23
MUSICAL COURIER
March 9, 1922
OUR AMERICAN IDIOM
ARTICLE III
the American idiom, that is, the idiom that is loved by Americans, the idiom that makes possible the sale of millions of copies of American compositions to Americans ? It is the idiom that counts, not the folk song- basis. You may be sure that the sale of the Indian songs of Cadman and Lieurance and the negro songs of Foster, Bland and others, is not due to the folk song basis, if there is any, but to the idiom—an idiom which satisfies the American consciousness.
An Old Dictionary
Thanks to the kindness of Julius Mattfeld, in charge of the musical department of the New York Public Library, my attention was called to an old American dictionary which did not share the modern dictionary’s contempt for the American popular composer. This is “A Handbook of. American Music and Musicians,” edited by F. O. Jones and published by C. W. Moulton & Co., 1887. It contains, among other valuable information of all sorts, an account of the Philadelphia composer, Sept. Winner, born in 1827, and who also wrote under the name of Alice Hawthorne. It was he who wrote “Listen to the Mocking Bird,” which brought forth a whole flock of imitations (after the manner of mockingbirds), and undoubtedly had a lasting influence on our musical idiom. Mr. Mattfeld also called my attention to other successful Americans, many of whose names I found in this dictionary. They are not listed in Elson’s “History of American Music.” Here are the names: “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” by J. P. Webster; “New England, New England,” by I. T. Stoddard, with a distinct syncopation like ragtime; “Where Was Moses When the Light Went Out,” by John Stanford; “Write Me a Letter From Home,” by William׳ Shakespeare Hays, who was born in Louisville in 1837 (this song sold the unprecedented number (at the time) of 350,000 copies, and you will note that, even in those days, it was the “heart-song” that had the big sale). Then there was “Silver Threads Among the Gold” and “What Is Home Without a Mother,” by H. P. Danks, born in New Haven in 1834. These, also heart songs, were enormously successful. Danks wrote over 1,200 pieces, much sacred music, most of it highly successful, and some of it still in use. Other names, and these listed by Elson, are: Oliver Holden, 1765-1844, who wrote “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”; Charles Crozat Converse, born in Warren, Mass., in 1834, who wrote “What a Friend We have in Jesus”; Henry Clay Work, born in Middletown, Conn., 1832, who wrote “Marching Through Georgia,” and George F. Root, who wrote “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.” Can you doubt the influence of any of these? Not a very good influence, you will say. Well, but who is to be the judge of that? Are we to have a contempt for the taste of our own people ?
“Not Educated to Know Our Own Past”
Mr. Mattfeld, again, is responsible for the above phrase, and it would be impossible to sum up our chief failing more accurately or more tersely than “Not educated to know our own past.” Even the historians have discovered it since the war, and are taking steps to teach American history for the.Americans in our schools. But when will they teach American music to American children in our schools? In our schools they even teach folk songs from almost every country in Europe. And our civic aid societies “Americanize” the immigrant by teaching him to sing the folk songs of his own native country so as to make him feel at home—in America. Also, one writer advises us to adopt European folk songs as the basis of our national music and poetry, “to behave like lawful heirs and claim our own.”
This condition, in our schools and our homes, is chiefly due to the teachers, music teachers and others. What is actually taking place is this: The pupil plays and sings, at home, one class of music, slowly and painfully “picking out” the old songs from collections or from old copies lying about the house. I have seen and heard that sort of thing dozens of times myself and know that it is a fact. And I know, also, that when “teacher” discovers what this pupil is doing at home, he or she, either frowns upon it or neglects it, instead of trying to get the pupil to play it right, getting a real hold on the pupil and arousing a real interest in music by approaching it through the reality of the pupil’s own taste. That is bad, and teachers are not only retarding the growth of American music (and of music in America) by this attitude, but they are lessening, reducing and limiting their own incomes.
We are not only not educated to know our own musical past, but also our children are not permitted by their teachers to know it; they are taught that it is something unworthy, worthless, something of
flavor of the romantic—just as some writers will gain success by introducing the ringing of bells or the swaying of a cradle, which is sure to appeal to the popular imagination. (It is program music of a sort.) To continue with the Witmark list, there is “Smilin’ Through,” by Arthur A. Penn, which, by the way, is strikingly “American” in idiom; just sing it over to yourself and try to associate it with the Italian, French, German, or even Irish or Scotch style, and you will see that this is a fact. And then, there is “There’s a Long, Long Trail,” by Zo Elliott, of which the same may be said—and you will note that neither of these has the borrowed romance of the negro, Indian, Irish or Oriental! It is just plain American. Also thousands and thousands of people all over America have sung, and played and whistled them. Therefore you will not find the names of these composers in the dictionaries. The names you will find are those who have written “symphonic failures.” Think it over!	.	.	. This Witmark
list also contains some sacred songs, among them “Teach Me to Pray,” by Jessie Mae Jewitt, which is worth looking at because of its harmony; its harmony illustrates one of the commonest features of American idiom: the passage from key to key through seventh or ninth chords (the chromatically raised third).
Self Contempt
As already stated, such people do not get into the dictionary. Biographical dictionaries of American music have, most of them, a complete and utter contempt for the American people. The names that get into these dictionaries are those of musicians whose output is thought to compare favorably with that of the Europeans. What the American people like and buy and sing or ])lay is of no consequence whatever. Our own standard and our own taste is too contemptable to be considered at all. No! We must accept ourselves and our own taste with proper contempt, and gaze with worshipful eyes at European masters 1 Our popular music, which is being built on a solid foundation of Americanism, is nothing. Our symphonic (or serious) music must be built on the foundation of Europe 1
A partial exception is “The History of American Music,” by Elson, which lists some of the popular composers—the makers of folk music—but only a very few, and closes with the remark that “it is difficult to say whether all of these deserve a place in history.” The joke is, that in a few years antiquarian folk-lorists will be performing the difficult labor of seeking out biographical data of the very people for whom historians now have so little consideration that they will not even list them in their dictionaries. This is passing strange in a country that coined the phrase, “Nothing succeeds like suc-
Is it not evident—self-evident—that the only real historical significance of music is its influence? And is it not equally evident that successful music is practically the only music that exerts any influence? You have only to look about you to become convinced of these things if you doubt them. In popular music a hit is always followed by numerous copies of it. The first ragtime piece was a hit and was followed by other ragtime hits, so that ragtime had its day of success. Puccini and Debussy have had innumerable followers. Wagner has swayed the whole world. “Cavalleria Rusticana” started a whole literature of one-act thrillers. The “Merry Widow” brought forth a host of Merry Widows.
But who follows the failures? Who cares anything about the failures except the antiquarians and makers of histories and of biographical dictionaries? And why do so many American serious composers dig up forgotten socalled folk songs that never, even when new, had any widespread success, and use them as a basis of their compositions? Are our composers to be antiquarians ? And what does the American public care about folk songs that were never popular, that they, the American public, never at any time accepted as satisfying their taste?
Dvorak
Also, consider again the case of Dvorak. He wrote a socalled American symphony, a very beautiful work based on socalled negro rhythms. But, as has been discovered by numerous writers, critics and commentators, it is thoroughly Dvorakian, not in the least American, in spite of its motives. Then why do American composers imagine that they make their music American by using American folk songs as a basis for its thematic material, while, at the same time, they have a real, manifest, contempt for
[Articles I and II on this subject appeared in the February 23 and March 2 issues respectively of the Musical Courier.—The Editor.]
Who?
Who, for instance, is, or was, the H. W. Petrie, who wrote that good, old-time war horse for the basso, “Asleep in the Deep?” There is an H. W. Petri (without the “e”) listed in Stokes’ Encyclopedia who was born in Holland in 1856, was a pupil of Joachim, concertmaster of the Gewandhaus, and lives in Dresden. He does not seem to be the man. Our H. W. Petrie was at one time head of the Petrie Music Company of Chicago, as may be learned by the notice of copyright on some of his songs. Some of these copyrights were afterwards assigned to the Frank K. Root Company and again to the McKinley Music Company, and some to M. Witmark & Sons, which firm holds the copyright of “Asleep in the Deep.” Called by phone, Witmark’s said it could give us no information about Petrie but believed that he was American. It may be assumed, anyway, that he lived in America, since he had a music publishing-business here. (Petrie also wrote “Over the Ocean Blue,” another big hit.)
Richard Strauss
Now this is just one song and just one author, but you may be sure that there are many others, many other songs and many other authors, about which the dictionaries carry just as little information. Nothing could better indicate the point of view, and this point of view is shared by nearly all serious musicians. Serious musicians generally cannot “see” the people—more’s the pity!—and, by the same token, the people cannot see them—which serves them right!
Only, there have been a few exceptions, and those exceptions were of the people themselves, and did not feel so high-brow that they were content to write symphonic failures. Beethoven, for instance—and Schubert, and Haydn, and Wagner, and a few others. Some of the Schubert songs have become folk songs in the truest sense of the word (except to the sense of those who believe that a folk song-should have no known authorship)—and the music of Beethoven, Haydn and Wagner (and all of the other really great masters) is full of tunes that are so near to the folk idiom that the people immortalize them and their makers. Sometimes (very rarely) these masters actually use folk melodies, but far more often they simply use the idiom which, as has already been pointed out, is their own natural idiom. If it were not, they would either, not use it, or they would not be great.
As to what is folk music, H. O. Osgood points out that even Richard Strauss saw no reason to make fine distinctions, and used Denza’s “Funiculi, Funicula” in the finale of his first symphony, “mistaking it for a folk song,” as one writer says. But wherein lies the mistake? Who can suppose that Strauss would care whether it was written by Denza or by an unknown author ? Strauss heard the people singing it. It was evidently their natural idiom, their natural mode of utterance. So he made it their “Leitmotiv.”
No American Folksong?
People who say there is no American folk song, no American national idiom, will do well to ponder on this. If the Denza song appears a folk song and a national idiom to so great a master as Strauss, can we afford to place our opinions above his and say it is not? That would be absurd. And if this Denza song is a folk song to the Italians why should not some of our modern American songs be folk songs to us Americans? As a matter of actual fact they are, and this in spite of the rapid change that is constantly taking place in this country.
To get back to Witmark’s Black and White Series, it lists a number of songs that, at least, have found great favor with a great many Americans—Americans who have not the taint of “foreignism” ; Americans who do not think that everything that comes from Europe is good, and everything that comes from America is, necessarily, bad, because it comes from America. There is “Can’t Yo’ Heah Me Callin’ Caroline,” by Caro Roma; “Evening Brings Rest and You,” by F. H. Bishop; “Gypsy Love Song,” by Victor Herbert, a tune known, surely, wherever music is known at all; “In the Garden of My Heart” and “Mother Machree,” by Ernest R. Ball, the latter of an Irish character; and “My Wild Irish Rose,” by Chauncey Olcott, also Irish, like a good deal of our popular music, since many American-born white Americans use either this or the negro idiom, in poor imitation, of course, just because they have a