Unsung American composers

[eschiss1]

Not for nothing - and correctly- is it pointed out that the first symphony published in full score in the USA (something along those lines) was not so published until 1886.  A look through the LoC scans shows a lot of piano works, vocal scores, and parts for larger-scale works (including many- often incomplete alas; they scan what they have..., preservation is the rule - sets of parts for small-ensemble with piano usually, small-orchestra, salon-orchestra, brass-band, etc. works- but parts, not scores, again...), but very very few full scores for large-ensemble works, because, I am guessing, one emphasis was on publication for performers' needs specifically, whether the at-home or salon or concert-hall performer of a piano piece or song, or performer of a small-ensemble work, etc. - not for listeners to follow along with a score... (I seem to recall Haydn's symphonies were published slowly this way first, then later in score. Some of the scans at LoC, unsurprisingly, are arrangements for piano or organ of movements of symphonies or chamber works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Hugo Ulrich, Alexander Fesca, etc.- you know, those famous fellows.)

There are some violin sonatas etc. there that were published by Schuberth (Edward Schuberth, the New York branch) and others, not just self-published works. (And unsurprisingly, a number of organ sonatas...)

[edurban]

"...There are some violin sonatas etc. there that were published by Schuberth (Edward Schuberth, the New York branch) and others, not just self-published works..."

Yes, but my guess would be that most composers had to underwrite the costs of publishing.  A modern equivalent would be Naxos records.  Naxos is a real record company, but my understanding is that they expect the performers to bear the cost of production...in most cases.

David

[eschiss1]

Or pay them a once-only fee instead of royalties, in the latter case, if I recall. But that seems probably true, even if it also was probably hardly unique to American composers of the 19th century

[edurban]

Here's a good one:

Fidelis Zitterbart (Pittsburg: 1845-1915)  The Zitterbart Collection at the University of Pittsburg has about 1,500 works in all forms including a Richard III overture (the prize winner in a contest juried by Arthur Foote, Victor Herbert and Walter Damrosch) and a symphony in D.  Here's a link to a delightful article about Zitterbart and the donation of his mss and papers in the early 1960s:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19600731&id=qslaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PWwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4768,6979518

Ca. 1934, there was a brief flurry of interest in Pittsburg's greatest composer not named Stephen Foster.  This article of the day describes it:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19340120&id=wMNRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MWkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5147,2665350

Zitterbart liked to write string quartets, in all he left about 125.  In April, 1985, Bernard Holland of the New York Times reviewed a Carnegie Recital Hall revival of one called 'The Water Carriers of Nazareth': "This four-movement work is a pleasant, flowing, well-organized piece with moments of interesting harmony to go with its patches of awkwardness and blankness."

I didn't hear the performance, sad to say.  I don't know how likely I am to hear another and form my own opinion (Holland says the performance was poor.)

David

[eschiss1]

Well, Sousa's teacher, the elusive George Felix Benkert (1831-after 1877), wrote at least 3 string quartets in manuscript (held by Pennsylvania libraries)...

Then there's Armin Schotte (fl.1860s-fl.1910s) (nationality unknown (to me...), but resident in the US for most of his life, I think)- his op.1 was a piano quintet (from some notes I took based on this and that-- "the opus 1 piano quintet of this "blind composer in New York", identified just as Schotte (but his first name is given in other sources, assuming this opus 1 is the same work in both places), was performed in Chicago in or around 1877 according to a concert review in Dwight's Journal of Music, and then published by 1887.")

Hrm. Worldcat lists at least 16 works by Zitterbart, and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has at least one manuscript of a score for string quartet by him (Adagio cantabile) and 18 items at CLP "and all libraries" in all (not all listed by Worldcat, I guess. Only that one quartet item unless I need to move to another catalog of theirs.)

Hrm, I was thinking about Georg Matzka, who wrote a somewhat interesting series of violin works including a sonata, and seems to have been a violist also. According to this site, Zitterbart's first viola sonata was dedicated to Matzka. Connections...

[edurban]

I'm delighted to hear about the Benkert quartets, I've hoped that something large-scale of his survived.  He had a piano trio performed in the inaugural concert of the very short lived New York American Music Association (1858), iirc.  Some years ago I was browsing through a now-gone bookstore around the corner from City Hall and found a manuscript music book Benkert had put together for a pupil (I'm assuming, based on the contents--arrangements, little piano pieces, that sort of thing) that had one extended piece..a duo for violin and piano.  I had come to think it was the only piece by Benkert I was likely to see...Thank you!

David

[eschiss1]

I hope I'm right. Hrm. From Franklin (University of Pennsylvania Library Catalog) there's Ms. coll. 217 (contains quartet in E-flat, 1849, Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia Collection of Music. Item 311 ; quartet 3 in D, 1850, Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia Collection of Music. Item 310) ; also another quartet in E-flat from 1849, M452 .B466 E♭­ maj. 1849 , which may be a 2nd copy of the other or another work in the same key (all are sets of parts)? (in which case, "quartet 3" makes one wonder... but it might be that one of the three is just missing.)

[chill319]

Speaking of Philadelphia: there resided in the 1830s and 40s a greatly talented man by the name of Charles Hommann (various spellings exist). I have heard one of his string quartets, a work clearly patterned after Beethoven's opus 59, but by no means dry or uninspired. It sounds like the natural voice of one filled with the love of a musical language that almost no one else spoke in his city of residence. There are more colorful American composers from that period, but none I know that can match the quality of his music. With all due respect to Fry and Bristow, Paine is the first American composer to match Hommann in both craft and style.

[eschiss1]

Have seen a little of Hommann's (maybe 1803-maybe 1872) music at LoC, also in connection with his maybe-relative and I think sometime publisher Hupfeld (ok, ok, ok...) I agree.

[edurban]

Fry's biographer William Treat Upton, in a moment he conceded was "pure conjecture" suggested that Fry may have had a few lessons with Homman.   I mention it for what it's worth, which is little, imo.

"...With all due respect to Fry and Bristow, Paine is the first American composer to match Hommann in both craft and style..." 

Dealing only with Fry, I can say that his craft was perfectly adapted to his interest: writing grand operas in a style that references Bellini/Donizetti, Weber and Meyerbeer/Auber.  His instrumental compositions are no more than sidelines...tone poems full of opera and opera tunes...intriguingly orchestrated, to be considered in the same light as purely instrumental compositions by Bellini, Verdi, Donizetti, Meyerbeer et al.  (Weber was another kettle of fish...a genuine instrumental composer, however opera-soaked the concertos and symphonies may be.)

This also applies to Fry's surviving string quartets, one of which uses a tune from Leonora.  Fry had no interest in writing quartets patterned after Beethoven or symphonies on the German model, and he never tried.  It's apples and oranges.

David

[eschiss1]

Ironically, at  the moment, while I don't despise his other works or anything, the only Verdi work I really especially like is his string quartet. I expect this will change and I hope it will- the more the merrier... erm- sorry. Right. Anyway.

After op.69? ...
59? Razumovsky? (A Robert Wilfred Levick Simpson reference?)

[chill319]

I take your point, David. Sobriety isn't everything -- unless you're a depressive like me. ;-) Even as they elevated the musical discourse of their place and time, Fry and Bristow in their works verged toward the rich vein of uniquely American artistry such as one finds in Foster or Twain or Gershwin or Ben Shahn, voices that remain treasurable even after we lose the contexts that their populist inflections originally addressed.

When I was younger, I appreciated these populist voices more. In my declining (though not yet reclining) years, I'm personally moved more by what in music reminds me of striving and idealism. There's no dearth of formulaic striving and idealism in 19th-century music, of course. But Hommann's sounds fresh and unforced to me.

[chill319]

69 was an unfortunate typo, Eric. Virtually a wipe-o.

[eschiss1]

I find myself returning to my show-tune roots (maybe?) and appreciating the music in the American Heritage collection, extremely variable in quality, more than I once would have done- I mean where the styles themselves of so many of the works, the parlor songs, the brief unadorned dances, etc. would have put me off and bored me quickly- for whatever reason I'm bored by many things but not by this so much now. Don't know... Ah well. Part of it is the hope, sometimes realized, of finding something remarkable in the middle of anywhere if I look in the right way at the right angle (not phrasing that quite right) but mostly it's just the personal, unuseful, subjective experience of my tastes changing (43's not too old for that, though. Anyway, irrelevant. Irrelephant.  Something.)

Clara Kathleen Rogers (1844- March 8 1931). She's been mentioned, if not in this thread, somewhere in this forum, right? I knew I'd remember her name eventually. Her violin sonata, I think, went unpublished during her lifetime- I think (though not some other works of some interest, mostly songs etc.) but has been published fairly recently... there were also 2 string quartets and a cello sonata (Op.23 Italiana), according to Wikipedia. (There's a CD of her cello and violin sonatas, and a book "Clara Kathleen Rogers: Chamber Music" produced by A-R Editions in 2001 with her cello sonata and her quartet in D minor op.5.)

She published two (published posthumously in 1932) memoirs, books on singing technique, at least 37 opera (op.nos. I mean, op.37 being If we but knew, published by the redoubtable Arthur P. Schmidt in 1906) (AP Schmidt a publisher which one should know about historically speaking if one doesn't, re Paine and also Chadwick, I think. See IMSLP, e.g.)

(Ok, actually, her violin sonata was published, op.25 in 1893... and has been scanned by archive.org.)

[edurban]

Clara Kathleen Rogers (who sang under the name Clara Doria, iirc?) pops up here from time to time, but lately it's been her father, John Barnett who's been on our minds!  The Mountain Sylph overture may be his first work on disc, no?  Certainly the first I've come across.  Kind of ironic that his daughter had been better recorded...maybe that will change...

David