22
March 2, 1922
MUSICAL COURIER
"Danny Deever,” Damrosch; “Mandalay,” Speaks; “Spirit Flower,” Tipton; “O Promise Me,” De Koven; “End of a Perfect Day,” Bond; “Rosary,” “Mighty Lak a Rose,” “Venice,” Nevin; Foster’s songs, etc., etc.
Now, what I want is, to place these facts before the American public in concrete form. I am tired of^ hearing it said that there is no American school, and I believe that you, as a publisher, will be able to contradict these statements with an authority that no mere observer possesses. I am asking you, therefore, to give me a list of pieces by American composers which have had a steady sale for a number of years. This does not mean “best sellers’׳ that have sold for a short time and then practically disappeared. It means the good old steadies that keep on selling year after year and which show no evidence of losing their hold on the public.
Results
Results have been a little disappointing from a statistical point of view because it soon came to light that there was only a very limited sale of old standards like the Foster songs. We know that they are sung, and we know that they have lasted better than any other of our folk songs, but there is little actual sale because, probably, everybody knows them or can find them in “collections.” “Collections” are rather troublesome. They contain all sorts of songs from all sorts of sources, native and foreign, and it is impossible to guess what people use. It may be said, also, that schools and school teachers cause a great deal of confusion by teaching children all sorts of music, native and foreign, without consulting their taste. John Grolle, of the Philadelphia Music School Settlement, tells me that children have a very distinct taste differing with various nationalities, and that pupils can only be interested and held by consulting their taste and giving them the sort of things they like. But public school teachers and some private teachers fail to perceive this or to consider it.
However, there still remains the music-loving public that wants what it wants and is guided by its taste pure and simple. It may be induced to buy a best seller for a short time by means of clever and persistent advertising, but in the long run it accepts what it really likes and discards what it does not. We will take up this material at random:
J. Fischer & Brother write: “A word of explanation before making any recommendation: Previous to not so many years ago our sole attention was given to Catholic church and organ music, which class cannot, I feel inclined to believe, receive any attention in Mr. Patterson’s research work. Then also, this is of importance: While I cannot make any recommendation from our secular list of numbers that happen to have enjoyed a sale covering a period of twenty years, I will do the next best thing and enumerate such compositions which I know will live as a result of the healthy showing they have made to date. A publisher can fairly well judge as to what is going to live or just happens to be in vogue for the time being.” Here is the list: (Piano solo) “Five American Dances,” Eastwood Lane; “Secret d’Amour,” Bruno Oscar Klein; “Intermezzo,” op. 40, No. 1, and “A Fragment,” “When the Sun Goes Down,” A. Walter Kramer. (Songs) “The Bitterness of Love” and “Under the Greenwood Tree,” James P. Dunn; “Night and the Curtains Drawn,” Ferrata; “The Americans Come” and “My Menagerie,” Fay Foster; “Rockin’ Time,” Gertrude Knox; “De San’man’s Song,” Howard D. McKinney; “Travlin’ to de Grave,” Reddick; “Plantation Love Song,” Deems Taylor. (Cantatas) “The Legend of Nachoochee,” James R. Gillette; “The Phantom Drum,” James P. Dunn; “The Tale of the Bell,” Lester; “Bethany,” W. Rhys-Herbert. (Part songs) “Come Where the Lilies Bloom,” Thompson; “I’ll Never Turn Back No More” and “Weeping Mary,” Dett; “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” and “I’m Troubled in Mind,” Russell. (Organ music) “Meditation,” Cadman (one of the first of Cadman’s published works), “Legend” and “Caprice,” Cadman; “Legend,” Federlein; “From the South” and “Three Negro Spirituals,” Gillette; “Evensong,” Johnson; “Oh, the Lilting Springtime” and “Where Dusk Gathers Deep,” Stebbins.
Witmark says: “The Witmark Black and White Series is exactly what Mr. Patterson refers to; in other words, songs that have been published some of them as far back as twenty years (others, of course, more recent), but which, by a steady sale, year after year, will continue to be in demand probably long after we are gone.” It is, of course, impossible to list all of the songs in this series—and here, too, I may mention a difficulty that has caused me some concern, the difficulty of learning anything definite about the nationality of some of the composers. Not that I personally think nationality matters much in this investigation. It is, rather, a matter of satisfying the American taste. It is rather a question of what the American public wants than where they get it. However, a good many of these names are not listed in any dictionary or “Who’s Who” of
OUR AMERICAN IDIOM
letter, which brings up several matters for discussion. In the first place, there is the question of influence. No matter whether we go abroad or not, we all learn music from foreign sources. The exercises and pieces we play are pretty sure to be to a large extent European. The symphonies and operas we listen to are nearly all foreign, the recital programs mostly foreign. That is true, so far as education is concerned and so far as it concerns music in the large forms. But it is also true that there is an immense output of “teaching pieces” from American sources; it is also true that the most successful of our ballad and semi-popular music, religious and otherwise, is American. And European influence is certainly not outstanding in this music. Even in Nevin’s most successful song, “The Rosary,” it is difficult, to say the least of it, to put our finger on any well-defined European idiom. What is it? German? French? Italian? .	.	. And Mac-
Dowell’s “Wild Rose?” Is it Scandinavian or Scotch? Was it influenced by his first teachers, all Latin-Americans? Or by the Paris Conservatoire? Or by Raff?
I cannot see that “it is natural that American art and music should be influenced” by the art and music of other countries any more than American literature is influenced by European literature, and if there is any influence there it is exceedingly small. Of course our methods are more or less international, as they are with every cultured nation, but we can not be denied the power of selection (as many a publisher knows to his sorrow) and we pick out what we like and reject what we do not like with unerring certainty. In the higher forms we show a great catholicity of taste and accept the European output with open arms, but in the matter of heart songs we are a closed corporation. There is no foreign rival to such songs as “Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginny,” the Foster songs, “The End of a Perfect Day,” the "Long, Long Trail,” and dozens of others, all equally possessing the distinction of nation-wide popularity.
Yes, we Americans certainly possess the power of selection. We know what we want. And to some extent we also possess the power of production—a natural result of the power of selection— for where there is a demand there will always ultimately be a supply.
Accord
That is one point of view. Another point of view is expressed in the following letter :
Musical Courier Co.,
New York.
Gentlemen:
Mr. Sam Fox saw your letter of the 20th and asked us to answer it for him since he has just returned home from the East and is very busy with other important matters.
Mr. Fox believes that America has a distinct national idiom in music. The best sellers in American music are the heart songs, or you might call them American ballads, but how different you will find them from the English_ ballad! Take, for instance, American songs such a Bond’s “A Perfect Day,” Cadman’s “At Dawning,” Bartlett’s “A Dream,” Nevin’s “Mighty Lak a Rose,” Dorothy Lee’s “One Fleeting Hour,” Edward J. Walt’s “Lassie o’ Mine,” and many others of this kind that have been selling steadily for years, all having that heart appeal.
The sentiment expressed is that of the American composer, and the above songs have not only become favorites at home but they have also reached out in the foreign lands because of that distinct American style that touches the heart of the true music lover.
Go into any first-class music store and ask them to give you a list of big selling songs in the class with the foregoing. Dissect them and you will find that all of them are built on the American style. We might mention that in the above list “One Fleeting Hour” and “Lassie o’ Mine” are recent song successes published in 1915. The Sam Fox Publishing Company cannot go back twenty years because we have only been publishing songs since 1915. However^ these songs from our catalogue possess the American idiom in music.	(Signed) Sam Fox Publishing Co.,
Cleveland—New York.
Our Letter
Now it may not be out of place to give our letter to which the above were replies. There were many other replies, most of them merely listing the works asked for. Those here quoted are of especial interest because they take a definite stand in the matter. Here is our letter:
You have no doubt noticed that when American composers, with a very few exceptions, attempt to write in the larger forms they adopt a style that is far removed from anything that might be called American. The blame fpr this is generally laid to the fact that America has no treasure of folk song on which to build. Is this really the reason? I do not believe that it is. I am, on the contrary, convinced that America has as distinct a national idiom in music as any other country, and that Americans will never recognize the symphonic music of our composers as being National until this idiom is made the basis of their melodic line. Where is this idiom found? In the compositions of American composers thaf have become national favorites and have lasted through the years. I refer to such works as
Article II
[The first article dealing with this subject appeared in the Musical Courier of February 23.] Divergent Opinions
IT is not to be supposed that there is any unanimity of opinion upon the matter of the views herein set forth; at the same time, the author must disavow any intention or desire to start a polemic. In such matters argument leads nowhere because it is impossible to convince anybody that they are wrong, and because people can prove pretty nearly anything by apparently irrefutable evidence. Certain people will tell you that Beethoven consciously used actual folk songs as the thematic material for all of his greatest works, and that Brahms and others, even Wagner, did the same—denying these composers, apparently, the power (or the desire) of original - thematic invention. I say they unconsciously fell into the national or folk idiom. These other people say they used folk songs, and point out similiarities to prove their contention. Evidently such argument gets nowhere. One might argue forever along these lines without either side being convinced.
This is true also about our main question, the question of the importance, or even the existence, of an American idiom. But there I have something far more definite and far more convincing upon which to base my argument. I base it simply upon success—and is there anything more convincing? Our popular music, some of it, has succeeded in getting and holding the attention of our people. It did so because it spoke to the mass-consciousness in its natural idiom—and when our symphonic composers succeed they will succeed for the same reason. But before they reach that point they will have to see and recognize our mass-consciousness and will have to learn to appreciate that which it appreciates. This means the folk idioms that have lived, not those that have died and are of interest only to the antiquarian. Personally, I believe that if the American composer of symphonies would only permit himself to be perfectly natural, just as the American popular composer has been, he would win the same success and become very quickly the idol of the people. It might be pretty poor music as compared with that of Wagner, Brahams or Debussy—but it would be American. Our American popular church music, heart songs and ballads and the like are all pretty poor stuff, no doubt, from a musical point of view, but it expresses us; its simplicity is the simplicity of our uncultured masses, its lack of subtlety is our lack of subtlety. It parallels perfectly the kind of art we like to hang on our walls, the kind of stories we like to read—the stories that give some of our magazines a circulation of “more than two million and a quarter a week!” And until our composers are proud of that sort of thing and believe in that sort of thing, and put the same unaffected honest American simplicity and sincerity into their music that our successful authors are putting into their stories, they will not succeed and will not deserve to succeed.	Opposition
That is my opinion—but it is not the opinion of one of our correspondents, a publisher, who permits us to print his letter. Here it is:
Musical Courier Co., New York.
Gentlemen:
We have your letter of the 20th with enclosed statement by Frank Patterson. We have discussed this matter with several well known musicians and not one of them seems to agree with Mr. Patterson when he says that America has a distinct school of music, unless he means Indian music. We do not believe he considers this for he gives as examples such songs as Damrosch’s “Danny Deever,” Speaks’ “On the Road to Mandalay” and De Koven’s “O Promise Me” .along with several others. Who for a minute thinks of these first two as American songs? Is there anything distinctly American about them? As a matter of fact, a good many people think they came from England. As to De Koven’s “O Promise Me,” have you ever seen a copy of Gastaldon’s “Música proibita” (Forbidden Music) ? It might prove interesting to do so.
If Mr. Patterson had used for his examples songs like Brownell’s “Four Leaf Clover” (published by us over twenty years ago and still selling), Mildenberg’s “Violet” (also our publication) and Cowles’ “Forgotten,” Bartlett’s “Dream,” Bland’s “Carry me back to 01’ Virginny” (these last three published by Ditson), we think he would have found these more like folk songs than those he mentioned.
As America is comparatively a new country, or at least a new nation, it is only natural that she should not have a great number of folk songs and that her art and music should be influenced by the art and music of the countries from which her people came. Then, too, some of the greatest composers, as MacDowell, Nevin, Le Forge and others, received a great part of their musical education abroad and have influenced our music accordingly.
(Signed) Luckhardt & Belder, New York.
Well, opinions are valuable, especially such frankly expressed and interesting opinions as in the above