Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
NATIONALITY IN MUSIC: DOES IT EXIST IN AMERICA, OR ELSEWHERE?
/Wl ARK TWAIN tells a story of a cele-
brated actor who was absolutely con-
fident of the power of the human face to ex-
press the passions and emotions hidden in
the breast. He said the countenance could
disclose what was passing in the heart plainer
than the tongue could.
"Now," he said, "observe my face. What
does it express?"
. "Despair."
"Bah! it expresses peaceful resignation.
What does this express?"
"Rage!"
"Stuff! it means terror! This?"
"Imbecility!"
"Fool! It is smothered ferocity! Now
this?"
"Oh, perdition! Any ass can see it means
insanity!"
An attempt to place a melody within its
geographical limits is apt to be just as dis-
astrous, says John Philip Sousa in a contri-
bution to the Herald. Rhythmic qualities
are imitated in all popular forms, but the
universal language of music makes it ex-
tremely difficult to name its genesis. The
waltz may have been German in the begin-
ning, but it is common to all people to-day.
If we know a composition is by Beethoven,
we immediately associate it with the Ger-
man ; if by Verdi, we pronounce it Italian.
Wagner in writing "Tristan" no doubt
meant it to be Irish, but the world calls
it German. "Lucia di Lammermoor" is a
Scotch subject, and we applaud the melo-
dies given to the Scotch characters, but they
do not sing Scotch music as we understand
it when we hear "Annie Laurie" or "Auld
Robin Gray," but as Donizetti conceived it.
Nationality can be depicted by national
instruments, but not always successfully. If
we hear a bagpipe, or the simulation of a
bagpipe, we immediately associate the melo-
dy with the Scotch, but it is possible for a
bagpipe to play German or Italian melo-
dies as well as Scotch melodies. If we hear
the guitar, we associate sunny Spain with
it, but if the melody played should hap-
pen to be the Wedding March from "Lohen-
grin," we are amiss in our guess. Still na-
tional instruments with their characteristics
form the strongest basis to recognize melo-
dies, and, next to that, the association of
words. A song of the palm trees or the
cotton fields suggests the South, while one
of the sleighbells and snow suggests the
North. The third manner of placing the
home of a melody is by its harmonic struct-
ure, but that is sometimes as vague and un-
certain as to say that should you meet a
blonde in Spain she is a Swede, or a bru-
nette in Sweden she is a Spaniard. From
the melody itself it is impossible to tell its
birthplace.
A few years since the distinguished com-
poser Dvorak wrote a symphony which he
called "The New World," and in the final
movement of that most erudite composition
occurs a theme more than suggestive of
"Yankee Doodle." "Yankee Doodle" is no
more of the New World than Dvorak is him-
self. "Yankee Doodle" is old English, but
the composer knowing it was a popular tune
here, did not bother about its origin any
more than Southerners do about "Maryland,
My Maryland/' which is German.
Individuality and the genius of the com-
poser stand for everything. A nation gives
birth to a number of musical geniuses, who
tell their stories in their own separate ways,
and that nation stands out as a musical peo-
ple on account of the world beholding its
giants, just as a city gets a reputation as a
great religious centre on account of the num-
ber and height of its church steeples.
Looking down the corridors of time, music
that wins its way into the hearts of people
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA.
and becomes, in a way, typical of those peo-
ple is always the outcome of emotions and
longings common to the masses. The cheva-
lier d'industrie character of the early trou-
badours, battling one moment, love-making
the next, a devil-may-care for the morrow,
found its echo in the days of the Crusades,
in their songs depicting life as they made it.
Next to language itself, perhaps there is
nothing that is so markedly national as the
dances of the people; and the minor com-
posers exercise their genius in creating mel-
odies embodying the most fascinating
rhythms and intervals for these dances, which
the masters of music have not hesitated
to appropriate to their own use for aesthetic
treatment. In America the favorite rhythm
is unquestionably the march. First pic-
turing to the imagination the measured tread
of warrior hosts, it has gradually become
the favorite rhythm of our dance. And it
is natural that this should be, for the Amer-
icans are undoubtedly the most warlike peo-
ple on earth.
The nation, although it has no great stand-
ing army, no compulsory service, knows that
when danger threatens the valor and in-
trepidity of its sons, the resignation and self-
sacrifice of its daughters, stand ready to do
or die. We have fought many wars, but
they were brought on not by machinations
of the heads of our government, as so often
happens in the Old World, but by the war-
like spirit of the people. The barbaric splen-
dor of the march has incited the imagination
in war, and the rhythmic elan of the two-
step sets in motion millions of twinkling
feet in times of peace.
The foundation of all so-called national
schools is in its folk song, but it rests with
the individuality of the composer, his tech-
nical skill, his dramatic power, his ability to
develop the melodic type, to lift it into the
highest form of the beautiful. Whenever a
true composer ceases his apprenticeship as
an imitator and becomes a creator he is lost
to whatever school he may have been as-
signed during his imitative period, and his
music only becomes national when he, in
turn, is imitated by his disciples. If there
were absolutely national schools of music
then there would be no Wagnerian style or
Weberian style, nor would Schubert or
Schumann have been individuals standing
alone, and a composer like Mozart, who im-
itated in his earlier works the Italians, and
in his developed genius simply wrote him-
self. We hear so often that what Chopin
wrote was purely Polish, and that his com-
positions embodied a remembrance of his
youth and the thought of the unfortunate
situation of his unhappy fatherland, but an
authority just as high speaks of his com-
positions as "a faithful poetic revelation of
his enigmatic imagination," and we know
that the character of the Poles is as the rest
of the human family.
The history of the art shows that at the
beginning of music, as we understand it now.
(i. e., the abandonment of the ecclesiastical
modes and the changeable dominant to the
present form of minor and major with a
fixed dominant) the Low Countries were the
first to make an impress in musical art.
They were in turn followed by the Italians,
who, in their earlier compositions were guid-
ed almost entirely by the Dutch until they
had outgrown their swaddling clothes and
changed from imitators into creators. And
the same process has been brought about
and developed into what is known to-day as
the German school, which is simply a host
of composers who developed sufficiently to
tell their musical stories in their own way.
The early Austro-Germanic composers fol-
lowed in the prevailing style of the Italian
masters until they began to think for them-
selves, and so it will be in America. Our
composers in the higher forms are dominated
very largely at present by the forms used
by the master minds of Europe, but the light
is beginning to break in this, our Western
world. We have a few composers of the
higher forms who are departing from a
slavish imitation and are beginning to de-
part from tradition.
The man we need to fear the most here,
as no doubt other nations have had to, is
the technical fakir; the gentleman who scorns
the simpler and free rhythmic compositions
of the people, but who, for mercenary pur-
poses or undue vanity, writes something
which he imagines is great, but which is
lacking in charm of melody, and clothed
with a preponderance of dissonants and di-
minished sevenths. I recall one of this ilk
sending me a march with more changes of
harmony than one would find in an act of
the Trilogy, with a request that I play it
and make it popular. The harmonic treat-
ment of the theme showed as little sense as
would a summer girl going to a Sunday