Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884–1920) was a poet-composer whose early death was a serious loss to America, for every thing he wrote was an addition to our music. He was impressionistic in style, and we are grateful for the lovely art songs, Five Poems of Ancient China and Japan, three songs with orchestral accompaniment to poems of Fiona MacLeod, ten piano pieces and the Sonata which have never been surpassed in beauty and workmanship by any American, the Poem for flute and orchestra, the string quartet on Indian themes, and his orchestral tone-poem, The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan. For the stage, Griffes composed a Japanese mime-play, Schojo, a dance drama, The Kairn of Korwidwen and Walt Whitman’s Salut au Monde, a dramatic ballet. The last two were presented at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where interesting experiments in music and the drama have been made by the Misses Lewisohn.
Griffes was a native of Elmira, New York, and his first studies were made with Miss Mary S. Broughton, who recognized her young pupil’s unusual talent and took him to Germany for study. His composition work was done with Humperdinck, and Rüfer, and from 1907 until his death he taught music at Hackley, a boys’ school in Tarrytown, New York.
Lawrence Gilman, American critic, says of him: “He was a poet with a sense of comedy.... Griffes had never learned how to pose—he would never have learned how if he had lived to be as triumphantly old and famous as Monsieur Saint-Saëns or Herr Bruch or Signor Verdi.... It was only a short while before his death that the Boston Symphony Orchestra played for the first time (in Boston) his Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan ... and the general concert-going public turned aside ... to bestow an approving hand upon this producer of a sensitive and imaginative tone-poetry who was by some mysterious accident, an American!... He was a fastidious craftsman, a scrupulous artist. He was neither smug nor pretentious nor accommodating. He went his own way,—modestly, quietly, unswervingly ... having the vision of the few....”
Emerson Whithorne (1884) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and studied there and in Europe. After writing some forty songs and compositions in Oriental and European fashion, he has given us in his New York Days and Nights, a group of piano pieces in which are cleverly pictured Times Square, Hudson River ferry boats, Trinity Church chimes, etc. His latest work is a ballet, Sooner and Later, written with Miss Irene Lewisohn for the Neighborhood Playhouse, in which they have combined the primitive and the very modern in an original and pictureful manner.
When Walter Damrosch took the New York Symphony Orchestra on tour in Europe, Albert Spalding (1888, Chicago) went along as joint soloist with John Powell, playing his violin concerto. Besides this, Spalding has written many small pieces for violin, other orchestral and piano works, and a string quartet played (1924) by the Flonzaley Quartet. Spalding ranks with the great violinists of the world.
Three other violinists showing talent as composers are Edwin Grasse (1884), who in spite of the handicap of blindness, has composed some charming violin pieces, violin sonatas and string quartets; Samuel Gardner, who has written orchestral works, chamber music and short violin pieces; and Cecil Burleigh, short poetic pieces for violin and for piano and a violin concerto.
To encourage the composing and appreciation of high class American composition, ten American composers formed an association, the American Music Guild. The members are Marion Bauer, Chalmers Clifton, Louis Gruenberg, Sandor Harmati, Charles Haubiel, Frederick Jacobi, A. Walter Kramer, Harold Morris, Albert Stoessel and Deems Taylor.
Albert Stoessel (1894, St. Louis) is professor of music at New York University, conductor of the New York Oratorio Society, of the New York Symphony concerts at Chautauqua, N. Y., of the Worcester Festival and composer of chamber music and orchestral works.
Deems Taylor (1885, New York) is musical critic of the New York World, and the composer of songs and orchestral works (Through the Looking Glass Suite) and he has written much choral and incidental music for plays and motion pictures. One of his most graceful works is the ballet in The Beggar on Horseback. His opera The King’s Henchman was given at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1927. The book is by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
A. Walter Kramer (1890, New York) is a critic and writer on musical subjects, composer of many songs that have made his name familiar, orchestral works, a Rhapsody for violin and orchestra, pieces for violin, organ and piano, and a symphonic tone poem on Masefield’s Tragedy of Nan.
Harold Morris (1889, Texas) has never written little pieces, but has jumped into classical forms which he treats in a most modern way, in piano sonatas, a violin sonata, a trio, quartet, a concerto for piano and orchestra, and a tone poem on a Tagore text. He has studied only in America.
Frederick Jacobi (1891, San Francisco), had his latest work, a symphony, performed in 1924; he has also written a string quartet on Indian themes, songs with orchestra, short pieces and orchestral tone poems in all of which his gift of poetic expression is uppermost.
Chalmers Clifton (1889, Jackson, Miss.), is conductor of an orchestra which has as object the training of young orchestra players, a much needed addition to American musical education. He has written some chamber music and music for a pageant.
Sandor Harmati (1894), Hungarian by birth, founded the Lenox String Quartet and has composed several string quartets and orchestral works. He has taken numerous prizes for his compositions and is now conductor of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra.
Charles Haubiel (1894, Delta, Ohio), has composed works in the classical form and is teacher of piano and theory.
Marion Bauer (1887) was born in Walla Walla, Washington. She has written 30 songs, 20 piano pieces, two violin sonatas, a string quartet, and a work for chamber music orchestra, and choruses. She writes and lectures on music, and is Asst. Professor at New York University.
A few years ago Edward MacDowell was one of the founders of an Academy in Rome for American students on the principle of the Roman prize of the Paris Conservatory. Several of the young prize-winners have profited by their visit to the ancient city of culture where they are living and working with funds provided by the Academy. Unfortunately the music fellowship does not admit women! Among those to enjoy this advantage are Leo Sowerby (1895, Grand Rapids, Michigan) who has written a piano concerto and a double piano concerto, also a work called Synconata in syncopated rhythms which has been played by Paul Whiteman and many other compositions in large and small forms; Howard Hanson (1896, Wahoo, Nebraska) who is now director of the Eastman School of Music at Rochester, New York, and has written a number of orchestral and chamber music works; and Wintter Watts, the composer of many beautiful art songs and an orchestral tone poem, Young Blood.
“What are discords?” was asked of Leo Ornstein (1895, Russia). “I can not tell,” he answered. “Somewhere there is a law of harmony.... What it is I can not tell. Only I know that under certain conditions ... I hear it, I get color impressions.... If some of the tones are gray, somber, violent is that my fault?... In a word, I am not concerned with form or with standards of any nature.” This is the young composer’s declaration of independence, and in his early compositions he has lived up to it! One of his piano works, Wildmen’s Dance, goes back to primitive man for his inspiration and wild rhythms. He is original and daring as few Americans have ever been. His last work was a piano concerto played by him with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. He has written sonatas for piano, for ’cello and violin, besides many piano pieces, which he plays well, as he is an exceptional pianist.
Although he has been in America since childhood, his early life in Russia, in which he suffered the terrors of the pogroms (the massacres of the Jews), is reflected in his work. His training was under the direction of Bertha Tapper and Percy Goetschius.
A gifted young modernist whose orchestral and chamber works are often played by important organizations, is Aaron Copland (1898), pupil of Rubin Goldmark and Nadia Boulanger, of Paris. He received (1925) the first Guggenheim Fellowship in Music.
Henry Eichheim, of Boston, has had many performances of his colorful Chinese and Japanese impressions. Carl Ruggles is an independent thinker and composer, experimenting in many combinations of harmonies and instruments. Two extremists, who have not yet proven the value of their ideas and whose works must be regarded as experiments are Henry Cowell of California and George Antheil who lives in Paris. Sometimes, however, out of the wildest experiment comes something that may make music grow.
There are many composers who are well known not for symphonies and chamber music but for songs. There are so many that we can list but a few: Alexander Russell, R. Huntington Woodman, Carl Deis, William Arms Fischer, Charles Fonteyn Manney, Clayton Johns, Sidney Homer, Charles Gilbert Spross, Oley Speaks, Louis Campbell-Tipton, Philip James, William C. Hammond, G. Bainbridge Crist, Marshall Kernochan, Eastwood Lane, Richard Hammond, Harry Osgood, Charles B. Hawley, Adolph Martin Foerster, Richard Hageman, Edward Ballantine, Clough Leighter, Victor Harris, Isidore Luckstone, Percy Lee Atherton, John Beach, Paolo Gallico, Arthur Bergh, Morris Class, Walter Morse Rummel, Blair Fairchild, Rudolph Ganz (Swiss-American), Eugen Haile (German-American), Frank La Forge, Harold Vincent Milligan, Timothy Spelman, Edward Horsman, Tom Dobson, Oscar G. Sonneck. Mr. Sonneck (1873–1928) was less known as a musicianly composer, than as a musicologist whose vast knowledge made him invaluable as the first librarian of the music division of the Library of Congress in Washington (1902–1915). His books form an important addition to musical Americana. He was editor of the Musical Quarterly, and secretary of the Beethoven Association.
Many who are making music grow in America were born in Europe and while they may not be American composers, they are composers in America, and most of them have become American citizens.
Ernest Bloch, born in Geneva, Switzerland (1880), has been here since 1916, when the Flonzaley Quartet played his String Quartet. Owing to his Jewish descent his work shows an Oriental strain rather than Swiss national feeling. Among his important orchestral works are Jewish Poems, Psalms, a symphony, Israel, Schelomo, for ’cello and orchestra, a prize symphonic rhapsody, America, and a Concerto Grosso for strings. He took the Coolidge prize with his Viola Suite, and has also a violin sonata and a piano quintet. He has taught in New York, Cleveland and San Francisco. A pupil, Ethel Leginska, the English pianist and orchestral conductor, has composed an interesting string quartet, piano pieces and works for orchestra.
Percy Aldridge Grainger, born in Melbourne, Australia (1882), appeared as a pianist at the age of ten and has never stopped since! His mother was his first teacher and later he was a pupil of Busoni and intimate friend of Grieg, whose concerto he played upon his first American appearance (1915). During the World War he became naturalized and served in the American army. As composer he is unique, being self-taught, and although knowing the compositions of all the great masters, he goes to folk music for his themes and ideas, and has become an authority on British and Scandinavian folk music, and is collecting music of the American Indian and the Negro.
Among Grainger’s best known pieces are: Molly on the Shore, Colonial Song, Shepherd’s Hey, Irish Tune from County Derry, Country Gardens and Turkey in the Straw, all folk-melodies around which he has woven most fascinating harmonies, and has brought back the old songs in modern dress. In the spring of 1925 he gave two concerts which he called, with true Grainger originality, “Room Music” instead of chamber music.
Carl Engel, although born in Paris (1883), and educated in France is an American citizen and the director of the Music Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. Engel has written in addition to essays in delightful style, a Tryptich (a violin sonata in three movements), and enchanting songs, marking him a lover of modern harmony.
Two Frenchmen in New York, Carlos Salzedo, one of the world’s leading harpists, and Edgar Varese are foremost among the innovators, bringing to the public through their own compositions and the work of the International Composers’ Guild, the latest styles in music. They hand the public the new works of the most extreme composers before the ink is dry on the manuscript. Most of these are composed in dissonance or so-called cacophony (from two Greek words kakos,—bad; phono,—sounds). Through the efforts of these men, the League of Composers, and the Pro Musica Society (E. Robert Schmitz, founder and president), many present day compositions are heard in America.
Lazare Saminsky, a Russian, choirmaster at Temple Emanu-El, New York, has written several symphonies and a chamber opera, Gagliarda of a Merry Plague. He has made a deep study of Hebrew music.
Kurt Schindler, (Berlin, 1882), first conductor of the New York Schola Cantorum, a chorus, is an authority on Russian, Spanish and Finnish folk music, of which he has made many collections. He has also written art songs and choruses.
Leopold Godowsky, born in Russia (1870), one of the greatest living pianists, has written much for piano and made many arrangements.
Among the world famous violinists, several living in America, Fritz Kreisler (1875), Mischa Elman (1892) and Efrem Zimbalist (1889), have added to violin literature, arrangements of piano pieces and songs, as well as a few original compositions. Kreisler, with Victor Jacobi, wrote the music for the light opera Apple Blossoms.
America has been fortunate in its patrons of music who like the Esterhazys and Lobkowitzs of old have advanced music by founding and maintaining orchestras, music schools, chamber music, festivals and prize competitions. Among these are Henry Lee Higginson (1834–1919), Boston Symphony; Harry Harkness Flagler, New York Symphony; W. A. Clark, Los Angeles Philharmonic; George Eastman, Rochester Symphony and Eastman School of Music; Juilliard Musical Foundation, Mrs. Edward Bok, Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; the Edward J. de Coppet (1855–1916), the Flonzaley Quartet; Carl Stoeckel, festivals at Norfolk, Connecticut; Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim and Mr. and Mrs. Murry Guggenheim, summer concerts by Edwin Franko Goldman’s Concert Band; Mrs. Elizabeth Shurtleff Coolidge, Berkshire Chamber Music Festivals. Also the American Society for the Publication of Chamber Music, the National Music League, the Walter Naumberg prize, the National Federation of Music Clubs, the League of Composers, the National Bureau for the advancement of Music, and many music schools and settlements have helped to make music grow.
It is not out of place to include here Arthur P. Schmidt (1846–1921) of Boston as a patron of music, for by his devotion to American composers and the faith with which he published their works as early as 1876 has made music grow. Under this head we must also include Gustav Schirmer (1829–1893) and Oliver Ditson (1811–1888).
Besides the orchestras in Boston, New York and Chicago, of which we have already told you, many new ones have been formed to the advancement of music in America: Philadelphia, (Leopold Stokowski, conductor); Detroit, (Ossip Gabrilowitsch); San Francisco, (Alfred Hertz); Cincinnati, (Fritz Reiner); Los Angeles, (Arthur Rodzinsky); St. Louis, (Guest Conductors); Cleveland, (Nikolai Sokoloff and Rudolph Ringwall); Rochester, (Eugene Goossens); Syracuse, (Vladimir Shavitch); Omaha, (Sandor Harmati); Portland, Oregon, (Willem van Hoogstraten); Minneapolis, (Henri Verbrugghen); State Symphony Orchestra, New York City, founded by Josef Stransky, (Emo von Dohnanyi and Alfredo Casella, in the season of 1925–26); and the American Symphony Orchestra composed entirely of Americans under Howard Barlow, founder and conductor; the Young Men’s Symphony Orchestra (Paul Henneberg), founded by the late Alfred Lincoln Seligman with Arnold Volpe, conductor; American Orchestral Society, (Chalmers Clifton). (See page 514.)
Besides the orchestras mentioned, the symphony orchestras of the motion picture houses all over the country are doing a very great service by the excellent music and the fine performances given to millions of people every day.
Among orchestras which helped to build love of music in this country were the Russian Symphony Orchestra (Modest Altschuler), the Volpe Symphony Orchestra (Arnold Volpe), and the People’s Symphony Concerts (F. X. Arens), all of which are out of existence.
Within the last few years the desire for music in the summer time has led to many open air concerts and operas. Of these the concerts of the Philharmonic Orchestra in the Lewisohn Stadium, those in the Hollywood Bowl (Los Angeles, California), Willow Grove, Pa., the Goldman Concert Band, playing on the Campus of New York University and in Central Park are the most widely known.
Ravinia Park which provides one of the most magnificent opera companies possible to assemble makes a delightful summer night playground for Chicago people.
We regret that opera has not kept pace with the symphony orchestras in America. The Metropolitan Opera Company (New York City), the Chicago Opera Company (Chicago, Illinois), the San Francisco Opera Company (G. Merola’s new venture), the Philadelphia Civic and the American Opera Company are in operation (1929). There are many cities holding summer opera.
There is every reason to be proud of the growth of music in America, and New York City today is the great musical center of the world.
Since writing this chapter, New York has lost the State Symphony, The American Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Symphony Society. Walter Damrosch has turned his orchestral interests to the radio in order to enlarge the sphere of music education. Due to the merger of the Philharmonic Symphony, Ernest Schelling conducts the concerts for children.
There was once an old man who said: “I have lived to see the post-chaise give way to the locomotive but I cannot and will not accept the automobile!” What would he have said to the aeroplane? But this old man was not different from the people today, who seem unable to accept the new music and take it as a personal affront when they must listen to it. Like the automobile and the aeroplane, however, it is here, and is a part of the 20th century!
Nothing that lives stands still; there must be constant change and growth, or decay sets in. This is as true of music as it is of ourselves and the things around us. We have watched this process of change in music from prehistoric man to the 20th century; we have seen certain periods bursting with new ideas, works and forms; we have seen individuals tower above their fellows, marking epochs to which their names have become attached, like the Palestrinian era, the Bach era, and the Wagner period; and we are living in a moment of new ideas, works and forms, on which we cannot pass final judgment. Time alone must be the judge!
There is no point at which a period ends and a new one begins, for they overlap. We saw harmony grow out of polyphony; we saw the romantic Beethoven rise out of the classic Beethoven; in the romantic Chopin, we found the germs of impressionism (for definition, see page 483), and in Debussy’s impressionism, we see the breaking away from traditions into a new world of sound.
When we begin our music lessons, we are taught the musical alphabet,—the major scale, and then, the minor and the chromatic. So accustomed are we to these scales that we forget there was a time when they did not exist, and that new ones may be added, for they are not fixed for all time. There have been, as you know, the no-scale time, the pentatonic scale, the Greek modes, the Ecclesiastical or Church modes, the diatonic (major and minor) scale, the chromatic scale and the so-called whole-tone scale of Debussy. Beethoven and all the writers of the classic period used the diatonic scales which gave their works a definite tonality, that is, a home tone to which all the tones try to return. If, for example, you sing Yankee Doodle and stop before the last note, you feel very uncomfortable, because you have not sounded the home tone towards which all the tones are reaching. To the diatonic modes, Chopin and Wagner added a frequent use of the chromatic scale, which enriched music. In addition to diatonic and chromatic harmony, along came Debussy with his melodies in whole steps, and he also went back to the old Greek modes, using them in new and unexpected ways. Today we have all the past to draw upon and the composers are quick to take advantage of their rich inheritance and to add innovations.
In the 20th century the influences have come from Paris and Vienna,—Debussy and Schoenberg,—and later Stravinsky, the Russian. From the French has come a style of writing called polytonality, and from Vienna has come atonality. Don’t be afraid of these names for they are easily explained!
Courtesy of “Musical America.”
Arnold Schoenberg (Austrian).
Igor Stravinsky (Russian).
Claude Achille Debussy.
Courtesy of Roland Manuel.
Maurice Ravel.
Having said that tonality is a system in which all tones gravitate to a central tone (they all come home to roost!) it is not difficult to understand through the formation of the word poly—many, tonal—tones, that it means the use of several keys or tonalities at the same time, a counterpoint of key against key, or scale against scale, instead of note against note as it was in the Golden Age of Polyphony. Think of a cantus firmus in C major, and a counter melody in F♯ minor! (Between ourselves if skilfully handled, it has possibilities!) Ravel, Milhaud and Honegger know how to do it. Of course in the old system we change from key to key by means of a musical bridge called modulation, but in polytonality, the bridge is discarded, and the unrelated keys are heard piled on top of each other in layers.
Atonality, the system which Schoenberg and his followers use, is based on the chromatic scale of twelve half steps, on each one of which, chords (major and minor) may be built. This gives a more varied tonal paint-box than the old diatonic modes and the chromatic scale of former days, for it has now become an independent scale, and is not a part of the diatonic family.
Rhythm also reflects this age of unrest, and there have been decided changes which seem to return to the Middle Ages to the period of bar-less music writing. Instead of finding a piece written throughout in ¾ metre or ⁴⁄₄, it will be multi-rhythmic or poly-rhythmic. Multi-rhythmic means many shiftings from one rhythm to another; poly-rhythmic means a counterpoint of different rhythms all played at the same time. The English composer, Cyril Scott, uses multi-rhythms (where almost every measure changes its metre), and the French Florent Schmitt uses poly-rhythms, (for example, triplets against eighth notes in common time in the right hand, and ⁶⁄₈ metre in the left).
In the 15th and 16th centuries every one wrote motets, masses and madrigals; in the 17th century every one wrote suites and from this time on, opera; in the 18th, sonata form; in the 19th, sonatas and short romantic pieces. In the 20th century, no one form is used more than another, but all forms are undergoing changes as the composers reach out for freedom. This is the day of the large orchestra and of the small chamber music groups; symphonies have been replaced by the shorter symphonic poem, the tendency being for short forms. The four-hour music drama has given way to the one-act operas, and the dance drama or ballet as the Russian Diaghilev introduced it, is a 20th century development. The orchestral writing has changed greatly from the methods of Berlioz, Wagner and Strauss, for while they were masters of large mass effects, the composers of today are treating each instrument individually, in other words, they are using orchestration, poly-instrumentally! In chamber music, we have the string quartet, but in addition, many experiments are being made in combining instruments of unrelated families, like strings, wind, brass and percussion, as we find in Stravinsky’s chamber music.
It is often said that modern music has no melody, but it would be more correct to say that it has new melody, resulting from the attempt to push aside old forms, old harmonies, old rhythms; now we have arrived at a new era of polyphony, abounding in dissonance, that often is cacophonous rather than harmonious. We call this period the Polyformic era.
The men who ushered in this Polyformic era were Claude Debussy in Paris, Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna, and Alexander Scriabin in Russia. Richard Strauss, then at his height, is a good example of the overlapping of two periods, for he represents the classical German school of the 19th century, and has also pointed the way to the future. Igor Stravinsky, although younger, is one of the strongest factors in this new Renaissance which in scope and power reminds us of the rebirth of learning in the Middle Ages.
Another cause for the breaking away from old forms and conditions was the World War, which cut off the composers from the usual sources of musical supply, and forced them to develop their own ideas. This led to new groups arising in all parts of the world, who, rebelling against restraint, put wild experiments in the place of time honored customs.
Although Claude Achille Debussy (1862–1918) was almost forty when the 20th century came in, only in this century has his work been known and imitated. He was the direct outcome of a movement in France, after the Franco-Prussian War to develop French music along the lines started by Rameau and Couperin. This meant breaking away from the classic models of Beethoven and the dramatic music of Wagner. He exchanged the romantic style of Schumann and Chopin for a new impressionistic style.
Claude Debussy was born in St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. He attended the Paris Conservatory when he was eleven and studied with Marmontel, Lavignac and Guiraud. In 1884, with a cantata, L’Enfant Prodigue, he won the Prix de Rome which has started the career of so many French composers! During this, his first period, he wrote many lovely songs to poems by Verlaine and Baudelaire, the same impressionistic poets who inspired Charles Martin Loeffler in America; Suite Bergamasque, which includes the lovely Clair de Lune (Moonlight); the work which first brought him fame, L’Après-midi d’un Faune (Afternoon of a Faun); the beautiful string quartet; Chansons de Bilitis; Three Nocturnes for Orchestra, and the unique opera Pelleas and Melisande, which took him ten years to write! It was first given in the Paris Opéra Comique (1902).
In this opera, Debussy showed himself an innovator; it was a new kind of harmony and melody and never before had an opera like it been written. He gave an exact impression in music of Maeterlinck’s imaginative, mystic play. This is not a case where music drowns the meaning of the story but each word is colored and interpreted by the music. Debussy accomplished what the Camerata, Gluck and Wagner tried to do. By the time he wrote Pelleas and Melisande, his style was established and the proof of his high attainment is seen in his many imitators.
He worked very slowly and carefully and often destroyed what had taken him hours to write. Although an innovator, he was a deep student well grounded in the traditions of the past, a lover of Mozart and of the 18th century French writers, and when he seemingly broke all rules he gave something new in their place, not in the spirit of experiment but of sincere conviction.
He was surrounded by painters who like Claude Monet, Pissarro and Sisley did not paint actual things, but rather ideals of things; and by poets who like Verlaine, Gustave Kahn, Henri de Régnier, Pierre Louys and Stéphane Mallarmé did not write about things but rather the impression and images things gave them. He was absorbed and delighted by this non-photographic kind of art and translated into his music the veiled, mystic, idealistic, silver glimmering impressions that others put into paint and into words. This is Impressionism in art.
Musically, Debussy was influenced by Wagner, although he fought against him, and by some of the French composers in whose day he began to write, like Chabrier and Chausson. From Moussorgsky and other Russians he learned much about old modes, color effects and free expression; and with Erik Satie he talked over many musical problems, no doubt gaining much from this curious musical caricaturist and humorist. No matter how extreme and absurd Debussy’s music might have sounded twenty-five years ago to the people, they must have felt the mystic beauty and rare poetic charm of his work.
Someone, as a joke, put a Butterick pattern on a playerpiano roll as a music record, and it sounded so ridiculous that a composer hearing it, said: “Ah, that must be a Debussy piece!” But, you see this was twenty-five years ago!
No matter how revolutionary his piano pieces may have sounded, today they have become almost classics! The combination of poetic imagination, romanticism and impressionism are seen in the titles: Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the Water), L’Isle joyeuse (Happy Island), La Cathédrale engloutie (The Engulfed Cathedral), Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain).
For his daughter Claude, who died the year after her father, Debussy wrote six little piano pieces called the Children’s Corner. At the time he was writing them, little Claude used to drag the manuscripts around like a ragdoll, telling anyone she met, “These are my pieces, my father is writing them for me.” They were: Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum, Jimbo’s Lullaby, The Doll’s Serenade, The Snow Falls, The Little Shepherd and Golliwogg’s Cakewalk.
Among his later works are: Three symphonic sketches, La Mer (The Sea); the mystery play on a book by d’Annunzio, Le Martyre de St. Sebastien (The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian); a work for two pianos, Noir et Blanc (Black and White); a Sonata for Violoncello and Piano and twelve Studies for Piano.
In his Minstrels, Children’s Corner and General Lavine we find humor, a characteristic of 20th century music.
His music was vague and dreamy, and many composers were weakened rather than strengthened by trying to imitate him, for they had neither his genius nor his poetry. What he gave us was genuine, what others tried to copy was affected. His inventions such as the whole-tone scale and the pastel shades of music were so much a part of him that to use them today shows a lack of originality. But to those coming after him, who did not imitate him but worked out their own ways, he was a path-breaker of great value.
Maurice Ravel (1875) has lived in or near Paris most of his life, although he was born in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées. He was a student at the Conservatory under Gabriel Fauré and André Gédalge. He did not receive the Prix de Rome, perhaps because in his early works he already showed tendencies, which must have seemed revolutionary to musicians who had not yet grown accustomed to the innovations of Debussy. Ravel developed his ideas at the same time and under the same influences as Debussy. You will often hear that Ravel imitated Debussy, but it is less an imitation than a development along the same lines. Ravel, too, is an impressionist, a poet, a lover of veiled mystic effects, suggesting images rather than reproducing them. He has a keen rhythmic sense, perhaps a heritage of his birthplace, so close to the Spanish border.
None of the 20th century composers understands the orchestra better than Ravel as may be seen in his ballet Daphnis and Chloe, Rhapsodie Espagnole, his delightful Mother Goose and La Valse. His short opera, L’heure espagnole is full of charming music and splendid workmanship; his quartet written in 1902–3 is one of the finest examples of 20th century chamber music. For piano he has added a rich contribution in the Sonatina, Pavane for a Dead Child, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Les Miroirs (Looking Glasses), Gaspard de la Nuit, Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Tomb of Couperin), and his songs are very beautiful, including Histoires Naturelles (Natural History) and the Greek and Hebrew folk songs.
Ravel’s latest work is a revelation of all his abilities, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child’s Sorceries), a ballet in early form with modern music. It is a fantasy tale about a little boy, who will not do his lessons and in a fury injures a squirrel; the chairs, grandfather’s clock, frogs, fairies, sprites, squirrels, arithmetic dwarfs from the book he has destroyed, and tea-pots rebel and talk “at him,” until he binds up the wound of the squirrel. Into this, Ravel puts humor and even sentiment; he makes some of the chairs dance a minuet, other characters, a fox trot, and includes many old and new dances. He shows his magic handling of the orchestra and with extreme cleverness he even has the chair and the shepherdess sing a song in canon form and at the end all join in singing a fugue of “heavenly beauty.”
A follower of Ravel is Maurice Delage, who has written some very interesting songs and an orchestral work in which he is modern enough to imitate the sounds of an iron foundry!
An enthusiastic follower and friend of Ravel, is Roland Manuel, critic, writer and composer. He has never written what is called ultra (very) modern music, but everything he does, songs, chamber music, operetta, or ballet is marked with good taste, refinement and fine musicianship.
Other Frenchmen who have added to the 20th century style are Paul Dukas (1865), whose opera based on Maeterlinck’s Ariane et Barbe Bleue (Ariadne and Blue Beard) is second only to Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande; Vincent d’Indy (1851); Déodat de Sévérac (1873–1921), a writer of charming piano music whose impressionism reflects his love of Nature; Albert Roussel (1869), a pupil of the Schola Cantorum, whose Symphony and opera Padmavati show splendid talent; Florent Schmitt (1870) whose orchestral works and piano quintet are important; André Caplet (1880–1925), Charles Koechlin (1867), and Erik Satie (1869–1925).
Erik Satie is a riddle! Many are the heated discussions he has caused. His influence has been through what he has said, not what he has done. He was a caricaturist rather than a great composer, giving amusing titles to frivolous little pieces that show humor, in which one never knows whether he was laughing at or with the world. He loved short disconnected pieces and did much to make the young composer break away from long symphonic forms. He was a friend of Debussy, godfather to the Group of Six, and later to four “youngsters” who call themselves the “School of Arcueil” where Satie lived. His name should have been Satyr for with his pointed ears, eyebrows, and beard, he looked the part! Among his compositions are the ballets, Parades and Relache, and a dramatic aria with orchestra, Socrates.
The School of Arcueil, which has not yet proven its value is composed of Sauguet, Maxime Jacob, Desormières and Clicquet-Pleyel, who take pleasure in American jazz effects and have tried amusing experiments.
The World War reacted directly and indirectly upon a group of composers in France. Daring and brutality are the keynote of almost all the works of the years from 1914 to the present day. Debussy and Ravel with their poetic imagery did not express the feelings of the younger men, so they were pitilessly brushed aside by Les Jeunes (The Young) who overthrew the accepted forms for their own experiments.
These young composers did not band together like the “Russian Five,” but a French critic called them “The Six,” and the name stuck! They were not united by oneness of purpose or by ideal, they just happened to be friends and their music was often presented on the same programs and Erik Satie “who had been throughout thirty-five years the instigator of all audacity, the manager of all impudence” was their confidential adviser. The six are Germaine Tailleferre who played her piano concerto in America (1925) and has written two charming ballets; Louis Durey (1888); Georges Auric (1899), and François Poulenc (1899), both of whom have written ballets; Darius Milhaud (1892) and Arthur Honegger (1892).
Of these, Milhaud and Honegger are by far the most important. Milhaud has written ballets, chamber music and orchestral works with great fluency, often showing fine gifts and flashes of beauty. Born into this age of storm and stress, Milhaud has written brutally, but he is at heart a romantic composer and will probably change as we get further away from the war.
Honegger has had a sensational success with a work in oratorio form, Le Roi David (King David), and with a tone poem, Pacific—231, which is a type of locomotive. Honegger has broken from the Group, and has gone his own independent way, writing beautiful songs, orchestral and chamber music, and giving promise of being one of the most important composers of the period.
There are many other young French composers showing the different tendencies of the day, some are writing in classic form, some in romantic, but all are very independent. Some have wiped out the past and are trying to build anew, not realizing that they are building on sand, for there can be no skyscraper without a foundation deep enough to carry it!
Alexander Nicolai Scriabin (1871–1915) was born in Moscow, Russia, and was sent to a military school; instead of becoming an army officer, he turned to music, and was a pupil of Safonov, for several years conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and of Taneiev. His early works show the influence of Chopin and Arensky, but he soon developed a style of his own, that has made him one of the important composers of the beginning of the 20th century. An English writer, Eaglefield Hull, thinks that “the sonatas of Scriabin are destined in the future to occupy a niche of their own, together with the forty-eight Preludes of Bach, the thirty-two Sonatas of Beethoven, and the piano works of Chopin.” To explain in a few words the innovations of Scriabin would be impossible, but he broke away from fixed scales and tonality, and opened new roads to composers following. He used neither polytonality nor atonality, although his methods border on the latter. He built new chords, not major and minor as we know them, but in intervals of fourths. Here is a typical Scriabin chord which he used as we use a major triad (c-e-g) as the center around which to build a composition: