Contemporary American Composers: Being a Study of the Music of This Country, Its Present; Conditions and Its Future, with Critical Estimates and; Biographies of the Principal Living Composers; and an; Abundance of Portraits, Fac-simile Musical Autographs, and; CompositionsHughes, Rupert
History
Contemporary American Composers: Being a Study of the Music of This Country, Its Present; Conditions and Its Future, with Critical Estimates and; Biographies of the Principal Living Composers; and an; Abundance of Portraits, Fac-simile Musical Autographs, and; Compositions
Hughes, Rupert
Composers -- United States -- Biography; Music -- United States -- History and criticism
A disciple of Dvorak's, both in advance and in retrospect, is Henry
Schoenefeld, who wrote a characteristic suite (op. 15) before the
Dvorakian invasion, and an overture, "In the Sunny South," afterward.
The suite, which has been played frequently abroad, winning the
praises of Hanslick, Nicode, and Rubinstein, is scored for string
orchestra. It opens with an overly reminiscent waltz-tune, and ends
conventionally, but it contains a movement in negro-tone that gives it
importance. In this the strings are abetted by a tambourine, a
triangle, and a gong. It is in march-time, and, after a staccato
prelude, begins with a catchy air taken by the second violins, while
the firsts, divided, fill up the chords. A slower theme follows in the
tonic major; it is a jollificational air, dancing from the first
violins with a bright use of harmonics. Two periods of loud chorale
appear with the gong clanging (to hint a church-bell, perhaps). The
first two themes return and end the picture.
The overture (op. 22) has won the high esteem of A.J. Goodrich, and
it seems to me to be one of the most important of native works, not
because of its nigrescence, but because of its spontaneity therein. It
adds to the usual instruments only the piccolo, the English horn, the
tambourine, and triangle and cymbals. The slow introduction gives
forth an original theme in the most approved and most fetching darky
pattern. The strings announce it, and the wood replies. The flutes and
clarinets toss it in a blanket furnished by an interesting passage in
the 'cellos and contrabasses. There is a choral moment from the English
horn, the bassoons, and a clarinet. This solemn thought keeps
recurring parenthetically through the general gaiety. The first
subject clatters in, the second is even more jubilant. In the
development a dance _misterioso_ is used with faithful screaming
repetitions, and the work ends regularly and brilliantly. There is
much syncopation, though nothing that is strictly in "rag-time;"
banjo-figurations are freely and ingeniously employed, and the whole
is a splendid fiction in local color. Schoenefeld's negroes do not
speak Bohemian.
His determined nationalism is responsible for his festival overture,
"The American Flag," based on his own setting of Rodman Drake's
familiar poem. The work opens with the hymn blaring loudly from the
antiphonal brass and wood. The subjects are taken from it with much
thematic skill, and handled artfully, but the hymn, which appears in
full force for coda, is as trite as the most of its kith.
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