Scene 3. The soldiers, returning from the war, sing out their joy on

coming home victorious. This episode is celebrated in transcriptions either for orchestra or for brass band. Almost as popular is the captivating Waltz in Act 2. In the opera it is sung and danced by villagers during a celebration in the public square (“_Ainsi que la brise légère_”); this excerpt is also familiar in transcription.

The Walpurgis Night Ballet Music from _Faust_, though generally omitted from the performances of the opera itself, has become a concert favorite. This music is given in Paris during the first scene of the last act. The classic queens—Helen, Phryne and Cleopatra—and their attendants are called upon to dance to distorted versions of several of the opera’s beloved melodies. There are here seven dances of which six appear in the score only with tempo markings: _Waltz_, _Adagio_, _Allegretto_, _Moderato maestoso_, _Moderato con moto_, _Allegretto_, and _Allegro vivo_.

When an orchestral potpourri from the opera is given by semi-classical orchestra, it includes some other beloved excerpts: Marguerite’s “Jewel Song” (“_Je ris de me voir_”), in which she speaks her joy in finding the casket of jewels secretly placed for her in her garden by Faust; the rousing _Kermesse_ or Fair Music that opens the second act, “_Vin ou bière_”; Mephistopheles’ cynical comment on man’s greed for gold, “_Le Veau d’or_”; Faust’s hymn of love for Marguerite, “_O belle enfant! je t’aime_”; the “Chorus of Swords” (“_De l’enfer qui vient émousser_”), a vibrant exhortation by the young men of the village who, sensing they are in the presence of the devil, raise their swords in the form of a cross to confound him.

The _Funeral March of a Marionette_ (_Marche funèbre d’une marionnette_) is a delightful piece originally written for the piano in 1873, and after that transcribed by the composer for orchestra. Gounod had hopes to make it the first movement of a piano suite. When he failed to complete that suite, he issued the march as a separate piece of music in the now-famous orchestral version. The opening march music tells of the procession of pallbearers to a cemetery as they carry a dead marionette. A brighter spirit is induced as the pallbearers stop off at an inn. Then the procession continues. The funereal atmosphere of the closing measures speaks of the ephemeral nature of all life, even the life of a marionette.

The opera _Mireille_—libretto by Barbier and Carré based on Mistral’s poem, _Mirèio_—is not often performed. But this is not true of its overture. The opera was first performed in Paris on March 19, 1864. The story revolves around the tragic love affair of the Provençal girl, Mireille, and the basket-weaver, Vincent. The overture opens with a slow introduction in which a stately idea is offered by the woodwind. In the main body, the principal melody is heard in the strings while the subsidiary theme is first presented by the violins. After both ideas are amplified, a crescendo section leads to the triumphant reappearance of the first theme in the full orchestra. The overture ends with a short but spirited coda.

Out of the opera _Roméo et Juliet_ comes a most charming waltz. The opera was introduced in Paris on April 27, 1867. The libretto, once again by Barbier and Carré, was based on the Shakespeare tragedy. The waltz opens the first act, a ballroom scene in the Capulet palace honoring Juliet. Against the lilting strains of this music, the guests perform an eye-filling dance.

Percy Grainger

Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Melbourne, Australia on July 8, 1882. After receiving some piano instruction from his mother he was sent to Germany in his twelfth year to continue his music study with James Kwast and Ferruccio Busoni. In 1900 he made his debut as concert pianist in London, following which he made an extended tour of Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. A meeting with Grieg, in 1906, was a significant influence in Grainger’s artistic development. Grieg infected the young man with some of his own enthusiasm for folk music. The result was that Grainger now began to devote himself to research in the English folk music of the past. His orchestral and piano arrangements of many of these folk tunes and dances, between 1908 and 1912, were responsible for bringing them to the attention of the music world. In 1915, Grainger made his debut as pianist in the United States. He has lived in America since that time, devoting himself to concert work, lecturing and teaching, besides composition. Grainger died in White Plains, New York, on February 20, 1961.

In his own music, Grainger reveals the impact that his studies in English music made upon him: in his partiality to modal writing, to the contrapuntal technique, to placid lyricism. But it is in his fresh arrangements of old English songs and dances that Grainger is most famous. “Even when he keeps the folk songs within their original dimensions,” says Cyril Scott, “he has a way of dealing with them which is entirely new, yet at the same time never lacking in taste.”

_Brigg Fair_ is a plaintive melody of pastoral character from the district of Lincolnshire. It was used by the contemporary British composer, Frederick Delius, as the basis for his orchestral rhapsody of the same name (dedicated to Grainger).

The bucolic and ever popular _Country Gardens_ is a “Mock Morris,” the “Mock Morris” being an old English dance popular during the reign of Henry VII and since then associated with festivities attending May Day. Grainger’s original transcription was for piano solo, and only later did he adapt it for orchestra.

_Handel in the Strand_ is a lively clog dance. _Irish Tune from County Derry_ is better known as the _Londonderry Air_, a poignant melody now known to us through numerous versions other than that originally made famous by Grainger. The piece, designated as a Mock Morris, is one of a series in a collection entitled _Room Music Tit Bits_. “No folk music tune-stuffs at all are used herein,” says the composer. “The rhythmic cast of the piece is Morris-like, but neither the build of the tunes nor the general layout of the form keeps to the Morris dance shape.”

The lively _Molly on the Shore_ was first written for piano before being adapted by the composer for orchestra. _Shepherd’s Hey_ is a Mock Morris and consists of four tunes, two fiddle tunes and two folk songs.

Of Grainger’s own compositions three are of general interest. The _Children’s March_ (1917) was written during World War I for the United States Army Band. “This march,” says the composer, “is structurally of a complicated build, on account of the large number of different themes and tunes employed and of the varied and irregular interplay of many contrasted sections. Tonally speaking, it is a study in the blend of piano, wind, and percussion instruments.”

_Passacaglia on Green Bushes_ has two versions. One is for small orchestra, and the other for a large one. This composition is built around the folk melody “Green Bushes” which remains unchanged in key, line, and rhythm throughout the work (except for eight measures of free passage work near the beginning, and forty measures at the end). Against this melody move several folk-like melodies of Grainger’s own invention.

_Youthful Suite_ for orchestra is made up of five sections. Part of this work was completed in 1902, and part in 1945. The first movement, “Northern March,” derives its character from the melodic and rhythmic traits of the folk music of North England and Scotland. The main melody here acquires its folk-song character through the use of the flat-seventh minor scale. “Rustic Dance” achieves an exotic quality through the employment of an unusual variant of the F major chord. “Norse Digger” is a somber lament in which is mourned the passing of a dead hero, possibly from an Icelandic saga. “Eastern Intermezzo” has an Oriental cast. The repeated use of drum beats and the virile rhythms were inspired by a reading of a description of the dance of the elephants in _Toomal of the Elephants_ from Kipling’s Jungle Book. This suite ends with a formal “English Waltz.”

Enrique Granados

Enrique Granados was born in Lérida, Spain, on July 27, 1867. After completing his music study at Conservatories in Barcelona and Madrid, and privately with Charles de Bériot in Paris, he earned his living playing the piano in Spanish restaurants. In 1898, his first opera was produced in Madrid, _Maria del Carmen_. The national identity of this music was to characterize all of Granados’ subsequent works and place him among the most significant of Spanish national composers. His most famous composition is _Goyescas_, a remarkable series of piano pieces inspired by the paintings of Goya; the composer later adapted this music for an opera, also called _Goyescas_, which received its world première in New York at the Metropolitan Opera on January 28, 1918. Granados came to the United States to attend this performance, after which he visited Washington, D.C. to play the piano for President Wilson at the White House. He was aboard the ship _Folkstone_, sailing from Folkstone to Dieppe, when it was torpedoed by a German U-Boat during World War I on March 24, 1916, bringing him to his death.

In their rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary, Granados’ best music is unmistakably Spanish. Perhaps his most famous single piece of music is an orchestral “Intermezzo” from the opera _Goyescas_. He wrote it after he had fully completed his score to the opera because the directors of the Metropolitan Opera filled the need of an instrumental interlude. This sensual Spanish melody is as famous in various transcriptions (including one for cello and piano by Gaspar Cassadó) as it is in its original orchestral version.

Twelve _Spanish Dances_, for piano, op. 37 (1893) are also popular. The most frequently performed of these is the fifth in E minor named _Andaluza_ (or _Playera_). Fritz Kreisler transcribed it for violin and piano, one of numerous adaptations. The sixth in D major is also familiar—_Rondalla Aragonesa_, a jota, transcribed for violin and piano by Jacques Thibaud.

Edvard Grieg

Edvard Hagerup Grieg, Norway’s greatest composer, was born in Bergen on June 15, 1843. Revealing unusual talent for music as a boy, he was sent to the Leipzig Conservatory in 1858. He remained there several years, a pupil of Plaidy, Moscheles, and Reinecke among others. In 1863 he returned to his native land where several of his early compositions were performed. He then lived for several years in Copenhagen. There he met and became a friend of two musicians who interested him in Scandinavian music and musical nationalism: Niels Gade and Rikard Nordraak. Under their guidance and stimulation Grieg began writing music in a national style, beginning with the _Humoresques_ for piano, op. 6, which he dedicated to Nordraak. Grieg also became a sponsor of Scandinavian music and composers by helping Nordraak organize a society for their benefit. In 1866, Grieg helped arrange in Oslo the first concert ever given over entirely to Norwegian music; a year later he helped found the Norwegian Academy of Music. He also served as a conductor of the Harmonic Society, an important influence in presenting Scandinavian music.

After marrying Nina Hagerup in 1867, Grieg settled in Oslo to assume an imperial position in its musical life. He also achieved worldwide recognition as a composer through his violin Sonata in F major, the A major piano concerto, and the incidental music to Ibsen’s _Peer Gynt_. He was the recipient of many honors both from his native land and from foreign countries. His sixtieth birthday was honored as a national Norwegian holiday. From 1885 on Grieg lived in a beautiful villa, Troldhaugen, a few miles from Bergen. Music lovers made pilgrimages to meet him and pay him tribute. His remains were buried there following his sudden death in Bergen on September 4, 1907.

Its national identity is the quality that sets Grieg’s music apart from that of most of the other Romanticists of his day. Though he rarely quoted folk melodies or dance tunes directly, he produced music that is Norwegian to its core. In his best music he speaks of Norway’s geography, culture, people, backgrounds, holidays, and legends in melodies and rhythms whose kinship with actual folk music is unmistakable.

The _Holberg Suite_ for string orchestra, op. 40 (1885)—or to use its official title of _From Holberg’s Time_—was written to honor the bicentenary of Ludvig Holberg, often called the founder of Danish literature. The composer also adapted this music for solo piano. Bearing in mind that the man he was honoring belonged to a bygone era, Grieg wrote a suite in classical style and with strictly classical forms; but his own romantic and at times national identity is not sacrificed. The first movement is a “Prelude,” a vigorous movement almost in march time. This is followed by three classical dances—“Sarabande,” “Gavotte,” and “Musette.” The fourth movement temporarily deserts the 17th and 18th centuries to offer a graceful “Air” in the manner of a Norwegian folk song, but the classical era returns in all its stateliness and grace in the concluding “Rigaudon.”

_In Autumn_, a concert overture for orchestra, op. 11 (1865, revised 1888) was Grieg’s first effort to write symphonic music. This composition is a fresh and spontaneous expression of joy in Nature’s beauties. The principal melody is a song written by Grieg in 1865, “Autumn Storm.” This material is preceded by an introduction and followed by a coda in which a happy dance by harvesters is introduced.

The _Lyric Suite_ for orchestra, op. 54 (1903) is an adaptation by the composer of four numbers from his _Lyric Pieces_, for piano—a set of sixty-six short compositions gathered in ten volumes, each a delightful miniature of Norwegian life. The first of the four episodes in the _Lyric Suite_ is “Shepherd Lad,” scored entirely for strings, music in a dreamy mood whose main romantic melody has the character of a nocturne. “Rustic March” (or “Peasant March”), for full orchestra, has for its principal thought a ponderous, rhythmic theme first given by the clarinets. The third movement is a poetic “Nocturne” whose main melody is presented by the first violins. The suite ends with the popular “March of the Dwarfs” in the grotesque style of the composer’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from _Peer Gynt_. This movement alternates a sprightly fantastic march tune (first heard in the violins) with an expressive melody for solo violin.

The _Norwegian Dance No. 2_ is the second of a set of four folk dances originally for piano four hands and later transcribed by the composer for orchestra, op. 35 (1881). This second dance, in the key of A minor, is probably the composer’s most famous composition in a national idiom. It is in three parts, the flanking section consisting of a sprightly rustic dance tune, while the middle part is faster and more vigorous contrasting music. The other somewhat less familiar, but no less beguiling, _Norwegian Dances_ are the first in D minor, the third in G major, and the fourth in D major.

The _Peer Gynt Suite No. 1_, for orchestra, op. 46 (1876) consists of four numbers from the incidental music for the Ibsen drama, _Peer Gynt_, produced in Oslo in 1876. Ibsen’s epic is a picaresque drama about a capricious and at times spirited Norwegian peasant named Peer, and his fabulous adventures, some of them amatory. He abducts the bride, Solveig, then deserts her; as an outlaw he roams the world; when he returns home he finds Solveig still believing in him and through that belief he comes upon salvation.

The first movement of Suite No. 1 is a bucolic picture, “Morning,” in which a barcarolle-type melody is prominent. This is followed by a tender elegy for muted strings, “Ase’s Death,” Ase being Peer Gynt’s mother. A capricious, sensual dance follows, “Anitra’s Dance,” a mazurka-like melody with an Oriental identity. The final movement, “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is a grotesque march built from a four-measure phrase which grows in volume and intensity until it evolves into a thunderous fortissimo.

Grieg prepared a second suite from his incidental music for _Peer Gynt_, op. 55. Only one movement from this set is popular, “Solveig’s Song,” a haunting Norwegian song for muted strings portraying Solveig, the abducted bride who thereafter remains forever faithful to Peer Gynt. This is the final movement of a suite whose preceding movements are “Ingrid’s Lament,” “Arabian Dance,” and “Peer Gynt’s Homecoming.”

_Sigurd Jorsalfar_, a suite for orchestra, op. 56 (1872, revised 1892) also comes from the incidental music to a play, in this case a historical drama of the same name by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, produced in Oslo in 1872. The central character is the twelfth-century Norwegian king, Sigurd, who joins the Crusades to fight heroically against the Saracens. There are three movements to this suite. The first “Prelude” is subtitled “In the King’s Hall,” and has three distinct sections. In the first of these the main thought is a theme for clarinets and bassoons against plucked strings; in the second, a trio, the most prominent melody is that for flute imitated by the oboe; the third part repeats the first. The second movement is “Intermezzo” or “Borghild’s Dream.” This is serene music alternated by an agitated mood. The finale is “March of Homage” in which trumpet fanfares and a loud chord for full orchestra set the stage for the main theme, in four cellos. This same theme is later proclaimed triumphantly by the full orchestra. Midway there appears a trio in which the first violins offer the main melody.

_Two Elegiac Melodies_, for string orchestra, op. 34 (1880) are adaptations of two of the composer’s most famous songs found in op. 33, “Heartwounds” and “The Last Spring,” lyrics by A. O. Vinje. Both melodies are for the most part in a somber mood. The first is in a comparatively fast time while the second is in slow tempo.

_Two Northern Melodies_, for string orchestra, op. 63 (1895) is, as the title indicates, in two sections. The first, “In the Style of a Folksong,” offers its main melody in the cellos after a short introduction. The second, “The Cowherd’s Tune,” begins with a slow, simple tune and ends with a delightful peasant dance.

The Broadway operetta, _Song of Norway_, was not only based upon episodes in the life of Grieg but also makes extensive use of Grieg’s music. The book is by Milton Lazarus based on a play by Homer Curran, and the lyrics and music are by Robert Wright and George Forrest. The operetta opened on Broadway on August 21, 1944 (Lawrence Brooks played Grieg, and Helena Bliss his wife, Nina) to accumulate the impressive run of 860 performances. Since the operetta has become something of a classic of our popular theater through frequent revivals—and since its music is sometimes heard on concerts of semi-classical music—it deserves consideration. The story centers mainly around the love affair of Grieg and Nina Hagerup, and their ultimate marriage; it also carries the composer from obscurity to world fame. Wright and Forrest reached into the storehouse of Grieg’s music for their songs. “Strange Music,” which became a popular-song hit in 1944 and 1945, is based on one of Grieg’s _Lyric Pieces_ for piano, _Wedding Day in Troldhaugen_. “I Love You” is based on Grieg’s famous song of the same name (“_Ich liebe Dich_”) which he actually wrote to express his love for Nina; the lyric was by Hans Andersen, and the song appeared in a set of four collected in op. 5 (1864). Musical episodes from Grieg’s G major Violin Sonata, the _Peer Gynt Suite_, _Norwegian Dance No. 2_, the A minor Piano Concerto, and some of the piano pieces provided further material for popular songs and ballet music.

Ferde Grofé

Ferde Grofé was born Ferdinand Rudolph Von Grofé in New York City on March 27, 1892. He began to study the violin and piano early. During his adolescence he became a member of the viola section of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. While engaged in serious music he started playing with jazz ensembles. Before long he formed one of his own, for which he made all the arrangements, and whose performances attracted considerable interest among jazz devotees. Paul Whiteman was one of those who was impressed by Grofé’s brand of jazz. In 1919 he hired Grofé to play the piano in, and make all the arrangements for, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Grofé worked for Whiteman for a dozen years, a period during which he prepared most of the arrangements used by Whiteman, including that of George Gershwin’s historic _Rhapsody in Blue_ at its world première in 1924. In 1924, Grofé wrote his first symphonic composition in a jazz style, _Broadway at Night_. One year later, came the _Mississippi Suite_, his first success. In 1931 he scored a triumph with the _Grand Canyon Suite_, still his most celebrated composition. After 1931, Grofé toured the country as conductor of his own orchestra, making numerous appearances in public and over the radio. From 1939 to 1942 he taught orchestration at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and in 1941 he began an eight-year contract with the Standard Oil Company of California to conduct the San Francisco Symphony over the radio. Grofé has also written music for motion pictures and special works for industry.

With Gershwin, Grofé has been an outstanding composer of symphonic music utilizing jazz and other popular styles and idioms. He is distinguished for his remarkable skill at orchestration, which frequently employs non-musical devices for special effects—for example, a typewriter in _Tabloid_, pneumatic drills in _Symphony in Steel_, a bicycle pump in _Free Air_, shouts and door-banging in _Hollywood Suite_, and the sound of bouncing bowling balls in _Hudson River Suite_.

The _Grand Canyon Suite_ (1931), Grofé’s most significant composition as well as the most famous, is an orchestral description in five movements of one of America’s natural wonders. The first movement, “Sunrise,” opens with a timpani roll to suggest the break of dawn over the canyon. The main melody depicting the sunrise itself is heard in muted trumpet against a chordal background. As the movement progresses, the music becomes increasingly luminous, until the sun finally erupts into full resplendence. “The Painted Desert” is an atmospheric tone picture. Nebulous chords suggest an air of mystery before a sensual melodic section unfolds. “On the Trail” is the most popular movement of the suite, having for many years been expropriated as the identifying theme-signature for the Philip Morris radio program. An impulsive, restless rhythm brings us a picture of a jogging burro. A cowboy tune is then set contrapuntally against this rhythm. In “Sunset” animal calls precede a poignant melody that speaks about the peace and serenity that descend on the canyon at sunset. “Cloudburst” is the concluding movement in which a violent storm erupts, lashes the canyon with its fury, and then subsides. Tranquillity now returns, and the canyon is once more surrounded by breathless and quiet beauty.

The _Hudson River Suite_ (1955) was written for André Kostelanetz, the conductor, who introduced the work in Washington, D.C. This music provides five different aspects of the mighty river in New York, and its associations with American history. The river itself is described in the opening movement, “The River.” This is followed by a portrait of Henry Hudson. The colonial times and the land of Rip Van Winkle are discussed in the third movement, “Rip Van Winkle,” while in “Albany Night Boat,” a delightful account is given of New York in years gone by, when a holiday trip on the boat was a favorite pastime of New York couples. The suite ends with “New York” a graphic etching of the metropolis along the Hudson.

The _Mississippi Suite_ (1925)—like its eminent successor, the _Grand Canyon Suite_—was written for Paul Whiteman, who introduced it in Carnegie Hall. The first movement, “Father of the Waters” has a melody of an American-Indian identity representing the river. In “Huckleberry Finn,” the character of the boy is suggested by a jazz motive in the tuba, later amplified into a spacious jazz melody for strings. “Old Creole Days” highlights a Negro melody in muted trumpet soon taken over by different sections of the orchestra. The closing movement is the suite’s best known section and the composer’s own favorite among his compositions. Called “Mardi Gras” it is a lively and colorful picture of carnival time in New Orleans. A rhythmic passage with which the movement opens serves as the preface to an eloquent melody for strings.

David Guion

David Wendell Fentress Guion was born in Ballinger, Texas, on December 15, 1895. He received his musical training at the piano with local teachers and with Leopold Godowsky in Vienna. After returning to the United States he filled several posts as teacher of music in Texas, and from 1925 to 1928 taught piano at the Chicago Music College. Early in the 1930’s he appeared in a cowboy production featuring his own music at the Roxy Theater in New York and soon thereafter made weekly broadcasts over the National Broadcasting Company network. A David Guion Week was celebrated throughout Texas in 1950.

He is best known for his skilful arrangements and transcriptions of Western folk songs and Negro Spirituals, some of which first became famous in his versions. His orchestral adaptation of “The Arkansas Traveler” has long been a favorite on “pop” concerts. A familiar legend helped to dramatize this American folk song to many. A traveler caught in the rain stops outside an Arkansas hut where an old man is playing part of a folk tune on his fiddle. Upon questioning him the traveler learns that the old fiddler does not know the rest of the song, whereupon the stranger takes the fiddle from him and completes it. The two then become devoted friends.

Even more famous is David Guion’s arrangement of “Home on the Range,” in 1930. It is not quite clear who actually wrote this song. It was discovered by John A. Lomax who heard it sung by a Texan saloon keeper, recorded it, and published it in his 1910 edition of _Cowboy Songs_. Only after Guion had arranged it did it become a national favorite over the radio, its popularity no doubt immensely enhanced by the widely circulated story that this was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s favorite song.

Guion’s concert arrangement for full orchestra of “Turkey in the Straw” is also of interest. This folk tune—sometimes known as “Zip Coon”—first achieved popularity on the American musical stage in the era before the minstrel show. It was published in Baltimore in 1834 and first made popular that year by Bob Farrell at the Bowery Theater. After that it was a familiar routine of the black-faced entertainer, George Washington Dixon. Several have laid claim to the song, but it is most likely derived from an English or Irish melody.

Other arrangements and transcriptions by Guion include “Nobody Knows De Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” “Ride Cowboy Ride,” “Short’nin’ Bread,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

Guion has also written several compositions of his own in which the folk element is pronounced. One of these is named _Alley Tunes_, three musical scenes from the South. Its most famous movement is the last, “The Harmonica Player,” but the earlier two are equally appealing for their homespun melodies and vigorous national identity: “Brudder Sinkiller and His Flock of Sheep” and “The Lonesome Whistler.” Another pleasing orchestral composition by Guion is a waltz suite entitled _Southern Nights_.

Johan Halvorsen

Johan Halvorsen was born in Drammen, Norway, on March 15, 1864. After attending the Stockholm Conservatory he studied the violin with Adolf Brodsky in Leipzig and César Thomson in Belgium. In 1892 he returned to his native land. For many years he was the distinguished conductor of the Oslo National Theater. His admiration of Grieg (whose niece he married) directed him toward musical nationalism, a style in which many of his most ambitious works were written. He was the composer of three symphonies, two rhapsodies, a festival overture, several suites, and a number of peasant dances all for orchestra. He died in Oslo on December 4, 1935.

The _Andante religioso_, in G minor, for violin and orchestra, is a richly melodious and spiritual work which has gained recognition with semi-classical orchestras. But Halvorsen’s most popular composition is the _Triumphant Entry of the Boyars_, for orchestra. The boyar or boyard was a military aristocrat of ancient Russia, a tyrant as notorious for his cruelty as for his extravagant way of life. Halvorsen’s vigorous, colorful march has an Oriental personality. It opens with a stirring march subject for clarinet against a drone bass in cellos and double basses, and it highlights a fanfare for trumpets and trombones.

George Frederick Handel

George Frederick Handel was born in Halle, Saxony, on February 23, 1685. After studying the organ in his native city he settled in Hamburg where he wrote, and in 1705 had produced, his first operas, _Almira_ and _Nero_. A period of travel and study in Italy followed, during which he was influenced by the Italian instrumental music of that period. In 1710 he was appointed Kapellmeister in Hanover. In 1712 he settled permanently in England where in 1727 he became a British subject and Anglicized his name. He became one of England’s giant figures in music, first as a composer of operas in the Italian style, and after that (when the vogue for such operas died out) as a creator of oratorios. For several years he was the court composer for Queen Anne and royal music master for George I. In 1720 he was appointed artistic director of the then newly organized Royal Academy of Music. In the last years of his life he suffered total blindness, notwithstanding which fact he continued giving public performances at the organ, conducting his oratorios, and writing music. He died in London on April 14, 1759 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Handel was a prolific composer of operas, oratorios, orchestral music, concertos for solo instruments and orchestra, sonatas, compositions for harpsichord, and chamber works. He was greatest in his religious music, in the deservedly world-famous oratorio _Messiah_, and in such somewhat less familiar but no less distinguished works as _Judas Maccabaeus_, _Samson_, _Solomon_, and _Israel in Egypt_. His greatest music is on such a consistently high spiritual plane, is filled with such grandeur of expression, and reveals such extraordinary contrapuntal skill that it does not easily lend itself to popular consumption. But one passage from the _Messiah_ is particularly famous, and especially popular with people the world over; it is probably the most celebrated single piece of music he ever wrote, and while originally for chorus and orchestra, is familiar in innumerable transcriptions for orchestra or for band. It is the sublime “Hallelujah Chorus,” about which the composer himself said when he finished writing it: “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself.” This grandiose choral passage, a miracle of contrapuntal technique, is undoubtedly the climactic point of the entire oratorio. When the _Messiah_ was first heard in London on March 23, 1743 (a little less than a year after its world première which took place in Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1742) the awesome immensity of this music made such an impression on King George II, in the audience, that he rose spontaneously in his seat and remained standing throughout the piece. The audience followed their king in listening to the music in a standing position. Since then it has been a custom in performances of _Messiah_ for the audience to rise during the singing of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

The _Harmonious Blacksmith_ is Handel’s best known composition for the harpsichord. This is the fourth movement of a harpsichord suite, No. 5 in E major, which the composer wrote in 1720; but most frequently it is played apart from the rest of the movements as a self-sufficient composition. The title _Harmonious Blacksmith_ was created not by the composer but by a publisher in Bath, England, when in 1822 he issued the fourth movement of the suite as a separate piece of music. There happened to be in Bath a blacksmith who often sang this Handel tune and who came to be known in that town as the “harmonious blacksmith.” The Bath publisher recognized the popular appeal of a title like “Harmonious Blacksmith” and decided to use it for this music. The story that Handel conceived this tune while waiting in a blacksmith’s shop during a storm is, however, apocryphal. The _Harmonious Blacksmith_ begins with a simple two-part melody which then undergoes five equally elementary variations.

The _Largo_, so familiar as an instrumental composition in various transcriptions, is really an aria from one of Handel’s operas. It was a tenor aria (“_Ombrai mai fu_”) from _Serse_ (1738) in which is described the beauty of the cool shade of a palm tree. In slower tempo it has become, in its instrumental dress, a broad, stately melody of religious character with the simple tempo marking of _Largo_ as its title.

The _Water Music_ (1717) is a suite for orchestra made up of charming little dances, airs and fanfares written for a royal water pageant held on the Thames River in London on July 19, 1717. A special barge held the orchestra that performed this composition while the musicians sailed slowly up and down the river. The king was so impressed by Handel’s music that he asked it be repeated three times. In its original form, this suite is made up of twenty pieces, but the version most often heard today is an adaptation by Sir Hamilton Harty in which only six movements appear: Overture, Air, Bourrée, Hornpipe, Air, and Fanfare.

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, on March 31, 1732. From 1740 to 1749 he was a member of the choir of St. Stephen’s in Vienna, attending its school for a comprehensive musical training. For several years after that he lived in Vienna, teaching music, and completing various hack assignments, while pursuing serious composition. In 1755 he was appointed by Baron Karl Josef Fuernberg to write music for and direct the concerts at his palace; it was in this office that Haydn wrote his first symphonies and string quartets as well as many other orchestral and chamber-music works. From 1758 to 1760 he was Kapellmeister to Count Ferdinand Maximilian Morzin. In 1761 Haydn became second Kapellmeister to Prince Paul Anton Esterházy at Eisenstadt, rising to the post of first Kapellmeister five years after that. Haydn remained with the Esterházys until 1790, a period in which he arrived at full maturity as a composer. His abundant symphonies, quartets, sonatas and other compositions spread his fame throughout the length and breadth of Europe. After leaving the employ of the Esterházys, Haydn paid two visits to London, in 1791 and again in 1794, where he directed orchestral concerts for which he wrote his renowned _London_ symphonies. At the dusk of his career, Haydn produced two crowning masterworks in the field of choral music: the oratorios _The Creation_ (1798) and _The Seasons_ (1801). Haydn died in Vienna on May 31, 1809.

Haydn was an epochal figure during music’s classical era. He helped to establish permanently the structures of the symphony, quartet, sonata; to arrive at a fully realized homophonic style as opposed to the contrapuntal idiom of the masters who preceded him; and to arrive at new concepts of harmony, orchestration, and thematic development. He helped pave the way for the giants who followed him, most notably Mozart and Beethoven, who helped carry the classical era in music to its full flowering. To his musical writing Haydn brought that charm, grace, stateliness, beauty of lyricism that we associate with classicism, and with it a most engaging sense of humor and at times even a remarkable expressiveness. Most of Haydn’s music belongs to the serious concert repertory. He did write some music intended for the masses—mainly the Contredanses, German Dances and Minuets which, after all, was the dance music of the Austrian people in Haydn’s time. Haydn’s _German Dances_ and Minuets are especially appealing. The former was the forerunner of the waltz, but its melodies and rhythms have a lusty peasant quality and an earthy vitality; the latter was the graceful, sedate dance of the European court. Twelve of Haydn’s _German Dances_ and twelve of his Minuets (the latter called _Katherine Menuetten_) were written in the closing years of his life and published in 1794; they were intended for the court ball held at the Redoutensaal in Vienna where they were introduced on November 25, 1792. The _German Dances_ here have sobriety and dignity, and are often filled with Haydn’s remarkable innovations in melodic and harmonic writing; the Minuets are consistently light and carefree in spirit.

The _Gypsy Rondo_—often heard in various transcriptions, including one for violin and piano by Fritz Kreisler—comes from the Piano Trio No. 1 in G major, op. 73, no. 2 (1795) where it is the concluding movement (Rondo all’ ongarese). It is in Hungarian style, vivacious in rhythmic and melodic content; it is for this reason that Haydn himself designated this music “in a gypsy style” and Kreisler’s transcription bears the title of _Hungarian Rondo_.

Of Haydn’s more than one hundred symphonies the one occasionally given by pop orchestras is a curiosity known as the _Toy Symphony_. Actually we now know that Haydn never really wrote it, but it was the work of either Mozart’s father, Leopold, or Haydn’s brother, Michael. But it was long attributed to Joseph Haydn, and still is often credited to him. This little symphony in C major, which is in three short movements, was long believed to have been written by Haydn during his visit to Berchtegaden, Bavaria, in 1788 where he became interested in toy instruments. The symphony uses numerous toy instruments (penny trumpet, quail call, rattle, cuckoo, whistle, little drum, toy triangle, and so forth) together with three orthodox musical instruments, two violins and a bass.

Joseph Haydn was also the composer of Austria’s national anthem, “_Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser_.” He was commissioned to do so in 1797 by the Minister of the Interior to help stir the patriotic ardor of Austrians; it was first performed in all Austrian theaters on the Emperor’s birthday on February 12, 1797. The Emperor was deeply impressed by the anthem. “You have expressed,” he said, “what is in every loyal Austrian heart, and through your melody Austria will always be honored.” Haydn himself used the same melody in one of his string quartets: as the slow second movement in which it receives a series of variations. It is for this reason that this quartet, in C major, op. 76, no. 3, is popularly known as the _Emperor Quartet_.

Victor Herbert

Victor Herbert was born in Dublin, Ireland, on February 1, 1859. He received a sound musical training at the Stuttgart Conservatory, following which he studied the cello privately with Bernhard Cossmann in Baden-Baden. For several years after that he played the cello in many German and Austrian orchestras. His bow as a composer took place with two ambitious works, a suite and a concerto, both for cello and orchestra. They were introduced by the Stuttgart Symphony (the composer as soloist) in 1883 and 1885 respectively. After marrying the prima donna, Therese Foerster, in 1886, Herbert came to the United States and played the cello in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, his wife having been engaged by that company. He soon played the cello in other major American orchestras, besides conducting symphonic concerts, concerts of light music, and performances at important festivals. In 1893 he succeeded Patrick S. Gilmore as bandleader of the famous 22nd Regiment Band, and from 1898 to 1904 he was principal conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony. After 1904 he was the conductor of his own orchestra.

Herbert won world renown as a composer of operettas for which he produced a wealth of melodies that have never lost their charm or fascination for music lovers. His first produced operetta, _Prince Ananias_, in 1894 was a failure. But one year later came _The Wizard of the Nile_, the first of a long string of stage successes Herbert was henceforth to enjoy. From then on, until the end of his life, Herbert remained one of Broadway’s most productive and most significant composers. Many of his operettas are now classics of the American musical stage. Among these are: _The Fortune Teller_ (1898), _Babes in Toyland_ (1903), _Mlle. Modiste_ (1905), _The Red Mill_ (1906) and _Naughty Marietta_ (1910). A facile composer with an extraordinary technique at orchestration and harmonization, and a born melodist who had a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of beautiful tunes, Herbert was a giant figure in American popular music and in the music for the American popular theater. He died of a heart attack in New York City on May 26, 1924.

Victor Herbert produced a considerable amount of concert music—concertos, symphonies, suites, overtures—most of which has passed out of the more serious repertory. A few of these concert works have enough emotional impact and melodic fascination to enjoy a permanent status in the semi-classical repertory. Potpourris from the scores of his most famous operettas—and orchestral transcriptions of individual songs from these productions—are, of course, basic to any pop or semi-classical orchestra repertory. For Herbert’s greatest songs from his operettas are classics, “as pure in outline as the melodies of Schubert and Mozart” according to Deems Taylor.

_Al Fresco_ is mood music which opens the second act of the operetta, _It Happened in Nordland_ (1904). Herbert had previously written and published it as a piano piece, using the pen-name of Frank Roland, in order to test the appeal of this little composition. It did so well in this version that Herbert finally decided to include it in his operetta where it serves to depict a lively carnival scene.

_The American Fantasia_ (1898) is a brilliantly orchestrated and skilfully contrived fantasy made up of favorite American national ballads and songs. It is the composer’s stirring tribute to the country of his adoption. The ballads and songs are heard in the following sequence: “Hail Columbia,” “Swanee River,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Dixie,” “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.” This composition comes to an exciting finish with “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a Wagnerian-type orchestration.

The operetta _Babes in Toyland_, which opened in New York on October 13, 1903, was an extravaganza inspired by the then-recent success on Broadway of _The Wizard of Oz_. Herbert’s operetta drew its characters from fairy tales, _Mother Goose_, and other children’s stories, placing these characters in a rapid succession of breath-taking scenes of spectacular beauty. The complicated plot concerned the escape of little Jane and Alan from their miserly uncle to the garden of Contrary Mary. They then come to Toyland where they meet the characters from fairy tales and Mother Goose, and where toys are dominated by the wicked Toymaker whom they finally bring to his destruction. Principal musical numbers from this score include the delightful orchestral march, “March of the Toys,” and the songs “Toyland” and “I Can’t Do the Sum.”

_Dagger Dance_ is one of the most familiar pieces in the semi-classical repertory in the melodic and rhythmic style of American-Indian music. It comes from Herbert’s opera _Natoma_, whose première took place in Philadelphia on February 25, 1911. This spirited Indian dance music appears in the second act, at a climactic moment in which Natoma, challenged to perform a dagger dance, does so; but during the performance she stabs and kills the villain, Alvarado.

_The Fortune Teller_ whose New York première took place on September 26, 1898, is an operetta that starred Alice Neilsen in the dual role of Musette, a gypsy fortune teller, and Irma, a ballet student. Against a Hungarian setting, the play involves these two girls in love affairs with a Hungarian Hussar and a gypsy musician. Hungarian characters and a Hungarian background allowed Herbert to write music generously spiced with Hungarian and gypsy flavors, music exciting for its sensual appeal. The most famous song from this score is “Gypsy Love Song,” sometimes also known as “Slumber On, My Little Gypsy Sweetheart,” sung by Sandor, the gypsy musician, in tribute to Musette.

_Indian Summer: An American Idyll_ (1919) is a tone picture of Nature which Herbert wrote in two versions, for solo piano, and for orchestra. Twelve years after the composer’s death, Gus Kahn wrote lyrics for its main melody, and for fourteen weeks it was heard on the radio Hit Parade, twice in the Number 1 position.

_The Irish Rhapsody_ for orchestra (1892) is one of several concert works in which Herbert honored the country of his birth. This work is built from several familiar Irish ballads found by the composer in Thomas Moore’s _Irish Melodies_, published in 1807. “Believe Me if All These Endearing Young Charms” comes immediately after a harp cadenza. This is followed by a variation of “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” “To Ladies’ Eyes,” “Thamma Hulla,” “Erin, Oh Erin,” and “Rich and Rare Were the Gems She Wore.” An oboe cadenza then serves as the transition to “St. Patrick’s Day.” The rhapsody ends with “Garry Owen” set against “Erin, Oh Erin” in the bass.

_Mlle. Modiste_, introduced in New York on December 25, 1905, is the operetta in which Fritzi Scheff, once a member of the Metropolitan Opera, became a star of the popular musical theater. This is also the operetta in which she sang the waltz with which, for the rest of her life, she became identified, “Kiss Me Again.” Fritzi Scheff was cast as Fifi, an employee in a Parisian hat shop. Her lowly station precludes her marriage to the man she loves, Capt. Etienne de Bouvray. An American millionaire becomes interested in her, and provides her with the funds to pursue her vocal studies. Fifi then becomes a famous opera star, thereby achieving both the fame and the fortune she needs to gain Capt. Etienne as a husband.

Early in this operetta, Fifi tries to demonstrate her talent as a singer by performing a number called “If I Were On the Stage,” in which she offers various types of songs, including a polonaise, a gavotte, and a waltz. The waltz part was originally intended by Herbert as a caricature of that kind of dreamy, sentimental music and consisted of the melody of “Kiss Me Again” which he had written some time earlier, in 1903. On opening night the audience liked this part of the number so well, and was so noisy in its demonstration, that Herbert decided to feature it separately and prominently in his operetta, had new sentimental lyrics written for it, and called it “Kiss Me Again.” This, of course, is the most celebrated single number from this operetta, but several others are equally appealing, notably one of Herbert’s finest marches, “The Mascot of the Troop,” another waltz called “The Nightingale and the Star,” and a humorous ditty, “I Want What I Want When I Want It.”

The operetta, _Naughty Marietta_—first New York performance on November 7, 1910—was set in New Orleans in 1780 when that city was under Spanish rule. The noble lady, Marietta (starring the prima donna, Emma Trentini) had come to New Orleans from Naples to avoid an undesirable marriage. There she meets, falls in love with, and after many stirring adventures wins, Captain Dick Warrington. A basic element of this story is a melody—a fragment of which has come to the heroine in a dream. Marietta promises her hand to anybody who could give her the complete song of which this fragment is a part, and it is Dick Warrington, of course, who is successful. This melody is one of Herbert’s best loved, “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life.” Other favorites from _Naughty Marietta_ are “I’m Falling in Love With Someone,” “Italian Street Song,” the serenade “’Neath the Southern Moon,” and the march, “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.”

_Pan Americana_ (1901) is a composition for orchestra described by Herbert as a “_morceau caractéristique_.” He wrote it for the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 (where President McKinley was assassinated). The three sections are in three different popular styles, the first in American-Indian, the second in ragtime, and the third in Cuban or Spanish.

_Punchinello_ and _Yesterthoughts_ (1900) are two evocative tone pictures originally for piano from a suite of pieces describing the natural beauties of scenes near or at Lake Placid, New York. Herbert orchestrated both these numbers.

_The Red Mill_, which came to New York on September 24, 1906, was an operetta starring the comedy team of Fred Stone and David Montgomery in a play set in Holland. They are two Americans stranded and penniless at an inn called “The Sign of the Red Mill.” When they discover that little Gretchen is in love with Capt. Doris van Damm and refuses to marry the Governor to whom she is designated by her parents, they come to her assistance. After numerous escapades and antics they help her to win her true lover who, as it turns out, is the heir to an immense fortune. The following are its principal musical episodes: the main love duet, “The Isle of Our Dreams,”; “Moonbeams”; and the comedy song, “Every Day Is Ladies’ Day for Me.”

The _Suite of Serenades_, for orchestra (1924) was written for the same Paul Whiteman concert of American music at Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924 in which Gershwin’s _Rhapsody in Blue_ was introduced. This is a four movement suite which represented Herbert’s only attempt to write directly for a jazz orchestra, and parts of it are characterized by jazz scoring and syncopations. Herbert wrote a second version of this suite for symphony orchestra. In the four movements the composer skilfully simulates four national styles. The first is Spanish, the second Chinese, the third Cuban, and the fourth Oriental.

Another familiar orchestral suite by Herbert is the _Suite Romantique_ (1901). Herbert’s vein for sentimental melody is here generously tapped. The four movements are mood pictures named as follows: “_Visions_,” “_Aubade_” (a beautiful solo for the cellos), “_Triomphe d’amour_” (a glowing love duet), and “_Fête nuptiale_.”

_The Woodland Fancies_, for orchestra (1901) also consist of four evocative and pictorial mood pictures, this time inspired by the Adirondack mountains where Herbert maintained a summer home and which he dearly loved. Here the four movements are entitled: “Morning in the Mountains,” “Forest Nymphs,” “Twilight,” and “Autumn Frolics.”

There are individual songs from several other Herbert operettas that are part of the semi-classical repertory in orchestral transcriptions. Among these are: “The Angelus” and the title song from _Sweethearts_ (1913); “I Love Thee, I Adore Thee” which recurs throughout _The Serenade_ (1897); “A Kiss in the Dark” from _Orange Blossoms_ (1922); “Star Light, Star Bright,” a delightful waltz from _The Wizard of the Nile_ (1895); and “Thine Alone” from the Irish operetta, _Eileen_ (1917).

Ferdinand Hérold

Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold was born in Paris on January 28, 1791. He began to study music when he was eleven. From 1805 to 1812 he attended the Paris Conservatory where his teachers included Adam and Méhul. In 1812 he received the Prix de Rome. Following his three-year stay in Rome he settled in Naples where he was pianist to Queen Caroline and had his first opera, _La Gioventù di Enrico_, produced in 1815. After returning to his native city he completed a new opera, _Charles de France_, which was successfully produced in 1816 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris where, from this time on, all his operas were given. Hérold wrote many serious operas before turning to the field in which he earned his importance and popularity, the opéra-comique. His first work in this genre was _Marie_ in 1826; his most successful, _Zampa_, in 1831. He also enjoyed a triumph with his last opéra-comique, _Le Pré aux clercs_, produced in 1832. Hérold died of consumption in Paris on January 19, 1833 before reaching his forty-second birthday.

About all that has survived from Hérold’s most famous opera, _Zampa_, is its overture, a semi-classical favorite everywhere. _Zampa_—libretto by Mélesville—was introduced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on May 3, 1831. The hero, Zampa, is the leader of a band of pirates who invade an island. He meets Camille and compels her to desert her lover and marry him. During the marriage festivities the pirate leader mockingly tries to place a ring on the finger of a statue. The statue suddenly comes to life and brings Zampa to his doom by drowning.

The overture opens with a robust subject for full orchestra (derived from the pirates’ chorus of the first act). A brief pause separates this section from a slower one in which timpani rolls and loud chords in the wind precede a stately melody for wind instruments. After some development, in which the mood becomes dramatic, two new subjects are heard: the first is a sensitive melody for clarinet against plucked strings, and the second is a soaring song for the violins.

Jenö Hubay

Jenö Hubay was born in Budapest, Hungary, on September 15, 1858. His father, a professor of the violin at the Budapest Conservatory, gave him his first violin lessons. Jenö made his public debut as violinist when he was eleven, then completed his violin studies with Joachim in Berlin and with Vieuxtemps in Belgium. In 1886 he was appointed professor of the violin at the Budapest Conservatory, and from 1919 to 1934 he was its director. Hubay was one of Europe’s most eminent violinists, violin teachers, and performers of chamber music, the last with the Hubay Quartet which he founded. He died in Vienna on March 12, 1937.

Hubay was the composer of several operas, four symphonies, four violin concertos, and many pieces for the violin. He was at his best when he drew both his inspiration and materials from Hungarian folk music. Perhaps his best known work is a set of fourteen pieces for violin and orchestra collectively known as _Scènes de la Csárda_, or _Hungarian Czardas Scenes_. The czardas is a popular Hungarian folk dance in duple time characterized by quick syncopations, and exploiting alternating slow and rapid passages. These _Scènes_ are often presented as orchestral compositions. The fourth, _Hejre Kati_, is the most popular of the group, a piece of music electrifying for its rhythmic momentum. The second, known as _Hungarian Rhapsody_, and the fifth, _Waves of Balaton_, are also familiar. Besides their rhythmic vitality these compositions are of interest for their sensual melodies, and dramatic contrasts of tempo and mood.

From Hubay’s most famous opera, _The Violin Maker of Cremona_, comes a sensitively lyrical “Intermezzo,” for orchestra. Hubay wrote this one-act opera in 1894, and it was introduced in Budapest the same year. The text by Francois Coppé and Henri Beauclair concerns a violin-making contest in Ferrari, Italy, in which the prize is the beautiful girl, Giannina. A hunchback, Filippo, makes the best violin, but he generously permits Giannina to marry Sandro, the man she really loves. A transcription of the “Intermezzo” for violin and piano is popular in the repertory and bears the title of the opera. The Intermezzo had also been adapted by Stoll as a composition for voice and orchestra under the name “Lonely Night.”

Engelbert Humperdinck

Engelbert Humperdinck was born in Sieburg, Germany, on September 1, 1854. He attended the Cologne Conservatory where his teachers included Hiller (who was the first to recognize his talent), Jensen and Gernsheim. After winning the Mozart Scholarship of Frankfort in 1876, Humperdinck continued his music study in Munich with Franz Lachner and Rheinberger. In Munich he published his first important composition, a _Humoreske_ for orchestra (1880). In 1881, he received the Meyerbeer Prize and in 1897, the Mendelssohn Prize, both for composition. Between 1885 and 1887 he was professor of the Barcelona Conservatory in Spain and in 1890 he became professor at Hoch’s Conservatory in Frankfort, and music critic of the _Frankfurter Zeitung_. He achieved his greatest success as a composer with the fairy opera, _Hansel and Gretel_, produced in Weimar in 1893. After 1896, Humperdinck devoted himself exclusively to composition, and though he wrote several fine operas none was able to equal the popularity of his fairy-opera. He died in Neustrelitz, Germany, on September 27, 1921.

_Hansel and Gretel_ scored a sensational success in its own day; and, in ours, it is the only opera by which Humperdinck is remembered. Following its première in Weimar, Germany, on December 23, 1893, it was performed within a year in virtually every major German opera house. In 1894 it came to London, and in 1895 to New York. The text by Adelheid Wette (Humperdinck’s sister) is based on the Ludwig Grimm fairy tale familiar to young and old throughout the world.

The overture, and two orchestral episodes, are often performed outside the opera house. The Overture is made up of several melodies from the opera beginning with the so-called “prayer melody,” a gentle song for horns and bassoons. A rhythmic passage then describes the spell effected by the witch on the children. After this comes the lovable third-act melody in which the children are awakened by the dewman. The happy dance of the children from the close of the opera leads back to the opening prayer with which the overture comes to a gentle conclusion.

The _Dream Pantomime_ comes in the second act and is an orchestral episode in which is described the descent of the fairies who provide a protective ring around the children, alone and asleep in the deep forest. The _Gingerbread Waltz_ (_Knusperwalzer_) from Act 3 is the joyous music expressing the children’s delight after they have succeeded in pushing the witch inside the oven and burning her to a crisp.

Among Humperdinck’s many works for symphony orchestra one is occasionally performed by semi-classical or pop orchestras. It is the _Moorish Rhapsody_ (1898) written for the Leeds Festival in England. The first movement, “Tarifa—Elegy at Sunrise” reflects the sorrow of a shepherd over the decay of the Moorish people. “Tangiers—A Night in a Moorish Café” is a coffee-house scene highlighted by the sensual chant of a café singer. The suite concludes with “Tetuan—A Rider in the Desert,” depicting a desert ride with a view of Paradise in the distance. To carry into his music an Oriental atmosphere, Humperdinck modeled some of his principal themes after actual Moorish melodies, such as the second theme of the first movement for English horn, and the main melody for woodwind in the second movement.

Jacques Ibert

Jacques Ibert was born in Paris on August 15, 1890. He attended the Paris Conservatory between 1911 and 1919, with a hiatus of several years during World War I when he served in the French Navy. In 1919 he won the Prix de Rome. While residing in the Italian capital he wrote a symphonic work with which he scored his first major success, the suite _Escales_, introduced in Paris in 1924. From 1937 to 1955 he was director of the Academy of Rome. During this period he also served for a while as director of the combined management of the Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique.

Ibert has written many works in virtually every form, which have placed him in the front rank of contemporary French composers. Many of these compositions are in a neo-classical idiom. Occasionally, however, he has made a delightful excursion into satire. It is with one of the latter works, the _Divertissement_ for orchestra (1930) that he has entered the semi-classical repertory, though to be sure this composition is also frequently given at symphony concerts. The _Divertissement_ begins with a short Introduction in which the prevailing mood of levity is first introduced. Then comes the “_Cortège_.” A few introductory bars suggest two march themes, the first in strings, and the second in trumpet. After that appears a loud quotation from Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” from his _A Midsummer Night’s Dream Suite_. The “Nocturne” is a dreamy little melody which precedes a delightful “Waltz” and a breezy “Parade.” The finale is in the style of an Offenbach can-can, with the piano interpolating some impudent dissonant harmonies.

Michael Ippolitov-Ivanov

Michael Ippolitov-Ivanov was born in Gatchina, Russia, on November 19, 1859. He was graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1882 where he was a pupil in composition of Rimsky-Korsakov. From 1882 to 1893 he was associated with the Tiflis Music School, first as teacher, then as director. In 1893 he was appointed professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory on Tchaikovsky’s recommendation, and from 1906 to 1922 he served as its director. He also distinguished himself as a conductor of opera in Moscow. He died in that city on January 28, 1935.

Ippolitov-Ivanov’s best music profited from his intensive researches into Caucasian folk music. His principal works have assimilated many of the Oriental melodic and rhythmic idioms of songs and dances from that region. His most popular work of all is the _Caucasian Sketches_ for orchestra, op. 10 (1895). The first movement, “In the Mountain Pass,” brings up the picture of a mountain scene. Horn calls are here used prominently. “In the Village” opens with a cadenza for English horn and proceeds to a beautiful melody for viola set against a persistent ⅜ rhythm. “In the Mosque” dispenses with the strings while describing an impressive religious ceremony. The suite ends with the stirring “March of the Sirdar,” a “sirdar” being an Oriental potentate.

Ivanovici

Neither Ivanovici’s first name nor details of his life are known. He was born in Banat, Rumania, in 1848, distinguished himself as a bandleader in his native country, and died in Bucharest on April 1, 1905. For his band concerts he wrote many popular concert numbers. One of these is the concert waltz, _The Waves of the Danube_ (_Donauwellen_), written in 1880, and achieving from the first phenomenal popularity throughout Europe. The main waltz melody of this set of waltzes was expropriated by Al Dubin and Dave Franklin for the American popular song “The Anniversary Song,” (lyrics by Saul Chaplin), which was effectively used in the motion picture _The Jolson Story_ in 1946, sung on the sound track by Jolson himself.

Armas Järnefelt

Armas Järnefelt was born in Viborg, Finland, on August 14, 1869. He studied music in Helsingfors with Ferruccio Busoni and Martin Wegelius; in Berlin with A. Becker; and in Paris with Massenet. Beginning with 1898, and for several years thereafter, he conducted opera performances in Viborg and Helsingfors. In 1907 he settled in Sweden where three years later he became a citizen. There he became court composer and the conductor of the Royal Opera. After returning to Helsingfors in 1932, he directed the Opera for four years and the Helsingfors Municipal Theater for one. He also appeared as guest conductor of many important Finnish orchestras, distinguishing himself particularly in performances of music by Jean Sibelius (his brother-in-law). In 1940, Järnefelt received the official title of Professor. He died in Stockholm in June 1958.

Järnefelt wrote many works for orchestra, including suites, overtures, and shorter works. One of the last is _Berceuse_ for two clarinets, one bassoon, two horns, violin solo and strings (1905), a moody and sensitive piece of music. The romantic main melody appears in solo violin after four introductory bars for muted strings.

His most popular composition is the _Praeludium_ for chamber orchestra. It opens with a three-measure introduction for plucked strings. This is followed by a brisk march subject for oboe which is soon discussed by other winds, and after that by the violins over a drone bass. A passage for solo violin leads to the return of the march melody.

Dmitri Kabalevsky

Dmitri Kabalevsky was born in St. Petersburg on December 30, 1904, and received his musical training in Moscow, at the Scriabin Music School and the Moscow Conservatory. He was graduated from the latter school in 1929, and in 1932 he was appointed instructor there. His first success as composer came in 1931 with his first symphony, commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the Russian revolution; this was followed in 1934 by his second symphony, which enjoyed an even greater triumph both in and out of the Soviet Union. In 1939 Kabalevsky was elected a member of the Presidium of the Organizing Committee of the Union of Soviet Composers; in 1940 he was given the Order of Merit; and in 1946 he received the Stalin Prize for the second string quartet. He has also written operas, concertos, additional symphonies, and piano music.

A composer who has always been partial to the more conventional means and techniques, and has relied heavily on broad and stately melodies and subjective feelings, Kabalevsky has managed to produce several compositions that have wide appeal. One is the sprightly _Colas Breugnon Overture_. _Colas Breugnon_ was an opera adapted by V. Bragin from a novel by Romain Rolland; it was first performed in Leningrad on February 22, 1938. The central character is a 16th-century craftsman—a jovial man who enjoys life and has a spicy sense of humor and a happy outlook on all things. The overture is essentially a study of that man, consistently gay and sprightly. There are two main melodies, both of them lively, and both derived from Burgundian folk songs.

Another popular work by Kabalevsky is _The Comedians_, op. 26 (1938), an orchestral suite made up of selections from the incidental music to a children’s play, _The Inventor and the Comedians_. The play is about the varied and picaresque adventures of a group of wandering performers in various towns and at public fairs. There are ten episodes in the suite, each in a light, infectious style that makes for such easy listening that this work is often given at children’s concerts. The ten sections are: Prologue, Galop, March, Waltz, Pantomime, Intermezzo, Little Lyrical Scene, Gavotte, Scherzo, and Epilogue.

Emmerich Kálmán

Emmerich Kálmán was born in Siófok, Hungary, on October 24, 1882. He studied composition in Budapest. In 1904 one of his symphonic compositions was performed by the Budapest Philharmonic, and in 1907 he received the Imperial Composition Prize. After settling in Vienna he abandoned serious composition for light music. From this time on he devoted himself to and distinguished himself in writing tuneful operettas. His first success came in 1909 with _Ein Herbstmanoever_, presented in New York as _The Gay Hussars_. Subsequent operettas made him one of Europe’s leading composers for the popular theaters. The most famous are: _Sari_ (1912), _The Gypsy Princess_ (1915), _Countess Maritza_ (1924) and _The Circus Princess_ (1926). In 1938 he left Vienna, and after a period in Paris, he came to the United States where he remained until 1949. He completed his last operetta, _The Arizona Lady_, a few days before his death in Paris, on October 30, 1953; it was presented posthumously in Berne, Switzerland, in 1954.

Kálmán’s forte in writing music for operettas was in combining the charm, _Gemuetlichkeit_ and sentiment of Viennese music in general, and the Viennese waltz in particular, with the hot blood and sensual moods of Hungarian gypsy songs and dances.

_The Circus Princess_ (_Die Zirkusprinzessin_)—first performed in Vienna in 1926, and in New York in 1927—was set in St. Petersburg and Vienna during the period immediately preceding World War I. When Fedora rejects the love of Prince Sergius by insisting she would sooner marry a circus performer, he seeks revenge by engaging a famous circus performer to pose as a member of nobility and woo and win Fedora. After their marriage, Fedora discovers the true identity of her husband, and leaves him. But she soon comes to the realization she is really in love with him and promises to come back if he in turn offers to give up his profession—a profession she now despises not from snobbery but because of fears for his safety. Two delightful waltz melodies—“_Leise schwebt das Glueck vorueber_” “_Im Boudoir der schoensten Frau_”—and an intriguing little melody that recurs throughout the operetta, “_Zwei maerchenaugen_” are the principal selections from this operetta.

_Countess Maritza_ (_Die Graefin Mariza_) is Kálmán’s most popular and successful operetta. It was first produced in Vienna in 1924, and in New York in 1926. The setting is Hungary in 1922. An impoverished count, Tassilo, finds employment on the estate of Countess Maritza under the assumed name of Torok. He falls in love with her, but when she learns of his real background she feels he is a fortune hunter interested only in her wealth. About to leave the employ of the countess and to bid her permanent farewell, Tassilo’s fortune suddenly takes a turn for the better when his aunt, a Princess, comes to inform him that Tassilo is a wealthy man after all, due to her manipulations of his tangled business affairs. Now convinced that he loves her for herself alone, the Countess Maritza is only too happy to accept him as her husband.

This score contains some of Kálmán’s finest and most beguiling music in a Hungarian-gypsy style. The most famous song is in this sensual, heart-warming idiom: “Play Gypsies, Dance Gypsies” (“_Komm Zigan, Komm Zigan, spiel mir was vor_”). This number begins with a languorous, romantic melody that soon lapses into a dynamic Hungarian-gypsy dance. Austrian waltz-music in a more sentimental manner is found in three winning songs: “Give My Regards to the Lovely Ladies of Fair Vienna” (“_Gruess mir die reizenden Frauen im schoenen Wien_”), “I Would Like to Dance Once More” (“_Einmal moecht’ ich wieder tanzen_”) and “Say, Yes!” (“_Sag ja, mein Lieb_”).

_The Gypsy Princess_ (_Die Csárdásfuerstin_) was first performed in Vienna in 1915, and produced in New York in 1917 under the title of _The Riviera Girl_. The heroine is Sylvia Varescu, a performer in a Budapest cabaret, who is loved and pursued by Prince Edwin. But the Prince’s father insists that he marry the Countess Stasi. Eventually the father’s heart is softened and he becomes more tolerant towards having Sylvia as a daughter-in-law when he is discreetly reminded that once he, too, had been in love with a cabaret singer. The principal selections from his score include two soaring waltz melodies: “_Machen wir’s den Schwalben nach_” and “_Tausend kleine Engel singen hab mich lieb_.” The score also includes a dynamic Czardas, and a pleasing little tune in “_Ganz ohne Weiber geht die Chose nicht_.”

_Sari_ was introduced in New York in 1914. Pali is a gypsy violinist who has grown old and is eclipsed at one of his own concerts by his son, Laczi. Pali throws his beloved Stradivarius into the flames. Since both father and son have fallen in love with the same girl, the older man also renounces her. He wants Laczi to have her as well as his musical success. A bountiful score includes such delights as “Love Has Wings,” “Love’s Own Sweet Song,” “My Faithful Stradivari,” and “Softly Through the Summer Night.”

Kéler-Béla

Kélér-Béla was born Albert von Keler in Bartfeld, Hungary, on February 13, 1820. He studied law and worked as a farmer before turning to music in his twenty-fifth year. After studying in Vienna with Sechter and Schlesinger he played the violin in the orchestra of the Theater-an-der-Wien. In 1854 he went to Berlin where he became conductor of Gungl’s Orchestra. He was soon back in Vienna to take over the direction of the famous Joseph Lanner Orchestra. From 1856 to 1863 he conducted an army band, and from 1863 to 1873 an orchestra in Wiesbaden. He died in that city on November 20, 1882.

Kéler-Béla wrote about one hundred and thirty compositions in the light Viennese style of Lanner and the two Johann Strausses. His works include waltzes, galops, and marches, a representative example of each being the waltz _Hoffnungssterne_, the _Hurrah-Sturm_ galop, and the _Friedrich-Karl_ march.

His most popular work is the _Hungarian Comedy Overture_ (_Lustspiel Ouverture_). It opens in a stately manner with forceful chords and a sustained melody in the woodwind. But the comedy aspect of this overture is soon made evident with two lilting tunes for the woodwind, separated by a dramatic episode for full orchestra. These two tunes receive extended enlargement. The overture ends with a succession of emphatic chords.

Jerome Kern

Jerome David Kern was born in New York City on January 27, 1885. He first studied the piano with his mother. After being graduated from Barringer High School in Newark, New Jersey, he attended the New York College of Music where he was a pupil of Alexander Lambert, Albert von Doenhoff, Paolo Gallico and Austen Pearce. He received his apprenticeship as composer for the popular theater in 1903 in London, where with P. G. Wodehouse as his lyricist he wrote a topical song, “Mr. Chamberlain” that became a hit. After returning to the United States he worked in Tin Pan Alley and immediately became a prolific contributor of songs to the musical stage. In 1905 his song “How’d You Like to Spoon With Me?” was interpolated into _The Earl and the Girl_ and became an outstanding success. From that time on, and up to the end of his life, he wrote over a thousand songs for more than a hundred stage and screen productions, thereby occupying an imperial position among American popular composers of his generation. His most famous Broadway musicals were: _The Girl from Utah_ (1914), _Very Good, Eddie_ (1915), _Oh, Boy!_ (1917), _Leave it to Jane_ (1917), _Sally_ (1920), _Sunny_ (1925), _Show Boat_ (1927), _The Cat and the Fiddle_ (1931), _Music in the Air_ (1932), and _Roberta_ (1933). His most significant motion pictures were _Swingtime_ with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, _You Were Never Lovelier_ and _Cover Girl_ both with Rita Hayworth, and _Centennial Summer_. Over a dozen of his songs sold more than two million copies of sheet music including “All the Things You Are,” “They Didn’t Believe Me,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” and “Look for the Silver Lining.” Two of his songs received the Academy Award: “The Way You Look Tonight” from _Swingtime_ and “The Last Time I Saw Paris” interpolated into _Lady Be Good_. Kern died in New York City on November 11, 1945.

Kern wrote two compositions for symphony orchestra which have entered the semi-classical repertory even though they are also performed by major symphony orchestras. These were his only ventures into the world of music outside the popular theater. One was _Mark Twain: A_ _Portrait for Orchestra_ which he wrote on a commission from André Kostelanetz, who introduced it with the Cincinnati Symphony in 1942. This is a four movement suite inspired by the personality and life of Kern’s favorite author, Mark Twain. The first movement, “Hannibal Days,” describes a sleepy small town on a summer morning a century ago. The cry “Steamboat comin’!” pierces the silence. The town suddenly awakens. In the second movement, “Gorgeous Pilot House” Mark Twain leaves home to become a pilot’s assistant on the Mississippi steamboat; this period in Mark Twain’s life, which spans about nine years, ends with the outbreak of the Civil War. In “Wandering Westward,” Twain meets failure as a Nevada prospector, after which he finally turns to journalism. The suite ends with “Mark in Eruption,” tracing Twain’s triumphant career as a writer.

Kern’s second and only other symphonic work is _Scenario_ in which he drew his basic melodic materials from his greatest and best loved musical production, _Show Boat_. Kern prepared _Scenario_ at the behest of Artur Rodzinski, conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, who felt that the music of _Show Boat_ had sufficient artistic validity to justify its use in a major symphonic work. Rodzinski introduced _Scenario_ in Cleveland with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1941, and since that time it has been performed by most of the major American orchestras.

A discussion of _Show Boat_ is essential before _Scenario_ can be commented upon. The libretto and lyrics are by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the famous novel by Edna Ferber. _Show Boat_, in a lavish Florenz Ziegfeld production, was introduced in New York in 1927 and was an instantaneous box-office and artistic triumph. It has, to be sure, become a classic of the American stage, continually revived in all parts of the country, three times adapted for motion pictures, and has been given by an American opera company in its regular repertory. It proved a revolution in the American musical theater by avoiding the usual stilted routines and patterns of musical comedy—chorus girls, production numbers, synthetic humor, set dances and so forth—and arriving at an integrated musical play filled with authentic characterizations, backgrounds, atmosphere and dramatic truth. The story opens and closes on _Cotton Blossom_, a show boat traveling along the Mississippi to give performances at stops along the river. The principal love action involves Magnolia, daughter of Cap’n Andy (owner of the boat) and the gambler, Gaylord Ravenal. They run off and get married, but their happiness is short-lived. Magnolia, though pregnant, leaves her irresponsible husband. After the birth of Magnolia’s daughter, Kim, the mother earns her living singing show boat songs in Chicago where she is found by her father and brought back to _Cotton Blossom_. Eventually, Magnolia and Ravenal are reconciled, and their daughter Kim becomes the new star of the show boat.

The most famous songs from this incomparable Kern score are: “Only Make Believe” and “Why Do I Love You?”, both of them love duets of Magnolia and Ravenal; two poignant laments sung by the half-caste Julie, a role in which Helen Morgan first attained stardom as a torch-song performer, “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man” and “Bill” (the latter with lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse); and a hymn to the Mississippi which has acquired virtually the status of an American folk song, “Ol’ Man River.”

_Scenario_ makes extended use of these songs in an integrated piece of music. It opens with a sensitive passage for muted strings and continues with a theme for horn; both subjects are intended to portray the Mississippi River and are the motto subjects of the entire work. The main melody of this tone poem is “Ol’ Man River,” first given softly by violas and bass clarinet. Other major songs of the musical play follow, among them being “Only Make Believe” and “Why Do I Love You?”, after which “Ol’ Man River” is heard for the last time.

Many of Kern’s more than a thousand popular songs are now classics in the popular repertory. They are so fresh and spontaneous in their lyricism, so inventive in the harmonic background, so filled with charm and grace that their survival seems assured. Two symphonic compositions by Robert Russell Bennett are constructed from one or more of Kern’s best known songs. One is _Symphonic Study_, a tone poem introduced in 1946 by the NBC Symphony under Frank Black. This work presents several Kern songs in correct chronological sequence beginning with “They Didn’t Believe Me.” After that come “Babes in the Wood,” “The Siren’s Song,” “Left All Alone Again Blues,” “Who?”, “Ol’ Man River,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” and “All the Things You Are.” The second of Bennett’s symphonic compositions is the _Variations on a Theme by Jerome Kern_, written in 1934 and soon after that introduced in New York by a chamber orchestra conducted by Bernard Herrmann. The theme here used for an effective series of variations is “Once in a Blue Moon” from the Broadway musical _Stepping Stones_.

Albert Ketelby

Albert William Ketelby was born in Birmingham, England, in or about 1885. Precocious in music he completed a piano sonata when he was only eleven. For six years he attended the Trinity College of Music in London where he captured every possible prize. When he was sixteen he became a church organist in Wimbledon, and at twenty-one he conducted a theater orchestra in London. He later distinguished himself as a conductor of some of London’s most important theater orchestras, besides appearing as a guest conductor of many of Europe’s major symphonic organizations, usually in performances of his own works. For many years he was also the music director of the Columbia Gramophone Company in England. He died at his home on the Isle of Wight on November 26, 1959.

A facile composer with a fine sense for atmospheric colors and for varied moods, Ketelby produced a few serious compositions among which were a _Caprice_ and a _Concerstueck_ (each for piano and orchestra), an overture and _Suite de Ballet_ (both for orchestra) and a quintet for piano and woodwind. He is, however, most famous for his lighter compositions, two of which are known and heard the world over. _In a Monastery Garden_ opens with a gentle subject describing a lovely garden populated by chirping birds. After that comes a religious melody—a chant of monks in a modal style. _In a Persian Garden_ is effective for its skilful recreation of an exotic background through Oriental-type melodies, harmonies, and brilliant orchestral colors. Ketelby wrote several other compositions in an Oriental style, the best of which is _In a Chinese Temple Garden_.

Aram Khatchaturian

Aram Khatchaturian was born in Tiflis, Russia, on June 6, 1903. He was of Armenian extraction. He came to Moscow in 1920, and enrolled in the Gniessen School of Music. From 1929 to 1934 he attended the Moscow Conservatory. He first achieved recognition as a composer in 1935 with his first Symphony, and in 1937 he scored a major success throughout the music world with his first piano concerto, still a favorite in the modern concert repertory. As one of the leading composers in the Soviet Union he has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the Order of Lenin in 1939, and the Stalin Prize in 1940 and 1942. In 1954 he visited London where he led a concert of his own music, and early in 1960 he toured Latin America.

Khatchaturian’s music owes a strong debt to the folk songs and dances of Armenia and Transcaucasia. It is endowed with a sensitive and at times exotic lyricism, a compulsive rhythmic strength, and a strong feeling for the dramatic.

The most popular single piece of music by Khatchaturian comes from his ballet, _Gayne_ (or _Gayaneh_), first performed in Moscow on December 9, 1942, and the recipient of the Stalin Prize. The heroine of this ballet is a member of a collective farm where her husband, Giko, proves a traitor. He tries to set the farm afire. The farm is saved by a Red Commander who falls in love with Gayne after Giko has been arrested.

Khatchaturian assembled thirteen numbers from his ballet score into two suites for orchestra. It is one of these pieces that has achieved widespread circulation: the “Saber Dance,” a composition whose impact comes from its abrupt barbaric rhythms and vivid sonorities; midway, relief from these rhythmic tensions comes from a broad folk song in violas and cellos. “Saber Dance” has become popular in numerous transcriptions, including an electrifying one for solo piano. In 1948 Vic Schoen made a fox-trot arrangement that was frequently played in the United States.

Two other excerpts from these _Gayne_ suites are also familiar. “Dance of the Rose Girls” presents a delightful Oriental melody in oboe and clarinet against a pronounced rhythm. “Lullaby” has a gentle swaying motion in solo oboe against a decisive rhythm in harp and bassoon; flutes take up this subject, after which the melody grows and expands in full orchestra, and then subsides.

_Masquerade_ is another of Khatchaturian’s orchestral suites, this one derived from his incidental music to a play by Mikhail Lermontov produced in 1939. Each of the five numbers of this suite is appealing either for sensitive and easily assimilable melodies or for rhythmic vitality. Gentle lyricism, of an almost folk-song identity, characterizes the second and third movements, a “Nocturne” and “Romance.” The first and the last two movements are essentially rhythmic: “Waltz,” “Mazurka,” and “Polka.”

George Kleinsinger

George Kleinsinger was born in San Bernardino, California, on February 13, 1914, and came to New York City in his sixth year. He was trained for dentistry, and only after he had left dental school did he concentrate on music. His first intensive period of music study took place with Philip James and Marion Bauer at New York University where he wrote an excellent cantata, _I Hear America Singing_, performed publicly and on records by John Charles Thomas. Kleinsinger then attended the Juilliard Graduate School on a composition fellowship. In 1946 he scored a major success with _Tubby the Tuba_. He later wrote several other works with humorous or satiric content, often filled with unusual instrumental effects. Among these are his _Brooklyn Baseball Cantata_; a concerto for harmonica and orchestra; and the musical, _Archy and Mehitabel_ (_Shinbone Alley_), which was produced for records, on Broadway and over television. In a more serious vein are a symphony and several concertos.

_Tubby the Tuba_, for narrator and orchestra (1942) belongs in the class of Prokofiev’s _Peter and the Wolf_. It serves to familiarize children with the instruments of the orchestra, but because of its wit and simple melodies it also makes for wonderful entertainment. It tells the story of a frustrated tuba who complains that he must always play uninteresting “oompahs oompahs” while the violins are always assigned the most beautiful tunes. In the end Tubby happily gets a wonderful melody of his own to enjoy and play. All the characters in this tale are instruments of the orchestra. In 1946 a recording of _Tubby the Tuba_ sold over a quarter of a million albums. Paramount made a movie of it, and major orchestras throughout the country presented it both at children’s concerts and in its regularly symphonic repertory.

Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler, one of the greatest violin virtuosos of his generation, was born in Vienna, Austria, on February 2, 1875. He was a child prodigy at the violin. From 1882 to 1885 he attended the Vienna Conservatory, a pupil of Leopold Auer, winning the gold medal for violin playing. In 1887, as a pupil of Massart at the Paris Conservatory, he was recipient of the Grand Prix. In 1888, he toured the United States in joint concerts with the pianist, Moriz Rosenthal, making his American debut in Boston on November 9. Upon returning to Vienna, he suddenly decided to abandon music. For a while he studied medicine at the Vienna Academy. After that he entered military service as an officer in a Uhlan Regiment. The decision to return to the violin led to a new period of intensive training from which he emerged in March 1899 with a recital in Berlin. From 1901 on until his retirement during World War II he occupied a magistral place among the concert artists of his time.

As a composer, Kreisler produced a violin concerto and a string quartet. But his fame rests securely on an entire library of pieces for the violin now basic to that repertory and which are equally well loved in transcriptions for orchestra. The curious thing about many of these compositions is that for many years Kreisler presented them as the genuine works of the old masters, works which he said he had discovered in European libraries and monasteries, and which he had merely adapted for the violin. He had recourse to this deception early in 1900 as the expedient by which a still young and unknown violinist could get his own music played more frequently, besides extending for his own concerts the more or less limited territory of the existing violin repertory. His deception proved much more successful than he had dared to hope. Violinists everywhere asked him for copies of these pieces for their own concerts. Publishers in Germany and New York sold these “transcriptions” by the thousands. As the years passed it became increasingly difficult for Kreisler to confess to the world that he had all the while been palming off a colossal fraud. Then, in 1935, Olin Downes, the music critic of the _New York Times_, tried to trace the source of one of these compositions—Pugnani’s _Praeludium and Allegro_—now a worldwide favorite with violinists. Downes first communicated with Kreisler’s New York publishers who were suspiciously evasive. After that Downes cabled Kreisler, then in Europe. It was only then that the violinist revealed that this piece was entirely his, and so were many others which he had been presenting so long as the music of Vivaldi, Martini, Couperin, and Francoeur among others.

It was to be expected that musicians and critics should meet such a confession with anger and denunciation. “We wish to apply the term discreditable to the whole transaction from start to finish,” one American music journal said editorially. In England, Ernest Newman was also devastating in his attack. “It is as though Mr. Yeats published poems under the name of Herrick or Spenser,” he said.

Yet, in retrospect, it is possible to suggest that musicians and critics should not have been taken altogether by surprise. For one thing, as Kreisler pointed out, numerous progressions and passages in all of these compositions were in a style of a period much later than that of the accredited composers, a fact that should have inspired at least a certain amount of suspicion. Also, when Kreisler presented his own _Liebesfreud_, _Liebesleid_, and _Schoen Rosmarin_ as transcriptions of posthumous pieces by Joseph Lanner in a Berlin recital, and was vigorously assailed by a Berlin critic for daring to include such gems with “tripe” like Kreisler’s own _Caprice Viennois_, Kreisler replied with a widely published statement that those pieces of Lanner were of his own composition. The reasonable question should then have arisen that if the three supposedly Lanner items were by Kreisler, how authentic were the other pieces of old masters played by the virtuoso?

Besides all this, Kreisler himself provided a strong clue to the correct authorship in the frontispiece of his published transcriptions. It read: “The original manuscripts used for these transcriptions are the private property of Mr. Fritz Kreisler and are now published for the first time; they are, moreover, so freely treated that they constitute, in fact, original works.”

The furor and commotion caused by the uncovering of this fraud has long since died down. It has had no visible effect on Kreisler’s immense popularity either as a violinist or composer. Since then, all this music has been published and performed as Kreisler’s without losing any of its worldwide appeal.

Among the compositions by Kreisler which he originally ascribed to other masters in imitation of their styles were: _Andantino_ (Martini); _Aubade provençale_ (Couperin); _Chanson Louis XIII et Pavane_ (Couperin); _Minuet_ (Porpora); _Praeludium and Allegro_ (Pugnani); _La Précieuse_ (Couperin); _Scherzo_ (Dittersdorf), _Sicilienne et Rigaudon_ (Francoeur); _Tempo di minuetto_ (Pugnani).

Perhaps the best loved pieces by Kreisler are those in the style of Viennese folk songs and dances in which are caught all the grace and Gemuetlichkeit of Viennese life and backgrounds. Some he originally tried to pass off as the works of other composers, as was the case with the already-mentioned _Liebesfreud_, _Liebesleid_, and _Schoen Rosmarin_, attributed to Lanner. Some were outright transcriptions. _The Old Refrain_ is an adaptation of a song “_Du alter Stefanturm_” by Joseph Brandl taken from his operetta, _Der liebe Augustin_, produced in Vienna in 1887. Still others were always offered as Kreisler’s own compositions and are completely original with him: _Caprice Viennois_, for example, and the _Marche miniature viennoise_.

Among other original Kreisler compositions which he always presented as his own are the following: _La Gitana_, which simulates an Arabian-Spanish song; _Polichinelle_, a serenade; _Rondino_, based on a theme of Beethoven; _Shepherd’s Madrigal_; _Slavonic Fantasia_, based on melodies of Dvořák; _Tambourin Chinois_; and _Toy Soldiers’ March_.

Édouard Lalo

Édouard Lalo was born in Lille, France, on January 27, 1823. After receiving his musical training at Conservatories in Lille and Paris, he became a member of the Armingaud-Jacquard Quartet, a renowned French chamber-music ensemble. In 1848-1849 he published some songs; in 1867 he received third prize in a national contest for his opera, _Fiesque_; and in 1872 he was acclaimed for his _Divertimento_, for orchestra, introduced in Paris. Two major works written for the noted Spanish violinist, Pablo de Sarasate, added considerably to his reputation: a violin concerto in 1872, and the celebrated _Symphonic espagnole_, for violin and orchestra, two years after that. One of his last major works was the opera, _Le Roi d’Ys_, introduced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on May 7, 1888. In that same year he was made Officer of the Legion of Honor and sometime later he received the Prix Monbinne from the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In the last years of his life he was a victim of paralysis. He died in Paris on April 22, 1892.

A composer of the highest principles and aristocratic style, Lalo is essentially a composer for cultivated tastes. One of his works, however, makes for easy listening. It is the _Norwegian Rhapsody_ (_Rapsodie norvégienne_), for orchestra (1875). There are two sections. The first begins slowly and sedately, its main melody appearing in the strings. Here the tempo soon quickens and a sprightly passage ensues. The second part of the rhapsody, ushered in by a stout theme for trumpets, is vigorous music throughout.

Josef Lanner

Josef Lanner, the first of the great waltz kings of Vienna, was born in the Austrian capital on April 12, 1801. When he was twelve he played the violin in the band of Michael Pamer, a popular Viennese composer of that day. In 1818 Lanner formed a trio which played in smaller cafés and at the Prater. In 1819 the trio grew into a quartet with the addition of the older Johann Strauss (father of the composer of _The Blue Danube_), then only fifteen years old. Soon afterwards, the quartet was expanded into a quintet. By 1824, Lanner’s ensemble was a full-sized orchestra popular throughout Vienna, heard in such famous café houses as the _Goldenen Rebbuhn_, and the _Gruenen Jager_, as well as at leading balls and other gala social events in Vienna. The call for Lanner’s music was so insistent that to meet the demand it soon became necessary to create two orchestras; one led by Lanner, and the other by the elder Strauss. Lanner remained an idol of Vienna until his death, which took place in Oberdoebling, near Vienna, on April 14, 1843.

For his various ensembles and orchestras Lanner produced a wealth of popular Viennese music: quadrilles, polkas, galops, marches, and more than a hundred waltzes. It is in the last department that Lanner was most important, for he was one of the first composers to carry the waltz to its artistic fulfillment. With composers from Mozart to Schubert, the waltz was only a three-part song form with a trio. Johann Hummel and Karl Maria von Weber suggested a more spacious design by assembling several different waltz tunes into a single integrated composition. Lanner extended this form further. He prefaced each series of waltzes with an introduction in which the theme of the main melody was often suggested; after the waltz melodies had been presented, Lanner brought his composition to completion with a coda which served as a kind of summation of some of the ideas previously stated. Between the introduction and the coda came the succession of lilting, lovable, heart-warming waltz-melodies so remarkable for their grace, elegance, freshness and poignancy that Lanner has sometimes been described as “the Mozart of the dance.” Nevertheless, Lanner always emphasized soaring lyricism where the elder Strauss was more partial to rhythm. The Viennese used to say: “With Lanner, it’s ‘Pray dance, I beg you.’ With Strauss it’s ‘You must dance, I command you!’”

The form which Lanner finally crystallized, and the style with which his waltz music unfolded, were adopted by the two Johann Strausses, father and son, who were destined to bring this type of Viennese music to its ultimate development. Thus Lanner was the opening chapter of a musical epoch. He was the dawn of Vienna’s golden age of waltz music.

Lanner’s most famous waltz is _Die Schoenbrunner_, op. 200, his swan song. Other outstanding Lanner waltzes are: _Die Pesther_, op. 93, _Die Werber_, op. 103, _Hofballtaenze_, op. 161, _Die Romantiker_, op. 167, and _Abendsterne_, op. 180. “With Lanner,” wrote H. E. Jacob, “the romantic epoch began for the waltz, and the flower-gardens and green leaves of Spring penetrated into the ballroom. Lanner’s compositions are unsophisticated and unpretentious, but his waltzes could no more be commonplace than could a flower.”

Charles Lecocq

Charles Lecocq was born in Paris on June 3, 1832. For four years he attended the Paris Conservatory where, as a pupil of Bazin and Halévy, he received prizes in harmony and fugue. For a while he earned his living teaching the piano and writing church music. In 1857 he shared with Bizet the first prize in a competition for one-act operettas sponsored by Offenbach. This winning work, _Le Docteur miracle_, was successfully introduced in Paris that year. After that Lecocq wrote several light operas which were failures, before he enjoyed a major success with _Fleur de thé_ in 1868, first in Paris and subsequently in England and Germany. His greatest successes came with two crowning works in the French light-opera repertory: _La Fille de_ _Mme. Angot_ in 1872, and _Giroflé-Girofla_, in 1874. Between 1874 and 1900 he wrote over thirty more operettas. He died in Paris on October 24, 1918 after enjoying for almost half a century a place of signal honor among France’s composers for the popular theater.

Lecocq is remembered today mainly for _La Fille de Mme. Angot_ and _Giroflé-Girofla_. The first of these was introduced in Brussels on December 4, 1872. In Paris, where it was given on February 23, 1873, it enjoyed the formidable run of more than five hundred consecutive performances. The book—by Siraudin, Clairville and Koning—was set in Paris during the French Revolution. Clairette, daughter of Mme. Angot, must marry the barber Pomponnet even though she loves the poet, Pitou. To avoid an undesirable marriage, even at the risk of arrest, Clairette sings a daring song by Pitou about an illicit affair between Mlle. Lange (reputed a favorite of Barras, head of the Directory) and a young lover. When Pitou proves fickle, and is discovered in the boudoir of Mlle. Lange, Clairette stands ready to forget him completely and to take Pomponnet as her husband.

The sprightly overture, filled with vivacious tunes and dramatized by energetic rhythms, is a favorite of semi-classical orchestras. So are several dances from the operetta, including an electrifying Can-Can, and a sweeping _Grand Valse_ with which the second act comes to an exciting close. The main vocal excerpts are Pomponnet’s passionate avowal of Clairette’s innocence, “_Elle est tellement innocente_” and the duet of Mlle. Lange and Clairette, “_Jours fortunés de notre enfance_” both from