Unsung American composers

[Balapoel]

Here are a few American unsungs with little information. Foster doesn't have a Grove's listing, and the others have rather minimal details (except Strube).

Busch, Carl (1862-1943)
String Quartet (1897), String Quintet (1897), 4 string trios, Violin Sonata, 26 works for woodwind ensembles
Symphony (1898)
Cello Concerto (1919)
6 Orchestral Suites (1890-1928)
4 symphonic poems (1898-1924)
2 Rhapsodies (1897-1905)

Fairchild, Blair (1877-1933)
Piano Trio in d minor, Op. 24 (1912)
String Quartet in g minor, Op. 27 (1911)
Piano Quintet in d minor, Op. 20 (1909)
Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 16 (1908)
Violin Sonata No. 2, Op. 43 (1919)
Legende in e minor for violin and orchestra, Op. 31 (1912)
Etude symphonique in d minor, vn and orch, Op. 45 (1922)
Rhapsodie, vn and orch (1924)
Tone Poems: East and West, Op. 17 (1908), Tamineh (1913), Shah Feridoun (1915), Zal (1915)

Foerster, Adolph Martin (1854-1927)
2 Piano Quartets (opp 21, 40)
Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 29 (1894)
2 String Quartets (Opp 33, 41)
Faust Overture, Op. 48 (1898)
Pittsburgh Suite, Op. 47
Thusnelda, symphonic poem, Op. 10
The Falconer, Op. 31
Symphonic ode to Bryon, Op. 35
Sigrid, Op. 50


Gilchrist, William Wallace (1846-1916)
Nonet in g minor for pf, fl, cl, hn, str
Piano Quintet No. 1 in c minor
Piano Quintet No. 2 in F (1914)
Suite in G for pf and orch
Symphonic poem in g minor (1910)
Symphony No. 1 in C (1891)
Symphony No. 2 in D (1916), completed by Happich, 1933)

Strube, Gustav (1867-1953)
2 String Quartets (1923, 1936)
Cello Sonata (1925)
Piano Trio (1928)
Viola Sonata in d minor (1925)
Concertino in D for vn and pf (1909)
Violin Sonata in e minor (1924)
Symphony in b minor (1910)
Sinfonietta
Symphonic Poems: Narcissus and Echo, Lorelei, Eine Walpurgisnacht
Overtures
Violin Concerto No. 1 in f# minor (1907)
Violin Concerto No. 2 in b minor (1927)
Violin Concerto No. 3 (1943)
Elegie for cello and orchestra (1907)

[eschiss1]

There's a lot of songs and other works by Gilchrist at IMSLP - a catalog of his music exists (Martha Furman Schleifer's "William Wallace Gilchrist, 1846-1916: a moving force in the musical life of Philadelphia" contains this.)  A few works by Fairchild have been scanned in here and there that I've seen that look interesting to me.

Foster- do you mean possibly Adolph Martin Foerster? The name and date coincidence is just too close... Have also seen some brief works of his, scanned by LoC, from earlier in his career. I don't think I was aware of the quartets, trio and symphonic works, but count me as interested.

[Balapoel]

Gilchrist is the best represented at IMSLP. I do mean Foerster (corrected above). There's quite a bit more in his oeuvre:
Chamber
Opp.
24   Ein Albumblatt for cello and piano   1888
39   2 pieces for cello and piano
21   Piano Quartet No. 1 in Eb   1888
40   Piano Quartet No. 2   
29   Piano Trio in g minor   1894
61   Trio Serenade   1907
83   Piano Trio in D   
33   String Quartet No. 1   
41   String Quartet No. 2   
15   Fantasie in F for violin and piano   1885
17   Romance and Melodie for violin and piano   1891
26   Novelette for violin and piano   1890
36   Suite for violin and piano   1896

Orchestral
8   Marche Fantaisie   1879
32   Festival March   1893
43   Dedication March   1895
48   Faust Overture   1898
47   Pittsburg Suite   
10   Thusnelda, symphonic poem   1881
31   The Falconer   
35   Symphonic Ode to Byron   
50   Sigrid   
9   Festival Music   

Piano
3   Andante in A   1876
5   Valse Caprice   
7   Nocturne in F# major   1877
11   2 Compositions (Valse brillante in F, Hunting Song in Bb)   1879
13   Sonnet   
14   3 Sonatinas (d minor, F, Eb)   1889
16   2 Sonatinas   
18   2 Sonatinas (F, D)   1889
27.2   Etude   
37   2 Concert studies   
38   12 fantasias for piano   
46   Piano Suite in F   1898
52   Romanza   
62.1   Prelude in f minor   

Vocal
4   The Fairy Boat, choruses   1876
19   2 lieder, TTBB   1891
20   2 part songs   
22   Bedouin's Prayer, male voices; Jung Song, mixed voices   
56   Te Deum in D   
58   Lead Us, Heavenly Father; The Spring Tide Hour   
1   3 songs   
2   2 Songs   
6   6 songs   1878
12   3 songs   
25   2 songs   
28   Among Flowers, 11 songs   
30   4 Songs   
34   2 Songs   
42   3 Songs   1897
45   4 songs   
49   6 songs   
53   10+ songs   
55   6 songs   
57   6 songs   
60   Tristam and Iseult   
64   Garland of Songs, 12 songs   
67   Child Lyrics, 5 songs   
69   14+ songs   
70   A Wreath of Songs, 6 songs   
72   2+ songs   
76   3+ songs   
23   Love Song, dramatic aria   1889
44   Hero and Leander, dramatic aria   
51   Verzweiflunir (call to Charon), dramatic aria   

others
85   The Enchanter's Dream (Des Zauberers Traum)   1922

[edurban]

Blair Fairchild has made a brief appearance here before, I believe.  Let's see....ah, a mention of a 1985 concert here in NYC, which included Fairchild's Concerto de Chambre...I had lobbied for it, provided the scores and  I'm pretty sure I wrote the program notes.  It was not liked by Tim Page of the NYTimes:

"...The program closed with a misfire - Blair Fairchild's Concerto de Chambre for Violin, Piano, Double Bass and String Quartet - which seemed a dreary exercise in formal rhetoric..."

Well, I liked it, anyway.


Foerster, the 'Beethoven of Pittsburg', actually wrote 3 piano trios, all at Library of Congress.  2nd was published (as Trio-Serenade?, I think...) and has been recorded, if I remember.  It is slighter than the other 2.  The 3rd, also published, is a big, passionate work with a lot of sequences, but really good tunes in the Rheinberger (Foerster's teacher) manner.  The texture, if I remember (all three scores are here somewhere in the storage bins of my apartment, lord knows where) was rather symphonic, with a big piano part and the strings belting out the melodies in octaves.

Carl Busch wrote a ton of choral music, much of which was published by Carl Fischer.  When Fischer closed their Astor Place store about 25 years ago, there were stacks of his scores piled up for practically nothing.  Ditto similar works by Charles Wakefield Cadman.  Am I correct in thinking that Busch taught out at the University of Kansas for many years?

David

PS. I see the original list has been revised to include these other Foerster trios...

[eschiss1]

I'd also perhaps add Oscar Weil, (1840-1921), a Reinecke pupil - will see if I can gather a worklist put together... and definitely Frederic Louis Ritter (1834-1891) (a few works published but quite a bit interesting in his manuscripts - concertos, etc. - that looks interesting) - and from a later generation, David Stanley Smith (1877-1949).

[Balapoel]

Am I correct in thinking that Busch taught out at the University of Kansas for many years?

He studied in Copenhagen with JPE Hartmann and Gade, and in Brussels and Paris with Godard. He emigrated to US in 1887 and founded several musical organizations, including the Kansas City SO (1911-1918).

[semloh]

Naxos has made a good start, and Albany are helping - but these posts suggest that a vast amount of U.S. music is being neglected and awaits (re)discovery. UC, especially in its old guise, alerted me to much sadly neglected music, and yet there's more, and more, and more ..... I know it won't all be of the highest quality, but goodness I'm sure we would all relish the opportunity of finding out! 

[eschiss1]

New World Records, Louisville First Edition (well, ok, you mentioned Albany), and Composers Recordings, ("for all their faults" taken as-read and as-said, and I know that New World Records at least is still around...) did (do) their yeoman's work (or more!) on behalf of American and other (e.g. that Rietz overture, and other examples, on Louisville First Edition) music.  Yes, and other labels too, but thought I'd mention those three...

(I know, the most recent New World Records new release to feature obvious Romantic music was that with Victor Herbert's Eileen in October, but...)

[eschiss1]

LoC's American Memory scans, with music by composers (American and otherwise) published in the US between 1830 or so and 1885, has quite a lot of names that are unfamiliar to me or have only become familiar to me since I saw them there; I've found here and there (and there and there) biographies for a few. I first saw Foerster's music there, as I mentioned (and - outside this thread- Helen Hopekirk's). Still know very little or nothing about a lot of them (though what one learns about some is intriguing, for instance Henry Rohbock, a Pittsburgh organist who (assuming one is not dealing with Sr. and Jr.) was alive as early as 1833 and as late as 1874 (if this is the H. Rohbock who he signed to a friend a manuscript copy of some Buxtehude organ works (here @ RISM (BuxWV 148)-

"Presented to Mr Chas. C. Mellor / by H. Rohbock / March I. 1874. / this piece came in my possession 1833 / from Gottfried Moeller, a pupil of / Kittle. the piece is said to be a M. S. / of the composer Boxtehude. / H R.")

[edurban]

Here are a few American names from my 'search for' files in alphabetical order:

Homer Bartlett (b. Olive, New York 12/28/1845 d. Hoboken, NJ April , 1920) Pupil of, among others, Sebastian Bach Mills.   Author of the Grand Polka de Concert, a hugely successful salon piece, as well as a Dance of the Gnomes for flute and string quintet, a violin concerto in G,  a cantata The Chieftain, an oratorio Samuel, Also wrote several music theatrical works about which I know next to nothing: La Valliere (3 act opera) Magic Hours premiered in the Astor Gallery of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel (2/18/1909) and Thetis and Vulcan Cort Theatre, 11/5/1916, as well as a symphonic poem Apollo, given in Sept, 1914 by the Orchestral Society of New York

William Kipp Bassford (b. New York, 4/23/1839 d. Belleville, NJ, 12/22/1902) Author of the opera Cassilda, vocal score was published in the 1860's, iirc, Mass in E flat, piano pieces, songs.  Completed Wm Vincent Wallace's unfinished opera Estrella at the request of Wallace's widow, according to Baker's

Johann Heinrich Beck (b. Cleveland, 9/12/1856- died there 5/26, 1924) a pupil of Reineke and Jadassohn.  Works incl. string quartet in c minor, string sextett in d minor, Deukalion (cantata), overture to Byron's Lara, Frei's Sehnsucht (orch), Der Freude Kuss (orch), 2 orch Scherzos, Meeresabend sop and orch, Aus meinem Leben, tone poem for orch, and others.  Mss. are in the Cleveland Public Library...

Willard Burr (b. Ravenna, Ohio 1/17/1852 d. Boston, 5/12/1915)  studied in Germany under Haupt, 1879-80.  Ms. "Grand" violin and piano sonata in B flat at L of Congress

Rossetter Gleason Cole (b. Clyde, Michigan 2/5/1866 d. Lake Bluff, Ind 5/18/1952) pupil of Max Bruch...he taught at Columbia University until 1939. opera: The Maypole Lovers 3 acts 1927-31, won David Bispham Medal, but not performed.  Ballade cello and orch (1909), Symphonic Prelude (1915) Pioneer Overture for the Illinois State Centenary (1919), Heroic Piece for Organ and Orch, 2 pieces for narrator and orch: Hiawatha's Wooing and King Robert of Sicily  Several cantatas, a violin and piano sonata in D, piano pieces and songs.  I have published scores for King Robert (narrator and piano) and the Ballade (vc and piano)

I could go on like this for pages and pages.  Back in the 80s I tried to track down the (largely unpublished) mss of these and many other American composers through probate records, I was largely unsuccessful, although in the online era, it might be easier to find a few things.

I'll post more anon.

David

[eschiss1]

One can find at least selections from Cassilda scanned in online, as I recall.

Hrm. How about musical theatre composers (if that's not way outside our orbit) like the Irish immigrant David Braham (1838-1905), Ludwig Engländer (operetta/musical show 1776, e.g. - with libretto by impresario Leo Goldmark- possibly of that same Goldmark family, as a Leo Goldmark was uncle to Carl)...

also
*Charles (Karl) Wels (Bohemian-American composer of church music and piano/harmonium music, generally light in the latter case, said to have composed a piano concerto also);
*Frederick Brandeis (German immigrant (again, German-American sounds rather like American born but of German ancestry- doesn't matter so but to be picky not true either) (1835-1899, as well as various works for piano, cello and piano, for chorus, etc. wrote one for piano or for string quartet which is one of the earlier works I can find published in the USA by an American composer for quartet, at least in the 19th century ?... admittedly, Anthony Philip Heinrich's (worth mentioning again...) compositions, even his published ones, were wider-ranging, but no published string quartets that I know of... )

*Theodore Felix von la Hache (1822?-1869) - see e.g. brief bio... (turn sound off or at least be aware that a sound file launches as soon as you open the page)
*Oley Speaks (1874-1948), Ohio-born singer, director of ASCAP in the 1930s, and composer of quite a few songs...

[Balapoel]

For what it's worth, my criteria for this (and the Austrian) post was composers with multiple large-scale orchestral works (preferably symphonies) and substantial chamber works (string quartets, etc.). The thought process was that if they were able to publish multiple works in many different forms, this should elevate the potential quality of their work, all other things being equal... If there is interest, I just started with the A's - there are many more...

[edurban]

Frederick Brandeis (Born, Vienna 7/5/35, d. NY, 5/14/1899)

Composition pupil of Rufinatscha.

I had an extensive correspondance with his grandaughter Irma Brandeis ca. 1985-7, an elderly, retired professor of romance languages at Bard College.  She loaned me copies of a few published piano pieces she had inherited, but knew nothing of the whereabouts of Frederick's larger works.  Alas, each piece she sent me (I seem to remember that one was a 'Doll's Funeral March') contained a patch of melodic 'borrowing' from some more famous composer obvious enough to be embarrassing.  Ms. Brandeis' NY Times obituary is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/31/obituaries/irma-brandeis-professor-84.html

David

[edurban]

In response to Balapoel:

"...if they were able to publish multiple works in many different forms, this should elevate the potential quality of their work..."

Alas, publishing serious works, for orchestra or chamber forces is one thing most Americans of this period were unable to do.  There was no market for such things until the very late 19th century, and then only in a few exceptional cases (ie. MacDowell).  Choral works were sometimes published in piano reduction (there was some hope of sale of those to choral societies), and piano works or songs likely to have a ready sale might also appear in print.  Note that none of Gottschalk's larger works were published, dispite his vast popularity, and Fry's operas Leonora and Notre Dame of Paris were only published in piano/vocal score at the composer's expense.  Similarly, the only one of Horace Wadham Nicholl's chamber works published was the cello sonata...again, at his own expense.

David

[Balapoel]

Alas, publishing serious works, for orchestra or chamber forces is one thing most Americans of this period were unable to do.  There was no market for such things until the very late 19th century, and then only in a few exceptional cases (ie. MacDowell).  Choral works were sometimes published in piano reduction (there was some hope of sale of those to choral societies), and piano works or songs likely to have a ready sale might also appear in print.  Note that none of Gottschalk's larger works were published, dispite his vast popularity, and Fry's operas Leonora and Notre Dame of Paris were only published in piano/vocal score at the composer's expense.  Similarly, the only one of Horace Wadham Nicholl's chamber works published was the cello sonata...again, at his own expense.

David

True enough, particularly for the American composers. From my perspective, it is one way to focus one's energies. I have "The Universal Handbook of Musical Literature" in PDF format - 19 volumes, each 400+ pages, and there are vast amounts of unknown (and unsung) composers. Too many for one lifetime - but the folks that have successfully composed many large-scale works, at least have potential. Not to say that others do not...