Chapter VIII
. His smaller works--the 137th Psalm (‘By Babylon’s Wave’), the 129th Psalm (‘Out of Darkness’), and especially the motet, ‘Gallia,’ with soprano solo--evidence a fund of pleasing melody that, while not ecclesiastical in feeling, lies close enough to the apprehension of the average listener to make his music deeply prized by lovers of sweet melody. The ‘Gallia’ (to words from the Lamentations of Jeremiah) is a lamentation over the disaster that befell his country in the war of 1870; it was written for soprano, chorus and orchestra and was first produced at the Albert Hall, London, May 1, 1871, at the opening of the International Exhibition. Théodore Dubois (born 1837), who was one of the many winners of the coveted _Prix de Rome_, on his return from Italy produced an important choral work, ‘The Seven Last Words of Christ’ (_Les sept Paroles du Christ_), on Good Friday, 1867, at St. Clotilde’s, of which he was then choir-master. The writer of melodious opera-music, Jules Massenet (1842-1912), has written one charming cantata, _Narcisse_ (‘Narcissus’), for chorus and orchestra, that was produced in 1877. After 1880, however, choral works in the smaller forms became more numerous in France.
At the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century elements of distinctive individuality began to creep into English cantata-music and assert themselves more and more. Out of the mass of cantatas that came into being to feed the choral appetites of the vast number of English singing societies and festivals, works of impressive beauty and fine workmanship appeared that would reflect credit on the choral literature of any nation. English composers have seized upon the ballad, the legend and the fairy-tale, upon scenes from secular and sacred history, and have exercised especial industry in using them as material for choral works. Their number is so great that but a few can be named.
Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842-1900) is best known in the field of cantata by the ‘Golden Legend,’ though it was preceded by two others, ‘Kenilworth,’ written in 1864 for the Birmingham Festival, and ‘The Martyr of Antioch,’ in 1875, for the Leeds Festival.
‘The Golden Legend’ received its first presentation at the Leeds Musical Festival in 1886. The text consists of those portions of Longfellow’s poem which concern Elsie and Prince Henry. Joseph Bennett, who acted as librettist, has arranged these into six scenes with a prologue and epilogue. The prologue describes the attempts of Lucifer and his spirits to tear down the cross from the spire of Strassburg Cathedral, Lucifer being a baritone, his spirits sopranos and altos, and the bells tenors and basses. In the opening scene of the legend Prince Henry in his chamber sings ‘I cannot sleep.’ This is followed by the temptation duet with Lucifer, which ends with an angels’ chorus. In
## Scene II Ursula, Elsie’s mother, sits before her cottage and sings an
evening song and the villagers are heard in a beautiful choral hymn, ‘O gladsome light.’ In the following dialogue Elsie discloses her decision to offer her life for the prince and then sings the beautiful prayer, ‘My Redeemer and my Lord.’
## Scene III is on the road to Salerno; Henry and Elsie sing a graceful
duet, ‘Sweet is the air with budding haws’; pilgrims pass, intoning a Latin hymn, and Lucifer, among them, utters his mocking lines, ‘Here am I, too, in the pious band’; the prince’s song of greeting to the sea is heard, and also a sweet song by Elsie, ‘The night is calm and cloudless,’ effectively repeated with full chorus. Scene IV is at the Medical School at Salerno. Lucifer, disguised as Friar Angelo, leads Elsie away to her sacrifice, but she is rescued by the repentant prince. The music to this dramatic scene is most stirring. In Scene V, before Ursula’s cottage, a messenger recites the prince’s miraculous cure and Elsie’s safety; after which Ursula’s prayer of thanksgiving is heard, ‘Virgin, who lovest the poor and lowly.’ The last scene is at the Castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine, on the evening of the wedding day. After a joyous duet by Prince Henry and his bride (now the Lady Alicia), there follows a choral epilogue, rising at the end to a great fugal climax.
Joseph Barnby’s (1838-1896) part-songs and church-music and his long experience as conductor of important choral societies gave him a large influence with an important section of English lovers of choral music. His choral pieces include the melodious psalm, ‘The Lord is King,’ written for the Leeds Festival of 1883, and the cantata ‘Rebekah,’ which he characterizes as a ‘sacred idyll.’
‘Rebekah’ was written in 1870 and is undoubtedly his finest work. It deals with the wooing of Rebekah by Isaac as related in the Scriptures and done into verse by Arthur Matthison. The first and last choruses disclose some effective modern fugue-writing that is melodious and expressive as well as contrapuntally interesting. The last chorus, especially, builds up to a massive and vocally brilliant climax. Probably the best-known number is Isaac’s solo, the favorite tenor aria, ‘The soft southern breeze plays around me.’
Alfred Robert Gaul (1837-1913) is the composer of many pleasing and popular cantatas, mostly on sacred subjects, the most widely known of which are ‘The Holy City,’ ‘Ruth,’ ‘The Ten Virgins’ and ‘Joan of Arc.’
Sir John Stainer (1840-1901) writes in a more serious style, but yet more suited to church choirs than to large choral bodies. ‘The Daughter of Jairus,’ ‘The Crucifixion’ (A Meditation for Passion Week), and ‘St. Mary Magdalen’ are his more familiar cantatas.
Frederic Hymen Cowen (born 1852) has been a prolific writer of cantatas, no fewer than seven having come from his pen. They are ‘The Rose Maiden’ (1870), ‘The Corsair’ (1876), ‘St. Ursula’ (1881), ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ (1885), ‘St. John’s Eve’ (1889), ‘The Water Lily’ (1893), and ‘The Transfiguration’ (1895). Some of these, particularly ‘The Rose Maiden,’ have attained wide popularity because of their easy, fluent melody and pleasing part-writing.
VI
It remained for three Englishmen, all born within five years of each other--Mackenzie (1847), Parry (1848) and Stanford (1852)--to break away from the traditions of English choral music and to venture to say their musical thoughts in their own way. The point of departure from the old to the new paths bases itself squarely on the work of this trio. Cowen and Cordor (both born in 1852) added nothing of importance to the musical means of expression employed by this trio, but Elgar (born in 1857) has carried forward English choral music to heights never before attained. The decade between 1847 and 1857, therefore, is memorable in English musical history in having witnessed the birth of the men who are most responsible for the remarkable revolution in the character of English choral music witnessed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It is a curious coincidence that the ode, a form cultivated with such industrious zeal by early English composers, should have appealed with great force to all of the trio mentioned above, as a musical form worthy of revival. No less than fourteen odes came from their pens.
When the first important choral work of Charles Hubert H. Parry (b. 1848), scenes from Shelley’s ‘Prometheus Unbound,’ was produced at the Gloucester Festival of 1880, its new tone of confident assertion was recognized as the beginning of a new era in English music, though its success with the public was very small. Works of impressive significance followed in quick succession and he became a figure of dominant importance in English musical life. In addition to three oratorios and several works combining symphonic and choral forms, he has written an imposing list of shorter choral works. The ordinary form of the cantata has little appeal for him, and none of his choral works is so named. ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ however, is really a cantata in feeling, even though it requires very slight solo work. He reaches superb heights of sustained expression in some of his odes--he wrote ten in all--that stamp his choral writing with qualities of superlative excellence, among which are perfect accentuation, mastery of expressive counterpoint and remarkable handling of large tonal masses so as to produce the greatest effects of sonority and breadth. These qualities appear with conspicuous force in his famous ‘Blest Pair of Sirens,’ an ode by John Milton, set for eight-part chorus and orchestra, and first sung in 1887 by the Bach Choir. Other choral works before 1900 that added greatly to his reputation are ‘The Glories of Our Blood and State,’ a funeral ode by James Shirley, produced at the Gloucester Festival of 1883, ‘Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day’ (poem by Pope) at Leeds, 1889, _L’Allegro ed il Penseroso_ (poem by Milton) at Norwich, 1890, ‘Invocation to Music’ (ode in memory of Purcell by Robert Bridges) at Leeds, 1895, and ‘The Lotus-Eaters,’ a choral song, 1892.
With the exception of ‘The Witch’s Daughter,’ performed at the Leeds Festival of 1904, all of the cantatas and shorter choral works of Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (born 1847) fall within the period covered by the present chapter. Attention was first attracted to his fine command of choral technique by ‘The Bride,’ a cantata founded on a poem by the German poet, Hamerling, and performed at the Gloucester Festival of 1881. Possibly his highest point of artistic effectiveness is reached in his fine _Veni, Creator Spiritus_, set to Dryden’s paraphrase and produced at the Birmingham Festival, 1891. Burns’ ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ furnished inspiration for one of his most characteristic works (for chorus only) and naturally appealed strongly to his national feeling and idiom. His other cantatas include ‘Jason’ (Bristol Festival, 1882), ‘The Story of Sayid’ (Leeds, 1886), founded on Edwin Arnold’s ‘Pearls of the Faith,’ and the ‘Dream of Jubal’ (Liverpool Philharmonic, 1889). In the last-named cantata he employs a reciter in addition to soloists and chorus.
The cumulative effect of the artistic activity of the notable trio named above may find partial explanation in the fact that together they represent the three dominant national branches of the United Kingdom--Parry the Englishman, Mackenzie the Scotchman and Stanford the Irishman. The works of these three brilliant exponents of British music reveal many idioms traceable to their respective racial characteristics. In the two choral ballads of Charles Villiers Stanford (born 1852)--‘The Voyage of Maeldune’ (Leeds Festival, 1889), poem by Tennyson, and ‘Phaudrig Crohoore’ (Norwich Festival, 1896), poem by J. S. Le Fanu--traits of Irish folk-song appear on many a page and lend to the music individuality and a fragrant beauty. Indeed, he has achieved some of his greatest successes in his choral ballads. His splendid setting of Tennyson’s ‘The Revenge’ (Leeds Festival, 1896), with its snappy, breezy and, withal, brilliant style, tempted him to set another nautical ballad, Campbell’s ‘The Battle of the Baltic,’ which, however, is hardly as effective. His style is more eclectic than that of his two great contemporaries, combining some of the best German and English qualities with his own individual mode of utterance. His oratorios will be mentioned in another place. He has made very notable contributions to sacred and church music, especially liturgical music.
VII
Sir Edward Elgar’s[71] position as not only the leader among English composers of the present, but as one of the greatest of contemporary creative musicians, is amply buttressed by a series of works in orchestral and choral fields, which, though not conspicuous by its length, is remarkable for the strength and originality of their musical ideas, the vigor of treatment and the supreme command which the composer displays over the technical means of expression. Most of his greatest works are discussed in other sections of this series, yet it was in the field of cantata that his name first rose to prominence and the English festivals furnished the occasion, as in the case of so many other English composers. ‘The Black Knight’ had found a respectful hearing at the Worcester Festival of 1893 and the ‘Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands’ at the same Festival in 1896, but the production of the ‘Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf’ at the North Staffordshire Festival at Hanley in 1896 created a profound impression and its remarkable success raised his name at once to a place among the great ones of music. ‘The Banner of St. George’ followed in 1897 and ‘Caractacus,’ the finest of his cantatas, in 1898.
‘The Black Knight,’ for chorus and orchestra, is a setting of Longfellow’s translation of Uhland’s poem, _Der schwarze Ritter_, and the music with virile urgency sets forth the dramatic incidents of this ballad of the mysterious ‘sable knight,’ whose visit at the court festivities of an ancient king caused the sudden death of the king’s two children. Elgar’s maturer style is clearly foreshadowed in this early work.
‘The Banner of St. George,’ a ballad for chorus and orchestra, with text by Shapcott Wensley, was inspired by the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897 and was performed the same year. The poem is divided into two scenes, dealing with the deliverance of a princess from the dragon by the valiant Saint George of Sabra, and an epilogue in which Elgar makes characteristic use of a stirring ‘marching’ melody, to words of patriotic sentiment, in building up a rousing choral climax.
‘Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf’ is a setting of Longfellow’s words with additions and connecting passages by H. A. Acworth. The vigorous and individual style of the preceding works here finds full fruition and Elgar stands forth as a matured creator, full armed and conscious of his strength. The poetical selections are grouped into eight scenes with introduction and epilogue. These include the remarkably strong and dramatic ‘Challenge of Thor,’ as the Norse god hurls defiance at the Christian religion; King Olaf’s return to Norway and his acceptance of the challenge; the breaking of the image of Thor and the conversion of Olaf’s subjects; ‘The Wraith of Odin,’ a stirring choral ballad relating the mysterious visit of the spirit of Odin to the banquet hall; the wooing of Sigrid, queen of Svithiod, by King Olaf, which is preceded by a charming chorus of the minstrel maids of the queen; the choral ballad of Thyri, sister of Svend, the Danish king, who flees from her betrothed to King Olaf’s court for protection--one of the finest parts of the cantata--followed by the lovely duet of Thyri and Olaf; and the death of Olaf in the fierce sea-battle with the Danes, thrillingly related by the chorus. In the epilogue the efficacy of Christian love in converting the world is contrasted with that of the sword and gives occasion to Elgar for constructing a choral climax, beginning _a cappella_ with the words, ‘As torrents in summer, half dried in their channels,’ that for simple beauty and sustained power of expression has few equals in choral literature. Three solo voices are added to the choral forces at the end.
‘Caractacus,’ written to the poem by H. A. Acworth for the Leeds Musical Festival of 1898, stands in the natural progressive order of his secular cantatas as the strongest of the series and, in many respects, the most remarkable of its class in any country or period. Elgar, in this and later choral works, appears in the double rôle of symphonist and choral writer, for the orchestra frequently rises into momentary preëminence and overshadows the choral machinery as a medium of expression. ‘Caractacus’ must be thought of in its orchestral coloring in order to grasp its full strength and beauty, for Elgar is a master of all modern orchestral resources.
This cantata was written at the composer’s home at Malvern in the immediate environment of the stirring scenes related in its score and enacted in ancient times by the heroic defenders of British freedom, for it was at Malvern Hills on the Welsh frontier that Caractacus made his final stand against the legions of Rome. The work is in six scenes, the first depicting Caractacus and his warriors in his British camp at Malvern Hills at night. It opens after a short orchestral introduction with the stirring chorus, ‘Watchmen, alert!’ The king’s daughter Eigen and her betrothed Orbin break in upon the sad reveries of the disheartened monarch and their recital of the warning of the Druid maiden ushers in the beautiful trio sung by Eigen, Orbin and Caractacus, ‘At eve to the greenwood we wandered away.’ As they depart, the Spirits of the Hills sing a calm benediction, ‘Rest, weary monarch,’ one of the loveliest choral portions of the work, scored with consummate skill for both chorus and orchestra. The second scene shifts the action to the sacred oak grove and deals with the rites of the Druids as they cast the omens. There is a mystic dance of the Druid-maidens, ‘Tread the measure left and right,’ which is an inspiration of enthralling beauty and rhythmic grace but which never loses a certain solemn dignity. As the dance ceases, there follows the impassioned invocation to Taranis. The king enters, the Arch-Druid deceives him as to the omens, Orbin protests, but is cursed and driven forth by the Druids. The close of the scene is built up around the vigorous soldiers’ chorus, ‘Leap to the light, my brand of fight,’ and the contrasting chorus of Druids as they call down curses on Orbin. The third scene pictures the parting of the lovers as Orbin joins the force of Caractacus. It opens with a graceful rustic chorus of youths and maidens who are with Eigen, twining wreaths of flowers, ‘Come beneath our woodland bow’rs.’ The scene closes with the beautiful duet of the parting lovers. The fourth scene is again on Malvern Hills and Eigen and her maidens anxiously discuss the rumors of distant battle. The return of Caractacus and the remnants of his defeated army brings this part to a close with the impressive lament of Caractacus (in 7-pulse measure) accompanied by the chorus of warriors. Soon afterwards Caractacus and his family are betrayed to the enemy and scene five, which is short, relates the embarking of the British captives in Roman galleys. The final scene is the triumphal procession in Rome, beginning with a pompous orchestral march followed by full chorus and dramatic solos by the captives--Caractacus, Eigen and Orbin. Their bold independence and intrepid defense before the tribunal of the emperor, Claudius, win pardon and an honored home in Rome. The subject is one that might well appeal to a British composer, and Elgar, with magnificent effect, seizes the opportunity to add a stirring epilogue--‘The clang of arms is over’--which unfolds, as it develops, some pages of patriotic sentiment (‘Britons, alert!’) that are thrilling in their majestic power.
VIII
Musical history has often been called upon to record the fact that a gifted composer’s firstling has been his best. In the case of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) his creative imagination never again reached such fine heights of inspired effort as those attained in its first flight. His greatest work is undoubtedly the cantata, ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’--the first of the ‘Hiawatha’ trilogy--performed November 11, 1898, at the Royal College of Music, London, while the composer was still a student at this institution. The second part of the trilogy, ‘The Death of Minnehaha,’ was brought out in 1899 at the North Staffordshire Festival, and the third, ‘Hiawatha’s Departure,’ made its first public appearance at a concert of the Royal Choral Society, at Albert Hall, March 22, 1900. Two months later the overture to the entire work received its initial performance. The text for the whole trilogy is selected from Longfellow’s familiar ‘The Song of Hiawatha.’ This poem, which handles with childlike simplicity and directness the emotions and experiences of a primitive race, seems to have struck deep into the soul of this Anglo-African composer and he has imbued the score, especially of the first part, with an atmosphere of individuality possessed by none of its successors. He touched a new vein here which he was not able to inject with equal success into his other works. The score abounds in concise, characteristic and striking themes, many of which are treated in the manner of ‘leading-motives.’
‘Scenes from the Song of Hiawatha.’--The first part of the trilogy is ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding-Feast,’ for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra. ‘Sumptuous was the feast Nakomis made at Hiawatha’s wedding’ and the detailed description includes not only the banquet itself but the entertainment which followed, how Pau-Puk-Keewis danced,
‘How the gentle Chibiabos, He the sweetest of musicians, Sang his songs of love and longing; How Iagoo, the great boaster, Told his tales of strange adventure.’
Chibiabos’ song, the beautiful tenor solo, ‘Onaway, awake, beloved!’ is one of the gems of the whole trilogy.
The second part--‘The Death of Minnehaha,’ for soprano and baritone solos, chorus and orchestra--begins with the description of the ‘long and dreary winter! the cold and cruel winter!’ and continues with the pathetic story of the wasting famine and the fever, how Minnehaha shuddered at the words of the two uninvited guests, ‘lay down on her bed in silence,’ how Hiawatha plunged into the forest in search of food only to return ‘empty-handed, heavy-hearted.’ Then follows the death and burial of Minnehaha and the lament of Hiawatha. The pathos of the words is given striking setting in the music, particularly in the opening chorus, ‘O the long and dreary winter!’ and in Hiawatha’s noble lament, ‘Farewell, O Minnehaha!’ which the chorus gently echoes after him. The chief share of the work is allotted to the chorus.
The third part--‘Hiawatha’s Departure,’ for soprano, tenor and baritone solos, chorus and orchestra--is the longest of the three and has more opportunity for varied effects. Reminiscences of themes from the preceding parts give pleasing thematic unity to the whole work. It begins with the return of spring and with it Iagoo, the great traveller, ‘full of new and strange adventures.’ He relates to an incredulous audience how he saw a water ‘bigger than the Big-Sea-Water’ and on it a tall canoe with great wings, ‘bigger than a grove of pine-trees,’ in which were warriors ‘painted white.’ Hiawatha, of all the listeners, laughed not, for he had seen the same things in a vision. He tells them of the coming of the white men and prophesies their achievements and the downfall of the Indian race. Then follows, in simple narrative, Hiawatha’s welcome to the white men and the missionary priest who came with them to tell the message of the Saviour; Hiawatha’s touching farewell to Nakomis and his people (‘I am going, O my people, on a long and distant journey. To the portals of the Sunset, to the regions of the home-wind’); and his departure in the birch canoe as he ‘sailed into the fiery sunset, To the Islands of the Blessed, to the land of the Hereafter!’ Musically the third part is unequal to the others in the strength of its appeal, yet at the close, Hiawatha’s tender words of parting and the answering farewell of the people are written in the virile and characteristic mood of the first part. The solo voices assume a larger share of work than in the other parts.
Coleridge-Taylor’s other choral works were of course in demand after the success of his first one, but, though received with favor, they do not measure up to the first, nor did they make the deep impression of the ‘Hiawatha’ music.
IX
The United States did not enter the list of cantata and oratorio producing nations until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Before that time W. B. Bradbury, J. A. Butterfield, A. Hamerik, George F. Root and others had prepared the way for their successors by choral works of a simple, popular character suited to the musical conditions of their time. On account of the number, musical quality, size and extensive influence of his choral works, Dudley Buck may justly be accorded the honor of being the first important choral writer in America.
The influence of Dudley Buck (1839-1909) in the field of church-music was probably stronger and more fundamental and lasting than in that of concert choral music, for the needs of American church-music could not be met, as could those of choral societies, by mere importation of foreign-made music. Yet his concert choral works are quite numerous. They include the 46th Psalm, written for the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, 1872; ‘Don Munio,’ a dramatic cantata written in 1874, whose story is taken from Washington Irving’s Spanish papers and deals with the wars and loves of the Moorish period; four cantatas for male voices--‘King Olaf’s Christmas,’ ‘The Nun of Nidaros’ (1878), ‘The Voyage of Columbus’ (1885) and ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’; ‘The Centennial Meditation of Columbia,’ written for the Centennial Exposition and performed at Philadelphia, May 10, 1876; ‘The Golden Legend,’ to which was awarded the prize offered by the Cincinnati May Festival Association for the best work by an American and which received its initial performance at the Festival in 1880; and his largest and most pretentious choral work, ‘The Light of Asia.’
‘The Golden Legend’ is, like Sullivan’s cantata of the same name, a setting of a portion of Longfellow’s ‘Christus.’ The text is divided into a prologue, twelve scenes and an epilogue. The story is identical with that of Sullivan’s cantata already mentioned and the music on the whole rises to a higher plane of excellence. Especially effective and deservedly well-known is Elsie’s prayer in the fifth scene (‘My Redeemer and my Lord’), an aria breathing a deep religious feeling and filled with calm beauty. Buck is at his best in such numbers as the simple hymn for unaccompanied quartet (‘O gladsome light of the Father’), Elsie’s charming aria in the ninth scene (‘The night is calm and cloudless’ with a choral refrain of _Kyrie eleison_), and the love-duet between Elsie and Prince Henry in the twelfth scene.
‘The Light of Asia’ was written in 1886, published in London and performed there for the first time in St. James’s Hall, March 19, 1889. The well-known poem by Sir Edwin Arnold naturally lends itself to elaborate treatment and the composer has done it full justice, constructing on its strong lines a work that approaches the dimensions and character of an oratorio. The initial fugal chorus (‘Below the highest sphere four regents sit’), foretelling the birth of the child Buddha who ‘shall deliver men from ignorance,’ establishes at once the broad massive outlines of the work. After the King has conferred with his ministers as to a remedy for the seriousness of Prince Siddârtha and, on their advice, has summoned a court of pleasure at which the most beautiful maidens are to teach him love, there follows a lovely duet describing the meeting and recognition of the Prince and the fair Yasôdhara, and the part closes with a jubilant wedding chorus, ‘Enter, thrice happy!’ The second part--‘The Renunciation’--describes the sensuous life of the Orient, the awakening of Siddârtha from this life of love and joy to his mission, his six long years of wandering, his victorious struggles with the varied temptations of ‘the fiends who war with Wisdom and the Light.’ The third part--‘The Return’--relates the sorrows of the lonely Yasôdhara and the return of the wandering Siddârtha as a Buddha, dressed in the yellow garb of a hermit, begging alms, yet greeted by his people with glad acclaim. The epilogue and final chorus (‘Before beginning and without an end’) is the choral climax of the whole work, constructed with fine musicianship and majestic in its effect. Important solo duties are assigned to the Prince, his wife Yasôdhara and his father, the King.
Dr. Leopold Damrosch (1832-1885), who occupied a position of great influence in the musical life of New York City, wrote two important choral works that were published in this country--‘Ruth and Naomi’ (1870), a Scriptural idyl, and ‘Sulamith’ (The Song of Songs), which was performed for the first time by the Oratorio Society, New York, in April, 1882. Other short choral works written by Americans in the period now under consideration were ‘Prayer and Praise,’ the Forty-sixth Psalm (Cincinnati Festival prize, 1882), and ‘The Rose,’ by William Wallace Gilchrist (born 1846); ‘The Culprit Fay’ (1879) and ‘Praise of Harmony’ (1886) by Frederick Grant Gleason (1848-1903); ‘Phœbus Arise’ (1882), ‘The Nativity’ (1883) and ‘The Realm of Fancy’ (1884) by John Knowles Paine (1839-1906); ‘The Tale of the Viking’ (1879) and ‘Henry of Navarre’ (1885) by George Elbridge Whiting (born 1842).
The choral works from the pen of Arthur Foote (b. 1853) are not numerous, but they are fine in musical quality and workmanship. There are only three of them and all are settings of poems by Longfellow--‘The Farewell of Hiawatha’ (1879), a ballad for baritone solo, male chorus and orchestra, ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ for mixed voices and ‘The Skeleton in Armor.’
George Whitfield Chadwick (b. 1854) has written more voluminously in the smaller choral forms, all of his writing being distinguished by a keen feeling for vocal values and a rich harmonic sense. His chief works in cantata form are ‘The Viking’s Last Voyage’ for baritone solo, male chorus and orchestra, 1880 (Boston Apollo Club, 1881); ‘Lovely Rosabelle’ for solos, mixed chorus and orchestra, 1889 (Boston Orchestral Club, 1890); _Phœnix Expirans_, 1891 (Springfield Festival, 1892); ‘Columbian Ode,’ 1892, written for the dedication of the buildings of the World’s Fair, Chicago, May, 1893; ‘The Lily Nymph,’ 1895 (Springfield Festival, 1896); and _Ecce jam noctis_, 1897, written for the commencement exercises of Yale University, 1897, on the occasion of his receiving from Yale the honorary degree of Master of Arts.
Horatio William Parker (b. 1863) has been a prolific writer of choral works, both before 1900 and since that date, and, through his skilful handling of vocal masses and a superb contrapuntal technique, has won for himself a foremost place among living masters of choral writing. While a student under Rheinberger at Munich, two of his choral works, ‘The Ballad of a Knight and his Daughter’ (1884) and ‘King Trojan’ (1885), were given public performance there and were later published. ‘The Ballad of the Normans’ (_Normannenzug_) for male chorus and orchestra appeared in 1889; ‘The Kobolds’ (poem by Arlo Bates) for chorus and orchestra was performed at the Springfield (Mass.) Festival in May, 1891; ‘Harold Harfagar’ for chorus and orchestra was performed in 1891 in New York; ‘The Dream-King and his Love’ (poem by Geibel) for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra won a prize in 1893 offered by the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, of which Dvořák was then director and in which the composer was a teacher; ‘The Holy Child,’ a Christmas cantata, was published in 1893; and ‘A Wanderer’s Psalm’ was written for and performed at the Hereford Festival, England, in 1900. A composition which finely illustrates his great ability in handling problems of vocal counterpoint is his motet for double chorus _a cappella_, _Adstant angelorum chori_ (poem by Thomas à Kempis), which won the prize given by the Musical Art Society of New York City in 1898.
Mrs. H. H. A. Beach (b. 1867) has written several small choral works that have found well-merited favor, among them ‘The Minstrel and the King’ for tenor and baritone solos, male chorus and orchestra, ‘The Rose of Avontown,’ a ballad for soprano solo and female chorus, ‘The Chambered Nautilus’ for female chorus, and ‘Sylvania’ for mixed chorus.
Among other small choral works of serious content and fine workmanship belonging to this period must be mentioned a fine motet by Arthur Whiting (b. 1861) for double chorus _a cappella_, ‘O God, my heart is ready’ (words selected from the Psalms).
FOOTNOTES:
[71] Born 1857.
##