquent trumpet
answers with lyrical phrases that not merely match but surpass the
expressive power of the voice, especially in rhythmic flexibility and
variety of tone. This is a perfect example of the antiphonal form of
the blues at its best.
Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton was a blues singer of the very first
order as well as a truly creative figure of instrumental jazz. The lyrical
quality of his style Is demonstrated in such recordings as "Winin' Boy"
and "Mamie's Blues," in both of which he accompanies himself on the
466 I Fulfillment
piano (a partial scoring of the latter number will be found in the ap-
pendix of Blesh's Shining Trumpets, Example 24, and will repay care-
ful study). In the "shouting" type of blues he performs effectively in
"Michigan Water Blues" and "Doctor Jazz." Transposition of the blues
from vocal to instrumental performance is exemplified in the recording
of "Mr. Jelly Lord" and "Wolverine Blues," which Jelly Roll made
together with Johnny Dodds on clarinet and "Baby" Dodds on drums.
This recording brings us straight into the heart of jazz. The clarinet
takes the place of the voice. It sings.
The merging of ragtime and blues in piano solo may be observed
in Jelly Roll Morton's playing of "Tom Cat Blues," recorded in 1924
(Folkways Jazz Anthology, vol. 9), which is in the New Orleans
style of "hot" piano that Morton himself did more than anyone else
to develop and perpetuate.
Piano blues and "boogiewoogie"
The "boogiewoogie" school of piano blues playing was launched
by Jimmy Yancey (1898-1951), whose wife, "Mama" Yancey was
also a remarkable blues singer (cf. the recordings of "Pallet on the
Floor" and "How Long Blues" made by Mama and Jimmy Yancey).
Boogiewoogie transfers to the piano the twelve-bar pattern of the
blues with its basic harmonic structure and is characterized by a per-
sistent percussive rhythmic figure in the left hand, which continues
unchanged while the right hand embroiders its own rhythmic-
melodic configurations. The resulting cross-rhythms are complex
and exciting. The typical Yancey bass, said to have been derived from
locomotive rhythms, has a powerful drive and moves ahead with
gathering momentum.
Among the recorded piano blues of Jimmy Yancey are "The
Fives or Five O'Clock Blues" (also recorded as "Yancey Stomp"),
"Midnight Stomp" (fast blues), and "How Long Blues." This last is a
slow blues in which the perfection of Yancey's art can be fully appre-
ciated; it is full of the genuine mood of the blues.
Continuators of the boogiewoogie style were Clarence "Pine
Top" Smith (1900-1928), who first popularized the term "boogie-
woogie"; and Meade Lux Lewis (b. 1905). Pine Top Smith, whose
checkered career ended when he was shot by a stray bullet during a
brawl in a night club— an institution where he spent most of his wak-
SINGIN' THE BLUES 467
ing hours—composed "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," "Pine Top's
Blues/1 "Now I Ain't Got Nothin' At All," and "Jump Steady Blues."
Meade Lux Lewis's masterpiece is "Honky-Tonk Train Blues," note-
worthy for its chromatic harmonies and compelling cross-rhythms.
The transformation of the vocal blues into the "hot" idiom of
boogiewoogie piano may be further demonstrated in the playing of
another Yancey follower, Albert Ammons (1903-1949), whose solo
version of the "St. Louis Blues," executed with tremendous virtuosity,
is an impressive example of this trend.
James P. Johnson, mentioned in the chapter on ragtime, is also an
outstanding performer and composer of blues for the piano. His
"Snowy Morning Blues," dating from 1927 (recorded in 1943 f°r
Folkways Records), reveals him as a masterly continuator of the
classic blues tradition. One should also recall his fine accompaniments
for various blues singers, especially for Bessie Smith in "Back Water
Blues."
The evolution of the blues has been traced from the primitive
solo chant, sung alone or with guitar, to the blues with instrumental
jazz accompaniment, or played by a jazz ensemble without singing,
and finally to the boogiewoogie blues for piano solo. None of these
manifestations or transformations of the basic form known as "blues"
is, of course, a substitute for any other. The archaic folk blues are as
beautiful and powerful today as they ever were. The blues of classic
New Orleans jazz cannot be bettered. The interpretations of the great
blues singers of the past remain as models of style and expression.
The blues will go on changing and evolving and engendering new
forms of American music. They have had, and will continue to have,
their influence upon the an music as well as the popular music of the
United States, and of other countries also.
chapter twenty-Mree
The growth of jazz
Jazz has contributed an enduring value to America in the sense that it has
expressed ourselves.
GEORGE GERSHWIN, IN REVOLT IN THE ARTS.
In 1917 the now defunct but then widely read Literary Digest ob-
served that "a strange word has gained widespread use in the ranks
of our producers of popular music. It is 'jazz/ used mainly as an
adjective descriptive of a band." That is rather vague, but at least it
offers testimony that the term "jazz" was established as a musical
term in the United States before the end of World War I. No one
knew just where the word came from, and hardly anybody knew
exactly what it meant, except that it had something to do with dance
bands. Today we know considerably more about jazz, but we are still
somewhat uncertain as to the origin of the word itself.
There are many theories concerning the etymology of the word
"jazz." Most of them are fanciful, especially those that allege a deriva-
tion from the name of some Negro musician, such as Jess, or Chaz
(abbreviated from Charles). More plausible is the derivation from the
Negro patois of I ouisiana, though whether the root is of French or
African origin remains in doubt. One theory asserts that the root is in
the French verb jaser, meaning to babble or cackle; another affirms
that such forms as jas, jass, jazz, and jasz originated in an African dia-
lect. The first appearance of the word "jass" (as it was then spelled)
to designate a certain type of music, appears to have been in 1915,
when a band from New Orleans was billed at Lamb's Caf6 in Chicago
as "Brown's Dixieland Jass Band." But according to the testimony of
Lafcadio Hearn, the word was known much earlier in New Orleans,
and certainly the music that came to be called jazz existed for sev-
eral decades before the Chicago episode.1
1 According to Charles Edward Smith, author of The Jazz Record Book (p.
4), "Thi5 word jazz is a corruptioi of the Elizabethan jass which had survived
in the vernacular of bawdy-houses,
468
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 469
New Orleans was the birthplace of jazz music. In our chapter
titled "The Exotic Periphery" we traced the racial, cultural, and
musical currents that converged and mingled in "The Crescent City,"
where French, Spanish, African, Caribbean, and American influences
created a cultural climate uniquely propitious for the emergence of an
urban folk music such as jazz. Many strands went into the making
of jazz. There were the traditional patterns and impulses of native
African music, remote but potent in survival (see Chapter 4). There
was the whole body of Afro-American folk song, the spirituals, the
work songs, the ballads, the blues. There were the blackface minstrel
tunes, which in turn had drawn upon the storehouse of Irish, Scottish,
and British folk melody. Closely related to minstrel music, and form-
ing a principal link with jazz, was ragtime, the syncopated piano
music of the 1890$. Important, too, was the heritage of Creole folk
songs and dance tunes, which gave such a gay and brittle character to
the popular music of New Orleans. It remains to show how these
diverse and apparently heterogeneous elements entered the blood
stream of jazz.
Jazz resulted, essentially, from the Negro's opportunity to obtain,
and to use in his own fashion, the conventional manufactured musi-
cal instruments of European origin, such as the trumpet or cornet,
the clarinet, the trombone, the snare and bass drums, as well as the
piano. This opportunity occurred because of the special situation of
band music in New Orleans. In the colorful, spectacular, exuberant
life of the city, with its annual Mardi Gras processions, its frequent
parades and celebrations of all kinds, brass bands occupied an impor-
tant place. Brass bands were needed not only for parades and cele-
brations, but also for weddings and funerals, for picnics and excursions,
in short, for every occasion that was either festive or solemn— and often
the solemn was turned into the festive through the music of the march-
ings bands, playing such gay tunes as Gettysburg March, High Society,
and Panama (Robert Goffin has identified the last two as derived from
traditional marches played by village bands in France and Belgium).
In a city abounding with bands, there was no scarcity of musical
instruments. After the Civil War, dispersed Confederate military
bands provided a source of secondhand instruments. These became so
plentiful and cheap that they were within the reach of everyone.
There were many Negro, as well as white, bands in New Orleans
during the nineteenth century. Negro fraternal and benevolent asso-
ciations, and various labor organizations, had their own bands. More
470 | Fulfillment
than a dozen Negro brass bands took part in die mammoth funeral
procession for President Garfield in 1881.
We do not know exactly how these Negro bands played in the
second half of the nineteenth century. That is, we do not know to
what extent they conformed to the conventional standards of the
white bands, or to what extent they made the music "hot" in accord-
ance with their own traditional musical values. In view of the strong
tradition of Afro-American music that existed in New Orleans, and
the freedom of cultural expression that the Negro had long enjoyed
there, it is reasonable to suppose that, in some cases at least, the old
popular tunes were played more or less "hot" by these early Negro
bands. Furthermore, these proletarian street bands were made up of
workers who played in their spare time and who were probably in-
fluenced little or not at all by the trend toward conventional educa-
tion that succeeded in denaturing and distorting the Negro spirituals
after they were "discovered" and arranged by cultivated musicians.
The "hot" qualities that went into the singing of work songs and of
spirituals in their pristine state were carried over into instrumental
music by the Negro bandsmen of New Orleans who were the pre-
cursors of classic jazz, which therefore emerges as an organic growth
from the traditional roots of Afro-American folk music, and as a
natural development from the sociocultural conditions of the city
in which jazz was born.
The "hot" band music that developed through the New Orleans
Negro street bands during this early period, roughly from about
1870 to 1890, has been termed "archaic jazz." It was mostly for street
parades and funerals. The street bands would accompany the funeral
cortege to the cemetery (interment is always aboveground in New
Orleans), playing slow dirges, perhaps an adaptation of some old
hymn or sentimental song. After the interment, on the way back, the
band would begin to play gayer tunes, and the music would soon get
"hot," in some familiar "leaving the cemetery" tune, such as "Oh,
Didn't He Ramble." Meanwhile, there would be a "second line" of
players walking along beside the band. This consisted of children,
fascinated by the music and the shining instruments, whistling or sing-
ing the tunes, and trying to imitate a brass band with all kinds of im-
provised or homemade instruments. In this "second line," absorbing
the elements of "hot" band music, there were assuredly many boys
who grew up to be the makers and leaders of New Orleans jazz.
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 471
When "hot" brass bands began to be used for dancing, the era of
jazz was definitely ushered in. It had been the custom previously, in
Louisiana, to use string orchestras, sometimes with a piano, for danc-
ing indoors, and the music they played was "sweet." When the power-
ful impetus of the street bands, with their contagious "hot" style, was
unleashed on the dance floor, it was the beginning of a revolution in
American popular music. This development took place in the 1 8905.
Pioneers of jazz
The most colorful figure associated with the beginnings of classic
jazz in New Orleans was Charles "Buddy" Bolden (1868-1931), a
barber with his own shop, and publisher of a scandal sheet called The
Cricket. He learned to play the cornet in his spare time, and in the
early 1 890$ formed a band that was in wide demand both for parades
and dances. It was a small band, consisting of from five to seven
pieces. This was the norm for classic New Orleans jazz. It included
cornet, clarinet, valve trombone (alternating with slide trombone, the
latter used for glissandi), guitar, bass, and drums. Later a second
clarinet was added. During the twelve years or more of its existence,
the personnel of Bolden's Band included many of the great pioneers
of hot jazz.
There is a difference of opinion as to the extent of Bolden's musical
training and knowledge. "Bunk" Johnson, who played second cornet
in Bolden's band in 1895-1897, wrote years later: "Buddy could not
read a note, but he surely played a good stiff lead and would have
you in maybe six sharps before you finished, but I could always go
anywhere the King went. We played parades and advertising wagons
and, excuse me for the expression, honky tonks, and together we
made many famous blues." 2 Bolden was called "King" after his skill,
his personality, and his enterprise had given him the ascendancy over
other pioneer trumpet players in New Orleans. Johnson insists on
Bolden's musical illiteracy as a prime factor in the success of his band:
Here is the thing that made King Bolden Band be the first band
that played jazz. It was because it did not Read at all. I could fake
like 500 myself; so you tell them that Bunk and King Bolden's Band
was the first ones that started Jazz in the City or any place else.
2 Letter to Frederic Ramsey, Jr., quoted in Ramsey and Smith's Jazynten<
472 | Fulfillment
A recent historian of jazz, Paul Eduard Miller, while conceding
that Bolden "undoubtedly was one of those rare natural, instinctive
musicians who had a flair for the right jazz phrasing and intonation,"
nevertheless adds that, "judging from the overwhelming consensus of
reports from old-time New Orleans musicians, he was a reasonably
good musician too and not all his playing was sheer spontaneity or
so-called improvisation. His technique too, was good and was acquired
by a natural bent for the medium rather than protracted study, al-
though there is little question that he was given considerable instruc-
tion on the cornet before he approached the zenith of his career as a
jazz virtuoso." 8 The fact remains that collective improvisation and the
remaking or reworking of the traditional New Orleans marches and
dance tunes in "hot" rhythm and intonation, were at the core of the
style developed, though not created (he had precursors in this field)
by King Bolden and his band.
Of course, there were many other bands, active in New Orleans
about the same time, which must share the credit for the growth of
jazz. One of the earliest was The Excelsior Band, led by the clarinetist
T. V. Baquet, which came to include such outstanding "hot" players
as Alphonse Picou (clarinetist), Manuel Perez (cornet), and John Robi-
chaux (bass drum)— note the preponderance of French and Spanish
names. Perez and Robichaux also had bands of their own. The latter's
first band, formed in 1885, was, like Boldeh's, a small hot group,
though later he formed bigger bands. Perez, considered by some to be
the greatest of the pioneer jazz trumpeters, played with the Onward
Brass Band from the 18805, and continued with it during its various
transformations (becoming continually hotter) until 1917.
Associated with The Olympia Band from 1900 to 1912 was another
legendary figure of early jazz, Freddie Keppard (1883-1932), who
first learned to play the violin but switched to cornet and formed his
own band at the age of sixteen. When King Bolden was struck with
insanity in 1909 and had to be committed to an asylum, where he spent
the rest of his life, Keppard became the leading figure of New Orleans
jazz, and his Olympia Band reigned supreme. With such hot players
as Louis "Big Eye" Nelson (clarinet), Sidney Bechet (clarinet), Willy
Santiago (guitar), Zue Robertson (trombone), and King Oliver (cor-
net), this combination was unbeatable. Keppard was one of the first
1 From "Fifty Years of New Orleans Jazz," in Esquire's 194; Jazz Book, p. 7.
Reprinted by permission of Esquire, Inc.
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 473
to spread jazz to other parts of the country, when he toured with his
band from 1912 to 1917, going as far as the Pacific Coast
Many people are undez the impression that jazz originated in the
red-light district of New Orleans, popularly known as "Storyville,"
named after the alderman who initiated the city ordinance to have
this section of the city set aside for organized vice. Storyville flour-
ished from 1887 to 1917, at which time it was abolished owing to pres-
sure from the War and Navy Departments. This period coincided
with the rise of jazz, and it is true that many jazz musicians—pianists,
singers, and some bands— found employment in Storyville, where cash
was plentiful, prejudice rare, and liberty unrestrained. However, our
account should have made it clear that jazz went through its forma-
tive period before the establishment of Storyville, that it was orig-
inally a music of the streets and later the dance floor, and that what
it got from Storyville was the encouragement and support long denied
to it by the more respectable elements of society. Not until 1925 did
the voice of a courageous preacher arise in the land to proclaim that
"Jazz is not necessarily the gateway to hell." And it was many years
before "nice" people were willing to admit that its early associations
did not necessarily make jazz immoral.
Joseph "King" Oliver (1885-1938), who became leader of the
famous Olympia Band in 1916, was one of the numerous New Orleans
jazz musicians who migrated northward after the closing of Story-
ville. He was a great trumpeter and a gifted leader, and his recordings
constitute one of the basic documents of classic jazz. From 1918 to
1920, and again from 1922 to 1928, he led his celebrated Creole Jazz
Band in Chicago, and afterward went to New York. Before taking
up the migrations of the various bands that spread jazz throughout the
United States, it would be well to give an account of the white musi-
cians from New Orleans who popularized the style known as "Dixie-
land jazz."
Rise of "Dixieland jazz"
Dixieland music is jazz played by white musicians in a style closely
approximating that of classic New Orleans jazz as developed by Negro
players. In Dixieland jazz, the white musicians of New Orleans paid
the compliment of imitation to their Negro confreres who had created
this new and original type of American music.
474 I Fulfillment
The father of white or Dixieland jazz was Jack "Papa" Laine (b
1873), leader of several bands, including the Reliance Brass Band,
dating from about 1892-1893, and Jack Laine's Ragtime Band. The
latter set the style for Dixieland jazz and is therefore of considerable
liistorical importance. Laine himself played the drums in his Ragtime
Band; the other instruments consisted of cornet, clarinet, trombone,
guitar, and string bass. It should be pointed out that before the term
"jazz" came into general usage, this type of hot music, whether for
band or piano, was called "ragtime" in New Orleans. Hence the title
of Laine's band.
Another white New Orleans outfit was the Tom Brown Band,
which was discovered by a promoter in 1914 and brought to Chicago
the following year, opening an engagement at Lamb's Cafe in June,
1915, and thereby launching the vogue of Dixieland jazz that soon
would sweep the country. As already noted, the billing of Brown's
Band as "Brown's Dixieland Jass Band" initiated the currency of the
term "jazz" (as it later came to be spelled). The word "jass" is al-
legedly a vulgar and derisive term with sexual connotations.
The success of Brown's Band stimulated the search for more New
Orleans talent. In 1916 a promoter from Chicago contracted Alcide
"Yellow" Nunez, the clarinetist, and a group of four other players:
Eddie Edwards (trombone), Dominique "Nick" La Rocca (cornet),
Henry Ragas (piano), and Tony Sbarbaro (drums). This band opened
at Schiller's Cafe* under the name of Dixieland Jass Band. With some~
what different personnel, and calling itself the Original Dixieland Jass
Band, this outfit went to New York in 1917 and began a sensational
engagement at Reisenweber's Restaurant. It was this band that made
the first recordings, in 1917, of Dixieland jazz. Among these pioneer
recordings were Tiger Rag, Reiseniveber Rag, Barnyard Blues, At the
Jazz Band Ball, Ostrich Walk, Bluiri the Blues, and Clarinet Marma-
lade. The Original Dixieland Jass Band went to England in 1919, and
gave a big impulse to European interest in jazz.
Although Negro jazz was not unknown in Chicago prior to the
invasion of the white Dixieland bands, it did not make much impres-
sion on the general public until after the arrival, in 1917 or 1918,
of King Oliver. After playing with other bands for two years, Oliver
obtained an engagement at the Dreamland Caf6 and organized his
famous Creole Jazz Band, whose personnel included Jimmy Noone en
the clarinet (soon replaced by Johnny Dodds); Honore Dutrey on
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 475
trombone; Ed Garland, string bass; Lillian Hardin, piano; and Minor
"Ram" Hall, drums. In 1921 Oliver took his band to California, where
Hall was replaced on the drums by Edward "Baby" Dodds. Return-
ing to Chicago the following year, Oliver added a second cornet to
his band: a young player from New Orleans by uie name of Louis
Armstrong.
Oliver continued to play at various spots in Chicago, where, from
1922, he made a series of recordings that are fundamental for the un-
derstanding of New Orleans classic jazz. He made about thirty-five
sides, among which may be mentioned Canal Street Blues, Mandy
Lee, Snake Rag, Riverside Blues, and High Society Rag. In 1928 Oliver
went to New York, where he continued to record. From 1931 to
1937 he toured in the Southeast.
Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton was another of the pioneer New
Orleans jazzmen who went to Chicago in search of wider opportuni-
ties. He was active there from 1923 to 1928, forming a small group
called the Red Hot Peppers, with which, from 1926, he made a series
or recordings that are likewise of crucial importance for the appre-
ciation of the New Orleans style. Besides Morton at the piano, this
group included George Mitchell on cornet, Omer Simeon on clarinet,
Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny St. Cyr on guitar and banjo, John
Lindsay on string bass* and Andrew Hilaire on the drums— a distin-
guished roster of jazz players. Among the records made by Morton's
Red Hot Peppers are Black Bottom Stomp, Smoke House Blues, Steam-
boat Stomp, Sidewalk Blues, Original Jelly Roll Blues, Doctor Jazz,
and Cannon Ball Blues. Each is a historic document of jazz.
Further backgrounds of jazz
Before continuing the story of jazz in Chicago and thereafter, it
will be desirable to return to its original birthplace, New Orleans, and
to attempt a description of New Orleans jazz as it developed in that
city. Unlike other fields of musical history, where written sources
exist, the phonograph record is the basic document for the history of
jazz. In the words of Jelly Roll Morton: "Jazz music is a style not a
composition." One might modify that by saying that it is not a 'writ-
ten composition; but assuredly, in the act of performance, the style
creates a composition, that is, a piece of music with a definite form
and texture* In any case, the style and the music must be heard to be
476 | Fulfillment
known, and the history of jazz means nothing without the phono*
graph recordings that give it life and substance. Fortunately, there is
available a recorded historical anthology of jazz, issued by Folkways
Records, which the reader will find of immense value in tracing the
antecedents, the genesis, and the growth of jazz. Most of the record-
ings discussed in this chapter will be found in this series.
We have no recordings by Negro bands trom the early classic
New Orleans period. Our knowledge of what New Orleans jazz was
like during this period comes partly from collateral sources (personal
recollections and descriptions) and partly from later recorded per-
formances of players who were active in New Orleans during the
classic period, such as King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton,
Bunk Johnson, and others. These recordings, in turn, fall into two
categories: those made when the New Orleans bands first began to
record, in the 19205, and those made after the revival of interest in jazz
history, initiated by the publication of the book Jazzmen, by Ramsey
and Smith, in 1939. The latter recordings were made in the 1940$,
utilizing as far as possible old-timers from New Orleans, and resulted
in what is generally called the "New Orleans Renaissance." With this
as background, we may proceed to discuss (and for the reader, it is
hoped, to hear) some of the recordings, old and new, that will help us
to reconstruct the growth of jazz and, what is more valuable, to un-
derstand and enjoy its qualities as music.
The instrumental and vocal antecedents of jazz were rather exten-
sively covered in the preceding chapters on ragtime and blues. In view
of the importance of the New Orleans street bands in the emer-
gence of jazz, it may be well to note what Jelly Roll Morton says
about the early Negro street bands:
All we had in a band, as a rule, was bass horn, trombone, trumpet,
an alto horn and maybe a baritone horn, bass, and snare drum— just
seven pieces, but, talking about noise, you never heard a sixty-piece
band make as much noise as we did.
In spite of Morton, these bands often included clarinet also, which,
together with the trumpet and trombone, became one of the principal
melody instruments of the jazz band. Alphonse Picou, a clarinetist who
played in the street bands, became one of the most famous pioneers of
jazz. Together with other old-time jazzmen— Henry "Kid" Rena
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 477
(trumpet), Louis Nelson (clarinet), Jim Robinson (trombone), Willie
Santiago (guitar), Albert Glcny (bass), Joe Rena (drums)— Picou
took part in a recording, made in New Orleans in 1940, of the Gettys-
burg March, which demonstrates the early jazz treatment of a slow
march tune. Each of the three melody instruments plays its solo over
the steady beat of the percussion (guitar, bass, drums), with that
singing quality that is vital to jazz, and also play together in charac-
teristic three-voiced polyphony.
The term "tailgate trombone" is often heard in connection with
jazz. This arose from the custom of using bands for advertising in
New Orleans. Often these bands, when hired for an advertising job,
would ride around the city in a wagon, making as much noise as pos-
sible (see Jelly Roll's comments on this subject above), and the trom-
bonist would ^it at the back, with his instrument projecting over the
tailgate. Frequently, when two "band wagons" met, there would be
a competition, or "cutting contest," between the rival groups.
The influence of ragtime
Let us consider next the influence of ragtime on early jazz. Ac-
cording to Louis Armstrong, the influence of Scott Joplin's piano rags
was "great" among the pioneer jazzmen. Said Armstrong: "If you
played his music and phrased it right, you was sivinging way back
there!" * Armstrong asserts that King Oliver is credited with the com-
position of Snake Ragy which he recorded with his Creole Jazz Band
in Chicago in 1923, but this may be one of the pieces that owed much
to Scott Joplin and his piano rags.
Ragtime was played in the South not only by honky-tonk pianists
but also by small instrumental groups that might include, in addition
to guitar, banjo, and mandolin, such unorthodox instruments as wash-
board and jug. A recording of Dallas Rag for jug, guitar, mandolin,
and banjo, demonstrates the old ragtime style which in New Orleans
was taken over by the instruments most favored in that city: cornet,
clarinet, trombone, guitar, string bass, and drums (the classic New
Orleans ensemble). Here is Jelly Roll Morton reminiscing about the
old "spasm" bands that played for "any jobs they could get in the
streets":
* Quoted in The Record Cbangef.
478 I Fulfillment
They did a lot of ad-libbing in ragtime style with different solos in
succession, not in a regular routine, but just as one guy would get
tired and let another musician have the lead.
Morton claimed to have created the famous Tiger Rag from a
French quadrille. In his own picturesque language:
The Tiger Rag I happened to transform from an old quadrille,
which was originally in many different tempos. First there was an
introduction, "Everybody get your partners!" and the people would
go rushing around the hall getting their partners. After five minutes
lapse of time, the next strain would be the waltz strain. . . . Then
another strain that comes right beside the waltz strain in mazooka
time. . . . We had two other strains in two-four time. Then I trans-
formed these strains into the tiger rag which I also named, from the
way I made the "Tiger" roar with my elbow.6
Whether or not Jelly Roll portrayed his personal role with strict
accuracy and impartiality (which he seldom did), the fact remains
that Tiger Rag was derived from a French quadrille. The influence
of French dances, marches, and songs was widespread in New Orleans
jazz.
There was also what Jelly Roll calls the "Spanish" influence,
though it was more specifically a Caribbean influence, and still more
precisely, an Afro-American influence. It is the Negro influence that
gives to the popular music of the Caribbean, and thence of Latin
America, the traits that distinguish it from European music. Let us
hear, in any event, what Jelly Roll has to say on this subject:
Now in one of my earliest tunes, New Orleans Blues, you can notice
the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Span-
ish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning,
I call it, for jazz. This New Orleans Blues comes from around 1902.
I wrote it with the help of Frank Richards, a great piano player in
the ragtime style. All the bands in the city played it at that time.6
Jelly Roll's comments on the "New Orleans Blues" also serves
to confirm the direct influence of early piano ragtime on New
Orleans jazz: a pianist like Frank Richards would compose or arrange
a piano rag, and all the bands in the city would take it up and play
8 Quoted by Alan Lomax, Mr. Jelly Roll.
•Ibid.
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 479
it in jazz style. As already noted, the first bands that played this music
were called "ragtime bands," before the terra "jazz" came into gen-
eral use.
Classic New Orleans jazz
In the previous chapter we observed how the instrumental accom-
paniments to blues singing gradually acquired more importance and
independence, leading to the full development of the call-and-response
or antiphonal pattern that jazz carried over from the blues. A good
blues singer working together with a New Orleans clarinet and cor-
net, and a rhythm instrument (guitar or piano) keeping the beat,
gives us that perfect coordination and teamwork that is the heart of
jazz. Such a performance is to be found in a recording of Margaret
Johnson singing "When a 'Gaitor Hollers," accompanied by clari-
net, cornet, and piano. The players are unidentified, but it is possible
that the cornet may be none other than King Oliver himself. The
two melody instruments, playing discreetly under the voice, come up
with assertive solos or piquantly discordant duets in the "breaks," the
clarinet answering with a real udirty" intonation, and the cornet stri-
dently singing its own version of the blues.
Blues singer, clarinet, and cornet, make three "voices" singing
over the steady beat of the rhythm section. Take the singer away,
add a trombone as the third melody instrument of the classic jazz
band, and you still have three "voices" that "sing'' the blues over the
throbbing bass. These three instruments— cornet (or trumpet), clari-
net, and trombone—were the ones chosen by the Negro jazzmen as
the most expressive and most flexible to constitute the melody section
of the band. The trumpet takes the place of the solo singer. It is the
"leader," playing the principal melodic part. The clarinet (high voice)
and the trombone (low voice) complete the three-part harmony,
embroider around the trumpet's melody, and take their own breaks
in turn.
Originally, and as a general rule, the rhythm section of the classic
New Orleans jazz band was composed of guitar, bass, and drums
(bass drum and snare drum). A few early bands included piano and
banjo in the rhythm section; the piano was considered a rhythm in-
strument, though it had a dual role, being associated with the melody
section through the melodic embroiderings of the right hand. The
480 I Fulfillment
banjo was rare until about 1918, when it often began to replace the
guitar. The rhythm section of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in
1923 consisted of banjo, piano, bass, and drums. The melody section
consisted of two cornets, clarinet, and trombone. It was this com-
bination, including some of the greatest players ever known, that re-
corded, in 1923, such masterpieces as "Dippermouth Blues" and "High
Society." The latter demonstrates to perfection the jazz treatment of a
modern march, originally written by Porter Steele and published in
1901. In addition to Oliver and Armstrong on trumpets, the personnel
includes Honore Dutrey, trombone; Johnny Dodds, clarinet; Lillian
Hardin, piano; Bud Scott, banjo; Bill Johnson, bass; and Baby Dodds,
drums. In these recordings, the phrasing, the timing, the tone color,
the dissonant polyphony, the coordination between the two sections
of the band, and the completely relaxed yet wonderfully controlled
style of playing, provide a paradigm of classic jazz.
The full flowering of the blues idiom in jazz, the complete trans-
position from vocal to instrumental performance, may be observed
in a recording of "Working Man's Blues" by King Oliver and his
Creole Jazz Band made in 1923 with the same personnel as above,
except that Johnny St. Cyr plays banjo, and Charlie Johnson on bass
saxophone replaces Bill Johnson on string bass. (In this case, the bass
saxophone, like the tuba in some early bands, is used as a rhythm
instrument.) King Oliver was very close to the folk tradition of the
blues as developed in their second or urbanized phase. He and his
gifted arranger, Lillian Hardin, have caught the full spirit and the
authentic idiom of the blues in this instrumental version, which, more
than a whole book on the subject, reveals what jazz really is. The
melody instruments sing with all the expressiveness of genuine Afro-
American vocalization, the King does what he calls "a real low-down
solo" on the cornet, and the call-and-response pattern is beautifully
exemplified.
Men who played with King Oliver, among them Louis Armstrong
and Barney Bigard, imbibed the blues tradition from him, carried
it to other bands, and diffused it throughout the la,nd. Armstrong is a
gifted singer of the "low-down" blues as well as a very great trumpet
player and leader. Both individual and traditional elements in his
treatment of the blues are present in his recording of "Keyhole Blues,"
made in 1927 with several of the same performers who had played in
King Oliver's band, except that Kid Ory plays trombone and Pete
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 481
Briggs tuba (taking the place of string bass). Armstrong sings like his
trumpet, and his trumpet sounds like his singing. The group with
which he recorded in 1927 was called Louis Armstrong and his Hot
Seven.
Armstrong and Chicago
Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans in 1900. At the age of
thirteen, after having fired his father's pistol while celebrating New
Year's Eve, he was arrested as a wayward boy and placed in the
Waifs Home, where he learned to play the trumpet. In 1918 he
joined Kid Ory's Brown Skinned Babies, and the following year he
was playing in riverboat bands on the Mississippi. In 1922, as we
know, he was called to Chicago by Joe Oliver. There he married
the pianist Lil Hardin, with whom he went to New York in 1924,
joining Fletcher Henderson's big band. He was soon back in Chicago,
playing with his wife's Dreamland Syncopators and then with his own
groups, the Hot Five and the Hot Seven. From 1929, his fame as a
jazz player fully established, he was in New York again, and from
1932 to 1935 he toured in Europe with the band that he had formed
in Chicago in 1931. In 1940 he recorded in New York with a small
New Orleans type of band, proving again his mastery of the classic
style. Before taking up the vogue of swing, with which Armstrong's
name became associated, we must trace the course of jazz in Chicago
after the initial success of New Orleans jazz there, as played by both
white and Negro bands.
After the Original Dixieland Jass Band, the most important white
band in Chicago was the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, which opened
in 1920, led by Paul Mares (1900-1949) on trumpet, and including
Leon Rappolo on clarinet and George Brunies on trombone. This
group adhered very closely to the New Orleans style, with its smooth,
relaxed rhythm. When it began to record in 1923, Jelly Roll Morton
acted as musical director and also played piano in several numbers,
including his own composition, Milneburg Joys. The New Orleans
Rhythm Kings included a saxophone in the melody section, setting a
fashion that was to be widely followed. Their recordings of Tiger
Rag and Milneburg Joys demonstrate the pure Dixieland style and its
affinity with the traditional sources of New Orleans jazz. Both the
ensemble and the solo work are brilliant and typical.
482 I Fulfillment
New Orleans jazz flourished in Chicago in the decade from 1920
to 1930, played by both white and Negro musicians. There were
many bands and players that we do not have space to mention. Suffice
it to say that youngsters growing up in the tough Chicago of the
19205 had ample opportunity to acquaint themselves with New Orleans
jazz by listening to its pioneer practitioners. A group of white boys,
fascinated with this new music that seemed so thoroughly to express
the spirit of the age, abandoned the path of respectability and took
up the torch of jazz. There was Charles Pierce and his Orchestra, in
which Pierce played saxophone, Muggsy Spanier cornet, Frank
Teschemacher clarinet, and Jack Read trombone. Recordings made by
this orchestra in 1927, including "Sister Kate,'* "Bull Frog Blues,"
"China Boy," and "Nobody's Sweetheart," display a tendency toward
a more "tricky" style of playing, whose characteristics have been
summed up by Mezz Mezzrow under the following headings: ( i ) the
flare-up, (2) the explosion, (3) the shuffle rhythm, and (4) the
break.7
Frank Teschemacher's Chicago Rhythm Kings, with which Mezz-
row played tenor saxophone, Muggsy Spanier cornet, Eddie Condon
banjo, and Gene Krupa drums, continued the development of what
came to be known as Chicago-style jazz. Condon himself, together
with the vocalist and comb player Red McKenzie, formed a group
called the "Chicagoans," which featured the cornetist Jimmy McPart-
land who was leader of a band called the "Wolverines" in Detroit in
1925-1926. But the most celebrated and influential Wolverine Or-
chestra was that organized by Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke in Chicago in
1923, in which he played the cornet. Beiderbecke's much-imitated
playing and leadership accelerated the trend toward "sweet" jazz
with romantic tendencies. During the 19305 the sweet orchestra trend,
featuring violins, soft saxophones, and sentimentality, almost crowded
jazz out of the picture.
The acme of the sweet trend was reached in Paul Whiteman's
overstuffed orchestra, which did have some fine players in it, but
which was lush with violins and saxophones and played saccharine
orchestrations written out in advance. Whiteman was a violinist who
had been fired from a jazz band at Tait's in San Francisco because "he
couldn't jazz it up." (That is his own account of the episode.8) In
T Mezzrow and Wolfe, Really the Blues.
'Whiteman and McBride, /azz, p. 36.
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 483
his autobiography, Whiteman wrote: "It is a relief to be able to prove
at last that I did not invent jazz. . . . All I did was to orchestrate
it." 9 It is an astounding revelation of the widespread ignorance that
prevailed about jazz that Whiteman could have acquired the reputa-
tion of having invented it, when what he actually did was to dena-
ture it.
Jazz in New York
Many jazz musicians flocked to New York in tne 19205 and 19305,
but there was not much chance to keep alive the real jazz in the face
of the slick commercial competition. Eddie Condon summed it up by
saying: "The only place we could play was in our rooms, at our
own request." A white musician from Texas who really knew the
blues, by the name of Jack Teagarden, was one of the men who did
most to keep alive the spirit of jazz. His authentic singing and expres-
sive trombone are heard in recordings of "Basin Street Blues" (1929),
in which he plays with Red Nichols on trumpet and Pee Wee Russell
on clarinet; and "Beale Street Blues" (1931), in which Charlie Tea-
garden plays trumpet and Benny Goodman is heard on clarinet and
saxes. In the recording of "Junk Man" (1934), Jack Teagarden and
Benny Goodman are joined by another famous name in jazz: Art
Tatum at the piano.
Fletcher Henderson, a Negro pianist and arranger from Georgia,
was an influential leader in New York jazz. He formed a large or-
chestra which played at the Roseland dance hall from 1919 and which
included Louis Armstrong as one of the trumpets and Coleman Haw-
kins on tenor saxophone. The large orchestra brought with it the
necessity of orchestral arrangements written out in advance and
thoroughly rehearsed, because groups of more than nine players could
not achieve in performance the spontaneous cohesion and smooth co-
ordination possible in the classic New Orleans ensemble. It was thus
that the art of the arranger came to assume prime importance and
ushered in a new phase of jazz music.
The significant fact to retain in connection with the large-band-
cum-writtcn-arrangement phase of jazz is that this brought with it
an inevitable subservience to conventional standards. More exactly, it
increased the influence of European orthodoxy on both the texture
to.
484 I Fulfillment
and style of jazz music. However much there may have been of an-
ticipated effect in New Orleans classic jazz, it was clearly a differ-
ent type of music from that obtained by strictly following the indi-
cations of a complete blueprint, which is what the orchestral arranger
provides.
Among the jazz arrangers who influenced large-band style, in addi-
tion to Fletcher Henderson, mention should be made of Don Redman,
who was with the McKinney Cotton Pickers in Detroit from 1926
and who formed his own orchestra in 1931; Benny Carter, who organ-
ized the recording group known as the Chocolate Dandies; Jimmie
Lunceford (1962-1948), a band leader with an academic background
who relied upon a "team" of arrangers that included Sy Oliver, Willy
Smith, and Edwin Wilcox; and, top figure among them all, Edward
"Duke" Ellington.
Ellington, born in Washington in 1 899, studied music at the Pratt
Institute of that city and formed his first band, a small one, in 1918.
From the outset he endeavored to impose his personal style upon his
orchestra and to produce his own type of music. Collective improvi-
sation was not in his credo, though he tolerated it temporarily. Like
the European composers of the Romantic tradition, he aimed at in-
dividual expression.
Following his engagement at the Kentucky Club in 1927, Ellington
rose rapidly to national and international fame, touring Europe with
immense success in 1933. He began to make recordings from 1926,
with "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" (composed by Rubber Miley), con-
tinuing with such well-known productions as "Black and Tan Fan-
tasy," "Hot and Bothered," "Tishomongo Blues," "The Mooche" (all
1928), "Saratoga Swing" (1929), "Mood Indigo" (1930; may be re-
garded as his theme song), "Rockin' in Rhythm," "Limehouse Blues,"
"Echoes of the Jungle" (all 1931), "Delta Serenade" (1933), "Clarinet
Lament," "Echoes of Harlem" (both 1936), and "Blue Goose" (1940).
Duke Ellington has aspired to be the man of distinction in jazz.
And he has succeeded, at the price of turning jazz away from its tra-
ditional channels. Sophistication, cleverness, mechanical smoothness
are the marks of his music. This trend has become increasingly accen-
tuated in the course of his career as leader, arranger, and composer.
In this last capacity he has gained enviable laurels. Constant Lambert
called him "the first jazz composer of distinction." His most ambitious
creative effort is the orchestral suite titled Black, Brown and Beige, in
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 485
four movements purporting to portray the development of jazz: ( t )
"Work Song," (2) "Come Sunday1' (spiritual), (3) "The Blues," (4)
"West Indian Dance: Emancipation Celebration: Sugar Hill Pent-
house." Pretentious in its aping of modern European composers and
the conventional tone poem, this work is more contrived than creative.
The same may be said of other compositions by Ellington in the larger
forms, such as Reminiscing in Tempo and Diminuendo and Crescendo
in Blue. There are critics who maintain that Ellington is outside the
tradition of jazz entirely. It would perhaps be more just to say that he
is on its periphery. He is an extremely talented arranger and composer
in the field of popular music. He has a place in America's music, wher-
ever that place may be.
Attention must be called to a significant development in jazz per-
formance that occurred in New York during the 19305. This was the
growth of "mixed" recording sessions, with the participation of white
and Negro musicians. With the exception of Jelly Roll Morton's ses-
sions with the Rhythm Kings in Chicago in 1923, this type of record-
ing had not hitherto taken place, owing to the timorous attitude of the
recording companies rather than to any feeling among the players.
Notable examples of mixed recording sessions were those made in
1929 by Fats Waller and His Buddies and Louis Armstrong and His
Orchestra. Eddie Condon played banjo with the former, and Jack
Teagarden trombone with the latter. After that, the Negro musicians
from the South who had come to New York bringing some of the
spirit and technique of real jazz, and the white musicians from all over
the country who had a genuine interest in this style of music, could
sit down together and revive the traditions of New Orleans and Dixie-
land jazz. Of course, times were changing, and jazz was changing with
the times. The real renaissance of New Orleans jazz did not occur
until the 19405. Meanwhile, something called "swing" was in the air.
The rise of "swing"
In 1936 Louis Armstrong published a book titled Swing That
Music, in which he claimed that swing was the basic principle of New
Orleans jazz. The main difference between jazz and swing, he main-
tained, was that the latter incorporated some of the orthodox tech-
niques of European music, using scored orchestrations and musically
trained players (i.e., those who could read music). Early New Orleans
486 | Fulfillment
jazz he regarded as "the Daddy of swing." Conversely, and by impli-
cation, swing might be described as jazz with a college education.
What actually happened was that large dance bands were com-
mercially successful during the depression of the 19305, and the small
hot jazz groups were not. Certain large Negro bands, such as those
of Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Louis Russell, and Chick
Webb, with their slick arrangements and written orchestrations, were
already playing, during the 19208, the type of music that came to be
known as swing, which may be briefly defined as streamlined jazz for
the modern mechanical age. It relied heavily on the riff, a reiterated
phrase that builds up tension; on the sensational solo characterized by
trick playing; on a strident tone color in the wind instruments; and
on a powerful, driving rhythm which was insistent rather than com-
plex.
A ragtime pianist named Bennie Moten (1894-1935) had formed a
band in his native Kansas City in the 19208, whose playing, according
to Charles Edward Smith, was characterized by "a rolling rhythm, ar-
rived at with the help of banjo and tuba, and a loose adaptation of
New Orleans style." By the 19308 Moten's Band had developed a four-
beat rhythm (in contrast to New Orleans two-beat) which came to be
known as "jump" or "Kansas City Style." When Moten died his band
was taken over by the pianist William "Couqt" Basic, whose musical
credo is thus summed up: "I don't go for that two-beat jive the New
Orleans cats play, because my boys and I got to have four heavy beats
to a bar and no cheating." 10 William Russell suggests that this em-
phasis on four heavy beats to the bar may have come about through
the influence of boogiewoogie piano playing, especially that of the
Kansas City pianist Pete Johnson (b. 1905). Be this as it may, the po-
tent influence of Count Basie and his Kansas City jump style made it-
self widely and powerfully felt. He became the leading exponent of
what is called "Kansas City jazz." In the 19305, Basic's Orchestra car-
ried this style to New York, where it gave a further impetus to so-
called powerhouse performance.
Another of the many "kings" elevated to an illusory throne by
American popular music is Benny Goodman (b. 1909), the "King of
Swing," who played a sensational clarinet in his native Chicago from
the age of sixteen. He played with Ben Pollack's Chicago Band from
10 Quoted by Frederic Ramsey, Jr., in Notes for Jazz Vol. 10, Folkways
Records No. FPyj.
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ 487
1926 to 1931, and with Red Nichol's Five Pennies and other groups in
New York until 1934, when he formed his own band, a large swing
ensemble that won immediate acclaim. Fletcher Henderson made
some fine arrangements for Goodman's band, including those of King
Porter Stomp and When Buddha Smiles. Goodman is a phenomenal
clarinetist who plays "classical" (standard European) as well as swing
with equal mastery.
Other names associated with swing music are those of Harry
James, Gene Krupa, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Glenn Miller,
Artie Shaw, and Lionel Hampton. According to Rudi Blesh: "Swing
is completely anti-jazz . . . opposed to the real musical values which
jazz represents." u That is one man's opinion, though it is shared by
other adherents of New Orleans jazz. Certainly, "classic" jazz and
swing are different in spirit, in form, and in technique. They may
start from the same basis, as Armstrong maintained, but they proceed
in different directions. Classic New Orleans jazz was a special genre
that arose from unique and definitely circumscribed cultural condi-
tions. Swing is a type of popular music \ more accurately, a manner of
arranging and playing that music. Each has its place in America's
music, and each listener has the privilege, as well as the responsibility,
of determining their relative values.
11 Blesh, Shining Trumpets, p. 290.
chapter twenty-four
The Americanists
/ was anxious to write a work that would immediately be recognized as
American in character.
AARON COPLAND, OUR NEW MUSIC.
In the 19205 many composers in the United States were trying very
hard to be "American." Some composers turned to the tribal chants
of the Indians, some were attracted by the Negro spirituals, others
drew on the tradition of Anglo-American folk music, and others found
material in the songs of the cowboys. A few composers, among them
Antheil, Carpenter, and Copland, were tapping the resources of cur-
rent popular music. Gershwin, by profession a highly successful com-
poser of popular ^songs, was making the transition from tin-pan alley
to Carnegie Hall through the medium of so-called "symphonic jazz."
That term, like everything else connected with jazz, is controversial.
In no other field of American music does one have to tread more
warily than in that of jazz and its manifold ramifications. Our concern
in this chapter is not so much with jazz itself as with some of its by-
products, particularly in the realm of symphonic music.
In a symposium entitled American Composers on American Music,
published in 1933, Gershwin made a statement on "The Relation of
Jazz to American Music" (his words were set down by the editor,
Henry Cowell). He summed up his views as follows:
Jazz I regard as an American folk-music; not the only one, but a
very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the
American people more than any other style of folk-music. I believe
that it can be made the basis of serious symphonic works of lasting
value, in the hands of a composer with talent for both jazz and sym-
phonic music.1
1 Reprinted from American Composers on American Music, edited by Henry
Cowell, with permission of the publishers, Stanford University Press. Copyright
!933 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.
488
THE AMERICANISTS 489
When Gershwin made that statement, he had already composed the
Rhapsody in Blue (1924), the Piano Concerto (1925), An American in
Paris (1928), and the Second Rhapsody (193 2) -compositions which
the consensus would today regard as "serious symphonic works of
lasting value." The world at large considers these works not only as
typically American, but also as classical examples of jazz composition.
Through countless performances, through records, radio programs,
and films such as Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, mil-
lions of people the world over have received from these compositions
their most vivid impressions of "the American idiom" in symphonic
music.
But to the question: is it jazz? the experts reply with a round No!
Here is the opinion of jazz enthusiast Robert Goffin:
Jazz has not made any important contribution to serious Ameri-
can music. Composers like Gershwin and Ferde Grofe* made a mis-
take in trying to develop a concert jazz, since they were trying to
intellectualize a phenomenon of sensibility. Behind their musical con-
structions one senses the mind rather than the heart. That isn't and
can never be jazz.*
Perhaps only a European critic of jazz— than whom none arc more
fanatic on the subject— could characterize such a work as the Rhap-
sody in Blue as an attempt "to intellectualize a phenomenon of sensi-
bility!" Most people simply think of it as a very agreeable piece of
music, in which the "heart" (call it sentiment, if you wish) has its
full share. As for the use of the mind in musical composition, Bach,
Beethoven, and Brahms, to mention only the three B's, established a
fairly good precedent along that line. However, Mr. Goffin may still
be right when he asserts that the compositions of Gershwin are not
jazz. It all depends on what one understands by the term. Let us set
what Gershwin himself had to say on this subject. In a statement foi
the volume Revolt in the Arts, edited by Oliver M. Saylor, he wrote
It is difficult to determine what enduring values, aesthetically, jazz
has contributed, because "jazz" is a word which has been used for
at least five or six different types of music. It is really a conglom-
eration of many things. It has a little bit of ragtime, the blues, classi-
cism, and spirituals. Basically, it is a matter of rhythm. After rhythm
* Goffin, Jazz: From the Congo to the Metropolitan, p. 83.
490 | Fulfillment
in importance come intervals, music intervals which are peculiar to
the rhythm. . . . Jazz is music; it uses the same notes that Bach
used. When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American.
When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the
result of the energy stored up in America. It is a very energetic kind
of music. One thing is certain. Jazz has contributed an enduring value
to America in the sense that it has expressed ourselves. It is an origi-
nal American achievement which will endure, not as jazz perhaps,
but which will leave its mark on future music in one form or an-
other. The only kinds of music which endure are those which pos-
sess form in the universal sense and folk-music. All else dies. But
unquestionably folk-songs are being written and have been written
which contain enduring elements of jazz. To be sure, that is only
an element; it is not the whole. An entire composition written in
jazz could not live.
To this last statement, the jazz experts would counter by saying
that an entire composition written in jazz could not exist, because jazz
is essentially improvisation. As stated by Goffin, "What is important in
jazz is not the written text, but the way it is expressed by the musi-
cian." However, what we are primarily concerned with now is Gersh-
win's conception of jazz. Granted that, in the light of modern "dog-
matic" jazz criticism, Gershwin's views are erroneous. The fact re-
mains that Gershwin seized upon certain traits of American popular
music— which he loosely called "jazz"— and embodied these traits in
compositions based, as regards form, on nineteenth-century European
models. He was never 'close to the folk roots of jazz or to its purest
improvisatory manifestations. His primary field was that of commer-
cialized popular music. He was a product of tin-pan alley. As a writer
of musical comedies and hit tunes, he used certain elements of what he
conceived to be jazz. When he turned his attention to the symphonic
field, and to the field of opera, he followed the same procedure, ex-
cept that he put the ingredients into larger forms. He was not trying
to write jazz. He was trying to use some traits of jazz in symphonic
music, as Liszt had used Hungarian tzigany music in his Rhapsodies.
The verdict of time seems to be that he was eminently successful.
Success in the field of popular music came quickly to George
Gershwin, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 26,
1898. He studied piano with Charles Hambitzer and Ernest Hutche-
son, harmony and composition with Edward Kilenyi and Rubin Gold-
THE AMERICANISTS 49 1
mark. But as a youth he was not reaching for symphonic laurels. At
the age of fourteen he had written his first popular song, and before
he was twenty he had composed his first musical comedy, Ltf, La
Lucille. Meanwhile, at sixteen, he had taken a job as pianist and "song
plugger" for the house of Remick, continuing to write tunes on the
side. After three years of this employment, he was commissioned to
write the music for George White's Scandals (1920-1924). The im-
mense popularity of his song hit, "Swanee," interpreted by Al Jokon,
brought him into national prominence. He continued to write scores
for musical comedies, including Lady, Be Good (1924), Tip Toes
(1925), Oh, Kay (1926), Strike Up the Band (1927), Funny Face
(1927), Girl Crazy (1930), and Of Thee I Sing (1931), this last a po-
litical satire which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Meanwhile, Paul Whiteman, who was having wide success with a
conventionalized type of orchestral arrangement that he called "jazz,"
decided to give a concert in Aeolian Hall, New York, under the pre-
tentious title, "Experiment in Modern Music." For this concert he
commissioned Gershwin to write a piece embodying jazz elements in
symphonic form. Gershwin set to work and in three weeks completed
the piano score of his Rhapsody in Bluey which was then orchestrated
by Ferde Grofe* in time for Whiteman's conceit, which took place
on February 12, 1924. Whiteman conducted and Gershwin was the
piano soloist. Thus was the Broadway tunesmith launched on his ca-
reer as a composer of "serious" music. Thereafter he continued, musi-
cally, to lead a double life. Carnegie Hall opened its doors to him,
but he did not shut up shop in tin-pan alley.
The Rhapsody in Blue is unquestionably Lisztian in style, with
strong reminiscences of Tchaikovsky in the slow section. It represents
the fusion of two traditions that already had much in common, be-
cause the stock-in-trade of tin-pan alley consists largely of stereotyped
procedures borrowed from nineteenth-century musical idioms. Gersh-
win, saturated with both traditions by temperament and by experi-
ence, was able to combine elements of popular style and of conven-
tional art form with remarkable felicity and with an effect of novelty
because these elements had not previously been brought together in
such an intimate manner. To be sure, several European composers,
notably Stravinsky and Milhaud, had envisaged the possibilities of jazz
and had used some of its effects with considerable success. But this
was for them an exotic venture, whereas Gershwin was working
492 | Fulfillment
within the tradition of American popular music. It was not he, but
the European musicians, who were "trying to intellectualize a phe-
nomenon of sensibility."
The year after the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, Walter Dam-
rosch, at that time conductor of the New York Symphony, commis-
sioned Gershwin to write a work of symphonic proportions for that
orchestra. The result was the Concerto in F for piano and orchestra,
first performed in New York on December 3, 1925, with Gershwin as
soloist. For this work Gershwin himself did the orchestration: he was
now a "serious" composer, and noblesse oblige! In presenting the
Concerto, Dr. Damrosch made a short speech in which he contributed
to the current fallacy that Gershwin had taken jazz and dressed it up
"in the classic garb of a concerto," thereby making it presentable to
concert audiences. What Gershwin actually had done was to write a
conventional piano concerto utilizing some traits of American popular
music, including the standardized or commercialized type of jazz,
while the real jazz went on its own way, eventually making its entry
into Carnegie Hall without benefit of any "classic garb."
The Concerto in F is in three movements: Allegro, Andante con
moto, and Allegro con brio. John Tasker Howard was of the opinion
that Gershwin's attempt to be formally correct in the Concerto "took
away much of the natural charm that had been found in his previous
Rhapsody in Blue." But a concerto for piano and orchestra is a work
of art, not a work of nature, and the Concerto in F is a better work
of art than the Rhapsody in Blue. When the English conductor Albert
Coates, in 1930, named Gershwin's Concerto in F as one of the best
musical compositions of all time— and the only one by an American to
figure on his list— he displayed remarkable acumen as well as excep-
tional courage. Today, more than a quarter of a century after its
premiere, Gershwin's Concerto is firmly entrenched as the first work
in that form by an American composer to have entered the permanent
repertoire of symphonic music.
Gershwin's next symphonic work was the orchestral tone poem
An American in Paris, first performed in New York on December 1 3,
1928. This is a gay and brash composition, colorfully and realistically
orchestrated (the score includes taxi horns), not without its moments
of sentimentality, mixed with mockery. The work has an especially
effective blues section. In this tone poem the composer caught the
THE AMERICANISTS 493
spirit of a decade and produced the difficult paradox of a period piece
that "dates" without fading.
In 19 j i Gershwin wrote the music for a film comedy called
Delicious, in which there was a sequence of New York street scenes.
For this sequence he devised a "rivet theme" to express the dynamic
energy of the city and its skyscrapers. Around this theme he com-
posed a rhapsody for piano and orchestra that originally bore the title
Rhapsody in Rivets. Renamed Second Rhapsody (perhaps in order not
to frighten prospective listeners), it was first performed by the Boston
Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky on
January 29, 1932. Mechanistic effects, dance rhythms, and tunes of the
Broadway type are utilized in this orchestral impression of a modern
metropolis.
The Cuban Overture, written in 1934, was the last orchestral work
that Gershwin lived to complete. His next major effort was in the
lyric theater, with his opera Porgy and Bess, produced in 1935, which
constitutes a landmark in American operatic history. (It is discussed
in another chapter of this book.) Before writing finis to Gershwin's
tragically brief career, we must mention his three Preludes for piano
(orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg), which rank high in their field
for authentic qualities of style and effective pianism.
In 1937 Gershwin was living in Hollywood, California, writing
music for films. While working on a score for the Goldwyn Follies he
was suddenly taken ill and had to undergo an operation on the brain,
which proved unsuccessful. He died on July 11, 1937.
Gershwin's place in American music is secure. His popular songs
will last as long as any music of this type, and his work in the larger
forms of art music mark the triumph of the popular spirit in the art
music of the United States. Gershwin was a composer of the people
and for the people, and his music will be kept alive by the people.
Composer from Brooklyn— no. 2
Aaron Copland, like Gershwin, was born in Brooklyn (on Novem-
ber 14, 1900), and took harmony lessons from the same teacher, Rubin
Goldmark. All the Copland children— there were five of them— had
music lessons, but only Aaron thought of taking up music seriously
as a career. The idea occurred to him when he was about thirteen,
and some two years later he definitely decided that he would like to
494 I Fulfillment
become a composer. After an unsatisfactory attempt to learn harmony
by correspondence, he began to study with Goldmark, an excellent
teacher but very conservative in his tastes. Goldmark warned his pupil
against the "moderns," which of course immediately set him on their
track. Young Copland reveled in the music of Scriabin, Debussy, and
Ravel, and quickly acquired the reputation of a musical radical.
Copland's next objective was Paris. Reading of the establishment of
a summer music school for Americans at Fontainebleau, in 1921, he
was the first to apply for admission. At the Fontainebleau School he
studied composition with Paul Vidal, whom he describes as tla French
version of Rubin Goldmark," only more difficult to understand. But
there was another teacher at Fontainebleau, the brilliant Nadia Bou-
langer, whose acquaintance Copland soon made. This encounter
marked a decisive moment in his career. He decided to stay in Paris
as long as possible in order to continue studying with Nadia Bou-
langer. He was the first American pupil in composition of this re-
markable woman whose teaching and personality have exerted such
a profound influence on contemporary American music. Copland re-
mained in Paris for three years, studying, becoming familiar with new
music, and composing several vocal and instrumental works, including
the score of a one-act ballet, Grohg. In June, 1924, he returned to the
United States.
Nadia Boulanger had commissioned him to write a symphony for
organ and orchestra, in which she was to appear as soloist. The work
received its first performance by the New York Symphony on Janu-
ary n, 1925, with Walter Damrosch conducting. According to Cop-
land, Damrosch made a little speech in which he declared, "If a young
man at the age of 23 can write a symphony like that, in five years he
will be ready to commit murder." On the other hand, Koussevitzky,
who conducted it in Boston, liked the symphony and remained thence-
forth a strong champion of Copland's music.
In his autobiographical sketch, Composer from Brooklyn, Cop-
land tells us that at this time he "was anxious to write a work that
would immediately be recognized as American in character.'* He does
not explain why he had this desire, except to say that it was sympto-
matic of the period. The interesting point is that in trying to write
music that would immediately be recognized as American in character
he turned to the idioms of our popular music, and specifically to jazz,
or what he conceived to be such. The award of a Guggenheim Fellow-
THE AMERICANISTS 495
ship in 1925 (the first given to a composer) gave him freedom to com-
pose as he pleased. His first important experiment "in the American
idiom" was a suite for small orchestra and piano titled Music for the
Theatre, composed at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire dur-
ing the summer of 1925. This suite consists of five movements: "Pro-
logue/' "Dance," "Interlude," "Burlesque," "Epilogue." Neoclassical in
form and spirit, influenced by Stravinsky, it is in the movement titled
"Dance" that the traces of jazz technique are most apparent.
In his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, which he played for the
first time with the Boston Symphony on January 28, 1927, Copland
continued to develop the use of jazzlike rhythms, particularly in the
second movement. Referring to the Piano Concerto, he afterward
wrote:
This proved to be the last of my "experiments" with symphonic
jazz. With the Concerto I felt I had done all I could with the idiom,
considering its limited emotional scope. TruCj it was an easy way to
be American in musical terms, but all American music could not pos-
sibly be confined to two dominant jazz moods: the "blues" and the
snappy number.8
This limitation of jazz to two moods is rather arbitrary. Students of
jazz have found it to contain at least five well-defined moods or emo-
tional attitudes, as follows: (i) The Blues ("simple, direct, personal
sadness"), (2) The Romantic (expansive, buoyant, dramatic, imag-
inative), (3) The Lyric ("a highly personal expression— a singing, a
brilliant soaring of the spirit . . ."), (4) The Decadent (veering be-
tween plaintive resignation and intense maladjustment), (5) The Pro-
test ("an angry, sometimes vicious, attack on life").4 Objectively, it
would be difficult to sustain Copland's statement that "these two
moods [the blues and the snappy number] encompass the whole
gamut of jazz emotion."
In any case, Copland confesses that he was more interested in the
letter than in the spirit of jazz. "What interested composers," he
writes, "was not so much the spirit ... as the more technical side of
jazz— the rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre through which that spirit
was expressed." 5 And he adds that "By far the most potent influence
* Copland, Our New Music, p. 227.
* See "The Main Currents of Jazz" by Miller and Crenshaw in Esquire's 194;
fazz Book, pp. 25-26.
* Copland, op. cit., p. 88.
496 I Fulfillment
on the technical side was that of rhythm." He concludes, therefore,
that only the technical procedures of jazz were of permanent value
to the composer, since these "might be applied to any number of dif-
ferent musical styles." Referring to the polyrhythms of jazz, he writes:
"The peculiar excitement they produce by clashing two definitely
and regularly marked rhythms is unprecedented in occidental music.
Its poly rhythm is the real contribution of jazz." This at least makes
clear Copland's position as a composer with regard to jazz and its in-
fluence.
In 1929 Copland entered a competition sponsored by the RCA
Victor Company, which offered an award of $25,000 for a symphonic
work. He wished to submit a one-movement symphony, which he
called Symphonic Ode, but was unable to complete it in time to
meet the deadline. He therefore extracted three movements from the
score of his early ballet, Grohg, and submitted them under the title of
Dance Symphony. None of the works submitted won the full award,
which was divided among five contestants, Copland receiving $5,000
for his symphony. No one would ever guess from the Dance Sym-
phony that its composer was born in Brooklyn, but it contains ample
evidence of his sojourn in Paris. It fluctuates between the impression-
ism of Debussy and the primitivism of Stravinsky, with more than
passing recognition to Ravel. While these influences indicate the musi-
cal climate of Copland's formative years, the Dance Symphony never-
theless bears the mark of his individuality both in mood and texture.
It is derivative but not imitative.
Here it should be mentioned that in 1928 Copland made a version
for orchestra alone of his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra. This
revised version, for large orchestra, became his First Symphony. It is
in three movements: Prelude, Scherzo, Finale (Lento). Characteristic
of Copland is the placing of a slow movement at the end of the work;
he does this also in the Piano Sonata and the Piano Quartet. The First
Symphony is interesting for its rhythmic complexity and its contra-
puntal texture.
At about the same time (1928-1929), Copland completed his Sym-
phonic Ode, which was first performed by the Boston Symphony Or-
chestra on February 19, 1932. Copland himself refers to this work as
"fulsome" and observes that it "marks the end of a certain period in
my development as a composer." He was now interested in writing
music of a more austere character, more intellectual in conception and
expression.
THE AMERICANISTS 497
Austerity and imposed simplicity
To this "period of austerity" belong the Piano Variations (1930),
the Short Symphony (1933) anc* Statements for orchestra (1934). To
these should be added another work of similar tendency, the Piano
Sonata, which, though not completed until 1941, was begun, accord-
ing to Arthur Berger, in 1935. The trio titled Vitebsk, "Study on a
Jewish Theme," for violin, cello and piano (1929), may also be re-
garded as related to this period. This work is significant also as Cop-
land's only deliberate attempt to treat Jewish material in his music,
though critics have found reflections of his Jewish background in other
phases of his work, particularly in his early compositions.
Copland remarks of his compositions of this period that "They are
difficult to perform and difficult for an audience to comprehend." That
is undoubtedly why they represent the least-known portion of his out-
put. On the other hand, difficulty is relative, and in the second half
of the twentieth century more listeners may be prepared to assimilate
what seemed difficult two decades ago. There is therefore hope that
Copland's music of this period may receive wider recognition as time
goes on.
The Piano Variations is a work of ingenious and masterly construc-
tion, forceful in utterance, concise in expression, modern not only in
manner but in essence. Conciseness is also a quality of the Short Sym-
phony , which takes barely fifteen minutes to perform. For originality,
for inventiveness, for vitality and expressiveness, for workmanship
and beauty of detail, the Short Symphony is one of Copland's finest
works. In 1937 the composer made an arrangement of the Short Sym-
phony for sextet (string quartet, clarinet, piano).
Whatever the artistic qualities of these works, there were com-
paratively few listeners for this type of music. Copland felt the urge
to reach a larger public. In his own words:
During these years I began to feel an increasing dissatisfaction
with the relations of the music-loving public and the living com-
poser. The old "special" public of the modern music concerts had
fallen away, and the conventional concert public continued apathetic
or indifferent to anything but the established classics. It seemed to
me that we composers were in danger of working in a vacuum.
Moreover, an entirely new public for music had grown up around
die radio and die phonograph. It made no sense to ignore them and
498 I Fulfillment
to continue writing as if they did not exist I felt that it was worth
the effort to see if I couldn't say what I had to say in the simplest
possible terms." e
Thus began what Copland describes as his "tendency toward an im-
posed simplicity."
The works representing this tendency range from El Salon Mexico
(1936) to Appalachian Spring (1944). The prevailing trend is toward
the utilization of folk material. But there is also the phase of writing
occasional or " workaday" music for special purposes, such as the
"play-opera" for high-school performance titled The Second Hurri-
cane (1937); the Music for Radio (Saga of the Prairie), of the same
year; and An Outdoor Overture for high-school orchestra (also ar-
ranged for band). And then there is the highly important phase of
writing music for films, including Of Mice and Men (1939), Our
Town (1940), and North Star (1943). The Lincoln Portrait of 1942,
for speaker and orchestra, with its declamatory style and its snatches
of popular songs of the Civil War period, belongs definitely within
the tendency toward an imposed simplicity. The main theme of this
work is based on the ballad "Springfield Mountain."
El Saldn Mexico was a deliberate attempt to write "tourist music."
Concerning the genesis of this orchestral evocation, Copland writes:
During my first visit to Mexico, in the Fall of 1932, I conceived
the idea of writing a piece based on Mexican themes. I suppose there
is nothing strange about such an idea. Any composer who goes out-
side his native land wants to return bearing musical souvenirs. In
this case my musical souvenirs must have been very memorable, since
it wasn't until 1933 that 1 began to assemble them into the form of
an orchestral work.
From the very beginning, the idea of writing a work based on
popular Mexican melodies was connected in my mind with a popular
dance hall in Mexico City called Sal6n Mexico. No doubt I realized
even then, that it would be foolish for me to attempt to translate into
musical sounds the more profound side of Mexico, the Mexico of the
ancient civilizations or the revolutionary Mexico of today. In order
to do that one must really know the country. All that I could hope
to do was to reflect the Mexico of the tourists, and that is why I
thought of the Salon Mexico. Because in that "hot spot" one felt, in
a very natural and unaffected way, a dose contact with the Mexi-
9 Copland, Our New Music, pp. 228-229.
THE AMERICANISTS 499
can people. It wasn't the music I heard, but the spirit that I felt there,
which attracted me. Something of that spirit is what I hope to have
put into my music.7
So Copland joined the company of Rimsky-Korsakoff and Chabrier as
a composer of "tourist music," a genre to which El Saldn Mexico is a
vividly picturesque contribution. As for the tunes he uses, he got most
of them from two books: Frances Toor's Cancionero Mexicano, and
El Folklore y la Musica Mexicana by Ruben M. Campos. Among the
melodies he borrowed are "El Palo Verde," "La Jesucita," and espe-
cially "El Mosco," which occurs twice, immediately after the intro-
ductory measures. El Saldn Mexico was first performed in Mexico
City on August 27, 1937.
Apart from this Mexican excursion, and a Danzdn Cubano for
two pianos (also orchestrated) which he wrote in 1942, Copland's
main concern during this period was the folk music of the United
States. During the 19405 American folk music was attracting wide-
spread attention, as jazz had done two decades earlier, but with this
difference: it was less controversial, it provoked no outbursts of moral
indignation, it drew no imprecations from the righteous. When Cop-
land experimented with jazz, he placed himself in the avant-garde;
when he took up American folk music, he was moving with the pre-
vailing trend, and this was in line with his strategy of coming closer
to the public. In the light of historical perspective, it may also be
found that Copland himself contributed something to the vogue of
folk music, for doubtless there were some Americans, and many for-
eigners, who heard these tunes for the first time in the engaging musi-
cal scores that he wrote for the ballets Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo
(1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944).
Billy the Kid, written for the Ballet Caravan, was produced in
New York on May 24, 1939. Three years later the composer made a
symphonic suite from the ballet score. The ballet deals with the legen-
dary desperado of the trans-Pecos country, of whom many a ballad
tells:
111 sing you a song of Billy the Kid,
I'll sing you a song of the desperate deeds that he did,
Wav out in New Mexico long, long ago,
When a man's only chance was his own fo'ty fo'.
'Quoted in Program Notes of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
5oo | Fulfillment
Prominent in the score is the cowboy song "Bury Me Not on the
Lone Prairie/' which Copland uses in an idealized version to create a
mood of pathos just before the scene of the final shooting.
Rodeo, written for Agnes de Mille, was produced by the Ballet
Russe de Monte Carlo in New York on October 16, 1942. The heroine
of the story is a "cow girl" who outdoes the men in broncobusting
and thereby becomes socially unpopular. But all ends well when she
meets her match. Along with more familiar cowboy songs, the score
includes freely treated versions of "Sis Joe" and "If He'd Be a Buck-
aroo." From this ballet the composer extracted Four Dance Episodes
for orchestra, consisting of "Corrale Nocturne," "Buckaroo Holiday,"
"Saturday Night Waltz," and "Hoedown."
Appalachian Spring (the title is from a poem by riart Crane)
was written on a commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge
Foundation and was first performed by Martha Graham and her Com-
pany at the Library of Congress on October 30, 1944. The original
score was for chamber orchestra (thirteen instruments). The com-
poser later arranged the music as a concert suite for symphony or-
chestra, first performed by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony
on October 4, 1945. For this suite, Copland provided the following
synopsis:
(1) Very slowly— Introduction of the characters, one by one, in a
suffused light,
(2) Fast— Sudden burst of unison strings in A major arpeggios
starts the action. A sentiment both elated and religious gives the
keynote to this scene.
(3) Moderate— Duo for the Bride and her Intended— scene of tender-
ness and passion.
(4) Quite fast— The Revivalist and his flock. Folksy feelings— sug-
gestions of square dances and country fiddlers.
(5) Still faster— Solo dance of the Bride— Presentiment of mother-
hood. Extremes of joy and fear and wonder.
(6) Very slowly (as at first)— Transition scene to music reminiscent
of the introduction.
(7) Calm and flowing— Scenes of daily activity for the Bride and
her Farmer-husband.
(8) Moderate-Coda-The Bride takes her place among her neigh-
bors. At the end the couple are left "quiet and strong in their
new house." Muted strings intone a hushed, prayer-like passage.
THE AMERICANISTS
In section 7, Copland introduces "five variations on a Shaker
theme." This theme-sung by a solo clarinet— is taken from the song
called "Simple Gifts," published in the collection of Shaker melodies
compiled by Edward D. Andrews under the title The Gift to be
Simple (see chapter n for the music of this song).
The music of Appalachian Spring is essentially diatonic, a tend-
ency that is continued in Copland's Third Symphony (1946). The
latter is a work in four movements, in which, according to the com-
poser, "any reference to jazz or folk material is purely unconscious."
The last movement opens with a fanfare (Molto deliberate) which is
derived from a Fanfare for the Common Man that Copland wrote in
19^. Stylistically the work is closely related to Appalachian Spring.
The Third Symphony appears to mark the return to a phase of
abstract or nonprogrammatic composition in Copland's career. To this
phase belong the Clarinet Concerto (1948), first performed by Benny
Goodman with the NBC Symphony on November 6, 1950, and the
Piano Quartet, commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foun-
dation and first performed at the Library of Congress on October 29,
1950. The Piano Quartet, consisting of a vivacious middle section
flanked by two slow movements, breaks away from the cliches of
Copland's folkish period and combines maturity of style with fresh-
ness of invention. These qualities are also evident in two vocal works,
In the Beginning for mixed chorus (1947), anc' Twelve Poems of
Emily Dickinson (1950), for voice and piano.
Copland's second opera, The Tender Land, based on a story of the
rural Middle West and dealing with "plain, salt-of-the-earth folk," was
produced by the New York City Opera in April, 1954, and was coolly
received by the public and the critics. According to Time, the music
"held as little punch as the libretto."
Whatever may be the ultimate verdict regarding the intrinsic
value of Copland's music, or the degree of attention that posterity
may bestow upon his compositions, he remains historically important
as a musician who by the diversity and effectiveness of his output, by
his impressive impact on America's musical activity at many different
points, by his versatility, his adventurousness, and his industry, has
participated with extraordinary completeness in the musical events of
the contemporary world, not only in the concert hall, the theater,
and the classroom, but also in such typical twentieth-century media of
mass communication as the radio and the motion picture. Whatever
502 I Fulfillment
posterity may say, we can only reply: "He was a musician of our
times." We may turn to his compositions as to a compendium of
twentieth-century trends in American music.
"Protagonist of the time-spirit"
"Gentlemen, a genius—but keep your hats on!" With this para-
phrase of Robert Schumann's excited tribute to Chopin's Opus i,
Arthur Farwell began an article on Roy Harris written in 1931. It was
in that year that Harris's Opus i, a Sonata for piano, appeared in
print. The composer could hardly be called precocious, for he was
then thirty-three years old. True, he had written a few earlier wc^jks,
which had already brought him a small measure of recognition; never-
theless at a comparatively mature age he still stood on the threshold
of his career as a composer. Farwell, therefore, could approach his
music in a spirit of discovery and with the thrill that comes from rec-
ognizing genius before it has been generally acclaimed.
Moved by the excitement of discovery, and by a certain "pride
of authorship," for Harris had been a pupil of his, Farwell was by no
means cautious in his tributes to this rising luminary of America's
music. "It may be that he will prove to be the protagonist of the time-
spirit," wrote Farwell. And this: "Harris is a straight-out classicist,
challenging the entire subsequent epoch, neo-classicists and all, from
the primal standpoint of Bach and Beethoven. . . ." Of the orchestral
Toccata: "I regard it as one of the greatest emotional and intellectual
achievements of modern times." No wonder that Walter Piston, after
the publication of this article, found it appropriate to congratulate his
colleague for "surviving the trying experience of having been hailed
as a genius."
In the light of Harris's unbounded enthusiasm, unabashedly ex-
pressed, for his own music, one may be permitted to doubt that he
found the experience of being hailed as a genius in the least trying. In
the words of Henry Cowell, "Harris often convinces his friends and
listeners of the extreme value of his works by his own indefatigable
enthusiasm for them." In 1942 he wrote to Nicolas Slonimsky: "I have
finished two movements of my Fifth Symphony, and it is wonderful
beyond my wildest hopes." Such self-adulation is refreshing, but we
need to pick our way carefully among the superlatives.
Roy Harris was born in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, on die *nni-
THE AMERICANISTS 503
vcrsary of Lincoln's birth: February 12, 1898. This chronological coin-
cidence, and the fact that the event occurred in a log cabin, are im-
portant ingredients of "the Harris legend," which makes him appear
as a rugged product of the pioneer Middle West. The family moved
to California while he was still a child, and it was there that Harris
grew up, on his father's farm. His musical experience consisted chiefly
of some sporadic piano lessons and playing the clarinet in a school
band. He spent four years working as a truck driver for a California
dairy company, exploring music in his spare time and finally, at the
age of twenty-four, deciding that he wanted to be a composer. He
then went to Los Angeles, where he studied harmony with Farwell
and orchestration with Altschuler. His first recognition as a composer
came when Howard Hanson conducted his Andante for Orchestra at
Rochester in 1926. This was a signal to move on to Paris, where Harris
joined the distinguished company of Nadia Boulanger's pupils.
In Paris he wrote a Concerto for piano, clarinet and string quartet,
which was performed there in 1927. An accident that resulted in a
broken spine caused him to return to the United States, necessitating
a serious operation followed by a long convalescence, during which
he composed his First String Quartet. After another sojourn in Paris,
Harris returned to New York, where his music had been performed
by the League of Composers; by 1934, when his First Symphony was
performed in Boston, he was on the highroad to fame. Koussevitzky's
interest in his music gave him an effective start in that direction.
From the beginning, Harris took himself very seriously as a com-
poser. He felt imbued with a sense of destiny and with a feeling of
moral responsibility toward his country and his times. In an article
entitled "The Growth of a Composer,'* published in The Musical
Quarterly for April, 1934, he stated his artistic credo: "The creative
impulse is a desire to capture and communicate feeling." This state-
ment is crucial for the appreciation of Harris's music. His compositions
have grown out of a yearning for self-expression. But at the same time
he feels a cosmic urge to express something beyond himself, and then
he speaks of the "search for an understandable race-expression."
Harris has been extremely articulate about his aims as a composer,
both in general and in connection with specific works. He has on sev-
eral occasions tried to establish verbal equations between the American
character and American music, and several of his compositions purport
to be musical expressions of such equations. In an essay on Problems
504 I Fulfillment
of American Composers, published in 1933, he develops at some length
the theory that Americans have rhythmic impulses that are funda-
mentally different from the rhythmic impulses of Europeans, "and
from this unique rhythmic sense are generated different melodic and
form values," Attempting to define this American sense of rhythm, he
writes: 8
Our sense of rhythm is less symmetrical than the European rhyth-
mic sense. European musicians are trained to think of rhythm in its
largest common denominator, while we are born with a feeling for
its smallest units. That is why the jazz boys, chained to an unimag-
inative commercial routine which serves only crystallized symmet-
rical dance rhythms, are continually breaking out into superimposed
rhythmic variations which were not written into the music. This
asymmetrical balancing of rhythmic phrases is in our blood; it is not
in the European blood. . . . We do not employ unconventional
rhythms as a sophistical gesture; we cannot avoid them. To cut
them out of our music would be to gainsay the source of our spon-
taneous musical impulses. . . . Our struggle is not to invent new
rhythms and melodies and forms; our problem is to put down into
translatable symbols and rhythms and consequent melodies and form
those that assert themselves within us.
As regards harmonic idiom in American music, Harris has this to say:
American composers have not as yet developed any predominant
type of harmonic idiom, but I have noticed two tendencies that are
becoming increasingly prevalent both with our commercial jazz
writers and with our more serious composers: (i) the avoidance of
definite cadence, which can be traced to our unsymmetrically bal-
anced melodies (difficult to harmonize with prepared cadences) and
our national aversion to anything final, our hope and search for more
satisfying conclusions; (2) the use of modal harmony, which prob-
ably comes from ennui of the worn-out conventions of the major
and minor scales and our adventurous love of the exotic.
It is typical of Harris's musical metaphysics that he ascribes an al-
leged avoidance of definite cadence to an alleged national aversion of
8 The three quotations that follow are from American Composers on Amer-
ican Music, edited by Henry CoweD. Reprinted with permission of the pub-
lishers, Stanford University Press. Copyright 1933 by the Board of Trustees of
Leland Stanford Junior University. Originally published in Scribner1?.
THE AMERICANISTS 505
anything final, which in turn is equated with our hope and search for
something more satisfying.
Harris has been much concerned with the "social value" of music.
In the same essay he writes:
Musical literature never has been and never will be valuable to
society as a whole until it is created as an authentic and character-
istic culture of and from the people it expresses. History reveals that
the great music has been produced only by staunch individuals who
sank their roots deeply into the social soil which they accepted as
their own.
There is ample evidence to indicate that Harris considers himself to
be one of those "staunch individuals" who are creating an authentic
and characteristic musical expression of American culture. He has made
this clear in the commentaries he has appended to several of his scores.
Let us now briefly review his major works, beginning with the sym-
phonies.
The symphonies of Roy Harris
The Symphony, 1933, his first, was performed by the Boston Sym-
phony Orchestra on January 26, 1934, under the direction of Kousse-
vitzky, who called it "the first truly tragic symphony by an Ameri-
can." The composer gave the following summary of its three move-
ments: "In the first movement I have tried to capture the mood of
adventure and physical exuberance; in the second, of the pathos which
seems to underlie all human existence; in the third, the will to power
and action."
The Second Symphony, performed by the same orchestra on Feb-
ruary 28, 1936, also consists of three movements, of which the first is
a sort of bravura introduction, the second (Molto cantabile) a "study
in canons," and the third a "study in rhythmic developments," which
is again intended to convey "a feeling of power." The emphasis on
canonic writing is characteristic of Harris, with whom canon and
fugue are favorite devices.
With the performance of his Third Symphony by Koussevitzky
and the Boston Symphony Orchestra on February 24, 1939, Harris
achieved a resounding triumph. Its success was sensational. Within a
year it received ten performances by the Boston Symphony alone, in
506 | Fulfillment
various cities. According to Leichtentritt, thirty-three performances
were given by American orchestras during the season of 1941-1942, in
addition to several performances abroad. The work was soon issued in
recorded form.
The Third Symphony is a relatively brief work, in one continuous
movement, with a duration of approximately seventeen minutes. The
composer has provided the following outline of its musical structure,
divided into five sections:
i. Tragic— low string sonorities
H. Lyric— strings, horns, woodwinds
HI. Pastoral— woodwinds with a polytonal string background
iv. Fugue— dramatic
A. Brass and percussion predominating
B. Canonic development of materials from Section II consti-
tuting background for further development of Fugue
v. Dramatic— tragic
A. Restatement of violin theme of Section I: tutti strings in
canon with tutti woodwinds against brass and percussion de-
veloping rhythmic motif from climax of Section IV
B. Coda— development of materials from Sections I and II over
pedal tympani
It will be noticed that the emphasis is upon strictly musical structure,
combined with generalized emotional situations devoid of program-
matic or descriptive connotations.
Musically, the Third Symphony is a powerful and fully integrated
work. Historically, it marks the beginning of a new era in American
symphonic music. It made a profound impression, achieved a wide
acclaim and had an unprecedented acceptance. It was a serious, an in-
dividual, and a compelling musical utterance, that communicated effec-
tively with large sections of the American public. The manager of a
baseball team is said to have written to Harris after hearing a perform-
ance of the Third Symphony: "If I had pitchers who could pitch as
strongly as you do in your Symphony, my worries would be over."
This is a new pitch in musical criticism.
On February 21, 1941, the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave the
first performance of Harris's fourth symphony, the Folk Song Sym-
phony for chorus and orchestra, in which his musical Americanism
finds literal expression through the use of American folk songs. It
was written, moreover, with the intent "to bring about a cultural co-
THE AMERICANISTS 507
operation and understanding between the high school, college and
community choruses of our cities with their symphonic orchestras."
The folk tunes are taken from the collections of John and Alan
Lomax and Carl Sandburg. The symphony consists of five choral sec-
tions and two instrumental interludes. The first choral section, "Wel-
come Party," is based on the Civil War song "When Johnny Comes
Marching Home" (upon which Harris had composed an Overture in
1934). The second, "Western Cowboy," makes use of "The Dying
Cowboy" ("Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie") and "As I Walked
Out in the Streets of Laredo." Then comes the first interlude, "Dance
Tunes" for strings and percussion, in which the tunes are of the com-
poser's invention, but strongly reminiscent of traditional fiddle tunes.
The next choral section, "Mountaineer Love Song/' is based on an
Anglo-American folk song with Negro influence, "I'm goin' away for
to stay a little while." The second interlude, for full orchestra, is a
lively combination of dance tunes, including "The Birds' Courting
Song" and "Hop Up, My Lady." Another choral number, titled
"Negro Fantasy," features the camp-meeting hymn "De Trumpet
Sounds It in My Soul." The choral finale, returns to cowboy material
with "The Gal I Left Behind Me," to which Harris adds "Goodnight,
Ladies," as a coda.
After a performance of the Folk Song Symphony in Cleveland,
Herbert Elwell wrote, "This music is nothing if not 100% U.S.A."
Henry Simon aptly described it as "not so much a symphony as a
little concert of Americana."
In his Fifth Symphony, performed on February 26, 1943 (inevi-
tably by the Boston Symphony), Harris clung to his obsession of
expressing the American character in music. He wanted to portray
qualities "which our popular dance music, because of its very nature,
cannot reveal." And the composer's comments continue:
Our people are more than pleasure-loving. We also have qualities
of heroic strength— determination— will to struggle— faith in our des-
tiny. We are possessed of a fierce driving power-optimistic, young,
rough and ready— and I am convinced that our mechanistic age has
not destroyed an appreciation of more tender moods. . . .
The Fifth Symphony opens with a somewhat martial introduction,
followed by a chorale movement "in singing choral style, yet rhap-
sodic." The last movement consists of a triple fugue, that is, it is in
508 | Fulfillment
three sections and on three subjects, with interpolated material, the
whole of considerable structural complexity. This work represents an
advance in technical mastery over the Third Symphony.
The Sixth Symphony (performed April 14, 1944, Boston Sym-
phony) is another essay in musical Americana, this time based on
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and dedicated to "the Armed Forces of
Our Nation." The four movements of the symphony are titled, re-
spectively, "Awakening," "Conflict," "Dedication," "Affirmation"-
episodes that the composer conceives as making up "that great cycle
which always attends any progress in the intellectual or spiritual
growth of a people," and which he considers as finding "a classic ex-
pression" in the Gettysburg Address. "Awakening" refers to the be-
ginning of Lincoln's speech, to the Revolution and the achievement of
independence. "Conflict" evokes the struggle of the Civil War. "Dedi-
cation" draws its inspiration from Lincoln's tribute to the fallen: "We
have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live." Finally,
"Affirmation" voices the spirit of Lincoln's statement of faith, that
"This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, that gov-
ernment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish
from the earth."
The last movement of the Sixth Symphony, again, is cast in the
structure of a fugue, by which the composer has endeavored to "re-
flect in architectural terms the mood of strong faith in mankind."
This is an example of Harris's attempt to make musical structure serve
the programmatic purpose of his symphony.
On November 20, 1952, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under
the direction of Rafael Kubelik, gave the first performance of Harris's
Seventh Symphony. This work, in one movement, received praise for
its brilliant orchestration, but did not appear to mark any important
step forward in the composer's creative development.
The compositions of Harris are too numerous to mention. He has
written works for band, for chorus, for piano, for voice and piano,
for piano and orchestra, and for various chamber-music combinations.
Notable in this last category are his three String Quartets and a Piano
Quintet (1936). The latter, indeed, is among his finest works. The
Second String Quartet consists of Three Variations on a Theme, and
is known by that title. An early Piano Sonata, dating from 1928,
should also be mentioned as Harris's only work in this form and
medium, up to the time of this writing.
THE AMERICANISTS
It is interesting to remark that the Overture, When Johnny Comes
Marching Home (1934), was written especially for recording, and
had to fulfill certain conditions, not the least of which was the re-
quirement that it should be eight minutes in length and be divided
into two equal parts, each to occupy one side of a twelve-inch record
(that was before the invention of the long-playing record). Another
requirement, more difficult to fulfill, was that "the work should
express a gamut of emotions particularly American and in an Ameri-
can manner."
In coping with this second problem, Harris decided that the
familiar Civil War tune would serve his purpose, particularly because
of its combination of ribaldry and sadness, contrasting moods that he
feels are particularly American. He tells us that it was his father who
planted in him "the unconscious realization of its dual nature. He used
to whistle it with jaunty bravado as we went to work on the farm in
the morning and with sad pensiveness as we returned at dusk behind
the slow, weary plodding of the horses." This antithesis of mood pro-
vides the basis for musical contrast in the Overture. About its general
organization, Harris writes: "In the treatment of the texture and the
orchestration I have tried to keep the work rough-hewn, sinewy, and
directly outspoken, as are our people and our civilization."
Harris, in formulating his creed as a composer, stressed the impor-
tance of the large contrapuntal forms, and stated:
I have become increasingly convinced that music is a fluid archi-
tecture of sound and that all the elements of music— melody, har-
mony, counterpoint, dynamics, orchestration— must be coordinated
into a swift-moving form which fulfils itself from the root idea to
its complete flowering in organic ornamentation.9
Because the music of Roy Harris at its best embodies these prin-
ciples of dynamic form and organic ornamentation, he must be
counted among the truly creative figures in American music.
Assorted Americanists
Many pages could be filled simply with mentioning the names and
works of composers who might be described as "musical American-
ists" in the sense that they have demonstrated a consistent concern with
' Quoted in The Book of Modern Composers, edited by David Ewen, p. 453.
Publwhcd by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York.
510 j Fulfillment
the American scene and with the vernacular elements of our music.
Some composers, such as Henry Cowell and Virgil Thomson, have
made numerous and valuable contributions to musical Americana, but
are dealt with elsewhere because of the emphasis placed on other
phases of their production. Cowell is included among "The Experi-
mentalists/1 while Thomson figures among "The Eclectics" as well
as in the chapter on the emergence of American opera. Another com-
poser who figures in the last-mentioned chapter, Douglas Moore,
should also be mentioned here because of his repeated excursions into
musical Americana, such as The Pageant of P. T. Barnum (5 episodes),
Overture on an American Tune, Moby Dick (symphonic poem
after Melville's famous novel), Village Music, Farm Journal, Power
and the Land (suite from music for a documentary film), Down East
Suite (for violin and piano), and Ballad of William Sycamore (poem
by Stephen Vincent Ben6t) for baritone solo, flute, trombone, and
piano. Moore's feeling for the vernacular in America's music, and for
many aspects of our tradition and folklore, is wide in range, embrac-
ing the tragic grandeur of Melville and the jaunty vulgarity of Bar-
num's "Greatest Show on Earth," with its culmination in the garish
pageantry of the circus parade. In his Overture on an American Tune,
Moore painted a musical portrait of Babbitt, the American business-
man immortalized in Sinclair Lewis's novel. Even in a work of classical
form, such as his Symphony of Autumn, one feels that the music of
Douglas Moore is permeated by the moods and tones of an American
landscape. In works without programmatic connotation— the Second
Symphony in A, string quartets, Quintet for winds, and Quintet for
clarinet and strings— Moore cultivates a traditional style with distinc-
tion and individuality.
The late John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951), a pupil of Paine
at Harvard, and, like Charles Ives, a businessman by profession, was
one of the first American composers to experiment with the use of
jazz inflections. He employed ragtime rhythms in his Concertino for
piano and orchestra, composed in 1915, several years before the vogue
for "symphonic jazz." Another experiment in the popular idiom was
the ballet or "jazz pantomime" titled Krazy Kat (1921), inspired by
the newspaper comic strip of that name. The success of this work
brought a commission from Diaghilev, the impresario of ballet, to
write a score employing the American musical vernacular and depict-
ing some typical aspect of American life. Carpenter responded with
THE AMERICANISTS 51!
Skyscrapers, "a ballet of modern American life/' which was pro-
duced at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on February
19, 1926. These works were symptomatic of the "Jazz Age." They
now appear to us as period pieces. Carpenter's musical Americanism
was largely of the surface; his style was wholly dominated by Euro-
pean—chiefly French— influences. Although he wrote symphonies,
choral works, songs, and chamber music, he will perhaps be best
remembered for his amusing descriptive suite for orchestra, Adven-
tures in a Perambulator (1914).
Ferde Grofe, born in New York in 1892, has composed a number
of orchestral suites descriptive of the American scene. The best-known
of these is the Grand Canyon Suite (1932), undoubtedly one of the
American compositions that is most frequently performed throughout
the world. Grofe has also written a Mississippi Suite, a Tabloid Suite,
a Hollywood Suite, and a Transatlantic Suite. He is an extremely
skillful orchestrator, as he proved when he orchestrated Gershwin's
Rhapsody in Elite. In the realm of popular orchestration, Grofe* has
been credited with creating "an orchestra based on saxophones rather
than strings,'' which is the typical radio orchestra as we know it today.
Whether this places him among the great innovators in the history of
orchestration, along with Berlioz and Rimsky-Korsakoff— as claimed
by one of his admirers 10— is a moot question. But there is no question
as to the widespread influence of Croft's innovations in this mass-
media phase of contemporary American music.
Two other composers closely associated with radio who have suc-
cessfully cultivated the American vein are Morton Gould (born in
New York, 1913) and Don Gil Us (born in Missouri, 1912). Gould
has rather systematically exploited the various phases of the American
musical vernacular, from spirituals to swing, not forgetting minstrel
tunes, jazz, and Latin American rhythms, dressing up his borrowed
materials in a smoothly effective and somewhat synthetically brilliant
orchestration. Among his compositions in this style are Swing Sym-
phonietta, Spirituals, Minstrel Show, and Concerto for Orchestra
(1945), this last described as "boisterously Americanistic." His most
recent excursion into musical Americana is the Concerto for Tap
Dancer and Orchestra (1952). His more ambitious works include three
symphonies and A Lincoln Legend for orchestra (1942). Gillis's con-
i°Tom Bennett, in Music and Radio Broadcasting, edited by Gilbert Chase.
New York, 1946, p 77.
512 I Fulfillment
tributions to musical Americana include An American Symphony,
Prairie Poem for orchestra, Coiittown (suite), The Alamo (symphonic
poem), and Symphony No. 7 ("Saga of a Prairie School"). Inclined
to be humoristic, often bright and brash, reflecting the prevailing pop-
ular tempo, Gillis's music finds a ready response among American
listeners today.
Among composers who have particularly cultivated American folk
music are David Guion (b. 1895), George Frederick McKay (b.
1899), Elie Siegmeister (b. 1909), Lamar Stringfield (b. 1897), and
Charles G. Vardell (b. 1893). The last two are from North Carolina
and may be said to represent a regional trend in American music.
Ernst Bacon (b. 1898) has written two orchestral suites, Ford's Theatre
and From These States, dealing with the American scene, as well as
the folk operas A Tree on the Plains and A Drumlin Legend. He has
also published a collection of eight American folk songs entitled Along
Unpaved Roads, which rank among the most skillful and faithful set-
tings of this kind.
William Grant Still has been concerned mainly with depicting the
backgrounds of the American Negro in music. Born in Woodville,
Mississippi, in 1893, he was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his
mother taught school. His racial heritage includes Indian, Negro, and
European strains. Becoming a composer of "serious" music was not an
easy task for Still. After considerable knocking about at odd jobs, he
obtained a scholarship to study composition at Oberlin College. Later
he became an arranger for W. C. Handy in New York, where he also
studied composition with the modernist Edgar Varese. Playing in
theater and night-club orchestras, and arranging popular music, gave
him another variety of musical experience. Out of this varied back-
ground, Still began to compose symphonic works influenced by Afro-
American traditions: Darker America (1924); From the Black Belt,
for chamber orchestra (1926); Africa (1930); Afro- American Sym-
phony (1931); and the Second Symphony in G minor (1937), sub-
titled "Song of a New Race" and described as an expression of "the
American colored man of today."
Still has written two operas, Blue Steel (1935) and Troubled
Island (1949), the latter produced at the New York City Center in
the spring of 1949. Haiti is the setting of Troubled Island, which deals
with the life of the Emperor Dessalines, whose brief moment of power
and glory had a tragic ending. The libretto is by the Negro poet
THE AMERICANISTS 513
Langston Hughes. The West Indies, Africa, and Harlem, provide the
setting for three ballets by Still. Sahdji (1931) has its scene in an-
cestral Africa and calls for a chorus that comments on the action,
also a bass chanter who recites African proverbs, La Guiablesse
(1933), based on West Indian and Louisiana Creole material, has its
scene laid on the island of Martinique. Lenox Avenue was originally
composed for radio and consisted of ten episodes for chorus, narrator,
and orchestra, depicting scenes in the life of Harlem, the Negro quar-
ter of New York. Later it was converted into a ballet and produced
successfully in that form. Finally, we must mention one of Still's
most impressive works, And They Lynched Him on a Tree (1940),
for contralto, mixed chorus, orchestra, and narrator.
Ernest Block's America
One of the most fervid manifestations of musical Americanism is
the work of the Swiss-born composer Ernest Bloch (b. 1880) titled
America and described as "an epic rhapsody in three parts for or-
chestra." The score has the following dedication:
This Symphony has been written in love for this country /In rev-
erence to its Past— In faith in its Future/It is dedicated to the mem-
ory of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman, whose vision upheld
its inspiration.
Bloch's America was completed in 1927, eleven years after the com-
poser first came to the United States. It received a mixed critical re-
ception and has not entrenched itself very firmly in the symphonic
repertoire. Nevertheless, the intent and scope of the work entitle it
to more than casual attention.
It is not within the plan of this book to deal in detail with Bloch's
career and output as a whole. Suffice it to say that he is one of the
most outstanding of contemporary composers, internationally admired
and respected for such works as Trois Potmes Jutfs for orchestra
(1913), the rhapsody Schelomo for cello and orchestra (1916), the
symphony Israel (1916), Suite for viola and orchestra, Concerto
Grosso (1924), Violin Concerto, and chamber and choral music, as
well as the opera Macbeth (1910). Bloch has lived in the United
States from 1916 to 1930, in Switzerland from 1930 to 1939 (with
frequent visits to America), and in the United States again since 1939.
514 I Fulfillment
The epic rhapsody America is an attempt to summarize and ex-
press in music the essential historical role and destiny of the United
States of America. It applies the epic style to musical composition,
relying on broad and massive effects, and on the impact of the work
as a whole rather than on the refinements or distinction of any of its
component parts. In a prefatory note to the score, the composer wrote:
The Ideals of America are imperishable. They embody the future
credo of all mankind: a Union, in common purpose and under will-
ingly accepted guidance, of widely diversified races, ultimately to
become one race, strong and great. But, as Walt Whitman has said:
"To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion, is of
no account. That only holds men together which aggregates all in a
living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of
plants."
Though this symphony is not dependent on a program, the com-
poser wants to emphasize that he has been inspired by this very
Ideal.
The score has running explanatory references at the bottom of the
pages, which are intended to clarify the composer's intentions rather
than to provide a descriptive "program." Part I begins with the year
1620. It evokes the soil, the Indians, the Mayflower, the landing of the
Pilgrims, primeval nature, and Indian life (with quotation of Indian
tribal melodies collected by Frances Densmore among the Pueblo,
Mandan, Hidatsa, and Chippewa Indians). Part II covers the period
of the Civil War, 1861-1865, and bears the subheading "Hours of
Joy— Hours of Sorrow." In this section there are musical quotations
from "Old Folks at Home," Virginia reels, "Hail Columbia," Creole
folk songs, "Dixie," "Battle Cry of Freedom," "John Brown's Body,"
and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp." Part III, bearing the date 1926, evokes
the spirit of the present and the future. Its motto is, "As he sees the
farthest he has the most faith." Two Negro folk songs are quoted:
"I Went to the Hop Joint" and "The Coon-can Game." There is a
section reflecting the "turmoil of the present time," the speed and
noise of the Machine Age. Then is heard "The Call of America," sym-
bolized in these lines from Walt Whitman:
Then turn, and be not alarm'd O Libertad—
turn your undying face
to where the future, greater than all the past,
is swiftly, surely preparing for you.
THE AMERICANISTS
515
The next episode depicts the mastery of Man over the machines, his
environment, and himself. The call of America to the nations of the
world leads to the climax of "The Fulfillment Through Love," and
at this moment the people (i.e., the audience) rise to sing the anthem
that the composer has incorporated in the score: ll
Andante moderato (^ -76)
-. breve
r"jj r Tr r IT
A - mer - i • ca! A - mer - i - ca! Thy name is in my
^
r r ir"
P
P
heart; My love for thee a - rous - es me to no- bier thoughts and
TT=ff=fr-r
deeds. Our fa • thers build - ed a na - don To
r i n
r r r
give us Jus - tice and Peace Toward high - er aims, toward
>. >. dolce
pL_r_r IF r r r i
bright - er goals, Toward Free -dom of all man - kind Our
A ^ ^-- A
hearts we pledge, A • mer - i - ca, To stand by thee, to
> ^ ^ >.
give to thee our strength, our faith and our lives!
give to thee our strength, our faith and our
As the composer explains, the symphony is based entirely upon
the anthem, which "from the first bars appears, in root, dimly, slowly
taking shape, rising, falling, developing, and finally asserting itself
victoriously in its complete and decisive form. . . . The Anthem . . .
symbolizes the Destiny, the Mission of America."
11 From the symphony America by Ernest Bloch, C. C. Birchard & Company,
Publishers. Used by permission.
chapter twenty-five
The eclectics
All music is a tone experience. . . . All human music should be close to us
. . . irrespective of race or epoch.
DANE RUDHYAR IN AMERICAN COMPOSERS ON AMERICAN MUSIC.
iLclecticism, in philosophy, is a system composed of doctrines selected
from different sources. By analogy, an eclectic composer is one who
selects his material from various sources. To a certain extent all creative
artists are eclectic, because an artist does not derive his material or
develop his style solely from one source or tradition. This is particu-
larly true of modern artists, who, to begin with, have all the sources
and traditions of the past to draw on; and in addition, thanks to the
greatly developed facilities for cultural interchange, have at their
disposal the materials and resources pertaining to all the cultural sys-
tems of the world.
Eclecticism in music, therefore, scarcely serves to define a specific
school or group of composers, especially in the United States, where
eclecticism is the norm rather than the exception. We are a nation
made from many sources and many cultures. An American composer
can be thoroughly eclectic even without seeking material beyond the
borders of his own country. He can draw on the music of the Indian
and of the Negro, on the heritage of Anglo-American folk song, on the
Hispanic tradition of the Southwest, on the tradition of rural hymnody
and on the various types of popular music, from ragtime to boogie-
woogie. Many of the composers dealt with in other chapters of this
book, among them Arthur Farwell, Henry Gilbert, George Gershwin,
Henry Cowcll, and Aaron Copland, are markedly eclectic, and what
we have done is simply to emphasize certain prominent trends within
their eclectic tendency, such as the folldorism of Farwell and the
Americanism of Gershwin. In this chapter we shall deal with com-
516
THE ECLECTICS 517
posers whose music represents divergent trends, and who have little
in common with one another except a marked tendency toward
eclecticism.
The first of these composers is Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-
1920), whose predominant tendency might be described as exotic
eclecticism. Griffes began by assimilating the technique of German
song writers, veered to the impressionism of Debussy and the primi-
tivism of Stravinsky, underwent the influence of the arch-eclectic
Busoni, made more than a passing bow to the Russian "Five," turned
briefly to American Indian themes, and found a congenial source of
material in the music of the Far East. Throughout these avatars he
maintained a personal style and developed a power of expression that
entitle him to a distinctive place among the creative musicians of
America. That he died before achieving his full creative development
seems probable; that he suffered from material handicaps in his career
as a composer is certain; and that his music reveals technical weaknesses
may be conceded. Yet alone for such works as The Pleasure Dome of
Kubla Khan, the Poem for flute and orchestra, and the Sonata for
piano, his place is secure.
Charles T. Griffes was born in Elmira, New York, on September
17, 1884. At an early age he displayed a remarkable sensitivity for color,
a trait that remained with him as a composer, for he came to asso-
ciate certain keys with certain colors. His musical aptitude was at first
channeled in the direction of becoming a concert pianist, and upon the
advice of his teacher he went to Europe in 1903 to complete his train-
ing at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. He remained in Germany
four years, except for two brief visits to his home. He became in-
creasingly interested in composing, in spite of the fact that his teacher
tore up the first song that he submitted— perhaps because it was in
French. He rebelled against the "terribly ordinary and common"
modulations recommended by the pedantic professor at the Conserva-
tory, and was happier when he managed to have some lessons in com-
position with the gifted Humperdinck, composer of the opera Hansel
and Gretel.
When Griffes returned to the United States in 1907 the only im-
mediate solution he could find for the problem of earning a living was
to accept a position as music teacher at the Hackley School for boys
in Tarrytown, New York. It was not a congenial situation. Of his
51 8 I Fulfillment
pupils he wrote, "Oh! how they bore and weary me!" Nevertheless he
was destined to remain at this school for the rest of his life.
As a composer, Griffes was befriended and encouraged by that gen-
erous and broad-visioned champion of American music, Arthur Far-
well, After his early settings of German songs, he began to set poems
by American and English authors, including Sidney Lanier ("Evening
Song"), Sara Teasdale, and Oscar Wilde. He wrote a series of im-
pressionistic piano pieces: The Lake at Evening (1910), The Night
Winds (1911), The Vale of Dreams (1912), Barcarolle (1912), and
Scherzo (1913).
Early in 1912 Griffes began to compose a work for piano based on
Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan." After frequent revisions over sev-
eral years he finally decided that it would be more effective as an
orchestral composition. In this form it was completed in April, 1916.
But not until November 28, 1919, just a -few months before the com-
poser's death, did this symphonic poem receive its first performance.
Regarding this symphonic poem, Griffes wrote:
I have taken as a basis for my work those lines of Coleridge's
poem describing the "stately pleasure-dome," the "sunny pleasure-
dome with caves of ice," the "miracle of rare device." Therefore I
call the work The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla Khan rather than Kubla
Khan. ... As to argument, I have given my imagination free rein
in the description of this strange palace as well as of purely imag-
inary revelry which might take place there. The vague, foggy be-
ginning suggests the sacred river, running "through caverns meas-
ureless to man down to a sunless sea." The gardens with fountains
and "sunny spots of greenery" are next suggested. From inside come
sounds of dancing and revelry which increase to a wild climax and
then suddenly break off. There is a return to the original mood sug-
gesting the sacred river and the "caves of ice."
The passages in Coleridge's poem to which Griffes specifically refers
consist of lines i to 1 1 and lines 32 to 38.
In 1915 Griffes composed his piano piece The White Peacock.
based, on a poem of that title by "Fiona Macleod," the pseudonym of
a Scottish writer named William Sharp who, in the early years of the
century, did much to stimulate what Gilman called "the Celtic im-
pulse" among American composers, including MacDowell. Actually,
there was nothing Celtic about a white peacock, and Griffes eventually
THE ECLECTICS 519
included his tone poem in a set of four piano pieces entitled Roman
Sketches (the other three pieces are "Nightfall," "The Fountain of
Acqua Paola," and "Clouds"). The White Peacock was orchestrated
by the composer for a choreographic number staged by Adolph Bolm
at the Rivoli Theatre in New York, which ran for a week beginning
on June 22, 1919. Both as a piano piece and as an orchestral tone poem,
The White Peacock obtained wide acceptance.
Griffes felt a strong attraction for the music of the Near and Far
East. While working on Kubla Khan he consulted all the works on
Arabian music in the New York Public Library, and copied out some
melodies that appealed to him. His tendency toward Orientalism was
further developed in his settings for voice and piano of Five Poems of
Ancient China and Japany and in the writing of a Japaneses dance
drama, Sho-Jo, for the dancer Michio Ito, based on Japanese melodies
given to him by the singer Eva Gauthier (1917).
The Poem for Flute and Orchestra, finished in 1918, is one of
Griffes's best works and marks the culmination of his Orientalism.
It is, to be sure, an impressionistic and highly attenuated Orientalism,
which strives for atmospheric coloring rather than for ethnographic
authenticity (such as we find later, for example, in the music of Colin
McPhee).
Griffes also turned briefly to American Indian music, in his Two
Sketches Based on Indian Themes for string quartet. The first of these,
Scherzo, was composed in 1916; the second, Lento, in 1918, utilizing
for its main theme a farewell song of the Chippewa:
Lento.
In February, 1917, a dance drama with music by Griffes, titled The
Kairn of Koridwen, was produced in New York. The music was scored
for piano, celesta, flute, clarinets, horns, and harp. This small combina-
tion acted as a challenge to the composer's resourcefulness, and he
made the most of it. In the words of Paul Rosenfeld: "The unusual
conjunction of timbres, split horn and piano, chromatic harp, chro-
520 j Fulfillment
made flute and celesta, the happy superposition of conflicting tonali-
ties, the knitting of strongly contrary rhythms that abound through-
out the work, should make a musicians' holiday."1 Actually there
was so much trouble over the rehearsals and the production that it
gave the musicians, including the composer, a headache rather than a
holiday.
Griffes's Sonata for piano, completed in January, 1918 (revised in
May, 1919), gives evidence of his impressionistic Orientalism in its
use of the following scale:
t
EESE*
Although influenced by Scriabin, the Sonata is, on the whole, the
most original as well as the most complex and ambitious of Griffes's
compositions. It is in three movements: Feroce-Allegretto con moto,
Molto tranquillo, Allegro vivace. Experimental in its harmonic idiom,
richly expressive and strongly emotional, the Piano Sonata may be
regarded as a peak of neo-romantic expression in American music.
Composers of the immediate past
In contrast to Griffes, whose music is very much alive over thirty
years after his death, there is a group of composers, all born in the
1870$, who long outlived him and who were more successful than he,
but whose music seems already to belong to another period. These
composers were markedly eclectic, influenced by many current trends
and fashions. They figured prominently in the American musical scene
for many decades and therefore merit at least passing mention in these
pages.
Henry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937), a native of Somerville, Massa-
chusetts, and a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music,
was active as a conductor besides being an extremely prolific com-
poser. Among his six operas were Azora, Daughter of Montezvma,
produced by the Chicago Opera Company in 1917 and 1918, and
Cleopatra's Night, produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in
New York in 1920. His orchestral works include five symphonies, of
1From a review originally published in Seven Arts. Quoted by Maisel in
Charles T. Griffes, p. 340.
THE ECLECTICS 521
which four were programmatic— ( i ) Youth and Life, (z) The Four
Seasons, (4) North, East, South, West, (5) Connecticut-Tercente-
nary. The Fifth Symphony— whose three movements bore the respec-
tive dates 1635, '735» 1935— was one of those well-meant historical-
commemorative-descriptive-nationalistic lucubrations that are fortu-
nately becoming less frequent in American music. Hadley should in
any case be remembered as the founder of the National Association
for American Composers and Conductors, which in turn sponsored
the Henry Hadley Memorial Library of music by contemporary
American composers.
Frederick Shepherd Converse (1871-1940), born in Newton,
Massachusetts, was a pupil of Paine at Harvard but also studied with
Chadwick in Boston and with Rheinbergcr in Germany. He was for
many years on the staff of the New England Conservatory of Music,
at first as professor of composition and later as Dean of the Faculty.
For a time, Converse was much concerned with the American scene.
He wrote the tone poem California (1918), the orchestral suite Ameri-
can Sketches (1929), and—his brightest contribution to musical Ameri-
cana—the symphonic poem Flivver Ten Million (1927). This work
depicts, in successive episodes, Da'wn in Detroit, The Birth of the Hero,
May Night by the Roadside ("America's Romance"), The Joy Riders
("America's Frolic"), The Collision ("America's Tragedy"), and
Phoenix Americanos, an apotheosis of "the indomitable American
spirit.^ Besides this humorous period piece, Converse wrote many
symphonic works, including three symphonies, and a one-act opera,
The Pipe of Desire, the first opera by an American to be produced at
the Metropolitan Opera House (in 1910).
Ernest Schelling (1876-1939), a brilliant pianist who began his
career as a child prodigy, was the composer of two symphonic works
that are still occasionally played by American orchestras: Impressions
from an Artist's Life, variations for piano and orchestra (1916), and
A Victory Ball, symphonic poem after Alfred Noyes (1923). The
latter is one of those vividly descriptive and emotionally evocative
compositions, in the tradition of the Lisztian tone poem, which con-
trasts peacetime gaiety with the horrors of war. Other works by
Schelling include Ltgende Symphonique, Suite Fantastique, the tone
poem Morocco, and a Violin Concerto first played by Fritz Kreisler
in 1917. For many years Schelling conducted the children's concerts
of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra.
522 | Fulfillment
David Stanley Smith (1877-1949), a native of Toledo, Ohio,
studied with Horatio Parker at Yale and in 1920 succeeded him as
Dean of the School of Music at that university. His approach to music
was intellectual and traditionalistic within the academic convention.
In addition to four symphonies and other orchestral works, such as
Fete Galante for flute and orchestra, Smith wrote a large quantity of
chamber music, including eight string quartets, and several choral
works, among which are The Vision of Isaiah (1927) and Daybreak
(1945). In two orchestral pieces, 1929— A Satire and the overture To-
morrow, dating respectively from 1932 and 1933, he recorded his
impressions of the world around him.
Some eclectics of today
Today, as yesterday, there are many eclectic composers writing
music in the United States. Only a few representative figures can be
cited here.
Arthur Shepherd was born in Paris, Idaho, on February 19, 1880,
the son of English converts to Mormonism who had emigrated to
the West in the 18705. At the age of twelve he was sent to Boston
to study at the New Englaiid Conservatory of Music. In the words of
William Newman: "During the five years that followed in Boston
the formal part of the training was as German as it might have been
at Leipzig"— where his parents had originally considered sending him.
Strong eclectic inclinations saved Shepherd from accepting late Ger-
man music as the sole pathway to salvation. After periods of teaching
in Salt Lake City and Boston, he became assistant conductor of the
Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. He then joined the music staff of
Western Reserve University in Cleveland, serving as chairman of the
Music Department from 1933 to 1948.
Shepherd became interested in modern French music, particularly
that of Faur6 and d'Indy, and in the national folklore movement led
by Farwell and Gilbert. He himself confessed that he seemed to have
a strong atavistic tendency toward writing tunes "with a pronounced
Celtic flavor." His First Symphony, completed in 1927 and tided
Horizons: Four Western Pieces for Symphony Orchestra (later the
composer stated that he wished this work to be known as Nature
Symphony), is an impressive embodiment of the spirit of the West
in music. It consists of four movements: "Westward," "The Lone
THE ECLECTICS 523
Prairie/' "The Old Chisholm Trail," and "Canyons." The second
movement makes use of the cowboy song known as "The Dying
Cowboy" ("O bury me not on the lone prairee"). The last movement
includes a chorale derived from a hymn of the Western pioneers.
In 1946 Shepherd composed a Fantasia on Down East Spirituals,
described as "an excursion into the realm of American folk tunes." But
his main preoccupation has not been with musical Americana. His
eclectic tendencies are revealed in an extensive catalogue of works in
many forms, outstanding among which are his Symphony No. 2
(1940), Violin Concerto (1946-1947), String Quartet in E minor,
Quintet for piano and strings. Triptych for soprano and string quar-
tet, Second Piano Sonata, Psalm 42 for chorus and orchestra, and some
two dozen songs.
Among women composers, Mary Howe (b. 1882) and Marion
Bauer (b. 1887) ^ave distinguished themselves. The former has writ-
ten a series of impressionistic orchestral poems, such as Sand, Dirge,
American Piece, Potomac; some choral works (Chain Gang Song,
Fiddler's Reel), and chamber music (including Three Pieces after
Emily Dickinson for string quartet). Marion Bauer, who was born
in the State of Washington, has worked largely within the orbit of
impressionism and has absorbed various exotic elements, ranging from
American Indian to African material (A Lament on African Themes
for chamber orchestra, 1928). Typical of her rather extensive cham-
ber-music production are the Fantasia Quasi una Sonata for violin and
piano (1928) and the Concertino for oboe, clarinet, and string quartet
(1939-1943).
Philip James (b. 1891) has ranged in his descriptive orchestral
music from metropolitan scenes of the present in Station WGZBX
(1932) to evocations of America's past in the overture Bret Harte
(1936), which attempts to evoke "the romance, the boisterousncss,
the animation" of the Far West as depicted in the stories of Bret
Harte. James has also written an Overture on French Noels, a Sea
Symphony, a setting of Vachel Lindsay's "General William Booth
Enters Heaven," and considerable chamber and choral music. An-
other scene of metropolitan daily life is his Skyscraper Romance
(The Typist and the Mailman), for women's chorus, soprano and
baritone solos, and piano accompaniment, with text by Amy Bonner,
published in 1949.
524 | Fulfillment
Harl McDonald, born in Boulder, Colorado, in 1899, joined the
faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1927 and in 1939 became
manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has written orchestral
and choral works, usually descriptive as in the Symphony No. i (The
Santa Fe Trail), the orchestral nocturnes titled San Juan Capistrano,
the symphonic suite My Country at War (1943), an<* tne symphonic
poem Bataan (1942). His Lament for the Stolen, for women's chorus
and orchestra (1938) was written as an elegy for the kidnaped child
of Charles Lindbergh. One of his best-known choral works is The
Breadth and Extent of Man's Empire for mixed chorus. In his Sym-
phony No. 2, subtitled Rhumb >a, McDonald employs Latin American
rhythms.
Harrison Kerr, born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1899, *s among the
many American composers who studied with Nadia Boulanger in
Paris. But he is an eclectic composer who has assimilated various ele-
ments of modern music in the process of evolving his personal style.
His evolution has been from a rather conventional idiom (in his stu-
dent days) to a prevailingly wwtonal (rather than atonal) texture
utilizing twelve-tone elements, though not according to the strict
Schoenbergian canon. His use of twelve- tone techniques has been
nearer to the practice of Alban Berg than of Schoenberg (cf. Chapter
28). Much of his music is characterized by chromaticism, frequent use
of chords or sonorities based on superimposed fourths, dissonant
counterpoint, and free use of changing meters. In his later works the
harmony is not readily identifiable with any key, but there is nearly
always a discernible tonal center. In general, tonal-center relationships
replace the conventional key relationships of orthodox harmony.
Among the orchestral works of Harrison Kerr are Dance Suite
(1938), which includes two African drums and seven Chinese gongs
as optional percussion; Symphony No. i, in one movement (1927-
1929; revised 1938); Symphony No. 2 in E minor (1943-1945); and
Symphony No. 3 in D minor (i953~'954). His chamber music includes
a String Quartet (1937), Suite for flute and piano (1940-1941), Suite
for cello and piano (1944-1946); Trio for clarinet, cello, and piano
(1936); and Trio for violin, cello, and piano (1938). For piano he has
written two Sonatas (1929 and 1943), and a set of Preludes (1938).
Among his vocal compositions are Wink of Eternity for mixed chorus
and orchestra (1937); Notations on a Sensitized Plate for voice, clar-
inet, piano, and string quartet (1935); Three Songs for contralto and
orchestra, Three Songs with chamber orchestra, and Three Songs with
THE ECLECTICS 525
string quartet (all 1924-1928). Since 1949 Harrison Kcrr has been
Dean of the College of Fine Arts of the University of Oklahoma.
Among American composers born in the last decade of the nine-
teenth century, two may stand as thoroughly representative of eclec-
ticism, though each in a completely different manner. They are Roger
Sessions and Virgil Thomson. Both are difficult to classify, but the
former may be called an academic eclectic with neoclassical tend-
encies. As for Thomson, we can say only that he is unscholastic, un-
academic, unorthodox, and unregenerate. Both composers are im-
portant.
"An intensely serious composer"
Roger Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December
28, 1896. But Brooklyn was not his natural habitat. He came of old
New England stock, and soon after his birth the family returned to
its ancestral domain in Massachusetts. Sessions, intellectually preco-
cious, entered Harvard at the age of fourteen. Later he attended the
Yale Music School, where he was a pupil of Horatio Parker in com-
position. Still later he studied composition with the Swiss-American
composer Ernest Bloch, who influenced him deeply and whom he
accompanied to Cleveland in 1921. In 1925 Sessions went to Europe,
and remained there eight years (except for trips to the United States
in 1927 and 1928), living chiefly in Florence, Italy, but traveling
through various countries, including France, Austria, and England.
After returning to the United States he occupied various teaching
posts and in 1945 became professor of music at the University of
California in Berkeley.
One critic assures us that Sessions derives from Stravinsky, while
another hailed him as an "American Brahms." If both are right, the
result is an amazing conciliation of opposites, and this argues a strong
character. And that is exactly what distinguishes the music of Ses-
sions: strength of character. He has deeply absorbed certain influ-
ences, notably those of Bloch, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Richard
Strauss. His creative personality, the interior dynamism that prompts
him to emotional expression in music, is strong enough to absorb
these influences and to emerge with a mode of utterance that is as
personal as it is eclectic.
We may unhesitatingly agree with Mark Schubart that Sessions
is "an intensely serious composer/' He takes with the utmost serious-
526 I Fulfillment
ness every aspect of musical art: the theoretical, the creative, the
didactic, and the interpretative. The fruits of his cogitations are found
not only in his compositions and his teaching, but also in two books
that he has published: The Musical Experience of Composer, Per-
former, Listener (1950) and Harmonic Practice (1951). The latter,
of course, is a textbook intended for classroom use. In it the author
acknowledges his indebtedness to Iwan Knorr, Hpnrich Schenker,
Paul Hindemith, and Arnold Schoenberg. Regarding the last-men-
tioned he writes: "It becomes always clearer that the influence of this
truly extraordinary man is not limited to his most immediate or obvi-
ous followers, but has had a far-reaching effect on friend and foe
alike. His Harmonielehre, many later writings, and above all his mu-
sic, have set in motion trains of thought, as they have opened new
avenues of musical sensibility, of human awareness— in a word, of
musical experience—which are at the very least a challenge to all
musicians of today." *
The last chapter of Sessions's text on harmony, "Introduction to
Contemporary Harmonic Practice," is a valuable analysis of recent
trends in composition, including the problem of tonality, and should
be read by anyone seriously interested in the subject. In discussing
various technical problems of today, he reminds us that, now as al-
ways, "It is never a question of applying a formula, but of solving a
problem, in each case, in accordance with the composer's ideas and
the technical necessities which these ideas create."
To illustrate what he means by a musical "idea," Sessions takes an
example from his First Piano Sonata, which was begun in 1927 while
he was in Italy. In his book The Musical Experience he writes:
The first idea that came to me for my First Piano Sonata . . .
was in the form of a complex chord preceded by a sharp but heavy
up beat
tftf,
1 Quoted by permission of the publisher, Harcourt, Brace and Company,
New York.
THE ECLECTICS
5*7
This chord rang through my car almost obsessively one day as I
was walking in Pisa. The next day, or, in other words, when I sat
down to work on the piece, I wrote the first phrase of the Allegro
Allegro
as you see, the chord had become simpler— a C minor triad, in fact,
and its complex sonority had given way to a motif of very synco-
pated rhythmic character. Later it became clear to me that the motif
must be preceded by an introduction, and the melody in B minor
[example 1240] with which the Sonata begins, immediately sug-
gested itself, quite without any conscious thought on my part.
Andante
pie*avoce,cantabil* ma semplice 0 tenza qualaiasi "rilbato"
A few days later the original complex chord came back into my
ear, again almost obsessively; I found myself continuing it in my
mind, and only then made the discovery that the two lower notes
of the chord, F# and £, formed the minor seventh of the dominant
of the key of B minor, and that the continuation I had been hear-
ing led me back to B; that the germ of the key relationship on
which the first two movements of the sonata were based were al-
ready implicit in the chorda! idea with which the musical train of
528 I Fulfillment
thought—which eventually took shape in the completed sonata— had
started.8
Allegro
Sessions goes on to say that he has pointed out these things not
only to illustrate the nature of the musical idea, but also "in order to
throw some light on some of the ways in which a composer's mind,
his creative musical mind, that is, works/' Since Sessions is generally
considered to be a "difficult" composer, these insights into his creative
processes are valuable in helping us understand the basis of his musical
thought.
Sessions' first important work was the orchestral score he com-
posed for a performance of Andreyev's play The Black Maskers given
at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in June, 1923 (he
taught there from 1917 to 1921). From this music he made in 1928 a
symphonic suite in four movements, which remains his best-known
and most frequently performed composition. The four movements are:
(i) "Dance": stridente, sarcastico, (2) "Scene": agitato molto, (3)
"Dirge": larghissimo, (4) "Finale": andante moderato un poco agi-
tato. Sessions points out that Andreyev's play, written in 1908, deals
symbolically with the theme of tragic conflict within the human soul.
•Quoted by permission of the publisher, Princeton University Press. Musical
examples from the First Piano Sonata, copyright 1931 by B. Schott's Sohne,
Mainz, Germany; by permission of Associated Music Publishers, Inc.
THE ECLECTICS 529
He quotes a passage from Andreyev's diary: "The castle is the soul;
the lord of the castle is man, the master of the soul; the strange black
maskers are the powers whose field of action is the soul of man, and
whose mysterious nature he can never fathom."
Concerning the score of The Black Maskers, the composer states:
"The music was conceived throughout as an expression of certain
moods felt behind the incidents of the play, rather than as their de-
scriptive counterpart." There are, to be sure, definite evocations of
moods and situations depicted in the play: the suggestion of malicious
laughter, cries of agony and despair, the victorious trumpetings of
the black maskers as they swarm over the castle, the trumpet calls that
announce the death of Lorenzo (the master of the castle), and the
conflagration of the final scene, when Lorenzo finds redemption in the
symbolic purity of the flames. But the music stands on its own mer-
its: it is extremely brilliant in orchestration, emotionally powerful in
its dramatic expression, rich in texture. It is exciting and compelling
music. Hearing it today, thirty years after it was written, one finds
its impact undiminished; and one is, moreover, somewhat surprised
to find that it does not sound in the least like most of the music that
was being written during the 19205— another proof of Sessions's inde-
pendence and strength of character as a composer.
Among other works of Sessions are three Chorale Preludes for or-
gan (1926), a Concerto for violin and orchestra (1932), three Dirges
for orchestra (1938), two String Quartets, a second Piano Sonata,
three symphonies, and a one-act opera, The Trial of Lucullus, based
on a radio play by Bertolt Brecht and first performed at the Univer-
sity of California at Berkeley on April 18, 1947. This opera has a
moral for our times, as it deals with the humiliation of a dictatorial
aggressor.
The Symphony No. 2 of Sessions, composed from 1944 to 1946,
is dedicated "To the Memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt." It is in
four movements: (i) Molto agitato, tranquillo e misterioso, (2) Alle-
gretto capriccioso, (3) Adagio, tranquillo ed espressivo, (4) Allegra-
mente. It has the dissonant contrapuntal texture, the harmonic com-
plexity, and the rhythmic drive that are characteristic qualities of his
music. Some hostile reaction was provoked by the first performance
of the work at San Francisco in 1947. That is a healthy sign.
The pianist Andor Foldes, for whom the Second Piano Sonata was
written, has made the following comments on this work: "The for-
53O | Fulfillment
bidding harmonies of the work and its uncompromising tonal struc-
ture will keep it from becoming very popular for the time being. . . .
But regardless of its immediate acceptance, this is a work of grandeur,
a composition of wide breadth and sincere, deep feeling." * Its three
movements are Allegro con fuoco, Lento, Misurato a pesante.
In The Black Maskers Sessions demonstrated that he possessed all
the requisites for writing overwhelmingly effective music of strong
emotional and imaginative appeal/ Had he turned out a series of sym-
phonies in this vein, his popular success would have been assured.
Instead, he chose to follow his true destiny as a composer, developing
"the ability to conceive his musical ideas in almost abstract terms" and
becoming "consciously aware of so much that previously remained
below the surface." Paraphrasing what he wrote about the composer in
general, we may say that Sessions, having reached the point of creative
maturity, refused to lapse into self-imitation and chose rather "to
strike out boldly into new territory." There the hardy listener may
follow him or the timid turn away. Sessions would subscribe to the
ancient Greek dictum: "The beautiful is difficult." In the music of
Sessions, technique and integrity link arms, blocking the primrose
path toward facile pleasures.
The unpredictable Mr. Thomson
It would be invidious to suggest that we may tread the primrose
path as we approach the music of Virgil Thomson, because this might
imply that he rules over a realm of facile pleasures. This would be
unfair to. Mr. Thomson, who really takes music seriously, however
much he may try to conceal the fact. Perhaps it would be more exact
to say that Mr. Thomson takes composition seriously as a metier, that
he has a meticulous sense of craftsmanship and a fastidious feeling for
the mot juste in his music as in his prose writing (he is a remarkably
productive and adept writer on musical subjects), but that he refuses
to write music that takes itself too seriously and that he absolutely
balks at being solemn about anything whatsoever. It may seem either
too obvious or too cryptic to call him the Erik Satie of American
music, yet the title is helpful as an orientation. Thomson's special
achievement, as Charles Seeger remarked, is the apotheosis of the com-
monplace, and that brings him rather close to Satie. Thomson, more-
* In Notes of the Music Library Association, March 1950, p. 313.
THE ECLECTICS 531
over, has been dubbed "our most musical Francophile," and he cer-
tainly imbibed through every pore the musical atmosphere of Paris in
the 19205, over which the spirit of Satie presided like an avuncular
oracle.
Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on November
25, 1896. His musical training was orthodox. He matriculated at Har-
vard, where he studied music with a number of impeccable professors.
He even played the organ in King's Chapel, Boston. He also displayed
aptitude for winning academic awards, obtaining the Naumburg and
Paine Fellowships, which permitted him to go to Paris, where he
studied with Nadia Boulanger and acquired a permanent taste for
French culture. After graduating from Harvard in 1922 he continued
there for three years as an assistant instructor and then went to Paris
again, where he remained most of the time until the outbreak of World
War II. In Paris he formed a friendship with Gertrude Stein, whose
Capital, Capitals and Four Saints in Three Acts he set to music (sec
the chapter "Toward an American Opera"). He inevitably gravitated
toward the circle of Jean Cocteau and "Les Six," the group of young
antibourgeois composers, followers of Satie, whose irreverent attitudes
and unconventional creations embodied the spirit of '26. These young
composers, among them Milhaud and Honnegger, were intrigued by
jazz and the idioms of American popular music. For them, nothing
was vulgar or commonplace. Or if it was, they transmuted everything
they touched. Thomson found in them a stimulus for his own musical
curiosity and eclecticism.
In February, 1926, at St. Cloud, Thomson completed his Sonata da
Chiesa (literally, "church sonata," a term borrowed from seventeenth-
century Italian instrumental music) for clarinet in E flat, trumpet in C,
viola, horn in F, and trombone. Who but a disciple of Satie would
have thought of inserting a tango as the second movement in this sup-
posedly austere type of chamber music? That is the Thomson touch,
and he carries it off most effectively, and discreetly, with just a sug-
gestion of the tango rhythm in the clarinet and trumpet parts, played
con sordino. The flanking movements are a Chorale and a Fugue, the
former plentifully supplied with parallel fifths. This little work dem-
onstrates Thomson's skillful and expressive use of dissonant counter-
point.
The lure of Paris did not cause Thomson to forget his American
heritage. In his Symphony on a Hymn Tune (1928) he drew on the
532 | Fulfillment
heritage of American hymnody, actually using two familiar hymn
tunes: "How Firm a Foundation Ye Saints of the Lord" (main theme)
and "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" (secondary theme). This symphony is
nostalgic in its evocation of the well-worn hymns, but it is also ex-
tremely witty and subtle. The musical idiom itself is deliberately com-
monplace and transparent, but here and there an unexpected touch or
an amusing vagary reveal the anticonventional aesthetic that prevails
in most of Thomson's music. His adherence to traditional symphonic
form also has in it a touch of satire and quiet maliciousness, like the
subdued ridicule of someone who salutes another person too cere-
moniously.
Thomson likewise drew on familiar hymn tunes in four sets of
Variations and Fugues for organ, written at different times. In these
he used the hymns "Come Ye Disconsolate/' "There's Not a Friend
Like the Lowly Jesus," "Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?"
and "Shall We Gather at the River?" With the exception of Charles
Ives, Thomson is the only contemporary composer who has taken full
advantage of the possibilities inherent in this type of musical Ameri-
cana.
Hymn-tune reminiscences or resemblances run through much of
Thomson's music. They can be noticed in his Second Symphony
(1931; reorchestrated 1941)1 a beautifully integrated and balanced
work, prevailingly diatonic.
In his ballet Filling Station (1938), Thomson turned out a period
piece that captures the flavor of the popular tunes of the 19305 and
that is still amusing and pungent.
Thomson is fond of composing musical portraits— he has written
over a hundred of these for piano, and a set of five Portraits for a
quartet of clarinets (1929). He has composed four Sonatas for piano,
a quantity of songs, two String Quartets, a Violin Sonata, a Sonata for
flute alone, a set of Mayor La Guardia Waltzes for orchestra, a Stabat
Mater for soprano and string quartet, Three Antiphonal Psalms for
women's voices a cappella, a Missa Brevis for men's voices a cappella
and one for women's voices with percussion, and a Mass for mixed
chorus a cappella. Scores written for the films The River, The Plough
That Broke the Plains , and Louisiana Story, have been made into or-
chestral suites. His two operas are discussed in another chapter.
From 1940 to 1954 Thomson was music critic of the New York
Herald Tribune, proving himself a lucid writer and a discerning, if
THE ECLECTICS 533
often caustic, critic. He is the author of several books, including The
State of Music (1939), The Musical Scene (1945), The An of Judging
Music (1948), and Music Right and Left (1951).
A dynamic New Yorker
We have now in the United States a generation of mature com-
posers who were taught by other American composers rather than by
European teachers. To this generation belongs William Schuman (born
in New York City on August 4, 1910), who studied composition with
Roy Harris and who at the outset of his career was definitely a dis-
ciple of that master. One also thinks of Schuman as being, in a way,
spiritually akin to Sessions, whom he resembles as a composer in seri-
ousness of purpose, intensity of expression, uncompromising utterance,
dynamic energy, and rhythmic drive. He is somewhat more eclectic
and flexible, for besides some of the grimmest music of our times he
has also written a Circus Overture (for the show Seven Lively Arts)
and the lighthearted baseball opera The Mighty Casey, which includes
some songs in Broadway musical-comedy style.
Schuman graduated from Columbia University in 1935 and ob-
tained his master's degree there in 1937. In 1935 'ie studied at the
Mozarteum in Salzburg. From 1935 to '945 he was on ^e faculty of
Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Since 1945 he has
been President of the Juilliard School of Music in New York City.
He was twice awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1943 he won
the first Pulitzer Prize to be given for musical composition, with A
Free Song (after Walt Whitman) for mixed chorus and orchestra.
He has won many other awards and honors and is a member of the
National Institute of Arts and Letters. He is the author of an essay,
"On Freedom in Music," published in the volume The Arts in Re-
newal (Philadelphia, 1951).
Schuman has written some piano pieces and considerable choral
music, including "Pioneers!" (Walt Whitman) for mixed chorus a
cappella; This is Our Time (Genevieve Taggard) for mixed chorus
and orchestra (1940); and Te Deum for mixed voices a cappella
(1944). But his most important production is in the realm of sym-
phonic and chamber music. His output in these fields comprises six
symphonies, three overtures, a Piano Concerto, a Violin Concerto,
four String Quartets, and die scores for several ballets: Undertow
534 I Fulfillment
(1945), Night Journey (1947), and Judith (1949)— the last two writ-
ten for Martha Graham.
The Symphony No. i for 18 instruments (1935) and Symphony
No. 2 (1937) have been withdrawn by the composer pending revi-
sion. The Symphony No. 3 (completed in January, 1941) is in neo-
classical style and consists of four movements: Passacaglia, Fugue,
Chorale, Toccata. In it Schuman's tendency toward the use of bitonal-
ity and polyharmony are affirmed. This tendency is further devel-
oped in the Symphony No. 4 (completed in August, 1941), which is
in three movements and closely akin in style to the Third Symphony,
complex in structure and markedly contrapuntal in texture. Robert
Sabin aptly said of this symphony that it is "as functional, and as
beautiful, in its way, as a skyscraper or an ocean liner. Yet it is neither
inhuman nor unfeeling. On the contrary, it is a direct expression of
the spirit of its time in art." e The same remarks apply to Schuman's
work as a whole. One should mention a jazzy injection in the last
movement of the Fourth Symphony that contributes to its vivid con-
temporaneity.
Schuman's Fifth Symphony, finished in July, 1943, is for strings.
Its three movements are: Molto agitato ed energico, Larghissimo, and
Presto leggiero. The jazzlike element, merely adumbrated in the
Fourth Symphony, acquires full stylistic status in the last movement
of the Symphony for Strings, which applies syncopation in the manner
of ragtime music. The Symphony No. 6, completed on the last day
of 1948, represents the peak of Schuman's achievements to date. The
work is in one movement with six sections, all derived from thematic
material stated at the. beginning. The sections are marked Largo;
Moderate con moto; Leggieramente; Adagio; Allegro risoluto, presto;
Larghissimo. Though the structure of this work reveals the composer's
customary formal logic and intellectual control, its emotional impact
is almost terrifying in its depth and intensity. It has grandeur and
passion.
William Schuman, like Virgil Thomson, merits a place among the
Americanists as well as the eclectics, because of his continual pre-
occupation with the American scene. In his American Festival Over-
ture ('939) he gave expression to a typically American mood. In his
own words:
6 In Notes of the Music Library Association, Dec. 1950.
THE ECLECTICS 535
The first three notes of this piece will be recognized by some lis-
teners as the "call to play" of boyhood days. In New York City it
is yelled on the syllables "Wee-Awk-BE" to get the gang together
for a game or a festive occasion of some sort This call very natu-
rally suggested itself for a piece of music being composed for a very
festive occasion. . . . The development of this bit of "folk mate-
rial" ... is along purely musical lines.
In the William Billings Overture (1943), Schuman incorporates
and develops themes from three choral works by the pioneer New
England composer. The first is the stirring anthem "Be Glad, Then,
America"; this leads to the middle section, based on "When Jesus
Wept"; and the final section is on "Chester," the hymn that became
the marching song of the Continental Army.
Other examples of musical Americana composed by Schuman are
Newsreel: In Five Shots (1941) and George Washington Bridge
(1950), both for band; music for the documentary film Steeltown;
the ballet Undertow (also arranged as Choreographic Episodes for
Orchestra); and the one-act opera The Mighty Casey.
The ballet Judith is presented also as a "choreographic poem for
orchestra," and, together with the score for Undertow, stands among
the most striking works of Schuman, particularly with respect to or-
chestration. Judith is like a richly colored biblical painting, and Under-
tow is exciting in its realism and satire.
Self-taught composer
Standing chronologically between Sessions and Schuman— he was
born in 1906— Paul Creston has something in common with both of
these composers: the importance that he assigns to rhythm, and his
stress on musical content rather than programmatic intent. "I regard
music as a language that begins where vocal language ends," he has
stated. Even when he gives descriptive titles to his works, he is con-
cerned with the projection of mood and emotion rather than with
narration or description.
Paul Creston (recte Joseph Guttoveggio) was born in New York
City and studied music with Randegger, D6thier, and Pietro Yon. In
composition he is self-taught. He first attracted attention with his
Seven Theses for piano (1933), which demonstrated the absolute or
constructivist style that he was to pursue in Five Two-part Inven-
536 I Fulfillment
tions (1937) and Six Preludes (1945) for piano, the Suite for violin
and piano (1939), the Partita for flute, violin, and strings (1937), and
the orchestral Pastorale and Tarantella (1941) and Prelude and Dance
(1941).
In his orchestral tone poem Threnody , composed in 1938, Creston
combines a subjective approach (personal emotion) with the abstract
development of musical ideas. This work is marked by the free use
of modal materials derived from Gregorian chant, a tendency that
reached its culmination in Creston's Third Symphony (1951), sub-
titled Three Mysteries (the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and the Resur-
rection). According to the composer's statement:
Although the work derives its inspiration from these events, his-
toric and mystic, it is a musical parallel of the inherent emotional re-
actions rather than a narrative or painting. The programmatic con-
tent, such as there may be, is for the justification of drawing from
the immense wealth in Gregorian chant.
Of Creston's two earlier symphonies, the First (Opus 20) was
completed in 1940, the Second (Opus 35) in 1944. Both reveal his fa-
cility in handling traditional materials and forms. The First Sym-
phony is in the usual four movements, with a vigorous opening Sonata-
allegro, a strongly rhythmic Scherzo, a lyrical Andante, and a four-
alarm Finale. The Second Symphony breaks with convention by hav-
ing only two movements, each of which is in two sections: (i) "In-
troduction and Song," (2) "Interlude and Dance." The whole is con-
ceived as an "apotheosis" of song and dance, the foundations of music.
A further tribute to the dance as abstract form is contained in Two
Choric Dances (1938), which exist in two versions, one for chamber
orchestra and one for full orchestra.
Creston has written three works for E flat alto saxophone: a Suite,
a Sonata, and a Concerto (with orchestra). He has also composed a
Concertino for marimba and orchestra, a Fantasy for piano and or-
chestra, Three Chorales from Tagore for chorus, and much chamber
music. His idiom is conservative, with moderate use of dissonance.
Neoclassical eclecticism
Norman Dello Joio, born in New York City in 1913, resembles
Creston in his penchant for Gregorian themes and Schuman in his
THE ECLECTICS 537
use of dissonant harmony and neoclassical tendencies. An interesting
contrast in the use of Gregorian material from the same source (Mass
of the Angels) is presented in two works by Dello Joio: the Piano
Sonata No, 3, and the Variations, Chaconne, and Finale for orchestra,
the former composed in 1947, the latter in 1948. The treatment of the
themes in the orchestral work is brilliant and colorful; in the piano
sonata it is more introspective but equally imaginative. The Fantasia
on a Gregorian Theme for violin and piano is another work in similar
vein.
Dello Joio studied composition with Bernard Wagenaar and Paul
Hindemith. Following in the footsteps of his father, he has been or-
ganist and choirmaster in several New York churches. For a time he
taught composition at Sarah Lawrence College.
Dello Joio's neoclassical tendencies are fully manifested in his
Ricercari for piano and orchestra (1946), which purports to be a kind
of Scarlatti redivivus. Its three movements develop a single germinal
idea harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically. Likewise in the neo-
classical tradition are the Sinfonietta for piano and orchestra (1941)
and the Serenade for Orchestra (1948). Following a similar tendency,
but in a lighter vein, is the Variations and Capriccio for violin and
piano, written to be, as the composer says, "earfully charming." More
serious in mood are the orchestral Magnificat (1942) and Epigraph
(1951), the latter described as "a piece written in memory of a man"—
in other words, an elegy.
One of his most important works is The Mystic Trumpeter, with
a text adapted from Walt Whitman, for full chorus of mixed voices*
soprano, tenor, and baritone solos, and French horn or piano— a thor-
oughly American composition that owes much to Harris and Schuman.
Dello Joio has made particularly impressive contributions to American
choral music. In addition to the work just mentioned, his choral com-
positions include A Jubilant Song, Madrigals, and A Psalm of David
for mixed chorus and piano (or brass, strings, and percussion). This
is a setting of Penitential Psalm 51 (50 in the Vulgate), in three sec-
tions with introduction and coda, in prevailingly homophonic style.
Impressive among Dello Joio's orchestral works is the symphony en-
titled The Triumph of St. Joan, first performed by the Louisville Or-
chestra in December, 1951. It is in three movements: I, The Maid; II,
The Warrior; III, The Saint. When performed in Louisville the work
was mimed by Martha Graham.
538 | Fulfillment
In 1953 Dello Joio was commissioned to compose a large choral
work for the centennial celebration of Cornell College, in Mount
Vernon, Iowa. The result was a symphonic cantata called Song of
Affirmation, with a text adapted from Stephen Vincent Ben^t's narra-
tive-historical poem, Western Star. The cantata consists of three sec-
tions: "Virginia," "New England," and "The Star in the West." The
score calls for a narrator, soprano solo, mixed chorus, and full or-
chestra.
An academic eclectic
Randall Thompson, born in New York City on April 21, 1899, is a
composer who has assimilated various styles of the past and has com-
bined them in a personal speech that shows a remarkable feeling for
the idioms of American folk and popular music within the framework
of academic traditionalism. He might have been placed with the tra-
ditionalists or the Americanists, but his output is perhaps most fully
contained in the concept of eclecticism. He studied at Harvard with
Hill and Spalding, and privately with Ernest Bloch. He was a Fellow
of the American Academy in Rome from 1922 to 1925, and received
Guggenheim Fellowships in 1929 and 1930. He has held various teach-
ing posts, at Harvard, at the University of Virginia, at Princeton,
and elsewhere. His most significant work has been done in the choral
and symphonic fields, though he has also written some admirable
chamber music and an attractive one-act opera, Solomon and Balkis,
based on Rudyard Kipling's tale "The Butterfly that Stamped" (it was
composed for radio production in 1942).
Two works stand out conspicuously in the production of Randall
Thompson: the Second Symphony (1931) and The Peaceable King-
dom (1936) for mixed voices a cappella. The Second Symphony, in
E minor, consists of four movements: i, Allegro (in sonata form); 2,
Largo; 3, Vivace (scherzo-trio); 4, Andante moderato— Allegro con
spirito— Largamente (E major). The Allegro in the last movement is
a modified rondo, having as its theme a diminution of the theme of the
first and last sections. The composer has been sparing in his instru-
mentation, limiting the percussion to cymbals and kettledrums, and
the brass in the scherzo to horns and one trumpet. Not until the
Largamentc at the end are the full sonorities of the orchestra em-
ployed. This restraint is characteristic of Thompson. He has wished
THE ECLECTICS 539
to entice and delight his hearers rather than to overwhelm them. The
composer insists that his symphony is simply music, with no literary
or spiritual "program." One would like to say that it is delightfully
civilized music, if one were certain that this would not belittle it in
the eyes (or ears) of any reader (or listener). The suggestions of
American popular idioms in the Vivace are as clever and engaging as
they are discreet and skillful.
The Peaceable Kingdom consists of eight choruses from Isaiah for
mixed voices a cappella, suggested by the painting of that title by the
early nineteenth-century American artist Edward Hicks, who was
also a Quaker preacher. Thompson selected the texts from Isaiah with
a view to illustrating the spirit of the painting. The first chorus con-
trasts the reward of the righteous, who "shall sing for joy of heart,"
and the fate of the wicked, who "shall howl for vexation of spirit."
The second chorus, "Woe Unto Them," is a dramatic admonition to
those who "regard not the Lord." The third chorus continues to fore-
tell the doom of the wicked: "Their children also shall be dashed to
pieces before their eyes." The dramatic tension reaches its culmina-
tion in the next number, "Howl Ye," for double chorus with an-
tiphony. The final section is also antiphonal, men's voices being op-
posed to women's voices in proclaiming the words of the prophet:
Say ye to the righteous, it shall be well with him:
for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
Thompson's choral music includes further Five Odes of Horace
(1924), Americana (1932) for mixed voices and piano or orchestra,
Alleluia for mixed voices a cappella (1940), and The Testament of
Freedom (1943) for men's voices with piano or orchestra. Each of
these compositions is completely different from any of the others. The
Odes show his mastery of part writing and his skill in the solution
of the rhythmic problems presented by the text. Americana is a set
of five choruses with texts from the American Mercury, dealing with
five aspects of American life—fundamentalism, spiritualism, temper-
ance, capital punishment, optimism. The satiric humor of these pieces
reaches its climax in the final chorus, which proclaims the virtues of
a book by Miss Edna Nethery, Loveliness, "all abrim with Joy, Love,
Faith, Abundance, Victory, Beauty, and Mastery." Thompson's set-
ting of Alleluia, written on that word alone, is a well-conceived and
brilliantly executed a cappella choral number that has firmly estab-
540 | Fulfillment
lished itself in the repertoire of American choirs. The Testament of
Freedom is a setting of selected writings by Thomas Jefferson: A
Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774); A Declara-
tion of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms (July 6, 1775);
Letter to John Adams, Monticello, dated September 12, 1821. In this
work the composer deliberately set himself to write a type of "public
music" that would be as impersonal as possible and that would possess
a dignified grandeur arising from simplicity of means. Hence the
writing is predominantly in unison, stressing directness of expression
and clarity in projection of the text.
Among Thompson's instrumental works should be mentioned his
two String Quartets, the Suite for oboe, clarinet, and viola (1940),
the Jazz Poem for piano and orchestra (1928), The Piper at the Gates
of Dawn (1924), symphonic prelude for orchestra, and the Third
Symphony (1949), which incorporates folklike material. These com-
positions reveal his eclectic tendencies, ranging from French impres-
sionism to the stylization of jazz. Finally, no account of Randall
Thompson would be complete that failed to mention his incidental
music for the Grand Street Follies (1926), one of the many musical
chores that he did to make a living during the two years that he was a
struggling young artist in Greenwich Village.
Two composers from Cleveland
Herbert Elwell, music critic of the Cleveland Plain Dealer since
1932, is a Clcvelander by adoption. He was born in Minneapolis, Min-
nesota, in 1898, and after attending the University of Minnesota he
studied composition with Ernest Bloch in New York and with Nadia
Boulanger in Paris. He was the recipient of a fellowship from the
American Academy in Rome in 1926, and thereafter spent several
years in Europe. He has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music and
at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
ElwelPs best-known work is the orchestral suite from a ballet
tided The Happy Hypocrite (1925), which has been frequently per-
formed in the United States and in Europe. He has also written Intro-
duction and Allegro for orchestra (1941); the cantata Lincoln for
baritone solo, mixed chorus, and orchestra (1945); a quantity of cham-
ber music, including Blue Symphony for medium voice and string
quartet; and many songs and piano pieces.
THE ECLECTICS 54!
Among Elwell's students in composition at the Cleveland Institute
of Music was a young Negro employee of the post office in that city.
His name was Howard Swanson. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia,
but his parents, who were poor, moved to Cleveland when he was
eight years old. After graduating from high school he got a job as
greaser in a locomotive roundhouse, then as a letter carrier, and after-
ward as a postal clerk. After completing his studies at the Cleveland
Institute of Music, he received a Rosenwald Fellowship that enabled
him to study composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris for two
years. Thus, like Kerr, Elwell, and so many other American com-
posers of our time, he became a member of what one pun-happy
critic has dubbed "the Boulangerie." Abandoning Paris in the face of
the German occupation, Swanson returned to the United States, where,
to make his living, he worked for a time in the Internal Revenue
Service of the Treasury Department. Finally, resolved to devote him-
self entirely to music, he resigned and began to compose intensively.
The next episode of Swanson's career reads like a classical Amer-
ican "success story." His dramatically expressive songs, in which the
text, the melody, and the accompaniment are so skillfully interwoven,
were introduced at a recital in New York in October, 1946, and im-
mediately won critical acclaim. The songs were taken up by Marian
Anderson and other celebrated singers, so that the composer's inter-
national reputation was quickly established. His Short Symphony,
composed in 1948, was given its first performance by Dimitri Mitro-
poulos with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in No-
vember, 1950, and was later included in the repertoire of that orchestra
when it played at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in the summer
of 1951. Then the influential Music Critics' Circle of New York chose
Swanson's Short Symphony as the best new orchestral work per-
formed in that metropolis during the 1950-1951 season. Today the
name of Howard Swanson is widely known both at home and abroad.
Swanson's Short Symphony is in three movements: Allegro mod-
erato; Andante; Allegro giocoso— Andante con moto. It is predomi-
nantly neoclassical in texture, and one critic has described it as an
attempt "to apply fugue principle to the sonata-allegro scheme." It is
markedly eclectic in its alternating use of freely chromatic, diatonic,
neoclassical, and slightly jazzlike elements (in the last movement).
These disparate elements do not always coalesce, but the Short Sym-
phony, in spite of its shortcomings, is a sincere and attractive work.
542 | Fulfillment
Another work by Swanson that has been well received is Night
Music for woodwinds, horn, and strings. Other instrumental works are
a Piano Sonata, Nocturne for violin and piano, Suite for cello and
piano, Soundpiece for brass quintet, and Music for Strings. His songs
'include "The Valley" (Edwin Markham), "The Junk Man" (Carl
Sandburg), "Ghosts in Love" (Vachel Lindsay), and "The Negro
Speaks of Rivers" (Langston Hughes).
Some younger eclectics
Ray Green is a composer from the Middle West who gravitated
toward the "New Music" group in New York and eventually became
executive secretary of the American Music Center in that city. Born
in Cavendish, Missouri, in 1909, he studied composition with Bloch,
Elkus, and Milhaud. His early works, published by New Music Edi-
tions in the 19308, reveal an innovating spirit impatient of conven-
tional restrictions. To this period belong the Sonatina for Piano, Two
Madrigals (one for mixed voices, the other for men's voices), and
Three Inventories of Casey Jones, for percussion. The Madrigal for
men's voices (Sea Calm) experiments with the use of quarter tones.
In later works Green has combined his distinctly modern idioms with
baroque formal structures, achieving a vigorous contemporary expres-
sion in such works as the Short Sonata for Piano, Holiday for Four
(for viola, clarinet, bassoon, and piano; in three movements: "Fugal
Introduction," "Prairie Blues," "Festival Finale"); and Festival Fugues ,
(subtitled American Toccata for Piano), consisting of "Prelude Prome-
nade," "Holiday Fugue," "Fugal Song," "Prelude-Pastorale," "Jubilant
Fugue,"
Green is one of the composers who have effectively utilized the
American heritage of folk hymnody stemming from the shape-note
"fasola" tradition, as well as the background of the early American
fuguing tune. He has done this notably in his Sunday Sing Symphony ,
in five movements, which evokes the whole range of communal reli-
gious feeling as manifested in rural traditions.
Leon Kirchner might be described as a "Californian from Brook-
lyn. He was born in Brooklyn in 1919 but went West early in life.
His teachers in composition were Bloch, Schoenberg, and Sessions.
During his younger years he wrote a quantity of music that he after-
ward, with admirable self-discipline, repudiated. His list of acknowl-
THE ECLECTICS 543
edged compositions begins with a Duo for Violin and Piano dating
from 1947, and continues with a Piano Sonata (1948), a String Quartet
(1949), and several pieces for piano. Aaron Copland, reviewing the
Duo, characterized it as belonging "to the Bart6k-Berg axis of con-
temporary music," and declared that Kirchner's principal claim to
originality lay in "the daringly free structural organization of his com-
positions." 8 His music is highly dissonant in texture and rhapsodically
emotional in expression, influenced by Central European folk music
(probably via Bart6k).
Paul Bowles, pupil and disciple of Virgil Thomson, is a composer
who has made eclecticism the very essence of his music. Born in New
York City in 1911, and no stranger, musically, to the commercial
Broadway circuit, he is an inveterate traveler, with a preference for
Africa and Latin America, and an indefatigable collector of exotic
musical materials. His list of compositions is impressively long and
reflects virtually every trend of contemporary music, from Futurism
and Dada to jazz and folklorism, not omitting a neoclassicism stem-
ming from Satie. Among his works are Scenes cTAnabase (1932) for
tenor, oboe, and piano (text by St.-John Perse); Par le Detroit (1933),
cantata for soprano, male quartet, harmonium, and percussion; Music
for a Farce (1938); Sonata for Two Pianos (1946); Yankee Clipper,
ballet (1946); and an opera, The Wind Remains (1943); after Gar-
cia Lorca). Typical of his neo-primitive writing is the concluding
Allegro of the two-piano Sonata, based on a West African dance and
employing tone clusters to evoke the percussive quality of native
tribal drums. For several years Bowles has been living in North
Africa, composing little but writing fiction (The Sheltering Sky and
numerous short stories) that has won him a considerable literary
reputation. His future as a composer is an interesting question of the
moment in American music. He is extremely talented and his music
has a powerfully evocative quality.
Roger Goeb, as one critic expressed it, "is a craftsman who can
write in many styles." This may provoke the query "Why should a
composer wish to write in many styles?" In the case of Goeb, Otto
Luening provides what appears to be a plausible answer:
Goeb seems to believe that in music as in other things, circum-
stances alter cases and that it is not only necessary but desirable to
• Notes of the Music Library Association, June 1950, p. 434.
544 | Fulfillment
compose music for particular performances and particular occasions.
He believes that audiences vary in their willingness to concentrate
on music and that they listen to music for different reasons at dif-
ferent times.7
It follows, therefore, that the composer should adopt different styles
according to the occasion.
Goeb, born in Cherokee, Iowa, in 1914, studied chemistry at the
University of Wisconsin (he also learned to play most of the instru-
ments of an orchestra), and composition with Nadia Boulanger in
Paris and Otto Luening in New York. He continued with his aca-
demic musical studies, winding up with a Ph.D. from the University
of Iowa in 1946. He has composed over fifty works, including Prairie
Songs for woodwind quintet (1947),. Fantasy for oboe and string or-
chestra (1947), Quintet for trombone and strings (1950), Suite in Folk
Style for four clarinets (1946), Lyric Piece for trumpet and orchestra
(1947), Symphony No. 3 (1951), Three American Dances for string
orchestra (1952), and Two American Dances for orchestra (1952).
His strong point is instrumentation, and his style follows the more
sophisticated academic norms of today.
Ellis Kohs (born in Chicago, 1916) belongs to the growing ranks
of Middle Western composers who have achieved promihence in re-
cent years. But he became a Californian by adoption when he joined
the music faculty of the University of Southern California in Los
Angeles. Recognition came to Kohs when his one-movement Con-
certo for Orchestra was performed at the 1942 Festival of the Interna-
tional Society for Contemporary Music in San Francisco. His reputa-
tion was subsequently confirmed by such works as the Piano Varia-
tions (1946; based on a twelve-tone row), the Chamber Concerto for
solo viola and string nonet (1949), the Capriccio for organ, and the
Toccata for harpsichord or piano solo (also using the twelve-tone
technique). There is also an early String Quartet (1940), structurally
less convincing than the later works but still interesting for its rhyth-
mic vitality and for the "exuberant musicalness" that Kohs brings to
all his compositions.
Leonard Bernstein sprang into sudden fame as a conductor at the
age of twenty-five, when he substituted for Bruno Walter at a con-
cert of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony in 1943. As a com-
T In Bulletin of the American Composers Alliance, June 1952, p. 2.
THE ECLECTICS 545
poser he is significant above all for his dual role as a writer of both
"serious" and "popular" music. Not since Gershwin has there been a
composer so firmly entrenched in both fields. But Bernstein achieved
his dual status by traveling in the opposite direction from Gershwin:
from the serious to the popular. His whole background was academic.
Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1918, he attended the Boston
Latin School and Harvard University, where he studied composition
with Piston and E. B. Hill. After graduating from Harvard, he spent
two years at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where his
teacher in orchestration was Randall Thompson.
Among the "serious" compositions of Bernstein are the Jeremiah
Symphony (1944) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra; The Age of Anx-
iety (Symphony No. 2) for piano and orchestra (1949); Hashkivenu
(1945) f°r tenor solo, mixed chorus, and organ; Sonata for clarinet
and piano (1942), Seven Anniversaries for piano (1943); and the
ballets Fancy Free (1944) and Facsimile (1946). These ballets are
"serious" only in the loose and unsatisfactory sense in which that
term is generally applied to "art music" (as distinct from folk and
popular music). Fancy Free, produced by the Ballet Theatre in New
York in 1944, proved to be enormously entertaining and drew large
crowds to the Metropolitan Opera House, where it was performed.
From this it was an easy transition to the Broadway popular theater,
and Bernstein made it with the musical comedy On the Toivn, in-
corporating material from the score of Fancy Free.
It would be a grave mistake to regard Bernstein simply as a tal-
ented composer cultivating two disparate fields of music. Such a di-
chotomy would completely miss the real significance of his contribu-
tion to America's music, which lies precisely in his fusion of serious
and popular elements. His symphonies undoubtedly display his innate
talent but are unconvincing as major works of musical art. On the
other hand, his short opera in seven scenes, Trouble in Tahiti, pro-
duced as a television show in 1952, is an original and truly contempo-
rary work that could have been written only by a composer of today
who has thoroughly absorbed both the academic and the popular tra-
ditions (see Chapter 30 for an account of this opera).
One wonders whether Alan Hovhaness, an American-born com-
poser of Armenian descent, should be included among the eclectics*
because he has drawn so extensively upon a single tradition, namely
that of Armenian modal music. However, even within the cultuial
546 I Fulfillment
area from which he draws most of his materials and techniques, there is
room for considerable eclecticism, for, as Virgil Thomson observed,
"He writes in the early Christian, the medieval, and the modern Ar-
menian techniques, possibly even a little in the pre-Christian manner
of that ancient and cultivated people."
Actually, Hovhaness's mother was of Scotch origin, and Leon
Kochnitzky is of the opinion that "the composer's Scottish heredity
played as important a part in his artistic formation as his Armenian
background." 8 This opinion is based on an analogy between the com-
poser's evocation of the myths and rituals of a "long forgotten primi-
tive people," and the famous "Ossianic" poems of the Scotsman Mac-
pherson, both being taken as evidence of a cult for archaism and
"make-believe." It appears, in any case, that Hovhaness did not be-
come "Armenian-conscious** until reaching the age of thirty. He was
born in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1911, and his father was a pro-
fessor of chemistry at Tufts College in Boston. He studied at the New
England Conservatory of Music, and it was only in imagination that
he later turned for musical inspiration to the land of his paternal an-
cestors, which he himself never visited.
The compositions of Hovhaness include Prayer of St. Gregory for
trumpet and string orchestra; Tzaizerk ("Evening Song") for violin,
flute, drums, and strings; Avak the Healer, for soprano, trumpet, and
strings; the symphony Anahid (named for an ancient Armenian god-
dess); Pe-El-Amarna ("City of the Sun") for orchestra; Suite for vio-
lin, piano, and percussion; Achtamar, for piano; Arevakal ("Coming of
the Sun"), concerto for orchestra; joth Ode of Solomon, for baritone
and orchestra; and Concerto No. 5 for piano and orchestra, first per-
formed by the National Orchestral Association in New York on Feb-
ruary 22, 1954. In an earlier piano concerto, titled Lousadzak ("The
Coming of Light"), Hovhaness imitates the effects of such ancient
Armenian instruments as the tar, kanoon, oud, and saz. Of these, the
kanoon is a zitherlike instrument on which sustained tones are simu-
lated by rapid repetition of single notes. In 1953 the composer com-
pleted a cantata, Shepherd of Israel, for cantor, recorder (or flute),
string quartet (or string orchestra), and trumpet ad libitum, written
after he learned that the young composers of Israeli were interested
•Sec the very interesting discussion of Hovhaness's "Armenianism" in Tbe
Tiger's Eye (Westport^ Conn.), No. 3 (March 1948), pp. 59-65
THE ECLECTICS 547
in musical materials and modes of expression akin to those that at-
tracted him.
Lukas Foss, born in Berlin, Germany, in 1922, came to the United
States at the age of fifteen and rapidly made a name for himself as a
remarkably gifted composer of eclectic tendencies derived partly
from his teacher Hindemith and partly from French neoclassical in-
fluences. He first came into prominence with a cantata, The Prairie (on
a poem by Carl Sandburg), composed when he was nineteen. His most
impressive work to date is A Parable of Death (1952) for tenor solo,
narrator, mixed chorus, and orchestra, with texts by Rainer Maria
Rilke, modeled upon the cantatas of J. S. Bach but utilizing a thor-
oughly modern musical idiom. Among his numerous other works are
The Song of Songs, four settings for voice and orchestra (or piano);
Symphony in G; Song of Anguish and Ode to Those Who Will Not
Return, both for orchestra; Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra;
Concerto for oboe and orchestra; String Quartet in G (1947); and
Suite for The Tempest (Shakespeare), for chamber orchestra.
Robert Starer, born in Vienna in 1924, was taken at an early age
to Israel, received his basic education there, and in 1947 came to the
United States, where he studied composition with the late Frederick
Jacobi and with Aaron Copland. Later he joined the faculty of the
Juilliard School of Music. Hailed as "a new talent of great promise,"
he has been steadily producing works that have translated the promise
into achievement. Among his more important compositions are a
String Quartet (1947), Five Miniatures for brass quintet; Concertino
for two voices or instruments, violin, and piano; Kohelet ("Ecclesi-
astes") for baritone, soprano, mixed chorus, and orchestra; a Sonata
for piano; and the Symphony No. 2, first performed by the Israeli
Philharmonic Orchestra on April 27, 1953. Like Kirchner, he moves
somewhat within the orbit of Bart6k, utilizing folk elements in a
chromatic texture.
chapter twenty-six
The traditionalists
Will you seek afar off? You surely will come back at last,
In things best known to you Ending the best, or as good as the best.
WALT WHITMAN, A SONG OF OCCUPATIONS.
Iradition is a body of usage transmitted from one generation to an-
other. In learning, scholarship, and the fine arts, the academy or uni-
versity is the recognized upholder of tradition. That is why most of
the composers whom we classify as traditionalists might also be de-
scribed by the term "academic.'7 Not all traditionalists are academic,
but the majority are by background, by association, or by tempera-
ment—sometimes by all three together. The academic traditionalist is
usually a professor or teacher; that is to say, he has a direct profes-
sional concern with the transmitting of tradition. It has, indeed, been
observed that in the United States we now have a large body of com-
position that might be called "professors' music." To it are generally
applied such descriptive terms as "conservative," "conventional," "tra-
ditional," or "classical." All of these terms are indicative, none is defini-
tive. "Professors' music," or, if you will, academic composition, follows
many tendencies, and is often characterized by a pronounced eclecti-
cism. To be qualified for academic sanction, an aesthetic trend or artis-
tic style needs only the consecration of usage. This usage may pertain
to the remote past, the near past, the immediate past, or even the
present. If it pertains to the present, it is never the dernier cri, but must
have gained fairly wide acceptance in order to qualify academically.
Examples of academic sanction in each of these chronological cate-
gories in the realm of music, are:
1. From the remote past—the cult of medieval music
2. From the near past— the post-romantic movement
3. From the immediate past— the neoclassical revival
4. From the present— twelve-tone music
548
THE TRADITIONALISTS 54Q
As thirty years have passed since Schoenberg developed his method
of composing with twelve tones, and since the method, in one form
or another, has found fairly wide acceptance, we find twelve-tone
music rather well entrenched in academic circles in the second half
of the twentieth century. Post-romanticism and neoclassicism, how-
ever, are the predominant academic trends. Among contemporary
American composers, Howard Hanson and Samuel Barber may be
taken as representing the former; Walter Piston and David Diamond
the latter. It is no mere accident that both Hanson and Piston have
been long and prominently identified with two important institutions
of higher learning. Piston has taught music at Harvard since 1925, and
Hanson has been, since 1924, director of the Eastman School of Music
of the University of Rochester, founded in 1921.
The educators responsible for the policies of the Eastman School
of Music were much concerned with the meaning of tradition. Charles
Riker, in an official history of the school, drew a parallel between the
aims of the institution and the ideas set forth by T. S. Eliot in his
famous and influential essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent."
Paraphrasing a celebrated passage in Eliot's essay, Mr. Riker wrote:
The musician and the school of music must be aware of the mu-
sical tradition, but not as something merely handed down or inher-
ited. This tradition must be obtained by great labor, and once se-
cured, includes a perception of the living presence of the past. In
coming to grips with the old or, on the other hand, the really new
work of art, one must be prepared to admit that both are measured
by each other. Neither exists alone. The Eastman School, with all its
commitments to the new in American music, has also its commit-
ments to the old. One of its larger aims has been to effect a rap-
prochement of the two.1
In accordance with these policies, the Eastman School inaugurated
in 1925 an annual series of American Composers' Concerts, and in
1930 an annual Festival of American Music. In 1935 ^c former were
replaced by two annual symposia, one for the performance of works
by composers from all over the country, the other for the performing
of works by students, graduates, and faculty members of the school.
The "commitments to the old" have resulted chiefly in the perform-
ance of music by "The Boston Classicists"— Paine, Chadwick, Foote,
1 Riker, The Eastman School of Music: Its First Quarter Century, p. 58.
550 | Fulfillment
Parker— as well as that of various American eclectics like Henry Gil-
bert, Charles Griffes, Charles M. Loeffler, and Henry Hadlcy. Stu-
dents, composers, and others who have attended these festivals have
therefore been provided with an opportunity to acquaint themselves
with American symphonic productions of the immediate past. Eliot
himself, incidentally, does not feel that the immediate past is particu-
larly valuable to the artist in establishing a sense of tradition. He rec-
ommends skipping several generations and picking up a more remote
tradition. But in the realm of American symphonic music, the imme-
diate past is all that we have. That is one of the difficulties encoun-
tered by the American composer in his search for "a usable past." By
and large, the academic composers have not found much of a usable
past in America's music.
An avowed romanticist
Howard Hanson himself uses a musical idiom that stems directly
from the tradition of nineteenth-century European romanticism. This
is true even when he turns to American subjects, as in the opera
Merry Mount or the Third Symphony (1938), written in commemo-
ration of the 3ooth anniversary of the first Swedish settlement on the
shores of the Delaware in 1638 and "conceived as a tribute to the
epic qualities of the Swedish pioneers in America." Hanson' himself
is of Swedish descent and he is partial to the Nordic temperament.
His First Symphony (1922), titled Nordic, reveals the influence of
Sibelius, especially in its opening movement, which "sings of the
solemnity, austerity, and grandeur of the North, of its restless surg-
ing and strife, of its somberness and melancholy." In the finale of this
symphony, Hanson employs themes reminiscent of Swedish folk
tunes.
With his Second Symphony (1930), Hanson proclaimed himself
an unabashed romanticist— in the music, in the title (Romantic), and
in a statement that he made at the time of its premiere:
The symphony represents for me my escape from the rather bit-
ter type of modern musical realism which occupies so large a place
in contemporary thought. Much contemporary music seems to me to
be showing a tendency to become entirely too cerebral. I do not be-
lieve that music is primarily a matter of intellect, but rather a mani-
festation of the emotions. I have, therefore, aimed in this symphony
THE TRADITIONALISTS 551
to create a work that was young in spirit, lyrical and romantic in
temperament, and simple and direct in expression.1
There are several controversial points that might be raised in connec-
tion with Hanson's statement. But this has been cited primarily as an
expression of his views, and it unquestionably makes his position clear.
As a result of his musical credo, Howard Hanson has found no diffi-
culty in "communicating" with his audience. Composers whom he
calls "cerebral" also communicate emotion, but theirs is musical emo-
tion, something which few listeners comprehend or are receptive to.
Hanson's emotion, on the other hand, is always associated with a sub-
jective feeling: mother love, Nordic melancholy, epic heroism, mourn-
ing for personal bereavement. Hanson's Fourth Symphony (1943), for
instance, is dedicated to the memory of his father, and each of its four
movements bears the name of a section of the Requiem, or Mass for
the dead: "Kyrie," "Requiescat," "Dies Irae," "Lux Aeterna." Since
the impulse is noble and generous and full of piety, and since the
musical expression draws on a deep traditional reservoir of emotion-
alized musical rhetoric, communication is readily established between
composer and listener.
At the time when he issued his "Romantic Manifesto," Hanson evi-
dently felt that he was reacting against the kind of music that pre-
dominated during the 19208. In a later statement, he declared himself a
partisan of "warm-blooded music," which he contrasted with "cold-
blooded music." In writing about his Third Symphony, he again re-
turned to the attack, affirming that it, too, "stands as an avowal against
a certain coldly abstract, would-be sentimental music professed by
certain composers of high gifts." As eighteenth-century France had its
Guerre des Buffons between the partisans of French and Italian opera,
we in our century have had our war between the hotbloods and the
coldbloods. And on the side lines are those who declare that only jazz
is really hot.
Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, on October 28, 1896. He
studied at the Institute of Musical Art in New York, and in 1921 ob-
tained the American Prix de Rome for musical composition. After his
three years at the American Academy in Rome he was called to be
director of the Eastman School of Music, which he made a leading
center of American music through the concerts and festivals men*
2 Quoted in Bagar and Biancolli, The Cone en Companion, p. 319.
552 | Fulfillment
turned above. Besides his four symphonies, he has composed five Sym-
phonic Poems and other symphonic works (Prelude, Rhapsody,
Legend), a Concerto for organ and orchestra (1926), a Concerto for
organ, strings, and harp (1943), a Concerto for piano and orchestra
(1948), some chamber music; The Lament for Beowulf for mixed
chorus and orchestra (1925), and Three Poems from Walt Whitman
(from "Drum Taps") for the same.
A painter with tones
Another composer long associated with the Eastman School of
Music is Bernard Rogers, who has been teaching there since 1929. He
was born in 1893 *n NCW York City, where he attended school. He
studied composition briefly with Arthur Farwell, but his principal
teachers were Ernest Bloch and Nadia Boulanger (in Paris). He might
be described as an academic eclectic with classical tendencies. He leans
strongly on tradition and on classical techniques, but has undergone
numerous influences, particularly those of his teacher Bloch, the French
impressionists, the modern British school (he spent some time in
England), and the music of the Orient. He is an amateur painter and
has been markedly influenced by visual elements in his music. For
example, his tone poem Fuji in the Sunset Glow and Three Japanese
Dances (1925) were inspired by Japanese prints, and The Supper at
Emmaus (for orchestra, 1937) was inspired by Rembrandt's painting
and is itself a sort of tonal painting. The same may be said of The
Dance of Salome (1938), The Song of the Nightingale (1939), and
Invasion (1943). His orchestral suite, Characters From Hans Christian
Andersen (1944), is subtitled "Four Drawings for small orchestra"
and each piece or "drawing" utilizes a different artistic medium: (i)
pen and ink, (2) soft charcoal, (3) gouache (impressionistic), (4)
brush and ink. The composer calls these pieces "acoustical illustra-
tions."
There is a pictorial-narrative element in Rogers's oratorio The
Passion (1944) —probably his most important work— which in six
scenes depicts the Passion of Our Lord from the entry into Jerusalem
to the last prayer on the Cross. The declamation in this work is
dramatically expressive, particularly the use of microtonally flatted
notes in the final prayer. Other biblical subjects are treated by Rogers
in his cantatas The Raising of Lazarus (1931) and The Exodus (1932).
THE TRADITIONALISTS 553
Rogers has written four symphonies: I, Adonais (1925); II (1928);
HI, On a Thanksgiving Song (1936); IV (1945). The date of thc
Fourth Symphony is significant in relation to its content and inten-
tion. It purports "to trace a line leading from darkness and despair
to eventual hope and affirmation." It consists of four movements:
"Battle Fantasy" (using material from Invasion), "Eulogy," "Fugue,"
"Epilogue." Rogers is but one of the many American composers
whose music reflects the conflicts, the anxieties, and the aspirations
of the times in which we live. His Elegy to the Memory of Franklin
D. Roosevelt for small orchestra is an impressively moving and sin-
cere elegiac expression and formally an admirable example of a com-
memorative composition.
Rogers's most often heard v/ork is the charming Soliloquy for
flute and strings (1922). He has also written a second Soliloquy, for
bassoon and strings (1938). Among his orchestral works are Five
Fairy Tales, after Andrew Lang (1935); Two American Frescoes
(1935); The Silver World, suite for woodwinds and strings (1950);
and Pinocchio, suite for small orchestra (1950). He has composed
three operas: The Marriage of Aude (1932), The Warrior (1946),
and The Veil (1950). His Hymn to Free France (1942) is another
occasional piece revealing his interest in the issues that move the
world. Rogers is the author of a valuable treatise on orchestration in
which special attention is given to the orchestral color of modern
music.
An eclectic traditionalist
Among the pupils of Bernard Rogers none has achieved greater
prominence than David Diamond, composer of four symphonies and
numerous other instrumental and vocal works that show the devel-
opment of a personal idiom resulting from the assimilation and adapta-
tion of many contemporary influences— chiefly those of Bart6k, Cop-
land, Sessions, and Stravinsky— and characterized by a transition from
incipient chromaticism in the early works to a consistently diatonic
style in the later compositions, with marked modal tendencies.
Diamond was born in Rochester, New York, on July 9, 1915. At
the age of ten his family moved to Cleveland, where he attended the
Cleveland Institute of Music. Five years later thc family returned to
Rochester and he then obtained a scholarship to study at the Eastman
554 ! Fulfillment
School of Music. He also studied composition with Roger Sessions
in New York and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He has summed
up his attitude toward musical composition in these words:
My emotional life and reactions to certain events and situations
have worked hand in hand with purely abstract musical conception
and manipulation of material, and it was always the material that re-
mained foremostly important to me in my working stages.
Diamond's first important work was the Symphony No. 2, com-
posed in 1942-1943 and consisting of four movements cast in tradi-
tional forms. Regarding it, the composer wrote: "This work was
composed during the days of tense world unrest, and I am quite sure
that a certain amount of exterior emotional influence has affected the
quality of the symphony. . . ." And he added: "It was in no way my
intention to have the musical substance represent specific emotional
reactions or to conjure up programmatic fantasies. I have a horror of
anything as prosaic as that, and since I have never known that method
of musical composition, I can only say that the opposite is true." 3
The composer, that is, wishes to have his symphony listened to as
music; certainly not an unreasonable or exorbitant demand, and yet one
that seems to arouse a certain degree of antagonism, as though ob-
jectified emotion were somehow inferior to subjective emotion.
Diamond's Third and Fourth Symphonies followed rapidly after
the Second and confirmed his adherence to traditional forms, his
tendency toward cyclic procedures, his reliance on diatonic melody,
and his frequent use of modality. Economy of means and clarity of
texture are other features of his mature style.
In July, 1944, Diamond completed what proved to be one of his
most happily conceived and successful compositions, Rounds for
String Orchestra, in three movements: Allegro molto vivace (with
syncopations reminiscent of the popular-song idiom), Adagio, and
Allegro vigoroso. A round is "A species of canon in the unison, so
called because the performers begin the melody at regular rhythmical
periods, and return from its conclusion to its beginning, so that it
continually passes round and round from one to another of them"—
"Three Blind Mice" and "Row, Row Your Boat," are familiar ex-
amples. Using rondo forms and canonic devices, with lively and ex-
8 Quoted in Bagar and Biancolli, op. cit.y p. 225.
THE TRADITIONALISTS 555
pressive thematic material, Diamond has written a work as ingratiating
as it is formally coherent.
To approximately the same period belong the Overture to The
Tempest (later revised for large orchestra), the incidental music for
Romeo and Juliet , which was made into an orchestral suite; and the
Sonata for violin and piano, all prevailingly diatonic. Diamond's vocal
music includes Chorale for mixed voices a cappella (poem by James
Agee); The Martyr for men's chorus a cappella (poem by Melville
on the death of Lincoln); Chatterton (poem by Keats) for voice and
piano; and several songs that are less diatonic than most of his recent
compositions.
Among Diamond's earlier, more complex works (as regards har-
monic texture), one of the best is the Elegy in Memory of M. Ravel
(1938) for string orchestra and percussion. It is clear that his admira-
tion for Ravel is tinged with affection; there is Ravelian influence in
much of Diamond's early music, which includes a Suite for chamber
orchestra, a Divertimento for piano and small orchestra, Heroic Piece,
Variations on an Original Theme, and Concerto (all for chamber
orchestra). There are indications that Diamond may be deviating from
the severe diatonicism of his output in the 19405 and resuming some
of the harmonic and contrapuntal complexity of his earlier production.
Other Rochester alumni
Hunter Johnson, born in Benson, North Carolina, in 1906, gradu-
ated from the Eastman School in 1929 and four years later was awarded
the American Prix de Rome, which enabled him to spend two years in
Europe. His compositions include Symphony No. i (1929), Concerto
for piano and small orchestra (1935), Elegy for clarinet and strings
(1936), For an Unknown Soldier, for flute and orchestra (1944); two
frequently performed ballets, Letter to the World (1940) and Deaths
and Entrances (1943), both written for Martha Graham; and an im-
portant Piano Sonata, first composed in 1933-1934, rewritten in 1936,
and revised in 1947-1948. The Sonata emerged as an expression of the
composer's thoughts and feelings about his homeland during his stay
in Rome. He said of the work: "It is an intense expression of the
South . . . the nostalgia, dark brooding, frenzied gaiety, high rhetoric
and brutal realism are all intermingled." As Herbert Livingston ob-
served, the harmonic writing of the Sonata is characterized by "the
556 I Fulfillment
frequent use of 'blue' chords containing both the major and minor
third above the bass."4
Burrill Phillips was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1907, and came
to the Eastman School in 1931 after a period of study with Edwin
Stringham in Denver. From 1933 to 1949 ne taught theory and com-
position at Rochester. Among his best-known works are Selections
from McGuffey's Reader for orchestra (1934), Concert Piece for bas-
soon and strings (1940), Trio for Trumpets (1937), Sonata for violin
and piano (1942), Concerto for piano and orchestra (first performed
in 1949); Partita for piano and strings; Tom Paine Overture; Dance
Overture; Symphony No. i; and an opera buffa, Don't We All? for
four singers and small orchestra (1949). In 1949 Phillips joined the
faculty of the University of Illinois as associate professor of composi-
tion. His style is technically deft and conservative in manner.
Gardner Read obtained his master's degree at the Eastman School
in 1937 after previous study at Northwestern University in his home
town of Evanston, Illinois, where he was born in 191 3. He also studied
with Copland in 1941. After teaching for several years at the Cleve-
land Institute of Music, he became head of the music department of
Boston University. He is a prolific composer of academic-eclectic
tendencies. He has written some Americana, as in the orchestral works
The Painted Desert (1933), Sketches of the City (1933), and First
Overture (1943), which utilizes a Stephen Foster tune, "De Glendy
Burk," and a Negro spiritual, "Don't Be Weary, Traveler." He has
also turned to contemporary realism (Night Flight, 1942), and to
exotic evocations (in the cantata, The Golden Journey to Samarkand).
One of his latest works is The Temptation of St. Anthony, a dance-
symphony after Flaubert's novel (1952). His abstract compositions
include Symphony No. i (1936), Passacaglia and Fugue for orchestra
(1938), Symphony No. 2 (1942), Concerto for cello and orchestra
0945)-
Robert Palmer, born in Syracuse, New York, in 1915, was a pupil
of Hanson and Rogers at the Eastman School but also studied inde-
pendently with Harris and Copland. Both of these composers have
influenced his style more than his teachers at Rochester. After teach-
ing at the University of Kansas he joined the music department of
Cornell University. Among his more important works are a Concerto
4 In Notes of the Music Library Association, Jane 1950, p. 433.
THE TRADITIONALISTS 557
for orchestra (1943), Symphonic Variations for large orchestra
(1946), Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (after Vachel Lind-
say) for mixed chorus and orchestra (1945), Concerto for five instru-
ments (1943), two String Quartets, two String Trios, and a Quartet
for piano and strings (1947). His piano music includes an extremely
interesting Toccata Ostinato (1946), which makes use of a boogie-
woogie bass. Vitality, rhythmic complexity, and contrapuntal tex-
ture, are the prevailing features of his music.
Robert E. Ward, born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1917, received his
bachelor's degree from the Eastman School in 1939, then continued
his studies at the Juilliard School of Music, where he has been teach-
ing since 1946. In 1941 he studied with Copland at the Berkshire
Music Center. Among his compositions are two Symphonies (1942 and
1951), Jubilation, an overture (1950), Night Music for orchestra
(1949), First Sonata for violin and piano (1951), Hush'd Be the
Camps Today for mixed chorus and orchestra (1940), and Lamenta-
tion for piano (1949). In 1953 he was at work on a Third Symphony,
Concert Music for orchestra, and two choral pieces commissioned by
the Juilliard Music Foundation. His music is rhythmically vigorous and
readily communicative.
Another Eastman alumnus who joined the faculty of the Juilliard
School is William Bergsma, a native of California (b. 1921). After
two years at Stanford University he enrolled in the Eastman School,
where he studied from 1940 to 1944. Two years later he transferred
his activities to New York. Like many of the Rochester group, Bergsma
has made his contribution to musical Americana in the folk vein, with
the orchestral suites Paul Bunyan and Pioneer Saga. His abstract works
include a Chamber Symphony, a Symphony completed in 1950, two
String Quartets, and Music on a Quiet Theme for orchestra. Following
a year spent in the West Indies he wrote a work called The Fortunate
Islands (1948).
To the roster of successful Eastman School alumni must be added
the name of Ulysses Simpson Kay, who studied at Rochester with
Hanson and Rogers, and later with Hindemith at Yale and at the
Berkshire Music Center. Winner of numerous prizes and awards, in-
cluding the Ditson Fellowship at Columbia University and two fellow-
ships at the American Academy in Rome, Kay has cultivated a mildly
dissonant contemporary idiom. During World War II he served in
the United States Navy. In 1954 he was invited to conduct the sym-
558 I Fulfillment
phony orchestra of his home town, Tucson, Arizona (where he was
born in 1917), in a performance of his work tided Of New Horizons.
Among his other orchestral compositions are a Sinfonietta, an Oboe
Concerto, and Five Mosaics (for chamber orchestra). He has also
written a Quintet for flute and strings, a Suite for oboe and piano, a
Suite for brass choir, a Sonata for piano, and Two Meditations for
organ.
Peter Mennin, born in Erie, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 1923, at-
tended the Eastman School of Music from 1943 to 1947, studying com-
position with Hanson and Rogers. From 1949 he began to have works
commissioned by various orchestras and foundations. The commission-
ing of works by American composers has taken great strides in re-
cent years and is one of the major factors in the creative development
of American music. Moreover, the demand for his music is a vital
factor in the composer's own creative attitude and productivity.
Mennin has written six symphonies, of which three were commis-
sioned, and all have been performed by major American orchestras
as soon as composed. They have also been published. These facts
are mentioned to show the encouragement and acceptance that await
a talented young American composer today. The battle for recogni-
tion of creative talent in American music has been won.
Besides his six symphonies, Mennin has written a Folk Overture
for orchestra (1945), a Fantasia for strings (1947), a Concertato for
orchestra (1952), two String Quartets; The Christmas Story, cantata
for mixed chorus, soprano and tenor solos, brass quartet, timpani, and
strings (1949); and Five Piano Pieces (published in 1951). His Sym-
phony No. 4 is entitled The Cycle and is written for chorus of mixed
voices and orchestra. Mennin wrote the text himself, which deals with
the cosmic forces of the world and eternity. If he has not completely
solved the problem of writing a satisfactory choral symphony, he has
in any case produced an ambitious and impressive work in a typical
twentieth-century American academic style.
Mennin, like Bergsma and Ward, joined the faculty of the Juil-
liard School of Music (in 1947). There he found himself associated
with several other rising young composers, among them Richard
Franko Goldman, Robert Starer, and Vincent Persichetti.
Vincent Persichetti was born in Philadelphia in 1915 and received
his musical training there. His teachers in composition were Paul
Nordoff and Roy Harris. He was appointed to the Juilliard faculty
THE TRADITIONALISTS 559
in 1947. His commissioned works include a Quintet for piano and
strings (1953-1954), for the Koussevitzky Foundation; an orchestral
Serenade (1953), for the Louisville Symphony; a Piano Concerto for
four hands, for the Pittsburgh International Festival (1952); and a
score for King Lear (1947), for Martha Graham. In addition he has
published four Symphonies, a Piano Concertino, two String Quartets,
Divertimento for band, Fables for narrator and orchestra, Eight Sere-
nades for various combinations of instruments, a Sonata for two pianos,
a Sonata for solo violin, a Sonata for solo cello, a Sonata for harpsi-
chord, three Piano Sonatas; Harmonium, a song cycle for soprano and
piano; and The Hollow Men, for trumpet and string orchestra.
Another Philadelphian, Paul Nordoff (b. 1909), may be men-
tioned here because of his connection with the Juilliard School, where
he studied composition with Goldmark. From 1938 to 1943 ne taught
at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, and later joined the music
department of Michigan State College. He has written two ballets
for Martha Graham: Every Soul is a Circus (1938) and Salem Shore
(1944). His orchestral compositions include Prelude and Three Fugues
(1932), two Piano Concertos and a Violin Concerto, a Symphony,
and a Suite for chamber orchestra. One of his most ambitious works
is a Secular Mass for mixed chorus and orchestra (1934). For chamber
combinations he has written two string quartets, Poem for violin and
piano, and Poem for clarinet and piano.
Composer from the Middle West
During the years when Howard Hanson was a Fellow of the
American Academy in Rome he was accompanied by another young
American composer who had also received a similar fellowship in the
same year. His name was Leo Sowerby, a native of Grand Rapids,
Michigan, where he was born on May i, 1895. ^s father was English
and his mother Canadian. He studied at the American Conservatory
in Chicago, graduating in 1918. From 1921 to 1924 he was in Rome,
and in 1927 he became organist and choirmaster of St. James's Epis-
copal Church in Chicago.
If a case were to be made for Middle Western regionalism in
American art music, Sowerby would certainly be a factor in the argu-
ment. His best-known composition is the tone poem Prairie (1929),
560 I Fulfillment
based on Carl Sandburg's poem of the same tide. The score bears the
following quotation from the poem:
Have you seen a red sunset over one of my cornfields, the shore of
night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a straw-
pile and the running wheat of the wagon boards, my corn
huskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of
women, worlds, horizons?
The composer has stated that he did not wish to write "program
music" in this work, that he sought only to interpret the moods of
the poetry, and that the only imaginative effort he asks of the listener
is to imagine himself alone in an Illinois cornfield. In spite of the
geographical tag, the music is not regional in any sense that would
appear to have aesthetic relevance or stylistic cogency (as in the
New England regionalism of Ives, for example).
The same observation may apply to another evocative work by
Sowerby: it was composed in Italy but deals with impressions of the
Canadian countryside near Lake Superior. This is the Suite in four
movements, From the Northland (1922), consisting of "Forest Voices/'
"Cascades," "Burnt Rock Pool," and "The Shining Big-sea Water."
The skillful impressionism of this suite, with its shimmering orchestral
coloration, reminds one of an American Respighi. His Canadian for-
ests and cascades are close to the pines and fountains of Rome.
Sowerby 's overture Comes Autumn Time stays nearer home, but
he is too eclectic, too deeply committed to the European tradition,
to be an utterer of the Middle Western "barbaric yawp" in music,
as Sandburg was in verse. He is more congenially employed in culti-
vating a conservative modernism in such works as the Canticle of the
Sim, a cantata for mixed chorus with piano or orchestra; The Vision
of Sir Launfal, another cantata; Mediaeval Poem for organ and or-
chestra; Concerto for violin and orchestra; and Classic Concerto for
organ and orchestra (or piano). Sowerby has written some of the
best contemporary organ music in America. Representative of his
work in this field is the Canon, Chaconne, and Fugue for organ, dating
from 1951. His chamber music comprises four String Quartets; a Trio
for flute, viola, and piano; a Suite for violin and piano; and a Quintet
for wind instruments. His setting of the fiddle tune "The Irish
THE TRADITIONALISTS 561
Washerwoman," originally for piano, later orchestrated, has been fre-
quently performed.
Another Middle Western composer, Ross Lee Finney, may be
grouped with the traditionalists, though his tendencies are also mark-
edly eclectic, and his early interest in American folk music would
entitle him to a place among the "Americanists." Finney was born in
Wells, Minnesota, in 1906. He studied with Roger Sessions and E. B.
Hill, and in Europe (on a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship) with Alban
Berg, Nadia Boulanger, and Gian Francesco Malipiero. He became
professor of music at Smith College, and after World War II (during
which he served with the OSS in Europe from 1944 to 1945) he was
appointed composer in residence at the University of Michigan.
Among Finney's most important contributions to musical Ameri-
cana are Pilgrim Psalms, a cantata, and Variations, Fugueing and
Rondo for orchestra. Pilgrim Psalms is for mixed chorus, soprano, alto
and tenor solos, and organ or piano. Completed in 1945, this work
stems from the composer's abiding admiration for the tunes of the
Ainsworth Psalter that the Pilgrim Fathers brought with them to
Plymouth. He uses fourteen tunes from the Psalter, adapting them
in a style that, in his own words, "springs both from the old melodies
and from my own emotional feelings." The final number calls for the
participation of the audience.
The Variations, Fugueing and Rondo, completed in 1943, resulted
from Finney's interest in the hymns and fuguing tunes of William
Billings. The unifying theme is derived from Billings's hymn tune,
"Berlin." As the composer writes:
Variations, Fugueing and Rondo is a triptych held together by,
and commenting on, this early style. The first panel is a set of vari-
ations on the hymn, developed in a free melodic manner rather than
harmonically. These variations are balanced by the last panel, a
Rondo which is vigorous and harmonic. Between these, and linked
together by a reference to the hymn, are two contrasting panels in
fugato style: the first—naively, perhaps— a picture of hell-fire and
brimstone; the second, pastoral and elegiac. The whole work is
framed by the Billings hymn.
In addition to various choral settings, Finney has used folk mate-
rial in his Third String Quartet (1941), Barber-shop Ballad for radio
orchestra (1937), Violin Concerto (1947), and Piano Concerto (1948).
562 I Fulfillment
Although still maintaining a lively personal interest in American folk
songs (which he sings to his own guitar accompaniment), Finney has
gradually turned away from the literal use of this material in his
music. In recent years he has concentrated mainly on the writing of
chamber music, and he has been increasingly concerned with the
problem of chromatic integration. His Second Sonata for cello and
piano, composed in 1950, was highly chromatic in texture, but free
in its integration (that is to say, it did not employ strict tone-row
techniques; see Chapter 28 for an explanation of these terms). In the
Sixth String Quartet, completed in the same year, Finney definitely
turned to strict twelve-tone writing. Since then he has continued to
strive for chromatic integration on the basis of tone-rows, but re-
maining within the framework of tonality. A further note on his
development in this direction will be found in the chapter on the
twelve-tone composers.
Quincy Porter is an academic traditionalist with a marked predi-
lection for writing string quartets: he has thus far composed eight
works in this form. Born in New Haven in 1897, ^e graduated from
Yale in 1919 and then studied composition with Horatio Parker and
David Stanley Smith at the Yale School of Music. He also studied with
Vincent d'Indy in Paris and with Ernest Bloch in the United States.
After teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Music and at Vassar
College, he joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory of
Music in 1938, becoming director of that institution four years later.
In addition to his eight String Quartets, Porter has written a
Ukrainian Suite for strings (1925), an orchestral Suite in C minor
(1926), Poem and Dance for orchestra (1932), a Symphony (1934),
Dance in Three-Time (1937), Two Dances for Radio (1938), and
Music for Strings (1942).
A neo-romantic composer
In any writing about Samuel Barber one is likely to come across
a sentence such as this: "He is one of the most frequently performed
of all contemporary American composers." This has been true ever
since Toscanini, in 1938, conducted the first performance of Barber's
Essay for Orchestra (Opus 12), composed the previous year, and the
Adagio for Strings, an arrangement of the slow movement of the
String Quartet (Opus 11) composed in 1936. The Adagio for Strings
THE TRADITIONALISTS 563
was the only work by an American composer that Toscanini played
when he toured in South America with the NBC Symphony Or-
chestra. The work is frankly lyrical, monothemaric, with unobtrusive
canonic treatment. It confirmed the composer's romantic allegiance,
previously asserted in such works as Dover Beach for voice and string
quartet (1931), Sonata for violoncello and piano (1932), Overture to
The School for Scandal (1932), Music for a Scene from Shelley
(1933), and the First Symphony (Opus 9), in one movement, com-
pleted in February, 1936.
Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March
9, 1910. He is said to have begun composing at the age of seven, and
at thirteen he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia,
where he studied composition with Rosario Scalero for six years,
obtaining a thorough grounding in counterpoint. He won the Pulitzer
Scholarship for music twice in succession (an unprecedented honor)
and in 1935 was awarded the Prix de Rome for composition. His
First Symphony received its premiere by the Augusteo Orchestra on
December 13, 1936, while he was a Fellow of the American Academy
in Rome. This symphony was also the only American work to be
performed at the Salzburg Festival in 1937. After his return to the
United States, Barber made his home in New York State, in a house
that he called "Capricorn." This gave its name to the Capricorn Con-
certo for flute, oboe, trumpet, and strings, in the style of Bach's
Brandenburg Concertos. Barber entered the Army in 1942. His Sec-
ond Symphony is dedicated to the Army Air Forces. In 1945 he re-
ceived a Guggenheim Fellowship for composition.
Barber describes his Symphony in One Movement as "a synthetic
treatment of the four-movement classical symphony**; that is to say,
the customary four movements are "telescoped" and follow one an-
other without interruption. Barber revised this symphony in 1943.
This is characteristic of his procedure, for he also revised the Second
Symphony in 1947- An English critic, Arthur Jacobs, visiting the
United States in 1951, had this to say about Barber's Second Sym-
phony:
The symphony is in that neo-Romantic style which makes Barber
more readily comprehensible to conventionally-educated European
musicians than are many other American composers. This is music
that it seems appropriate to describe in terms of rhetoric—statement
564 I Fulfillment
and counterstatement, question and answer, repetition and summari-
zation. ... It harnesses modern discords to basically 19th-century
modes of construction.6
Actually, the "modern discords" employed by Barber are ex-
tremely mild, especially in his compositions up to 1940. Since then
he has been somewhat more venturesome in his use of dissonance and
in his treatment of tonality. The Second Essay for Orchestra (Opus
17), composed in 1942, contains a polytonal fugue (Molto Allegro ed
energico) that indicates a bolder concept of tonality and that points
toward the tonal freedom achieved in the Medea Suite, which dates
from 1947. His evolution has been in the opposite direction to that
of such composers as Copland and Diamond, who have proceeded
from complexity to simplicity. His feeling for traditional forms appears
to be gradually uniting with a trend toward dissonant counterpoint
and polyharmony. He is slowly catching up with the twentieth
century.
Barber's trend toward a more complex texture can be observed in
such works as Knoxville: Summer of /p/j, for soprano and orchestra
(Opus 24); the Piano Sonata (Opus 26), which employs twelve-tone
writing; the String Quartet No. 2, and especially the cycle of five songs
on poems of Rilke (in French), Melodies passagtres, completed in
1951.
A modern classicist
On the whole, the trend from complexity to simplicity has been
more prevalent among contemporary American composers than the
reverse trend. It characterizes, for example, the evolution of our lead-
ing academic traditionalist, Walter Piston. The transition becomes
evident if one compares Piston's First Symphony, completed in 1937,
with his Second Symphony, composed in 1943. The former employs a
dissonant contrapuntal texture with twelve-tone elements and extensive
use of canonic devices and fugal writing. In the Second Symphony
the expression is more direct, the texture less complex, the themes
boldly lyrical or dramatic, and the slow movement sings with the sus-
tained emotional mood of a classical Adagio. Of course, with a com-
poser as erudite and as skillful as Piston, the term "simplicity" is
5 In Musical America, Apr. 15, 1951.
THE TRADITIONALISTS 565
relative. There are details of workmanship, subtle felicities, and inner
relationships in all his music that reveal themselves and attain their
full effect only after repeated hearings. And the music of Piston is
made for repeated hearings. That is an essential feature of its quality.
It is, in a word, classical.
Walter Piston did not, at first, contemplate a musical career. His
boyhood was spent in Rockland, Maine, where he was born, of
Italian descent, on January 20, 1894. Wishing to become an artist,
he attended the Massachusetts School of Art, from which he was
graduated in 1914. After working as an artist for some time, and get-
ting married, he decided that he wanted a college education. He
then matriculated at Harvard University, where he became seriously
interested in music. Although he rebelled, in the words of Elliott
Carter, against "the standardized academic routine which taught har-
mony and counterpoint according to outmoded and unimaginative
textbooks," he turned out to be a brilliant student. And when he
himself became a professor of music at Harvard— where he has taught
theory and composition for nearly three decades— he undertook to
renovate the teaching of harmony and counterpoint in line with the
evolution of modern music, summarizing his concepts in three influ-
ential textbooks: Principles of Harmonic Analysis (1933), Harmony
(1941; revised edition, 1948), and Counterpoint (1947).
Meanwhile, after his graduation from Harvard in 1924, Piston
went to Paris, where, like Copland and Thomson, he studied with
Nadia Boulanger. The influence of this remarkable woman upon con-
temporary American music should not go unremarked. In addition
to the three older men mentioned above, she has been the mentor of
many of the younger composers. As far as direct teaching is. con-
cerned, the only influences that can be compared to hers, in recent
years, are those of Bloch and Hindemith (the latter's courses in com-
position at Yale have attracted many of the younger generation). At all
events. Piston found himself in Paris during that incomparably stimu-
lating decade of the 19205, when Satie and Stravinsky and Cocteau and
the exuberant "Six" set the tone of musical derring-do. French influence
on American music in the second quarter of the twentieth century is
a historical fact that has to be taken into account; but it should be
stressed that this was a liberalizing influence, strongly international
in character. Moreover, the influence was reciprocal, for American
music influenced French composers in that decade too, chiefly through
566 | Fulfillment
ragtime, blues, and jazz. Piston, with a receptive ear for the neo-
classical audacities of Stravinsky, heard nothing in Paris that would
cause him to turn away from the novel and piquant idioms of Ameri-
can popular music.
In his Suite for orchestra (1929), his first tully characteristic
work, he combined atonality with definite allusions to American
popular idioms, the blues in particular. The score calls for "snare
drum with wke brush" in the manner of the dance band of the
19205. In this type of composition he was following a trend that was
fairly common in that decade. But it should be observed that Piston's
allusions to jazz and other popular idioms of American music became
a fundamental feature of his style and were not merely the result of a
passing fashion. The popular idioms have become more closely inte-
grated into his musical texture and are used not decoratively but or-
ganically. This is splendidly illustrated in the first movement of the
Second Symphony, where the syncopated rhythms actually impel
one's feet to dance. The second theme of the slow movement in this
symphony, played by the clarinet accompanied by muted strings, is
also a striking example of the manner in which Piston has assimilated
the traits of American popular song. He has never been a self-pro-
claimed Americanist or a cultivator of musical nationalism, but his
compositions, perhaps more than those of any other composer, demon-
strate the extent to which popular idioms can infuse and color even
the most classical manifestations of contemporary art music in the
United States.
Up to about 1939 Piston composed a number of works in neo-
classical vein that gained for him an estimable reputation as a modern-
ist but not a large following among the public. In addition to the first
Suite, these works included Three Pieces for clarinet, flute, and bas-
soon (1926); Symphonic Piece for orchestra (1927); Sonata for flute
and piano (1930); Suite for oboe and piano (1931); Concerto, and
Prelude and Fugue, for orchestra (1934); Trio for violin, violoncello,
and piano (1935); Concertino for piano and chamber orchestra (1937);
and two String Quartets (1933 and 1935).
In 1938, Piston wrote the music for a ballet, The Incredible Flutist,
performed at the Boston "Pops" Concerts in Symphony Hall in May
of that year, and repeated with much success the following year.
The scenario deals with the arrival of a circus in a village and of the
strange effect that a member of the troupe, a flutist, has upon the
THE TRADITIONALISTS 567
inhabitants of the drowsy village. A Latin American locale is sujf
gested by such musical episodes as "Siesta Hour in the Market Place*"
"Tango of the Four Daughters/' and "Spanish Waltz." This colorful
and amusing score, made into an orchestral suite in 1940, became im-
mediately popular with audiences and has been frequently played.
While this wide aceptance made Piston's name more generally familiar,
it also resulted in his being best known for his least representative
work. The Incredible Flutist is Piston's only incursion into the realm
of descriptive music or music for the stage. For the rest, he has ad-
hered strictly to absolute musical expression in the instrumental media,
avoiding not only programmatic implications but also, with very
few exceptions, the setting of literary texts. This consistency is rare
in modern music.
During the 19405, Piston produced the Second and Third Sym-
phonies, the Concerto for violin and orchestra (1940), the Sinfonietta
for orchestra (1941), the Allegro for organ and orchestra (1943), the
Passacaglia for piano (1943), the Divertimento for nine solo instru-
ments (1946), the Second Suite for orchestra (1948), the Third String
Quartet (1947), anc^ t'ie Piano Quintet (1949). The Second Symphony
may be regarded as the representative work of this richly productive
period, not only because of its intrinsic merits— it ranks very high in-
deed among contemporary symphonies— but also because its imme-
diate and far-reaching success, following its premiere in Washington,
D.C., on March 5, 1944, immensely widened the circle of Piston's
admirers and brought about his nationwide recognition (on more than
a critically appreciative level) as a composer who speaks for the pres-
ent as much as he relies on the past.
Piston's recent output includes a Fourth Symphony (1950), com-
missioned for the centennial celebration of the University of Minne-
sota; a Fourth String Quartet (1951); and a Fantasy for English horn,
harp, and string orchestra.
Some Harvard alumni
Among the younger composers from Harvard, there are three who
attained to considerable prominence during the last decade: Harold
Shapero (b. 1920), Irving Fine (b. 1914), and Elliott Carter (b. 1908).
Carter and Fine studied with Nadia Boulanger after graduating from
Harvard. Fine first attracted attention with a set of choral settings of
568 | Fulfillment
poems from The New Yorker magazine, The Choral New Yorker.
Among his instrumental works are a Violin Sonata (1946), Toccata
Concenante for orchestra (1947), Music for Piano (1947), and Par-
tita for woodwind quintet (1948). Fine's idiom is dissonant but tonal.
In his Toccata Concenante he asserts "a certain affinity with the ener-
getic music of the Baroque concertos." This affinity with the Baroque
is not uncommon among the younger American composers of today.
Harold Shapero, a native of Lynn, Massachusetts, obtained the
Paine Fellowship as a pupil of Piston. He also received a Naumburg
Fellowship, the American Prix de Rome, the award of the second
annual GersHvin Contest, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. After gradu-
ating from Harvard he studied composition with Copland and Hinde-
mith. He has written chiefly instrumental music, including a Sym-
phony, a Nine-minute Overture, a String Quartet, a Trumpet Sonata,
a Violin Sonata, a Sonatina, and Three Sonatas for piano.
Elliott Carter's principal compositions are the First Symphony
(1942), A Holiday Overture (,1944), Woodwind Quintet (1948),
Sonata for cello and piano (1948), Piano Sonata (1946); Eight Etudes
and a Fantasy (1950) for flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon; String
Quartet (1951); Sonata for flute, oboe, cello and harpsichord (1952);
two ballets, Pocahontas (1939) and The Minotaur (1947); and several
vocal works, including Mean Not So Heavy As Mine (Emily Dickin-
son) for mixed chorus a cappella (1938); The Defense of Corinth
(after Rabelais) for speaker, men's chorus and piano four-hands
(1941); The Harmony of Morning (Mark Van Doren) for four-part
women's chorus and small orchestra (1944); and Emblem* (Allen
Tate) for four-part men's chorus and piano solo (1947).
Carter has been influenced by Copland, Piston, Hindemith, and
Stravinsky, which is normal for composers of his generation. Clash-
ing tonalities, fugal writing, and sustained expressiveness characterize
his music. He nas been steadily developing along his own creative
lines. In his Sonata for cello and piano, Carter employs a procedure
that has been called "metric modulation," which consists "in the
coordination of all the tempi of the work and their interrelation by
notatcd changes of speed. . . . The large circle of speed changes is
completed when the sonata concludes by returning at the very end
to the speed of the first movement."
Another composer who studied with Piston at Harvard and with
THE TRADITIONALISTS 569
Nadia Boulanger in Paris is Arthur Berger (b. 1912). Born in New
York Gty, he graduated from New York University and then went
to Harvard for his M.A., at the same rime attending the Longy School
of Music in Cambridge. The award of a Paine Fellowship from Har-
vard enabled him to study in France for two years, where Darius
Milhaud was one of his teachers in composition. But the most power-
ful influence on Berger's style has been the music of Stravinsky, par-
ticularly the works of the latter's most pronounced neoclassical period.
Berger has written chiefly chamber music. This includes a Quartet
in C Major for woodwinds (1941); a Serenade Concertante for violin,
woodwind quartet, and orchestra of strings, two horns, and trumpets
(1944; revised 1951); Duo No. 2 for violin and piano (1950); and
Duo for clarinet and oboe (1952). He has also written Three Pieces
for string orchestra (1945), consisting of Prelude, Aria, Waltz; and an
orchestral work, Ideas of Order (1952), commissioned by Dimitri
Mitropoulos for the New York Philharmonic-Symphony (first per-
formed in April, 1953). This is a work of considerable structural
complexity, which prompted Time magazine to remark that "Berger
has a style of his own." If so, the style has resulted from a remarkable
feat of assimilation and self-discipline.
We began this chapter by saying that tradition is a body of usage
transmitted from one generation to another. But traditions are con-
tinually being renovated or created anew. The contrapuntal chromati-
cism of Schoenberg and the neoclassicism of Stravinsky are both
deeply rooted in tradition. And they have, in turn, established two of
the main traditions of twentieth-century music, which younger com-
posers of our time have inherited and are in the process of assimilating
and transforming for their own needs and idiosyncrasies. Today, in
the second half of the century, dissonant counterpoint, syncopated
rhythms, twelve-tone techniques, atonal excursions, and emphasis on
percussion, are part of the traditional procedures of musical composi-
tion. Nowadays it is more "revolutionary" to write a simple triad than
an atonal chord.
Such terms as "traditional," "conservative," "revolutionary," and
"experimental," are all relative. For some, all music that is not abso-
lutely "safe and sound" is regarded as revolutionary or experimental,
Thus, after a conceit of contemporary music given recently in New
York, a critic wrote: "Most of the evening, one devoutly wished that
570 | Fulfillment
the compositions had stayed in the laboratory where they belonged.**
Actually, the laboratory— the setting for experiments in musical in-
vention—is quite a fascinating place (though it is, as they say of Hell,
a state of mind rather than a place). In our next chapter we shall look
into the musical laboratories where the "Experimentalists" have been
busily at work.
chapter twenty-seven
The experimentalists
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
SHAKESPEARE, SONNET LXXVI.
JtLach decade produces at least one musical enfant terrible— "bad boy
of music," as Antheil called himself— who breaks the traces of tradi-
tion and cavorts like a wild colt in the corral of convention. In 1912
the fifteen-year-old Henry Cowell startled an audience at the San
Francisco Music Club with "tone-clusters," played by striking the keys
of the piano with his forearm. A few years later, about the time of
World War I, a young Philadelphian of Russian birth named Leo
Ornstein drew snorts of indignation from conservative music lovers
with his "revolutionary" piano pieces, assailing their ears with alarm-
ing discords and publicly proclaiming his renunciation of "form." In
the 19205, at the height of the Jazz Age, George Antheil made the
headlines and reaped the ephemeral rewards of a succ$s de scandale
with his Ballet metcaniquey in which he used horns and buzz saws. In
the same decade, musical circles began to be stirred by unprecedented
sound waves emanating from the amazing creations of the French-
born Edgar Varese, bearing such abstract titles as Hyperprism and
lonisation. In the 19405 a young man from California, John Cage,
began to attract attention with his compositions for "prepared piano"
and for novel combinations of percussion instruments, including oxen
bells and tin cans.
These are not, by any means, the only American composers of the
present century whom we might classify as innovators or inventors,
but, as they are typical specimens of theii kind and have stirred up
several tempests in teapots of varying importance, it will serve our
purpose to present them as our first exhibit in this display of musical
571
572 | Fulfillment
rarities. We may begin by disposing rather rapidly of Leo Ornstein,
who was born in Russia in 1895 anc* was brought to the United States
as a child. His earliest compositions were quite conventional, but
around 1915 he began to turn out some piano pieces, such as Wild
Men's Dance and Impressions of Notre Dame, which made him a
center of controversy and caused at least one critic (Paul Rosenfeld)
to take him seriously as a significant innovator. But Ornstein's fit of
musical radicalism was of short duration and he soon passed over
into the conservative camp, producing a series of works in orthodox
style, such as Lysistrata Suite (1930) and Nocturne and Dance of the
Fates (1936), the latter commissioned by the League of Composers,
which have been performed by various orchestras without so much
as rippling the surface of contemporary musical gossip. Established
in Philadelphia as head of his own School of Music and teaching at
Temple University, Ornstein has not produced much recently, and his
youthful radicalism has acquired a sort of legendary remoteness.
George Antheil is another composer who passed from the sensa-
tionally novel to the comparatively conventional. Born in 1900, in
Trenton, New Jersey, of Polish parentage, he received his early train-
ing at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and later studied com-
position with Ernest Bloch. He lived in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin,
concertized as a pianist in Europe for several years, and was the re-
cipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932 and 1933. By that time he
had acquired a considerable reputation as a musical spokesman of the
"Jazz Age." His Jazz Symphony for twenty-two instruments, com-
posed in 1925, was one of the early attempts to treat jazz symphon-
ically. His opera Transatlantic was produced at the Frankfort Opera
(Germany) in 1930. This was a satire on high finance and political
corruption, which the composer claims was "the first modern politi-
cal opera/*
It was chiefly by the performance of his Ballet mecanique in Car-
negie Hall, New York, on April 10, 1927, that Antheil acquired his
reputation as the "bad boy" of American music— a reputation that he
has never completely been able either to live down or live up to.
Scored for ten pianos and an assortment of mechanical noise makers,
the Ballet mtcanique and its effect on the audience provided eye-
catching copy for the alert reporters of the metropolitan dailies whose
busy typewriters catapulted the composer to fame overnight. Here are
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 573
the headlines into which The New York Times pecked the gist of the
news for its readers:
Antheil Art Bursts on Startled Ears— First Performance of Ballet
M£canique in This Country Draws Varied Response—Hisses, Cheers
Greet Him— Concatenation of Anvils, Bells, Horns, Buzzsaws Deaf-
ens Some, Pleases Others.
For an American composer to draw hisses and cheers from a New
York audience was in itself quite an achievement. This sort of passion-
ate reaction to new music was to be expected in Paris— where Antheil
had been hobnobbing with that iconoclastic band of young composers
known as "Les Six," who delighted to tpater le bourgeois—or in Vi-
enna, where listeners had come to blows over Schoenberg's twelve-
tone music. But violent musical partisanship was not exactly in the
Carnegie Hall tradition, and it was largely because of the novelty of
the situation that Antheil received such instantaneous notoriety.
Neither in its aesthetic conception nor in its specific mechanistic
effects was the Ballet mfcanique a new development in modern music.
At Milan, in 1913, Luigi Russolo had issued the Futurist Manifesto
which laid the aesthetic foundations for "The Art of Noises," stating,
among other things, that "We must break out of this narrow circle
of pure musical sounds, and conquer the infinite variety of noise-
sounds." Russolo classified the futurist orchestra into six families of
noises, ranging from thunderclaps and explosions to shrieks and groans,
and predicted that all these would soon be produced mechanically
(as they are in radio sound effects, for that matter). The Ballet m&can-
ique, as we look back on it, appears to be merely an example of
Antheil's agility in identifying himself with the current fads of Euro-
pean music in its more extreme manifestations. Antheil himself, how-
ever, claims that his purpose in writing this work was totally misunder-
stood, that he never proposed to "grind out pictures of the machine
age" or to project "a kind of Buck Rogers fantasy of the future."
Writing to Nicolas Slonimsky in 1936, Antheil tried to explain the
significance of his mechanical ballet:
I personally consider that the Ballet M6canique was important in
one particular and that it was conceived in a new form, that form
specifically being the filling out of a certain time canvas with musi-
cal abstractions and sound material composed and contrasted against
574 I Fulfillment
one another with the thought of time values rather than tonal values.
... In the Ballet Mlcanique I used time as Picasso might have used
the blank spaces of his canvas. . . . My ideas were the most abstract
of the abstract.1
If this interpretation is correct, then Antheil must be regarded as a
precursor of the "Abstract Composers" of the post-World War II
period, such as John Cage and Morton Feldman, who have been ex-
perimenting with time-space concepts in music. Antheil wrote several
discussions of this subject in avant-garde periodicals of the 19208: De
Stijl (Rotterdam, 1924-1925), transition (Paris, 1925), and The Little
Review (1925).
Much to everybody's surprise, Antheil's Ballet mtcanique, in a
shortened version (lasting 18 minutes instead of half an hour), was
revived at a concert of the Composers Forum in New York on Feb-
ruary 20, 1954, and was received with prolonged applause that con-
stituted an ovation for the composer, who was present, and for the
conductor of the performance, Carlos Surinach. For this perform-
ance, the number of pianos was reduced from ten to four, and the
original airplane propeller, which, according to an ear-witness, "at the
American premiere in 1927 produced more wind than noise," was
replaced by a recording of the roar of a jet engine. A reviewer in
The New York Times wrote that "the work . . . now sounds like
an ebullient and lively piece that is actually pretty in places and sug-
gests nothing so much as an amplified version of Balinese gamelan
music." Thus have our ears become accustomed to the mechanistic
terrors of the twenties.
Antheil's opera Helen Retires, to a libretto by John Erskine, pro-
duced at the Juilliard School of Music, New York, in February, 1934,
with its blend of disparate styles ranging from musical comedy to
modern dissonance, its pseudo jazz effects, its deliberate banality, its
tunefulness and topicality, deserves, I believe, a place within the de-
veloping tradition of realistic opera in America, of which more will
be said in another chapter.
Antheil also belongs to that small band of American composers
who have tussled with the exigencies of Hollywood and mastered the
difficult task of writing music for films, among them The Plainsman
1 Quoted in Slonimsky, Music Since 1900, 3d ed. (New York: Coleman-Ross
Company, Inc., 1949), p. 288.
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 575
and Make Way for Tomorrow. His Fourth and Fifth Symphonies,
dating respectively from 1942 and 1946, are cast in a mold of ample
rhetoric and a somewhat synthetic dynamism which make him appear
as an emulator of Shostakovitch. He continues to produce works in
the larger forms, including a Violin Concerto and a Piano Concerto,
while working as a film composer in Hollywood and pursuing on the
side a variety of esoteric hobbies, such as the study of astronomy and
of glands.
Henry Dixon Cowell, born in Menlo Park, California, in 1897, ^as
not been consistently an innovator or an experimentalist in his numer-
ous compositions, many of which, to borrow Slonimsky's paradoxical
epithet, sound "audaciously conservative." Nevertheless, he belongs in
this chapter as the exploiter of "tone-clusters" on the piano (he has
employed the same principle in his orchestration too), as a theorist con-
cerned with new musical resources, as a leader of the new music
movement (chiefly as founder and editor of the New Music Quar-
terly), and as a restless investigator of the unusual in music, whether
it be the most primitive or the most sophisticated.
Cowell grew up without orthodox musical training and developed
his novel pianistic effects as the result of self-guided experimentation
on an old upright piano. From the age of sixteen he studied theory
at the University of California with Charles Seeger. Later he studied
composition in New York for three years, chiefly with R. Hunting-
ton Woodman and Percy Goetschius. Cowell delved into the prob-
lems of musical notation, embodying his findings and theories in a
book titled New Musical Resources (1930), and then endeavored to
put his theory into practice by inducing Professor Leon Theremin,
inventor and constructor of acoustical instruments, to collaborate with
him in making an instrument, called the "Rhythmicon," designed to
reproduce with complete accuracy all kinds of rhythms and metrical
combinations, however complex. This instrument was first demon-
strated in January, 1932, at the New School for Social Research in
New York. Cowell had previously composed a suite in four move-
ments, titled Rhythnricana, for orchestra and "Rhythmicon."
One of Cowell's deliberately experimental works is Synchrony
(1930), in which tone-clusters are treated orchestrally as elements in
an abstract musical "construction." Slonimsky calls this work a* "con-
structivist symphonic poem," but surely the term "symphonic poem*
can legitimately be applied only to an orchestral work that has a
576 I Fulfillment
programmatic or extra-musical factor imposed on it, whether this
be descriptive or allusive, whereas a "constructivist" composition is
by definition "abstract" and therefore devoid of poematic content.
Cowell has on occasion written "program music," such as his Tales
of Our Countryside, just as he has written many other kinds of music,
for he is essentially an eclectic composer drawing his material from
many sources, including Celtic folklore, traditional American hymn
tunes and country-dances, and the folk music of many lands. Were it
not for his persistent interest in new musical resources and his various
acoustical experiments, we would certainly have placed him among
the Eclectics, for that is where he belongs by the bulk of his produc-
tion, such as his eight Symphonies, his Irish Suite, his Celtic Set, his
United Music, his Amerind Suite, and his Ancient Desert Drone.
"A rugged individualist"
That too-abused term, "a rugged individualist," inevitably needs to
be applied to Carl Ruggles, who for many years has lived in a con-
verted schoolhouse in Arlington, Vermont, writing his own kind of
music at his own deliberate pace, sublimely indifferent to current
trends and changing fashions, painting pictures or working at manual
crafts when not composing or arguing, and always plainly speaking
his mind about everything and everyone under the sun. Henry Cowell,
a close friend, describes him as "irascible, lovable, honest, sturdy, origi-
nal, slow-thinking, deeply emotional, self-assured and intelligent." An
anecdote told by Cowell illuminates the composer's character:
One morning when I arrived at the abandoned school house in
Arlington where he now lives, he was sitting at the old piano, sing-
ing a single tone at the top of his raucous composer's voice, and bang-
ing a single chord at intervals over and over. He refused to be in-
terrupted in this pursuit, and after an hour or so, I insisted on know-
ing what the idea was. "I'm trying over this damned chord," said he.
"to see whether it still sounds superb after so many hearings." "Oh,"
I said tritely, "time will tell whether the chord has lasting value."
"The hell with time!" Carl replied. UP11 give this chord the test of
time right now. If I find I still like it after trying it over several
thousand times, it'll stand the test of time, all right!" *
2 Prefatory Note to Harrison's About Carl Ruggles, p. 3.
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 577
Had Ruggles lived several generations earlier, he probably would
have gone a-whaling like his New Bedford ancestors. But by the time
he was born, on March u, 1876, at Marion, Massachusetts, his family
was steeped in gentility; and the boy Carl was taught to play the
violin, appearing as a local prodigy at the age of nine in a concert
given for President Cleveland. At Harvard he studied music with
Claus, Spalding, and Timner, then went to Winona, Minnesota, where
he founded and directed a symphony orchestra. As a composer, his
first work of any importance was an opera, The Sunken Bell, after
the drama by Gerhart Hauptmann. His characteristic style, based on
the use of free dissonant counterpoint, is first fully displayed in the
work titled Angels, dating from 1921 and originally scored for six
trumpets (it was later revised for four violins and three cellos, or for
four trumpets and three trombones, and published in this version in
1938). The list of his published works is so brief that it may be given
here in full: Toys, for soprano and piano (1919); the two versions of
Angels, mentioned above; Men and Mountains, for chamber orchestra
(1924); Portals, for string ensemble or for string orchestra (1926);
Sun-Treader, for large orchestra (1933); Evocations, for piano solo
(1937-1945). Besides various early works, there are in manuscript
Vox damans in Deserto, for solo voice and chamber orchestra; and
Organmn, for orchestra, completed in 1945. This output is small com-
pared to that of most composers. Ruggles is fastidious, often works for
several years over one composition, and writes only when and as he
pleases.
Because he cultivates a contrapuntal texture in chromatic disso-
nant style, the music of Ruggles bears a family resemblance to that
of Schoenberg and Alban Berg, but with a marked individuality of
idiom. Spiritually his musical ancestors are J. S. Bach and Handel.
The quality of Ruggles's counterpoint is perceptively described in an
essay by Lou Harrison, who writes:
It is characterized by an absolute lack of negative spacing in the
voices, which is to say that no voice is ever given over to repetitious
arpeggiation or figuration of any kind at all. Each voice is a real mel-
ody, bound into a community of singing lines, living a life of its
own with regard to phrasing and breathing, careful not to get ahead
or behind in its rhythmic cooperation with the others, and sustain-
ing a responsible independence in the whole polyphonic life.*
• About Carl Ruggles, pp. 7-8.
578 | Fulfillment
Ruggles's melodic line is characterized by nonrepetition of the same
tone (01 any octave of it) until after the tenth progression, a prin-
ciple observed particularly in the leading melody, less strictly in the
other parts.
Ruggles seeks in music a quality of beauty which he calls the
"Sublime." The main impression that his own music makes on most
hearers (assuming that their ears have become accustomed to chro-
matic dissonance) is probably that of austerity. One recognizes an
uncompromising integrity and a creative force that seems genuine
though limited, and perhaps one deplores the lack of sensuous appeal.
Yet the music stands there, as solid as Vermont granite, indifferent
to our romantic inclinations, and one admires it either very much
or not at all. Ruggles's music is very much admired and praised by a
group of devoted friends and disciples who happen to be gifted
musicians and peisuasive writers and who are convinced that he has
made a unique and enduring contribution to American music. The
uniqueness of his contribution may be granted, but the test of its
enduring quality— in spite of the composer's vehement protest— must
be tritely left to time and posterity.
To seek new paths
John J. Becker, born in Henderson, Kentucky, in 1886, is another
composer who has gone his own way, shunning the beaten path; but
in contrast to Ruggles he has been prolific, producing seven sym-
phonies, the same number of concertos, several orchestral suites, half-
a-dozen large choral works, a quantity of chamber music, and some
scores for the theater and for films. Most of this music remains in
manuscript. The Symphonia Brevis (piano version) the Concerto
Arabesque for piano and small orchestra, a Concerto for horn and
orchestra, Soundpiece No. 5 (sonata for piano), and Sound piece No. 2
for strings, have been published by New Music Editions.
Becker received his musical training at the Wisconsin Conserva-
tory, obtaining the degree of Doctor of Music. After serving as
music director at the University of Notre Dame and professor of fine
arts at the College of St. Scholastica, he became music director and
composer-in-residence at Barat College of the Sacred Heart, Lake
Forest, Illinois. He has been active as lecturer, writer, editor, and
conductor. His credo as a composer is summed up in the phrase
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 579
"Laws are made for imitators; creators make their own laws." A
further statement of his attitude toward composing will make clear
why he is included in this chapter:
It is every composer's duty to add to the already existing musical
resources. Regardless of the great orchestral works of the past, the
undiscovered possibilities for new ways in the development of or-
chestral forms and sounds are beyond comprehension. The true
creative artist must never be satisfied. He must seek new paths con-
stantly, for only by seeking will he find for himself the way to
musical truth and beauty.4
In his development as a composer Becker has been concerned with
the renovation of a Palestrinian polyphonic style in a modern disso-
nant idiom. In addition to the Symphonia mentioned above, his
religious music includes a Mass in Honor of the Sacred Heart for
men's or women's voices a cappella, and Moments from the Passion
for solos and men's or women's voices a cappella (this score, com-
pleted in 1945, has been published). He has also been engaged in the
search for a personal orchestral idiom leading to the creation of new
orchestral sounds.
Describing his methods of orchestration in an article for Musical
America, Becker mentions certain specific devices. One of these is
"the juxtaposition of contrasting instruments, that is, instruments which
have no relationship to each other as far as their orchestral color is
concerned." He gives as an example a passage for trumpet, horn, and
bassoon in his Concerto Arabesque. This method he considers par-
ticularly effective for the projection of dissonant contrapuntal and
harmonic passages. Another device for obtaining new and interesting
effects is that of "long sustained sections of seconds, scored for in-
struments of the same color." Becker finds fascinating possibilities in
scoring for percussion instruments and has exploited some of these
possibilities in his dance work Obongo (1933), scored for twenty-
nine percussion instruments. He has also exploited the resources of the
piano as a percussion instrument. For example: "If the top line of a
dissonant counterpoint or chordal movement in the orchestra is
doubled in octaves by the piano played with a percussive stroke, an
effect like the cutting of steel will be produced.*' Becker has used
this effect frequently in his Third Symphony (1929).
4 Musical America, Feb. 1950, p. 214.
580 I Fulfillment
The reader may ask why a composer should be interested in pro-
ducing an effect like the cutting of steel. The answer is that an
experimentally minded composer is primarily concerned with dis-
covering or inventing new sounds, or at least sounds that are new
to the traditional materials of musical composition. This is more or
less true of all composers, and it is largely a matter of emphasis and
degree as to whether a particular composer should be classed among
the experimenters. At all events, the desire of certain contemporary
composers to incorporate in their music a wider range of sounds,
especially "realistic" sounds suggested by conditions in the modern
world, may be compared to the incorporation in modern poetry of
realistic images and words from everyday speech, supplementing the
traditional poetic diction.
Experimental composers of the twentieth century have also en-
deavored to expand and enrich their basic materials by drawing on
the resources of non-European and nondiatonic musical systems.
The importance of this expanded concept of musical composition is
stressed by Becker in a challenging essay titled "Imitative Versus
Creative Music in America," from which we quote the following
excerpt:
If it is true that all composers must learn their craft by imitation,
we can find no objection to teaching the technic of composition
provided it is based upon all of the musical systems, new and old.
This is not the usual method of procedure. Almost all teachers, the-
orists, and composers ignore the importance of the Greek, Chinese,
Blast Indian, modal, and all of the newly evolved scales, and have in-
sisted for generations that the diatonic is the *(and not a) system
upon which the entire musical an must be based.5
The charge of narrowness in pedagogical theory is perhaps less valid
now than it was when Becker wrote his essay some twenty years ago.
For one thing, there has been an increasing interest in the study of
comparative musicology, which has done much to spread the knowl-
edge of primitive and non-European musical cultures. And secondly,
the systematic compilation and divulgation of new musical resources
has made great forward strides, the most notable effort in this direc-
5 Co well (ed.), American Composers on American Music, p. 188. Reprinted
with the permission of the publishers, Stanford University Press. Copyright 1933
by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 58 1
rion being Nicolas Slonimsky's monumental Thesaurus of Scales and
Melodic Patterns, a work that Virgil Thomson has aptly called "a
tonal vocabulary of modernism."
Charles Louis Seeger is better known as a musicologist than as a
composer. Nevertheless, he was one of the first genuinely experi-
mental composers in America, and the influence of his inventive,
inquiring, and systematic mind has made itself felt in the modern
musical movement of the United States. Seeger was born in Mexico
City, of American parentage, in 1886. He was educated at Harvard
University, where he won honors in music. From 1912 to 1919 he
was professor of music at the University of California. He then taught
at the Institute of Musical Art and the New School for Social Re-
search in New York. For several years he was associated with the
Federal Music Project in Washington, D.C. From 1941 to 1953 he was
chief of the Division of Music and Visual Arts of the Pan American
Union. His compositions include Twenty-five Songs with Pianoforte
Accompaniment (1906-1911); The Shadowy Waters, overture for
orchestra after W. B. Yeats (1908); Three Choruses with Pianoforte
Accompaniment (1912); Seven Songs for voice and piano; String
Quartet in two movements (1913); Sonata for violin and piano (1913);
Studies in single, unaccompanied melody and in two-line dissonant
counterpoint (1915-1932); two pageants for orchestra and chorus,
Derdra (1914) and The Queerfs Masque (1915); Parthenia and Sec-
ond Parthenia for orchestra (1915-1917); Solo for clarinet (1924);
and a setting of the folk ballad "John Henry" for solo voice with
orchestra.
Ruth Crawford Seeger has produced a number of highly original
compositions full of intellectual subtleties and formal complexities.
Born in East Liverpool, Ohio, in 1901, she studied music first in Chi-
cago and later, on a Guggenheim Fellowship (the first given to a
woman for musical composition), went to Berlin and Paris. Her
Three Songs (words by Carl Sandburg) for contralto, oboe, piano and
percussion with orchestral ostinato, composed in 1930-1932, are char-
acterized by a heterophonic and polymetrical organization of the mu-
sical materials. This means that the various parts or simultaneous sound
units (such as the solo instruments and the orchestral ostinato) are
treated with a high degree of independence, and that different metri-
cal patterns are superimposed upon each other. The three songs are
"Rat Riddles," "In Tall Grass," and "Prayers of Steel."
582 I Fulfillment
Important among Ruth Crawford Seeger's works is a String Quar-
tet composed in 1931, consisting of four movements, of which the
third employs what has been termed "contrapuntal dynamics," as
illustrated in the following example: •
Sempre legatissimo
* J J
^X1^^*^
-p—sm^zr:
i
w*f
aempre
simile
E
« r rr
m
Other compositions include T<u;0 Movements for chamber orchestra
(1926), Nine Preludes for piano (1926), Sonata for violin. and piano
(1927), and Four Diaphonic Suites (1930) for two cellos, two clari-
nets, oboe, and flute (in various combinations). She has also written
Two Ctiants for women's chorus a cappella (1930). Her originality
and independence, her technical resourcefulness and creative integ-
rity, give to Ruth Crawford Seeger a prominent place among the
experimentalist composers of America. She died in Washington, D.C.,
on November 18, 1953.
Trio from Canada
Three Canadian-born American composers, each an experimental-
ist in his own fashion, should be mentioned here. They are Colin
McPhee (b. 1901), Gerald Strang (b. 1908), and Henry Drey fuss
Brant (b. 1913). McPhee lived for a number of years in Bali (in the
19305) and has made a special study of the music of Bali and of Java.
This interest is reflected in an orchestral work titled Bali (1936) and
in Balinese Ceremonial Music for two pianos (1942). Among his
Music y A Quarterly of Modern Compositions, Jan. 1941, p. 12.
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 583
other works are a Concerto for piano and wind octet (1929) and a
Sea Shanty Suite for baritone solo, men's chorus, two pianos, and two
sets of timpani (1929). A gifted writer as well as musician, his book
A House in Bali (1946) paints a fascinating picture of life on that
island and contains a good deal of information on the musical tradi-
tions and ceremonial dances of the Balinese.
McPhee's most important work in Balinese style is the symphony
Tabuh Tabuhan, in three movements, which represents what is prob-
ably the most authentic, most exciting, and most significant meeting
of East and West in modern symphonic music. According to Henry
Cowell, parts of this score were mistaken for boogiewoogie by mem-
bers of the CBS Orchestra who performed it for a radio broadcast in
1948.
Gerald Strang, a native of Alberta, was graduated from Stanford
University, then did graduate work in music at the Universities of
California and Southern California. From 1935 to 1940 he was man-
aging editor of New Music Editions and during part of that period
was also assistant to Schoenberg in the music department of the Uni-
versity of California at Los Angeles. His compositions include two
Symphonies, a Canzonet for string orchestra and string quintet (or
quartet), a String Quartet, a Quintet for clarinet and strings, three
pieces for flute and piano, percussion music for three players (interest
in percussion is typical of the experimentalists), and a choral work
titled Vanzetti in the Death House, for baritone, mixed chorus, and
small orchestra. This dates from 1937 and is still in manuscript. In
his Mirrorrorrim for piano, Strang organizes his musical material
around "tonal centers*' instead of the traditional tonalities.
Henry Brant studied composition with Goldmark, Brockway,
Copland, Antheil, and Riegger. He settled in New York, and has
been busy writing or arranging scores for radio, for films, and for
ballet, as well as teaching, while collecting exotic wind instruments
and performing on them as a hobby. At the age of sixteen he com-
posed a highly intellectual and deliberately modernistic set of Varia-
tions for Four Instruments, of which the original feature was that
they created harmonic relations obliquely instead of vertically. Brant
subsequently repudiated this and other early works of his published
by New Music Edition. Prior to 1950, the compositions of Brant made
considerable use of jazz and of satirical materials. Representative of this
period are the Symphony in B flat (1945) anc* the Saxophone Concerto
(1941), both of which have been recorded recently. Brant's present
584 I Fulfillment
tendencies, based on antiphonal and polyphonic organization, are rep-
resented by the following works: Millennium t (1950) for eight trum-
pets, bells, cymbals; Origins (1952), for forty percussion instruments
with sixteen players; Stresses (1953), for strings, harp, celesta, piano;
Signs and Alarms (1953), for three woodwinds, five brass, and two
percussion instruments; Antiphony i (1953), for symphony orchestra
in five separated groups; Millennium 2 (1954), for ten trumpets, ten
trombones, eight horns, four tubas, four percussion, and one soprano
Encephalograms (1954), for high voice, harp, piano, percussion, wood-
winds, and trumpet; Ceremony (1954), for solo violin, oboe, cello,
four solo voices (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone), with six woodwinds,
pianos, and four percussion; Galaxy i (1954), for vibraphone, chimes,
clarinet, horn; Galaxy 2 (1954), for two woodwinds, four brass, two
percussion; Galaxy 3 (1954), for clarinet, piano, xylophone, glocken-
spiel. The piece titled Ceremony was commissioned for the Columbia
University bicentennial celebration and was first performed in New
York on April 3, 1954.
Brant's compositions since 1950 have made use of two basic con-
cepts. One of these is the concept of "antiphonal placing," or "stereo-
phonic distribution," of the instrumental and vocal forces into various
separated positions in the concert hall, so that the hearer receives the
sound from more than one direction. The second concept is that of a
"polyphony of tempos," conceived as a possible intensification of "an-
tiphonal placing," but also used when the instruments are normally
placed. In this kind of polyphony, each separated group or instrument
has not only its own particular time signature, but also its own inde-
pendent tempo. For example, in Millennium 2, in one place, there are
as many as twenty-one different tempi heard simultaneously; but only
one conductor is needed! In Antiphony /, on the other hand, five con-
ductors are required.
Brant's personal collection of odd musical instruments includes
Spanish ox bells, a Persian oboe, a Chinese oboe, double ocarina, double
flageolet, an American and a French dulcimer, and twenty tin whistles
in different keys.
Trio from France
To match our trio of Canadian-born experimentalists, we have
three composers of French origin who have been prominently iden-
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 585
tified with the avant-garde of music in this country. They arc Carloi
Salzedo (b. 1885), Dane Rudhyar (originally Chenneviire-Rudyard
b. 1895), and Edgar Var&e (born in Paris, December 22, 1885).
Salzedo, trained at the Paris Conservatory, is a celebrated harpist, and
all his compositions feature the harp either alone or in combination
with other instruments. He belongs literally among the "inventors"
in this chapter, for he invented a modern harp reflecting the ingenious
complexity of the machine age. He has also "invented" new sonorities
for the harp, systematically exploring all its possibilities and discover-
ing by experimentation more than a hundred different effects that had
previously been unknown or unexploited. He is thus, within his special
field, both an inventor and an innovator.
The compositions of Salzedo include The Enchanted Isle for harp
and orchestra (1918), Concerto for harp and seven wind instruments
(1926), Four Preludes to the Afternoon of a Telephone for two harps
(1921), Sonata for harp and piano (1922), and a number of pieces for
harp solo, among them Short Stories in Music and Fantasies on Popu-
lar Folk Tunes.
Dane Rudhyar, composer of atonal music, is also a painter, a writer,
a mystic, and a student of Oriental philosophy who has attempted to
achieve "a new cosmological outlook" on life. He was first heard from
in America with the performance in 1917 of two orchestral pieces
whose titles are reminiscent of Erik Satie: Pofrmes Ironiques and
Vision Veghale. These were included in the program of a modern-
istic dance recital given at the Metropolitan Opera House in New
York by Valentine de Saint-Point. Among other orchestral works
of Rudhyar are The Surge of Fire (1921), To the Real (1923),
Ouranos (1924), a Symphony (1928), Hero Chants (1930), and a
Sinfonietta (1931). In 1934, while living at Chamita, New Mexico,
he completed the piano score of a symphonic poem with recitation,
Paean to the Great Thunder, the first part of a projected trilogy titled
Cosmophony, which, according to the composer, is "designed to ex-
press stages of development of mystic consciousness." Rudhyar has
recently taken up musical therapy.
Edgar Var&e, the most consistently uncompromising among Amer-
ican musical modernists, was born in Paris on December 22, 1885, of
French and Italian parentage. An early interest in science and mathe-
matics indicated that he might take to engineering as a career, but at
the age of seventeen he had already decided that music was to be his
586 | Fulfillment
field (which by no means meant that he had abandoned his scientific
interests: his approach to music remained abstract and objective, and
he experimented with sonorities as though he were a scientist in a
laboratory). He studied with Roussel and d'Indy at the Schola Can-
torum and with Widor at the Paris Conservatory; but it was through
another teacher, of bolder vision than these, the enigmatic Ferruccio
Busoni, that Varese was influenced in the direction of an experimental
modernism. He also heeded the message of the Futurist Manifesto
issued in 1913, with its program for developing "The Art of Noises"
through all kinds of percussive and conventionally nonmusical sonorous
effects.
From the first Varese was also an active organizer and leader of
musical organizations. In Paris, in 1906, he organized the chorus of the
Universit6 Populaire and the concerts of the "Chateau du Peuple,"
both intended to bring music to the people. After the outbreak of
World War I he joined the French army, was discharged, and came
to the United States in 1916, where he has since remained. His first
musical enterprise in America was the founding of the New Symphony
Orchestra in New York in 1919. His intention was to concentrate on
the performance of music by modern composers, but meeting with
opposition from the board of directors, he resigned and founded, in
1921, the International Composers' Guild, which under his leadership
became a consistent vehicle for the performance of new and uncon-
ventional works by composers of America and Europe. Carlos Salzedo
was associated with him in this enterprise, which was discontinued in
1927. A year later Varese and Salzedo took the initiative in founding
the Pan American Association of Composers, an early and significant
effort to achieve cooperation among composers of all the Americas.
The list of Varise's orchestral compositions begins with a work
titled Ameriques and ends (as of this writing) with one titled Equa-
torial^ for bass-baritone voice, organ, percussion, trumpets, trombones,
and theremin. But the majority of his compositions move in a world
of abstract sonorities devoid of such geographical connotations. Merely
to read the titles is to stand on the threshold of that unique sonorous
microcosm created by Varese: Arcana, Metal, Espace, Integrates,
Offrandes, Hyperprism, lonisation, Density 21.5, Octandre. Let us
attempt to explore that strange world of sounds, in which primitive
forces blend with the dynamic energy of the modern industrial city.
Four representative compositions of Varese will be examined, not
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 587
in their chronological order but according to die relative degree of
difficulty that they offer to the listener (though this is admittedly a
subjective criterion, since reaction and receptivity will vary with dif-
ferent hearers). One should perhaps begin by casting off certain tra-
ditional listening habits and preconceived notions of form and har-
mony before exposing oneself to the music of Varese. Listening to
some African tribal music or to some of the authentic music of the
Orient is recommended as a preparatory exercise, not so much be-
cause of any direct similarity that may exist but rather as a reminder
that there are other musical systems that do not rely on the major and
minor modes, the chords and the tonal relationships to which we
have become accustomed in Western Europe and America. Though
the music of Varese is by no means "primitive/* it has certain qualities
that are associated with primitive music, such as the reliance upon
percussion (treated with great rhythmic complexity) as a funda-
mental and expressive element of the sonorous texture and the com-
plete independence of the polyphonic lines or voices from the demands
of chordal harmony. Another similarity with non-Occidental music
is the supreme importance given to timbre in Varese's musical tex-
ture. As Sidney Finkelstein points out in his perceptive notes for the
complete recorded works of Varese,7 it is out of the composer's con-
cept of timbre that arise both his individual harmony and his indi-
vidual polyphony. Since timbre depends on the creation of a series of
overtones which arise naturally from each instrument, it becomes "a
means of exploring the sounds in between the whole and half tones of
customary pitch." The exploitation of these fractional intervals result-
ing from the blending of overtones is another factor for which we
must be prepared in listening to the compositions of Varese. As re-
gards polyphony, Finkelstein expresses the idea very well when he
remarks that "one layer of sound is added to another." Each instru-
ment has its own melodic line and rhythmic pattern, and its inde-
pendence is emphasized by contrasting timbres.
Dissonance is a fundamental architectonic element in the composi-
tions of Varese. This is probably the most disconcerting factor to the
listener who hears this music for the first time. Only when one has
become so accustomed to these strong dissonances that they cease to
distract one's attention from other elements of style and texture, can
* Copyright by EMS Recordngi, New York.
588 | Fulfillment
one really begin to appreciate the finely balanced sonorities and the
multitude of rhythmic refinements and subtle contrasts of timbre that
make each of Var&e's compositions a highly organized work of art
possessing an inviolable integrity of form and structure. As to why
he finds it necessary to use such dissonances consistently as part of his
harmonic fabric, Henry Cowell offers an explanation that is interesting
because it stresses the element of tension that is always present in
Varise's music: "To introduce a consonant harmony would remove
the sense of implacable, resilient hardness, and create a weak link in
the chain; the let-down would be so great that the whole composi-
tion might fall to pieces." 8 The music of Varise has the beauty and
precision of an intricate machine, and creates its emotion objectively,
not as a subjective projection of the composer's ego or a public display
of his private feelings.
The piece titled Density 21. j for solo flute was composed in 1936
for Georges Barrire's new platinum flute (21.5 is the density of plati-
num). Since there arc limits to the unconventional effects one can
create with a single instrument, this may well serve as an introduction
to the music of Var&se, from which the listener may pass on to larger
and more complex works, in which the same type of melodic line is
employed polyphonically. Here, indeed, the wide range of the in-
strument, from the lowest to the highest register, conveys the sug-
gestion of widely spaced polyphony and harmonic richness, even
though only a single instrument is actually used.
With Octandre (1924) we enter a realm of instrumental polyphony
in which contrasting timbres are interwoven in complex and clash-
ing linear designs. The composition is for flute, clarinet, oboe, bas-
soon, French horn, trumpet, trombone, and contrabass. It is in three
short movements, the first introduced by the oboe, the second by the
flute, and the third by the bassoon. Each instrument is treated inde-
pendently as regards melodic line, and with the intent of emphasizing
its individual tone color.
lonisation (1924) is one of the works that has gained for Varese
the reputation of being a manipulator of percussive effects at the
expense of harmony and melody. Slonimsky, who accurately labels
this work as "for instruments of percussion, friction, and sibilation,
of inderminate pitch," points out that it is in sonata form,
8 Cowell (ed.), American Composers on American Music, p. 47.
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 589
. . . with the first subject given out by die tambour mUitaire (the
while two sirens slide over the whole range in opposite directions
like two harps glissando), the second by the tutti of percussion in-
struments, the development section being built on contrasting metal
and wood percussion tone-color, and the coda (after an abridged re-
capitulation) introducing tubular chimes and low-register pianoforte
tone-clusters (like pedal points).9
Among the instruments used in this composition (thirteen performers
play thirty-five different instruments) are low and high sirens, "lion's
roar," slapstick, bongos (Afro-Cuban drums), guiro (scraper made of
a serrated gourd), Chinese blocks, sleigh bells, and two anvils.
Stylistic elements of the two preceding works are combined in the
composition titled Integrates (1926), written for two flutes, two clari-
nets, two trumpets, three trombones, oboe, French horn, and a bat-
tery of percussion instruments (four players). Thematic developments
and other elements of formal structure may be discerned, but they
scarcely obtrude on the hearer's attention, which is beset by the
impact of sensational sonorities. Slonimsky speaks of "static" emotion
in this work; but of subjective emotion there appears to be none. This
is abstract musical design, or as abstract as music can be; for it is a
paradox of music that the more "abstract" it tries to be, the more
"concrete" it becomes: it winds up as pure sound, a concrete physical
fact.10
Trio from the Far West
Among the younger experimental composers, Lou Harrison, born
in Portland, Oregon, in 1917, stands about midway between Varese
and Cage, sharing the former's interest in exploring the resources of
pure percussion, and the latter's penchant for subtle and distinctive
•Slonimsky, Music Since 1900, $d ed. (New York: Coleman-Ross Company,
IncM 1949), p. 340.
10 Cf. the recent movement in Paris known as Musique concrete, a refinement
of the "art of noises" utilizing modern recording techniques. Consult on this
subject the article "Musique Concrete" by Henry Barraud in Musical America,
Jan. 15, 1953, which in turn is a resume" of Pierre SchaeflFer's authoritative work,
A la 'Recherche (Tune musique concrete (Paris, Edition du Seuil, 1952). Pierre
Boulez, the leader of this movement in France, has influenced John Cage. Morton
Feldman is another young American composer who has been experimenting along
these lines, as has Vladimir Ussachevsky (experiments with magnetic tape re-
corder) .
590 | Fulfillment
quasi-Oriental sonorities. He studied composition with Henry Cowcll
and Arnold Schoenberg. In 1952 and 1954 he was the recipient of a
Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. On the percussive side, Harrison
has written, among other things, Canticles 1-VI, Simfomes /-X/K,
and First Concerto for solo flute with percussion. His Canticle ///, first
performed under the direction of Leopold Stokowski, includes such
unconventional percussion media as brake-drums, iron pipes, and pack-
ing boxes, in addition to wood blocks, assorted drums, a guitar, and
an ocarina for the melodic element. The result has been described by
Richard Franko Goldman as "a succession of charming and obviously
well-organized sounds."
There is a deeply serious, semimystical vein in much of Harrison's
music. He has written a number of religious works, including several
Masses, a Motet for the Day of Ascension (for seven stringed instru-
ments), Praises for Michael the Archangel (for organ and strings),
and an Alleluia for small orchestra. He has also composed a "Sym-
phony on G" (1948-1954), which employs a tonally centered twelve-
tone technique (see next chapter for an explanation of these terms),
a Piano Sonata, Suite No. 2 for string quartet (1948), Suite for cello
and harp (1949); Suite for violin, piano, and orchestra; and an opera,
The Only Jealousy of Enter (after Yeats). He is strongly influenced
by the Baroque style, especially in his Suites, and he endeavors to de-
velop the resources of secundal counterpoint, particularly as a medium
of meditative expression. He says that his Suite No. 2 for string quar-
tet is an attempt to make secundal counterpoint "sit down quietly and
think and feel."
In 1954, Harrison was invited to attend the International Composers
Conference in Rome and to submit a composition for a prize offered
by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. He won a divided prize for the
third section of a short opera, Rapunzel (text by William Morris), for
mezzo-soprano, contralto, baritone, and seventeen instruments. Like
many of Harrison's recent compositions, this score employs the twelve-
tone technique.
Harry Partch is a composer who during the past thirty years has
been consistently experimenting with new musical resources and
devices. He was born in Oakland, California, in 1901, raised in Arizona,
and self-taught in music. His theoretical musical explorations led him
to develop a new musical scale, based on microtonal intervals and
giving forty-three tones to the octave (instead of the twelve tones
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 591
of the conventional tempered scale). In order to have instruments
that could play the music written according to his system, Partch
became an inventor, creating or adapting a whole array of micro*
tonal instruments, including electric guitars and three types of adapted
reed organ with special keyboard, which he calls "chromelodeon."
Among the compositions of Partch are Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po,
San Francisco Newsboy Cries, Letter from Hobo Pablo, US. High-
ball—Account of Hobo Trip, Account of the Normandy Invasion by
an American Glider Pilot (setting of a recorded transcription), and a
score for King CEdipus (the William Butler Yeats version of Soph-
ocles's CEdipus Rex), produced at Mills College, Oakland, California,
in March, 1952. The score of this last work—his most important to
date— calls for various modified string instruments, a newly designed
kithara, three specially constructed marimbas, and glass bowls struck
with hammers, in addition to the instruments mentioned above.
In his score for King CEdipus , Partch - has written neither inci-
dental music for a play nor an opera. It is an integrated score for in-
struments and actors, in which the instruments often follow the lines
of inflected speech, and in which the actors are required to intone on
pitch according to the system of the composer's microtonal scale. In
both the speech and the instrumental music there is frequent use of
"gliding" up or down from one tone to another— a practice hitherto
condemned in art music but often encountered in folk and primitive
music (another of the many links between the modern and the primi-
tive in art).
Concerning his score for King CEdipus, Partch has said: "The mu-
sic is conceived as an emotional saturation that it is the particular
province of dramatic music to achieve. My idea has been to present
the drama expressed by language, not to obscure it, either by operatic
aria or symphonic instrumentation. Hence in critical dialogue music
enters almost insidiously as tensions enter."
There is an interesting similarity between Partch's conception of
the role of music in drama and T. S. Eliot's conception of the use of
poetry in drama. Good dramatic poetry, according to Eliot (in his
book, Poetry and Drama), is poetry that "does not interrupt but in-
tensifies the dramatic situation." He objects to "passages which called
too much attention to themselves as poetry" and charges that "they
are too much like operatic arias." His ideal, therefore, is essentially
the same as that of Partch.
592 | Fulfillment
Partch has developed a type of composition that he calls "Satyr-
play Music for Dance Theater." In this form he appears to return to
the ancient Roman satura (from which we get our term "satire"),
which originally meant "a medley full of different things" (satur
means "full"). The original satura combined words, music, and mim-
ing, but without a fixed plot.
One of Partch's satyr-plays, titled Ring Around the Moon, is de-
scribed by the composer as
A satire on the world of singers and singing, music and dance;
on conceits and concert audiences, where the occasional perception
of an understandable American word is an odd kind of shock. Also
a satire on the world in general, on whimsy and caprice, on music in
43 tones to the octave, on people who conceive such things, on grand
flourishes that lead to nothing, on satyrs, or on nothing.
In the course of this satire, further identified as "A Dance for Here
and Now," a voice utters a series of cliches, banalities, and hackneyed
expressions, such as, "Well, bless my soul!" and "Shake hands now,
boys, and at the sound of the bell come out fighting!"
The trilogy of satyr-plays is completed by Castor & Pollux— A
Dance for the Twin Rhythms of Gemini, and Even Wild Horses-
Dance Music for an Absent Drama (in three acts and eight scenes).
In the latter work a voice declaims fragments from Rimbaud's A Sea-
son in Hell. The dances bear such unlikely labels as "Afro-Chinese
Minuet" and "Cuban Fandango."
The following instruments are used by Partch in these "Plectra
and Percussion Dances":
Kithara: seventy-two strings in chords of six each in a lyre-type
body. Open chords and sliding tones. Completed in 1943.
Surrogate kithara: six strings each on two long resonating boxes.
Sliding tones mostly. Completed in 1953.
Harmonic canons (three): forty-four strings on each, with a mov-
able bridge for each string. Developed from 1945 to 1953.
Chromelodeon: a reed organ with a forty- three-tones- to-the-octave
scale spreading over three and one-half keyboard octaves. Completed
in 1941.
Diamond marimba: thirty-six blocks with bamboo resonators ar-
ranged for chordal strokes and running passages. Made in 1946.
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 593
Bass marimba: eleven Sitka spruce blocks over redwood resonators,
descending to the low cello C Completed in 1950.
Cloud-chamber bowls: tops and bottoms of pyrex carboys. Bell-
like tones. Collected 1950-1952. (A carboy is a large glass bottle used
for corrosive acids, etc.).
Eroica and wood-block: a Pernambuco block giving the A below
cello C, and a high multiple-toned redwood block.
Adapted viola: with an attenuated neck for microtonal scales.
Played like a cello. Completed in 1930.
Adapted guitars: Hawaiian type, six and ten strings. Made in 1935
and 1945.
Once the novelty of Partch's microtonal instrumentation has worn
off, the listener is apt to be left with a feeling of monotony. The
expressive range of his music is limiteJ. But since he seems to be
aiming at a fusion of speech and dance with music, one should perhaps
more fairly judge his works in their complete lyrical-mimetic pro-
jection rather than simply as formal patterns of organized sounds.
The fact that Partch, Cowell, and Cage come from California might
tend to support the claim that the climate of that state is inducivc
to experimentation and inventiveness in the arts. Be this as it may,
John Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and by the time he was
twenty was already composing piano pieces in which his sole interest
seemed to be the search for unusual sonorities based on subtle grada-
tions of timbre and dynamics. He studied dissonant counterpoint and
composition with Cowell for one season and then went to New York
to study with Adolph Weiss, an exponent of the twelve-tone tech-
nique who had been a pupil of Schoenberg in Vienna. Since Schoen-
berg had meanwhile settled in Los Angeles, Cage returned to his native
city and studied with the master at the University of California there;
he did not, however, exert himself to acquire the tone-row technique
of composition, preferring rather to develop his own system. While
in New York he attended Coweirs course in comparative musicology
at the New School for Social Research and this stimulated his interest
in non-European musical systems, particularly those of the Far East.
Nearly all of John Cage's music has been written either for per-
cussion or for the "prepared piano." His works for percussion or-
chestra include Construction in Metal for seven players (1939); Sec-
ond Construction (1940) and Third Construction (1941)* both for
four players; March for five players (1942); Amores for three players
594 | Fulfillment
(1943); and The City Wears a Slouch Hat (1942), composed for radio
performance. He has written several Imaginary Landscapes, including
one for electrical orchestra with percussion and another for twelve
radios.
Cage's "prepared piano" is an ordinary grand piano whose strings
have been muted at various specified points with a wide assortment
of miscellaneous small objects, such as bits of wood, rubber, metal,
glass, screws, bolts, hairpins,, rubber bands, weather stripping, and so
forth. The exact type of "preparation" differs for each piece or set
of pieces. Occasionally an "unprepared" tone is allowed to sound in its
natural state. Virgil Thomson described the typical sound of the pre-
pared piano as "a ping, qualified by a thud." Cage's sonorous effects
are delicate, carefully calculated, controlled by an extraordinary aural
sensibility, and based on an extremely subtle exploitation of overtone
combinations. His prepared piano suggests the Javanese gamelan or
orchestra, with its wooden chimes, its bronze slabs, its bamboo pipes
and metal disks, all blended into rather limited but enchanting sonori-
ties.
Cage's most ambitious work for the prepared piano is a set of six-
teen sonatas and four interludes, composed between February, 1946,
and March, 1948, which takes eighty minutes to perform. Each of
the twenty pieces that make up this complex work is a self-contained
unit with its own structural pattern. The basic principle of organiza-
tion is that of unchanging phrase-lengths within a given piece. If Mr.
Cage decides that a sonata will consist of a succession of nine-measure
phrases, he adheres strictly to that pattern throughout that particular
composition. Another sonata may consist of six-measure phrases, an-
other of ten-measure phrases, and so forth. The composer explains
that this system of division "corresponds to the Oriental organization
of poetry in terms of breath-phrases." This principle of rhythmic
organization supplants the system of harmonic organization upon
which traditional Western European music is based. The end of a
rhythmic phrase takes the place of a harmonic cadence. The whole
scheme is rigidly controlled by the application of a preconceived plan.
Sometimes, however, the plan itself may be the result of chance.
In the endeavor to create purely objective form, Cage wishes to elim-
inate the factors of personal choice and volition. He therefore often
lets chance decide such questions as how many measures shall consti-
tute a phrase, or what scheme of dynamics shall be followed in a given
THE EXPERIMENTALISTS 595
work. His favorite method for utilizing the aid of chance is "I-Chang,"
an old Chinese game of throwing coins or marked sticks for chance
numbers (the equivalent of our dice).
Cage used "I-Chang" to determine the structure of his composi-
tion for twelve radios titled I?naginary Landscape, first performed in
New York in 1951 and marking what was up to that date probably the
most extreme manifestation of mechanistic experimentalism in music,
if music it can be called. This composition requires twenty-four per-
formers—two at each radio— plus the conductor (who at the New
York performance was the composer himself). One member of the
team at each radio set manipulates the tuning dial and the other
handles the dial for regulating the dynamics. The wave lengths to be
tuned in at any particular moment are indicated in the score; but the
actual stations that will be received vary, of course, according to the
location of the performance. A given pattern of wave lengths will
bring in one set of stations in New York and another in Chicago or
San Francisco. The results, obviously, will also vary according to the
time of day or night when the composition is performed. Therefore,
while such factors as wave lengths to be tuned in, dynamic gradations
(ranging from pianissimo to fortissimo), and the ratio of silence to
sound, are determined beforehand and rigidly controlled the actual
"content" of the composition (musical or otherwise) is determined
by the nature of the radio programs that are on the air at a particular
time and place. That is to say, the "content" in one performance will
never be identical with that of any other performance.
Virgil Thomson classifies the music of John Cage and his fol-
lowers—for he already has a following among the younger musi-
cians—as "abstract," in the sense in which this term is employed with
relation to modern art. Cage himself, in March, 1952, delivered a
speech at the Juilliard School in New York called "Words for Pre-
pared Discourse," in which, with transparent confusion, he explained
his own ideas on music, on composition, and on expression. Among
his leading ideas seemed to be the following: (i) the most that any
musical idea can accomplish is to show how intelligent the composer
was who had it; (2) in the case of a musical feeling the sounds are
unimportant: what counts is expression; (3) one has to stop all the
thinking that separates music from living.
Some actual excerpts from Cage's discourse— which was punctu-
ated with music (here indicated by blank spaces)— will be quoted
596 I Fulfillment
herewith, in order that the reader may appreciate the full flavor of
this possibly historic document of contemporary music:
I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry
as I need it contemporary music is changing.
But since everything's changing we could simply decide to
drink a glass of water. To have something to be a masterpiece
you have to have enough time to talk when you have nothing to
say.
In other words there is no split between spirit and mat-
ter. And to realize this: we have only suddenly to awake
to the fact.11
The influence of Gertrude Stein on John Cage's prose style is evi-
dent. Since there should always be experimentation in the arts, Cage's
movement is a healthy sign, whatever its ultimate significance may be
in terms of permanent artistic achievement.
II Quoted in Bulletin of the American Composers Alliance, June 1952, p. u.
chapter twenty-eight
Twelve-tone composers
Composing with twelve tones is not nearly as forbidding and exclusive a
method as is popularly believed.
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, MY EVOLUTION (MUSICAL QUARTERLY, 1952).
Iwenty years ago the small handful of courageous composers who
cultivated Arnold Schoenberg's "method of composing with twelve
tones" would certainly have found their proper place among the very
advanced guard of the Experimentalists. Today, thirty years after
Schoenberg completed his first compositions systematically employing
the twelve-tone technique, the latter may be said to have definitely
outgrown the stage of laboratory experimentation and to have be-
come one of the main trends of musical composition in the twentieth
century. All three of its great pioneer exponents— Arnold Schoenberg,
Anton Webern, Alban Berg— have passed into history, leaving to the
world a fecund musical legacy in the form of some indisputable
masterpieces, a profoundly elaborated theory, and the makings of a
genuinely new tradition in the art music of Western civilization.
On April n, 1941, Arnold Schoenberg, Viennese-born composer
and creator of the method of composing with twelve tones, became
an American citizen. He was then sixty-six years old and had been
living in the United States with his family since 1933. Until 1925 he
had lived and composed and taught in Vienna, becoming known as
the composer of several impressive works of post-romantic tendency,
stemming from Wagner, Brahms, and Bruckner, such as Verklarte
Nacht ("Transfigured Night") and the symphonic poem Pelleas and
Melisande. But he also became a controversial figure, often arousing
violent opposition, through his bold experiments with dissonance and
his alleged undermining of the "eternal'' laws of musical aesthetics.
Withal, his reputation and prestige were such that in 1925 he was
597
598 I Fulfillment
appointed to succeed Busoni as professor of advanced composition
at the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. As a Jewish musician,
his position in Berlin became precarious after Hitler seized power.
Hence Schoenberg, anticipating the inevitable, left Germany in May,
1933, going at first to Paris. In October of the same year he sailed for
America.
During his first winter in the United States, Schoenberg taught at
the Malkin Conservatory in Boston. Finding the climate of the Eastern
seaboard uncongenial (he suffered from asthma), he moved to Los
Angeles, California, in the fall of 1934. The following summer he
became professor of composition at the University of Southern Cali-
fornia. In 1936 he was appointed professor of music at the University
of California at Los Angeles, retaining this position until 1944, when
he retired and was named professor emeritus. He died at his home in
Brentwood on the night of July 13, 1951, at the age of seventy-six.
In the United States, Schoenberg, like many other exiled artists
and scholars, had an opportunity to exercise his profession in full
freedom and to contribute his valuable store of knowledge and in-
spiration to the enrichment of our cultural life. True, he did not feel
that his music was performed often enough, either in the United
States or elsewhere. He was never able to hear, for instance, a "live"
performance of his Violin Concerto, composed in 1936 and first played
in 1940. Shortly before his death, a tape recording of another per-
formance was sent to him, and that is how he finally heard a per-
formance of the concerto. Although Schoenberg may have felt some-
what isolated or neglected in his eminence as a tremendously "ad-
vanced" composer, he was certainly not a prophet without honor in his
adopted land. Besides the regular academic posts that he held, he was
invited to lecture at the University of Chicago and other centers of
higher learning. Harvard University commissioned him to write a
String Trio for the "Symposium on Music Criticism" held in 1947-
In April of that year, a special citation and a cash award for distin-
guished achievement in music were bestowed upon him by the Ameri-
can Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His
important treatise on harmony was published in an English translation
in New York in 1948, and his volume of collected essays and ad-
dresses, Style and Idea, appeared in 1950.
It is not the purpose of this chapter to trace in detail the life and
TWELVE-TONE COMPOSERS 599
work of Schoenberg, most of whose career belongs to the history of
music in Europe. But his residence of eighteen years in the United
States gives him a definite place in the American musical scene, and
we propose to review briefly the works that he composed in this
country. First, however, it will be necessary to summarize, as con-
cisely as possible, the development of Schocnbcrg's method of com-
posing with twelve tones.
Schoenberg himself described his system as follows:
The method of composing with twelve tones substitutes for the
order produced by permanent reference to tonal centers an order ac-
cording to which, every unit of a piece being a derivative of the tonal
relations in a basic set of twelve tones, the Grundgestalt [fundamen-
tal form] is coherent because of this permanent reference to the
basic set.1
The music of Schoenberg and his followers has often been called
"atonal" because of this search for a fundamental principle of formal
organization not based on that of "tonality" or "permanent reference
to tonal centers" which has dominated Western art music for roughly
two and a half centuries. The term "atonality," however, is mis-
leading and has been repudiated by Schoenberg. Actually, as we shall
see later, the method of composing with twelve tones may be adapted
for use within the traditional tonal system.
Evolution of the twelve-tone method
For a long time, then, Schoenberg was seeking a method of com-
position, a coherent system of organizing musical materials, that would
be independent of traditional tonal relationships (tonic-dominant,
and so forth). In the course of this search he found it necessary to
arrive at what he calls "the suspension of the tonal system." But this
was a gradual process. Passages of indeterminate tonality in certain of
his early works, among them Pelleas and Melisande, were signposts
marking an "advance in the direction of extended tonality." The com-
1From an essay entitled "My Evolution," originally written in 1949 for the
Mexican periodical Nuestra Music a, later delivered as a public lecture at the Uni-
versity of California at Los Angeles, and published in the Musical Quarterly
for Oct. 1952 (copyright by G. Schirmer, Inc.). Other quotations from Schoen-
berg used in this chapter are from the same source.
6oo j Fulfillment
poser was preparing himself for a definite renunciation of a tonal
center as the unifying principle of a composition. A considerable
advance in this direction was made in the Chamber Symphony (Opus
9), particularly through "the emancipation of dissonance." This tend-
ency was continued in the Two Ballads (Opus 12) and in the Second
String Quartet. In the latter work, according to the composer, "there
are many sections in which the individual parts proceed regardless
of whether or not their meeting results in codified harmonies." Hence,
"the overwhelming multitude of dissonances cannot be counterbal-
anced any longer by occasional returns to such tonal triads as repre-
sent a key." Here we are face to face with the suspension of the tonal
system. It becomes necessary to find a new principle of organization,
one that will provide unity and coherence along with variety and
flexibility.
In 1915 Schoenberg sketched the scherzo of a symphony in which
the main theme happened to consist of twelve tones. Soon afterward,
in his unfinished oratorio, Jacob's Ladder, he planned to build all the
main themes out of a row or series of six tones. Then, in the Five
Piano Pieces (Opus 23), he began tentatively but deliberately the pro-
cedure of "working with tones," though not yet exploiting the device
of a fixed series of tones or "tone-row." Only the last piece in this
set actually uses a twelve- tone row. Finally/ in the Suite for piano
(Opus 25) and the Wind Quintet (Opus 26), both dating from the
year 1924, the material is organized entirely on the basis of tone-rows,
and the method of composing with twelve tones takes definite shape.
The "twelve tones" are those of the chromatic scale (obtained by
playing all the white and black keys on an octave of the piano key-
board). The composer begins by arranging these twelve tones in a
series or row. Once arranged in a special order, with no tones re-
peated, this tone-row provides the material, both melodically and har-
monically, out of which the entire composition is made. It may be
said, therefore, in the words of Ren6 Leibowitz, that "every twelve-
tone piece is nothing but a series of variations on the original row."
The tone-row may be used in its entirety or in fragments, and in any
of the following basic forms, derived from traditional contrapuntal
devices: *
*Thc tone-row given in this illustration is that used by Schoenberg in his
Suite for piano (Opus 25).
TWELVE-TONE COMPOSERS 6oi
t. Its original form (symbol: O).
• •• b, ^ (,•"•.*"• ^ m
n. Its retrograde or "backwards" form (symbol: R).
in. Its inverted or "upside-down" form (symbol: I).
••*• i.-"- t. -t. . • .
iv. Its retrograde inversion or "upside-down backwards" form (sym-
bol: RI).
Since each of these forms of the tone-row may be transposed to each
of the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, a total of forty-eight pos-
sible patterns is available to the composer who employs this method
of composition.
As Virgil Thomson sensibly observes:
The device of arranging these twelve tones in a special order par-
ticular to each piece and consistent throughout, is not an added com-
plication of twelve-tone writing but a simplification, a rule of thumb,
that speeds up composition. The uses of such a "row" ... are not
necessarily intended for listeners to be aware of any more than the
devices of fugal imitation are. They show up under analysis, of
course, but they are mainly a composer's way of achieving thematic
coherence with a minimum of effort.1
Among important works of Schoenberg written before his coming
to America and embodying further development of the twelve-tone
technique are the Suite (Opus 29) for piano, piccolo clarinet, clarinet,
bass clarinet, violin, viola, and cello (1926); the Third String Quartet
(Opus 30, 1926); the Variations for Orchestra (Opus 31, 1927-1928);
and the opera buff a From Today Till Tomorrow (Opus 32, 1929).
• Music Right and Left, p. 182. Used by permission of the publisher, Henry
Holt & Company, Inc.
6o2 I Fulfillment
Schoenberg's American period
In America a curious thing occurred with Schoenberg's composing:
he returned in certain instances to tonal writing. His first work com-
posed in the United States was a tonal Suite for Strings, in the key of
G Major, written for student orchestra. In 1938 he composed a tonal
setting of the Kol Nidre for solo voice, chorus, and orchestra. Another
tonal work, the Variations on a Recitative for Organ, was written in
1941. Regarding this return to tonality, Schoenberg wrote: "A longing
to return to the older style was always vigorous in me; and from time
to time I had to yield to that urge." He was like an explorer who has
discovered a new continent that thrills and fascinates him, but who
feels now and then a longing to revisit the homeland with its familiar
habits and comforts.
But Schoenberg did not by any means abandon twelve-tone writing
in America. He continued to develop the twelve-tone method in such
works as the Violin Concerto (Opus 36, 1936), the Fourth String
Quartet (Opus 37, 1936), the Piano Concerto (Opus 42, 1942), and
the String Trio (Opus 45, 1947). Another extremely interesting
twelve-tone work of this period is the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte,
(Opus 41, 1942), for string quartet, piano, and reciter. This is a set-
ting of Lord Byron's poem denouncing tyranny and praising the demo-
cratic spirit of George Washington. It employs a kind of "speech
song" (Sprechstimme), a technique that Schoenberg had previously
used in the poetic settings of Pierrot Lunaire (1912) for reciter and
five instruments. The Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, with string or-
chestra substituted for quartet, was first performed at a concert of
the New York Philharmonic-Symphony on November 23, 1944.
The Ode gave proof that Schoenberg was not indifferent to the cata-
strophic struggle of the world in which he lived, and which had
touched his own life so closely. Further evidence of this preoccupa-
tion is found in a work composed in 1947, entitled A Survivor From
Warsaw (Opus 46), for narrator, men's chorus, and orchestra. The
narrator takes the role of the Survivor and recounts his experience
of Nazi brutality toward the Jews of Warsaw, as they are rounded
up for the gas chamber, while the old and infirm are knocked down
and beaten over the head with clubs. The singing of the Hebrew
prayer, "Hear, O Israel," rises like an affirmation of faith and hope in
die midst of this horror.
TWELVE-TONE COMPOSERS 603
Schoenberg's last completed work was the De Profundis (Opus
5ob), a setting of the 1 30* Psalm in Hebrew, for six-part mixed chorus,
using the twelve-tone technique, with spoken and sung passages alter-
nating. He left many works unfinished.
Schoenberg was less dogmatic than is generally supposed. In his
lecture "My Evolution," from which we have already quoted, he said:
In the last few years I have been questioned as to whether certain
of my compositions are "pure" twelve-tone, or twelve-tone at all.
The fact is I do not know. I am still more a composer than a the-
orist. When I compose I try to forget all theories and I continue
composing only after having freed my mind of them. It seems to me
urgent to warn my friends against orthodoxy. Composing with
twelve tones is not nearly as forbidding and exclusive a method as
is popularly believed. It is primarily a method demanding logical or-
der and organization, of which comprehensibility should be the main
result.
It is very characteristic of Schoenberg that he should warn his follow-
ers against "orthodoxy." He did not want the twelve-tone method to
become a dogma but rathei a source of creative energy. Some of his
followers took his warning to heart and went their separate ways,
seeking new and unorthodox procedures for twelve-tone writing.
Others have endeavored to uphold strict orthodoxy and to develop
a systematic body of dogma, in spite of the Master's warning. Others,
agaiii, have taken some elements of the twelve-tone technique and
have combined them with traditional tonal procedures.
Schoenberg himself combined the twelve-tone technique with tonal
organization in his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, and, more re-
markably, in the Ode to Napoleon. An earlier and striking example
of a twelve-tone work that employs the functions of tonality may be
found in Alban Berg's Violin Concerto (1935), which utilizes a tone-
row so constructed that it includes major and minor triads as well as
the whole-tone scale, as follows:
Whole Tones
Minor I I
i Mtjor
Major
604 | Fulfillment
The "tonal application" of the twelve-tone technique is rapidly be*
coming one of the most widespread, most productive, and most sig-
nificant trends in the music of our time.
Another composer from Vienna
Prominent among twelve-tone composers in America is Ernst
Kfenek (b. 1900), who, like Schoenberg, was born in Vienna, and who
approached the twelve-tone technique via the unlikely route of
Schubert's music. Kfenek first visited the United States in 1937 and
returned the following year to take up permanent residence in this
country. From 1939 to 1942 he was on the music faculty of Vassar
College; later he was appointed Dean of the School of Fine Arts at
Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota.
In an autobiographical statement published in 1942, Kfenek re-
viewed his musical evolution and attempted to explain his "apparently
aimless meandering through styles." This is his self-explanation:
After a few initial attempts in the exalted late romantic manner
of my teacher, Franz Schreker, I turned soon to the more aggressive
idiom of atonality, whose main organizing agency was elemental
rhythmic force. I became interested in jazz, in the early twenties,
and I had my greatest success when I used some jazz elements in my
opera Jonny spielt auf! ... I was not satisfied with either rhyth-
mically stiffened atonality or semi-primitive jazz, and in about 1928 I
went back to the early romantic vocabulary of Schubert. I was called
both surrealist and reactionary, while I personally had the feeling
that I was making up for things which I had missed when I had been
in school. Another about-face, this time slow and deliberate, took
place: through concentration, condensation, sophistication of the
Schubert style, I came directly to Schoenberg's twelve-tone tech-
nique. This move seemed particularly logical to me. During the last
years, I have devoted much work to the practical development and
the critical interpretation of that technique, as well as to creative
writing and theoretical studies.4
Thus Kfenek's evolution reflects some of the predominant trends of
contemporary composition: the neo-primitive cult of elemental rhyth-
mic force, the exploitation of jazz effects in an atmosphere of urban
4 From The Book of Modern Composers, ed. by David Ewcn (Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc., New York, 1042), p. 354.
TWELVE-TONE COMPOSERS
sophistication, and the search for absolute values in abstract musical
expression. When a third factor is added— his vein of political satire-
he becomes a yet more representative musician of these times. From
1926 to 1928, Kfenek composed a trilogy of one-act operas in the
spirit of political satire, titled respectively The Dictator, The Mys-
terious Kingdom, and Heavyweight, or Pride of the Nation. It is in-
teresting to observe that after his arrival in the United States he re-
turned to the subject of tyranny and violence, this time in a more
serious vein, in his chamber opera Tarquin (1940), described as "a
new opera for the modern stage."
Anyone wishing to become acquainted with the twelve-tone tech-
nique in all its "classical" purity and strictness, but in a comparatively
simple form not too difficult to grasp, might well begin by acquiring
a knowledge of Kfenek's Twelve Short Piano Pieces, written in 1938,
which are a sort of Gradus ad Parnassum of twelve-tone writing.
Considerably more formidable is the Second Concerto for piano and
orchestra, composed in 1937 with strict employment of a twelve-tone
row in its four basic forms. When this work received its first American
performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on November 4,
1938, an old lady in the audience was overheard remarking to her
husband, "Conditions in Europe must be dreadful." *
Apart from the historical opera Charles V (1933), Kfenek's most
ambitious effort to employ the twelve-tone technique in a large-scale
work is his Fourth Symphony (1947), a carefully constructed com-
position designed to depict the conflict between the Ideal and the
Real. It was the composer's intention to present in this work "a very
high amount of logical coherence and intelligible significance." But
these qualities are more appreciated in mathematics and in philosophy
than in music, which for most people remains a language of the emo-
tions. Hence Kfenek's symphony was not received with enthusiasm.
Kfenek's Third Concerto for piano and orchestra, composed in
1946, is not a twelve-tone composition but is based on traditional
tonality. It is in five movements, played without interruption, and in
each movement a different section of the orchestra enters into dia-
logue with the solo instrument. The score makes occasional excursions
into jazzlike effects.
One of the most unusual bits of musical Americana was composed
5 This anecdote is told by H. W. Heinshcimer in his entertaining book,
Menagerie in F Sharp.
606 | Fulfillment
by Kfenek in 1945, when he set to music The Santa Fe Time Table
for mixed chorus a cappella—* monodic intonation of the names of
railroad stations on the Santa Fe line from Albuquerque to Los An-
geles. A more traditional contribution to musical Americana is Kfenek's
set of orchestral variations on the American folk hymn "I Wonder as
I Wander" (1942).
Among other works written by Kfenek in the United States are
the Cantata for Wartime (1943), The Ballad of the Railroads (song
cycle, 1944), Five Prayers by John Donne for women's voices a cap-
pella (1944), Sonata for violin and piano (1944-1945), String Quartet
No. 7 (1944), and a considerable quantity of other chamber music. He
is the author of a stimulating book, Music Here and Now (English
translation, New York, 1939), and of Studies in Cotmterpomt (1940).
Two independent twelve-toners
Stefan Wolpe is another European-born exponent of twelve-tone
music, who settled in the United States about the same time as Kfenek
and eventually became an American citizen. Born in Berlin in 1902,
Wolpe received his musical training in that city. His musical develop-
ment was strongly influenced by Busoni and later by Anton Webern,
whom he met after going to Vienna in 1933. He was active in Pales-
tine for several years before going to the United States* From 1939
to 1944 he taught at the Settlement Music School in New York City.
Wolpe, like Kfenek, assimilated many styles and experimented with
many techniques before turning to the twelve-tone method. And then
he transformed the latter for his own purposes instead of adopting it
literally. According to Abraham Skulsky:
Stefan Wolpe was the first composer to develop a newly organ-
ized harmonic system from the twelve-tone principles of Schoenberg.
He employs harmonic zones or regions that result from each of the
individual contrapuntal lines; the inner relationship between the har-
monic zones is established by what he calls spatial organization.6
Wolpe first began to experiment with these "spatial'* relationships in
his Studies on Basic Rows (1934), originally written for piano and
later orchestrated, in which he systematically exploited the intervalic
4 In Musical America, Nov. i, 1951, p. 6.
TWELVE-TONE COMPOSERS 607
relationships derived from the twelve-tone technique. The Passacaglia,
for example, "is built progressively on all the intervals from the minor
second to the major seventh19 (Skulsky).
Wolpe has been deeply influenced by his contact with the folk
music of the Near East. Unlike Schoenberg, who scorned the use of
folk music, Wolpe has found inspiration in Hebrew folklore and its
ancient roots. A manifestation of this interest are his Twelve Pales-
tinian Songs on biblical texts (1936) and the oratorio Israel and His
Land (1939).
Among Wolpe's compositions written in America, there is the
Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejia, a setting of Garcia Lorca's splen-
did poem on the death of a bullfighter, for soprano, baritone, speaker,
and chamber orchestra (1945). A Toccata for Piano in Three Move-
ments, composed in 1941, uses basic tone-rows somewhat in the man-
ner of his earlier Studies. Other works that reveal the development of
his contrapuntal style are Encouragements, or Battle Piece, four piano
(1946-1947); Sonata for violin and piano (1949); and Quarte^ for
trumpet, saxophone, piano, and drums (1950).
One of the earliest followers of the twelve-tone method in the
United States is Adolph Weiss, who studied with Schoenberg in Vienna
from 1927 to 1929. Weiss was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1891,
and received his musical training in Chicago and New York. A bas-
soonist by profession, he played with symphony orchestras in New
York, Chicago, and Rochester. For his own instrument he wrote a
prize-winning Concerto for Bassoon and String Quartet, which has
been frequently performed. He was one of the musicians who, in the
19305, organized the "Conductorless Orchestra" in New York City.
The early compositions of Weiss were markedly derivative, with
strong impressionistic influences. After his studies with Schoenberg,
he began to compose with twelve tones in such works as Chamber
Symphony for ten instruments (1928), Sonata da Camara for flute
and viola (1930), and Preludes for piano. In his scherzo for orchestra
titled American Life (1929) he does not use a twelve-tone row, but
builds the composition on the basis of the interval of the augmented
fourth. Among other works by Weiss are a Quintet for wind instru-
ments (1932), four String Quartets, a Concerto for trumpet; and The
Libation Bearers (after Aeschylus) for solo quartet, mixed chorus,
orchestra, and. dance pantomime (1930).
608 | Fulfillment
The music of Wallingford Riegger
The leading native-born American composer who composes with
twelve tones is Wallingford Riegger. He was born in Albany, Georgia,
in 1885, but while he was still a child his family moved to Indianapolis,
where his musical education began. When he was fifteen the family
moved to New York. After attending Cornell University for a year,
Riegger entered the Institute of Musical Art, from which he was
graduated in 1907. There followed two years of advanced study at
the Berlin Hochschule, an engagement as conductor of the opera in
Wiirzburg (1914-1915), and as conductor of the Bliithner Orchestra
in Berlin. When the United States entered World War I, Riegger of
course returned to America. For three years he taught at Drake Uni-
versity in Des Moines, Iowa, then at a conservatory in Ithaca, New
York. Since the early 19305 he has made his home in New York City.
Although he received several awards and commissions during the
19205, it was not until some twenty years later, with the performance
of his Third Symphony at the Columbia University Festival of Amer-
ican Music in 1948, that Riegger began to win the wide recognition
that his music merits. Riegger's early works, such as the Piano Trio
in B minor (1921), were lushly romantic. He was at that time writing
the kind of conservative music that was most generally acceptable.
He might have gone from one facile success to another, but instead
he chose to alter his course completely. In 1927 he completed a work
entitled Study in Sonority, for ten violins or any multiple thereof,
written in a strongly dissonant idiom, and in which, instead of fol-
lowing the traditional tonic-dominant relationship, he invented, as
Cowell observes, "a chord to play the part of tonic and another to
play that of dominant." This initiated the vein of innovation that he
has since pursued.
Riegger's adherence to the method of composing with tone-rows
was foreshadowed in his orchestral work Dichotomy, composed in
1931-1932, in which he uses two different tone-rows, one consisting
of eleven tones, the second of thirteen (ten different tones and three
recurring tones). This impressive work, which closes with a pas-
sacaglia, is one of the most interesting and original modern American
compositions for orchestra. Concerning it Riegger has written:
TWELVE-TONE COMPOSERS 609
Among the special things I should like to point out is what I call
"cumulative sequence," a device by no means original with me, but
used perhaps more consciously and to a greater degree in my work
than elsewhere. . . . This is the old Three Blind Mice idea, keep-
ing the original motive and adding a sequence, above or below, in-
stead of moving the motive itself. I also use something I call "organic
stretto," e.g., the telescoping of different sections, instead of the sub-
ject with itself, as in the fugue. It is like beginning a subordinate
theme before the principal theme is established.7
In his First String Quartet (Opus 30) Ricgger uses the twelve-tone
technique in its strict or "classical" form, according to the purest
Schoenbergian canon. Each of the four movements of this quartet em-
ploys the basic tone-row of twelve tones in one of the four funda-
mental forms prescribed by Schoenberg: in its original form (first
movement); in its retrograde form, or "backwards" (second move-
ment); in its inverted form, or "upside down" (third movement);
and in its retrograde inversion form, or "upside-down backwards"
(fourth movement). Clear and prominent statement of the tone-series
at the outset, combined with ingenious variety of texture and a lively
expressiveness, make this an attractive and satisfying work.
In general Riegger uses the twelve-tone method rather freely. He
is by no means a dogmatic Schoenbergian. Expressiveness and strength
of texture are what he seeks above all. There is in his music a funda-
mental honesty, both of concept and workmanship, that is best de-
scribed by the word "integrity." He avoids the sensational, the cliche\
and the cheap effect. His qualities of originality, invention, clarity,
discipline, and expressiveness, are amply revealed in his Third Sym-
phony, the work that brought him a wider fame when performed in
1948. In this symphony, traditional and tone-row procedures are com-
bined, and the sense of tonality is not abandoned. This is a strong and
sincere work, splendidly orchestrated, which serves to place its com-
poser in the very front rank of contemporary American musicians.
Among other compositions by Riegger are Canons for Woodwinds
(1931), Fantasy and Fugue for orchestra and organ (1930-1931);
Music for Brass Choir for ten trumpets, four horns, ten trombones,
two tubas, and timpani (Opus 45, 1948-1949); Passacaglia and Fugue
for orchestra (1942); Duo for Three Woodwinds (1943); New and
7 Quoted by Henry Cowell in Musical America, Dec. i, 1948.
6io I Fulfillment
Old, a suite of twelve pieces for piano (1945); W?u> Dance for piano
and chamber orchestra (1944); several String Quartets; and t Fourth
Symphony.
Riegger has written a number of vocal works, including a setting
of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" for four solo voices and eight instru-
ments (an early work of impressionist tendency, 1924); and especially
In Certainty of Song (1949), a cantata for mixed chorus with or-
chestra in praise of "the brotherhood of man," dedicated to the Inter-
racial Fellowship Chorus of Greater New York. His stage works were
written mostly for the modern dance, and are scored for various
chamber combinations. They include Frenetic Rhythms (1932), Thea-
tre Piece (1935), With My Red Fires (1936), Chronicle (1936), Trend
(1937), and Trojan Incident (1937).
Wallingford Riegger has been aptly described by Cowell as "a
romantic who admires strict forms." His predilection for strict classi-
cal forms and his striving for intellectual order through twelve-tone
techniques have not obscured the essentially expressive quality of
music. Out of the fundamental dichotomy of his temperament "he has
welded together"— in the words of Irving Lowens— "an astonishingly
eloquent and highly individualistic personal style from a number of
widely disparate elements." 8
Some younger twelve-tone writers
Kurt List, born in Vienna in 1913, came to the United States
with the advantage— for a twelve-tone composer— of having absorbed
the Schoenbergian principles at their fountainhead, as a pupil, in his
native city, of Alban Berg and Anton Webern. A strict follower of
the twelve-tone canon, he reveals his allegiance to both Schoenberg
and Bach in his contrapuntally elaborated compositions. These include
Wind Quintet for flute, oboe, clarinet, English horn, and bassoon;
First Symphony for contralto, tenor, and twenty-six instruments (set-
ting of texts by Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, Heine, Wordsworth,
Verlaine, Vatery, George, Rilke, Wayne Clark, Louise Labbe\ Guil-
laume Apollinaire) ; String Quartet; Variations on a Theme of Alban
Berg for piano; Contrapuntal Pieces for piano (Chorale, Passacaglia,
Fugue, and Toccata); Songs to Words by E. E. Ctmrmngs, for voice
• In Notes of the Music Library Association, Mar. 1952, p. 325.
TWELVE-TONE COMPOSERS 6ll
and piano; Second Symphony, and an opera, The Wise and the
Foolish
Also of Central European* origin but now identified with the
twelve-tone movement in the United States, is Erich Itor Kahn, whose
Ciaccona dei tempi di guerra for piano (1943) ^as received frequent
performances in this country. Among other works of this composer
are TIVO Psalms for mezzo-soprano, Three Madrigals for mixed choir,
and Music for Ten Instruments and Soprano, first performed at a con-
cert of the International Society for Contemporary Music in New
York in January, 1954.
Among the younger American twelve-tone composers, George
Perle (b. 1915) has distinguished himself both as a theorist with orig-
inal ideas and as the author of musical works possessing marked indi-
viduality of style. He studied composition with Ernst Kfenek. Within
the area of twelve-tone writing, which he uses freely, Perle has ex-
perimented with modal structure. He is, therefore, one of those who
followed Schoenberg's advice to avoid orthodoxy. Perle, who is on
the music faculty of the University of Louisville (Kentucky), has
written several theoretical studies, including "Evolution of the Tone-
Row" (The Music Review, Nov. 1941).
Perle began composing in a "free" atonal system, but soon aban-
doned this in order to investigate the possibilities of twelve-tone writ-
ing. From the outset he had a fundamental objection to the orthodox
twelve-tone method because, in his opinion, "it failed to rationalize
harmonic events." He decided that he wanted to use twelve-tone
writing, but without being atonal. What he wanted was "dodecaphonic
functionality" rather than "atonality" to take the place of diatonic
functionality. From this premise he evolved his "Twelve-tone Modal
System," which has been the basis of his composing since 1940. He
has been consistently concerned with the harmonic problem in twelve-
tone writing. Apart from the Third String Quartet (Opus 21, 1947),
Perle has composed few works in the orthodox twelve-tone technique.
Among his tonal twelve-tone works are the Second String Quartet
(Opus 14, 1942) and the Variations on a Welsh Melody for band
(Opus 30, 1952). He has written several homophonic atonal works, not
based on a tone-series, including the Sonata for Solo Viola (Opus 12,
1942), Three Sonatas for Solo Clarinet (Opus 16, 1943), and Sonata
for Solo Cello (Opus 22, 1947). In addition to the foregoing, his prin-
cipal compositions include an important Piano Sonata (Opus 27, 1950),
612 I Fulfillment
Preludes for piano (Opus 2, 1947), Fourth String Quartet (Opus 24,
1948), Sonata for Viola and Piano (Opus 25, 1949), three symphonies
(Opus 23, 1948; Opus 26, 1950; Opus 31, 1952), and Rhapsody for Or-
chestra (Opus 33, 1953).
Two American composers who happen to have been born in the
same year— 1916— have achieved prominence as cultivators of the
twelve-tone technique, each in his own manner. They are Milton
Babbitt and Ben Weber. Babbitt is from Mississippi and studied com-
position with Roger Sessions, Marion Bauer, and Philip James. He ac-
knowledges that his greatest debt is to Sessions, who managed to re-
veal to him the path that he should take. Babbitt teaches music at
Princeton University, where he formerly studied with Sessions. It is
perhaps not without significance that for a time he taught mathe-
matics at Princeton. This is in line with his statement that as a com-
poser he likes "the overtone of complete abstraction" implicit in such
titles as Composition for Four Instruments and Three Compositions
for Piano, which he has given to recent works of his.
Babbitt is a strict and uncompromising twelve-tone writer. An-
thony Bruno quotes him as saying,9 "I believe in cerebral music, and
I never choose a note unless I know why I want it there." And again:
"The twelve-tone set [his term for the tone-row or series] must ab-
solutely determine every aspect of the piece. The structural idea is the
idea from which I begin. ... I have the end in mind as well as the
beginning and a middle, and the piece ends when the possibilities or
resources of the particular set are exhausted." Babbitt feels that he has
made a sacrifice in renouncing tonality, but he also believes that in
twelve-tone music "we can structuralize rhythm as we cannot in
tonality" and that, consequently, "The great achievement and the
compensation for sacrificing tonality is rhythmic independence." Fi-
nally, he is convinced that "dynamics are an absolutely organic part
of the piece"— that is, of any musical composition (compare Ruth
Crawford Seeger's "contrapuntal dynamics" in the preceding chapter).
Ben Weber was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 23, 1916. He
attended the University of Illinois, where, like many another future
musician, he received premedical training. But at De Paul University
9 Bruno, "Two American Twelve-tone Composers," Musical America, Feb.
1951, pp. 22, 170. In my discussion of Babbitt and Weber I have drawn exten-
sively on Bruno's article, which in turn is based on personal interviews with
these two composers.
TWELVE-TONE COMPOSERS 613
in Chicago, having discovered his true vocation, he took up the study
of musical theory. In composition, however, he is largely self-taught
From 1939 to 1941 he was active as a leader of the "New Music
Group" in Chicago. He earns a living as an autographer for photo-
offset reproduction, but in 1950 he was awarded a Guggenheim
Foundation Fellowship, which enabled him for a time to devote him-
self entirely to composing.
Weber is much less dogmatic than Babbitt in his attitude toward
twelve-tone composition. He relies more on intuition than on logic
and confesses that he has a "romantic" temperament. "I tend to use
the twelve-tone row melodically," he says, "and my rhythms are de-
termined by my melody." In relation to the Great Three of the
twelve-tone tradition, he is closer to Schoenberg than to Webern, and
closer to Berg than to Schoenberg. He is inclined to an impassioned
lyricism, which is always, however, under firm technical control, as
in the Fantasia for violin and piano, the Lyric Piece for string quar-
tet, the Suite for piano (Opus 8), and the Trio for strings. He has
produced works in free atonal style, such as Five Pieces for cello and
piano (1941)1 Variations for piano, violin, clarinet, and cello (1941),
Ballade for cello and piano (1943), Second Sonata for violin and
piano (1943), Symphony for cello and orchestra (1945). And he has
also written numerous works in the twelve-tone technique, though
seldom within the strictest canon. Among these are the First Sonata
for violin and piano (1939), Suite for piano (1941), Concertino for
violin, clarinet, and cello (1941), Sonata for cello and piano (1942),
Capriccio for piano (1946), Fantasia Variations (Opus 25) for piano,
Piano Suite (Opus 27), Concerto (Opus 32), for piano, cello, and five
wind instruments; and a ballet, The Pool of Darkness (Opus 26),
scored for flute, violin, bassoon, trumpet, cello, and piano. It will be
noted that most of Weber's output consists of chamber music. He
has, however, composed an a cappella choral setting of Rilke's Ninth
Sonnet, and a Concert Aria after Solomon, Opus 29 (1949), for so-
prano and orchestra. Among his recent works are a Concerto for
piano solo, cello, and wind instruments, Opus 32 (1950), and Sym-
phony on Poems of William Blake, Opus 33 (1952). In 1953 he was
at work on a Concerto for violin and orchestra.
Among American composers discussed elsewhere in this book,
Walter Piston has made rather frequent use of twelve-tone writing,
notably in his First Symphony and in the Partita for violin, viola, and
614 I Fulfillment
organ. His procedure is to treat the material tonally. Ellis Kohs, Ross
Lcc Finney, Gerald Strang, Harrison Kerr, Lou Harrison, Virgil
Thomson, Leon Kirchner, Roger Sessions, Samuel Barber (in his Piano
Sonata), and Aaron Copland (in his Piano Quartet) are others who
have in various ways employed twelve-tone techniques.
Finney and Kerr
The case of Ross Lee Finney is exceptionally interesting because
it demonstrates how a composer may turn to twelve-tone techniques,
not by adopting a doctrinaire attitude, but simply as the consequence
of a natural evolution. As stated in an earlier chapter, among the
teachers with whom Finney studied in Europe was Alban Berg (in
1931). But at that time Finney reacted violently against the twelve-
tone technique because of what seemed to him "its opposition to tonal
organization and the functionalism that occurs in music from such
tonal design." Nearly twenty years passed before Finney realized
that "the twelve-tone technique is not actually in opposition to tonal
functionalism but is a technique concerned with chromatic integra-
tion." Finney had used a highly chromatic dissonant texture in his
Second Sonata for cello and piano, but he was still seeking a method
of integration, of structural organization, that would enable him to
achieve emotional expression in a contemporary idiom. This he found,
almost without being aware of it himself, in the Sixth String Quartet
(1950), which turned out to be a work strictly conceived on the
basis of the twelve-tone row. Far from being a coldly calculated plan,
Finney says that this event came almost as much a surprise to him as
to anyone else. As he writes:
No work that I have ever written has sprung from logic; music
springs, I feel sure, from musical ideas and gestures. The real prob-
lem, therefore, and the one that concerns me more and more, is to
find a lyric expression within the bounds of organization that seem
to me important.10
This would appear to offer at least one explanation for the fact that
so many composers are using twelve-tone techniques as a means of
integrating and organizing their musical ideas.
10 From a letter to the author, dated Feb. 22, 1954. Other statements from
Finney are from the same source.
TWELVE-TONE COMPOSERS 6l$
Although he was included among "The Eclectics," Harrison
Kerr must also be mentioned here because, without being a strict
twelve-tone writer, his compositions since 1935 have all been more
or less influenced by the twelve-tone technique. The compositions
of Kerr in which this influence is most prominent are the String
Quartet (1937), the Suite for flute and piano (1940-1941), the Sec-
ond Symphony in E minor (1943-1945; slow movement), the Second
Piano Sonata (1943), and the Violin Concerto (1950-1951). The ap-
plication of the twelve-tone method is very free in these works, ex-
cept in the slow movement of the String Quartet. Only rarely and
briefly has Kerr used the strict Schoenbergian technique, with the
tone-row appearing in all voices, and with inversion and retrograde
motion. Kerr, like Finney, feels that the twelve-tone technique is
compatible with tonal functionalism.
It is slightly amusing, as well as somewhat disconcerting, to learn
that in some circles Kerr is regarded as a rather strict twelve-tone
composer, while others have denied that he is a twelve-tone com-
poser at all! It all depends on whether or not one judges by the canon
of the strictest orthodoxy. The fact that most twelve-tone practition-
ers are going in the direction of greater freedom seems to indicate
the desirability of revising and liberalizing our conception of twelve-
tone writing. In the light of present practice it is difficult to tell, as
Kerr confesses, "where ultra-chromaticism leaves off and twelve-tone
technique begins." As a first step toward clarification, one should per-
haps seek a new terminology.
The term "ultra-chromaticism," employed by some writers, is not
entirely satisfactory. It implies a texture but not a structure; it ex-
presses freedom but not form. Ross Lee Finney's term, "chromatic in-
tegration," is felicitous and useful. It implies both texture and form.
Inherent in the term "integration" are the principles of form, struc-
ture, and organization which are indispensable to the work of art. At
the same time, the composer is left free to select, within a chromatic
texture, the elements and techniques and devices by which he achieves
integration.
What has actually happened is that the whole scope of twelve-tone
writing has widened immensely in the last ten or fifteen years. On the
one hand, the older twelve-tone composers are in many cases becom-
ing more free in the use of that technique, and on the other hand,
many composers hitherto not particularly interested in twelve-tone
616 | Fulfillment
writing have become attracted by it and are using it with increasing
frequency and also, in most cases, with considerable freedom. They
seem to have accepted Schoenberg's declaration that "composing with
twelve tones is not nearly as forbidding and exclusive a method as is
popularly believed." And, of course, the more and the more freely it
is used by composers of many different tendencies and temperaments,
the less forbidding and exclusive it becomes. We ca^i safely say that
free twelve-tone writing, call it "chromatic integration" or what you
will, is here to stay for a while, and that it should be accepted as
"standard practice" by listeners who live in the second half of the
twentieth century.
chapter twenty-nine
In the orbit of Broadway
The lyrics, choreography, and music of Broadway musical entertainment
have made steady progress — particularly in the last thirty-five years — toward
an unmistakably American character. . . .
CECIL SMITH, MUSICAL COMEDY IN AMERICA.
Ihis chapter is concerned with two types of musical entertainment-
comic opera and musical comedy— that have Broadway as their sym-
bol if not always as their geographical locus. Musical comedy, indeed,
is indigenous to Broadway, but comic opera is not. The latter has a
history that long precedes the rise of Broadway as the "Great White
Way" of popular entertainment. Comic opera is an imported Euro-
pean product. The greatest names in the annals of comic opera are
European: Offenbach, Lecocq, Von Suppe\ Johann Strauss, Lehar, Sir
Arthur Sullivan. The most celebrated names in musical comedy arc
unquestionably American: George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole
Porter, Richard Rodgers— to mention only the top few. Conversely,
many of our most successful composers of comic opera have been
European-born, like Herbert, Friml, and Romberg, or European-
trained, like De Koven.
The line of demarcation between comic opera and musical comedy
has not been rigidly drawn. Comic opera— or light opera, or operetta-
is nearer in form and style to traditional opera, except that it employs
spoken dialogue and more frivolous plots. Musical comedy is nearer to
the "play with music," although it by no means follows that "the
play's the thing" in musical comedy. A good libretto can help, of
course, but more important are good tunes, sparkling lyrics, lavish cos-
tumes, and, naturally, beautiful girls. In the beginning, girls and
comedians were the chief attractions. They are still important, but it is
a sign of maturity in American popular entertainment that the li-
618 I Fulfillment
bretto, the lyrics, the choreography, and the music of our musical
comedies have been steadily improving in artistic quality.
Comic opera preceded musical comedy in America. The success of
European works in this genre aroused emulation among American
composers. A pioneer in this field was Willard Spenser (1852-1933)
of Philadelphia, whose two-act comic opera The Little Tycoon was
produced in that city on January 4, 1886. In subsequent years it was
performed many thousands of rimes all over the country, by both
professional and amateur groups. The plot concerns the efforts of a
young New Yorker to marry the daughter of wealthy General Knick-
erbocker against the latter's opposition and preference for an English
lord as a son-in-law. When the American suitor presents himself as
"The Great Tycoon of Japan," the General falls for the title and
grants him his daughter's hand; whereupon the bride and chorus sing,
"Yes, I'll Be the Little Tycoon/* It was all good clean fun. Spenser
wrote several other comic operas, of which the most successful was
The Princess Bonnie (1894).
A composer from Boston named Woolson Morse (1858-1897)
was the next American to make a big impression on the popular musi-
cal stage. He had studied painting in Paris but found music more to his
liking, though he continued to paint the scenery for his comic operas
after becoming a composer (he is said to have composed all his music
on a harmonium). Morse turned out The Merry Monarch (1890),
Panjandrum (1893), and Dr. Syntax (1894), but his great success
was attained with Wang, produced in New York in 1891 with De
Wolf Hopper in the tide role of Wang, the Regent of Siam. In spite
of the Oriental setting, which established a pattern for many musical
comedies, and which Morse evoked by "loud cymbals plus cacophony,"
the music was rather colorless and uninspired. Morse continued his
exotic musical excursions with Panjandrum, with the Philippine Islands
for its setting and De Wolf Hopper again as the leading man.
Edgar Stillman Kelley (1857-1944), known as the composer of a
New England Symphony, a Gulliver Symphony and various other
symphonic works, was the conductor of a comic-opera company in
the 18905 and perhaps for this reason was tempted to try his hand
in the popular theater. There is considerable doubt as to whether his
operetta Puritania, produced in Boston in 1892, comes under the head-
ing of entertainment. It dealt with the Salem witch trials, a subject
that seems to appeal to American composers. It ran for upwards of
IN THE ORBIT OF BROADWAY 6lQ
a hundred performances and was not heard again. Another "serious"
composer, George Chadwick of "The Boston Group," made an in-
cursion into the popular field with a comic opera titled Tabasco, pro-
duced in 1894, which has been described as a "hodgepodge" and
must inelegantly be termed a flop. These experiments proved that
comic opera, though it might be light entertainment, could not be
taken lightly by a composer. It was not something to be tossed off
between symphonies. It required a solid m6tier and a special knack,
acquired by training and experience.
De Koven and Victor Herbert
Reginald De Koven (1859-1920) made it a point to acquire the
special training needed for composing comic operas. He was born in
Middletown, Connecticut, and at the age of ten was taken to Eng-
land, where he graduated from Oxford University in 1879. He then
studied composition in Stuttgart, in Frankfort, in Vienna with Gen6e,
and in Paris with Delibes. From these two masters he learned the
technique of comic opera, and began to apply his knowledge in The
Begum (1887) and Don Quixote (1889). Meanwhile he had married
an American and settled in Chicago. There, on June 9, 1890, he pro-
duced the greatest success of his entire career, the romantic comic
opera in three acts, Robin Hood. It was performed by a company
called The Bostonians, who kept it as their chief support for many
years. The score contains De Koven's two most enduring songs,
"Brown October Ale" and "Oh, Promise Me." The work achieved
more than three thousand successive performances and established
De Koven's reputation so firmly that he could live on it ever after.
Not that he didn't try hard enough to repeat the success of Robin
Hood. He kept on writing comic operas, turning out a total of twenty,
but none even remotely approached the success of that early effort.
The work that came nearest to it was The Highwayman, produced
in New York in 1 897 and revived there, with better success, twenty
years later. Rob Roy was produced in 1894 and Maid Marion in 1901,
the latter a sequel to Robin Hood. De Koven tried his hand at grand
opera with The Canterbury Pilgrims, libretto by Percy Mackaye, pro-
duced in New York on March 7, 1917. He also wrote what he called
an American "folk opera," Rip Van Winkle, produced in Chicago
shortly before he died (January 2, 1920).
620 | Fulfillment
DC Koven's contemporary, Victor Herbert (1859-1924), far sur-
passed him in the nr.nber and permanence of his successes. Herbert
was born in Dublin, Ireland, and received his musical training, pri-
marily as a cellist, in Germany, where he was sent to study from the
age of seven. In 1882 he played with the Johann Strauss Orchestra in
Vienna, and from 1883 to 1886 was a member of the court orchestra
in Stuttgart, where he studied composition with Max Seifritz. In 1 886
he married the Viennese singer Th6r£se Forster and came to the
United States as a cellist at the Metropolitan Opera House. Later
he held the same position with the Theodore Thomas Orchestra and
the New York Philharmonic Society. From 1898 to 1904 he was
conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and thereafter con-
ducted his own orchestra in New York.
In 1893 Herbert was persuaded to write a comic opera, Prince
Ananias, for The Bostonians, who produced it in New York the fol-
lowing year. Its reception was sufficiently encouraging for Herbert
to feel that he should continue in this path. There followed in rapid
succession The Wizard of the Nile (1895), The Serenade (1897), The
Fortune Teller (1898), Babes in Toy land (1903), Mile. Modiste
(1905), The Red Mill (1906), Little Nemo (1908), Naughty Marietta
(1910), Sweethearts (1913), The Princess Pat (1915), The Century
Girl (1916), Eileen (1917), The Velvet Lady (1919), and The
Dream Girl (1924)— the list does not pretend to be complete. This is
the most distinguished and most enduringly successful corpus of light
opera produced by an American composer—and Victor Herbert may
be considered such by virtue of his early identification with the Amer-
ican milieu.
Victor Herbert's mellifluous melodies and skillful orchestrations,
united to better-than-average librettos, have kept the best of his light
operas alive for many decades. And many of his songs have enjoyed
an independent life apart from their theatrical context. M lie. Modiste,
produced in New York on December 25, 1905, with Fritzi Scheff in
the title role, contains the largest number of hit tunes, with "The
Time and the Place and the Girl," "Love Me, Love My Dog," "I
Want What I Want When I Want It," and, above all, "Kiss Me
Again." Naughty Marietta, produced on November 7, 1910, includes
"I'm Falling in Love with Someone" and "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life."
The Red Mill has proved to be one of Herbert's most enduring works,
combining an effective plot, fast action, a picturesque setting, and at-
IN THE ORBIT OF BROADWAY 621
tractive tunes, such as "The Isle of Our Dreams" and "Because You're
You."
Herbert was ambitious to achieve success in the realm of grand
opera. His first attempt in this direction, Natoma, dealing with an
Indian subject, was produced in Philadelphia in 1911 and was given
two performances at the Metropolitan Opera House, in New York in
February and March of that year, by the Chicago-Philadelphia Opera
Company. It was also performed in Chicago and on tour. His second
attempt, Madeleine, was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House
on January 24, 1914. Although Otto Kahn, after the premiere, de-
clared, "We have at last a real English opera," it received a total of
only six performances. The composer died without having obtained
more than a succes (festime in the field of serious opera.
John Philip Sousa, the "March King," merits mention in this chap-
ter as the composer of ten comic operas, of which the best-known is
El Capitan, produced in 1 896 with De Wolf Hopper in the title role,
a Peruvian viceroy of the sixteenth century who disguises himself as
a notorious bandit in order to thicken the plot. The familiar march
El Capitan appears as a male chorus in the second act, and the last act
contains what was once a topical hit, "A Typical Tune of Zanzibar."
Sousa was born in Washington, D.C., in 1854, and died in 1932.
After conducting with various theater companies he became conductor
of the U.S. Marine Band in 1880. Twelve years later he formed his
own famous band, with which he achieved an unprecedented success
at home and abroad. He composed over one hundred marches, among
them Semper Fidelis (1888), Washington Post March (1889), High
School Cadets (1890), and Stars and Stripes Forever (1897). His
comic operas include, besides El Capitan, The Bride-Elect, The
Charlatan, and The Free Land.
Backgrounds of musical comedy
Before dealing with later composers of comic opera in America,
let us trace the antecedents of modern musical comedy in the closing
decades of the nineteenth century. It is customary to begin the story
of American musical comedy with the production of The Black
Crook at Niblo's Garden in New York on September 12, 1866. This
fabulous production was certainly a huge success and held the stage
for more than a quarter of a century; but it was actually a musical
622 | Fulfillment
extravaganza, which relied for its effect largely upon girls in tights
and the flashing of many lovely legs. While girls and legs have con-
tinued to be important ingredients of musical comedy, they are not,
in the best circles, regarded as the whole show. The fact is that many
types of musico-theatrical entertainment went into the making of
musical comedy, including old-time minstrelsy, burlesque (in its orig-
inal meaning of travesty or parody, in the pre-Minsky era), farce, pan-
tomime, extravaganza, and operetta. When A Gaiety Girl was pro-
duced in New York in 1894, the critic of the Dramatic Mirror called
it "an indefinable musical and dramatic melange," containing "senti-
mental ballads, comic songs, skirt-dancing, Gaiety Girls, society girls,
life guards, burlesque, and a quota of melodrama." It was from this
sort of indefinable mixture that musical comedy was to emerge.
Since A Gaiety Girl was imported from London's Gaiety Theatre,
we must credit the British stage with an assist toward the creation of
musical comedy. There was much give-and-take between the English
and American popular theater in that early period. The American
producer Edward E. Rice, who in 1876 had made American theatrical
history with his production of the burlesque musical extravaganza
Evangeline (for which he also wrote the music), followed the lead of
A Gaiety Girl by producing, in 1897, The Girl from Paris, with an
imported British company. The music was by Ivan Caryll, a com-
poser of Belgian birth who settled in England and later came to the
United States, where he lived as an American citizen from 1911 until
his death in 1921. His biggest triumph was with The Pink Lady, pro-
duced in New York in 1911 and taken on tour throughout the
country with immense acclaim. As Earl Derr Biggers wrote: "Every-
one should see The Pink Lady to discover what a musical comedy
should be." Caryll also achieved notable successes with Oh! Oh!
Delphine (1912) and Chin Chin (1914).
Meanwhile, the American vernacular was coming along. In 1898
Edward Rice sponsored the production of an all-Negro musical com-
edy called Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk, with a libretto by
Paul Laurence Durtbar and a score by Will Marion Cook (1869-
1944). It broke no records, but it was full of fine singing and ex-
ploited the ragtime rhythms that were then sweeping the country.
People found it novel and exciting and enjoyed such numbers as
"Darktown Is Out Tonight" and "That's How the Cakewalk Is
Done." Although all-Negro shows have been rare on Broadway, the
combination of white and Negro talent has been one of the character-
IN THE ORBIT OF BROADWAY 623
istic features of the American musical stage. As for Will Marion Cook,
he deserves to be remembered as one of our best popular composers.
Actually, he had a thorough training in music, for he studied at the
Oberlin Conservatory, in Berlin with Joachim, and in New York
with Dvorak. He wrote the music for several shows that featured the
celebrated team of Williams and Walker: Dahomey (1902), Abys-
sinia (1906), Bandanna Land (1907); and a number of highly suc-
cessful songs, among them: "I May Be Crazy but I Ain't No Fool,"
"Mandy Lou," "I'm Comin' Virginia," "Swing Along," and "Rain
Song." His stage works, in addition to Clorindy, include Darkey dom
(1912), and an opera, St. Louis 'ooman.
The year 1903 saw the production of a musical comedy that, iri
one form or another, was to keep its hold on the American public for
several decades: The Wizard of Oz, based on the novel by L. Frank
Baum, with music by Paul Tietjens and A. Baldwin Sloane. The origi-
nal production took place in Chicago, but it soon hit New York,
where it owed much of its success to the performances of Fred Stone
as the Scarecrow and Dave Montgomery as the Tin Woodman.
At about this time the vernacular took a large stride forward on
Broadway through the activities of George M. Cohan (born July 3,
1878), member of a theatrical family that at first appeared as "The
,Four Cohans." Cohan was a producer, a manager, an actor, a dancer,
a singer, a playwright, and a composer of songs. When he starred in
Little Johnny Jones, in 1904, he featured one of his typical songs,
"Yankee Doodle Boy." Following Forty-five Minittes from Broad-
way y produced in 1906 and epitomizing the Broadway spirit, Cohan
struck his characteristic flag-waving vein with George Washington,
Jr. (1906), which featured the patriotic song "The Grand Old Flag."
Although conservative critics accused him of being vulgar, cheap, and
blatant, Cohan went merrily on his way from one success to another,
both with his shows and his songs. Lasting fame came to him when
he composed the favorite song of World War I: "Over There."
Among his other songs are "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Give
My Regards to Broadway/* He died in 1942.
Comic opera composers
Going back to the year 1903, mention must be made of the comic
opera The Prince of Pilsen, if only for the sake of the reputation it ac-
quired rather than for any intrinsic merit. Its composer was Gustave
624 I Fulfillment
Luders (1866-1913), who had been born in Germany and who came
to the United States in 1885, settling in Chicago, where he met his
principal librettist, Frank Pixley. The story of The Prince of Pilsen,
such as it is, concerns a party of American girls on a tour of Europe
who mistake Hans the brewer for the Prince. The ensuing antics are
said to have been side-splitting in their day. Luders wrote the music
for a whole string of comic operas, among them: King Dodo, The
Grand Mogul, and The Sho-Gun (1904), this last with a libretto
by George Ade.
Two other European-born composers may be briefly mentioned
here because of the success that they achieved in the Broadway thea-
ter. They are Gustave Kerker (1857-1923) and Ludwig Englander
(1859-1914); the former came to America at the age of ten, the lat-
ter at twenty-three. Kerker's outstanding success was the musical com-
edy The Belle of New York, produced in 1908. Englander made the
transition from comic opera to musical comedy in such shows as
The Strollers and A Madcap Princess (1904), the latter based on the
best-selling novel, When Knighthood Was in Flower.
Much more important in the history of the American musical
stage is Rudolf Friml, born in Prague in 1881, trained as a concert
pianist, and a pupil of Dvorak in composition. He began in the vein
of comic opera or operetta with The Firefly (1912), High Jinks
(1913), and Katinka (1915); tried his hand at musical farce with
Tumble In (1919) and The Blue Kitten (1924); and returned tri-
umphantly to his true field of operetta with Rose Marie (1924) and
The Vagabond King (1925). The former contains his best-known
tunes, "Indian Love Call" and "Rose Marie I Love You." In 1928
Friml scored another hit with The Three Musketeers. Since then he
has devoted his time mainly to writing music for films.
Another foreign-born composer who made his mark upon the
American musical stage is Sigmund Romberg, born in Hungary in
1887 and originally trained as a construction engineer. Coming to
America in 1909, he secured a job as Staff composer at the Winter
Garden in New York, writing music for The Passing Show, a typical
(and topical) Broadway revue. He wrote the scores of several musical
comedies, including Follow Me (1916) and Over the Top (1917),
but his most congenial field was that of operetta, in which he pro-
duced three enduring works: Maytime (1917), Blossom Time (1921),
and The Student Prince (1924). This last is his masterpiece, a model
IN THE ORBIT OF BROADWAY 625
comic opera both for its plot and its music. Blossom Time, based on
a highly fictionized life of Schubert and utilizing some of that com-
poser's melodies, including a theme from The Unfinished Symphony
and the Ave Maria, indulges in a sentimentality that verges on bathos;
but this has not diminished its perennial appeal. Romberg obtained
another notable success with The Desert Song in 1926, followed by
The New Moon in 1928 and, after a long interruption, Up in Central
Parky produced in 1945.
Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern
This brings the story of American comic opera more or less up
to date, and we must now pick up the thread of musical comedy.
The date of December 8, 1914, will serve that purpose as well as any,
for on that date Charles Dillingham produced a "syncopated musical
show" called Watch Your Step9 with music and lyrics by Irving Ber-
lin, featuring the dancing of the Castles (Irene and Vernon). Irving
Berlin (recte Izzy Baline), born in Russia in 1888, was brought to
America as an infant and grew up in New York's lower East Side.
He got a job as a singing waiter at a place known as "Nigger Mike's"
in Chinatown. Thereafter he began an extraordinarily successful ca-
reer as a song writer, turning out such hits as "Alexander's Ragtime
Band," "Everybody's Doin' It," "When that Midnight Choo-Choo
Leaves for Alabam," "When My Baby Smiles at Me," "A Pretty Girl
Is Like a Melody," "What'll I Do?" "All Alone," "Blue Skies," "Re-
member," and many others.
In August, 1918, on leave from the Army, Irving Berlin produced
a soldier show called Yipy Yip, Yaphank, for which he wrote the
tunes and the lyrics and which included the hit song, "Oh, How I
Hate to Get Up in the Morning." Twenty-four years later this song
was heard again in another soldier show put together by Berlin, This
Is the Army, produced on July 4, 1942, with immense success. This
had been originally conceived as an up-to-date version of Yip, Yip,
Yaphank, but turned out to be something quite different. Its theme
song, "This Is the Army, Mr. Jones," quickly captured the nation.
Apart from these two soldier shows, Berlin's most important con-
tributions to American musical comedy were made with Face the
Music (1932) and As Thousands Cheer (1933), both with librettos
by Moss Hart and both highly topical in their allusions to the current
626 I Fulfillment
depression, political affairs, and contemporary celebrities. Face the
Music had police corruption in New York as the target of its satire,
while As Thousands Cheer directed its shafts at everything from the
White House to the Metropolitan Opera. One sketch was entitled
"Franklin D. Roosevek Inaugurates Tomorrow," and another, labeled
"Heat Wave Strikes New York," featured Ethel Waters in a song
that included the unsubtle couplet, "She started a heat wave, By mak-
ing her seat wave."
After the success of these two musical shows, Berlin yielded to
the lure of Hollywood and did not do another Broadway musical
until Louisiana Purchase, produced in 1940. This too exploited the
vein of political satire, with Huey Long as its target, but the satire
was less pointed and pungent In 1946 Berlin climaxed his Broadway
career with a tremendous success, Annie Get Your Gun, featuring
Ethel Merman in the role of Annie Oakley, the sharpshooting star of
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. For this show Berlin wrote some of
his most effective songs: "Doin' What Comes Naturally," "Show
Business," "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun," and "They Say It's
Wonderful."
As a matter of record, it should be added that one of Berlin's patri-
otic songs, "God Bless America," popularized by Kate Smith on the
radio, swept the country in the early 1940$ and became ubiquitous for
a time. In 1954, Irving Berlin received a special citation of merit from
President Eisenhower as the composer of many patriotic songs, espe-
cially "God Bless America."
The elaborately lavish type of musical comedy, incorporating fea-
tures of the revue, is represented by The Century Girl, produced in
1916, with music by Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin. The producers
of this show, Dillingham and Ziegfeld, tried to duplicate its success
with another lavish musical comedy, Miss 1917, for which Herbert
and Jerome Kern wrote the music. Kern, born in New York in 1885,
already had a number of musical comedies to his credit, among them
The Red Petticoat (1912), which marked the discovery of the West
in American musical comedy. This was followed by yo'in the Shade
(1915), with the Philippine Islands as its alleged locale, and Very
Good Eddie (1915), which established the vogue of the intimate type
of musical show written especially for a small theater. Then, in 1917,
came Have a Heart and Oh, Boy, which attempted to introduce
"realism" rather than "escapism" into musical comedy. Leave It to
IN THE ORBIT OF BROADWAY 627
Jane (1917) dealt with what purported to be life on an American
college campus, a field that was to prove fruitful for the musical stage.
During the 19205 Kern wrote the scores for Sally (1920) in collabo-
ration with Herbert; in which Marilyn Miller, the darling of the
decade, sang "Look For the Silver Lining"; its sequel, Sunny (1925);
Stepping Stones (1923), written for Fred Stone and his dancing fam-
ily; Show Boat (1927); and Sweet Adeline (1929). In the 19305 he did
the music for The Cat and>the Fiddle (1931), Music in the Air (1932),
Roberta (1933), and Very Warm for May (1939). Roberta revealed
again the fine melodic gift of Kern in such songs as "Smoke Gets in
Your Eyes" and "The Touch of Your Hand." During the last years
of his life, Kern wrote mostly for the films.
Show Boat has a special place in the affections of the American
public. It was composed on a commission from that vastly enterpris-
ing showman, Flo Ziegfeld, at whose theater it was produced on
December 27, 1927. Oscar Hammerstein 2d prepared the libretto from
Edna Ferber's novel of the same title, and Jerome Kern wrote some of
his best songs for the score: "Old Man River," "Only Make Believe,"
"Can't Help Lovin' that Man," "Why Do I Love You?" "You Are
Love," and "My Bill" (for which P. G. Wodehouse wrote the words).
Show Boat tells the story of Cap'n Andy and his theatrical troupe
aboard the Mississippi steamer Cotton Blossom, with the love interest
revolving around the romance of Magnolia, the leading lady, and
Gaylord Ravenal, the dashing gambler. The second act brings the
couple to the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the Trocadero Music
Hall. Their daughter Kim turns out to be a successful singer, and as
the action ends on board the Cotton Blossom in the year 1927, we
hear her singing some of the old songs of another day.
There is general agreement that Show Boat is a masterpiece of its
kind. In the words of Cecil Smith: "No other American piece of its
vintage left so large a permanent musical legacy, and certainly no
other surpassed it in quality." * There is less agreement as to what
kind of piece it is. Smith calls it a musical comedy; McSpadden, a
musical play; the Harvard Dictionary of Music, an operetta; J. T.
Howard, hedging somewhat, calls it "almost a folk opera." My own
preference is for calling it an operetta in the tradition of American
musical comedy; which leaves the matter of nomenclature in Hie air
1 Smith, Musical Comedy in America, p. 275.
628 | Fulfillment
but is fairly satisfactory as description. Show Boat received notable
revivals in 1932, 1945, and 1952. It was while he was in New York,
working on the production of the 1945 revival, that Kern died, on
November n.
In addition to his stage works and film scores, Kern composed an
orchestral suite, Portrait of Mark Twain, commissioned by Andre
Kostelanetz in 1942, consisting of Hannibal Days, Gorgeous Pilot
House, Wandering Westward, and Twain in His Career. He also
prepared a Scenario for Orchestra on Themes from Show Boat, writ-
ten for the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra in 1941 at the request of
Artur Rodzinski.
Youmans, Gershwin, and Porter
Vincent Youmans (1898-1946) was a composer who might have
left an even stronger impression than he did on the musical-comedy
stage had not illness cut short his career. His masterpiece was No! No!
Nanette, produced in 1923, which contains those memorable songs,
"Tea for Two" and "I Want to Be Happy." The score of Hit the
Deck (1927) included one of his biggest hits, "Hallelujah." Another
lasting success, the balladlike "Without a Song," made its appearance
in Great Day (1929). In the 19305 he wrote the music for Smiles,
Through the Years, and Take a Chance. This last featured two of his
most effective songs, "Eadie Was a Lady" (sung by Ethel Merman),
and "Rise and Shine" (which brought the frenzy of revivalism to the
musical-comedy stage).
George Gershwin (1898-1937), whose background and achieve-
ments in the realm of "serious" music are described in Chapter 24,
got off to a rather slow start with his first two musical comedies,
La! La! Lucille (1919) and Sweet Little Devil (1924), in which his
lack of technical preparation were apparent. He hit his stride with
Lady, Be Good (1924), Tip-Toes (1925), Oh, Kay (1926), Funny
Face (1927), and Girl Crazy (1930). With Strike Up the Band (1930)
he and his brother Ira (who wrote the lyrics for most of his shows)
turned to political and social satire that pulled none of its punches.
It was hard-hitting, often bitter, very effective, and quite amusing.
Gershwin was to continue this vein of satire, though with less propa-
ganda and more humor, in Of Thee I Sing (1931), which spoofed the
folklore of an American presidential election and its aftermath in the
IN THE ORBIT OF BROADWAY 629
White House. In 1932 Of Thee I Sing was awarded the first Pulitzer
Prize ever bestowed for a musical play, as "the original American
play performed in New York which shall best represent the educa-
tional value and power of the stage." George and Ira Gershwin went
on to display once more the satirical power of the musical comedy
stage with Let Jem Eat Cake (1933). The libretto was by Kaufman
and Ryskind, and, as Brooks Atkinson wrote, "Their hatreds have
triumphed over their sense of humor." This could scarcely be called
musical comedy. Gershwin, in any case, was ready to leave the field
of musical comedy, for by this time he had established his reputation
as a "serious" composer. In the same year (1933) he turned out one
more piece in the genre that he had cultivated with such success,
Pardon My English, an inconsequential affair, and when he returned
to the lyric theater it was with a far more ambitious effort, Porgy
and Bess (1935). The story of that work is told in the chapter "To-
ward an American Opera."
Cole Porter, whom Cecil Smith calls "the genteel pornographer"
of musical comedy, was born in Peru, Indiana, in 1892. He was grad-
uated from Yale in 1913; then, after study at the Harvard Law School,
he enrolled at the music school there and finally polished off his musi-
cal training at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where Vincent d'Indy
presided over a musico-mystical-aesthetic regime that was almost
monkish in its austerity. It was not there that Porter acquired his
encyclopedic knowledge of sex, which he displayed to a delighted
public in his first complete musical-comedy score, Fifty Million
Frenchmen (1929), for which he also wrote the sophisticated lyrics
(a practice he was to continue in other works). Porter's next show,
The Neiv Yorkers (1930), was allegedly a "sociological musical satire"
(that was a fashion of the 19305), but it proved to be chiefly a vehicle
for Jimmy Durante. Porter, at all events, continued to turn out one
show after another. The list includes The Gay Divorcee (1932), Any-
thing Goes (1934), Jubilee (1935), Red Hot and Blue (1936), Leave
It to Me (1938), Du Barry Was a Lady (1939), Panama Hattie (1940),
Let's Face It (1941), Something for the Boys (1943), Around the
World (1946; a failure), and Kiss Me Kate (1948; a huge success,
based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew). This last show
included such characteristic Porter songs as "I Hate Men," "Wunder-
bar," and "So in Love Am I." The songs of Cole Porter are thor-
oughly idiosyncratic. They have a wide range of expression, from
630 I Fulfillment
deft parody ("Wunderbar") to erotic feeling ("Night and Day"), and
they are less formula-ridden than most Broadway tunes. The highly
effective "Begin the Beguine" is a good example of his individual style
and dramatic flair.
Rodgers, Hart, and Hammerstein
American musical comedy may be said to have reached maturity in
the series of works for which Richard Rodgers wrote the music, at
first in literary partnership with Lorenz Hart and later with Oscar
Hammerstein 2d.
Richard Rodgers was born in New York City in 1902, the son of
a physician. The usual legend of musical precocity is attached to his
infancy. In the words of his press agent, "Rodgers showed his unique
musical aptitude at an early age ... he began picking out tunes on
the parlor piano at the age of four." Not unique: merely standard
procedure for musical geniuses. He attended Columbia University,
where he met his librettist, Lorenz Hart, with whom he collaborated
in the varsity show of 1918, Fly With Me. Rodgers left college at the
end of his sophomore year, determined upon winning success in the
professional theater. Meanwhile he studied composition at the Insti-
tute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School of Music) and contin-
ued to write, in collaboration with Hart, a long series of amateur
shows. Professional success seemed very distant, and he was about to
accept a job as a salesman for a garment firm in New York. Then, in
1925, the Theatre Guild invited him to write the music for the Garrick
Gaieties, and he was launched on Broadway.
The first outstanding Rodgers and Hart production was A Con-
necticut Yankee (1927), based on Mark Twain's novel of a Yankee
at the court of King Arthur, in which the lyrics combined the archaic
and the slangy in a blend that caught the public's fancy. There fol-
lowed Present Arms (1928), glorifying the Marines; Jumbo (1935),
described by Percy Hammond as "a sane and exciting compound of
opera, animal show, folk drama, harlequinade, carnival, circus, ex-
travaganza and spectacle"; On Your Toes (1936), remarkable for its
realistic ballet, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue; Babes in Arms (1937),
an apotheosis of youth; and Fd Rather Be Right (1937), in which
they collaborated with George Kaufman and Moss Hart as librettists
in another political satire of the 1930$. More characteristic of the
IN THE ORBIT OF BROADWAY 631
Rodgers and Hart inspiration were / Married an Angel (1938), Too
Many Girls (1939; comment on college life), and especially Pal Joey
(1940), based on a series of hard-boiled stories by John O'Hara origi-
nally published in The New Yorker. Woven into a libretto by O'Hara
himself, the story concerns a plausible young heel who climbs to suc-
cess on the crest of a love affair with a society woman, only to be let
down when she grows tired of him. In the course of the show all the
cliches and bromides of the entertainment business are cleverly sati-
rized. After collaboration on one more show, By Jupiter (1942),
which reached no high level of accomplishment, the remarkably pro-
ductive partnership of Rodgers and Hart was dissolved (Hart died in
1943). They had collaborated on twenty-nine musical shows (nine of
which were made into motion pictures) and had written a total of
nearly four hundred songs.
A new musical-comedy team was formed when Rodgers began to
collaborate with Oscar Hammerstein zd, initiating a partnership that
was to be no less memorable than its predecessor, since it resulted in
Oklahoma! (1943); Carousel (1945), Allegro (1947), South Pacific
(1949), The King and I (1951), and Me and Juliet (1953).
Oklahoma! was an adaptation of the regional folk play by Lynn
Riggs, Green Grow the Lilacs, which had been produced by the
Theatre Guild in 1931. The musical version started out as Away We
Go in New Haven, but in Boston it became Oklahoma!, and with that
title reached the St. James Theatre in New York on March 31, 1943,
to remain there for nearly six years. It achieved a total of 2,202 per-
formances, the longest run of any musical show in the history of
Broadway. On the road it endeared itself to the whole nation, for it
was a fine and friendly show, good-humored, colorful, clean, and
clever. It contained such attractive songs as "O What a Beautiful
Mornin'," "People Will Say We're in Love," and "The Surrey with
the Fringe on Top." But good songs alone did not give Oklahoma! its
lasting appeal and its historical importance in America's musical thea-
ter. Here was a genuinely American musical comedy, different in
character and idiom from anything known to Europe, different even
from the standard Broadway show. It was original, it was refreshing,
and it was gratifying on all counts.
Rodgers and Hammerstein became more conventionally ambitious,
perhaps one should say pretentious, in their next two shows. Carousel
was based on Ferenc Molnar's play Liliom, much more adult and
632 I Fulfillment
complex in its treatment of human character than the average Broad-
way show. The scene of the play was shifted to New England (instead
of Europe), complete with clambake and other local color. The score
had some good songs, such as "If I Loved You" and "What's the Use
of Wond'rin'?" but Rodgers did not show himself fully equipped to
deal with the dramatic exigencies of the play; so that it did not build
up to an effective climax. Nevertheless, Carousel is a fine example of
the mature American musical play, and it has continued to hold the
stage with both critical and popular acclaim.
More definitely pretentious was Allegro, with a would-be dra-
matic theme involving the spiritual struggles of a young doctor torn
between worldly ambition and noble humanitarianism. Needless to say,
he adopts the choice of dedication and self-sacrifice. Staged with many
gadgets and elaborate scenic effects, Allegro failed to please the pub-
lic, which found it neither entertaining nor exciting.
Their next production, South Pacific, brought Rodgers and Ham-
merstein into wide favor once more. The libretto, adapted from James
Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, provided them with a plausible
story and an exotic setting for the romance of the American nurse
who falls in love with an island planter. The show was a tremendous
success. Its array of hit songs included the duet "Some Enchanted
Evening," and the hilarious chorus, "There's Nothing Like a Dame."
With The King and /, based on the biography Anna and the King
of Siam, which recounts the experiences of an English girl who was
engaged as a teacher, for the children of the King of Siam, Rodgers and
Hammerstein continued the vein of intelligent, tasteful, clever, and
skillful musico-theatrical entertainment by which they had raised
American musical comedy to its highest level of achievement.
The German-born composer Kurt Weill, who died in 1950, was
responsible for some of the best musical shows produced on Broadway
in recent years. His two most notable successes were Knickerbocker
Holiday (1938), with a libretto by Maxwell Anderson based on
Washington Irving's Father Knickerbocker's History of New York;
and Lady in the Dark (1941), for which Moss Hart wrote the book
and Ira Gershwin the lyrics. The latter featured Gertrude Lawrence
in the role of a successful but unsatisfied magazine editor, Liza Elliott,
who seeks the advice of a psychoanalyst to solve her personal prob-
lems. Much of the action was concerned with depicting the vivid
dream sequences of Liza's subconscious, as she indulges freely in wish-
IN THE ORBIT OF BROADWAY 633
fulfillment. It moved far from the conventional musical-comedy pat-
tern, but by this time it should be clear that anything goes in the
American musical theater, provided that the results are effective, as
they certainly were in this case.
A few words must be said here about one of the most extraordi-
nary musical productions that ever struck Broadway, Oscar Hammer-
stein's adaptation of Carmen, with the locale changed to North Caro-
lina and an all-Negro cast. Robert Russell Bennett edited and ar-
ranged Bizet's score for the production, which opened in 1943 under
the sponsorship of Billy Rose and enjoyed a run of 231 performances.
Stunningly staged, it proved that opera is welcome on Broadway when
it possesses all the attributes of a good show.
American musical comedy, in its more ambitious manifestations,
has made a slight approach in the direction of opera. And American
opera, in its more popular manifestations, has adopted some of the
traits of musical comedy. Some observers believe that at the point
where these two tendencies converge, the American opera of the
future will emerge. Others believe that opera and the popular theater
should go their separate ways, lest the result should be an unsatisfac-
tory hybrid. Whatever may be the final outcome, it is certain that
there will be much interchange of influences among the various types
of musical theater in America; in whatever happens, the American
musical theater will be varied, many-sided, enterprising, and change-
ful.
chapter thirty
Toward an American opera
The "vernacular" is on the march.
MARK VAN DOREN, INTRODUCTION TO MADE IN AMERICA BY JOHN A. KOUWENIIOVEN.
Ihc editor of Harper's Magazine, writing in 1859 about the arts in
America, concluded that "what is fine in the buildings of the old
countries we can borrow; their statues and their pictures we will be
able in good time to buy." That was the theory of the fine arts that
prevailed in America for many generations: a theory that art imitated
or imported from Europe was better than anything we could produce
ourselves, and that the best hope for us was to imitate faithfully and
borrow extensively. Few people were ready to listen to Emerson
when he said: "It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its
miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness
in new and necessary facts, in the field and roadside, in the shop and
mill.'1
During the nineteenth century, composers such as Fry and Bristow
tried to create American grand opera by a slavish imitation of the
Italian models then in vogue. The choice of an American subject like
the legend of Rip Van Winkle did little to mitigate the imitativeness
of their music. Toward the end of the century, when the prevailing
mode was Wagnerian music drama, Walter Darnrosch's setting of
The Scarlet Letter (1896) was aptly characterized as "the Nibelungen
of New England." After an excursion into French poetic drama with
Cyrano de Bergerac (1913), Damrosch many years later turned again
to an American subject in The Man Without a Country, with a li-
bretto by Arthur Guiterman after the story by Edward Everett Hale,
produced at the Metropolitan Opera House on May 2, 1937; but he
succeeded only in producing another conventional grand opera made
from a European stereotype.
634
TOWARD AN AMERICAN OPERA 635
It may be objected that Damrosch, Breslau-born and European-
trained, was musically too close to his native Germany to have a feel-
ing for American elements in opera. But the native-born American
composers of opera were just as conventional and just as imitative, as
proved by the earliest American operas produced at the Metropolitan
Opera House: The Pipe of Desire (1910) by Frederick S. Converse;
Mona (1912) by Horatio Parker; Cleopatra's Night (1920) by Henry
Hadley. Resounding public successes were achieved by the two operas
of Deems Taylor, The King's Henchman (February 17, 1927), with
a libretto by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Peter Ibbetson (February 7,
1931), after the novel by Du Maurier (previously dramatized by Con-
stance Collier). The former received fourteen performances in three
seasons, the latter sixteen performances in four seasons. These records
have never been surpassed by any other American composer whose
works have been given at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Howard Hanson's opera Merry Mount, produced on February 10,
1934, achieved a total of nine performances. Based on a fictional ac-
count of happenings at Thomas Morton's colony at Merry Mount,
the plot of the opera deals with the downfall of a Puritan pastor who,
in attempting to save the soul of a beautiful sinner, loses his own and
brings death to both himself and her. Olin Downes described the music
as "at times conventional and noisily effective," and added: "It displays
neither originality nor any special aptitude for the theater." This re-
mark would apply to most American operas produced at the Metro-
politan. Deems Taylor's operas displayed some aptitude for the thea-
ter—which accounts for their relative success—but they completely
lacked originality— which may account for their subsequent neglect.
With dogged persistance, but with even more dismal results, the
Metropolitan, on January 1 1, 1947, produced another American opera,
The Warrior, music by Bernard Rogers, libretto (dealing with the
story of Samson and Delilah) by Norman Corwin, a prominent ra-
dio dramatist. In spite of the reputation of both composer and libret-
tist, the work was a flat failure: dull, stilted, and lifeless. Rogers, a
composer with an excellent technical background, revealed, like so
many of his predecessors, a lack of feeling for dramatic values in the
musical theater. Corwin, who could certainly write effectively when
he chose, became self-conscious and pretentious, as so many people do
when they approach opera from the outside.
There is general agreement that opera should be good theater. Ir
636 I Fulfillment
should also be good music; and theater and music should be thor-
oughly integrated, so that neither overbalances the other and each
contributes structurally to the effectiveness of the whole. Many Amer-
ican operas have been condemned for not being good theater. On the
other hand, when a particularly effective dramatic work has been set
to music, the complaint is sometimes made that the music is more or
less superfluous. Something of the sort occurred with Louis Gruen-
berg's operatic version of Eugene O'NehTs drama, Emperor Jones,
produced at the Metropolitan Opera House on January 7, 1933.
The play deals with a Negro Pullman porter who goes to an island in
the West Indies and makes himself "Emperor" there. The mysterious
and primitive forces of the island prey on his mind, and he becomes
demented, while the terrors of the jungle close in around him. As Olin
Downes remarked after the premiere, Gruenberg showed dramatic in-
stinct and intuition for the theater, and it is this which makes his
work a landmark among American operas produced at the Metropoli-
tan. He utilized a modern orchestral idiom and drew on the dramatic
resources of Afro-American rhythms and songs, as in the spiritual
"Standin' in the Need of Prayer," and in the writing for chorus.
Moreover, he had the wisdom to choose a subject dealing with recog-
nizable human beings in the world of today, involved in a compre-
hensible dramatic situation charged with inherent psychological ten-
sions. Critics may question the extent to which the music enhances
the intrinsic dramatic power of the play, and the degree of merit
that the score possesses as music. But the significance of Emperor
Jones is that here at last an American opera appeared that was both
musical and dramatic.
Gruenberg has written two other operas. The first was Jack and
the Beanstalk, to a libretto by John Erskine, subtitled "A Fairy Opera
for the Childlike," which was produced by the Juilliard School of
Music in New York on November 19, 1931. The other is an opera
written especially for radio performance: Green Mansions, after the
novel by W. H. Hudson, produced by the Columbia Broadcasting
System on September 17, 1937. Radio and television have played a
role of considerable importance in the development of American opera.
In fact, these media, together with the university workshops and the
Broadway theater, have made possible the emergence of an American
tradition in the lyric theater.
It may not be irrelevant to note that Gruenberg had worked for
TOWARD AN AMERICAN OPERA 637
some time with the stylization of Afro-American material, as in The
Daniel Jazz and The Creation (both for high voice and eight solo
instruments), and Jazz Suite for orchestra. Emperor Jones was a
continuation of this vein. The point is of interest because, when we
reach the first indisputable masterpiece of the American lyric theater,
Gershwin's forgy and Bess, we find that it resulted from a similar in-
terest in Afro-American material, combined with the cultivation of
so-called "symphonic jazz" and the background of the Broadway
musical show.
Gershwin's Porgy and Bess
Somewhere around 1929 Gershwin read the novel called Porgy ,
by Du Bose Heyward, dealing with Negro life in Charleston, South
Carolina. He was attracted by the subject, saw at once its dramatic,
human, and musical possibilities, and wished to make an opera of it.
When the novel was made into a play, Gershwin was closer to get-
ting the libretto that he wanted. The libretto was finally fashioned by
Heyward, with the composer's brother Ira collaborating on the lyrics
(as he had done for many of George's Broadway shows). The sum-
mer of 1934 was spent by Gershwin on Folly Island, about ten miles
from Charleston, absorbing the music and the folkways of the Ne-
groes. He attended services of the Gullah Negroes on nearby islands,
and took part in their "shouting." He noted the cries of the street
vendors in Charleston, with their fascinating melodic inflections.
Gershwin spent nine months orchestrating Porgy and Bess. To
Rouben Mamoulian he wrote: "It is really a tremendous task scoring
three hours of music." Gershwin was not doing another * musical
"show," he was writing a full-sized opera, and he took the job very
seriously. Partly because the work was cut (by about one-fourth)
for its original production, and partly because of Gershwin's use of
some tunes in the Broadway manner, the notion prevailed that Porgy
and Bess was just a super musical play rather than a "real opera." But
as Alexander Steinert remarked: "It belongs in an opera house, played
by a large orchestra, for which it was written." Porgy and Bess may
not be orthodox grand opera, but it 15 opera, and some day it may be
given in the large opera houses of America, as it has been given, with
tremendous acclaim, in those of Europe.
It is customary to speak of Porgy and Bess as a folk opera. But
638 I Fulfillment
neither this description nor any other appears on the title page of the
published score. Since Gershwin does not use folk tunes to any ap-
preciable extent (there are some traditional street cries in the score),
there is no need to call his work a folk opera. Porgy and Bess is sim-
ply an American opera in three acts and nine scenes. If anyone doubts
its operatic proportions, let it be observed that the manuscript score
contains 700 pages of closely written music.
The action takes place in Catfish Row, a Negro tenement section
on the Charleston water front, and on the nearby island of Kittiwah.
The time is the recent past. The central figures are Porgy, a crippled
Negro beggar who rides in a small cart drawn by a goat, and Bess,
who comes to live with him after her man Crown, a powerful steve-
dore, commits murder and flees to Kittiwah Island. A character named
Sportin' Life, who peddles dope, tries to induce Bess to accompany
him to New York. She refuses and remains with Porgy. In the second
act the people of Catfish Row are mourning for Robbins, the man
killed by Crown in a crap game. But this is also a day of gaiety, for
there is to be a picnic on Kittiwah Island. Bess is persuaded to go
along, though her heart tells her she should stay with Porgy. As she
is about to leave the island after the picnic, she hears the voice of
Crown, who has been hiding and waiting to find her alone. She tries
to resist him, but in the end yields, for he still attracts her strongly;
and he keeps her on the island when the others leave.
After a few days Bess returns to Catfish Row, ill and delirious.
Recovering, she confesses to Porgy that she has agreed to meet Crown
and go away with him. His domination over her is strong, but at heart
she fears him. Her real love, as she now admits, is for Porgy, and as
the latter sings "You got Porgy, you got a man,** he promises to pro-
tect her from Crown. Following a terrific storm, Crown suddenly re-
turns. In the third act he reappears, attempts to enter the room where
Bess is, and is intercepted and strangled to death by Porgy. When
the police come to investigate, they receive no help in identifying the
killer. But Porgy is taken to jail as a witness. Meanwhile, Sportin'
Life again tempts Bess with "happy dust" and the lure of New York.
This time, feeling alone and defeated, she succumbs and goes off with
Sportin' Life. When Porgy comes back and learns that Bess has gone
to New York, he calls for his goat and cart, and sets off to find her.
There are many goods tunes and memorable songs in Porgy and
Bess. The fact that some of these songs are couched in the Broadway
TOWARD AN AMERICAN OPERA 639
idiom does not invalidate their status as operatic material. We have
only to think how close to the spirit of Italian popular song are many
of the tunes in the operas of Verdi. Gershwin was writing an Amer-
ican opera, dealing with a certain segment of the American folk, and
his use of the popular-song idiom, integrated into the action and the
score, was entirely appropriate. The songs in Porgy and Bess are so
excellent, and so much a part of America's music, that it is fitting to
review them briefly.
"Summertime" is the lovely lullaby sung in the opening scene by
Clara, wife of the fisherman Jake (who is later lost in the storm).
"Gone, Gone, Gone" is a mourning-spiritual for the death of Rob-
bins, with the call-and-response pattern faithfully reflected in solo and
chorus, and with the typical melodic inflections of Negro singing.
"My Man's Gone Now" is Serena's lament for her murdered hus-
band, remarkable for its expressive use of syncopation and for the
wailing glissando chorus, accompanied by a chromatic crescendo in
the orchestra. "It Takes a Long Pull to Get There," sung by Jake
and the fishermen, is a stylization of the Negro work song in call-
and-response form, with the characteristic grunt at the end of the
chorus as the men pull at the net: to get there, huh! It shows also
the blend of work song and spiritual, as the singer first says, "I'm
going out to de Blackfish banks," and at the end, "But I'll anchor in
de Promise' Land."
A tune in Gershwin's best popular style is "I Got Plenty o'
Nuthin'!" Porgy's song of insouciance, when he is feeling carefree and
happy with love. A complete contrast is the "Buzzard Song," sung
by Porgy when a great bird flies low over Catfish Row, bringing an
ill omen. This is a truly dramatic aria (including high notes) both in
itself and in the function it performs in the opera, marking a transi-
tion to tragedy. "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" is the love duet
sung by Porgy and Bess just before she goes to the picnic, and it is
in the operatic tradition. Then comes the irresistible syncopation of
"Oh, I Can't Sit Down" sung by the people as they leave for the pic-
nic, while The Charleston Orphans' Band plays on stage.
At the picnic the Negroes are dancing and making music on
mouth organs, combs, bones, washboard, and washtub. Sportin* Life
sings his big humorous song, "It Ain't Necessarily So" ("De t'ings dat
yo' li'ble to read in de Bible"), with effective help from the chorus.
When Crown appears, he and Bess sing the duet, "What You Want
640 I Fulfillment
wid Bess," in which she expresses her loyalty to Porgy while Crown
asserts his domination over her.
The cries of the street vendors— the Strawberry Woman, the
Honey Man, and the Crab Man— are the folklore gems of the opera.
Another spiritual, "Oh, Doctor Jesus," sung while the people are
praying during the storm, over the continuous humming of men and
women, reveals again the degree of skill achieved by Gershwin in
the stylization of Afro-American material. Sportin' Life's "tempta-
tion song," 'There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York,"
marked Tempo di Blues, is the product of a top-notch Broadway
song writer. Finally there are the last two songs of Porgy, the first
when he is seeking for Bess after his return from jail, "Bess, Oh
Where's My Bess?" and the second when he starts for New York in
his goat cart, in a mood of exaltation that approaches the religious
fervor of the spirituals: "Oh Lawd, I'm On My Way."
Porgy and Bess was first performed at the Colonial Theatre in
Boston on September 30, 1935, under the auspices of the Theatre
Guild, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and conducted by Alexander
Smallens. On October 10 it was brought to the Alvin Theatre in New
York, where it ran for sixteen weeks, followed by a road tour of three
months. It was revived in 1938 and in 1942, and was taken on a tour
of Europe in 1952 with an all-Negro cast that performed it with im-
mense success in the leading capitals. A revival at the New York City
Center in 1953 was tremendously successful. Porgy and Bess has
proved its vitality as a work for the theater, its validity as a work o*
art, and its stature as an American opera.
In the American folk vein
American composers, since the nineteenth century, had tried to
present American subjects in operatic form, but perhaps they had tried
too hard to emulate the style of "grand opera," with results that were
imitative, stilted, artificial, and pretentious. Gershwin, adapting the
operatic tradition to familiar material and to his own background as
a composer, avoided these pitfalls. An American subject was not the
open sesame to operatic success; but, other factors being equal, it
could facilitate the path to that integrity of form and style, that inte-
gration of content and expression, which make for successful works
of art. Douglas Moore, a composer who had frequently occupied him-
TOWARD AN AMERICAN OPERA 641
self with the American scene, found in a story by Stephen Vincent
Benet a bit of American folklore and American humor, as well as
some deeper reflection of the American spirit, which appealed to him
strongly as operatic material. This story was The Devil and Daniel
Webster.
Made into a one-act opera, with the libretto by Bene*t himself, and
the music (scored for large orchestra) by Douglas Moore, The Devil
and Daniel Webster was produced by the American Lyric Theatre
in New York on May 18, 1939, with Fritz Reiner conducting. The
author's synopsis of the plot is as follows:
"The Devil and Daniel Webster" is laid in New Hampshire, in the
forties. It begins with a country festival-the neighbors of Cross
Corners celebrating the marriage of Jabez and Mary Stone. The
Stones were always poor, but Jabez has prospered .amazingly and
they're talking of running him for governor. Everything goes well at
first—Daniel Webster, the great New England hero, appears as a
guest, and is given a real New Hampshire welcome. But there is an-
other guest, too, and an unexpected one— a Boston lawyer named
Scratch, who carries a black collecting box under his arm. His ap-
pearance terrifies Jabez, the song he sings horrifies the neighbors
and when a lost soul, in the form of a moth, flies out of the col-
lecting box, panic ensues. The neighbors realize that Jabez has sold
his soul to the devil, denounce him, and flee. Left alone with Mary,
Jabez tells how he came to make his hideous bargain. They appeal
to Daniel Webster who promises to help them. But the devil— Mr.
Scratch— is an excellent lawyer too. When Webster demands a trial
for his client, Scratch summons from the Pit a jury of famous
American traitors and renegades and a hanging judge who pre-
sided at the Salem witch-trials. It is a jury of damned souls, and
Webster seems about to lose, not only the case but his own soul's
salvation, when, by his powers of oratory, he finally turns the tables
on Scratch and rescues Jabez. The neighbors rush in to drive the
Devil out of New Hampshire, and the case ends with pie breakfast,
as it should.1
In The Devil and Daniel Webster, the composer follows the tra-
dition of opera comique in having spoken dialogue alternating with the
1 From the score of The Devil and Daniel Webster, for the opera by Douglas
Moore, copyright 1938, 1939, by Stephen Vincent Ben£t; published by Boosey
and Hawkcs, New York.
642 I Fulfillment
singing. He also employs the device known technically as "melo-
drama," in which the spoken dialogue has an orchestral accompani-
ment. There are "set numbers," such as the duet between Mary and
Jabez, the latter's narrative in which he tells of his deal with the devil,
and Scratch's ballad, "Young William Was a Thriving Boy," with its
refrain, "Listen to my doleful tale." This is a sort of parody of the
doleful popular ballad, but done in traditional style, so that it is half
mocking and half serious. Then there is Daniel Webster's song, "I've
Got a Ram, Goliath," in the manner of the tall-tale, bragging, frontier
ballad. Webster's stirring oration in the trial scene is in the form of
melodrama, spoken rhythmically over a musical accompaniment. The
whole trial scene is extremely effective, and the opera sweeps quickly
to the boisterous climax in which the devil is driven out of New
Hampshire, while Daniel Webster, joining the general chorus, sings
again of his ram Goliath.
Musically, Moore has made the most of the local atmosphere, with
evocation of fiddle tunes for New England country-dances, and has
been faithful to the setting as well as to the folklike spirit of BeneYs
story. His score, straightforward and vivacious, is also lyrical when it
should be and dramatic when it needs to be. These qualities have
earned it frequent performances throughout the United States, by
universities and music schools, at Chautauqua, at the Worcester Fes-
tival (1941), and by opera companies in San Francisco, Mobile, Cin-
cinnati, St. Louis, and New York. In the summer of 1953 The Devil
and Daniel Webster was selected for a long-run performance (July 18
to August 30) at Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, a restored
replica of a New England village as it appeared in the early nineteenth
century. It was planned to make this performance a permanent feature
of the Sturbridge Festival each summer. This is an encouraging sign
that American opera is not only being written and produced, but that
it is also finding its place in the cultural life of the nation.
Douglas Moore has composed three other stage works. One is the
operetta The Headless Horseman, written especially for performance
by schools and amateur groups (produced in 1937). Another is his
musical setting of Philip Barry's play White Wings, produced by the
Hartt Opera Guild in Hartford, Connecticut, on February 9, 1949.
This is a whimsically humorous fantasy in which Moore provides a
lot of singable tunes and has some fun caricaturing both nineteenth-
century grand opera and American popular idioms. The third is a
TOWARD AN AMERICAN OPERA 643
tragic opera in three acts and four scenes, titled Giants in the Earth,
libretto by Arnold Sundgaard after the novel by O. E. Rolvaag, first
performed by the Columbia University Opera Workshop in New
York, from March 28 to April 7, 1951. The action of this opera takes
place in Dakota Territory in 1873 and revolves around the spiritual
conflicts of a pioneer wife who rebels against the harsh and godless
world into which she has been thrust and into which her baby is
born. The somber story matches the starkness of the setting. The ac-
tion is possibly too circumscribed, the plot somewhat spare, for maxi-
mum theatrical effectiveness. Moore has written a masterly score,
perhaps more notable for the instrumental than the vocal writing.
One often finds that the term "opera" is avoided in connection
with American musical works for the stage. Thus, the two chamber
operas of Ernst Bacon, A Tree on the Plains (1943) and A Drumlin
Legend (1949), are described as "music-plays." Nevertheless, they are
operas: there is no need to avoid the term. Both of these operas have
an American setting and incorporate American musical idioms. In re-
cent years a number of other American composers have turned to
American themes and settings for their operas. Among them are Otto
Luening with his four-act opera Evangeline (1948), Vittorio Giannini
with his radio opera Blennerhassett (1939), Max Wald with A Pro-
vincial Episode (which has for its setting a small Middle Western
town in the early 1890$), Lukas Foss with The Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County, after the story by Mark Twain, and Virgil Thom-
son with The Mother of Us All.
The team of Thomson and Stein
Virgil Thomson deserves a special niche in the halls of American
opera. His contributions to the American lyric theater are unique and
memorable. On February 8, 1934, an enterprising organization called
"The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music," produced in Hartford,
Connecticut, Thomson's opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, with li-
bretto by Gertrude Stein. It was sung by an all-Negro cast and cre-
ated a sensation. In the same month it was brought to New York
for a run of several weeks at the Forty-fourth Street Theatre. Broad-
cast performances in 1942 and 1947, and a highly successful revival
at the Broadway Theatre in New York in April, 1952, demonstrated
that the appeal of this work was the result not merely of novelty but
644 I Fulfillment
also of its intrinsic musical merit and stagecraft. Taken on its own
terms—as it must be taken— Four Saints in Three Acts is* lovely work.
No one familiar with the writings of Gertrude Stein and the compo-
sitions of Virgil Thomson need be told that this is not a conventional
opera. The composer has summarized the intent of the work in these
words:
Please do not try to construe the words of this opera literally or
to seek in it any abstruse symbolism. If, by means of the poet's lib-
erties with logic and the composer's constant use of the simplest ele-
ments in our musical vernacular, something is here evoked of the
child-like gaiety and mystical strength of lives devoted in common
to a non-materialistic end, the authors will consider their message
to have been communicated.2
Thomson's delightful music greatly facilitates our participation in
the unlogical landscape of words and images created by Stein's un-
trammeled text. The score incorporates elements from a variety of reli-
gious traditions, ranging from Gregorian chant to American folk hym-
nody (Thomson is thoroughly familiar with the shape-note tradition
of the fasola folk). Thomson sets English words to music with mar-
velous clarity, precision, and fidelity to the spoken language. In
spite of the deceptive simplicity of his musical idiom, his score is full
of subtleties and of imaginative touches that reveal a high order of
creative inspiration. Four Saints in Three Acts is an opera completely
sui generis, and a masterpiece in originality and invention.
Another product of the Stein-Thomson collaboration was the
opera The Mother of Us All, commissioned by the Alice M. Ditson
Fund of Columbia University and produced at the Brander Matthews
Theatre on May 7, 1947. The central figure of this opera is Susan B.
Anthony, pioneer leader in the struggle for woman suffrage in the
nineteenth century. The cast includes many other historical figures,
several of them anachronistic: Daniel Webster, Anthony Comstock,
Ulysses S. Grant, John Adams, Lillian Russell, Andrew Johnson,
Thaddeus Stevens— also Virgil T(homson) and "G. S." (none other
than Gertrude Stein, of course). To explain everything that happens
in this opera would take too long. Daniel Webster pursues (dis-
creetly) Angel More; John Adams courts Constance Fletcher, but
2 Introducing a broadcast performance in 1942. Quoted in The New York
Times.
TOWARD AN AMERICAN OPERA 645
cannot kneel to propose because he is an Adams; General Grant is
stubborn; Jo the Loiterer marries Indiana Elliot and then changes
names with her; and in the midst of it all, Susan B. Anthony carries
on her Cause, and in the last scene but one the chorus sings:
Susan B. Anthony was very successful we are very grateful to
Susan B. Anthony because she was so successful, she worked for the
votes for women and she worked for the votes for colored men
and she was so successful they wrote the word male into the con-
stitution of the United States of America, dear Susan B. Anthony.8
In the last scene the cast gathers around the statue of Susan B.
and her comrades in the suffrage fight. At the end, Susan B.'s voice
is suddenly heard from the statue and attempts to expound what it is
all about (previously she had said, "I am not puzzled but it is very
puzzling"). Her final message is summed up in these words: "Life is
strife, I was a martyr all my life not to what I won but to what was
done." If this is still puzzling, try listening to the music.
The same qualities of clarity and felicity in the setting of English
are evident in this score, equally manifested in the treatment of recita-
tive and in the arias and choruses. The musical materials utilized by
Thomson are heterogeneous: revival hymnody, gospel tunes 4 la Sal-
vation Army band style, modal melodies, popular-song idiom, and so
forth. He employs the calculated cliche" and the deliberate common-
place with an amazing effect of freshness. The whole score has style,
and it is unmistakably the Thomson style. It is also unmistakably
American.
Bearing in mind Paul Bekker's dictum that "opera is a musical work
based on the genius of the language," we must concede real impor-
tance to the musical stage works of Virgil Thomson, not only for
their originality and ingenuity, but above all for their fidelity to the
American vernacular, both in music and in speech.
In 1947 Thomson told an interviewer that he might sometime
set to music Gertrude Stein's "opera" Doctor Faustus Lights the
Lights (1938). As he remarked to the reporter: "She's changed the
story a good deal. In her version, Faust is always playing with dyna-
mos and the lights are always going out." It is to be hoped that this
opera will eventually be composed, for we should have an American
1 Stein, Last Operas and Plays, p. 83. Used by permission of Carl Van Vechten,
Gertrude Stein's literary executor, and of Rinehart & Company, Inc., publishers.
646 I Fulfillment
Faust on the operatic stage, after doing with importations for so many
yean.
Blitzstein and Kurt Weill
The proletarian novel of the 19308 had its counterpart in the
opera of "social significance" with its themes of the class struggle and
social justice. Two such operas were written by Marc Blitzstein (born
in Philadelphia, 1905), a pupil of Scalero, Boulanger, and Schoenberg.
The first of these was The Cradle Will Rock, first performed in a
concert version in New York in 1937 (with piano) and ten years
later brought to the stage at the City Center in New York with the
original orchestration. The second was No for an Answer, pro-
duced at the Mecca Auditorium in New York on January 5, 1941.
Regardless of the ideological content, these operas had the merit of
coming to grips with problems of our times and in the musical lan-
guage of our times. Moreover, they revealed a flair for the theater
that was further manifested in a later, nonpolitical work: Blitzstein's
operatic version of Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes, produced
in 1949 at the New York City Center under the title of Regina. Again,
the setting is familiar and unremote: a small town in Alabama in the
year 1900. But the play is essentially a study of character, and this has
imposed a difficult task on the composer. In 'coping with it, Blitzstein
demonstrates a genuine musico-dramatic talent. The extent of his ab-
solute success has been questioned, but Regina at this writing still
holds the stage: a situation not yet so common with American opera
that it may go unrecorded.
Notable contributions to the American musical theater were made
by the German-born composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), who began
to be interested in American themes long before he settled in the
United States and became a citizen of this country. From the outset
he was attracted by American jazz idioms, which he used in his opera
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930). The scene of this
satiric opera is laid in Alabama; it has been called a modern morality
play because of its expos6 of corruption and hypocrisy.
In 1933 Weill left Germafiy and two years later settled in the
United States, where his fame as the composer of The Threepenny
Opera had preceded him. In this work, based on John Gay's The
Beggar's Opera, Weill had also used elements of American popular
TOWARD AN AMERICAN OPERA 647
music, including the blues. After his arrival in the United States, Weill
devoted himself to writing chiefly for the popular musical stage,
though he wrote the scores for at least two works that transcended
the level of popular entertainment: Street Scene (Elmer Rice), and
Lost in the Stars. The former is a play of humble people in New
York City, the latter a musical tragedy with a libretto by Maxwell
Anderson, based on the novel by Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Coun-
try, dealing with racial tensions in South Africa. In this work, Weill
was exploring one of the possible paths toward the creation of Amer-
ican tragic opera: the elevation of the musical show, with its songs
and choruses, to what Brooks Atkinson calls a uhigh plane of spiritual
existence." Lost in the Stars proved that it could be done even on
Broadway.
Kurt Weill also composed an American "folk opera," Down in
the Valley (based on the familar folk song of that name), written
especially for performance by schools and amateur groups.
In the summer of 1952, WeilPs The Threepenny Opera, in an Eng-
lish version and adaptation by Marc Blitzstein, received a concert per-
formance at Brandeis University. In the Blitzstein version, the locale
of the work is New York in the 18705, and the lyrics are translated
into American slang.4 As hard-hitting satire in the vernacular, this
eighteenth-century comic opera with a modern twist retains its lusty
vitality, its rough vigor, and its mordant wit.
The operas of Menotti
In 1937 the opera department of the Curtis Institute of Music in
Philadelphia produced a one-act opera buffa by a young composer
named Gian-Carlo Menotti. The work was entitled Amelia Goes to
the Ball and revealed an exceptional flair for the musical theater. The
little work was later performed in New York, and on March 3, 1938,
it reached the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, where its re-
ception confirmed the appearance of a new talent in the American
lyric theater.
Menotti came to the United States in 1928 from his native city of
Milan, Italy, where he was born on July 7, 1911. From his boyhood
in Milan he had thoroughly absorbed the tradition of Italian opera,
4 In the revival presented at the Theater de Lys in New York in March, 1954,
Blitzstein changed the locale again-back to England.
648 I Fulfillment
and after completing his musical training at the Curtis Institute he
was ready to adapt his skills and his intuition to the field of opera
in his American environment. He conceived his own operatic plots
and wrote the librettos himself. He started off rather conventionally
with Amelia al Ballo (it was originally written in Italian), but became
somewhat more venturesome with the comic opera The Old Maid and
the Thief, commissioned by the National Broadcasting Company for
radio performance in 1939 (it later proved equally successful on tele-
vision). He switched to tragedy, rather less successfully, with The
Island God (one act), produced at the Metropolitan in 1942. A few
years later he was commissioned to write an opera by the Alice M.
Ditson Fund of Columbia University. The result was a work that
made him famous: the musical tragedy in two acts titled The Medium^
produced at the Brander Matthews Theatre on May 8, 1946.
Revised and restaged, The Medium was presented by the Ballet
Society at the Heckscher Theatre in New York from February 18 to
20, 1947. Within a few months it broke into Broadway, with a run
that began on May i at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Thereafter it
enjoyed continuous success, with many performances in America and
Europe, and a film version made under the composer's direction.
There are five characters, one of whom is a mute, in The Medium.
The action takes place in the parlor of Madame Flora, an unscrupu-
lous medium with a violent temper, a daughter named Monica, and
a mute servant named Toby, an orphan whom she has taken into her
household. He manipulates the machinery that sets the spiritualistic
apparatus in motion, while Monica does the sound effects (voices of
the dear departed). Monica is a lonely and imaginative girl who in-
dulges in fairy-tale fantasies with Toby, who dresses himself in fan-
tastic attire with pieces of colored silk and gaudy ornaments belonging
to Madame Flora (who is called "Baba"). During a seance Baba sud-
denly feels a hand at her throat. She is terrified and abruptly dis-
misses her clients. Becoming panic-stricken and hysterical, she tries to
get Toby to confess that he is the culprit. Since she can get nothing
out of him, she beats him in a fit of fury. Finally Toby, in terror,
hides behind the curtain of the puppet theater in the parlor. Baba
takes out a revolver, and as the curtain moves, she shoots, killing
Toby, who falls headlong into the room. As Baba kneels by his body,
she hoarsely whispers, "Was it you? Was it you?" And the curtain
falls very slowly.
TOWARD AN AMERICAN OPERA 649
The acting and singing of Marie Powers as Madame Flora con-
tributed much to the success of this two-act musical thriller. But it
can stand on its own as a taut and suspenseful psychological drama.
The gay tenderness of Monica's songs in her make-believe scenes con-
trasts with the painful sentimentality of the stance and the brutal
realism of Baba's disintegration under the influence of fear, remorse,
and alcohol. Her long monologue, in which she alternately cajoles and
threatens Toby, is an example of Menotti's dramatic writing at its
most powerful.
Menotti adhered to tragedy in his next work, The Consul, a musi-
cal drama in three acts which received its premiere at the Schubert
Theatre in Philadelphia on March i, 1950 and began its Broadway
run at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 15, 1950. Nothing is
more eloquent of Menotti's success than the fact that with his operas
one takes a Broadway run for granted. The action of The Consul
takes place in a large European city and the time is the present. The
principal characters are John Sorel and his wife Magda. The scene
alternates between the shabby apartment of the Sorels and the office
of an unspecified Consulate. John Sorel is a patriot, a friend of free-
dom and therefore an enemy of those who have the power in his coun-
try. He and his wife are trying to obtain visas so that they can es-
cape to a free nation. Sorel, pursued by the secret police, is forced
to go into hiding. Meanwhile Magda joins the crowd of persistent,
frustrated people who haunt the Consulate seeking visas. The Consul
himself never appears and is too busy to see anyone. Magda's urgency
and anguish are of no avail against the solid wall of indifference and
routine.
In the second act, a month later, Magda is at home, her baby dy-
ing, and receives word that John is hiding in the mountains near the
border. The secret police come to the apartment and attempt to force
Magda into revealing the names of her husband's fellow patriots. In
act three, Magda is at the Consulate again, though she is now almost
hopeless. Her mother and her baby have died. John, appearing at the
Consulate just after Magda has left, is taken off by the secret police.
Alone in the apartment, Magda turns on the gas in the stove. As she
dies, she has a vision of her husband, her mother, and the people in
the Consulate, swirling wildly around her.
There can be no question about the theatrical effectiveness of The
Consul. That can now be taken for granted in the works of Menotti.
6 jo j Fulfillment
He knows all the tricks of the trade and can apply them with unfailing
craftsmanship. The opening of the first act, with a phonograph play-
ing a sentimental French song backstage while John Sorel, injured,
stumbles into the room and is greeted by a frantic Magda, is but one
of many clever devices in the score. The work is musically resourceful,
skillfully orchestrated, employing dissonant harmony that gives it a
modern texture, while the melodies often preserve the facile contours
of conventional operatic style. The treatment of the recitative, always
a difficult matter in English opera, is one of the most satisfactory fea-
tures of The Consul. Performances of The Consul in London and
Vienna in 1951 confirmed its European success.
Another distinction came to Menotti when he was commissioned
by the National Broadcasting Company to write the first opera de-
signed especially for television production. This was Amahl and the
Night Visitors, a short work, which was produced on Christmas Eve,
1951, by NBC-TV. This opera was suggested by Hieronynius Bosch's
painting "The Adoration of the Magi." A crippled shepherd boy
sees a star shining brightly in the night sky and excitedly tells his
mother about it. She reproves him for "imagining things." He goes
to bed, and soon the Three Kings arrive, bearing gifts for a newborn
child. While the Kings sleep, the mother, wishing to help her crippled
son, attempts to steal some of the gold but is discovered by a servant.
When the Kings offer to let her keep the gold, since the newborn
child does not really need it, she becomes remorseful. So that he also
may give a gift, the boy offers his crutch. He then finds himself mirac-
ulously healed and accompanies the Three Kings on their journey.
Amahl and the Night Visitors is a chamber opera, melodious and
deftly orchestrated. As in his other stage works, Menotti wrote the
libretto himself. And, as in his other works for the theater, he uses
the conventional devices of opera. Menotti has transplanted the con-
ventions of European opera to America, but he has used them with a
freedom and flexibility, and with a sense of contemporary values and
needs that has given them a new impact and a new significance. His
music is derivative, showing the influence of Puccini, Verdi, Mous-
sorgsky, Debussy, Stravinsky, Wolf-Ferrari, Richard Strauss, Proko-
fieff, and others. His effects are often superficial and contrived rather
than genuinely imaginative or inventive. That he is the most success-
ful living American composer of opera is an objective fact. He has
proved to many Americans, to whom the heritage of opera is not a
birthright, as it was to Menotti in Milan, that opera can be good theater
TOWARD AN AMERICAN OPERA 65!
and that it can deal effectively both with imaginative subjects and
with the burning issues of our time. The future must reveal the ulti-
mate scope and value of his contribution toward the emergence of
an indigenous American opera.
Bernstein and Schuman
Leonard Bernstein, who was mentioned in an earlier chapter as cul-
tivating both popular and "serious" types of music, has combined ele-
ments of both in his short satirical opera, Trouble in Tahiti, first per-
formed at Brandeis University and later on television (1952). As the
composer points out, in this work there is no "plot" in the ordinary
sense and very little "action." It presents a psychological situation,
and it is essential that every single word sung or spoken by the actors
be clearly heard. The principal characters are Dinah, an American sub-
urban wife in her early thirties (mezzo-soprano), and Sam, her hus-
band, a successful businessman (bass baritone). There is nothing un-
usual about this couple. They are supposed to be typical members of
any American suburban community. Their marital relationship pro-
vides neither of them with the emotional satisfaction that they are
seeking. Their attempt to talk things over ends only in frustration.
Finally they decide to go to the movies together, although it is only
to see a picture, called Trouble in Tahiti, which Dinah has already
seen and disliked. The movie, with its "Super Silver Screen," at least
offers them ready-made magic with which to escape from their own
troubles.
Throughout the action, which takes place in a single day, there is a
running comment by The Trio, "a Greek Chorus born of the radio
commercial" (soprano, tenor, baritone), which "sings generally in a
whispering, breathy pianissimo which comes over the amplifying sys-
tem as crooning. . . . The Trio is refined and sophisticated in the
high-priced dance-band tradition. They . . . must never stop smil-
ing" (from the composer's directions in the score, published by G.
Schirmer). The score employs a wide variety of popular idioms, from
"scat" to the blues. It is original, extremely clever, and effective.
When William Schuman reached the age of forty, he had many
important compositions to his credit, but not a single opera. He de-
cided to write one. His subject was quickly chosen: baseball. Schu-
man had always loved baseball, and what could be more American?
He decided to build his opera around that immortal classic of baseball,
652 I Fulfillment
"Casey at the Bat," by Ernest L. Thayer, which tells how the mighty
Casey, in his hour of expected triumph, suddenly strikes out He got
Jeremy Gury to write a libretto (Gury also added two stanzas to
Thayer's poem), and set to work. The result was the one-act opera
The Mighty Casey, produced in Hartford, Connecticut, by the Julius
Ham Opera Guild, on May 4, 1953.
The action of The Mighty Casey takes place in Mudville, U.S.A.,
in the not too distant past. The opera is divided into three scenes. In
the first, various characters are introduced, including the heroes of
baseball, who are acclaimed in an "Abner Doubleday Song" (named
for the inventor of the game). In the second scene the fateful game
is going on, while the Watchman recites the lines of "Casey at the
Bat" as he sits on the apron of the stage. In the third scene, following
the catastrophe (which is lamented in a requiemlike chorus), Casey's
ignominious strike-out is turned into a motive of rejoicing by his girl
friend Merry, who can now have him all to herself instead of shar-
ing him with a big-league ball club. And a little boy named Charlie
still thinks that Casey is a hero.
In addition to those mentioned, the cast includes the usual quota
of baseball players, three umpires, and the manager of the Mudville
team, who at one point tells the umpire (in song), "I'm Fed to the
Teeth." Other numbers include a teen-agers' chorus, "Case on Casey ";
"Peanuts, Popcorn, Soda, Crackerjack"; "You're Doing Fine, Kid"
(the catcher addressing the pitcher in a pep talk); "Oh, Somewhere in
this Favored Land" (chorus following the strike-out); and "A Man"
(what Merry wants), the aria sung by Casey's girl friend, who thinks
that a husband is more important than baseball.
In Schuman's score, baseball is very close to Broadway. It inevi-
tably brings up the perennial question: where does inusical comedy
end and opera begin? But there are many kinds of opera, and as long
as we are shaping the tradition of American opera with new ma-
terials and new concepts, the field may as well be left wide open. In
The Mighty Casey, Schuman takes a zestful swing at the American
vernacular. Time will tell whether or not he has made a hit.
William Schuman has already decided on the subject of his next
opera. It will be based on Theodore Dreiser's novel An American
Tragedy. Comic or tragic, the vernacular in American opera marches
on!
chapter thirty-one
Composer from Connecticut
The future of music may not lie with music itself, but rather ... in the
way it makes itself a part with the finer things that humanity does and
dreams of.
CHARLES E. IVES, MUSIC AND ITS FUTURE.
In the year 1894 Antonin Dvorak, distinguished composer from Bo-
hemia, was teaching in New York and urging the creation of an
American "national" movement in music based on the use of Negro
and Indian melodies. Edward MacDowell, "a glorious young figure"
(so Hamlin Garland saw him), wearing a derby hat and a curled
mustache, walked in Boston Common musing upon Arthurian legends
and Celtic lore. Horatio Parker, erudite, fastidious, Munich-trained,
fresh from the triumph of his cantata Hora Novis$i?na, had just as-
sumed his duties as professor of music at Yale University. A twenty-
year-old student from Danbury went up to New Haven and matricu-
lated in the class of '98 at Yale. His name was Charles Edward Ives.*
Young Ives was a musician, the son of a band master and music
teacher in Danbury, Connecticut, where he was born on October 20,
1874. The senior Ives had an inquiring mind and an open ear. He
brought up his children mainly on Bach and Stephen Foster. Conven-
tional listening habits were not encouraged in the Ives household.
When Charles was ten, his father had him sing "Swanee River" in
the key of E flat major and play the accompaniment in the key of
C major, in order, he said, "to stretch our ears." George Ives, the
father, was a true spiritual descendant of Billings and of Benjamin
Franklin: self-reliant, independent, inventive, and ingenious. He en-
gaged in various acoustical experiments, including the investigation of
* While this book was in press, word was received of the death of Charles
Ives, on May 10, 1954.
653
654 I Fulfillment
quarter tones, for which purpose he constructed a device consisting of
twenty-four violin strings stretched over a wooden frame.
Receiving music lessons from his father beginning at the age of
five, Charles Ives learned to play several instruments, including the
organ, and from the age of twelve was employed as organist in a
local church. From his father he also learned harmony, counterpoint,
and fugue. He began to compose at an early age, and when he was
fifteen the town band performed a piece of his "suggesting a Steve
Foster tune, while over it the old farmers fiddled a barn dance with
all its jigs, gallops and reels." At twenty he composed a Song for
Harvest Season, for voice, cornet, trombone, and organ pedal— each
in a different key!
This was the musical "baggage" that Charles Ives brought to Yale
in 1894. At that time not even the most advanced European com-
posers had begun to experiment with poly tonality (the simultaneous
use of different tonalities, as in Stravinsky's famous bitonal chord— C
major and F sharp major—in Petrouchka, dating from 19 1 1). No won-
der that Parker, with whom Ives studied composition at Yale, was
disconcerted and annoyed. "Ives," he testily asked, "must you hog all
the keys?" Thenceforth the daring young man from Danbury kept
his musical heresies to himself and satisfied his teacher by turning out
an impressive batch of "correct" compositions. Perhaps the discipline
was good for him. At any rate, no one could claim, later, that he did
not know how to write music, that is, music "according to the rules."
After graduating from Yale, Ives had to decide whether to make
music a career or an avocation. It was clear to him that he had no
interest in writing the conventional music that found ready acceptance
with publishers and performers and public. If he depended on music
as a profession he would undoubtedly face a rough road, beset by
frustration. In order to be creatively independent he decided to make
himself financially independent. He entered the world of business, spe-
cializing in the field of insurance. After working in this field for sev-
eral years, he organized in 1909 the firm of Ives & Myrick, which
became very successful. He remained with this firm until 1930, when
ill-health forced his retirement. He did his composing in the evenings,
on week ends, on holidays and vacations Often, absorbed in his crea-
tive work, he stayed up until two or three in the morning. His wife-
Harmony Twitchell, whom he married in 1908— gladly renounced an
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 655
active social life so that her husband could devote all his leisure to his
chosen avocation.
Toward a "substantial" art
Ives himself never felt that his business career was a handicap to
him as an artist. On the contrary, he felt that it was of positive value
to him in every way, and not merely a matter of "expediency" (a
word that he detests) . It is extremely revealing, both of the man and
his music, to hear what he had to say on this subject, as told to his
friend Henry Bellamann:
My business experience revealed life to me in many aspects that
I might otherwise have missed. In it one sees tragedy, nobility, mean-
ness, high aims, low aims, brave hopes, faint hopes, great ideals, no
ideals, and one is able to watch these work inevitable destiny. And it
has seemed to me that the finer sides of these traits were not only
in the majority but in the ascendancy. I have seen men fight honor-
ably and to a finish, solely for a matter of conviction or of princi-
ple—and where expediency, probable loss of business, prestige, or
position had no part and threats no effect. It is my impression that
there is more open-mindedness and willingness to examine carefully
the premises underlying a new or unfamiliar thing, before condemn-
ing it, in the world of business than in the world of music. It is not
even uncommon in business intercourse to sense a reflection of a phi-
losophy—a depth of something fine— akin to a strong beauty in art.
To assume that business is a material process, and only that, is to
undervalue the average mind and heart. To an insurance man there
is an "average man" and he is humanity. I have experienced a great
fullness of life in business. The fabric of existence weaves itself
whole. You cannot set an art off in the corner and hope for it to
have vitality, reality and substance. There can be nothing "exclusive"
about a substantial art. It comes directly out of the heart of experi-
ence of life and thinking about life and living life. My work in
music helped my business and my work in business helped my
music.1
This declaration of faith reveals, among other things, that Ives has
pursued the ideal of a nonexclusive and substantial art, possessing vi-
tality, reality, and substance. In his artistic philosophy, Ives opposes
1 Musical Quarterly, XIX, i (Jan. 1933), 47.
656 I Fulfillment
"substance" to "manner," and gives a higher value to the former. He
equates substance with reality, quality, spirit, as against "the lower
value of form, quantity, or manner." And he continues:
Of these terms, "substance" seems to us the most cogent and
comprehensive for the higher, and "manner" for the under-value.
Substance in a human-art-quality suggests the body of a conviction
which has its birth in the spiritual consciousness, whose youth is
nourished in the moral consciousness, and whose maturity as a re-
sult of all this growth is then represented in a mental image.2
As an illustration of his thesis, Ives uses a comparison between Emer-
soa and Poe. The former, he says, seems to be almost wholly "sub-
stance" and the latter "manner."
The measure in artistic satisfaction of Poe's "manner" is equal to
the measure of spiritual satisfaction in Emerson's "substance." The
total value of each man is high, but Emerson's is higher than Poe's
because "substance" is higher than "manner"— because "substance"
leans toward optimism, and "manner" pessimism.
Ives rakes his stand with Emerson: that is an important fact to re-
member about him.
Ives has written a great deal about the philosophy of art, the na-
ture of beauty, the problems of musical expression. He evidently en-
joys being a homespun philosopher. By a sort of spiritual anachronism,
he has preserved much of the soaring speculativeness of the Concord
Transcendentalists. But as a shrewd Connecticut Yankee he keeps at
least one foot on the earth. He admits that "if one tries to reduce art
to philosophy" one inevitably ends by going around in a circle. And
then he adds— this is a typical Ivesian touch— "But personally, we prefer
to go around in a circle than around in a parallelepipedon, for it seems
cleaner and perhaps freer from mathematics. . . ." It is important also
to remember that Ives has a sense of humor.
It is not our purpose to expound in detail the artistic philosophy
of Ives. A few pointers toward the spiritual "climate" of his music
are all that we propose to extract. We have learned something of what
he means by "substance," and that he considers "substance" more im-
portant than "manner/1 That is because he believes substance is re-
lated to character while manner is not. On the subject of expression,
'From Essays before a Sonata.
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 657
he has this to say: "The humblest composer will not find true humil-
ity in aiming low— he must never be timid or afraid of trying to ex-
press that which he feels is far above his power to express. . . ." Ives
himself has often stretched the limits of musical expression to the ut-
most; and it is the listener who needs to be bold and adventurous in
attempting to follow him. For, as Ives writes: "Beauty in music is too
often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy
chair. Many sounds that we are used to, do not bother us, and for that
reason, we are inclined to call them beautiful." Ives remarks that fa-
miliar sounds, like drugs, can be habit-forming.
The historical perspective
Today, in the second half of the twentieth century, many sounds
that might have bothered us or our parents thirty or forty years ago,
no longer annoy us, or annoy us less, because the ear gradually be-
comes accustomed to unusual combinations of sound. We have become
fully accustomed to polytonal music, and more or less accustomed to
atonal music. It takes a tremendous dissonance to startle us now. This
chronological factor is central to our discussion of Ives's music, espe-
cially when we attempt to place it in its historical sequence. Ives, as
we have seen, was far ahead of his time in that he employed tonal,
harmonic, and rhythmic combinations that did not come into general
use until much later. Had his music been performed immediately or
soon after it was composed, it would have appeared, in most cases, as
something startlingly "new" and would presumably have created as
much of a furore as did the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky in
Europe. But the music of Ives did not synchronize with the musical
development of the United States. When we were finally ready for
his music, he was an old man, and many of his innovations were "old
hat." It is a tribute to his vitality and originality, to the "substantial"
quality of his music, that so much of it appeared as new as it did,
after such a disconcerting time lag in its performance. Let us glance
at the record.
Ives's Second Symphony, completed in 1902, did not receive its
first performance until 1951, when it was played by the New York
Philharmonic-Symphony under the direction of Leonard Bernstein.
His Third Symphony, completed in 1911, was performed for the first
time by the New York Little Symphony, Lou Harrison conducting.
658 I Fulfillment
on April 5, 1945. The Fourth Symphony, composed between 1910 and
1916, has never been performed in its entirety. The second movement
of this symphony was played at a concert of the Pro Musica Society
in New York on January 29, 1927, under the direction of Eugene
Goossens. The second Piano Sonata, begun in 1904 and finished in
1915, received its first complete public performance when John Kirk-
patrick played it in Town Hall, New York City, on January 20, 1939.
Not until 1947, when he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his Third
.Symphony, did Charles Ives approach the status of a well-known fig-
ure in American music. With the advent, some two years later, of the
long-playing phonograph record, much of his music began to be re-
corded, and through this medium to reach a receptive audience. In
1945 Iyes was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and
Letters. He was then seventy-one years old and had never heard any
of his compositions performed by a full orchestra.
It might be claimed that Ives made this long neglect inevitable when
he cut himself off from active participation in the musical life of the
country, as well as when he wrote music that was mostly too "diffi-
cult" for the musicians and the hearers of his time. It could be argued
that he chose isolation instead of having it thrust upon him. The mat-
ter might be settled by saying that he was following his destiny. How-
ever we look at it, the most significant fact is that the music of Charles
Ives has entered, albeit belatedly, the main stream of America's music.
Charged with vitality and substance, it flows along in the stream of
enduring things that move toward the future.
However modern it may be in "manner," the "substance" of Ives's
music has its sources in the past— not so much the past as history but
the past as a continuing tradition, the past surviving in the present, as
it does, for instance, in folklore. We can take almost the whole body
of American folk and popular music, as we have traced it from the
early psalmody and hymnody of New England, through the camp-
meeting songs and revival spirituals, the blackface minstrel tunes, the
melodies of Stephen Foster, the fiddle tunes and barn dances, the vil-
lage church choirs, the patriotic songs and ragtime—and we can feel
that all this has been made into the substance of Ives's music, not imi-
tated but assimilated, used as a musical heritage belonging to him by
birthright. Thanks to his early background, to the decisive influences
of his formative years, and to his utter independence of conventional
musical standards, Charles Ives, first and alone among American com-
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 6 59
posers, was able to discern and to utilize the truly idiosyncratic and
germinal elements of our folk and popular music.
This music, as we know, possesses intrinsic traits— melodic, har-
monic, and rhythmic— that do not conform to the norms of European
art music. These include such features as "incorrect" harmonic progres-
sions, irregular rhythms, asymmetrical melodies, improvised embel-
lishments, and deviations from standard pitch. Most composers and
arrangers altered or discarded these traits in order to make the music
conform to the academic tradition in which they had been trained;
thus they destroyed or distorted all that was most vital and character-
istic in the folk and popular traditions. Ives, on the contrary, by seiz-
ing precisely on the most unconventional features of folk and popular
music— unconventional, that is, by academic standards— was able to
create an entirely new and powerful medium of musical expression,
which is at once personal and more than personal. It is personal be-
cause only he could have created it; and it is more than personal be-
cause it incorporates a vital tradition that is the cultural expression
of a human collectivity through numerous generations.
Formative experiences
While his contemporaries in Boston were absorbing Brahms and
Wagner, Ives was absorbing the musical experiences provided by the
New England village in which he grew to manhood: the concerts of
the village band, the singing of the village choir, the barn dances,
the camp meetings, the circus parades. The musical impressions he
received were lasting and fecund. In after years he recalled the un-
usual effects obtained when the village band was divided into several
groups placed in and around the main square:
The main group in the bandstand at the center usually played
the main themes, while the others, from the neighboring roofs and
verandahs, played the variations, refrains, and so forth. The piece
remembered was a kind of paraphrase of Jerusalem the Golden, a
rather elaborate tone-poem for those days. The bandmaster told of
a man who, living near the variations, insisted that they were the
real music and [that] it was more beautiful to hear the hymn come
sifting through them than the other way around. Others, walking
around the square, were surprised at the different and interesting
effects they got as they changed position. It was said also that many
66o | Fulfillment
thought the music lost in effect when the piece was played by the
band all together, though, I think, the town vote was about even.
The writer remembers, as a deep impression, the echo parts from
the roofs played by a chorus of violins and voices.*
Ives has always been keenly sensitive to the qualities of sound, and
to the conditions that affect this quality, such as the factor of distance.
As he points out: "A brass band playing pianissimo across the street
is a different-sounding thing from the same band, playing the same
piece forte, a block or so away." The volume of sound that the lis-
tener hears will be approximately the same, but the quality will be
different. The sound of distant church bells has fascinated Ives, as it
did Thoreau, who loved to listen to the Concord church bell over
Walden Pond. "A horn over a lake," writes Ives, "gives a quality of
sound and feeling that it is hard to produce in any other way." For
the understanding of Ives's music, it is valuable to retain this refer-
ence to "sound and feeling," for Ives is equally interested in both. Few
composers have ever attached more significance to the sheer quality of
sound in music, but this does not imply a doctrine of "sound for
sound's sake." Sound as a medium of expression is what Ives seeks.
It would be misleading to think of Ives as belonging to the "folk-
lore" school of composers. He stands as far from Dvorak as he does
from MacDowell. There is nothing to indicate, either in his music or
in his writings, that he has any particular interest in folklore as such;
in the sense, let us say, that John Powell and Vaughan Williams are
interested in folklore. Folk music is for him simply one source, among
many others, of material that can be utilized to create an expressive
musical language. It is also a means, when creatively utilized, of reno-
vating the idiom of art music and injecting into it new vigor. In his
search for vigor and vitality, Ives does not shun vulgarity. A circus
band is as valid for him as a church organ. A gospel hymn may be as
inspiring as a symphony. He does not limit himself. He does not ex-
clude. What is of value to him in the tradition of European art music
he takes— and fuses it with American folk and popular traditions. He
assimilates and transforms disparate elements; his art is heterogeneous,
and only his creative genius gives it unity.
Ives employs polytonality, multiple cross-rhythms of great com-
plexity, extreme dissonance, tone-clusters (chords made up of minor
* "Music and Its Future," New Music Quarterly.
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 66 1
and major seconds), quarter tones and other fractional intervals, wide
melodic skips, asymmetrical rhythmic patterns* off-beat rhythms em-
phasized by dissonance, jazz effects, and other devices and procedures
that were new when he used them though later incorporated into
much of modern music. He arrived at these procedures independently,
because he was not familiar with the "advanced" European music of
his time. Besides, as already stated, some of his innovations preceded
those of Schoenberg and Stravinsky in Europe. If it is true, as Stravin-
sky claims, that the composer's task is to "invent" music, then Ives
will go down in musical history as one of the most inventive com-
posers of modern times. But it is also necessary to observe that Ives,
when it suits his expressive needs, can write with the utmost sim-
plicity. Coming to his music so late, as we do, we sometimes have to
make more allowance for his simplicity than for his complexity.
The symphonies of Ives
The Second Symphony, for example, evokes, as Burrill Phillips re-
marks, "in gentle and mostly lyrical language, a world long vanished.
It is a world in which leisure and individuality and strength of mind
had not become boisterous and shrill and psychotic. . . . The har-
monic language throughout is of course dominated by the ipth cen-
tury, but it is in the style of the parlor organ and the 19th-century
park bandstand, not the European concert hall or opera house." This
"aesthetic of the commonplace" kept Ives from uttering pretentious
banalities, as did so many of his American contemporaries.
Ives composed the Second Symphony between 1897 and 1901, ex-
cept for part of the last movement, which dates from 1889. The com-
poser describes this part as "suggesting a Steve Foster tune, while over
it the old farmers fiddled a barn dance with all its jigs, gallops, and
reels." This symphony is in five movements: Andante moderate, Al-
legro, Adagio cantabile, Lento maestoso, Allegro molto vivace. It is
scored for large orchestra and takes about thirty-five minutes to per-
form. The juxtaposition of two slow movements is characteristic of
Ives; actually, because of the proportion and balance between these
two movements, there is no trace of formal incongruity. It is also
characteristic that Ives makes no marked attempt to exploit orchestral
color in this work: he is more interested in texture than in color. In
the first movement the scoring is almost entirely for strings, with only
66i | Fulfillment
brief passages for horns and bassoons; and near the end an embel-
lished restatement of the main theme is given to the oboe: *
quasi recitative
i
*T^I"*j|f«u air.
In the last movement Ives introduces snatches of familiar American
songs-"Camptown Races," "Turkey in the Straw,7* "Columbia, the
Gem of the Ocean"— a procedure that he has followed in other scores
also. Often he sets such interpolated songs in different keys, but here
he does not employ polytonality.
In the same year (1901) that he completed his Second Symphony,
Ives began to compose his Third Symphony, which he finished in
1904 except for some revision in 1911. The Third Symphony is con-
siderably shorter than the Second (it requires about seventeen min-
utes to perform) and is scored for a small orchestra: flute, oboe, clar-
inet in B flat, bassoon, two horns in F, trombone, strings, and bells
(ad libitum). It is in three movements: Andante maestoso, Allegro,
Largo. Concluding with a slow movement is typical of Ives. The bells
(or chimes) are heard in the last two measures of the work, "as dis-
tant church bells," marked with a decrescendo sign from ppp to ppppp
—an example of Ives's insistence on dynamic nuances that verge on the
impossible. The bells are heard as triads of B minor and G sharp
minor, floating above the chords of B flat major and F major in the
strings. This is the only touch of polytonality in the symphony.
The first and third movements are devotional in character, utilizing
material originally written for the Presbyterian church service, as well
as themes from familiar hymns. In the first movement there is a sec-
tion, marked Adagio cantabile, based on the hymn tune "O, What a
Friend We Have in Jesus." There is also a reminiscence of that old-
time revival hymn, "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood." Another
well-known hymn, "Just As I Am Without One Plea," figures promi-
nently as a main theme in the third movement, treated contrapuntally
with a subject derived from material in the first movement.
The contrasting middle movement, in binary form (A-B-A), has
4 Charles E. Ives, Second Symphony, used by permission of the copyright
owners. Copyright 1951 by Southern Music Publishing Company, Inc., New York.
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 663
for its principal theme an attractive and rhythmically flexible melody
of folklike flavor: 5
im
P
^
The middle section of this movement consists of one of those march-
ing rhythms that are perhaps associated with memories of the band
led by the composer's father.
Though its texture is fairly complex, and there are some rapidly
shifting rhythms in the last movement, the Third Symphony presents
no untoward difficulty for the listener. It is a work of quiet charm,
mostly meditative in mood, devoid of sensational effects, appealing by
its integrity and restrained eloquence, by its "substance" rather than
its "manner." It sums up in symphonic form the deep-rooted tradi-
tion of American hymnody, from which our major musical impulse
sprang for upwards of three centuries; and it stands, to borrow a
phrase of William Carlos Williams, as a classic "in the American
grain."
Ives's Fourth Symphony, composed between 1910 and 1916, has
not, at this writing, been performed in its entirety. The second move-
ment, as previously mentioned, was performed in New York in 1927.
Slonimsky describes it as "employing polymetrical notation, ad libitum
instrumental passages, counterpoint of two orchestral units, and the
freest use of dissonance within essentially simple tonality." This work
is therefore one of Ives's most "advanced" compositions and for that
reason may have to wait decades before receiving adequate recog-
nition.
From 1911 to 1916 Ives worked on a projected Universe Sym-
phony, intended as "a presentation and contemplation in tones, rather
than in music (as such), of the mysterious creation of the earth and
firmament, the evolution of all life in nature, in humanity to the di-
vine." He completed only the Prelude to this symphony, and left
part of one movement unfinished. The attempted distinction between
•Copyright 1947 by Arrow Music Press, Inc., New York. Used by permis-
sion or the copyright owners.
664 I Fulfillment
"tones" and "music" as such— perhaps akin to the distinction between
substance and manner?— indicates a tendency toward mysticism in
Ives, a tendency that has always been present, though counterbal-
anced by his sense of humor and his feeling for reality. In the Sec-
ond Piano Sonata, as we shall observe later, we find this tendency to
transcend the limitations of music and to attain through tones to the
realm of pure contemplation.
New England Impressionist
A good case could be made for considering Charles Ives as a re-
gional composer of New England. He represents both a grass-roots
regionalism, drawn from his rural environment, and an intellectual or
cultivated regionalism, identifying itself with the spiritual achieve-
ments of the finest New England minds at their best moment. This
latter aspect finds its fullest expression in the Second or Concord So-
nata for piano, evoking the choice spirits of Concord in its golden
decades: Emerson, the Alcotts, Hawthorne, Thoreau. Other works
deal with various aspects of the New England scene, in both its his-
torical and its natural settings.
The First Piano Sonata (composed mostly in 1902) was described
by the composer as "in a way a kind of impression, remembrance, and
reflection of the country life in some of the Connecticut villages in
the i88os and 18905." It evokes such home-town scenes as the school
baseball game, the farmers1 barn dance on a winter's night, the "quick-
steps" of the town band, a touch of ragtime, and echoes of old hymn
tunes. It is in five movements, of which two are scherzi.
The First Orchestral Set (1903-1914), subtitled Three Places in
Ne*w England and sometimes referred to as New England Symphony,
consists of three tone-pictures: "The Boston Common," "Putnam's
Camp," and "The Housatonic at Stockbridge." This last piece takes
its name from a poem by Robert Underwood Johnson, parts of which
are printed with the score. The last lines quoted are "Let me thy
companion be/By fall and shallow to the adventurous sea." In a letter
to Alfred Frankenstein, the composer's wife wrote as follows regard-
ing his intentions in this piece:
This grand old river is one of nature's masterpieces and has been
an inspiring friend to Mr. Ives from his boyhood days. The music
would reflect—at least he hopes it does-the moving river, its land-
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 665
scapes and elm trees, on its way to the adventurous sea. From the
beginning of the score until the sea is near, it was, in a way, in-
tended that the upper strings, muted, be heard rather subconsciously
as a kind of distant background of an autumn sky and mists seen
through the trees and over a river valley.6
Here we have sheer musical impressionism: a term that will define
Ives's prevailing mode as well as any and better than most. If one
must tag him, let it be with the label of uNew England Impressionist."
The Second Orchestral Set (1912-1915) contains three more New
England sketches or impressions: "Elegy," "The Rockstrewn Hills
Join in the People's Outdoor Meeting," and "From Hanover Square
North-at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voice of the People Again
Arose."
Another set of orchestral pieces, titled Holidays (1909-1913),
evokes scenes of national rather than regional scope; yet their vivid-
ness owes much perhaps to the observation of local color, which
makes the impressions concrete rather than generalized. The four holi-
days are "Washington's Birthday," "Decoration Day," "Fourth of
July," and "Thanksgiving."
In his setting of Psalm 67 for mixed chorus a cappella, Ives created
a modern expression of early New England psalmody, combining ele-
ments of the old fuguing tune with a bitonal texture (women's voices
in D major, men's voices in G minor).
Ives's chamber music includes several works that are evocative of
New England rural scenes. Among these is the Second Sonata for vio-
lin and piano (1903-1910), of which the three movements are titled,
respectively, "Autumn," "In the Barn," and "The Revival." The
Fourth Sonata for violin and piano (1914) bears the subtitle Chil-
dren's Day at the Camp Meeting; it uses the revival hymn "Shall We
Gather at the River," and conveys a lively impression of what hap-
pens when the children get out or hand.
Miscellaneous works and songs
While regionalism is unquestionably a fundamental trait of Ives's
creative character, it does not encompass the entire extent of his out-
put. Many of his compositions have no local connotations. Among
• Quoted by permission of Alfred Frankenstein.
666 | Fulfillment
these are the Tone Roads for orchestra (1911-1919); Lincoln— the
Great Commoner, a setting of Edwin Markham's poem, for chorus
and orchestra (1912); General William Booth Enters into Heaven,
after the poem by Vachel Lindsay, for chorus, or solo voice, with
brass band (1914); On the Antipodes, chorus with two pianos, organ,
and string orchestra (1915-1923); Aeschylus and Socrates, chorus
with string orchestra or quartet (1922); The Unanswered Question
("A Cosmic Landscape") for trumpet, four flutes, treble woodwind,
and strings (1908); Hallowe'en for string quartet and piano (1911);
Over the Pavements for clarinet, piccolo, bassoon, trumpet, piano,
drum, and trombones (1906-1913); Second String Quartet (1911-
1913); and numerous songs for voice and piano. A work that has
local connotations, but not connected with New England, is the im-
pressionistic tone poem for orchestra, Central Park in the Dark (1906).
The Second String Quartet has been aptly called a modern quod-
libet (from the Latin, "what you please"). A quodlibet is a piece of
music characterized by the quotation of well-known tunes (and texts,
in a vocal composition), combined in an incongruous manner, usu-
ally with humorous intent. Ives describes this work as "String Quartet
for four men— who converse, discuss, argue (politics), fight, shake
hands, shut-up, then walk up the mountainside to view the firma-
ment." Its three movements are titled, respectively, "Discussions," "Ar-
guments," and "The Call of the Mountains." It is in the first and sec-
ond movements that most of the quotation* occur. One hears snatches
of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," and of such Civil War tunes
as "Dixie" and "Marching Through Georgia." Later there are bits of
familiar hymn tunes, like "Nearer, My God, to Thee," and excerpts
from famous symphonies: Beethoven's Ninth, Brahms's Second, and
Tchaikovsky's Pathetique.
Throughout these two movements Ives has a lot of verbal as well
as musical fun. He gives the second violin the name of "Rollo" and
makes him the scapegoat for characteristic gibes at the genteel tradi-
tion (it is significant that Ives's most damning adjective is said to be
"nice"). He writes sweetly sentimental passages for Rollo, marking
them Andante emasculata and, in parentheses, "Pretty tune. Ladies."
When the music gets difficult, Ives writes in the margin, "Too hard
to play— so it just carit be good music, Rollo/1 Finally, he throws a
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 667
sop to Rollo with .the words "Join in again, Professor, all in the key
of C. You can do that nice and pretty." At the end of the second
movement, the argument winds up violently, and the performers are
directed to play con fistiswatto.
In the final movement the mood becomes serious. The men have
had enough of discussion and argument. In a spirit of cosmic contem-
plation they heed "The Call of the Mountain" and commune serenely
with Nature.
In 1922 Ives published A Book of 114 Songs in a privately printed
edition, with a preface saying, among other things, "I have not written
a book at all— I have merely cleaned house." Most of the songs were
composed in the period between 1895 anc* I9°l> ^ut the earliest dates
from 1888, and the latest from 1921. As indicated by the composer's
quip about cleaning house, there is no attempt at selectivity or orderly
arrangement in this volume. Anything goes. The songs range in mood
from sentimentality to satire, from bathos to burlesque, from nostalgia
to caricature. The best of them are art songs of marked originality
and expressivity, each of which creates and projects a definite mood
or emotion in a musical idiom that is unmistakably individual. In them
we find many anticipations of modern musical devices, such as poly-
tonality ("The Children's Hour," 1901), atonality produced by chords
of fourths and fifths ("The Cage," 1906), extreme dissonance (UA
Song to German Words," 1899), off-rhythms ("Walking Song,"
1902), and ragtime effects ("The Circus Band," 1894).
It is necessary to stress the immense variety of mood and style in
the songs of Ives. Tenderness prevails in such lyrics as "Two Little
Flowers" and "Cradle Song." In "Charlie Rutledge" we have a rough-
hewn Western ballad of rousing dramatic effect. "The Greatest Man,"
in which a boy gets to thinking about his "pa," is good, homespun
human stuff. And for a sustained poetic expression we may turn to a
song like "The White Gulls," with its typical Ivesian harmonic tex-
ture.
Later collections of Ives's songs made selected items from the 1922
volume more readily available; and smaller collections of new songs,
the latest composed in 1927, were also brought out by various publish-
ers. An album of recorded songs issued by the Concert Hall Society
contains a representative selection from 1894 to 1921. The songs of
668 | Fulfillment
Charles Ives are a vital and enduring contribution to art song .in
America.
The "Concord" Sonata
In the years 1909 and 1910 Ives composed the greater portion of
one of his most important works, the Second Pianoforte Sonata, sub-
titled Concord, Mass., 1840-1860. The last movement was completed
in 1915. The sonata consists of four movements: "Emerson," "Haw-
thorne," "The Alcotts," "Thoreau." John Kirkpatrick, the American
pianist who first overcame the tremendous difficulties of this work,
has called it "an immense four-movement impressionist symphony for
piano." It is indeed of symphonic proportions, and we are not sur-
prised to learn that the first movement is based on an uncompleted
score of a concerto for piano and orchestra, while the third move-
ment uses material taken from an orchestral overture titled Orchard
House. The first edition of the Concord Sonata was privately printed
in the fall of 1919 and appeared together with six Essays before a
Sonata written by the composer. The volume bore the following dedi-
cation: "These prefatory essays were written by the composer for
those who can't stand his music— and the music for those who can't
stand his essays; to those who can't stand either, the whole is respect-
fully dedicated." Summarizing the intent of the sonata, Ives wrote:
The whole is an attempt to present one person's impression of
the spirit of transcendentalism that is associated in the minds of
many with Concord, Mass., of over half a century ago. This is un-
dertaken in impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau, a
sketch of the Alcotts, and a Scherzo supposed to reflect the lighter
quality which is often found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne.
The first and last movements do not aim to give any programs of
the life or of any particular work of either Emerson or Thoreau but
rather composite pictures or impressions.7
In the foregoing passage, Ives appears as a self-proclaimed impres-
sionist.
T This and other quotations from Ives in the remainder of this chapter are
from Essays before a Sonata and from the composer's notes for the Second
Pianoforte Sonata (id ed.). Copyright 1947 by Arrow Music Press, Inc., New
York. Used by permission of the copyright owner.
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 669
Ives sees Emerson as "America's deepest explorer of the spiritual
immensities." From the prefatory essay on Emerson, the following ex-
cerpt may serve to establish the spiritual climate of the sonata's first
movement:
We see him standing on a summit, at the door of the infinite
where many men do not dare to climb, peering into the mysteries
of life, contemplating the eternities, hurling back whatever he dis-
covers there-now thunderbolts, for us to grasp, if we can, and
translate, now placing quietly, even tenderly, in our hands, things
that we may see without effort. . . .
In addition to the prefatory essays, Ives includes numerous notes
on the interpretation of the sonata, which reveal much about the com-
poser as well as the music. In his first note on the Emerson movement,
Ives applies his theory of "musical relativism," based on variable sub-
jective factors:
Throughout this movement, and to some extent in the others,
there are many passages not to be too evenly played and in which
the tempo is not precise or static; it varies usually with the mood
of the day, as well as that of Emerson, the other Concord bards,
and the player. A metronome cannot measure Emerson's mind and
over-soul, any more than the old Concord Steeple Bell could. . . .
The same essay or poem of Emerson may bring a slightly different
feeling when read at sunrise than when read at sunset.
While refusing to identify the music with any specific passages in
Emerson's writings, the composer does indicate that certain sections
of the music are associated with the poetry and others with the prose.
At one point the entrance of an abrupt dissonance, marked fortissimo,
is described as depicting "one of Emerson's sudden calls for a Tran-
scendental Journey." Three pages later the performer is instructed to
hit a certain formidable chord "in as strong and hard a way as possible,
almost as though the Mountains of the Universe were shouting, as all
of humanity rises to behold the 'Massive Eternities' and the 'Spiritual
Immensities.' " Here is this passage: 8
9 Quotations from the Second Pianoforte Sonata are used by permission of
the copyright owners. Arrow Music Press, Inc.
670 I Fulfillment
Sva • -
V V
After the dramatic climax of this call to a "Transcendental Journey,"
there follows a meditative section leading to a mystical ending in
which the upper notes in the treble clef (played by the left hand,
pianissimo) are supposed "to reflect the overtones of the soul of hu-
manity and as they rise away almost inaudibly to the Ultimate
Destiny."
Concerning the second movement, a Scherzo, the composer tells us
that the music makes no attempt to reflect the darker side of Haw-
thorne's genius, obsessed by the relentlessness of guilt:
This fundamental part of Hawthorne is not attempted in our
music . . . which is but an "extended fragment" trying to suggest
some of his wilder, fantastical adventures into the half-childlike,
half-fairylike phantasmal realms. It may have something to do with
the children's excitement on that "frosty Berkshire morning, and
the frost on the enchanted hall window" or something to do with
"Feathertop," the "Scarecrow," and his "Looking Glass" and the
little demons dancing around his pipe bowl; or something to do with
the old hymn tune that haunts the old church and sings only to
those in the churchyard, to protect them from secular noises, as
when the circus parade comes down Main Street; or something to
do with the concert at the Stamford camp meeting, or the "Slave's
Shuffle"; or something to do with the Concord he-nymph, or the
"Seven Vagabonds" or "Circe's Palace," or something else in the
wonderbook-not something that happens, but the way something
happens; or something personal, which tries to be "national" sud-
denly at twilight, and universal suddenly at midnight; or something
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 671
about the ghost of a man who never lived, or about something that
never will happen, or something else that is not.
Here we meet several of the favorite Ivesian themes: the old hymn
tune, the camp meeting, the circus parade. In treating the "phantas-
mal" aspects of Hawthorne's world, Ives avoids the merely quaint or
fanciful. When he evokes a circus parade it is a real one, with all its
gaudy vulgarity. His brass band blares in competition with the local
Drum Corps marching along Main Street, and at one point in the
score (the composer tells us), the Drum Corps "gets the best of the
Band— for a moment." Another realistic touch is when certain notes
"are hit hard by the left hand, as a trombone would sometimes call
the Old Cornet Band to march."
There are other pure Ivesian touches in this Scherzo. When the
old hymn tune is first heard it follows a furious arpeggio passage cul-
minating in a chord marked ffff . The composer directs that "The first
chord in the Hymn (ppp) is to be played before the ffff chord held
with the right foot pedal is stopped— as a Hymn is sometimes heard
over a distant hill just after a heavy storm." A little later he remarks:
"Here the Hymn for a moment is slightly held up by a Friendly Ghost
in the Church Yard."
The Scherzo is marked to be played "Very fast." Toward the end
there is the direction, "From here on, as fast as possible," then "Rush
it," and finally, "Faster if possible"! The final section Ives refers to
as the "call of the cloud breakers." The hymn tune appears, very softly
and slowly, as an echo, just before the final, up-rushing chord that
brings the Scherzo to a close.
In connection with the third movement of the Concord Sonata,
"The Alcotts," the composer has written about the spirit and aspect
of Concord village, and about Orchard House, the family home where
Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women and where her father philoso-
phized:
Concord village, itself, reminds one of that common virtue lying
at the height and root of the Concord divinities. As one walks down
the broad-arched street, passing the white house of Emerson— ascetic
guard of a former prophetic beauty—he comes presently beneath the
old elms overspreading the Alcott house. It seems to stand as a kind
of homely but beautiful witness of Concord's common virtue— it
seems to bear a consciousness that its past is living, that the "mosses
6j2 I Fulfillment
of the Old Manse" and the hickories of Walden are not far away.
Here is the home of the "Marches"— all pervaded with the trials and
happiness of the family and telling, in a simple way, the story of
"the richness of not having." . . . And there is the little old spinet-
piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth
played old Scotch airs and played at the Fifth Symphony. . . .
We dare not attempt to follow the philosophic raptures of Bron-
son Alcott. . . . And so we won't try to reconcile the music sketch
of the Alcotts with much besides the memory of that home under
the elms— the Scotch songs and the family hymns that were sung at
the end of each day— though there may be an attempt to catch some-
thing of that common sentiment ... a strength of hope that never
gives way to despair— a conviction in the power of the common soul
which, when all is said and done, may be as typical as any theme of
Concord and its transcendentalists.
"The Alcotts" is the shortest and the least difficult of the four
movements of the Concord Sonata. The composer has provided all
the clues that are needed for its understanding: the simplicity of the
old home, the family hymns, the Scotch songs, and the reminis-
cences of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Remember, however, that the
latter transcend the amateurish attempts of Beth Alcott at the spinet-
piano, and are transmuted into the image of the Concord bards "pound-
ing away at the immensities with a Beethoven-like sublimity."
For the final movement of his sonata, "Thoreau," the composer has
given us a more detailed "program" than for the other movements.
This section might have been subtitled "A Day at Walden." In his
synopsis Ives does not specifically correlate the verbal description with
the corresponding passages in the score. In giving the composer's
synopsis below, I have taken the liberty of inserting musical illustra-
tions that correspond to the scenes or moods described in the com-
mentary.
And if there shall be a program let it follow his [Thoreau's]
thought on an autumn day of Indian summer at Walden— a shadow
of a thought at first, colored by the mist and haze over the pond:
Low anchored cloud,
Fountain head and
Source of rivers . . .
Dew cloth, dream drapery-
Drifting meadow of die air ...
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT
673
PPP
but this is momentary; the beauty of the day moves him to a certain
restlessness— to aspirations more specific—an eagerness for outward
action, but through it all he is conscious that it is not in keeping with
the mood for this "Day." As the mists rise, there comes a clearer
thought more traditional than the first, a meditation more calm.9
As he stands on the side of the pleasant hill of pines and hickories in
front of his cabin, he is still disturbed by a restlessness and goes
down the white-pebbled and sandy eastern shore, but it seems not
to lead him where the thought suggests— he climbs along the "bolder
northern" and "western shore, with deep bays indented," and now
along the railroad track, "where the Aeolian harp plays." But his
eagerness throws him into the lithe, springy step of the specie hunter
9 Copyright 1947 by Arrow Music Press, Inc. Used by permission of the copy-
right owner.
674 I Fulfillment
—the naturalist— he is still aware of a restlessness; with these faster
steps his rhythm is of a shorter span— it is still not the tempo of
Nature, it does not bear the mood that the genius of the day calls
for, it is too specific, its nature is too external, the introspection too
buoyant, and he knows now that he must let Nature flow through
him and slowly; he releases his more personal desires to her broader
rhythm, conscious that this blends more and more with the harmony
of her solitude; it tells him that his search for freedom on that day,
at least, lies in his submission to her, for Nature is as relentless as
she is benignant. He remains in this mood and while outwardly still,
he seems to move with the slow, almost monotonous swaying beat of
this autumnal day.10
He is more contented with a "homely burden," and is more assured
of "the broad margin of his life; he sits in his sunny doorway . . .
rapt in re very . . . amidst goldenrod, sandcherry, and sumach . . .
in undisturbed solitude." At times the more definite personal striv-
ings for the ideal freedom, the former more active speculations come
over him, as if he would trace a certain intensity even in his sub-
mission. "He grew in those seasons like corn in the night and they
were better than any works of the hands. They were not time sub-
tracted from his life but so much over and above the usual allow-
10 Copyright 1947 by Arrow Music Press, Inc. Used by permission.
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT
ance." He realized "what the Orientals meant by contemplation and
forsaking of works." . . . "The evening train has gone by," and
"all the restless world with it. The fishes in the pond no longer
feel its rumbling and he is more alone than ever. . . ." His medita-
tions are interrupted only by the faint sound of the Concord bell—
'tis prayer-meeting night in the village— "a melody, as it were, im-
ported into the wilderness. ... At a distance over the woods the
sound acquires a certain vibratory hum as if the pine needles in the
horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. ... A vibra-
tion of the universal lyre." . . . Part of the echo may be "The voice
of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by the wood
nymph." It is darker, the poet's flute is heard out over the pond and
Walden hears the swan song of that "Day" and faintly echoes.11
Flute
675
"Copyright 1947 by Arrow Music Press, Inc. Used by permission.
676 | Fulfillment
[In these final pages, Ives has written out a part for the flute; but if
no flute is used, he directs that the piano shall play the melody given
in the small notes. He adds, however, that "Thoreau much prefers to
hear the flute over Walden."]
Is it a transcendental tune of Concord? Tis an evening when the
"whole body is one sense." . . . and before ending his day he looks
out over the clear, crystalline water of the pond and catches a
glimpse of the shadow-thought he saw in the morning's mist and
haze—he knows that by his final submission, he possesses the "Free-
dom of the Night." He goes up the "pleasant hillside of pines, hick-
ories," and moonlight, to his cabin, "with a strange liberty in Na-
ture, a pan of herself." ia
8va
Throughout this movement there are no key signatures, no time
signatures, and no bar lines. But this does not mean that Ives sub-
scribes to a principle of musical "anarchy," or that his musical dis-
course is merely "rhapsodic," lacking in formal cohesion. Obviously,
he does not adhere to conventional form, but that is only one kind of
form. In this connection it is well to remember that Ives called this
work a "sonata" only because he could not think of a better name for
it. He did not propose to write a composition in conventional sonata
form. The Concord Sonata has organic form, based on thematic unity,
structural parallelism, motival development, repetition, and variation.
It also has psychological form: it follows the curves of emotion and
feeling, rising to climaxes and falling to quieter moods, according to
a controlled design.
In the "Emerson" and "Hawthorne" movements, Ives occasionally
11 Copyright 1947 by Arrow Music Press, Inc. Used by permission.
COMPOSER FROM CONNECTICUT 677
uses time signatures, and therefore bar lines. In uThe Alcotts" he uses
a key signature in some sections, as well as time signatures. Ives is not
a doctrinaire iconoclast. His object is musical expression. He will use
conventional devices and commonplace materials when they suit his
expressive purpose, and he will discard them when they hamper that
purpose. Whatever material he employs, and whatever devices he
uses, whether conventional or unconventional, we may be certain that
a genuinely creative mind is at work. In the "Hawthorne" movement
of the Concord Sonata, certain clusters of notes have to be played by
using a strip of board about fifteen inches long, "heavy enough to
press the keys down without striking." This is the effect that Ives
felt he needed to suggest Hawthorne's "Celestial Railroad," and he
adopted the only practical means to obtain that effect. Such a device
is the result not of modernistic eccentricity but of Yankee ingenuity.
Past and present in the music of Ives
When Henry Bellamann wrote that "Ives is wholly of the bone
and flesh of Colonial America" he overstated his case. Ives, one of the
most independent artists who ever lived, cannot be circumscribed by
colonialism. It is true— and this is the important thing— that Ives does
have his spiritual roots deep in America's past, including all that was
most "uncolonial," all that was most self-sufficient and new-seeking,
in the period preceding our nationhood. But he is equally akin to the
pioneer, self-made composers and singing-school masters of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; and one pictures him, in his
self-reliance, his enthusiasm, his belief in the strength of Nature, and
his philosophizing on the powers and properties of music, as a mod-
ern Billings. He belongs also to the great age of New England culture,
blood brother to the Concord bards, achieving in music, more than
half a century later, what they achieved in literature and thought. He
belongs, finally, to the whole tradition of New England folkways,
which he absorbed and transmuted in his music.
There is much truth in Burrill Phillips's statement that Ives "might
be fairly called a historian-composer," in the sense that he evokes a
past that has presumably vanished. But let us recall what Ives said of
Orchard House in Concord, that "it seems to bear a consciousness that
its past is living" The same may be said of Ives's music: that in it
the past is living. And it lives in his music because it lived for him
678 | Fulfillment
and in him. Ives did not deliberately seek to recreate the past or to be
a musical historian. He embraced the past, as well as the present, sim-
ply by identifying himself completely with the traditional culture of
his environment. And the deeper he immersed himself in this tradi-
tion, the more boldly he was able to reach out toward the future.
The paradox is similar to that expressed by Van Wyck Brooks in The
Flowering of New England: "Ironically enough, it was Boston and
Cambridge that grew to be provincial, while the local and even paro-
chial Concord mind, which had always been universal, proved to be
also national." Ives's outlook was local but never provincial. Like the
ever-widening circles that appear when a stone is thrown into a pool
of water, his music proceeds from the local to the regional, thence to
the national, and finally to the universal.
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Ihe bibliographies for the individual chapters serve largely as a list
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The general bibliography that follows those for specific chapters
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Slonimsky, Nicolas. Music Since 1900. (24) means that the com-
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 689
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690 I Bibliography
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PP- "5-3*7-
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For thirteen, The Ethiopian business
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For sixteen, Europe versus America
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For nineteen, Nationalism and folklore
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696 I Bibliography
For twenty, Indian tribal music
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For twenty-one, The rise of ragtime.
Blesh, Rudi, and Harriet Janis. They All Played Ragtime: The True Story
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698 I Bibliography
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See also the bibliography for Chapter 23.
For twenty-two, Singin' the blues
Ferguson, Otis. "The Man with the Blues in his Heart." New Republic,
XCI (July 14, 1937), 277-279. About Jack Teagarden.
Gombosi, Otto. "The Pedigree of the Blues." Volume of Proceedings of
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— * — . Father of the Blues, An Autobiography. New York: The Macmillan
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Lee, George W. Beale Street, Where the Blues Began. New York: Robert
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For twenty-three, The growth of jazz
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Blesh, Rudi. Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz. New York: Alfred A.
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• Our New Music. (24)
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yoo | Bibliography
For twenty-four, The Americanists
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For twenty-five, The eclectics
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For twenty-six, The traditionalists
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For twenty-seven, The experimentalists
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For twenty-eight, Twelve-tone composers
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For twenty-nine, The orbit of Broadway
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For thirty, Toward an American opera
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For thirty-one, Composer from Connecticut
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704 | Bibliography
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2 of Famous Composers and Their Works. Boston: J. B. Millet & Co.,
1901.
Reis, Claire. Composers in America; Biographical Sketches of Contempo-
rary Composers 'with a Record of Their Works. Rev. and enlarged
edition. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947. (Originally pub-
lished in 1938.)
Ritter, Frederic Louis. Music in America. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1883.
Rosenfeld, Paul. An Hour 'with American Music. Philadelphia: J. B. Lip-
pincott Company, 1929.
Sonneck, Oscar G. Miscellaneous Studies in the History of Music. New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1921. Includes* "The History of
Music in America."
. Suum Cuique; Essays in Music. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1916.
Includes "A Survey of Music in America."
Slonimsky, Nicolas. Music Since 1900 (3d edM revised and enlarged). New
York: Coleman-Ross Co., Inc., 1949. (First published in 1937.)
Spaeth, Sigmund. A History of Popular Music in America. New York:
Random House, 1948.
Stearns, Harold E. (ed.). Civilization in the United States. New York,
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., 1922. Includes a chapter on
music by Deems Taylor.
Sward, Keith. "Jewish Musicality in America." Journal of Applied Psy-
chology, XVII, 6 (Dec. 1933)* 675-712.
The ASCAP Biographical Dictionary of Composers, Authors and Pub-
lishers, ed. by Daniel I. McNamara (id ed.). New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, 1952.
The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, ed. by Oscar
Thompson (6th ed.). Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. New York:
Dodd, Mead & Company, 1952.
The Year in American Music, 1946-1941, ed. by Julius Bloom. New York:
Allen, Towne & Heath, Inc., 1947. Also published in 1948, edited by
David Ewen.
Upton, William Treat. Art-song in America; A Study in the Development
of American Music. Boston and New York: Oliver Ditson Company,
1930.
. A Supplement to Art-song in America, 1930-1938. Boston: Oliver
Ditson Company; Philadelphia, Theodore Presser Company, distribu-
tors, 1018.
A note on recordings
Jtvecordings of works by American composers have increased in
number to a surprising extent during the last few years. This has been
due in part to the stimulus given to all types of recording by the ad-
vent of the microgroove or long-playing disk, but also in large part
to an awakened interest in the production of our contemporary com-
posers, as well as to a growing curiosity about our musical past. As
a result there is available a large body of recorded American music,
from the psalmody of the Puritans and the compositions of the first
musical emigrants to the most recent works of the older and younger
composers of today.
In addition to the goodly percentage of American music being is-
sued by both the larger and the smaller commercial recording com-
panies, there are various special recording enterprises, such as those
of the Louisville (Kentucky) Symphony Orchestra and the "Univer-
sity Recordings" of the University of Oklahoma, which, while not
dedicated exclusively to American music, yet give a very large share
of their attention to it. An organization that does devote itself ex-
clusively to the recording and distribution of American music is the
American Recording Society, which was established through a grant
from the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University. The ARS
recordings are distributed solely on a subscription basis.
In the field of folk music, the most comprehensive single source is
the Archive of American Folk Song in the Library of Congress, which,
drawing on its vast and always increasing collection, periodically is-
sues record albums copiously annotated by experts, presenting folk
music of the United States in all its diversity. Catalogues of these re-
cordings may be obtained by writing to the Recording Laboratory,
Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington 25, D.C. Another
valuable source of recordings of American folk music, available
708 | A note on recordings
through commercial outlets, is the "Ethnic Folkways Library" issued
by Folkways Records of New York City, which has also issued "Folk-
ways Americana," "Anthology of American Folk Music," and "An-
thology of Jazz" (historical survey of jazz in eleven volumes with
three additional "Footnotes").
Since many of the older recordings of American music are not
readily obtainable, and since new recordings are appearing continually,
no attempt will be made here to compile a comprehensive record list,
which would soon become obsolete. The Long Player, a periodical
catalogue published by Long Player Publications of New York and
distributed through record dealers, may be consulted for current re-
cordings of American music. We will list here the releases of the
American Recording Society, because it is the only label devoted ex-
clusively to American music, and because its recordings are not avail-
able through dealers and record stores. Further information may be
obtained by writing to the American Recording Society, 100 Avenue
of the Americas, New York 1 3, N.Y.
ARS-i Walter Piston, Symphony No. 2
ARS-i Henry Cowell, Symphony No. 5
ARS-3 Edward MacDowell, Indian Suite
ARS-4 Randall Thompson, Symphony No. 2
ARS-5 Douglas Moore, Symphony in A major
ARS-6 Howard Hanson, Symphony No. 4
ARS-7 Howard Swanson, Short Symphony
David Diamond, Rounds for String Orchestra
ARS-8 Virgil Thomson, The River
Otto Luening, Two Symphonic Interludes and Prelude on a
Hymn Tune (by William Billings)
ARS-p Alexei Haieff, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
Robert Ward, Symphony No. i
ARS-io Howard Swanson, Seven Songs
Roger Goeb, Prairie Songs for Woodwind Quintet
Ben Weber, Conceit Aria after Solomon
ARS-i i Roger Sessions, The Black Maskers
ARS-i 2 Jerome Moross, Frankie & Johnny
Aaron Copland, Music for the Theatre
ARS-I4 Leo Sowerby, Prairie (A Poem for Orchestra) and From the
Northland
ARS-i 5 Stephen C Foster, Village Festival and Old Folks Quadrille
Minstrel Songs of the Nineteenth Century
ARS-i 8 William Bergsma, String Quartet No. 2
Arthur Shepherd, Triptych for Soprano and String Quartet
A NOTE ON RECORDINGS
ARS-io
709
John Powell, Rhapsodic Ntgre
Daniel Gregory Mason, Chanticleer Overture
ARS-ii Bernard Wagenaar, Symphony No. 4
ARS-22 Charles T. GrifTes, Poem for Flute and Orchestra
Arthur Foote, Suite for String Orchestra
ARS-23 Deems Taylor, The Portrait of a Lady (Rhapsody for strings,
winds, and piano)
Paul Creston, Partita for Solo Flute and Violin with String
Orchestra
ARS-24 Ernest Bloch, Trois Poemes Juifs
Victor Herbert, Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra
ARS-25 Elliott Carter, Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (1948) and
Sonata for Piano (1945-1946).
ARS-26 Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring
Samuel Barber, Overture to The School for Scandal and Music
for a Scene from Shelley
ARS-27 Charles Ives, Three Places in New England
Robert McBride, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
ARS-iS Roy Harris, Symphony No. 3
William Schuman, American Festival Overture
ARS-29 Frederick S. Converse, The Mystic Trumpeter
George W. Chadwick, Tarn O'Shanter (Symphonic Ballad)
ARS-3O Bernard Rogers, Leaves From Pinocchio
Robert Sanders, Saturday Night
Burnet Tuthill, Come Seven (Rhapsody for Orchestra)
ARS-3I Ray Green, Sunday Sing Symphony
Peter Mennin, Concertato for Orchestra
Norman Dello Joio, Epigraph
ARS-32 Early American Psalmody: The Bay Psalm Book (Sung by Mar-
garet Dodd Singers)
Mission Music m California: Music of the Southwest (Sung by
Coro Hispanico de Mallorca)
ARS-33 American Colonial Instrumental Music: John Christopher Mol-
ler, Quartet in E Flat; Joseph Gehot, Quartet in D major; John
Frederick Peter, Quintet No. i in D major and Quintet No. 6
in E Flat major.
ARS-36 Quincy Porter, Concerto for Viola and Orchestra
Norman Dello Joio, Serenade
ARS-37 John Alden Carpenter, Skyscrapers (Suite from the Ballet)
Herbert Elwell, The Happy Hypocrite
ARS-38 Henry Brant, Symphony No. i
Burrill Phillips, Selections From McGuffey's Readers
ARS-33 5 Horatio W. Parker, Hora Novissima
Ernst Bacon, Ford's Theatre
Index
Abel, Carl Friedrich, 60
Abel, F. L., 151
Abel, Ludwig, 375
Abstract composition, 573-575, 595, 612
Adams, George Whitefield, 151
Adams, John, 61, 99, 540, 644, 645
A(Je, George, 624
Adgate, Andrew, 128, 191
Adonais (Chadwick), 370
Adventures in a Perambulator (Carpen-
ter), 511
Aeolian Hall, New York, 491
African music, 66, 68, 69, 71-76, 254-
256, 469, 523, 543
music of West Africa, 71-76, 255-256
rhythm in, 73-75, 255-257
singing, characteristics of, 71-72, 255
call-and-response pattern in, 33, 71,
233» 249. 255
harmony in, 72, 75, 255
intervals, 72
syncretism in, 75, 256
(See also Afro-American music)
Afro-American Folksongs (Krehbiel),
248, 3i3» 3'5
Afro-American music, 65-69, 76-83,
452-458
hymns, 64, 80-8 1
influence of, 75-78, 257-258, 437-438,
457-458
instruments, 67, 76, 469-470
origins of, 254-256
themes from, 388-391, 398, 401, 512
work songs, 245-246, 435-436
(See also Blues; Creole songs and
dances; Jazz; Negro spirituals;
Ragtime; Voodoo ceremonies in
New Orleans)
Agee, James, 555
"Ah, Lovely Appearance of Death/'
Aiken, Jesse B., 200, 201
Ainsworth, Henry, 16-18
Ainsworth Psalter, 17-18, 21, 39, 561
Aitken, John, 62
Alabados, 62
AlabanzaSy 62
Alcott, Bronson, 672
Alcott, Louisa May, 671
Alcott family, 664, 668, 671, 672, 677
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" (Berlin),
451, 625
Allegro (Rodgers), 631-632
Alleluia (Thompson), 539
Allen, William Francis, 238-239, 243,
M7
Allison, Richard, 12, 13, 20
Alsted, Johann Heinrich, 13-14
Altschuler, Modest, 503
Amahl and the Night Visitors
(Menotti), 650
"Amazing Grace," 202, 224
Amelia Goes to the Ball (Menotti),
647, 648
America (Bloch), 513-515
"America" (Law), 129
American Academy in Rome, 540, 551,
557. 559. 5<*3
American Composers' Concerts, 549
American Festival Overture (Schu-
man), 534-535
American Harmony (Holden), 135
American Indian music, 403-432
characteristics of, 406-409
in MacDowell's Indian Suite, 363
modern, 430-432
religious significance of, 227, 421, 424
studies of, 404-406, 400-411, 414, 416
American Indians, folklore of, 121, 404,
417-430
and German missionaries, 55, 60
Jefferson on, 66
711
712 I Index
American Indians, music inspired by,
3<*3, 385~3W. 388-390. 399-4°°. 43*.
514. 517. 5*9. 5*3
in New England, 5, 6, 9, 12
and Spanish missionaries, 62
American minstrelsy (see Minstrelsy)
American Music Center, New York,
542
American m Paris, An (Gershwin),
489, 492
American Prix de Rome (see Rome
Prize)
American Tragedy, An (Dreiser), 652
Americana (Thompson), 539
Americanesque (Gilbert), 398
Ammons, Albert, 467
Amores (Cage), 593
Anderson, Arthur Olaf, 395
Anderson, Marian, 541
Anderson, Maxwell, 647
Andrews, Edward D., 500
Andreyev, Leonid, 528, 529
Angels (Ruggles), 577
Annie Get Your Gun (Berlin), 626
Antes, John, 60
Antheil, George, 488, 571-575. 583
Anthony, Susan B., 644, 645
Aphrodite (Chadwick), 370
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 610
Appalachian Spring (Copland), 220,
498-501
Apthorp, W. F., 350
Arcadian Symphony (Bristow), 329
Archers, The (Carr), 119
Armenian music, 545-546
Armonica (see Harmonica)
Armstrong, Louis, 465, 475, 477, 480-
481, 483, 485, 487
Arne, Thomas A., 85, 100, 155
Arnold, Samuel, 114
Art of Noises (see Futurist Manifesto)
As Thousands Cheer (Berlin), 625-626
Asbury, Francis, 207
Asbury, Henry, 222
Asbury, Herbert, 306
Asbury, Samuel, 223-224
At a Georgia Camp Meeting (Mills),
45<>
Atkinson, Brooks, 629, 647
Atonality, 509, 611, 667
(See also Twelve-tone technique)
Auber, Daniel Fra^ois, 331
Austin, Lovie, 465
Autos sacramentales, 62
Ayres, Frederic, 395
Babbitt, Milton, 612, 613
"Babylon is Falling" (Work), 180
Bach, C P. En 59, 112, 116, 117
Bach, Johann Christian, 59, m, 116
Bach, Johann Christian Friedrich, 60
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 109, 113, 287,
359. 3<*5-3°A 377. 5°*. 547, 577, 653
Bacon, Ernst, 512, 643
Baker, Benjamin Franklin, 179
Baker, John G, 176
Baker, Theodore, 363, 404, 409-410, 413
Baker family, 176
Balakirev, Mily A., 387
Balinese music, 582, 583
Ballad operas, 114, 118, 204
Ballads, traditional, 14-15, 95, 248, 261,
298, 469
Ballanta-Taylor, Nicholas, 74
Ballet Caravan, 499
Ballet mecanique (Antheil), 571, 572-
574
Ballet music, 337, 404, 499, 510-511, 532-
533, 535, 540, 543, 545, 559, 5°A
568, 630
Ballet Russe, 500, 513
Baline, Izzy (see Berlin, Irving)
Baltimore, 52, 116-118, 343
Balzac, Honore" de, 123
Bamboula, La (Gottschalk), 306, 310-
i", 314-315
Bamboula (dance), 307-309, 308
Bananier, Le (Gottschalk), 315
Bands in New Orleans, 469-471
Banjar (see Banjo)
Banjo, The (Gottschalk), 315
Banjo, 66-68, 259-260, 262-263, 307, 313,
433, 439-44°, 457
Baptists, 47, 53, 57, 79, 104, xu, 236,
238, 251
Barber, Samuel, 549, 562-564
Barlow, Joel, 42
Barnum, Phineas Taylor, 150, 316, 325,
3*7, 51°
Barry, Philip, 642
Bartlett, M. L., 308
Bart6k, Bela, 389, 543, 547, 553
Basic, William ("Count"), 486
"Basin Street Blues," 483
"Battle Cry of Freedom, The" (Root),
1 80, 249, 514
"Battle Hymn of the Republic,"
(Howe), 231
Battle of Trenton (Hewitt), 120
Baudelaire, Charles, 373
Bauer, Marion, 523, 612
Baum, Frank, 623
INDEX
Bay Psalm Book, 14, 19-21
Bayley, Daniel, 127
"Be Glad, Then, America" (Billings),
'44* 535
Beach, Mrs. H. H. A., 378
Beach, John P., 395
"Beale Street Blues," 483
"Beautiful Dreamer, Wake unto Me"
(Foster), 296
Bechet, Sidney, 472, 476
Becker, John J., 578-580
Beecher, Lyman, 152, 156, 174
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 92, 152, 155,
287, 327, 332, 333, 347, 366, 502, 672
"Before Jehovah's Awful Throne," 131,
155
Beggar's Opera, The, 114, 646
"Begin the Beguine" (Porter), 630
Begum, The (De Koven), 619
Beiderbecke, Leon ("Bix"), 482
Beissel, Conrad, 57-58
Bekker, Paul, 645
Belcher, Supply, 124, 125, 132-134, 324
Bellamann, Henry, 655, 677
Belle of New York (Kerker), 624
Bellinger, Lucius C, 217, 222, 237
Bellini, Charles, 86
Bellini, Vincenzo, 167, 331-332, 338
Benavides, Fray Alonso de, 62
Benet, Stephen Vincent, 510, 538
Benham, Asahel, 124
Bennett, Robert Russell, 633
Benson, Louis, 52, 208
Bentley, John, 113
Bentlev, William, 124, 140, 144-145
Berg, Alban, 524, 543, 561, 577, 597, 610,
613
Violin Concerto, 603
Berger, Arthur V., 497, 568
Bergsma, William, 557-558
Berkenhead, John, 120
Berkshire Music Center, 557
Berlin, Irving, 451, 462, 625-626
Berlioz, Hector, 315, 322, 511
Bernstein, Leonard, 544, 651, 657
Bethlehem, Pa., 58-60
(See also Moravians)
Bigard, Barney, 480
Biggers, Earl Derr, 622
Billings, William, 124, 130, 135, 130-145,
150, 155, 183, 188, 191, 324, 561,
653, 677
on composing, 140
fuguing tunes, 141-142
New England Psalm Singer, 140-143
Thoughts on Music, 141
713
Billy the Kid (Copland), 499
Bimboni, Alberto, 400
Birch, Raymond (see Johnson,
Charles L.)
Bizet, Georges, 385, 633
Black, Brown and Beige (Ellington),
484
Black Maskers (Sessions), 528-530
Blackface minstrelsy (see Minstrelsy)
Blake, Eubie, 446
Blake, William, 394, 613
Blennerhassett (Giannini), 643
Blesh, Rudi, 444, 464, 466, 487
Blitzstein, Marc, 646-647
Bloch, Ernest, 513, 525, 538, 540, 542,
552, 5:62, 565, 572
Blossom Time (Romberg), 624, 625
Blue laws, 9
Blues, 72, 78, 82, 433, 435, 438, 449, 452-
467, 469, 471, 478, 480, 483, 492,
495, 566
antiphonal pattern in, 458, 465, 478
"blue" notes, 434, 456-458
"break" in, 455, 478
folk, 455-456, 458, 461, 467
scale, 72, 456-457
singers of, 462-467
structure of, 454-458
"tangana" rhythm in, 461
Boccherini, Luigi, 85
Boehler, Peter, 44-45
Bohm, Carl, 450
Bolden, Charles ("Buddy"), 471-472
Bolm, Adolph, 519
Bones in minstrel shows, 259-260, 267
Bonja (see Banjo)
"Bonja Song," 262
Bonner, Amy, 523
Boogiewoogie, 466-467, 400, 583
(See also Blues)
Borneman, Ernest, 444
Borodin, Alexander, 387
Boston, 19, 20, 39, 86
"Classicist" composers of, 364-382
early musical life in, 9, 13, 19-20, 27,
34, 39, 121-122, 138-142
Boston Academy of Music, 153, 155,
159, 160, 162, 179
"Boston Common" (Ives), 664
Boston "Pops" Concerts, 566
Boston Symphony Orchestra, 351, 374,
398, 493. 495» 505-5<>8» 605
Boston University, 556
Bostonians, The, 619-620
Botsford, George, 445
714 I Index
Boulanger, Nadia, influence of, 565
pupils of, 494, 503, 524, 531, 540-541*
544* 55*. 554* 56l» 5*7. 5*9. W
Boulez, Pierre, 58971.
Bourgeois, Louis, 17
Bower, Frank, 259
"Bowery Gals," 281
Bowles, Paul, 543
Bradbury, William B., 162, 179
Bradford, William, n
Bradstreet, Anne, 8
Braham, Dave, 439
Brahms, Johannes, 334, 347, 365~367»
375» 5*5» 597» 659
Brandeis University, 647
Branscombe, Gena, 395
Brant, Henry D., 582-584
Brattle, Thomas, 4, 34
Brecht, Bertold, 529
Brewster, William, 12, 13
Briggs, Pete, 480-481
Bristow, George Frederick, 326-330,
634
Broady, Thomas E., 446
Brockway, Howard A., 583
Brooks, Van Wyck, 678
Brown, Bartholomew, 1 24
Brown, William, 113
Brown University, 129
Browne, Robert, 8
Bruckner, Anton, 597
Brunies, George, 481
Bruno, Anthony, 612
Bryan, Samuel J., 237
Bryant, Dan, 260, 268
Bryant, William Cullen, 171, 236
Bryant's Minstrels, 268, 272-273, 275
Buck, Dudley, 334-335. 338, 351
"Buffalo Gals," 171, 247
Buitrago, Juan, 348
Bull, Amos, 124
Bull, Ole, 181-182
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 331
Bunyan, John, 7
Bremner, James, 100, 101
Burke, Edmund, 107
Burleigh, Henry Thacker, 315, 387-300
Burlin, Natalie Curtis, 253, 595, 403,
405, 424
Burns, Barney, 263
Burton, Frederick R., 405, 410-412, 414
Busch, Carl, 400
Busoni, Ferruccio, 517, 586, 508, 606
Butler, Nicholas Murray, 352
Butler, Pierce, 232
Butts, Thomas, 49
Byles, Mather, 42, 141
Byron, George Gordon, 349, 602, 610
Cable, George W., 304, 306-3 io» 312-
314, 398
Cadman, Charles Wakefield, 399-400
Cady, C. M., 179
Cage, John, 571, 574, 589/1., 593-596
prepared piano, compositions for,
57 x. 593» 594
Cakewalk, 78, 83, 310, 311, 433, 438
origin of, 439
Caldwell, William, 194, 197
Calhoun Industrial School, 253
California missions, 62
Calinda (dance), 312-314
Camidge, Matthew, 36, 38
Camp-meeting hymns, 40, 138, 106, 199,
208, 213-214, 219, 222, 507, 658
(See also Negro spirituals)
Camp meetings, 207, 200-211, 237, 251,
255, 659, 665
Campos, Ruben M., 499
"Camptown Races" (Foster), 248, 292,
295, 298, 662
Canterbury Pilgrims (De Koven), 619
Capron, Henry, 113
"Careless Love," 464, 465
Caribbean music, 302-309
Carmen (Bizet-Bennett), 633
Carmina Sacra (Mason), 150, 160
Carnegie Hall, 488, 492, 572, 573
Carousel (Rodgers), 631-632
Carpenter, John Alden, 105, 338, 488,
510-511
Carr, Bertjamin, 118-120
Carr, Joseph, 118
Carr, Thomas, 118
Carrell, James P., 192-193, 106
Carreno, Teresa, 350
Carter, Benny, 484
Carter, Elliott, 565, 567-568
Carter, Robert, 85, 92, 127
Caryll, Ivan, 622
"Casey at the Bat," 652
Castle, Irene and Vernon, 625
Catholic Church music, 61-63
Catlin, George, 390, 404
Cavaliers, 5, n
Cavendish, Michael, 20
Cennick, John, 50, 51, 208, 214
Central Park in the Dark (Ives), 666
Chabrier, Emmanuel, 409
Chadwick, George Wn 351, 366, 368-
37*» 375-37<*. 379. 3*°* 5", 549. *«9
535
INDEX
Charleston, S.C, 45, 84, 86, 106-109,
'49, 6*37
St. Cecilia Society, 84, 107-109
Charleston (dance), 83, 460
Charlestown, S.C (see Charleston)
Charpentier, Gustave, 307
Chauncey, Nathaniel, 22, 24, 25, 35, 38
Chauvin, Louis, 442, 444
Cheney, Amy Marcy (see Beach, Mrs.
H. H. A.)
Chennevtere-Rudyard (see Rudhyar,
Dane)
Cherubini, Luigi, 155, 159
"Chester" (Billings), 144,
Chestnut Street Theatre (see New
Theatre)
"Chevy Chase," 15, 95
Chicago Musical College, 445
Chicago Opera Company, 520
Chicago-Philadelphia Opera Company,
621
Chicago Rhythm Kings, 482, 485
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 508
Chicago World's Fair, 627
Children's Day at the Camp Meeting
(Ives), 665
Chippewa Indians, tribal music of, 406-
407, 409, 4H-4I2> 4I4~4I5» 5i9
Chopin, Frederic, 316, 333, 347, 387, 502
Christensen, Axel, 446
Christian Harmony (Ingalls), 137-139,
202
Christian Harmony (Walker), 201
Christian Minstrel (Aiken), 200, 201
Christy, E. P., 180, 260, 267-268, 284,
285, 292-294
Christy, George, 268
Christy Minstrels, 268, 281, 292
Chromatic integration, 562, 614-616
(See also Twelve-tone technique)
Church, Arthur L., 57
Circuit riding, 197, 207, 209, 223
Civil War, 257, 274, 276, 318-319, 342,
469, 508, 509, 514
songs, 178, 180, 298, 451, 408, 507
"dare de Kitchen," 261, 279
Clark, John J. ("Juba"), 269
Clarke, H. AM 339
day, Henry, 167, 177
Cleopatra's Night (Hadley), 520, 635
Cleveland Institute of Music, 540, 541,
553* 550*, 5&*
Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, 522,
628
Clifton, William, 205, 279
715
Clormdy, the Origin of the Cakewalk
(Cook), 622
"Coal Black Rose," 171, 261, 289
Coates, Albert, 492
Cocteau, Jean, 531, 565
Cohan, George M., 623
Cole, F. L. Gwinner, 340
Cole, John, 280
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 518
Collier, Constance, 625
Collins, Lee, 465
Col man, Benjamin, 42
Columbia Broadcasting System, 636
"Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,"
662, 666
Columbia University, 346-347, 351-353,
355» 38o» 557> 630, 644, 648
bicentennial celebration, 584
Opera Workshop, 643
"Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,'*
1 88, 214
"Come Where My Love Lies Dream-
ing" (Foster), 296, 298
Comedy Overture on Negro Themes
(Gilbert), 398
Comes Autumn Time (Sowerby), 560
Composers Forum (New York), 574
Concerto in F (Gershwin), 492
Concord, Mass., 656, 660, 664, 668-672,
675, 678
Concord Sonata (Ives), 658, 664, 668-
677
Concrete music, 589
Condon, Eddie, 482, 483, 485
Congo (dance), 76, 77, 312
Congo Square (New Orleans), 305-306,
Congress for Cultural Freedom, 590
Connecticut Yankee (Rodgers), 630
Continental Harmony (Billings), 140
Contradanza, 300-311
Contrapuntal dynamics, 582, 612
Contredanse, 309, 312
Converse, Frederick S., 338, 377, 520,
635
Cook, Will Marion, 622
Coolidge Foundation (see Elizabeth
Sprague Coolidge Foundation)
Coon songs, 78, 433, 438-440
Cooper, George, 296
Copland, Aaron, 488, 493-501, 516, 543,
553, 564, 565, 568
Appalachian Spring, 229, 500-501
and jazz, 494~49^» 501
other compositions, 494-500, 501
pupils of, 547, 556, 557, $83
716 | Index
Corelli, Arcangeio, 85
Corelli, Marie, 338
Cornell University, 393, 556, 608
Corwin, Norman, 635
Cotton, John, 9, 14, 16, 31, 32
Cotton, Seaborn, 14
Counjaille (dance), 312
Cowboy songs, 393, 396, 523
Cowell, Henry, 190, 510, 516, 571, 575-
576, 583, 608, 610
compositions of, 575-576
pupis of, 590, 593
quoted, 488, 502, 576, 588, 608, 610
use of tone-clusters, 571, 575
Cowper, William, 51
Cradle Will Rock, The (Blitzstein), 646
Crane, Hart, 500
Crawford, Ruth (see Seeger, Ruth
Crawford)
"Creation" (Billings), 143
Creole Jazz Band, 473
Creole songs and dances, 300-314
Creston, Paul, 535-536
Crevecoeur, St. Jean de, 324
Cromwell, Oliver, 7
Crosby, Fanny, 179
Cuban Overture (Gershwin), 493
Cui, Cesar, 387
Culprit Fay (Gleason), 338
Cummings, E. E., 610
Curwen, John Spencer, 30, 32-36
Curtis, Natalie (see Burlin, Natalie Cur-
tis)
Curtis Institute of Music, 545, 563, 647,
648
Gushing, Frank G, 404
Custis, Nellie, no
Dada, 543
Dakota Indian music, 416
Dallas, R. C, 262
Dallas Rag, 477
Damon, Foster, 261, 262, 264, 278
Damrosch, Walter, 492, 494
operas, 634-635
Dance in Place Congo (Gilbert), 307
Dance Symphony (Copland), 496
Dancing, 76-78, 83, 171
in Africa, 66, 69, 71, 74
Maypole, 10," 1 1
Negro, 77, 236, 256, 304-3 12, 43<*-437
(See also Cakewalk; Shouts)
among Puritans, 10, 13
among Shakers, 210, 220-230
Damon Cubano (Copland), 499
Dare, Elkanah Kelsay, 189
Dark Dancers of the Mardi Qras (Cad-
man), 400
"Dark Was the Night," 463
David, Hans T., 61
Davies, Cecilia, 91
Davies, John, 79-82
Davies, Marianne, 90-91
Davies, Samuel, 47, 48, 67, 78, 236-237
Davis, Jefferson, 276
Davisson, Ananias, 189-193, 197, 204
Dav,H.W.,2i3
Debussy, Claude, 347, 379, 494, 406, 517
"Deep River," 380, 388
De Koven, Reginald, 617, 619
Delaval, E. H., 90
Delibes, Leo, 619
Dello Joio, Norman, 536-538
de Mille, Agnes, 500
"Denmark" (Madan), 131, 185
Density 21.5 (Varese), 586, 588
Densmore, Frances, 405-408, 414, 416,
422, 427, 430, 514
Desvernine, Paul, 348
D£thier, Eduard, 535
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, 401
Devil and Daniel Webster (Moore),
641-642
Diaghilev, Sergei, 510
Diamond, David, 549, 553~555» 5<*4
Dichotomy (Riegger), 608, 609
Dickinson, Emily, 501, 523, 568
Dillingham, Charles, 625, 626
d'Indy, Vincent (see Indy, Vincent d')
Dippemiouth Blues, 480
Dissonant counterpoint, 569, 577, 579,
59o» 593
Ditson, Alice M., Fund of Columbia
University, 644, 648
Ditson, Oliver, 173
"Dixie'* (Emmett), 259, 272, 274-277,
514,666
Dixieland Jass Band, 468, 474, 481
Dixieland jazz, 473-476, 481, 485
Dixon, George Washington, 259, 261,
263, 266, 271, 278
Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights
(Stein), 645
"Doctor Jazz," 466, 475
Dodds, Edward ("Baby"), 465, 466, 475,
480
Dodds, Johnny, 466, 474, 480
Dodecaphonic composition (see
Twelve-tone technique)
Dodpe, Ossian EM 180
Donizetti, Gaetano, 167, 331, 332
Doolitde, Amos, 124, 134
INDEX
Dorn, Heinrich, 340
Dorsey, Tommy, 487
Dow, Lorenzo, 209-211
Dow, Peggy, 209, 237
Dowland, John, 20
Down m the Valley (Weill), 647
Downes, Olin, 635, 636
Drake, Sir Francis, 5, 6
Drake, Joseph Rodman, 338
Dreamland Syncopaters, 481
Dreyschock, Alexander, 333
Drumlin Legend (Bacon), 643
Du Bois, William E. B., 68
Dulcimer, The (Woodbury), 150, 163
Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 622
Dunkers, 55
Duport, Pierre Landrin, 117
Duran, Padre Narciso, 63
Durang, John, 39
Durance, Jimmy, 629
Dutrey, Honore, 474, 480
Dvorak, Antonin, 319, 322, 355, 356,
386-392, 394, 623, 624, 653, 660
and folk music, 389
influence in America, 387-392
on musical nationalism, 355, 356
and Negro spirituals, 388-391
New World Symphony, 388, 389, 391
pupils in America, 387-388
Dwight, John Sullivan, 150, 168, 284,
333. 33<5, 39i
Dwight, Timothy, 43
"Dying Cowboy," 507, 523
Dying Poet (Gottschalk), 321
Eastman School of Music, 549, 551-558
Easy Instructor, The, 187
Edmonds, Shepard N., 439
Edwards, Charles L., 398
Edwards, Eddie, 474
Edwards, Jonathan, 46
Edwin and Angelina (Pelissier), 121
Ehlert, Louis, 348
Einstein, Alfred, 349
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 626
El Capitan (Sousa), 621
Eliot, T. S., 549, 591
Eliott, John, 78
Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 5, 227
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation,
374, 500, 501
Elkus, Albert, 542
Ellington, Edward ("Duke"), 484-486
Elson, Louis C, 368, 384, 389, 300
Elwell, Herbert, 507, 540-541
717
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 145, 234, 634,
656, 664, 668-671
Emmett, Daniel Decatur, 259, 260, 263,
267-277, 284, 325
"Dixie," 272, 274-277
"Old Dan Tucker," 270
walk-arounds, 270, 272-273
Emperor Jones (Gruenberg), 636, 637
Engel, Carl, 373
Englander, Ludwig, 624
English Dancing Master (Playford), 7,
10
Ephrata Cloister, 57, 58, 63
Episcopalians, 34, 79
Erskine, John, 354-356, 574, 636
Essay for Orchestra (Barber), 562
Essays before a Sonata (Ives), 668
Ethiopian melodies, 247, 248, 283-285
(See also Minstrelsy)
Ethiopian Serenaders, 271, 281
Evangeline (Luening), 643
Evangeline (Rice), 622
Evens, Williams, 286
Everett, A. B., 201
Everett, L. C, 201
Face the Music (Berlin), 625, 626
Falckner, Justus, 55, 56
Falla, Manuel de, 389
Fancy Free (Bernstein), 545
Farmer, John, 20
Farnaby, Giles, 20
Farrell, Bob, 261, 278
Farwell, Arthur, 392-397, 399, 405, 502,
503, 516, 518, 522, 552
compositions, 396, 309
and Wa-Wan Press, 394-397
Fasola folk, 137, 183-206, 214, 542, 644
(See also Shape-note system)
Fauquier, Francis, 85, 86
Faure*, Gabriel, 522
Federal Harmony (Swan), 135
Federal Overture (Carr), 119
Feldman, Morton, 574, 58971.
Fenton, William, 410
Ferber, Edna, 627
Fetis, Francois Joseph, 153
Fewkes, J. Walter, 404, 426
field, A. G., 277
Fifty Million Frenchmen (Porter), 629
Fig Leaf Rag (Jopiin), 442
Filling Station (Thomson), 352
Fillmore, John Comfort, 405
Films, music for, 498, 532, 535, 574
Fine, Irving, 567, 568
Finkelstein, Sidney, 587
7i 8 | Index
Finney, Ross Lee, 561, 614, 615
and twelve-tone technique, 614
Fireside Tales (MacDowell), 353
First Orchestral Set (Ives) (Three
Places in New England), 664-665
First Piano Sonata (Ives), 664
First Piano Sonata (Sessions), 526-528
Firth & Hall, 262
Firth, Pond & Con 275-276, 291, 295,
296, 299
Fish Wharf Rhapsody (Gilbert), 309
Fisher, William Arms, 387
Fisk University, 254
Fithian, Philip Vickers, 85, 92, 127
Flag*, Josiah, 124
Flaubert, Gustave, 556
Fletcher, Alice C, 344, 403, 405, 408,
4'3. 421
Fletcher, Francis, 6
Fliwer Ten Million (Converse), 521
Foldes, Andor, 529
Folk hymnody, 45, 138, 189, 190, 192,
193, 196, 202, 214, 542, 644
(See also Fasola folk; Negro spiritu-
als)
Folk music, 192, 198-199, 202, 222, 224,
325, 366, 512, 562
Arthur Farwell on, 393, 394, 396
compositions based on, 380-381, 401-
402, 498-499, 5<> i » 5<*H°7» 5I2»
5|4» 535> 538, 543i 5<5i> 57<*
Dvorak's interest in, 387-391
and hymns, 33, 202-203
and jazz, 469, 488, 490
MacDowell on, 355, 356, 363
minstrel songs in, 278
and ragtime, 435
and Stephen Foster, 248-249, 300
Folk opera, 443, 493, 512, 627, 637, 638,
641, 647
Folk Song Symphony (Harris), 506-507
Folklore, of American Indians, 121, 404,
417-430
in music, 322, 355~35<*. 3*3, 397. 433.
510, 516, 543
of Negroes, 60, 78, 205, 248
Fontainebleau School of Music, 494
Foote, Arthur, 338, 351, 366-368, 549
Foote, Henry Wn 38
Foss, Lukas, 547, 643
Foster, Dunning, 290, 294
Foster, Henry, 296
Foster, Jane McDowell, 292, 294-296
Foster, John, 9
Foster, Morrison, 287*280, 204, 296
Foster, Stephen Collins, 132, 168, 171,
214, 219, 273, 282-300, 325, 336
and Afro-American musk, 248-240,
280, 434
early life, 285-288
influence of, 388, 390, 556, 653, 654,
658, 661
marriage, 292, 295
"My Old Kentucky Home," 294, 300
and Negro minstrelsy, 268, 289, 291-
293
"Oh Susanna," 290-291, 298-299
"Old Folks at Home," 292, 298-300
summary of his music, 297-300
Foster, William Barclay, 286, 288
Four Saints in Three Acts (Thomson),
531, 643, 644
Fourth Symphony (Ives), 658, 663
Fox, George, 57
Fox, Gilbert, 119
Frankenstein, Alfred, 664
Franklin, Benjamin, 15, 25, 34, 42, 57,
85. 87-97, 105, 653
compositions attributed to, 89
inventor of Glass Harmonica, 88-92
as music critic, 92-96
Franklin, James, 25, 27, 33
Franklin, Peter, 15, 92, 04
Friedenthal, Albert, 77
Frinil, Rudolf, 617, 624
"From Greenland's Icy Mountains"
(Mason), 155
Fry, William Henry, 105, 328-333, 634
Fuguing tunes, 10, 49, 134-136, 139, 141-
143, 145, 196, 202, 542, 665
Futurism, 543
Futurist Manifesto, 573, 586
Gaiety Girl, A, 622
Gaines, Francis P., 271
Galbreath, C. B., 273
Galuppi, Baldassare, 92
Garcia Lorca, Federico (see Lorca,
Federico Garcia)
Garland, Ed, 475
Garland, Hamlin, 363, 653
Garrick Gaieties, 630
Garrison, Lucy McKim (see McKim,
Lucy)
Gauthier, Eva, 519
Gay, John, 646
Gehot, Jean, 120
Genee, Franz, 619
Geneva Psalter, 19
Genteel tradition, 130, 164-183, 184, 28
Wt 3*3. 354. 356. 3*4* &• t*6
INDEX
Georgia Sea Islands, 82, 232, 236, 240
Gershwin, George, 462, 488-493, 511,
516, 545, 617, 628-691
An American in Paris, 489, 492-493
Concerto in F, 489, 492
on jazz, 488-490
Porgy and Bess, 637-640
Rhapsody in Blue, 488, 491-492
Gershwin, Ira, 628, 629, 632, 637
Gettysburg March, 469, 477
Giannini, Vittorio, 643
Giants in the Earth (Moore), 643
Gilbert, Henry F., 362, 394-399, 516,
5". 550
Gilchrist, William Wallace, 338, 339
Gilliat, Sy, 76
Gillis, Don, 511, 512
Gilman, Benjamin Ives, 405, 425-427
Gilman, Lawrence, 347, 349, 350, 357,
361, 363, 518
Glass Harmonica (see Harmonica)
Glassychord (see Harmonica)
Gleason, Frederick Grant, 338-339
"Glendy Burk" (Foster), 285, 295, 434,
556
Gleny, Albert, 477
Glinka, Mikhail, 322, 330, 385, 387, 389
Gloria Dei Church, 55, 56
Gluck, Christoph Willibald von, 90
"God Bless America" (Berlin), 626
Godowsky, Leopold, 450
Goeb, Roger, 543-545
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 92, 349,
610
Goetschius, Percy, 380, 575
Coffin, Robert, 469, 489-490
Gogol, Nikolai, 374
Goldman, Richard Franko, 558, 590
Goldmark, Rubin, 387, 388, 395, 400-
491, 493, 494, 559, 583
Goldsmith, Oliver, 121
Goodale, Ezekiel, 124
Goodman, Benny, 483, 486-487, 501
Goossens, Eugene, 658
Gordon, R. W., 242, 257
Gottschalk, Edward, 301-302
Gottschalk, Louis Moreau, 302-323, 306,
439
La Bamboula, 306, 310-311, 314
Caribbean vagabondage, 317-318
in Europe, 306, 315, 316
in South America, 319-322
Gould, Morton, 511
Graham, Martha, 228, 500, 534, 537, 555,
559
Gram, Ham, 136
719
Grand Canyon Suite (Grofe), 511
Green, Ray, 542
Green Grow the Lilacs, 631
Greene, David, 159
"Green-sleeves," 10
Gregorian chant, 365-366, 536-537, 644
Grieg, Edvard, 347, 362, 387, 389
Griffes, Charles T., 517-520, 550
Grissom, Mary Allen, 249
Grofe, Ferde, 489, 491, 511
Gruenberg, Louis, 636, 637
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fel-
lowship, 563, 568, 572, 581, 590
Guilmant, Alexandre-Felix, 393
Guion, David, 513
Guitar, 67, 457, 463-4*5. 4*7
Guiterman, Arthur, 634
Gury, Jeremy, 652
Guttoveggio, Joseph (see Creston, Paul)
Habanera rhythm, 310-311
Hadley, Henry Kimball, 520, 550, 635
Hagen, Peter Albrecht van, 121
"Hail Columbia," 119, 288, 514
Haiti, 277, 303, 309, 5 12
Hale, Edward Everett, 634
Hale, Philip, 354, 371, 372, 375» 377
Hall, Minor ("Ram"), 475
Hall, Thomas C, 46
Halle, Charles, 315
Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 171
Hallowell, Emily, 238
Hambitzer, Charles, 490
Hamerik, Asger, 343
Hamline University, 604
Hammerstein, Oscar, 2d, 627, 630-633
Hampton, Lionel, 487
Hampton, Robert, 446
Hampton Institute, 254
Handel, George Frederic, 34, 59, 85,
96, 100, 112, 128, 131, 152, 155, 287,
33*, 577.
The Messiah, 97
Handy, W. C, 455, 459-4^2, 5"
Hanson, Howard, 337, 503, 549~552»
Merry Mount (opera), 550, 635
Happy Hypocrite (Elwell), 540
Hardin, Lillian, 475, 480, 481
Harlem Rag (Turpin), 443, 444
Harmonic Society of New York, 327,
327
Harmonica, 85, 88-91, 121
description of, 91
invented by Benjamin Franklin, 88
Harmony of Maine (Belcher), 132
720 I Index
Harney, Ben R., 444-446
Harp of Columbia, 190
Harper, Edward, 278
Harrigan and Hart, 439
Harris, Roy, 501-509, 533, 537, 557-55^
on American music, 503-504
compositions, 503, 505-508
Harrison, Lou, 577, 588, 589, 614, 657
Han, Lorenz, 630, 631
Hart, Moss, 625, 632
Harte, Bret, 523
Ham Opera Guild, 642, 652
Harvard College (see Harvard Univer-
sity)
Harvard University, 9, 13-15, 22, 25,
33, 124, 336, 378-380, 531, 538, 545,
549. 565? 5<$7> 5<*9» 598
early musical studies at, 13-14
Hasse, Johann Adolph, 85, 91, 92
Hastings, Thomas, 161-162, 185, 391
and "Ethiopian melodies," 283-284
Haupt, Karl August, 335, 369
Hauptmann, Gerhart, 577
Hauptmann, Moritz, 333, 334
Hauser, William, 197-198, 215
Hawkins, Coleman, 483
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 11, 664, 668,
670-0*71, 676, 677
Hayden, Scott, 442
Haydn, Josef, 59-61, 112, 116, 120, 155,
159, 287, 365
Haydn, Michael, 155
Hearn, Lafcadio, 77, 305, 313, 435-438,
468
Heath, Lyman, 174
Heine, Heinrich, 349, 610
Heinrich, Anton Philip, 385-386, 400
Helen Retires (Antheil), 574
Heilman, Lillian, 646
Helmholtz, Hermann, 407
Hemenway, Mary, 404
Hemenway Southwestern Expedition,
404, 405
Henderson, Fletcher, 481, 483-484, 486,
487
Henderson, William J., 351, 377
Henry, Patrick, 65, 86
Henry Hadley Memorial Library of
Music, 521
Herbert, Victor, 377, 617, 620, 626, 627
Heredia, Jose Maria de, 385
Herman, Woody, 487
Hermits of the Wissahickon, 55
Herrnhut, 45, 46
Herskovits, Melville, 69
Herzog, George, 354
Hesperian Harp (Hauser), 197, 198, 215
Hess, Albert, 56
Hess, Cliff, 462
Hewitt, James, 120, 121, 177, 364
Hewitt, John Hill, 176-179
Heyman, Karl, 348
Heyman, Katherine Ruth, 395
Hey ward, Du Bose, 637
Hicks, Edward, 539
Higginson, Henry Lee, 373
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 240-
241, 244
High Society, 469, 475, 480
Highwayman, The (De Koven), 619
Hilaire, Andrew, 475
Hill, Bertha ("Chippie"), 465
Hill, Edward Burlmgame, 378-379, 395,
538, 545. 56i
compositions, 379
Hill, Sumner, 162
Hill, Ureli Corelli, 172
Himes, Joshua V., 220
Himmel, Friedrich H., 159
Hindemith, Paul, 526, 536, 547, 557, 565,
568
"Ho, Westward, Ho!" (Dodge), 181
Holden, Oliver, 124, 125, 135, 136, 156
Hollers, 82, 435
Holyoke, Samuel, 135-136, 188, 191
Homer, Sidney, 369
Honnegger, Arthur, 531
Hooker, Brian, 377
Hopi Indians, tribal music of, 404, 423,
426-427
Hopkinson, Francis, 97-103, 105, 119,
125, 126, 132, 364
Seven Songs for the Harpsicho"* oo-
102
Hopkinson, Joseph, 119
Hopper, De Wolf, 6 1 8, 621
Hora Novissrma (Parker), 376, 377,
653
Horizons (Shepherd), 522
Horn, Charles Edward, 164, 172, 176,
205, 298
Hornpipes, 16, 19, 50
"Hot* rhythm, 310, 434, 450, 474
in Negro dancing, 435-437
in Negro spirituals, 255, 257
in New Orleans bands, 470-472
(See also African music; Afro- Ameri-
can music; Jazz; Negro spirituals)
"Housatonic at Stockbridge" (Ives),
664-665
Hovey, Richard, 372
Hovhaness, Alan, 545-546
INDEX
"How Firm a Foundation,** 224, 532
Howard, John Tasker, 295, 354, 492,
627
Howe, Julia Ward, 231
Howe, Mary, 523
Hubbard, John, 130
Hudson, W. H., 636
Hughes, Langston, 513, 542
Hughes, Rupert, 337, 34^-347. 3^7-3^8.
37'. 440
Humperdinck, Engelbert, 393, 517
Hunt, Leigh, 88
Hunter, Charles H., 445
Hus, John, 46
Huss, Henry Holden, 351
Hutcheson, Ernest, 490
Hutchinson, Abby, 175
Hutchinson, John, 173
Hutchinson family, 170, 173-176, 222
Hymnody, 21, 22, 38, 43, 49, 50, 52, 67,
82, 130, 334, 532, 658
evangelical, 40, 43, 48, 50, 51, 63, 64,
78, 208
- Methodist, 45, 52, 58
revivalist, 45, 52, 208-209, 248, 645
popular, 40, 48, 157, 207, 231
(See also Folk hymnody; Mason,
Lowell)
Hymns, 80, 81, 124, 126, 160, 162, 214
gospel, 133, 645, 660
(See also Camp-meeting hymns;
Hymnody)
Hymns and Spiritual Songs (Watts),
41, 42, 208
Hyperprism (Varese), 471, 586
"I Wonder as I Wander," 606
Ibsen, Henrik, 97
Imaginary Landscapes (Cage), 594, 595
Impressionism, 540
in music of Griffes, 517, 519
in music of Ives, 664, 668
in music of Loeffler, 373-374
Incredible Flutist (Piston), 566-567
Indian Suite (MacDowell), 351, 362-
3<*3. 4<>4
Indians, American (see American In-
dians)
Indy, Vincent d', 378, 381, 522, 562, 586,
629
Ingalls, Jeremiah, 124, 137-139, 202
Institute of Musical Art, 551, 608, 630
(See also Juilliard School of Music)
Integrates (Varese), 586, 589
International Composers Conference
(Rome), 500
721
International Composers' Guild, 586
International Society for Contemporary
Music (ISCM), 544, 611
lonisation (Varese), 571, 586, 588, 589
Iroquois tribes, music of, 400-410
Irving, Washington, 329, 335, 632
Island God, The (Menotti), 648
Ives, Charles E., 510, 532, 560, 653-678
artistic philosophy, 655-657
business experience, evaluation of,
654-655
Concord Sonata, 658, 664, 668-677
other compositions, 657-658, 664-667
symphonies, 661-664
Ives, George, 653, 654
Jack and the Beanstalk (Gruenberg),
636
Jackson, George K., 152
Jackson, George Pullen, 38, 50, 81, 190,
203, 254
Jackson, John BM 194
Jackson, Tony, 446, 449
Jacobi, Frederick, 547
Jacobs, Arthur, 563
Jadassohn, Salomon, 369
James, Harry, 487
James, Joe, 196
James, Philip, 523, 612
James, William, 145
James, Willis Laurence, 434
Janis, Harriet, 444
Jasmine Concerto (Johnson), 450
Jazz, 468-487, 494-49^. 504-506
archaic, 470
backgrounds of, 31, 72, 78, 82, 257,
304, 435, 438, 457-459. 4<$5. 475-
477
(See also African music; Afro-
American music; Blues; Rag-
time)
"break" in, 455
in Chicago, 473-475. 481
Chicago style, 482
Dixieland, 473~47<*. 481, 485
effects in musical composition, 501,
534* 540, 54i. 5^5. 574. *>4. ^>5.
661
Kansas City style, 486
in New Orleans, 433, 43<*-437. 440,
470-476, 47^-481, 484-487
origin of word, 468, 474
pioneers of, 471-475
and ragtime, 435, 477-478
* also Symphonic jazz)
J22 | Index
"Jeanic with the Light Brown Hair"
(Foster), 300
Jefferson, "Blind Lemon," 464, 465
Jefferson, Thomas, 83, 85-87, 97, 101-
103, 105, 227, 262, 277, 540
on Negro music, 66-68
Jenks, Stephen, 124
Jeremiah Symphony (Bernstein), 545
Jig, 7, 16, 19, 50, 76, 101, 144
W
"Ji,
"Jim Crow," 264-265, 284, 289
Joachim, Joseph, 373, 623
Jocelyn, Simeon, 127
"Joe Turner," 454-456
John Brown's Body, 514
Johnson, Charles L., 445
Johnson, Guy B., 218, 254
Johnson, Hunter, 555-556
Johnson, James P., 446, 450, 467
Johnson, Margaret, 479
Johnson, Pete, 486
Johnson, Robert Underwood, 664
Jommelli, Nicola, 92
Jones, Charles C, 237
Jones, Richard M., 465
Jonny spielt auf/ (Kfenek), 604
Jonson, Ben, 4
Joplin, Scott, 440-44*1 445~448i 45°» 477
Journal of Music (Dwight), 150, 168,
.333
Jubilee (Chadwick), 371
"Judea" (Billings), 50
Judith (Schuman), 535
Juilliard Music Foundation, 557
Juilliard School of Music, 388, 533, 547,
557-559, 630, 636
Jullien (Julien), Louis Antoine, 327, 332
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
(Foss), 643
Kahn, Erich Itor, 611
Kairn of Koridwen (Griff es), 519
Kames, Lord, 92
Kansas City jazz, 486
Kaufman, George, 629
Kay, Ulysses Simpson, 557
Keats, John, 555
Kelley, Edgar Stillman, 304, 395, 618
Kelpius, Johannes, 55, 56
Keltic Sonata (MacDowell), 353, 359,
362
Kemble, Frances Anne, 232-234, 247,
266, 280
Kendall, Edward, 269
Kentucky Harmony (Davisson), 189-
100
supplement to, 191, 204
Keppard, Freddie, 472
Ker&er, Gustave, 624
Kern, Jerome, 462, 617, 626*628
Kerr, Harrison, 524-525, 541, 614
and twelve-tone technique, 615
Kilenyi, Edward, 490
Kimball, Jacob, 124, 150
King, A. Hyatt, 91
King, E. J., 196
King and I, The (Rodgers), 631-632
King CEdipus (Partch), 591
King Porter Stomp (Morton), 450, 487
King's Chapel, Boston, 34, 531
Kings Henchman, The (Taylor), 635
Kipling, Rudyard, 538
Kirchgassner, Marianne, 92
Kirchner, Leon, 542-543, 614
Kirkpatrick, John, 319, 658, 668
Kiss Me Kate (Porter), 629
Kithara, microtonal, 590, 592
Kleber, Henry, 288
Kneass, Nelson, 200
Knickerbocker Holiday (Weill), 632
Knight, Joseph, 164
Knorr, Ivan, 526
Kochnitzky, Leon, 546
Kohs, Ellis, 544, 614
Kolinski, Mieczyslaw, 75, 254-256
Kostelanetz, Andre, 628
Kotzschmer, Herman, 335
Koussevitzky, Serge, 493, 494, 503, 505
Koussevitzky Foundation, 559
Krazy Kat (Carpenter), 510
Krehbiel, H. E., 244, 248-249, 254, 305,
309, 3>3» 3i5
Kreisler, Fritz, 521
Krell, William, 444
Kfenek, Ernst, 604-606, 611
Krupa, Gene, 487
Kubelik, Rafael, 508
La, La, Lucille (Gershwin), 491, 628
Labbe, Louise, 610
Lady in the Dark (Weill), 632-633
La Flesche, Francis, 405
Laine, Jack ("Papa"), 474
Lalo, Edouard, 385, 389
Lamb, Joseph, 445
Lambert, Constant, 484
Lampe, John Frederick, 48, 49
"Land of the Sky Blue Water" (Cad-
•nan), 399
Lang. J- B., 367
Lang, Margaret Ruthven, 351
Lanier, Sidney, 334, 341-345. 37'. 5'*
La Rocca, Dominique ("Nick"), 474
INDEX
Law, Andrew, 127-131, 136, 186-188
shape-note system, 129-130
Lawes, Henry, 36
Lawrence, Gertrude, 632
Leadbetter, Huddle ("Leadbelly"), 465
League of Composers, 503, 571
Lecocq, Charles, 617
Lee, "Mother" Ann, 53, 54, 227
Lee, Philip Ludwell, 106
Lehar, Franz, 617
Leibowitz, Rene", 600
Leichtentritt, Hugo, 506
Leipzig 162, 333, 334, 522
Leland, John, 223
Leonora (Fry), 329, 331
Leschetizky, Theodor, 401
Let 'em Eat Cake (Gershwin), 629
Lewis, Meade Lux, 466
Lewis, Sinclair, 510
Library of Congress, 58, 114, 116, 139,
224, 252, 374, 410, 449, 500, 501
(See also Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge
Foundation)
Lincoln, Abraham, 276, 388, 508, 512,
555
Lind, Jenny, 327
Lindbergh, Charles, 524, 543
Lindsay, John, 465, 475
Lindsay, Vachel, 523, 666
Lining-out, 31, 32, 38, 39, 81, 349-351
(See also Psalmody)
List, Kurt, 610, 611
Liszt, Franz, 186, 333, 334, 340, 349, 366,
367, 379, 490
Little, William, 186-188, 191
Little Tycoon (Spenser), 618
Livingstone, Herbert, 555
Lodge, Henry, 446
Loeffler, Charles Martin, 372-374, 550
Lomax, Alan and Jdhn, 507
London, 45, 08, 113, 162, 340, 350
Long, Huey, 626
"Long Tail Blue," 263, 264, 289
"Long Time Ago," 172, 205, 279-280,
298
Longfellow, Henry W., 17, 175, 334
Loomis, Harvey Worthington, 387, 388,
395-39<*
Lorca, Federico Garcia, 543, 607
Lost in the Stars (Weill), 647
Loud, Thomas, 124
Louisiana Purchase (Berlin), 626
Louisville Orchestra, 537, 559
Love, Charles, 106, 107
Low, Seth, 351
723
Lowens, Irving, 610
Luders, Gustave, 623-624
Luening, Otto, 543~544» *43
Lunceford, Jimmie, 484
Luther, Martin, 45
Lyell, Sir Charles, 234
Lyon, James, 125-128, 150, 162
Lyric theater (see Musical comedy;
Opera)
McCurry, John Gordon, 198, 199, 214-
215, 219
Macdonald, A. J., 230
McDonald, Harl, 524
MacDowell, Edward A., 345-364, 373
390, 392» 396, 4°4» 5!8, 653, 660
in Boston, 350-351
at Columbia University, 351-353
compositions, 350-351, 353, 359~3<*4
in Europe, 348-350
ideas on music, 356-359
on musical nationalism, 355-356
MacFarren, G. A., 326
McGready, James, 207
Mclntosh, Rigdon McCoy, 201
Mackay, Charles, 167, 168, 176
McKay, George Frederick, 512
McKim, J. Miller, 242
McKim, Lucy, 240, 243
McPartland, Jimmy, 482
McPhee, Colin, 519, 582, 583
McSpadden, J. Walker, 627
Madan, Martin, 131, 155
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 374
Mahon, John, 296
"Majesty" (Billings), 142-143
Malet, William W., 238
Malipiero, Gian Francesco, 561
Mamoulian, Rouben, 637, 640
Man without a Country (Damrosch),
634
Mainzer, Joseph, 32
"Maniac, The" (Russell), 167, 170, 173
Mann, Ellas, 128
Maple Leaf Rag (Joplin), 441-442, 449-
450
Marcello, Benedetto, 159
"Marching through Georgia" (Work),
180, 666
Mares, Paul, 481
Margil de Jesus, Fray Antonio, 62
Markham, Edwin, 542, 666
Marmontel, Antotne-Fran$ois, 348
Marshall, Arthur, 442, 446
Mason, Barachias, 151, 334
724 I Index
Mason, Daniel Gregory, 153, 338, 365,
3<*t 375» 379"38i. 4<>2
compositions of, 380'
Mason, Johnson, 334
Mason, Lowell, 150-162, 173, 179, 187,
'9*, 333-334
early life, 151
influence of, 130, 150-151, 195-196,
200, 201, 325
sacred music collections of, 150-152,
i59
and school music, 156-159
Mason, Timothy, 159, 187
Mason, William, 153, 333, 365
Masque of Alfred the Great (Hopkin-
son), 100
"Massa's in de Cold Ground" (Foster),
285, 294, 297
Massenet, Jules, 385
Mather, Cotton, 23, 25, 28, 31, 35, 42
Mather, Increase, 8
Mathews, W. S. B., 338
Matthews, Brander, 271
Maytime (Romberg), 624 .
Me and Juliet (Rodgers), 631
Meachum, Joseph, 53
Meignen, Leopold, 330
Melville, Herman, 325, 510
"Memphis Blues" (Handy), 460
Men and Mountains (Ruggles), 577
Mendelssohn, Felix, 327, 333, 334, 365
Mennin, Peter, 558
Mennonites, 54, 55, 63
Menotti, Gian-Carlo, 646-651
The Consul, 649-650
The Medium, 648-649
Merman, Ethel, 626, 628
Merry Mount (Hanson), 550, 635
Merry Mount, 10-12, 635
Mesmer, Franz Anton, 91
Metcalf, Frank J., 136, 137, 161
Methodists, 40, 44, 46, 49, 52, 79, 188,
194, 207-211, 234, 236, 251
Metric modulation, 568
Metropolitan Opera House, 377, 398,
399, 510, 520, 545, 585, 620-621, 625,
634-636, 647, 648
American operas produced at, 634-
636
Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 167, 320
Mezzrow, Mezz, 482
Michael, David Moritz, 60
Michener, James, 632
Microtontl music, 587, 590-593
Milhaud, Darius, 491, 531, 541, 569
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 635
Millennial Harp, 217, 220-222
Miller, Glenn, 487
Miller, Paul Eduard, 472
Miller, Peter, 57
Miller, William, 220-221
Milligan, Harold Vincent, 299
Mills, Kerry, 450
Mills College, 691
M ilneburg Joys (Morton), 481
Milton, John, 7, 116
Mims, Edwin, 341
Minstrel shows (see Minstrelsy)
Minstrelsy, 78, 170, 180, 205, 236, 246-
247, 249, 257-300, 460, 622
antecedents of, 259-264
compositions based on, 511, 658
first minstrel troupes, 259, 267-268
and jazz, 469
minstrel melodies, 277-282
and ragtime, 433~434> 43^-439
(See also Emmett, Daniel Decatur;
Foster, Stephen Collins; Rice,
Thomas Dartmouth)
Mintz, David, 208
Mississippi Rag (Krell), 444
Missouri Harmony, 190
Mitchell, George, 475
Mitropoulos, Dimitri, 541, 569
Moffet, John, 219
Moller, John Christopher, 121
Molnar, Ferenc, 631
Mona (Parker), 377, 635
Moore, Douglas, 510, 641-643
The Devil and Daniel Webster, 641-
642
other operas, 642, 643
Moore, William, 193
Moravians, 44-47, 50, 58-60, 63, 197
music of, 58-59
Mordecai, Samuel, 76
Moreau de St. Mery, Mederic L. E.,
no
Morgan, Justin, 124, 136, 191
Money, Thomas, 20
Morneweck, Evelyn Foster, 287
Morris, George Pope, 171, 172, 174-
176, 205, 288, 298
Morris, William, 394, 500
Morse, Woolson, 618
Morton, Ferdinand ("Jelly Roll"), 446,
449-450, 465-466, 475-478, 48l» 485
Morton, Thomas, 10-12, 635
Moscheles, Ignaz, 333
Moten, Bennie, 486
Mother of Us All (Thomson), 643,
INDEX
Morion pictures, music for, 498, 532,
535. 574
Mount Wollaston (see Merry Mount)
Moussorgsky, Modest P., 387
Mozart, Leopold, 91
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 59, 91-92,
112, 152, 155, 159, 327, 332, 365,
366
and the Harmonica, 91-92
Murphy, Jeannette R., 252
Music Critics' Circle (New York), 541
Music for the Theatre (Copland), 495
Musica Sacra (Hastings), 161, 185
Musical comedy, 617-633
backgrounds of, 621-623
by George Gershwin, 628-629
by Richard Rodgers, 630-632
since 1914, 625-633
Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia,
118
Musical glasses (see Harmonica)
Musical Primer (Law), 129, 130, 186
Musique concrete, 589
"My Days Have Been So Wondrous
Free" (Hopkinson), 100
"My Old Kentucky Home" (Foster),
285, 294, 297, 300
Mystic Trumpeter (Dello Joio), 537
Nathan, Hans, 263, 264, 274-275, 279
National Broadcasting Company, 630,
648
NBC Symphony Orchestra, 501, 563
National Conservatory of Music, 376,
377» 387
National Federation of Music Clubs,
377» 4°'
National Institute of Arts and Letters,
598, 658
National Orchestral Association, 546
Nationalism in American music, begin-
nings of, 332, 340, 371, 381, 385-386
in Bloch's America, 513-515
Dvorak on, 386-391
FarwelPs contribution to, 392-396
Gilbert's contribution to, 396-398
and jazz, 488, 489
MacDowell on, 355-356
in music of Charles Ives, 658-000,
677-678
in twentieth century, 401-402, 404-
495» 5<>3-509i 534-535* 56*
Natoma (Herbert), 621
Naughty Marietta (Herbert), 620
Naumann, Johann G., 92, 159
Naumberg Fellowship, 531, 568
7*5
"Nearer, My God, to Thee" (Mason),
160, 666
Negro music (fee African music; Afro-
American music; Blues; "Hot"
rhythm; Jazz; Negro spirituals;
Ragtime)
Negro spirituals, 232-258
antebellum accounts of, 232-239
and blues, 455~45^ 4*3. 4<*5
compositions based on, 380, 390, 511,
556
during and after Civil War, 238-248
Dvorak's interest in, 388, 390, 391
first publications of, 239-240, 243-246
folk tradition of, 249-255
"hot" rhythm in, 255, 257, 435, 470
manner of singing, 232-233, 236, 238-
239, 246, 250-254, 455-456
origins of, 45, 67, 75, 78, 80-82, 200,
216
relation to African music, 254-257
(See also African music)
Nelson, Louis ("Big Eye"), 472, 477
Neoclassicism, 435, 543, 549, 566, 569
Nevin, Arthur, 400
Nevin, Ethelbert, 346, 400
Nevin, Robert, 291
Nevins, Marian (Mrs. MacDowell), 349
New England (see Boston; Ives,
Charles E.; Mason, Lowell; Psalm-
ody; Puritans)
New England Conservatory of Music,
369* 375> 52»~5"» 54<5, 562
New England Harmony (Swan), 135
New England Idyls (MacDowell), 353,
360
New England Psalm Singer (Billings),
140-143
New England Symphony (Ives) (see
Three Places in New England)
New Music Editions, 542, 578, 583
New Music Quarterly, 375
New Orleans, 77, 78, 180, 301-306, 314-
315, 308, 449-45<>, 468-469
voodoo ceremonies in, 304-305
(See also Creole songs and dances;
Gottschalk, Louis Moreau)
New Orleans jazz (see Jazz)
New Orleans Rhythm Kings, 481
New School for Social Research, 575,
593
New Theatre, Philadelphia, in, 114,
117, 119, 331
New World Symphony (DvoHk),
388-389, 391, 393
726 I Index
New York Qty, 316, 354, 376, 393, 533,
54*-543» 545
Academy of Music, 331
early musical life in, 109, 113, 118-
121, 164-165, 168, 172-174
jazz in, 483
musical comedy in, 617-633
New York City Center, 640, 646
New York Qty Opera, 501, 512
New York Little Symphony, 657
New York Philharmonic Society, 172,
326-330, 332, 620
New York Philharmonic-Symphony,
500, 521, 541, 544, 569, 657
New York Symphony, 492, 494
Newburgh, Brockhill, oo
Newman, William, 522
Newton, John, 50, 51, 202, 208
Niblo's Garden, 621
Nichols, George, 261, 266
Nichols, Red, 483, 487
"Night and Day'* (Porter), 630
Niles, Edward Abbe, 453, 455-457
No for an Answer (Blitzstein), 646
No! No! Nanette (Youmans), 628
Noise-sounds (see Futurist Manifesto)
Noone, Jimmy, 474
Nordoff, Paul, 558-559
Norma (Bellini), 331, 332
Norris, Homer A., 393
Norse Sonata (MacDowell), 353
"Northfield" (Ingalls), 138-139
Notes on Virginia (Jefferson), 65-67,
262
Noyes, Alfred, 521
Nunez, Alcide ("Yellow"), 474
Oberlin Conservatory of Music, 540,
622
O'Brien. Daniel Webster (see Bryant,
Dan)
Octandre (Var&e), 586, 588
Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte (Schoen-
berg), 602, 603
Oedipus Tyramus (Paine), 337
Oerter, Christian Frederick, 60
Of Thee I Smg (Gershwin), 626-629
Offenbach, Jacques, 617
O'Hara, John, 630
Ojibway Indians (see Chippewa
Indians)
Ojos Criollos (Gottschalk), 311, 319
Oklahoma/ (Rodgers), 631
"Old BUck Joe" (Foster), 285, 292, 294,
295, 297, 298, 300
"Old ChishoJm Trail," 523
"Old Churchyard," 174, 222
"Old Dan Tucker," 171, 270, 434
"Old Folks at Home" (Foster), 283-
285, 292-294, 297-299, 319, 514
"Old Granite State," 222
"Old Hundredth," 18, 170, 333
Old Maid and the Thief (Menotti),
648
Old Ship of Zion, 237, 308
Oldberg, Arne, 395
"Ole Tare River," 280, 281
Oliver, Joseph ("King"), 472-477, 479-
480
Oliver, Sy, 484
Olney Hymns, 51
Omaha Indians, tribal music of, 400, 413
On the Town (Bernstein), 545
On Your Toes (Rodgers), 630
O'Neill, Eugene, 636
O'Neill, Francis, 279
"Open Thy Lattice, Love" (Foster),
171, 288
Opera by American composers, in
early twentieth century, 377, 399,
621, 634-635
modern, 512, 574, 636-652
in nineteenth century, 329-332, 634
one-act, 533, 535, 538, 543, 641, 647-
648, 652
(See also Folk opera; Musical
comedy)
Original Sacred Harpy 134, 139, 219
Denson Revision of, 218
(See also Sacred Harp)
Ornstein, Leo, 571, 572
Ory, Kid, 475, 480, 481
Over the Pavements (Ives), 666
Pachelbel, Charles Theodore, 109
Pachelbel, Johann, 109
Pagan Poem (Loeffler), 374
Paine, John Knowles, 334-338, 346, 351,
3<$7. 379. 38o. 5io, 521* 549
compositions of, 337-338
Paine Fellowship, 531, 568, 569
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 155,
357
Palmer, Robert, 556
Pan American Association of Com-
posers, 586
Papago Indians, tribal music of, 427-429
Paris, 86-87, 89, 306, 315-316. 33». 348»
373, 38i, 393
American music performed in, 350-
35'
INDEX
Paris, American musicians who studied
in, 494* 5°3* 5*4» 53 *» 540, S4*» 544»
552. 554* 5^2, 5<*5. 5*9
Conservatory, 89, 330, 348, 586
Ope*ra, 87, 331
Parker, Horatio W., 366, 375-377, 386,
5", Wi 55<>» 562, 635, 653, 654
compositions of, 376-377
Parker, John R., 117, 118
Parkman, Francis, 336
Parnell, Thomas, 100
Partch, Harry, 590-593
microtonal instruments invented by,
592
Pastorius, Francis Daniel, 57
Patent notes (see Shape-note system)
Paton, Alan, 647
Pawnee Indians, tribal music of, 421-
423
Peabody, George Foster, 394
Peabody Symphony Orchestra, 343
Peaceable Kingdom (Thompson), 538,
539
Peale, Charles Willson, 99
Pelham, Dick, 259
Pelissier, Victor, 121
Penn, John, 86
Penn, William, 57, 227
Pennington, William, 263
Perez, Manuel, 472
Pergolesi, Giovanni, 100
Perkins, Gertrude, 464
Perle, George, 611, 612
twelve-tone modal system, 611
Perronet, Edward, 135
Perse, St. John, 543
Persichetti, Vincent, 558
Pestalozzi, J. H., 158, 159
Peter, John Frederick, 60, 61
Peter Ibbetson (Taylor), 635
Peterboro Artists' Colony, 353, 495
Peters, Samuel, 9
Peters, W. C., 264-265, 290, 291
Peyser, Herbert, 331
Pfitzner, Hans E., 393
Philadelphia, early musical activity in,
54-57, 86, loo-ioi, 107, loo-ni,
113-117, 119-120, 125, 128
Philadelphia Conservatory of Music,
559» 57*
Philadelphia Orchestra, 524
Phile, Philip, 118
Phillips, Burrill, 556, 661, 677
Phillips, Ulrich B., 83
Picasso, Pablo, 574
Picou, Alphonsc, 472, 476-477
727
Pierce, Charles, 482
Pietists, 46, 50, 55, 57
Pilgrims, 6, 9, 16, 38, 39, 41
Pink Lady, The (Caryll), 622
Pipe of Desire (Converse), 377, 521, 635
Piston, Walter, 379, 502, 545, 540, 564-
568
compositions, 566-567
use of twelve-tone technique, 613
Pittsburgh International Festival, 559
Pixley, Frank, 624
Plaidy, Louis, 334
Plantation melodies, 78
Dvorak's interest in, 388, 390, ^91
in minstrelsy, 260, 265, 267, 280
and ragtime, 433, 440
Stephen Foster's use of, 248, 288, 289,
291-292, 294, 295
Play-party songs, 278, 315
Play ford, John, 3, 7, 10, 14, 20, 29, 156
Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan
(Griff es), 517-519
Pleyel, Ignaz, 120, 155
Pockrich, Richard, 90
Poe, Edgar Allan, 176, 177, 399, 656
Poem for Flute and Orchestra
( Griff es), 519
Pollack, Ben, 486
Polytonality, 564, 654, 660, 662, 667
in blues, 548
Pond, William, 296
Pond, William A., & Co., 165
Popular music, 381, 440
blues as, 457, 459, 461, 462
by Gershwin, 488-493
idioms of, in compositions, 494, 531-
532, 538-539, 545> 5<$6
(See also Blues; Jazz; Minstrelsy;
Musical comedy; Ragtime)
Porgy and Bess (Gershwin), 493, 629,
637-640
Port Royal Islands, 234, 238, 240, 243,
246-247, 252, 257
Portals (Ruggles), 577
Porter, Cole, 617, 620-630
Porter, Quincy, 562
Powell, John, 380, 401-402, 660
Powers, Marie, 649
Prairie (Sowerby), 559-560
Pratt, Paul, 446
Pratt, Silas Gamaliel, 340-341
Pratt, Waldo Seldcn, 17
Prepared piano, 571, 593, 594
Presbyterians, 47, 79, 126, 194, 207, 208,
210
President^ March (Phile), 119
728 I Index
Prince of Pilsen (Luders), 623-624
Princeton University, 125, 126, 538, 612
Pro Music* Society, 331, 658
Prynne, William, 8
Pryor, Arthur, 438
Psalm 87 dves), 665
Psalm Singer's Amusement (Billings),
140
Psalmody, 3-45, 50, 66, 80-82, 101, 125,
126, 131, 239
early New England, 3-6, 8, 16-21,
22-39
Ainsworth Psalter, 16-19
Bay Psalm Book, 14, 19-21
folk style of singing in, 22-26, 28-35,
38-39, 81, 455
Gaelic, 30, 32-33
Negroes and, 70-82, 236-237
Pueblo Indians, music of, 423
Putnam, Gaetano, 85
Pulitzer Fellowship, 561, 563
Pulitzer Prize, 533, 629, 658
Purcell, Henry, 14, 100
Puritans, 3-21, 30, 31, 34, 38, 41
attitude, toward dancing, 10-12
toward music, 6-9
toward use of musical instruments,
7,9-10
(See also Psalmody)
Putnam, J. S., 440
Pyrlaeus, John Christopher, 60
Quakers, 47, 50, 53, 57, 210
Shaking, 47, 53
(See also Shakers)
Quarter tones, 542, 654, 66 1
Quincy, Josiah, 107, 108
Quinones, Cristobal de, 62
Raff, Joseph Joachim, 337, 349
Ragas, Henry, 474
Ragtime, 433-45't 455
antecedents of, 260, 310
and jazz, 469, 474, 477-479
use of, by composers, 510, 534, 566,
658, 664, 667
Ragtime Instructor (Harney), 445-446
Ragtime Nightmare (Turpin), 443
Rainey, Gertrude ("Ma"), 464, 465
Rarncau, Jean-Philippe, 85
Ramsey, Frederic, 476
Rappolo, Leon, 481
Rapports, 141
Ravel, Maurice, 379, 385, 404, 406, 555
Ravenscroft, Thomas, 20, 25
Read, Daniel, 124, 125, 134, 135, 156,
1 88
Read, Gardner, 556
Read, Jack, 482
Red Hot Peppers, 475
Red Mill, The (Herbert), 620
Redman, Don, 484
Regina (Blitzstein), 646
Regionalism, in American music, 402,
512, 5"-523
Middle Western, 559-561
in music of Charles Ives, 664-665
Regular singing (see Psalmody)
Remagle, Alexander, 110-117, 120
compositions of, no, 112, 114
Reiner, Fritz, 641
Rena, Henry ("Kid"), 476
Rena, Joe, 477
Repository of Sacred Music (Wyeth),
188-189
Second Part, 189
Revival hymns (see Hymnody,
revivalist)
Revivalism, 46, 48, 63, 64, 79, 157, 207-
231, 255, 277, 500
(See also Camp meetings)
Rhapsody in Blue (Gershwin), 489,
491-492, 511
Rhapsody in Rivets (Second Rhap-
sody) (Gershwin), 489, 493
Rheinberger, Josef, 369, 375, 376, 521
Rhodes, Willard, 430-432
Rhythmicon, 575
Rice, Dan, 289
Rice, Edward E., 622
Rice, Edward L., 261
Rice, Elmer, 647
Rice, Thomas Dartmouth ("Daddy"),
259-261, 264-267, 271, 279, 289
interpreter of "Jim Crow," 261, 264-
265
Rich, Arthur L., 159
Richards, Frank, 478
Riegger, Wallingford, 583, 608-610
Riggs, Lynn, 631
Riker, Charles, 549
Riley, William, 34, 35
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 547, 564, 610, 613
Rimsky-Korsakoff, Nikolai, 385, 387,
389* 499. 5"
Ring shouts (see Shouts)
Rip Van Winkle (Bristow), 329-330
Rise and Fall of the City of
Mahagormy (Weill), 646
Rittenhouse, David, 54
INDEX
Ritter, Frederic Louis, 3, 188, 389
Rittinghuysen, Willem, 54
Roarke, William, 290
Rob Roy (De Koven), 619
Roberta (Kern), 627
Roberts, Luckey, 446
Robertson, Zue, 472
Robichaux, John, 472
Robin Hood (De Koven), 619
Robinson, J. Russel, 446
Robinson, Jim, 477
Robinson, Robert, 214
Rochester, N.Y. (see Eastman School
of Music)
Rodeo (Copland), 500
Rodgers, Richard, 617, 630-632
Rodzinski, Artur, 628
Rogers, Bernard, 55*~553» 557» 558
The Warrior, 635
"Roll, Jordan, Roll," 240
Rollig, K. L., 92
Rolvaag, O. E., 643
Roman Sketches (Griffes), 519
Romanticism, 337, 349, 387, 520, 549
in music of Barber, 563
in music of Hanson, 550-551
in music of MacDowell, 346-347,
349, 360, 362
Romberg, Sigmund, 617, 624
Rome Prize, American, 551, 555, 563,
568
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 529, 626
Root, George Frederick, 62, 179-180,
249
Rose, Billy, 633
Rose Marie (Friml), 624
Rosenbaum, Charles, 287
Rosenfeld, Paul, 347, 354, 359, 373, 519,
571
Rosen wald Fellowship, 541
Rossini, Gioacchino, 159, 167, 320, 332
Rounds for String Orchestra (Dia-
mond), 554
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 155, 158
Roussel, Albert, 586
Rudhyar, Dane, 585
Ruggles, Carl, 57<H?8
Russell, Henry, 164, 166-168, 170-171,
*73» 175. 176* 180-182, 235, 257, 270,
*95
on Negro singing, 235-236, 246-247
Russell, Charles Ellsworth, Jr., ("Pee
Wee"), 483, 486
Russell, William Howard, 238
Russolo, Luigi, 573
729
Sabin, Robert, 524
Sable Harmonists, 290, 291
Sacred Harp (White), 136, 190, 196,
204, 223
Sacred Harp Singers of Alabama, 139
St. Cecilia Society of Charleston, 84,
107-109
St. Cyr, Johnny, 475, 480
St. Louis, Mo., jazz in, 438
ragtime in, 441-443
"St. Louis Blues" (Handy), 459, 461,
467
Salazar, Adolfo, 349
Salon Mexico, El (Copland), 498-409
Salzedo, Carlos, 585, 586
Sandburg, Carl, 501, 542, 547, 560, 581
Sandys, George, 36
Santiago, Willy, 472, 477
Sarah Lawrence College, 533, 537
Sargeant, Winthrop, 457
Satie, Erik, 530, 531, 543, 565, 585
Saunders, Otis, 441
Savane, La (Gottschalk), 314, 315
Sbarbaro, Tony, 474
Scalero, Rosano, 563, 646
Scarlatti, Domenico, 537
Scarlet Letter y The (Damrosch), 634
Scharfenberg, William, 172
Schelling, Ernest, 521
Schenker, Heinrich, 526
Schmidt, Henry, 333
Schneider, Marius, 277, 300
Schoenberg, Arnold, 493, 540, 573, 583,
597-604, 661
evolution of twelve-tone technique,
599-602
influence of, 524-526, 569, 577, 606,
609-611, 616, 657
life in America, 597-508
pupils of, 542, 500, 593, 607, 646
works composed in America, 602
Schola Cantorum, 381, 586, 629
School of Ragtime (Joplin), 446
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, 390, 404, 411
Schreker, Franz, 604
Schubart, Mark, 525
Schubert, Franz, 155, 366, 604, 625
Schuman, William, 533-537, 651-652
compositions, 534-535
The Mighty Casey, 652
Schumann, Robert, 92, 359, 365, 502
Scott, Bud, 480
Scott, James Sylvester, 443-444
Scriabin, Alexander, 494, 520
Sea Pieces (MacDowell), 353, 360
730 | Index
Second Piano Sonata (Ives) (sec
Concord Sonata)
Second Rhapsody (Gershwin), 489, 493
Second Symphony (Ives), 657, 661-662
Second Symphony (Piston), 564-567
Seeger, Charles, 190, 530, 575, 581
Seeger, Ruth Crawford, 581, 582, 612
Seguin, Anna and Arthur, 165, 168
Selby, William, 107, 122
Separatists (see Pilgrims)
Sessions, Roger, 5*5-53°, 533. 54*. 553-
554, 561, 612
compositions, 529
Seven Songs for the Harpsichord
(Hopkinson), 99, 102
Sewall, Samuel, 3-5, 9
Seymour, Johnny, 441
Shakers, 47, 52-54, 63, 224-230
songs of, 226-229, 501
Shakespeare, William, 16, 324, 547, 610,
629
"Shall We Gather at the River?" 532,
664
Shaneivis (Cadman), 399
Shape-note system, 129, 130, 185, 187-
190, 192, 194, 2<x>-20i> 542, 644
songbooks, 134, 186-190, 197, 213
(See also Fasola folk)
Shapero, Harold, 567, 568
Sharp, Cecil, 199
Sharp, William, 518
Shaw, Artie, 487
Shaw, Oliver, 151
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 349, 563
Shepherd, Arthur, 395, 522-523
"Ship on Fire" (Russell), 168-169
Shouts, 82, 236, 256-257, 287, 435
(See also Negro spirituals)
Show Boat (Kern), 627-628
Shryock, R. H., 366
Sibelius, Jan, 550
Siegmeister, Elie, 512
Simeon, Omer, 475
Simms, Bardett D., 444
Simon, Henry, 507
Simon, Menno, 54
"Simple Gifts," 229, 500
Singing families (see Baker family;
Hutchinson family)
Singing Master's Assistant (Billings),
140
Singing schools, 28-20, 30, 40, 57, 63,
124, 132, 145, 183-184, 186. 188,
191, 286, 334, 365
description of, in Connecticut, 184-
186
Sioux Indians, tribal music of, 407, 416-
420, 430
"Six, Les" (Group of Six), 565, 573
Skilton, Charles Sanf ord, 400
Skulsky, Abraham, 606, 607
Skyscrapers (Carpenter), 510
Slave songs (see Negro music; Negro
spirituals)
Slavery, 65-69, 78-79, 82-83
(See also Negro spirituals)
Sloane, A. Baldwin, 623
Slonimsky, Nicolas, 502, 573, 575, 581,
588, 589, 662
Smallens, Alexander, 640
Smart and Williams, 439
Smetana, Bedfich, 387
Smith, Bessie, 464, 465, 467
Smith, Carleton Sprague, 344
Smith, Cecil, 627, 629
Smith, Charles Edward, 476, 486
Smith, Clarence ("Pine Top"), 466-467
Smith, David Stanley, 522, 562
Smith, Joshua, 208
Smith, Kate, 626
Smith, Seba, 174
Smith, William, i86-i88y 191
Smith, Willy, 484
Smith and Mellor, 265
Smith College, 528, 561
Smithsonian Institution, 405, 410
Snyder, White, 261
Social Harp (McCurry), 198, 199, 214-
215, 218, 219
Sonata Eroica (MacDowell), 351, 360
Sonata Tragica (MacDowell), 351, 360
Sonata Virginianesque (Powell), 401
Sonneck, Oscar G., 87
Sousa, John Philip, 438, 621
South Pacific (Rodgers), 631-632
Southern Harmony (Walker), 139, 190,
194-195, 200-205, 212, 218
Sowerby, Leo, 559-561
Spalding, H. G., 240, 247
Spalding, Walter Raymond, 538, 577
Spanier, Muggsy, 482
Spencer, Frank, 291
Spenser, Willard, 618
Spirituals (see Negro spirituals)
Spring Symphony (Paine), 336
Stamitz, Johann, 21, 30, 38, 59, 60, 85
Starer, Robert, 547, 558
Stark, John Stilwell, 441-444, 446
Steele, Porter, 480
Stein, Gertrude, 531, 596, 643-64 c
Steinert, Alexander, 637
INDEX
Steinway Hall, 329
Stennett, David, 211
Sternhold, Thomas, 5
Sternhold and Hopkins, Psalter of, 17,
*9» *9t 143
Sticcado pastorale, 88
Still, William Grant, 512-513
Stokowski, Leopold, 590
Stone, Fred, 637
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 142, 143, 267,
294
Strakosch, Max, 316, 318
Strang, Gerald, 582, 583, 614
Strauss, Johann, 617, 620
Strauss, Richard, 366, 379, 525
Stravinsky, Igor, 491, 495, 496, 517, 525,
553* 5<*5i 5*6* Sfy* 654, 657, 661
Street Scene (Weill), 647
Strike Up the Band (Gershwin), 628
Stringfield, Lamar, 512
Stringham, Edwin, 556
Stubbs, Philip, 7
Student Prince (Romberg), 624
Study in Sonority (Riegger), 608
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 617
Sun-Treader (Ruggles), 577
Suppe, Franz von, 617
Surinach, Carlos, 576
Survivor from Warsaw (Schoenberg),
602
Swan, Timothy, 124, 125, 135, 188, 191
"Swance River" (see "Old Folks at
Home")
Swansea, Howard, 541-542
Sweeney, Joel Walker, 262
Swing, 477, 481, 486, 487, 511
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," 388-389
Symmes, Thomas, 13-15, 25, 27-30, 35,
39
Symphonic jazz, 488-491, 494, 510-511,
57*, 6*7
Symphonic Sketches (Chad wick), 371-
372
Symphony Hall (Boston), 566
Symphony on a Hymn Tune (Thom-
son), 531-532
Symphony in One Movement (Bar-
ber), 563
Symposium on Music Criticism, Har-
vard, 508
Synchrony (Cowell), 575
Syncopation, 74-75, 236, 263, 277, 279,
}"» 434* 554» 5^. 6*5
Syncretism in African music, 74, 256
Synge, John M., 309
731
Taggard, Genevieve, 533
Taflpate trombone, 477
Talbs, Thomas, 20, 156
Tammany (Hewitt), 121
Ttns'ur, William, 140, 156
Tate, Allen, 568
Tatum, Art, 483
Taylor, Deems, 635
Taylor, Raynor, 112, 117-120
Tcnaikowsky, Peter I., 366, 379, 491
Teagarden, Jack, 485
Teasdale, Sara, 518
Television, opera for, 636, 648, 650, 651
Templeton, Alec, 118
Tender Land, The (Copland), 501
Tennyson, Alfred, 344, 349
Teschemacher, Frank, 482
Testament of Freedom (Thompson),
540
Teton Sioux (see Sioux Indians)
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 260,
266
Thayer, Ernest L., 652
Theatre Guild, 630, 631, 640
Theodore Thomas Orchestra, 620
Theremin, Leon, 575
Third Symphony (Harris), 505-506
Third Symphony (Ives), 657, 658, 662-
663
Third Symphony (Riegger), 608, 609
This Is the Army (Berlin), 625
Thomas, Theodore, 336
Thompson, H. S., 176
Thompson, Oscar, 331
Thompson, Randall, 381, 538-539, 545
Thomson, Virgil, 190, 510, 525, 530-
534* 543» 5^5, 595
compositions, 531-532
operas, 643-646
quoted, 546, 581, 504, 601
Thoreau, Henry David, 380, 660, 664,
668, 672
Three Places in New England (Ives),
664-665
Threepenny Opera (Weill), 646, 647
Tietjens, Paul, 623
Tiger Rag (Morton), 449, 474, 478, 481
Till, John C., 61
Timm, Henry Christian, 172, 328
Tipton, Louis Campbell, 395
Tomaschek, W. L., 92
Tomlinson, Eliza, 286
Tone-clusters, 543, 571, 575, 660
Tone Roads (Ives), 666
Toor, Frances, 499
Toscanini, Arturo, 562-563
732 | Index
Totten, John G, 208-209
Town Hall, New York, 658
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" (Root), 180,
5>4
Transatlantic (Antheil), 572
Transcendentalism, 656, 663
Tree on the Plains (Bacon), 643
Treemonisha (Joplin), 442-443
Triumph of St. Joan (Dello joio), 537
Trouble in Tahiti (Bernstein), 545, 651
Troubled Island (Still), 512-513
Troyer, Carlos, 394-396
Tucker, Isaac, 156
Tufts, John, 25, 40
"Turkey in the Straw," 278, 662
Turpin, Thomas M., 443-444
Tustegee Institute, 254
Twain, Mark, 630, 643
Twelve-tone technique, 524, 548-549,
562, 564, 569, 573, 590, 593, 597-616
evolution of, 598-601
tonal application of, 603, 604, 614, 615
Unanswered Question, The (Ives), 666
Undertow (Schuman), 535
Union Harmony (Caldweli), 104
Union Harmony (Holden), 135
Unitas Fratrem (see Moravians)
Universe Symphony (Ives), 663
University of California, 393, 525, 529,
598
University of Chicago, 179, 598
University of Illinois, 556, 612
University of Southern California, 544,
598
Urania (Lyon), 125-127
Ussachevsky, Vladimir, 58971.
Vagabond King, The (Friml), 625
"Vagrom Ballad, A," (Chadwick), 371,
37*
Vatery, Paul, tfio
Van Alstyne, Egbert, 449
Van der Stucken, Frank, 350-351
Van Doren, Mark, 568
Vardeil, Charles G., 512
Varese, Edgar, 512, 571, 585-589
Vassar College, 562, 604
Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 660
Verdi, Giuseppe, 320
Verlaine, Paul, 373, 610
Victory Ball, A (Schelling), 521
Vidal, Paul, 404
Vicreck, J. C, 276
Virginia Harmony (Carrell), 192
Virginia Minstrels, 259-260, 267
Virginia Reel, 278, 43*-437» 5*4
Vitebsk (Copland), 497
Vivaldi, Antonio, 85
Volunteers, The (Reinagle), 114
Voodoo ceremonies in New Orleans,
304-305
Voudou (dance), 312
Wa-Wan Press, 393-397
Wagenaar, Bernard, 537
Wagner, Richard, 186, 338, 347, 365-
367, 379, 598, 659
"Wake, Nicodemus" (Work), 180
Wald, Max, 643
Walden (Thoreau), 380, 672, 675
Walk-arounds, 257, 270, 272-273, 275,
439
by Dan Emmett, 273
Walker, William, 187, 194-197, 200-202,
204-205, 212, 218
Wallace, William Vincent, 165, 168
Waller, Thomas ("Fats"), 446, 450, 485
Walter, Bruno, 544
Walter, Thomas, 24-27, 35, 40
The Grounds and Rules of Mustek
Explained, 25
Ward, Robert E., 557, 558
Ward, W. E., 72
Ware, Charles Pickard, 243, 245
Warrior, The (Rogers), 635
Washington, George, 99, 101, 102, no,
in, 120, 127, 136, 188, 227, 602
Waterman, Richard A,, 71-73, 75, 254-
256
Waters, Ethel, 626
Watts, Isaac, 41-43, 52, 80-82, 127, 128,
133, 138, 143, 208, 218, 236
Webb, Chick, 486
Webb, George J., 153, 159, 160, 162,
173, 179
Weber, Ben, 612, 613
Weber, Carl Maria von, 155, 159
Webern, Anton von, 597, 606, 610, 613
Webster, Daniel, 641, 642, 644
Weems, Mason Locke, 123, 131
"Weeping Mary," 202
Weill, Kurt, 632-633, 646-647
Weiss, Adolph, 593, 606
Welsh, Nolan, 465
Wenrich, Percy, 445
Wells, Frederic P., 138
Wesley, Charles, 43^6, 48, 49, 52, 156,
191, 208, 214
Wesley, John, 43-52, 58, 70, 80, 82, 156,
208
Wesley, Samuel, 45
INDEX
West African music (see African
music)
"When Jesus Wept" (Billings), 143,
When Johnny Comet Marching Home
(Harris), 507, 509
Whitakcr, James, 53
Whitby, Henry, 260
White, Benjamin Franklin, 196, 204, 223
White, Cool, 281
White, Newman, 254
White Peacock (Griffes), 518, 519
White. Wings (Moore), 642
Whitefield, George, 46, 51
Whiteman, Paul, 482-483, 491
Whiting, Arthur, 369, 375, 379
Whitlock, Billy, 259
Whitman, Walt, 325, 347, 364, 399,
5'3, 5*4i 533» 537
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 57, 336
Whole-tone scale, 603
Widor, Charles M., 379, 588
Wignell, Thomas, 114
Wilcox, Edwin, 484
Wilde, Richard Henry, 344
Wilde, Oscar, 518
William Billings Overture (Schuman),
535
Williams, Aaron, 156
Williams, William Carlos, 663
Williams and Walker, 439, 623
Williamsburg, Va., 34, 76
Festival concerts, 85
Willig, George, Jr., 261, 265, 288
Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 171
Willis, Richard Storrs, 329-330, 332
Winslow, Edward. 8, 13
Winter, Peter von, 159
Wissahickon Hermits, 55
Witt, Christopher, 56
Wittke, Carl, 266
Wizard of Oz, The, 623
733
Wodehouse, P. Gn 627
Woile, Peter, 61
Wolpe, Stefan, 606, 607
Wolverines, The, 482
Wood, Abraham, 124, 125
Wood, F. C, 218
Woodbury, Isaac Baker, 150, 162-163
Woodforde, James, 88
Woodland Sketches (Mac Do well),
35'» 3<*o
Woodman, R. Huntington, 575
"Woodman, Spare that Tree" (Rus-
sell), 166-167, 171, 176
Worcester Collection of Sacred Har-
mony (Holden), 136
Wordsworth, William, 610
Work, Henry Clay, 180
Wyeth, John, 188-189, 191
Yale College (see Yale University)
Yale School of Music, 525, 562
Yale University, 43, 376, 400, 522, 557,
565, 629, 653, 654
Yancey, Jimmy, 466, 467
"Yankee Doodle," 119, 120, 284, 333
Yankee Doodliad (Heinrich), 386
Yeats, William Butler, 590, 591
Yip, Yip, Yaphank (Berlin), 625
Yon, Pietro, 535
Youmans, Vincent, 628
Young, William, 107, 120
Youngs, Isaac N., 228
"YouVe Been a Good Old Wagon but
YouVe Done Broke Down," 444,
464
Zedwitz, Herman, 107
Zeisberger, David, 60
Ziegfeld, Flo, 626-627
Zinzendorf, Count, 45, 46, 58
"Zip Coon," 261, 278-279, 289, 308, 434
Zuni Indians, tribal music of, 404, 423*
4*7
About the Author
Gilbert Chase attended Columbia University and the Univer-
sity of North Carolina, and also studied music privately. In
Paris he was for six years music critic of the Continental Daily
Mail, and correspondent for Musical America of New York
and Musical Times of London. While abroad, he traveled ex-
tensively in Spain, and later wrote The Music of Spain, which
was published in 1941. When he returned to the United States,
Mr. Chase continued his activities in the world of music as
associate editor of the International Cyclopedia of Music and
Musicians, Latin American specialist in the Music Division of
the Library of Congress, supervisor of music for the NBC Uni-
versity of the Air, educational director for RCA Victor, and
lecturer on American music at Columbia University. In 1951,
Mr. Chase joined the Foreign Service and served as Cultural
Attache in Lima, Peru. Two years later, he was appointed to
the same position in Buenos Aires. He has been a member of
the Advisory Committee on Music for the State Department,
a member of the American Musicological Society, the French
Musicological Society, the Spanish Institute of Musicology, and
many other organizations. Mr. Chase is married and has three
sons who are now in college.
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