USA > New York > New York City > New York panorama : a comprehensive view of the metropolis > Part 25
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With the founding by Leopold Damrosch in 1874 of the Oratorio S ciety ; with the introduction in 1879 of the first Gilbert and Sullivan ligh operas; with the grand music festival celebrations in 1881, when Berli
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tionsequiem, excerpts from Wagner's Die Meistersinger, and Beethoven's inth Symphony were given by an orchestra of 250 pieces and a chorus 200; with the start of the Wagnerian music dramas at the Metropoli- n in 1884 (though Tannhäuser had a hearing as far back as 1859 at the adt Theater ) ; and with the building in 1891 of Carnegie Hall, at first hown as Music Hall (the occasion marking Tschaikovsky's first appear- ice in America )-with these events music in New York may be said to ive passed definitely out of the experimental or provincial stage.
The prejudice against living talent was still strong, however. The ad- ent of such conspicuous native composers as Edward MacDowell, Henry Hadley, Rubin Goldmark, Daniel Gregory and Charles T. Griffes would supposedly have left no doubt in the minds of our people that the merican composer really had something to say and that what he had to y was eminently worth listening to. But prejudice, stronger than convic- on, continued to hold its own.
After the Spanish-American War and the turn of the century, New y afork, because of its financial preeminence, became a kind of world clear- He wid g house for music and performing musicians and ensembles. Experiments. the Manhattan Opera House, the Kneisel Quartette, the foreign opera. hrtentures, the Beethoven Society, the Mendelssohn Glee Club, the Flonzaley uartette, all flourished. The accent, however, was on money rather than anka music. This "gold standard" provided a dangerous basis for artistic. ",flues. Tempting sums brought the greatest singers, dancers, instrumen- enlists in a mad scramble to America's shores. New York, the new Eldo- amendo, witnessed as a consequence an unbroken pageantry of front-rank thusical talent, such as it had never known before: Kubelik, Ysaye, Thi- aud, the De Reszkes, Paderewski, McCormack, Melba, Casals, Kreisler, s, aruso; from La Scala came Toscanini and Gatti-Casazza, the one as or- strmestral conductor, the other as managing director, of the Metropolitan reopera. But concurrent with the coming to New York of all these distin- hauished foreigners was the gradual elevation to stellar rank of our own whivas and virtuosos: Victor Just, Maud Powell, Horace Britt, Albert on palding, Guy Maier, Lillian Nordica, Leon Barzin, Louise Homer, Marie an appold, Geraldine Farrar, Clarence Whitehill, Reinald Werrenrath and orithers.
The World War, which confirmed New York's position as the premier Stower in the international money marts, also decisively established its pre- eminence as patron of music. The Jazz Age, following close upon the idrar, brought into sharp relief all the vernacular influences-Negro spirit-
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uals, blues, hot music and work songs; military, circus and Broadw ;. night-club bands; hillbilly and Western ballads-that had been animatir and shaping our musical idioms and trends since the Civil War. Jazz Wig and is-in its later metamorphoses-a definite contribution to America folk music; its value lies not so much in the usually trivial or derivatiw songs and compositions written for it, as in its assertion of the princip, of free improvisation, a principle that has developed instrumentalists remarkable technical dexterity and considerable creative resource. But the early 1920's it constituted a challenge to the future of American fo mal music. Out of jazz and the other folk idioms, a group of young mo ern composers in the 1920's and later (George Gershwin, Leo Ornstei Robert Russell Bennett, Randall Thompson, Deems Taylor, Werner Jan sen, Samuel Barber, Roy Harris, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston, Aard Copland) adapted whatever elements they found useful in creating ne patterns for a native American music in the classical mediums-symph nies, concertos, operas, tone poems. Today, among others, Alec Templ ton, the English composer-pianist, and Robert McBride, a young compost from the West, are experimenting with the jazz idiom as a primary ml sical structure, sometimes with brilliant effectiveness.
In other directions the war also caused considerable confusion in m sical values. But it accomplished one thing at least-it focused attentie on talent flowering in America. More than that, it stressed the need actively encouraging that talent and of securing to it an adequate moneta return. In time, as an answer to the first need, there were establish foundations (Juilliard) ; scholarships (Naumburg, Schubert Memori: Philharmonic); awards (Guggenheim, Pulitzer, National Broadcasti) Company). In answer to the second need, a host of musical organizatio sprang into being. Among the most active are the American Guild Musical Artists, the National Federation of Music Clubs, the Nation Music League, the League of Composers, the American Society of Co! posers, Authors and Publishers, the American Music Alliance, the Am ican Guild of Organists, and (most recent of all) the Affiliated Gra Rights Association.
The post-war era brought with it radio, community concerts and t revival of song festivals, music in the films, the popularization of outdo summer concerts and national "music weeks." These have democratiz music by making it available in every village and farmhouse in the cou try. Radio, with its numerous excellent programs, its scope and variety, incomparable facilities for reproduction, has earned the lion's share
PROGRAM NOTES 239
edit for this result in terms of audience. The democratization of the con- ati W ol of music was not an overnight phenomenon. Throughout the years rious orchestral, vocal, and even purely philanthropic organizations ught to bring music and the people closer together, by way of free or ati CID S w-priced admissions to concerts, free instruction in schools and settle- ents. The Mendelssohn Glee Club, the music federations, the MacDowell horus (which became, in 1912, the Schola Cantorum) helped consider- ly toward that end. But these were individual, isolated, and for the most fo no teig rt fugitive attempts. What was needed was a concerted and sustained ort, backed by a powerful agency and directed by musicians with a ong social consciousness. All this was inherent in the establishment of ante Federal Music Project of the Works Progress Administration. Almost fore anyone was aware of what had happened, the direction of the coun- ne phe ''s musical destinies, controlled heretofore by a relatively small group directors and patrons, was transferred to the people. The significance this change, this musical coup d'état, may be summed up by saying that, OS a result of it, music today is no longer caviar for the privileged few but meat and drink for the millions. And these millions are not merely passive teners-they are active participants. They go to music with a will and my open mind; they come away from it as from a service in which they tiohave had a part. An art that began as part of a communal service is once d core serving the community. at
The activities of the Federal Music Project in New York are extensive. she om December 1935 to November 1937, the Concert Division and the fla usic Education Unit of the project gave 6,971 concerts to an aggregate tilidience of 4,903,458 and made 4,010 radio broadcasts. The perform- lohces, most of them free, were held at more than 350 churches, museums, iblic libraries, parks, etc., in the five boroughs. The project also pre- Oninted 147 paid concerts to an aggregate audience of 75,417 at the Fed- onal Music Theatre in 1937. The Music Education Unit, composed of two ib-projects, (1) the Teaching of Music and Music Appreciation and (2) raffle Recital Division, instructed thousands of New Yorkers in 36 music bjects ranging from piano tuning to musical therapy. During 1935-7 there was a total attendance of 4,029,069 at 267,312 classes held in 150 donters. The unit sponsored 2,028 extra-curricular activities (student con- izerts, operettas, recitals, etc.) that drew an attendance of 228,791. The outecital Division has II groups of performers.
," As for the American composer, his day seems also to have arrived at (st. Through the WPA Composers' Forum-Laboratory, a device perfected
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by Ashley Pettis, entire evenings are given over to the presentation of single composer's works. On such occasions, the composer himself is re quired to be present to answer questions put to him by the audience. I the compositions performed find favor, the bay and laurel are his; other wise he must be prepared to take the consequences. This immediate judg ment is, of course, not final, nor is it meant to be. Besides the Composer: Forum-Laboratory, there is the opportunity offered by WPA orchestras a. over the country, which are eagerly receptive to native talent. Their pro grams have included the work of such Americans as Copland, Hadley Goldmark, Chadwick, Mabel Daniels, Roy Harris, Daniel Gregory Masor Edgar Stillman-Kelley, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Quincy Porter, Joh, K. Paine and others.
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I. POPULAR MUSIC
Folk Tune to Swing
WHEN the old Academy of Music was being razed in 1926 to make way or the Consolidated Gas Company building, there was a feast of remi- scence in the metropolitan press. Tony Pastor's, formerly in the same ock, got almost as much space as its more dignified neighbor. The names great concert stars who had appeared at the Academy shared the fading melight with Weber and Fields-Helene Mora, the female baritone, ho helped to popularize Harry Kennedy's Say Au Revoir But Not Good- ve and sang it at the composer's funeral; and the original Pat Rooney, ith his soft-shoe interpretation of Sweet Rosie O'Grady. This demolition as a love feast at which there were few guests. Most of the excavation atchers were curious but frankly unaware of the significance of this par- cular part of Fourteenth Street at Irving Place. Those who knew best hat the name of Tony Pastor signified had long since moved on to the 'in Pan Alley of the Times Square district.
With the world's biggest song business well in hand-in 1936 Tin Pan lley wrote the nation's songs to the tune of $5,000,000-the metropoli- in music manufacturers nevertheless occupy an anomalous position. By nd large, the products of the Alley are not folk music; nor can they, ex- ept by the kind of musical chicanery publicized by tune detectives, claim elationship with the classical composers. This does not mean that indi- idual songwriters lack distinction but simply that the products of the Alley, with exceptions to be noted, have followed the trend of popular iste-a taste dictated less by the will of the people than by the social atterns of the time.
Popular art, in the sense in which we use that term here, is created not y the people but for them. The distinction is particularly obvious in the ase of popular song, which as a rule is musically less distinguished than he folk or classical music from which it so often derives. This is not be- ause popular art of a high standard is impossible but because, by its very lature, it rests on the structure of the society in which it exists, reflecting
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in an exaggerated fashion the virtues and weaknesses of that society. In (W field that has more than its share of the false and the artificial, popul: song manages to convey, to those who take stock of its limitations, a sua prisingly accurate picture of the times and the people.
We learn from George Stuyvesant Jackson's Early Songs of Uncle Sa:lug that such songs were used in 1815 to popularize the issues which divide00 the forces of Thomas Jefferson from those of Alexander Hamilton. The verses, for example, celebrate the Jeffersonian point of view:
Your union's a knot no intrigue can untie, A band which the sword of no tyrant can sever; Chased by Reason, the shades of Opinion shall fly, And the murmurs of faction be silenced forever. From the father to son, every blessing you've won Unimpair'd to the last generation shall run.
The same device combines with modern advertising in Those Fooli. Things Remind Me of You, composed by Jack Strachey, Harry Link ar Holt Murrell in 1935, to suggest that in that year of grace women smoke cigarettes, used lipstick and traveled by airplane to romantic places, tl probable mingling with the improbable in the process of melodic wis fulfillment in reverse-a new variation on the torch song (related to blu but limited in its subject matter to the theme of frustrated love).
Our Tin Pan Alleyites, sponsored for the most part by big busine (the majority of popular songs today are published by companies und control of the large Hollywood film studios), tend to avoid the pure political, though a tinsel patriotism is often assumed. Exceptions are ra but notable. The Yacht Club Boys, who made their hit at one of the mo exclusive upper East Side night clubs, poke fun at alphabetic governme agencies in such a way as to indicate not so much their knowledge of go ernment as their awareness of what will please their special audience. TI capable composers who scored Modern Times for Charles Chaplin did very fine job of adapting wordless but significant variations on songs l Joe Hill, balladist of the Wobblies, and The Prisoner's Song.
Pianos in the Alley
There is no better vantage point from which to see the panorama ( popular music in America than New York's Tin Pan Alley, that shiftir section now more or less bounded on the north by Fifty-Second Street, tl
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In ving sector of the Rialto; on the east by Fifth Avenue; on the west by pul ighth Avenue, which, like Sixth Avenue, flanks Times Square with the ickstage poverty of pawnshops, rooming houses and small hotels; and the south by Thirty-Eighth Street. The flippant name for the Alley is Salapposed to have had its origin in the offices of a music publisher-com- videoser of the 1890's. This is possible; but in the Bryant's Minstrels pro- They'am for November 25, 1861, the show is described as a "Grand Tin- an-O-Ni-On of Pot Pourri." Aside from being a heavily loaded pun, tis suggests that the Alley need not have waited for a piano with mando- n attachment to acquire its name. Today its most famous composers, and me of its most capable, spend more time in Hollywood than in New ork. But New York may still lay claim to most of this music publishing isiness, which has flourished since the earliest days of the Constitution. ne of the first smash hits of the Revolutionary period was more in the ature of an already well-seasoned folksong than what is now called a olicommercial pop tune-the intrepid Yankee Doodle, which turned Tory anderision into democratic pride.
okej Though native music was published here so long ago (and occasionally thven an English importation, such as The Girl I Left Behind Me, attained istide popularity), the national song hit was not to become a reality until luelmost 50 years later. Troupes of minstrels did for 1840 what nation-wide ook-ups do for the present-that is, they made it possible for the song nesit of the day, more often than not of New York origin, to be sung, adeummed and whistled simultaneously in diverse parts of the country. rel'here is no doubt that in this manner they helped to shape a national pat- radern of thought, particularly on such compelling subjects as home, mother- good and young love. But to trace the moral atmosphere of the 19th cen- henry to the influence of popular music would be inaccurate. The popular ov music of that era emerges as part of a social pattern. Whatever the crime, The guilt of the Alley has never been more than that of aiding and abetting. This it has done, with a frankness always surprisingly unabashed. Thus bhore than one sentimental pop tune had an origin as immediate as the ong's content. In the Baggage Coach Ahead, written by the Negro com- poser Gussie L. Davis, is said to refer to an actual (and harrowing) inci- lent; and the charming Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie, by one of Tin Pan Alley's finest melodists, Harry von Tilzer, was inspired by a news- paper clipping read in the lobby of the Hotel Breslin on a rainy day. With a superior knowledge of its technical apparatus, Tin Pan Alley has in emained faithful to this tender tradition. In the year 1937, for example, d
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it promulgated My Cabin of Dreams, Sailboat in the Moonlight, Where or When? and That Old Feeling.
The popular conception of Tin Pan Alley, a conception aided by Holly. wood and its talent for hyperbole, is still that of an uninhibited mad. house, with composers and their lyricists in the role of zanies who nai" the reluctant publisher to a chair while he listens to the year's (unpub- lished) smash hit. A sober tour of the district, however, is enough to con." vince anyone that the glamor-and-screwball atmosphere has long beer concealed behind polite but firm secretaries; executives who, aside from their Broadway tastes in haberdashery, might as well be in the cream sepa rator business; mahogany desks and, more often than not, photo-mural." in place of the old-time collection of autographed pictures of stars who plugged the firm's songs. Here and there, of course, an office typical o.f the Alley in its halcyon youth can still be found. Here the telephone gir reads Variety as she hums one of the firm's numbers; zanies scramble hither and thither; and from innumerable cubbyholes fitted out with anti quated uprights come (with or without words ) the unpublished and, alas often never-to-be-published smash hits of the season.
Statistically, the shorter-lived hits of today are written by fewer song writers as the new century's downbeat sounds its accent. A closer concer tration of the music business, the decline of the sheet music and phonc graph record industry, and the rise of radio and moving pictures-thes factors augured ill for the many. The lucky few among the nation's song writers were rewarded with air-conditioned bungalows in the glamor Cit of Celluloid. The less lucky stay-at-homes obligingly ground out Yo Ought to Be in Pictures and continued to take schnapps with theill schmaltz (cheaply sentimental sweet music) in the depths of the Fifty Second Street underground.
The Rise of the Minstrels
If there is any single factor that encourages a study of chronology i popular song, it is the distinction that within a hundred years-whateve may be the case with America's classical composers-songwriters, whi. confined pretty much to the limitations of the popular music field, hay nevertheless used their source material with a naturalness not possible century ago. Gershwin's Summertime shows that the composer understoc the richness of theme inherent in American Negro music, and one hard ce needs to be told that Gershwin felt this music as part of the America
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cene, or that he looked upon Bessie Smith, the blues singer, as a creative olk artist. This is a sign for the future. In the past the unassimilated ele- nents in American popular music were very evident, as was also the indi- ation of an emergent pattern in which these elements-native folk music, lassical and popular music from abroad-were to take their places.
ub Almost from the beginning, one of the dominant influences in Amer- can popular music has been the folk music of the American Negro, which eer n turn utilized to great advantage the old English folk music, hymns and diversity of other folk sources, particularly in such places as New Or- pa al eans-a port of entry for French, Spanish and Italian emigrants and a enter of the slave trade from all parts of Africa. Old Zip Coon (now h known as Turkey in the Straw) was adapted from Negro folk music for The burnt-cork business back in the 1840's; and certainly since that time he most typically American strains of popular music have derived largely ble ti From the folk music of the Negro. The first important influence was a nelodic one, as revealed in the work of Stephen Collins Foster, who wrote ador minstrel shows. The second influence-though chronology here is a natter of conjecture-was that predecessor of jazz, ragtime; and of course the third was jazz itself, which came to its lusty infancy in the city of New Orleans at about the turn of the century.
Stephen Foster lived and wrote in New York. He died miserably at eså ng Bellevue Hospital in January 1864, after his friend and collaborator, George Cooper, had found him lying naked and wounded in the hall of Han old lodging-house at No. 15 Bowery. Foster's work need not be con- fused with folk music; but the influence of American folk music upon it eil was more profound than is usual in the case of popular balladists. To fastidiously musical ears there is, even in the best of these songs-My Old Kentucky Home, Old Black Joe, Old Folks at Home-the strain of senti- mentality that mars so much of our popular music. But there is also some- thing indigenous and genuine about them, notably in the Poesque dark- ness (Foster could recite Poe's verses "with thrilling effect") of Nellie Was a Lady and in the up-and-coming Susannah. One can hardly imagine vet an American background without the songs of Stephen Foster. It was quite natural that the melody of Camptown Races should be utilized to AV help describe the Lincoln-Douglas debates in a quasi-folksong of the time, Lincoln Hoss and Stephen A .; just as it was natural that Dan Em- 0 mett's Dixie, written for a minstrel show in 1850, should have been ac- acepted by the rank and file of the Confederate South. Carry Me Back to Old Virginny was perhaps even more indigenous in inspiration. Written ity
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by a Virginian, James A. Bland, the offspring of former slaves, it has the slow solemnly rhythmic quality that characterizes so much Negro folk music. Bland also gave to the quartet contingents In the Evening by the Moonlight.
Many colored song writers, taking their cue from white writers for the minstrels, composed songs about themselves and their way of life. Irving Jones' I Live as Good as Any Other Coon was typical of their output; though here and there, as among the white composers, an outstanding tal- ent such as that of Bland revealed itself.
Later, Ernest Hogan, a Negro comedian who is said to have been al- most as good as Bert Williams, wrote a song entitled All Coons Look Alike to Me (1896). This song was justifiably resented; yet when two Negroes, Bert Williams and George Walker, came to New York as the century was turning the corner, their act was a great success, though it was in out-and-out coon style. They did the cakewalk, a fad with both black and white; and Williams challenged William K. Vanderbilt, who had taken up the dance, to a cakewalk contest for a side bet of $100. The rep- ertoire of Williams and Walker featured the coon song tradition. Walker died and Bert Williams went on alone to success on the New York stage, starring in the Ziegfeld Follies until his death in 1922. Despite the limi- tations of his subject matter, which was sometimes an unconscious slui upon his own people, Williams was a great entertainer, and his many imi- tators still pay tribute to his talent.
With the demise of the coon song era and its undesirable (however unconscious) humorous disparagement, there appeared a new type of Negro performer and a more self-respecting style of entertainment. Wher Billy Johnson of the comedy team of Cole and Johnson died, Bob Cole sent to the south for a new partner, J. Rosamund Johnson, a young Negro musician. The team of Cole and Johnson made a hit in vaudeville and became even more famous as collaborators in song writing. Rosamund': brother, James Weldon Johnson, who later became a leader of his race ir America, quit school teaching in the South and joined them. He and Cole wrote lyrics and Rosamund the music. Their songs were varied-some times romantic, sometimes quaint and humorous, but never in the old clownish coon style. During their rise the coon song went into the dis card; and the coon-shouter (loudly exuberant singer of Negro songs disappeared from the theater.
While W. C. Handy was notating the blues and New Orleans com
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osers were participating in the development of the still nascent jazz train, Negroes in the North carried on their work in the popular music teld. Hallie Anderson, the capable singer and musical director, supplied rchestras for the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem and the Howard in Wash- ngton, D. C. For the most part, her efforts were in the channels of con- entional popular music, as were those of James Reese Europe, founder of the Clef Club in New York, who studied under Hans Hanke of Leip- ig, Germany, became a renowned figure in the field of popular music, nd wrote Castle Walk. Later he gained greater fame as leader of what vas perhaps the outstanding American band in France during the World War. In discussing a concert under the auspices of the Clef Club given at Carnegie Hall in May 1912, Schirmer's Musical Quarterly said: "Few of he players in that great band of more than a hundred members had re- eived any musical training whatever. They were, by profession, elevator hen, bell-boys, porters, janitors or followers of still humbler tasks, for ew trades-unions then admitted colored men, so that the vocations open o the Negro were about as restricted and over-crowded as the Negro treets themselves." In the program for that concert one or two ragtime ieces are listed, a similar number of pieces that suggest the minstrels, nd one number that was to become a swing standard, Panama.
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