CHAPTER XV

THE LIGHTER VEIN

Sources of American popular music--Its past and present phases--American comic opera: Reginald de Koven; Victor Herbert; John Philip Sousa; other writers of light opera--The decline of light opera and the present state of theatrical music.

It cannot be too often reiterated that, however highly developed an art a nation's music may become, it inevitably springs from the germ of popular expression that voices itself in the simple songs of its masses, the folk-music. In this lies the essence of its being and to this it owes its vitality. America's history has been such as to deprive her in a great measure of a folk-music in the true sense of the word. Many causes have contributed to this; the decidedly non-idyllic character of its early phases and the suppressing hand of Puritanism were undoubtedly potent factors, but the fundamental reason lies in the absence of a national consciousness, which is necessarily lacking in a country of mixed peoples developing a borrowed civilization. Now that America is able to boast the beginnings of a sophisticated art, it is beginning to be more deplored that there is not present the rich vein of folk-music to lend to our native art that vital and distinctive touch that should give it its place among the nation's music.

The course of our national life has brought, however, from time to time, certain moments when there has emanated from the people a voice more distinctly local in its suggestions, not entirely lacking the influence of a borrowed expression, but blending with it a certain flavor of its own and thereby creating a sort of music in the folk-manner. Such were the songs of Stephen Foster, and such were the patriotic songs of the Civil War times, and in these two contributions to our native music we have the most genuinely and deeply emotional expressions that have yet sprung from Americans of European origin. Previous to the appearance of these, the complexion of our music had been almost entirely English, consisting as it did of patriotic or sentimental songs either actually imported from England or locally written songs which copied the English models so slavishly as to lose all distinction.

The negro element began at an early epoch to bear an influence on our expressions. As the one keenly suffering people in our midst, leading a life of elemental toil and possessing richly endowed musical natures, the negro, with his intensely emotional expression, was bound to make himself heard and felt throughout the land, and his songs entered largely into the fibre of our own expression. But even the most ardent supporter of the practice of employing the negro element as a basis for American music must admit that there is much of the exotic about it, and that by its employment alone our native art will never attain to that desideratum of the American composer, a nationalistic feeling.

It has already been remarked in commenting on this subject how Dvořák in handling this negro element remained unequivocally Slavic in idiom, and it has been noted, also, with what scant success our own composers have pursued the same efforts toward concocting what would seem an indigenous art. That such a nationalistic art, when it does finally evolve, will contain a strong strain of these various influences is undoubtedly the case, but the tinge of real local atmosphere which will constitute its nationalism will be an intangible quality not existing in any defined formula. It will not possess salient external features which our own composers may seize upon, but it will be charged with a consciousness that shall be inherent in the composers themselves and shall find unconscious voicing in their melodies. It is not unreasonable to suppose that it is from what we generally designate as our 'popular music' that such an art will emanate; from the street, the theatre, the dance hall, and more particularly from the sentimentalities of the popular songs which periodically hold the affections of such a vast public. Ephemeral as is the mass of this music that annually sweeps over our country, each phase of it leaves its mark, some deeper than others, but all contributing to the upbuilding of the national character of our music.

I

Let us turn our attention to a brief survey of some of these phases of the popular music, both past and present.

Generally speaking, the bulk of this music may be classified into the two form-divisions which distinguish the main orders of all musical art--the dance and the song form, the rhythmic and the lyric. While the latter predominated in the popular music of past decades, the present-day tendencies give greater importance to the dance and even the larger part of our popular songs are set to the more enlivening rhythms of the prevailing dance measures. We have seen that the 'minstrel show' provided the medium whereby the first purveyors of popular music reached the public. It was through the means of this popular entertainment that many of the early favorites reached fame. With the rise of the vaudeville or 'variety show' the character of popular music underwent a considerable change. The introduction of the comic song brought a new element into its nature and then came that slough of sentimentalism which was to remove from our popular music the naïve but sincere appeal of the old ballads and replace them with the more sophisticated but vulgar frivolities.

The sentimental song has, however, never entirely disappeared from the popular répertoire; it has, indeed, persistently maintained a considerable place in the affections of every period. Even the younger of our own generation can recall the phase of popular taste that existed just before the inauguration of a new order in the appearance of 'ragtime.' Almost all of the then popular melodies consisted of songs replete with the so-called 'heart quality.' The mild eroticism of 'Sweet Marie' and 'The Sweetest Story ever Told' shared the popular favor with the patriotically sentimental 'Comrades' and 'Just Break the News to Mother,' songs in which the memory of the war lingered and which were prompted by the success of the military drama. While the popularity of these songs has been great, the public has been indifferent to the composers, and they have had to be content with an almost anonymous fame. Some of the men who represent this past decade of the sentimental song are: Charles K. Harris, whose greatest success was 'After the Ball'; Charles Graham, Felix McGlennon, H. W. Petrie, and Paul Dresser.

The reappearance of the negro-element in the form of the 'coon song' marks an important epoch in the evolution of our popular music. The 'coon song' presents to us the light-hearted side of the negro; the pathos of the slave is never presented in these later negro songs--only the 'darky's' picturesqueness, his quasi-humorous vagabondage, and, in the more vulgarized types, his frenzied ribaldry.

The coon song has passed through a number of development stages. The first examples, such as 'Kentucky Babe' and 'Little Alabama Coon,' were of a naïve variety which contained but the merest suggestion of the real negro element. There has been a subsequently wider utilization of the syncopated rhythms which constitute the popularities of 'ragtime' and present-day examples, such as 'Waitin' for the Robert E. Lee,' represent a rather complicated and decidedly more characteristic type than do the coon songs of preceding seasons.

Following the success of the coon song there was an exploitation of the 'Indian' song. These songs were even less genuine in origin than their antecedents. The Indian element was often obtained by the employment of a sort of garbled Oriental ragtime or of a disguised Celtic idiom, and only the titles revealed these compositions as Indian. 'Hiawatha' and 'Tammany' were among the first of these songs, and they were followed by a large number of imitations.

Besides these two principal classes of popular music employing a local color in its idiom, countless experiments have been made with other varieties. The Oriental has been much used and the refrain of the once popular 'Streets of Cairo' has served as the 'leitmotif' of a thousand and one pieces partaking of a pseudo-Orientalism. The Irish song has had a persistent vogue; it has several representative types; the sentimental 'Annie Rooney' and 'Maggie Murphy' of earlier days have been succeeded by the more boisterous 'Bedelia' and the perennial 'Mr. Dooley.' There is usually a saving grace of humor in these Hibernian offerings which palliates even their most patent vulgarity.

The vogue of the more recent popular music has been dictated by the various dance fads which have lately seized the public fancy. First the 'turkey trot' and 'barn dance' brought forth such originalities as 'Alexander's Rag Time Band' and 'Everybody's Doin' It,' these to be followed by an avalanche of various 'glides' and 'rags.' The music of the dances and dance songs is unique in its blending of certain negro qualities of rhythm and melody with a strange indeterminate sense of something Slavic or Oriental in their abandon. The last aspect of popular dance music is that furnished by the importation of the 'tango,' maxixe and other Latin American dances. Most of the more popular tunes to which these steps are danced are pronouncedly Spanish and have in most cases been imported with the dances themselves.

An ingenious procedure on the part of the popular composer has been to weave into the verse or refrain of a song a few measures of some well-known popular classic. One of the first and perhaps the best known example is the use of Mendelssohn's 'Spring Song' in the refrain of the song so disrespectfully called 'That Mendelssohn Rag.' Following this there have appeared many such appropriations and nearly the entire list of the popular melodies of the standard classics has been thus utilized.

Viewed as a whole, the popular music of to-day presents an expression far in advance of that of even a few years ago. Some of it contains subtleties of harmonic and rhythmic design that would have been caviar to the public of yesterday. It is to be regretted that this advance in form has been made at the sacrifice of the more ingenious spirit of the early popular music, and that the tone of most of our popular music to-day is so uniformly vulgar.

II

There is a middle world of music that touches, on its one side, the more elevated regions of art, while, on the other, it does not lose its hold on the larger world of popular taste. This is the world of comic opera--using the term in its general sense of a stage piece with music of a lighter variety.

The American public was early taught to appreciate this form of artistic amusement; the history of opera in this country shows a continuous record of the production of such works in all the larger cities. Important agencies in the popularizing of comic opera were the early performances of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, the brilliant seasons of French and Viennese opera at the Casino Theatre in New York, and the excellent services of the Bostonians in presenting ideally some of the most charming of the standard répertoire, besides revealing the merit of our native composers, in giving with success some of the first American comic operas to reach public hearing.

Up to the time of the Bostonians' championship of the American light opera composer there has been but an occasional performance of some work of local interest. Julius Eichberg is generally accredited with being America's first comic opera composer, his fame resting largely on a popular work entitled 'The Doctor of Alcantara' that was produced in Boston in 1862. Eichberg could be called an American composer only in that an American city happened to be the scene of his activities. There is nothing about his work to give it any special significance as American.

In fact, as we look over the entire product of our light opera composers, we are forced again to deplore the lack of a distinctive vein or local sense that would put the national seal on America's many and notable achievements in this field. Even England, whose cultivated art is almost as devoid of a national feeling as is America's, has, in the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, works of a truly national significance. Mr. Krehbiel has observed that George Ade has the requisite equipment of an American Gilbert, but that as yet there has not been found the composer who could be his Sullivan.

To assert convincingly America's claims to having contributed largely and valuably to the world's comic operas we have only to put forward these names: Reginald de Koven, Victor Herbert, and John Philip Sousa. The first name in this group is of one who is perhaps more closely identified with the comic opera stage than any other living composer. Reginald de Koven was born in 1861 at Middletown, Conn. After graduating at Oxford University in 1880 he began his career as a musician by studying in several European cities. The studies which were to bear the greatest fruit were those pursued under that master of comic opera, Suppé. On returning to America Mr. de Koven resided for some years in Chicago, where he did musical journalism and wrote the experimental scores that preceded his first and greatest success, 'Robin Hood.' Mr. de Koven's career since coming into the fame to which this work has brought him has been too familiar to need recounting. He is as well known for his songs as for his operas and his place in the lists of American lyricists is noted in