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5745 results in Nineteenth-Century Music

Page 89 of 288

  • NCM volume 14 issue 2 Cover and Front matter

  • Journal:
    Nineteenth-Century Music Review / Volume 14 / Issue 2 / August 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    03 August 2017, pp. f1-f4
    • Article
      • You have access
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  • NCM volume 14 issue 2 Cover and Back matter

  • Journal:
    Nineteenth-Century Music Review / Volume 14 / Issue 2 / August 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    03 August 2017, pp. b1-b2
    • Article
      • You have access
    • PDF
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  • MacDowell, Liszt, and the Symphonic Tone Poem

  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 83-104

  • Summary

    The symphonic poem, as a genre, had a fitful beginning. As Hugh MacDonald notes, it grew out of such programmatic overtures as Beethoven's Leonore, and Berlioz's Rob Roy and Le Roi Lear overtures. He suggests that Mendelssohn's Die schöne Melusine and Die Hebriden are “direct prototypes of the Lisztian symphonic poem.” While some of Mendelssohn's overtures have programs, they are regarded primarily as concert overtures. And as we now know, the first versions of many of Liszt's symphonic poems were conceived as overtures as well; the final versions of most of the symphonic poems, as well as the Faust and Dante symphonies, date from his Weimar years, 1848 to 1858.

    Because Liszt was seen as a radical avant-garde composer, the symphonic poem genre was not, in general, favored by other German composers. This attitude was not as pronounced outside of Germany. The Bohemian, Bedřich Smetana, who met Liszt in 1857, was one of the first composers to write symphonic poems. His early pieces, Richard III and Hakon Jarl, are based on literary subjects by Shakespeare and Schiller, respectively. His famous cycle of six poems, Má vlast, was completed in 1879. Modest Musorgsky's A Night on Bald Mountain (1867), Alexander Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880) and Mili Balakirev's Tamara (1882) represent the genre in Russia. Camille Saint-Saëns, who in his early years was part of Liszt's circle, completed four symphonic poems in the 1870s, the most famous being the Rouet d'Omphale, op. 31 (1872), and Danse macabre, op. 40 (1875). César Franck (Les Éolides, 1876) and Vincent D'Indy (La Forêt enchantée, op. 8 [1878]), also essayed the genre with some success. In the United States, William Henry Fry (1813-1864) experimented with the symphonic poem idea in a number of works during the 1850s and early ‘60s. Although Fry referred to them as symphonies, they are single- movement works with programs. Works like Santa Claus (1853), The Breaking Heart (1853), and Niagara (1854) are evidence of Fry's knowledge of, and interest in, European avant-garde music.

    In New York City, Zukunftsmusik (the music of Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz) was well represented at orchestral concerts.

  • Historical Concerts in New York City, 1860-1876: An Approximation

    • By F. Javier Albo, School of Music of Georgia State University in Atlanta
  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 31-52

  • Summary

    When Edward MacDowell was born in New York City, on December 18, 1860, the city's population exceeded 800,000. By April 1876, when he, encouraged by his teacher, Cuban-born pianist Pablo Desvernine (1823–1910), moved to France, expecting to be admitted at the Paris Conservatoire, the population—old-time city residents as well as new immigrants, mostly from Britain, Ireland (like MacDowell's ancestors), Germany, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia— had soared well above 1.5 million. In the course of those fifteen years, the spectrum of New York's musical life became as culturally diversified as its residents. No matter how “secluded” in the comfort of bourgeois surroundings the young MacDowell might have grown up, he could not have remained unaware of the bustling variety of musical stimuli the city offered: indirectly but unquestionably, that multi-cultural environment molded him as an individual and as a composer.

    In the 1860s, orchestral music in New York City was mainly provided by the Philharmonic Society and the orchestra led by Theodore Thomas (founded in 1842 and 1862, respectively). Opera reigned supreme, with various companies offering, often simultaneously, Italian, German, and French opera throughout the musical season and beyond. Chamber music also thrived, propelled by the formation of the Mason and Thomas Chamber Music Soirées in 1855. The “historical concert,” a type of musical event closely related to another novel format—the piano recital—which aimed to unite entertainment and enlightenment, emerged in New York around the time MacDowell was born; by the time he left, it had become an established format.

    By mid-century, a historical concert (or recital, for both terms were interchangeable) was a type of musical event in which a number of works from the past, usually presented in a reasoned, chronological fashion, were performed by a solo pianist, or by a pianist and a singer or, more rarely, by a pianist and another instrumentalist. By contrast, the purpose of the dominant type of concert at the time, the so-called “miscellaneous concert,” was to entertain; typically, programs featured a variety of genres and timbres, including arias and ensembles from operas, art and popular songs, and instrumental ensembles and solos. A sacred piece and—depending on the budget—an orchestral work or two might also be included.

  • Wagnerian Influence and Motives in the Works of Edward MacDowell

  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 105-128

  • Summary

    That MacDowell knew Richard Wagner's compositions intimately and admired his achievement is shown by references made to specific works in his Critical and Historical Essays and in the musical material he incorporated into his own compositions. In his essay “Declamation in Music,” he offered a concise analysis of Wagner's accomplishment:

    The vital principle of Wagner's art was that he not only made startlingly vivid pictures in his music, but that he made the people in these pictures actually walk out of the frame and directly address the audience…. his orchestra forms a kind of pictorial and psychological background from which his characters detach themselves and actually speak. If they speak falsely, the ever present orchestra … unmercifully tears away the mask …

    Reading MacDowell's words some time ago awakened me to the possibility of connections and sent me in search of evidence. This article identifies for the first time passages in which there are actual musical quotations and points to other areas where Wagner's music is suggested. In the compositions with recognizable motives, Mac- Dowell usually treats the first statements as quotations or paraphrases, subsequently using the small idea as the basis for a passage whose origins are submerged in the total musical fabric.

    In addition to the direct quotations, MacDowell seems to have absorbed some general features of Wagner's style:

  • Melodies are constructed of motives, not necessarily tuneful, creating melodic areas of a declamatory rather than lyrical nature, described by Rey M. Longyear as a: “Less ‘melodic’ but highly significant … type of instrumental melodic writing that is abstract and motivic rather than tuneful and phraseoriented; … The most striking continuations of this kind of abstract design, as opposed to tune, are to be found as leitmotives in Wagner's … music dramas.”

  • At times, harmony emanates from the polyphonic fabric of related motives or tonal cells.

  • Shifting sonorities, generated at points of expressive intensity, are often altered chords, and upper-partial chords or sevenths, frequently favoring the half-diminished seventh chord, at times dissolving into areas of non-functional harmony. For MacDowell, entire sections might be said to grow from exploration of a single harmony.

  • “On Sundays there was the music …” George Whitefield Chadwick between symphony and organ

    • By Marianne Betz, Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig
  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 129-142

  • Summary

    On Sundays there was the music in church. And a grander thing than a churchly cadence the boy's imagination could not grasp. Solemn musical debauches were the family reunions at Thanksgiving or Christmas, when uncles, aunts and cousins—some of whom were the possessors of excellent voices—sang praises to the Lord in rich and vibrant harmony. These early experiences left their mark on the boy. His bent for music would not tolerate ignoring.

    Carl Engel, chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, wrote these words in 1924, in an article on the 70-year-old Boston composer George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931). Engel's biographical essay is not only an appraisal of the composer whom the author regarded as mainly a “symphonic composer.” It is simultaneously a reflection of New England's music history when the biographical data of the composer is integrated into its regional context. And even more: it appreciates Chadwick as part of a trio with Edward Mac- Dowell (1860–1908), and Horatio Parker (1853–1919), as he was often seen, usually combined with the question of who was the most American, the most prolific, or the most artistic of the three. It appreciates Chadwick, the least star-like, as the one who probably had the strongest ties to his cultural surrounding—ties which at times bound him down.

    Chadwick was born in Lowell, MA, in 1854. His father, who had advanced from a millwright to an insurance agent, was a selfmade man. His youngest son George would start as an assistant organist and assistant music professor and end as a conservatory director and one of the most important symphonic composers of his generation. About his childhood musical experiences Chadwick noted in his “Memoirs” that they consisted of “running after hand organs or funerals with a band,” thus the “Dead March” from Handel's Saul became the first piece of classical music he knew. In 1859 the family moved from Lowell to Lawrence, MA. The elder brother Fitts Henry, who himself played the organ at church, noticed Chadwick's vigorous interest in music and began to give him his first piano lessons.

  • Edward MacDowell and the Society of Friends

  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 13-30

  • Summary

    The December 2010 MacDowell Symposium at Elizabethtown College opened with two papers on the composer's family background. The late Dr. Margery Morgan Lowens—in the last public paper of her distinguished professional career—traced the influence of Mac- Dowell's mother in broadening his worldview beyond the Quaker home where he was born. The second paper was my own essay on the Quaker faith of his father's family and their connections to the Society of Friends. These two papers were in dialogue with each other, showing the complex interaction of the dual influences on MacDowell's personality. Though Dr. Lowens’ declining health prevented her from revising her essay for inclusion in the present volume, the influence of her ideas pervades my discussion of MacDowell's Quaker heritage. Like other biographers, she followed the lead of Marian MacDowell in pointing out that Edward MacDowell was not a religious man and showed no adult interest in the faith of his father, gravitating instead to his mother's friends and interests. In this essay I will not dispute those assessments, but rather, I will look for evidence of how his early years in the 15th Street Quaker Meeting did affect his life and music. I will make the case that Quaker values and practices had a subtle, if unacknowledged, influence on this complex individual and his unique musical style.

    Quaker belief and practice

    The Society of Friends (or “Quakers,” as they were popularly known) arose in England during the turbulent period of civil wars in the late 1640s. Despite widespread persecution, the sect grew rapidly through the recruitment of disaffected members of other religious groups. In 1682, William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania as a “Holy Experiment” in religious tolerance, attracting a significant population of Quakers who spread to surrounding colonies in subsequent years. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, members of the Society of Friends played a significant role in movements for social justice in America, especially in education, women's suffrage, the Abolition movement, and prison reform. The nineteenth century saw several splits over questions of belief and practice, with the Hicksite branch, to which the McDowells belonged, representing the more liberal direction. The 15th Street Meeting House, where the family attended services, is still standing in mid-town Manhattan.

  • “No MacDowell, No Carreño”: Teresa Carreño's Contributions to the Dissemination of Edward MacDowell's Piano Music

  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 53-82

  • Summary

    On February 13, 1890 the virtuoso pianist Teresa Carreño performed the European premiere of MacDowell's First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic under Gustav F. Kogel. The news of the event reached MacDowell in Boston a few days later through a letter from Carreño in which she wrote excitedly about their great achievement:

    [A] big success you and I obtained last night and I want you to rejoice with me. Your concerto proved as heretofore as brilliant a success as can be wished for and I think I played more like a devil … than [like] an archangel. I was recalled amid cheers five times after it … I think we can feel proud. After the first movement the applause was like a storm, and … Kogel worked really to the best of his knowledge. After the Andante also a big sound of applause, and I tell you after the Finale, I thought the recalls would never cease. I had an immense house … and so you were heard by a large public of musicians and music lovers, as well as by all the critics.

    The success of this performance proved to be very significant for both MacDowell and Carreño. It was an affirmative step in MacDowell's international recognition as a composer. At the same time, it was a triumphant new beginning for Carreño, who in midlife was determined to gain a place in Europe among the first-rank pianists. The idea of performing MacDowell's Concerto came from Carreño herself, who proposed the work for the last of her three debut concerts in Berlin. Her manager, Hermann Wolff, did not consider it appropriate to launch Carreño's career in Germany with an unknown work by an American composer. The conductor, afraid of the conservatism of the Berlin public, did not welcome it either. But after the success she had had in her two previous concerts in Berlin, the pianist was able to stand up for her convictions. Her answer to the conductor and the manager was “no MacDowell, no Carreño,” and she got her way and played MacDowell.

  • Parallels in the Careers of Edward A. MacDowell and Chou Wen-chung

  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 163-194

  • Summary

    “It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”

    (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

    The careers of Edward MacDowell and Chou Wen-chung, though separated by more than half a century, frequently involved similar issues, among them: crossing national and cultural boundaries, professional involvement with the cities of Boston and later New York, and affiliations with Columbia University that—although they provided valuable opportunities for both composers—ultimately hindered their compositional activity. As we track questions relating to race, ethnicity, national identity, and intercultural dynamics, we can see a number of parallel challenges that both composers confronted, often with quite different results. As faculty of Columbia University, both men shouldered heavy responsibilities for designing and delivering the music curricula. Time commitments demanded by administration led to an appalling reduction of musical works during the years of their administrative activities. Interestingly, MacDowell's and Chou's ideas for planning students’ curricula and for designing departmental structures have important elements in common.

    “A time to be born”

    Consistent Inaccuracies in Data

    The parallel issues in the lives of Edward MacDowell and Chou Wen-chung commence at the times of the respective composers’ births. Chou's birth date, like MacDowell's, has been inconsistently reported during his lifetime. In MacDowell's case, his tombstone originally bore the incorrect birth year of 1861 but has since been corrected to read 1860. Apparently MacDowell himself allowed this piece of misinformation to be accepted as fact.

    In my biography of Chou Wen-chung, I note that, “according to reputable music dictionaries, Chou Wen-chung was born on May 16, June 29, and July 29, 1923. In his own curriculum vitae, Chou lists a fourth birth date, July 28, 1923.” The disparities here arise in part from the differences between the calendars used in Chinese and Western cultures. At the time of Chou's birth, the Chinese calendar consisted of twelve lunar months with intercalary months interpolated at regular intervals to balance the difference between the 354-day lunar year and the 365-day solar year. Chou was born in the fifth month of the year of the Boar; here is the source for a birthday in “May,” which, though it certainly is the fifth month of the Western calendar, is clearly not the fifth month of the Chinese calendar.

  • Introduction: MacDowell at 150

  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 1-12

  • Summary

    A composer's reputation is dependent on much more than his talent and inspiration. After his death, when he can no longer influence public perception directly, his critics and admirers shape that perception for him. In the introduction to his magisterial biography of Felix Mendelssohn, R. Larry Todd illustrates how such factors as anti-Semitism and anti-Victorianism can change perceptions of a composer's music in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Kate Hevner Mueller's study of the changing repertoires of American symphony orchestras demonstrates that popularity with conductors and audiences is by no means stable over time. Few composers vacillated more strongly between adulation and excoriation than MacDowell, and his meteoric rise and subsequent fall shed light on American musical aspirations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To set the stage for the essays in this collection, it will be useful to consider the reception history of his works from his period of greatest fame to his 150th birthday in 2010.

    Born in 1860 in New York City, MacDowell grew up in a Quaker family and pursued his early music studies with teachers from Latin America. MacDowell moved to Europe as a fifteen-year old to further his musical training, spending the next twelve years in France and Germany first as a student and then as a young professional. Initially he pursued a career as a concert pianist, but during his last four years in Germany, his time was devoted almost entirely to composition. In addition to numerous piano works, he published his first orchestral works at this time. In the summer of 1888, he and his wife Marian moved to Boston, where he reactivated his performing career, accepted students in piano and composition, and pursued his dream of achieving fame as a composer.

    The timing of his return home could not have been better. MacDowell had published a substantial number of piano, vocal, and orchestral works with major German publishing firms, and his music had been played by European orchestras. MacDowell's family friend Teresa Carreño was also influential in bringing his music before the public. To American concert promoters, MacDowell was ideal—a native-born American whose works had already been given the stamp of European approval.

  • MacDowell vs. Butler: The “Idealist” Professor and the Administrator of “Materialism”

  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 143-162

  • Summary

    On Wednesday, February 3, 1904, the Evening Post broke the story that Edward MacDowell was abruptly resigning from his position as the head of the music department at Columbia University, citing his inability to “obtain the reorganization of work which he thinks necessary.” The story, which ran with bold headlines on the front page of the evening paper, included a transcript of an interview with MacDowell, which had presumably taken place earlier that day. In the interview, MacDowell faulted the University administration, specifically President Nicholas Murray Butler, for refusing to put into effect his ideas for developing a Fine Arts division at Columbia. He called the study of the fine arts at the University “poor” and lamented that the majority of graduates from the school were not even aware what constituted the fine arts. He declined to speak further on the subject until his resignation and a detailed report of his criticisms could be formally presented to the Board of Trustees. Butler, however, did not seem interested in the composer's report. “Professor MacDowell's declarations,” the article reported, “were laid before President Butler this afternoon…. The President declared that he did not consider them important, and had nothing to say.” The story quickly spread from coast to coast: Butler and Columbia were put on the defensive, and in turn, MacDowell was forced to respond repeatedly in the press. “The Columbia Wars,” as some would later refer to the newspaper sparring, continued for weeks and negatively impacted both MacDowell's and the University's images. The controversy also reignited a debate concerning music in university curricula, offering an important glimpse into the development of music as an academic subject.

    Eight years earlier, in 1896, MacDowell had been appointed the first professor of music at Columbia University. At the time of the appointment, the university lauded him as “the greatest musical genius this country has produced.” That spring, MacDowell began building the music program, designing courses in history, theory, and composition as well as establishing the University Orchestra, directing multiple choral ensembles, and undertaking other administrative tasks.

Very Good for an American
  • Essays on Edward MacDowell
  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017
  • This collection of essays explores topics of relevance to understanding Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) and his music. At the height of his career, MacDowell was widely recognized as America's leading composer. He had come of age during an era when the infrastructure of concert music in the United States was expanding rapidly, as outlined in Javier Albo's description of historical concerts in New York during his childhood. MacDowell came from an unusual background that resulted from the interaction between his father's Quaker roots, described in Douglas Bomberger's essay, and his mother's ambitious goals. He benefited from the early advocacy of his mother's best friend, the Venezuelan pianist Teresa Carreño, whose support of MacDowell is explored in Laura Pita's essay. He studied for two years in Paris and then spent a decade in Germany, studying with Liszt's pupil Raff and establishing his career. The crucial influences of Wagner and Liszt on MacDowell's style are explored in essays by Francis Brancaleone and John Graziano. He lived in Boston from 1888 to 1896, during which time he was in close contact with George Whitefield Chadwick, an American contemporary whose career as an organist is examined in an essay by Marianne Betz. MacDowell's growing body of works for piano and orchestra earned him the reputation of America's most important young composer, which led to his appointment as first professor of music at Columbia University in 1896. His contributions as a teacher were ended after eight years by a public dispute with President Nicholas Murray Butler, explored in Michael Joiner's essay. Columbia continued to feel the tension of the issues raised by MacDowell and Butler for generations, as demonstrated in Mark Radice's discussion of Chou Wen-chung's experience on the faculty from the 1960s through the 1990s. After MacDowell's death at the age of forty-seven, his widow Marian developed their Peterborough, NH, farm into an artists' colony that is still prominent today. Robin Rausch's essay, richly illustrated with photos from the Library of Congress, shows how she gained support for her efforts through summer pageants.

  • American Bayreuth: The 1910 Peterborough Pageant and the Genesis of the MacDowell Colony

  • Edited by E. Douglas Bomberger
  • Book:
    Very Good for an American
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    18 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 July 2017, pp 195-212

  • Summary

    By the summer of 1905, it was clear that Edward MacDowell was seriously ill. In July he signed over power of attorney to his wife Marian. He worried increasingly about the fate of their beloved farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire. For some time he had been thinking about inviting other creative artists to work there, so that they might enjoy the same ideal working conditions that had inspired his own best work. He envisioned a smaller-scale American Academy, like the one in Rome recently founded by his colleague, architect Charles McKim.

    Now facing his mortality, MacDowell obsessed over this idea. Marian MacDowell consoled her husband with the promise that she would make it happen. She would turn their home into a creative retreat, where artists could work undisturbed in a community of their peers. She wasted no time turning her intentions into action.

    In the fall of 1905 a group of MacDowell's former students and supporters met in New York City to form the MacDowell Club of New York, which would become a vibrant force in the cultural life of the city. At its inaugural meeting on October 29, Marian MacDowell laid out her plan to offer their Peterborough property to the organization. The following year the Mendelssohn Glee Club, which MacDowell had directed from 1896 to 1898, started a fund to help pay for the care of the ailing composer. From May 1906 until the composer's death in January 1908, a specially appointed committee solicited donations from around the country. The Edward MacDowell Fund of the Mendelssohn Glee Club paid Marian a small monthly stipend and covered other expenses, including Edward's funeral costs. When the fund was closed in March 1908, the remaining balance of close to $30,000 was offered to Marian. She refused to accept it for herself, insisting it be used to support the colony.

    In 1907, the MacDowell Club of New York and the Mendelssohn Glee Club joined forces to establish the Edward MacDowell Memorial Association for the purpose of taking legal possession of the MacDowells’ Peterborough property and administering the funds to support it. “I was wise enough to realize that there had to be something tangible for people to have [in] back of a venture so that they could believe in what we were trying to do,” Marian said.

Page 89 of 288